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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. Let’s get to it.
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves went #1 at the weekend box office, and the reviews are good for it. This can be a little bit of a dark horse for visual effects, especially knowing that three-time Oscar nominee Scott Menza is part of the Visual Effects team. Menza’s nominations came from two Transformers films and Kong: Skull Island. I have my doubts about how valuable this visual effects would be on your fantasy team, but an Oscar shortlist is not unheard of here. Critics organizations may also nominate it a handful of times given it’s high score on Rotten Tomatoes. I’m not going to target this in my draft, but if you’re looking for a plug and play, this might offer some sleeper value.
The faith based film His Only Son was a bit of a surprise hit with audiences, going #3 at the weekend box office. I don’t see anything here worth drafting on the fantasy radar, and I’ll be talking more about about faith based films later on in the Oscar history segment.
A Thousand and One also opened last weekend, and I’ve said before that A.V. Rockwell and Teyana Taylor should be on your radar as late round sleeper picks in fantasy drafts. This film is distributed by Focus Features, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence come film awards season, but we can’t completely ignore its Sundance win. A.V. Rockwell, of course, has breakthrough appeal with this being her debut and Teyana Taylor feels like that critics darling sleeper pick. Celine Song is the biggest competition for A.V. Rockwell right now, but a lot can happen these next six months. The fact that A Thousand and One debuted to over $1 million in its opening weekend inspires a little bit of confidence. We’ll see how Celine Song’s Past Lives does at the box office.
This is Easter weekend, so I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at so-called faith-based films and their history at the Oscars. Defining faith-based films, or any genre for that matter, is difficult. What makes a film a faith-based film. It’s kind of like what makes a film a Christmas movie. You just kind of know it when you see it. A lot of the unquestionable faith-based films, like God’s Not Dead or similar films like that, don’t do very well during film awards season. I wouldn’t say there’s a religious bias against these films, but I wouldn’t not say it either. Faith based films Jesus Revolution and this last weekend’s His Only Son have surpassed expectations and became surprise hits. But other films have sort of snuck into the Oscar race. Consider Breakthrough, for which Diane Warren got nominated for Best Original Song, is widely considered to be a faith based film. Of course, if anyone else wrote the song for that movie, I’m not convinced it would even be nominated. So for this exercise, I’m going to try to highlight movies that have had Oscar success and also features religion pretty heavily. Not all these are or should be classified as faith-based films, but you will see that religion isn’t a stranger to Oscar.
Probably the most famous faith-based film is The Passion of the Christ. It made loads of money at the box office, and even got nominated for three Oscars: Best Cinematography for Caleb Deschanel, Best Original Score for John Debney, and Best Makeup & Hairstyling. It wouldn’t win any of these (Best Cinematography went to The Aviator, Best Original Score went to Finding Neverland, and Best Makeup went to Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events at the 77th Academy Awards on February 27, 2005.
A network television tradition is to show The Ten Commandments around Easter time. Cecil B. DeMille’s epic story also got quite a few Oscar nominations, seven to be exact and including Best Picture, at the 29th Academy Awards on Feb 18, 1957. It only won for Best Special Effects, but could’ve easily won Best Picture over the super overrated Around the World in 80 Days. In fact, that whole year could’ve easily had Best Picture nominees for John Ford’s The Searchers or Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, but that’s a whole other topic of discussion. The Ten Commandments still holds up today and it’s a fond memory of mine watching it on TV every year as a kid.
Speaking of Biblical epics, William Wyler’s Ben-Hur won Best Picture three years later at the 32nd Academy Awards on Feb 22, 1960. It is still tied for the most number of wins at the Academy Awards at 11 with the other two films being other epics Titanic and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and I have to admit that Return of the King itself has many religious overtones especially considering the source material. Anyway, Ben-Hur was nominated for 12 awards, and the only loss on that Oscar night was for Best Adapted Screenplay, which went to fellow Best Picture nominee Room at the Top. Ben-Hur was a masterpiece, and my father went to see this film in theaters at least three times.
But faith-based films don’t have to be epics to break into the Oscar race. Best Picture winner Going My Way won a staggering 7 wins out of an equally staggering 10 nominations at the 17th Academy Awards on Feb 3, 1945. This film is largely forgotten now, but it shouldn’t be. It’s a wonderful film starring crooner Bing Crosby in his Oscar winning role as a priest who forms a choir in the slums of NYC. This win becomes even more impressive when you consider that it won over other classic masterpieces Double Indemnity and Gaslight. Sure, either of those two films could have arguably been more deserving, but Going My Way struck a chord with many at the time. Also, in my TRIVIA TIDBIT OF THE WEEK, Going My Way earns a special spot in Oscar history as been the only film where one actor was nominated twice for the same role. You heard that correctly, actor Barry Fitzgerald is the only actor who got nominated for the same role, inexplicably being nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. He lost Best Actor to fellow co-star Bing Crosby, but won for Best Supporting Actor. In hindsight, he definitely played a supporting role, and the Academy took notice because they changed the rules so such a thing can’t happen again.
At the 54th Academy Awards on March 29, 1982, Raiders of the Lost Ark lost to Chariots of Fire, a movie about a runner who refuses to race on a Sunday because Sunday is the Sabbath Day. Chariots of Fire is best remembered for its Oscar winning score by Vangelis, but it did earn 7 nominations, winning 4 of them.
Only because I’m a huge horror fan, I should at least mention Best Picture nominee The Exorcist. Sure, this is not a faith-based film, but…well…Catholicism is featured pretty heavily, don’t you agree?
