The Big Picture · Review · Discussion · Interview
February 5, 2019/ 92 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Amanda finally watches The Wife, ending a months-long bit; Bohemian Rhapsody wins an editing award nobody can explain; and BlacKkKlansman editor Barry Alexander Brown talks 40 years of cutting for Spike Lee.
14 films across 4 segments.
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 Wife'-a-PaloozaAmanda watches the all-time plane movie at last
The recurring bit finally pays off. Both hosts agree Glenn Close is doing something new here, but the movie itself is clunky: a third of it plays out in flashback with different actors, and it never explains why Joan agreed to ghostwrite Joe's entire career in the first place.
Jonathan Pryce already played this exact type of narcissistic, thinly veiled Philip Roth stand-in, opposite Elisabeth Moss.
Close's previous Oscar nomination, lost to Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady. Also Annie Stark's screen debut, playing a young Glenn Close.
Stark played a young version of a Close character here too, practically her whole filmography.
Stock Up, Stock Downthe Ace Eddie and DGA Awards
Wins the Ace Eddie for dramatic editing despite widely mocked continuity errors. Bryan Singer was fired partway through the shoot and Dexter Fletcher finished it. Sean argues the real reward for salvaging it is the $850 million it made.
Wins the documentary Ace Eddie; directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi had been guests on the show the week before.
Alfonso Cuarón wins the DGA Award, which Sean says all but locks him in for Best Director.
Bo Burnham wins the DGA's best first feature award over Bradley Cooper's A Star Is Born.
Tim Wardle wins Best Documentary Directing at the DGA despite the film missing an Oscar nomination entirely.
The Big Racesupporting actor and the road to the BAFTAs
Mahershala Ali's supporting nomination is complicated by the film's controversies around Nick Vallelonga and Peter Farrelly.
Ali's prior, uncontested supporting win, cited as the rare case of the right person winning.
Sam Elliott's campaign is 'cursed,' per Sean, up against Mahershala, Adam Driver, Sam Rockwell, and Richard E. Grant.
In conversation
His nomination comes 40 years after his first, for a documentary he made in his twenties. He singles out two sequences: Kwame Ture's campus speech, built around individual crowd-member portraits shot separately and cut in afterward, and the Harry Belafonte monologue intercut with a Klan screening of The Birth of a Nation, both cut in days, not weeks.
His pick for the last great thing he's seen. He argues animation is still editing: 'however you get there, if you draw the edits, it's an edit.'
Also mentioned raised along the way
Glenn Close's earlier films The World According to GarpThe Big ChillThe NaturalGreystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the ApesJagged EdgeFatal AttractionDangerous Liaisons
Other late-career Best Actress comps Still AliceThe ReaderThe HoursBlue SkySense and Sensibility
Overlooked-star Oscar wins BeginnersAfflictionRain ManScent of a WomanLa Vie en Rose
In passing The Big ShortViceDances with WolvesMission: Impossible - Fallout
Brown cutting for Spike Lee She's Gotta Have ItSchool DazeDo the Right ThingMalcolm XHe Got GameSummer of Sam25th Hour
Brown's other work Salaam Bombay!Madonna: Truth or DareThe War at HomeSon of the SouthThe Birth of a Nation
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV True DetectiveDamagesGame of ThronesShe's Gotta Have It (Netflix series)