FBC co-founder/editor-in-chief Brandon Andreasen is a football expert, and I love asking him questions about the NFL. He manages to be smart and funny and insightful while nerd-ing out on the gridiron. Today, as the Oscar nominations come out, he turns the tables on me and asks some questions about what happened this morning. Let’s get fancy!!!
On Thursday, the Oscar nominations will be revealed to the world. All the guilds and AMPAS members will finally have their say and we will see who will be in the running for movies biggest night. I usually can predict the Oscars with about 80% accuracy. Any less than 70% and I’m just gonna drink my way through January. Any more than 90% and… well, about the same. It’s cold in the midwest and there isn’t a lot to do.
I should point out that this is who I think will be nominated and not who should be nominated. So, with that said, let’s get into nominees from the major categories.
And the nominees will be…
When a movie is expected to dominate the Oscars in January, it can go one of two ways: It can keep the bright light shone upon it and have a very big night (Oppenheimer, Everything Everywhere All At Once) or can be weighed down under all of the expectations and sink to the bottom (The Power Of The Dog, 1917). Heavy is the head that is expected to wear the crown, and this year, that head is firmly on the shoulders of Paul Thomas Anderson, the 55-year old bespectacled weirdo whose film, One Battle After Another, is expected to have a very big March. The film, telling the story of Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to get him and his daughter to safety, has all of the PTA benchmarks: a star-studded cast, a razor-tight script, a Jonny Greenwood score, and a lot of hype. One Battle will be Anderson’s fourth film making a run at Oscars’ biggest prize and he will almost be certainly be nominated for Best Director for the fourth time.
But something about this film and this nomination feels bigger. Because One Battle may have to win Best Picture in order to be considered a success. And, if you are a fan of movies, you need the film to succeed.
This Thursday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will release the nominations for the 98th Academy Awards. I, as always, am fucking psyched. You’ve heard me talk about the Oscars before so you know how I feel about them. They’re amazing and they try to get it right and, lately, they’ve been doing ok. No, I am not counting Green Book winning Best Picture. Or CODA.
This year, the big question seems to be if any movie will be able to stop the momentum that One Battle After Another has been, seemingly, building since its release. While Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest movie seems to currently be on pace to have a big Thursday as the front-runner for the top prize, there are some storylines which have popped up in the last few weeks.
This Thursday, we will learn the answers to these questions:
Happy Oscars, everyone!
This has been the least I have written about my favorite awards show in the history of this site and there are two big reasons for that. The first is that the major races have been the most fluid I have, possibly, ever seen since I’ve been watching the awards as a child. While some races seem to have solidified, there are few categories where I feel like you can lock in and say, “This is one you should bet a lot of money on.”
Continue reading “FBC 2025 Oscar Coverage, Part III: Predicting the winners…”
With raging wildfires forcing the delay of the nominations until Thursday, it’s given me time to reflect on who the nominees should be. As some of the guild precursors have resonated, my Buzz Meter from a week ago has undergone great tumult. Nickel Boys has lost a ton of steam, The Apprentice has gained some, and Sing Sing has had one of the crazier pre-Oscar runs in recent history.
But, it’s time to lock them in. My goal is always for around 75%, with anything over 80% a near guarantee to turn me into an unbearable douche. So, with those stakes on the table, let’s get predicting!!!
We are back talking about The Oscars, baby!
Nominations for Hollywood’s biggest night will be revealed this Sunday which means we need to make some predictions. And we cannot do that without seeing which films seem to be peaking at the right time. So, to do that, I made the Buzzmeter!!!
The Buzzmeter looks at which films are getting the most predictions in the major categories (Best Picture, Director, Acting and Screenwriting) and puts them into three piles: Definite locks, Lots of good buzz, and Wild Cards. I gave 5 points to every lock, three to a film with good buzz and a point to the Wild Cards. Also, if you haven’t seen the movie, I will give what I can only assume was the basic one sentence elevator pitch for the movie.
Let’s get buzz-examining!
Yet another beloved old cartoon and comic strip character IP (intellectual property) has come into the public domain. This time, it’s everyone’s favorite sailor man- Popeye.
Now, to be clear, while there are 2 evil Popeye movies (so far) coming this year, neither is attached to the Twisted Childhood Universe, affectionately referred to as the “Poohniverse”, which kicked off with Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey in 2023, followed by the sequel in 2024.
To be clear, those movies rule.
Continue reading “Which is the Lesser of Two Evil Popeyes?”
When the pandemic started in 2020, part of my escapism from the dread of the moment was going back and rewatching the entirety of the old Muppet Show. And it felt good, letting the nostalgia wash over me, but also it made me sad. As I continued watching more Muppet content, the movies, then the later TV shows, I felt like something got lost along the way, and it was the earnestness with which the Muppets and even the humans around them behaved. Even in moments of commentary or weirdo subversion, there was a genuineness that I felt fell away a bit. Recent years felt like there was more snark, more bite, more irony, even in how we as viewers engage with the Muppets. I was pleasantly surprised by the Electric Mayhem focused show with Lilly Singh and Tahj Mowry from a few years back, that felt like a love letter to music through the heartfelt lens of the Muppets. And it gave me hope that perhaps more Muppets could be coming. Then news came that a certain Warner Bros owned streaming service might be looking to off-load Sesame Street, and I didn’t just have hope, I had an idea, a movie pitch for how to reunite the Muppets and the folks of Sesame Street for the first time since the early 2000s.
I guess in order for this to happen Disney would have to buy the rights to Sesame Street to have them under the same umbrella as the Muppets. I’m not here to discuss the pros and cons of monopolistic IP hoarding and such. I’m here to talk about Muppets. So…
Continue reading “My Sincere Pitch for a New Muppets Movie”“Have you heard of Martini Ranch?”
It’s a question that I ask of anyone who gets to know me on a long enough timeline. More often than not, I’m not even met with a faint glimmer of recognition. Which always blows my mind until I remember that I also had to be introduced to Martini Ranch long after it had ceased to exist.
I remember exactly how it happened, I was working as a truck driver in 2017, and I had a lot of time to listen to podcasts on the road. A personal favorite was the Witch Finger Horror Podcast. I’d started listening to it as a fan of the band Kittie (who still rips by the way and just dropped a phenomenal album back in June), because the vocalist Morgan Lander was one of three hosts along with Megan Rae, and Yasmina Ketita of Rue Morgue Magazine. As I was listening to episode 19, titled “Near Dark and our tribute to Bill Paxton” (he had died earlier that year) I heard the name Martini Ranch for the first time.
Continue reading ““Have You Heard of Martini Ranch?” by Riki MJ Adams”
Fancy Boys Club 