The Projector #26: What’s Your Oscars Strategy? (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

Blessedly, the awards season is shorter this year than it has been in a while. That means a tighter window for campaigning, black-ops campaigns, and endless takes on the nominees. But it also means less time to prepare for the big night. How is everyone else approaching this?

For those of us who write about film professionally, the lead-up to the Oscars generally means a diminishing stack of movies. Screeners start to arrive in the fall, first in a flurry then in a blizzard. The conscientious among us try to watch broadly and widely before voting in our various critics organizations. That means performing a bit of triage, sorting out the truly unpromising looking selections but otherwise trying to take in as much as time and other professional obligations will allow. 

After voting, the focus shifts toward what we need to see to talk smartly about the Oscars. That means trying to see as many of the nominees as possible. So we’re pretty much in the same boat as serious Oscars followers at that point. Whether I’m writing about them or not — and it’s been a while since I covered the Oscars as they happened in any significant way — I try to go into the awards having seen most of the major nominees. I’ve still got a little ways to go. The big blind spot remains Jojo Rabbit, in part because it’s been kind of a relief not to have to have an opinion on it these past few weeks. I’m sure I’ll get to it. Others… I don’t know. I mean, I think Charlize Theron is terrific but actually popping Bombshell in the DVD players feels a lot like homework given what basically everyone else has told me about the film. It doesn’t help that, despite many fine nominees, the awards seems less in touch with the excellent film year that preceded it. Or to paraphrase a tweet from Sean Fennessey, the best movie year in a long time could potentially produce the “most boring Oscars ever”?

How about you? How much homework are you putting in?

If nothing else, please see Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, the subject of this week’s episode. And if you want to put in some extra reading, here’s a few pieces we like and/or wrote in the past week:

We don’t get much of a chance to talk about how great Bob’s Burgers is on the podcast. But it’s great. For Vulture, our pals Charles Bramesco and Vikram Murthi ranked all 180 of the show’s original songs.

At The Ringer, Brendan Boyle looked back at the late Czech director Ivan Passer’s American venture, the 1981 film Cutter’s Way.

 For Vulture, E. Alex Jung considered the career of Jude Law, including his work in past podcast subject The Talented Mr. Ripley.

And speaking of past podcast topics, Abbey Bender wrote about To Die For for Decider.