Welcome to Red Carpet Rosters Podcast, your hub for film awards fantasy advice, betting advice, some history, and the Academy Awards themselves. I am your host, John Richards of RedCarpetRosters.com.
First I must issue a correction. I said All Quiet on the Western Front won five Oscars. It actually won 4 Oscars. My apologies.
We are just beginning the off-season, but part of the nearly weekly updates will be films that have released that might need to be on your radar. We’re already three months into the eligibility period of next years Academy Awards, which also closely matches the eligibility period of most other awards, so are there any films that have already been released that could be a fantasy contributor? Probably not any that you’ve already seen, but there was a certain film festival in February that could offer some insight. I’m talking, of course, about Sundance. Now not all Sundance films will get a distributor, and some of them will actually be widely released next year, making them eligible for the next season, not this one. A good example of that is Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Wonderful film. It premiered at Sundance 2021, but released to the masses in 2022, making it eligible for the 2022-2023 film awards season. Anyway, Sundance has a mixed history with film awards fantasy. CODA won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2021 and then went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Nanny, however, was last year’s Sundance winner and barely registered at any award ceremony, except for some breakthrough points for Nikyatu Jusu. Last year’s Audience Award Winner Cha Cha Real Smooth registered even less than Nanny. This year saw the film A Thousand and One win the Grand Jury Prize starring Masked Singer champion Teyana Taylor. It certainly appears it’ll make some noise at more of the independent awards, like Gotham and Independent Spirit, but there’s just too many unknowns right now. It releases later this month, a little early for an Oscar contender of this scale, but anything can happen.
Where Sundance really gives a little clarity is the documentaries that premiere there. Oscar winner Navalny won the Sundance Audience Award, Editing Award winner Fire of Love was an Oscar nominee, World Cinema Grand Jury Winner All That Breathes was an Oscar nominee, Directing winner A House Made of Splinters was an Oscar nominee, and other documentaries such as The Territory and Descendant did get points elsewhere, even if they weren’t Oscar nominees. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that in 2021, Oscar winner Summer of Soul, triple Oscar nominee Flee, and Oscar nominee Writing with Fire all won awards at Sundance.
So the narrative feature wins at Sundance are really hit or miss during the film awards season, but the documentaries are a little more reliable. Having said that, though, Red Carpet Rosters leagues follow a strict tradition of kicking off the season with the Gotham Awards Nominations. In most years, the Critics Choice Documentary Awards announce their nominations prior to that, so that will also help you separate the contenders from the pretenders. Anyway, check out the documentary winners and all of the Sundance winners by following the link in the show notes.
In summary, here are the Grand Jury Award winners, films that could have fantasy relevance next season:
U.S. Dramatic winner A Thousand and One
U.S. Documentary winner Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
World Dramatic winner Scrapper
World Documentary winner The Eternal Memory
The Festival Favorite winner went to Radical.
The Audience Awards for dramatic features went to The Persian Version and Shayda, while the documentary audience awards winners went to Beyond Utopia and 20 Days in Mariupol.
In addition to International Women’s Month, it is also Disability Awareness Month. Disability representation at the Oscars is mixed at best, but I contend that the shorts categories and the documentary feature usually feature people with disabilities at a higher level than other categories. Just this last ceremony, we saw a Live Action Short called Night Ride feature a little person main character played by Sigrid Husjord, and Oscar winner An Irish Goodbye featured James Martin, who has Downs Syndrome, as one of the leads. The Documentary Feature race had All the Beauty and the Bloodshed that highlighted substance abuse and the AIDS epidemic, and A House Made of Splinters highlighted children who undoubtedly suffer from various mental health problems such as PTSD.
In Academy Awards history, there have been only three acting winners who had disabilities. For the sake of this history lesson, I’m not including disabilities like mental health (i.e. anxiety, depression, etc.) or substance abuse disorder. This is not because they don’t matter or aren’t serious, but these ailments are often invisible to others and I don’t want to inadvertently mistakenly include or exclude anyone. For example, you can make a case that any acting winner had, at some point in their lives, struggled with some sort of mental health crisis. So although mental health is something that I care deeply about, for the sake of this exercise, I’m not including someone like Heath Ledger who tragically committed suicide before he could accept his posthumous Oscar win for playing Joker in The Dark Knight.