Christianity isn’t the only faith where Oscar has turned its gaze. Judaism also makes frequent appearances. Of the Best Picture winners, there are 1937’s The Life of Emile Zola, where a French journalist defends a Jewish man, 1947’s Gentleman’s Agreement, where a reporter pretends to be Jewish in order to expose antisemitism, and 1993’s Schindler’s List, about German Oskar Schindler who went on to save many Jewish people during the Holocaust by giving them jobs in his factory.
Although many Oscar-nominated film feature religion in its narrative, for better or for worse, the biggest role religion plays in any of the Oscar nominated films from this last year is the documentary short Stranger at the Gate, produced by Malala. Islam takes center stage in this one where an Indiana man converted to Islam instead of committing an extreme act of atrocity.
Speaking of this year’s Oscar nominated films, you saw portrayals of many religions, some real and some fake. Southern Baptists in Elvis, Mennonites in Women Talking, Christians in All Quiet on the Western Front, Jews in The Fabelmans, Catholics in The Banshees of Inisherin, An Irish Goodbye, and Le Pupille, Islam in The Red Suitcase and Stranger at the Gate, Evangelicals in The Whale (although the original play had Mormons), Hindu in RRR, ancient Mayans and Wakandans in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Na’vi’s in Avatar: The Way of Water.
This weekend has the premieres of The Super Mario Bros movie and Air. We’ll talk about those movies with next week’s special guest, Wesley Stenzel. In the meantime, we can take a look at some betting lines on Bovada. I am absolutely NOT betting on any of these. It’s too early, and the lines aren’t attractive at all.
Five Actors have betting lines. Leonardo DiCaprio and Joaquin Phoenix are both at +200 for Killers of the Flower Moon and Beau Is Afraid, respectively. Beau Is Afraid comes out next week while Killers of the Flower Moon will premiere at Cannes in May before going to theaters later this year. Both actors will likely be worthy of early round picks on prestige alone. The other three actors are Colman Domingo of The Color Purple at +300, Cillian Murphy of Oppenheimer at +350, and Paul Giamatti of The Holdovers at +450. Paul Giamatti is interesting here. Paul Giamatti reunites with Sideways filmmaker Alexander Payne in The Holdovers, which will be released to theaters in November. If The Holdovers premieres at one of the fall film festivals, this might be worth having on our radar.
Five Actresses also have betting lines. Emily Blunt of Oppenheimer and Fantasia Barrino of The Color People both have +200 betting lines. If I had to choose one of these as an early round target, I’d opt for Fantasia Barrino. Having a black actress will net you some great points at more African American centric awards while also getting great points at all the other awards. Carey Mulligan of Maestro at +225, Margot Robbie of Barbie at +325, and Annette Bening of Nyad at +800 round out the other Best Actress betting lines. Carey Mulligan is pure name recognition, and she will undoubtedly be drafted. Margot Robbie is an interesting pick here. I can’t wait to see this film, and I will be talking about it more in depth once it comes out. Nyad is a film made by the filmmakers behind Best Documentary Oscar winner Free Solo, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. Netlfix is the distributor of this, so if they feel like they have a good campaign to run for Annette Bening, they’ll put a lot of their weight behind it. Annette Bening plays Diane Nyad, a long-distance swimmer who attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida. This feels a little like a legacy campaign for Annette Bening, who has been nominated for four Oscars but has never won.
Five directors also have betting lines. Martin Scorsese of Killers of the Flower Moon at +200, Christopher Nolan of Oppenheimer at +225, Bradley Cooper of Maestro at +250, Greta Gerwig of Barbie at +350, and Emerald Fennel of Saltburn at +500. All five of these have appeal, and to be brutally honest, the director race this year is a crowded field. However, we have some interesting quirks this year. Martin Scorsese will be a first round pick, especially because he also co-wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, leading to a potential double threat at each ceremony. Christopher Nolan also has double threat potential being writer-director of Oppenheimer, but I can see him slipping to the second round. Bradley Cooper is assuredly a first round draft pick because he has cross-eligibility AND can be a triple threat for acting, writing, AND directing Maestro. If Maestro is received well at whatever inevitable fall film festival it premieres at, he could very well be #1 in the pre-draft rankings. Skipping over Greta Gerwig just for right now, we have Emerald Fennell who also has cross-eligibility. Unlike Cooper, though, this is for different films. Fennell will have acting, directing, and screenplay credits, but will probably not be a triple threat. She plays Midge in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and she wrote and directed the thriller Saltburn, starring Carey Mulligan and Barry Keoghan. This could be a sleeper candidate. If you wait on an actress, Fennell may be able to occupy your actress slot while getting some points for writing and directing. Saltburn doesn’t have a release date yet, so it’s entirely possible it comes out next year, which would make Fennell undraftable, but I’m keeping her in the back of my mind if it gets released this year. And lastly, Greta Gerwig could very much be a first round pick for directing and co-writing with Noah Baumbach the movie Barbie. I avoid trailers, but I have seen some stills from this film, and…well…it could be a fantasy juggernaut. Lots of multiple Oscar nominees and winners are attached to this movie both in front of and behind the camera. Also, Dua Lipa reportedly wrote an original song for this film. It is not at all unheard of to have the writers of the film share songwriting credits with the original songs from that film. If for some reason Greta Gerwig has a songwriting credit on Dua Lipa’s Barbie theme, she becomes a triple threat and can occupy that score/song/sound/vfx slot on your roster, making her insanely valuable. The song hasn’t been released yet nor have the credits, or at least not where I can find them, so stay tuned for that.
As for Best Picture, Bovada has named eight films with betting lines. In order of favorites, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Blitz Bazawule’s The Color Purple, Denis Villenueve’s Dune: Part II, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, David Fincher’s The Killer, and Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. With the exception of Blitz Bazawule, every single one of these movies is helmed by Oscar nominees, if not winners. This is a stacked year, which only adds to the excitement of film awards fantasy leagues when they start drafting in October.
That’s it for me. 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.