The Big Picture · Discussion
March 11, 2024/ 80 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins recap the 96th Academy Awards the night it airs: Oppenheimer's seven wins and Christopher Nolan's first directing Oscar, Emma Stone edging Lily Gladstone, and an increasingly international Academy sending Sound and Animated Feature to The Zone of Interest and The Boy and the Heron. Plus the settling of their year-long Oscars Big Bet.
17 films across 1 segment.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The 96th Academy Awardsrecapped the night it aired
Seven wins, including Best Picture, Best Director for Christopher Nolan (presented by Steven Spielberg), Best Actor for Cillian Murphy, and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr. The hosts agree this is how the night will be remembered: the Nolan-Oppenheimer Oscars.
Didn't win the night, but the 'I'm Just Ken' number (Ryan Gosling going 'a thousand percent,' Slash on guitar, Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig pulled in) is the show's high point for both hosts. Billie Eilish's 'What Was I Made For?' won Best Song, which Amanda spent the performance in 'full brat mode' about.
Emma Stone's Best Actress win over Lily Gladstone was the night's one real upset. Its below-the-line sweep (makeup and hairstyling over the favored Maestro, plus costume and production design) is what tipped Sean off mid-show that the Actress race might break Stone's way.
Won Best Sound over Oppenheimer (Sean deleted it from his ballot at the last minute for Oppenheimer and regretted it) and Best International Feature. Jonathan Glazer's was the only speech to address both the October attacks in Israel and the war in Gaza.
Best Animated Feature over Across the Spider-Verse; Miyazaki's second Oscar, and once again he didn't show up. Part of what the hosts read as a more internationalist Academy flexing across the below-the-line categories.
Justine Triet and Arthur Harari won Best Original Screenplay (cue Amanda repeatedly getting corrected on 'Justine'). The hosts riff on Messi the dog as the season's biggest 'scandal' and note Sandra Hüller's performance went unseen by most of the audience.
Shut out, 0-for-10: the third Scorsese film to go winless from ten nominations. The hosts, who both called it the year's best movie, chew on whether it's a bias against a long, expensive movie that started at Paramount and ended at Apple.
Also shut out. Favored for months in makeup and hairstyling, where Kazuhiro Tsuji had already won twice, it lost that to Poor Things, the result that started the night's pattern. Another Paramount-to-Netflix blank-check production.
Cord Jefferson's Best Adapted Screenplay win and the speech Sean loved most: make twenty $10 million movies instead of one $200 million one. Sterling K. Brown was a Supporting nominee most of the audience hadn't gotten to see.
Best Documentary Feature. Mstyslav Chernov's speech (he said he'd trade the Oscar to undo everything the film captured in Ukraine) got a delayed standing ovation and, per the hosts, was allowed to run its full length when lesser speeches got played off.
Best Visual Effects, the first Oscar ever for a Godzilla film. Sean's favorite surprise of the night; the winners fumbled Godzilla figurines, the statue, and their speech on stage.
Lost Best Animated Feature to The Boy and the Heron, one of the below-the-line results the hosts flag as the international voting body asserting itself.
The John Williams Best Score nomination the hosts argue about: Amanda thinks a legend earned his seat, Sean says nobody walked out of the movie raving about the music and it shouldn't have been nominated.
The stunt-choreography montage, set up by its stars Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, doubled as an ad for it. That feeds Sean's decade-long campaign for a stunts Oscar, announced this year only for casting instead.
Cited alongside the year's other great practical stunt work as evidence the Academy should already have a stunts category.
Another entry in Sean's stunts-category case: a year loaded with real stunt filmmaking that still had no award to recognize it.
Named in passing among the year's standout stunt and effects work as the stunts-Oscar argument comes up.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In passing ParasiteNomadlandCODATitanicGladiatorThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingTop Gun: MaverickAvatar: The Way of WaterTwinsThe FabelmansMementoTenetDunkirkThe Dark Knight RisesIron Man 2Iron Man 3Doctor SleepSpirited AwayRangoField of DreamsLa La LandMoonlightRicky StanickyMadame Web3 WomenTroop Beverly HillsDune: Part Two
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
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