The first actor with a disability to win an Academy Award was all the way back in 1947 when Harold Russell won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a World War II soldier named Homer Parrish who lost both of his hands in the war and his and other veterans’ adjustment to post-war life in Best Picture winner The Best Years of Our Lives. He had a lot of life experience to draw from with this role because Harold Russell himself lost both of his hands during World War II, although not overseas. A faulty detonator while he was teaching concepts in demolition at Camp Mackall in North Carolina blew off his hands, and Russell subsequently replaced them with functional hooks. His role in The Best Years of Our Lives was his feature film debut after director William Wyler cast him after seeing him in Government produced short film called Diary of a Sergeant. Russell would then go on to only appear in two more feature films. That wasn’t the only Oscar he received. That same year, he received a special award statuette for “bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives.”
The next two Oscar winning actors with a disability both appeared in CODA, Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur. Marlee Matlin earned her Best Actress Oscar for her debut film role in Children of a Lesser God, a film where William Hurt plays a speech teacher at a deaf school who falls in love with a janitor named Sarah Norman, portrayed by Marlee Matlin. Marlee Matlin not only became the first deaf actress to win an Oscar, but the youngest to win Best Actress at 21 years old, a record that still stands today. She beat out some big Hollywood names. The other nominees were Jane Fonda, Sissy Spacek, Kathleen Turner, and Sigourney Weaver. Marlee Matlin was not born deaf, but became deaf either due to illness or genetic predisposition or both when she was 18 months old. Since earning her Oscar win along with a Golden Globe win for the same role, she has gone on to earn a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble for CODA as well as multiple nominations for a Primetime Emmy, my favorite for being Jerry’s love interest in “The Lip Reader” episode of Seinfeld. She has also published four books, the latest being I’ll Scream Later published in 2009.
And the third and most recent actor to win an Oscar is, of course, Troy Kotsur for CODA, where he plays Frank Rossi, a fisherman trying to be supportive of his daughter’s dream of becoming a singer. Not only did Kotsur win an Academy Award, he also won the SAG Award, BAFTA, Critics Choice Awards, Independent Spirit Award, and Gotham Award, among others. Troy Kotsur was born deaf in Arizona and later attended Galluadet University in my hometown of Washington DC before touring with a theater group. His feature film debut was in the much maligned film The Number 23, where he played Barnaby. He also has a directing credit to his name, No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie, which also stars Marlee Matlin. Shortly before CODA, Troy Kotsur was hired as an advisor on the hit show The Mandalorian for the developing a sign language used by the Tusken Raider scouts. After figuring out that Troy Kotsur had acting experience, they cast him as a scout. If you’re looking for him, he appears in Chapter 5: The Gunslinger. Since winning the Oscar, he performed the National Anthem in sign language at the Super Bowl, and, if everything goes according to plan, play a football coach in a Disney+ series about the true story of a deaf football team to go on to the California state championship. If that sounds familiar, the film Audible was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, but that Maryland team is not the inspiration for this series.
And there they are, the only three disabled actors to have won an Academy Award. Many actors have been nominated and won Oscars for playing someone with a disability. Think Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot or Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman or any number of actors playing someone with a debilitating disease, like AIDS or cancer. However, there is a place for disabled actors and actresses, and hopefully more representation not only in roles but in acting jobs manifest in the near future.
So I talked earlier about Sundance those films that could become fantasy relevant next season. Shall we move on to any films that were released to theaters that could be fantasy relevant? It’s only March, and I know I’m thinking mostly about why I even bother doing any kind of basketball pools. Plus, I’m a Wizards fan, and I don’t even know if they can make the play-in game. But no matter. March is usually pretty early for any Oscar contender to be released to theaters. Sure there are exceptions, the initial release of Everything Everywhere All at Once was in March. But when that came out, there was something about it. Maybe we didn’t think it would be the juggernaut that it became, but there was something there. Anyway, what are the movies that have come out that could at least earn some fantasy points.
