Blank Check with Griffin & David

This week we’re in hygge mode, uncovering traumas in our generational home with the host of This Had Oscar Buzz, Joe Reid! One of the breakout Oscar films of the year is Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, a warm, realist Norwegian film about a difficult but brilliant director (Stellan Skarsgard), his two daughters (Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), and an American actress cast in the auteur’s new film (Elle Fanning). All four performances earned Oscar nominations, along with nominations for Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Screenplay.

Sentimental Value also highlights a recurring phenomenon in Hollywood, wherein the Academy will pass over a director’s breakout film but shower the follow-up with nominations. In Trier’s case, his previous film The Worst Person in the World received nominations for Best International Film and Original Screenplay but, in our opinion, deserved many more. We try to break down how and why this happens, whether films about filmmaking have an innate appeal to Oscar voters, how Fanning’s star power helps bridge the international gap for voters, and the film itself, including its deft intermingling of artistic expression and sublimated generational trauma. 

With Joe's guidance, we also check in on some of the Oscar-buzziest films of the year that didn't pan out, check in on the state of the acting category race and some potential upsets, and celebrate The Secret Agent's breakout star Tânia Maria and her new role as Burger King spokeswoman.

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Our Lynne Ramsay series comes to a close with last year's Die My Love, which brings us to the realization - damn, have we really never talked about Jennifer Lawrence before? Join us and Vulture's Alison Willmore as we do a full career deep-dive on J.Law, and grapple with this film and Mubi's decision to purchase it out of Cannes for a buttload of money.

Read the NY Mag profile of Darren Aronofsky from 2017

Read Alison's work at Vulture

Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on.

Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

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Viva Brazil! Today we discuss Best Picture nominee The Secret Agent, the simmering, colorful Brazilian thriller about a man on the run, starring the dreamy Wagner Moura and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. The story, about retaining personal and political memory under authoritarianism, has proven resonant with an international audience and awards bodies, garnering three additional Oscar nominations for Best International Feature, Best Casting, and Best Actor for Moura. On this episode, we discuss The Secret Agent itself, how it fits into and subverts the tropes of international films at the Oscars, the Eurovision-like process for international nominations, check in on the Berlin Film Festival, and do a very special Il Postino corner.

Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on.

Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook! 

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Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord

For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com
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In 2018, Lynne Ramsay released You Were Never Really Here, a film about a completely implausible scenario...a townhouse on the East side of Manhattan houses a sex trafficking operation that implicates high-level government officials in its web of depravity???? Could you even imagine?!! Hollywood Handbook's Sean Clements joins us to chat about this eerily relevant film, the literary career of Jonathan Ames, Joaquin Phoenix's screen persona, and Joseph Gordon Levitt's recently announced follow-up to Don Jon.

Listen to Hayes Davenport's (not a guest on this episode) episode of High & Mighty where he talks about newspaper comics.

Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on.

Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

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This week we’re brooding, Victorian style, with Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri! Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is a Best Picture nominee and is well represented in the craft categories, but it has only one acting nomination, for Jacob Elordi’s hulking monster. It’s of a piece with past craft-heavy Oscar contenders like Dune or The Lord of the Rings, but does Frankenstein actually stand a chance? We discuss the film itself, its lavish sets and costumes, del Toro’s choice to center the monster as the hero, and how that decision reshapes the monster’s opposite, Victor, played by Oscar Isaac.

We also touch on the new Wuthering Heights, also starring Jacob Elordi, the history of Wuthering Heights adaptations, the shameless state of celebrity Super Bowl ads, and finally atone for our past sins, as Bilge defends previous subjects Train Dreams and Hamnet against our critiques. As it turns out, we were the monster all along.

Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on.

Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes.

Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook! 

Buy some real nerdy merch

Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord

For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices