By Matt Neglia
​
For Episode 104, I am joined by Will Mavity, Ryan C. Showers, Kt Schaefer & Josh Parham. Together we continue our discussion from Episode 103 about the Academy's newest Oscar category: Best Popular Film. We also discuss the polls, answer your fan questions and give our reactions to the trailers for "Roma" and "Green Book."

Thank you and please feel free to subscribe on either ​SoundCloud, Tunein, GooglePlay, iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM, CastBox or you can have a listen down below. Also be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and you'll receive exclusive podcast content.

By Matt Neglia 

Our review this week on the podcast is the all Asian starring film "Crazy Rich Asians" starring Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh and a lot more! It's been hailed as a groundbreaking film for Asian representation on screen with endorsement from a major Hollywood studio but what did the NBP team think of it and its Oscar chances? Listen to myself, Beatrice Loayza and Josh Parham review the film to find out.

Thank you and please feel free to subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on either ​SoundCloud, Tunein, GooglePlay, iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM & CastBox or you can have a listen down below. Also be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month.

By Edward Douglas

​Jesse Peretz has come a long way since his early days playing bass for Boston band the Lemonheads, who he continued to work with, directing their music videos before moving over to filmmaking with “The Chateau” in 2001, starring Paul Rudd and Romany Malco. Both actors would go on to  star in Judd Apatow’s directorial debut “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” There’s a great story that Peretz shares in our interview below.

After a few other movies, Peretz moved onto directing for television at just the right time when the medium was taking off, being behind the camera for such shows as “Nurse Jackie,” “Girls,” “New Girl” and most recently, the Netflix series “GLOW.”  Peretz was even nominated for an Emmy for directing the pilot of the latter, as well as directing the final episode of Season 2.

Peretz has returned to the movies for “Juliet, Naked,” an adaptation of Nick Hornby's 2009 novel about a British woman from a small seaside town whose frustration with her marriage leads to a friendship with an American rock star.  Rose Byrne plays Annie, whose husband Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) is a devout fan of alternative rocker Tucker Crowe, who vanished from the public eye after a gig twenty years earlier. When Duncan sleeps with a co-worker, Annie kicks him out of the house, but at the same time, she has been Emailing with Tucker (played by Ethan Hawke) who reemerged after reading a negative review Annie left on Duncan’s Tucker Crowe website (out of spite). The results are what might be one of the funniest rom-coms of the year which mixes Horby’s sensibilities with those of Peretz (and his sister Eugenia, who co-wrote the script), as well as producer Judd Apatow and of course, the three actors.

When I sat down with Peretz for the following interview, maybe it was apropos that our conversation began and ended with some talk about the Netflix series “GLOW,” the second season ending with the “GLOW girls” heading to Vegas to continue their wrestling show there.

By Matt Neglia 

"We The Animals" is one of the most visually inventive and breathtaking independent features of the year. All of this was accomplished under the watchful eye of writer/director Jeremiah Zagar. After spending years making documentaries and short films, Zagar's feature narrative debut premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and is now opening in theaters in limited release on August 17th from The Orchard. Jeremiah was kind enough to give us a few minutes of his time to talk about the making of his new film.

Thank you and please feel free to subscribe on either ​SoundCloud, Tunein, GooglePlay, iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM, CastBox or you can have a listen down below. Also be sure to help support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month.

By Tom O'Brien 

Welcome to the second in our NBP series of the 10 best early Oscar contenders in each of the four acting categories. Last week, we looked at the early contenders for Best Supporting Actress before the fall film festivals kicked into high gear. This week, we turn our attention to Best Supporting Actor.
 
At this moment, here are the 10 men who, as we see it, stand the best chance of hearing their name on nomination morning. Click below to see the top contenders in alphabetical order.

By Ryan C. Showers 

Spike Lee made a quality comeback in “BlacKkKlansman,” with the majority of critics and audiences heralding this as his best work in decades. Even though “The Meg” led the box office results this weekend with a surprising $45 million, “BlacKkKlansman” is the movie that everyone is talking about. “BlacKkKlansman” has led to important societal discourse, but before I move on, it would be dishonorable to undercut its box office: it made over two-thirds of its budget ($10.8 million) back in its first week of wide release. Some have debated the historical accuracies the film puts forth, others have reported how groups of people responded collectively while watching it. But the most common direction of conversation is veering toward comparison to current political events. Many have taken to solemn reflection of the film’s message on the anniversary of the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Va., (I would argue, Charlottesville was the impetus for Lee’s motivation behind the film.) and drawing comparisons between the facts and attitudes embedded in the plot and characters mirroring the current political landscape in the rise of President Donald Trump.

By Daniel Howat 

​Last week, The Academy announced some major changes to the awards, marking the biggest changes in many decades. An Oscar for “Achievement in Popular Film” will be awarded at this upcoming ceremony, though they’ve yet to announce any further details on what they will mean. This, among the other announced changes, are an effort to boost the ratings for the telecast.

There is plenty of justified outrage for this new category as many point out the stupidity of the addition. Among the criticism, many are questioning why a film should be judged in a different category simply based on how much money it makes, or what genre the film is in. All films have an equal shot at Best Picture, so why do we need this category? (See Episode 103 of our podcast for more in-depth discussion).