Let’s start with the first major release of the year, M3GAN. It was good fun, but let’s be honest. The only appeal this has is some genre points here and there. Not worth a draft pick nor even a plug and play. This movie exists only for fun, not points.
Also releasing in January was the A24 feature When You Finish Saving the World. This one is intriguing. Jesse Eisenberg makes his directorial debut, which could net him some breakthrough points, especially because he also wrote the film. It stars familiar faces Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfard, but the only thing on my radar right now is Jesse Eisenberg only because it is his first. Last year, though, B.J. Novak had his debut with Vengeance and didn’t get anything.
Infinity Pool was shocking, but not fodder for fantasy points.
Knock at the Cabin and 80 for Brady released the same weekend, and while the former film by M. Night Shyamalan won’t be fantasy relevant, 80 for Brady has a secret weapon: Diane Warren. Yes, Diane Warren is a 14 time nominee, and it’s become a running gag that if she writes a song for a movie, it’s going to be nominated. I just feel like nomination 15 will be win #1, but it’s way too early to tell that. However, her recent nominees have come from…how do I put this lightly?...films that have not been universally loved. 80 for Brady though is serviceably good, and she wrote a song for it called Gonna Be You..as in the Oscar winner is gonna be Diane. Usually Diane Warren is a plug and play and bench stasher, but this year I wouldn’t mind spending a draft pick on Diane Warren. And that’s not her only song this year either. It’s very possible she becomes a double nominee for writing Found for Netlfix’s animated feature The Magician’s Elephant, and Netflix has reasonable success at getting animated films into the Oscar race conversation. I’ll speak about streaming movies’ chances in later podcasts, but Diane Warren has written two songs for some decent movies, and she should be on our radar come fantasy draft time.
Magic Mike’s Last Dance shouldn’t be bothered with. Maybe Salma Hayek? That’s a stretch.
So far, the highest grossing movie of 2023 that was also widely released in 2023 is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The VFX will probably get Oscar shortlisted, but otherwise this one can be ignored because the VFX won’t get many points elsewhere not because they’re not good but because there are other contenders later this year that will render this one unvaluable. Those include Dune: Part II and Oppenheimer.
Cocaine Bear is fun, but not for fantasy purposes. Maybe it’ll get thrown a VFX nomination here and there because it features a CGI cocaine bear, and Elizabeth Banks and a bear did present the Visual Effects Oscar this year.
Jesus Revolution is a faith-based film that has become a surprise box office hit, but there’s nothing here for fantasy purposes.
Creed III is intriguing because Michael B. Jordan has cross-eligibility as an actor and director. It’s also his directorial debut, so he is certainly in play to earn quite a few breakthrough points. And Ryan Coogler does have a story credit to Creed III, but story credits aren’t eligible in Red Carpet Rosters fantasy leagues. I only bring him up because he’s well-respected in the industry and could push Michael B. Jordan into some fantasy points. Jonathan Majors could also get some supporting actor points.
And last weekend saw Scream VI, 65, and Champions. Scream VI can be ignored, even if I’m a big fan of the Stab (uh, I mean) Scream franchise. 65 will probably get Oscar shortlisted for Visual Effects, but not much else. Champions, directed by Bobby Farrelly and starring Woody Harrelson and about a coach trying to coach a basketball team with intellectual disabilities, probably won’t get much fantasy attention, except for maybe Madison Tevlin for some breakthrough acting points playing one of the team members.
And that’s it. Certainly nothing like Everything Everywhere All at Once, but maybe Diane Warren and Michael B. Jordan will find themselves some fantasy points next season.
And that’s it for me on this episode of the Red Carpet Rosters Podcast. Next podcast I am pleased to announce my first guest appearance: Paulo from the Oscars Death Race Podcast and I will hash some things out! We’ll certainly talk about some fantasy contenders on our radar for next season, so stay tuned for that.
Turn on notification for future episodes of this podcast. Thank you to Patrick Richards for writing the show music exclusively for Red Carpet Rosters Podcast. This is John. Thanks for listening. See you next time.