AwardsWatch Podcast #186: Tier Rankings of all Best Picture Oscar Winners – Part 1
On episode 186 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, AwardsWatch Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch contributors Sophia Ciminello, Dan Bayer, Zach Laws and Josh Parham to tier rank the 95 winners for Best Picture from the Academy Awards.
While this summer has provided some good films and the team has given out some fun top 5 lists inspired by them, the heart of AW is always the awards season, specifically what will win the Best Picture prize at the Oscars. So in a fun change of pace, the AW podcast team set out to tier rank the 95 films the Academy has handed out the prize of Best Picture to over their celebrated history. In trying to place these winners in the correct spot, the team had to come together and decide on whether to place the films in the S (all time winner), A, B, C, D, or F tier and explain the ranking. The episode was so much fun that it had to be split into two parts, with this episode covering all the films up to 1960, placing a couple of classic in the S tier early on.
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This podcast runs 2h13m. We will be back later this week with Part 2 of the Best Picture Tier rankings. Till then, let’s get into it.
Music: “Modern Fashion” from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).
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