Hollywood’s awards time filled with 5 podcasts
The 2024 awards season has felt unusually hectic because of the strike-delayed Emmy Awards shifting from their usual fall airdate to January. To help make sense of it all — and unpack the discombobulated state of Hollywood now — these five podcasts offer a mixture of expert analysis and predictions for the major ceremonies; original reporting on the industry trends and behind-the-scenes machinations that influence voting; and reflections on Oscar front-runners of the past that probably shouldn’t have been.
‘Little Gold Men’
This Vanity Fair series debuted in 2015, which means it has been on hand to chronicle some of the weirdest moments in Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences history, such as the 2017 best picture flub (when “La La Land” was mistakenly announced as the winner instead of “Moonlight”), 2021’s muted covid-era ceremony held in a cavernous Los Angeles train station, and the slap heard around the world in 2022. But even when there’s nothing quite so unusual going on, the analysis here always makes awards season more interesting. Hosted by Vanity Fair journalists Michael Hogan, Katey Rich, Richard Lawson and Joanna Robinson, the conversation is exhaustive and packed with expertise, exploring not just the contenders for Hollywood’s top prizes, but also the campaigning and strategizing that shape the race. Since many Oscar journeys begin at film festivals such as Sundance, Cannes, Venice and Toronto, there’s no shortage of news and releases to cover year-round, not to mention interviews; recent guests have included Andrew Scott (“All of Us Strangers”), Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) and Greta Lee (“Past Lives”). Starter episode: “Oscar Voters, Start Your Engines”
‘This Had Oscar Buzz’
There’s a peculiar category of film that debuts with great fanfare, attracts plenty of awards buzz, and then fades from the cultural consciousness without a trace (and no awards). Not all of the films discussed on “This Had Oscar Buzz” fall into that
bracket, but, as the title suggests, the focus is on the movies that had that buzzy aura around them, at least for a while. An early episode about “Cake,” a 2014 movie starring Jennifer Aniston as a woman living with chronic pain, exemplifies what works so well about this format — Aniston was lauded for her playing-against-type performance and campaigned intensely during that awards season, but she was famously snubbed on Oscar nomination morning. The hosts, Joe Reid and Chris Feil, don’t belittle either the performance or the hustle, but rather use the hype around “Cake” as a jumping-off point to discuss Aniston’s career and celebrity more broadly, alongside the ins and outs of how exactly buzz gets built in the first place. Starter episode: “Alexander (With David Sims)”
‘The Town With Matthew Belloni’
Although not a traditional awards season podcast with predictions or play-byplay recaps, “The Town” is an invaluable resource for anyone hoping to understand the upheaval in Hollywood. Delivered in snappy episodes that clock in around 30 minutes, Matthew Belloni, a former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and a founding partner of the digital media company Puck, shares insights and exclusive reporting on the industry, whether the issue is last year’s monthslong writers and actors strikes, Disney’s succession woes or the cost-of-streaming crisis. In a recent episode, Belloni and Brooks Barnes, a Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times, went deeply on the current state of the “unkillable” Golden Globes, which returned last year after a hiatus sparked by controversy surrounding its unorthodox voting body, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, now defunct. Traditionally the first awards show on the calendar — and the most chaotic — the Globes have proved to have more staying power than many predicted, and this analysis is a good resource for anybody wondering why. Starter episode: “Four Burning Hollywood Questions to Kick Off 2024”
‘Gold Derby Show’
Since its relaunch in 2011, website Gold Derby has become a hub for those who want to monetize their awards predictions, offering betting odds and a points scoring system much like a racetrack, with each category being continually updated throughout the year for the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys and other awards. In the podcast offshoot, Joyce Eng, a Gold Derby senior editor, and Christopher Rosen, the site’s digital director, track each moment of the race in painstaking detail, offering their expert views on nomination snubs and surprises, whose odds are up and whose are down, and what it all means for the industry as a whole. Eng and Rosen are amiable and accessible hosts; they take their task seriously while leaving room to acknowledge how inherently silly the whole business of prognostication is, and their divergent tastes and approaches always make for engaging conversation. Starter episode: “Joyce & Chris: Our Final 2023 Emmy Awards Winners Picks (In 2024)”
‘IndieWire: Screen Talk’
You need only to glance at the list of the last few years of best picture winners (“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “CODA” and “Nomadland”) to see just how much traction independent films have gained at the Oscars. This podcast from website IndieWire is a weekly roundup of what’s happening in the indie film world, featuring festival roundups, reviews of new releases and interviews with actors and directors, hosted by journalists Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio. It’s reliably worthwhile listening for any cinephile, and since it’s no exaggeration to say that the awards race now begins at Sundance, it’s especially handy for staying up to date on likely contenders as they emerge. Starter episode: “Who Made the Oscar Short List?”