The Big Picture · Discussion · Interview

What It’s Really Like at an Awards Show. Plus: Cliff Booth Returns and the Best Super Bowl Trailers!

February 10, 2026/ 120 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins

Sean and Amanda run through the Super Bowl movie trailers: the Fincher-Tarantino 'Cliff Booth' teaser, Spielberg's 'Disclosure Day,' 'Project Hail Mary,' 'The Mandalorian and Grogu,' and 'Supergirl.' Then they recap the DGA Awards dinner, where Paul Thomas Anderson won and Steven Spielberg loomed over the room. Plus Sean's Vidiots talk with the 'K-pop Demon Hunters' directors.

22 films across 3 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 Super Bowl trailerswhat aired between the ads

The Adventures of Cliff Booth 2026

The surprise of the night: a one-minute Netflix teaser, written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by David Fincher, that never shows the title. It's a faux-'70s exploitation reel with scratched-out visual 'bleeps,' cut to the Peter Gunn theme. Brad Pitt is back as Cliff Booth; the hosts clock Elizabeth Debicki, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Holt McCallany, Karen Karagulian and a bikini-clad Carla Gugino. Sean reads it as pure Fincher, closest to 'Fight Club,' and compares the flashes-and-vibe cut to the 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' teaser.

Disclosure Day 2026

Spielberg's alien film got a short, ball-hiding Universal teaser: a car trapped under a train in an old-school Spielberg set piece, a UFO drifting through cloud at the end, and an Emily Blunt reveal. The hosts want to know everything and nothing about it.

Project Hail Mary 2026

The Amazon adaptation, out March 20, a week after the Oscars. Sean started the trailer and shut it off, already sold, and dreads the drive across town to the Amazon theater to see it.

The Mandalorian and Grogu 2026

The first Star Wars movie in seven years turned up only as a 30-second spoof of the Budweiser Clydesdale ads: Tauntauns on Hoth, no Mandalorian face. Sean and Amanda read the flat anticipation as a sign Disney has aimed the franchise squarely at kids, and admit their sons will love it anyway.

Supergirl 2026

Out June 26, Millie Alcock in the lead. Sean skipped the new trailer and worries it looks like the jokey-rooms-then-explosions superhero mode he thought was finished; notes it caps an 11-month gap with no superhero release, the longest since roughly 2008.

Inside the DGA Awardsa wedding you can drink at

One Battle After Another 2025

Paul Thomas Anderson's film and the winner. Leonardo DiCaprio introduced it and PTA; PTA leaned on a John Steinbeck line about a shared soul, then paid tribute to his late first AD, Adam Sumner, to whom the film is dedicated. The DGA winner has lost the Oscar only eight times in 80 years, so the hosts call Best Director all but settled.

Sinners 2025

Ryan Coogler's film, the box-office and audience favorite in the room, introduced by Michael B. Jordan. Coogler held up his DGA and insurance cards, invoked his Black Panther uncle and union history, and came closest of anyone to naming ICE. The hosts weigh a possible best-picture/best-director split, and Sinners' softer international run.

Hamnet 2025

Chloe Zhao's Shakespeare-grief film, introduced by Steven Spielberg, who sat at its table and, Sean says, loomed over the whole night. Zhao thanked her first AD; Amanda says the film's best stretch is its ending, connection after grief.

Frankenstein 2025

Guillermo del Toro's film, introduced by a brown-suited Jacob Elordi, too tall for the mic. Del Toro closed by inviting the room to build model kits at his house on Sundays. Elordi is the best thing in it, Sean says; the monster role was originally Andrew Garfield's.

Marty Supreme 2025

Josh Safdie's film, presented by Timothée Chalamet in full Damien Chazelle mode. Chalamet was loose and funny; Safdie's own speech turned personal: his father weaponizing 'Kramer vs. Kramer' against his mother during the divorce, and how that made movies inseparable from his life.

2000 Meters to Andriivka 2025

Mstyslav Chernov's Ukraine documentary won the doc award. His somber speech, about a colleague asking why he holds a camera instead of a gun, set a different register for the night. Sean's still shocked his Mariupol film, '20 Days in Mariupol,' wasn't an Oscar doc nominee.

The Plague 2025

Charlie Polinger's first feature, a mild upset for the first-time-filmmaker award; Polinger seemed gobsmacked. Sean liked it and looks forward to his next, 'The Mask of the Red Death' for A24.

In conversationrecorded at a Vidiots screening