Of course, we already have other Oscar categories based on genre: Best Documentary Feature and Best Animated Feature. Interestingly, there’s a third such category that is still active and on the books with the Academy: Best Original Musical. It’s existed since 2000 but has never been handed out. While we’re expressing our understandable anger about Best Popular Film, it’s interesting to look at this little-known, never-awarded Oscar for Best Original Musical.

By Matt Neglia 

After debuting at this year's Cannes Film Festival to high acclaim, Spike Lee's latest film "BlacKkKlansman" is now finally playing in theaters. It's definitely his strongest work in awhile and to take us a bit behind the scenes at how the incredible true life story of Ron Stallworth came to the screen, writers Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz were kind enough to lend me some of their time to talk about the process of writing the film.

Thank you and please feel free to subscribe on either ​SoundCloud, Tunein, GooglePlay, iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM, CastBox or you can have a listen down below.

By Matt Neglia
​
Episode 103 is probably the most important episode we have ever recorded. History was made on August 8th 2018 when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introduced three major changes which rocked the industry. After years of making suggestions on what changes we would like to see The Academy introduce, none of the changes they actually announced pleased us one bit. Here to discuss all of this is Michael Schwartz, Ryan C. Showers, Celia Schlekewey, Kt Schaefer, Josh Parham & Jacey Aldredge as we try to answer your questions and ask some of our own regarding the recent decisions by AMPAS. The search for the Next Best Picture just got more complicated.

Thank you and please feel free to subscribe on either ​SoundCloud, Tunein, GooglePlay, iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM, CastBox or you can have a listen down below.

By Matt Neglia 

Our review this week on the podcast is Spike Lee's latest film (joint) titled "BlacKkKlansman" starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier and Topher Grace. It's been hailed as Spike Lee's best film in years but what did the NBP team think of it and its Oscar chances? Listen to myself, Beatrice Loayza, Danilo Castro and the returning Ryan C. Showers as we go through our reactions to the film, its themes, specific scenes and more!

Thank you and please feel free to subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on either ​SoundCloud, Tunein, GooglePlay, iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM & CastBox.

By Ryan C. Showers 
​
We made it through the dreadful early-year releases, slogged our way through the empty films slated in the spring, and now the big, blockbuster summer releases – also known as the prime time for movies that will now campaign for “Best Popular Film” at the Oscars – are starting to wrap up. In fairness, the majority of films with value released in the first two-thirds of the year have 15 minutes of fame at the time of their release but rarely encompass a lasting reputation to compete in awards races. Most the films the public spends money on for the majority of the year won’t see the light of any golden accolades – again, except now in the “Best Popular Film” category, recently added to the Academy Awards. Quality films, Oscar buzz, and award season contenders are revving up to take over the industry in the coming months. That being said, there are opportunities for successful and critically acclaimed early-released films to make an appearance during the long months of award season.

A pocket for such opportunities is the Golden Globes Comedy/Musical categories. Though those categories typically have their fair share of late-released awards bait and film-festival darlings, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HPFA) sometimes ushers in movies that made their mark with critics or at the box office early in the year.

By Tom O'Brien 

As stated yesterday by Matt, we will be continuing to provide you with the best Oscar coverage we possibly can for the 2018 Awards Season. With that said, each week in August, we'll take on the four acting categories and try to determine the 10 performers who, at this moment, stand the best chance at scoring those coveted Oscar nominations.

We'll start this week with the already-hot race for Best Supporting Actress race. In alphabetical order, here, as we see it, are the top contenders.

By Matt Neglia

My dear fellow readers

The following editorial reflects my personal viewpoints, not every staff member at Next Best Picture.

We all should've seen it coming. We should have known that 10 years ago when the Academy snubbed "The Dark Knight" and "WALL-E" of Best Picture nominations that a day like this would come. The outcry was loud. The Academy reacted and made the decision to expand the Best Picture lineup from 5 films to 10 films. This change lasted for two years before Academy voters complained about having to come up with a list of 10 nominees for Best Picture.

Then, the decision was made to have a sliding number of Best Picture nominees (Between 5-10), where members would list only 5 films and depending on the number votes, we would get a certain number of Best Picture nominees. That change has been in place since and has resulted in criticism and skepticism for we did not see more blockbuster films or animated films get nominated as was originally intended. Since the sliding scale was introduced, lucrative films such as "Mad Max: Fury Road," "Dunkirk," and "Get Out" all received nominations for Best Picture and clinched wins in other categories.

However, these are not the types of films mainstream audiences are desperate to see nominated at the Academy Awards. The public wants true blockbusters, the types of films which gross hundreds of millions of dollars, nominated for Best Picture, not a high-brow blockbuster by an auteur director. No. They want to see blockbusters like "Avengers: Infinity War," "A Quiet Place" or "Black Panther" receive that prestigious honor, because apparently, all the money in the world is no longer enough.

By Will Mavity 

​In a jaw-dropping announcement, The Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences has announced huge changes to the Oscars telecast which will have big ramifications for the film industry.

​Click below to read these changes.

By Matt Neglia 

We had already received the news that the Opening Night Film for this year's New York Film Festival (NYFF) would be Yorgos Lanthimos' new film "The Favourite." We also found out the Centerpiece Film would be Alfonso Cuaron's followup to "Gravity," the black and white shot film "Roma" (Which is also making an appearence at Venice, TIFF and Telluride). And just the other day, we found out that the Closing Night Film would be Julian Schnabel's film "At Eternity's Gate" starring Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh. Now, we have the rest of the lineup officially announced.

Click below to see which films will be shown at NYFF56.