AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 319 – Oscars Retrospective of the 93rd Academy Awards

On episode 319 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch contributors Dan Bayer, Mark Johnson, and Josh Parham to go back five years and take a look at the 93rd Academy Awards, covering the films of 2020.

On this retrospective, the AW team take one last trip to the past for the year to talk about the pandemic year of cinema that saw one of the worst Oscar telecasts of all time. Baffling decision after another, the night ended on a sour note instead of one of celebration for Nomadland winning the top prize and Chloé Zhao becoming the second female director to win Best Director. Still, even with the ceremony being so divisive, the year presented plenty of films the team wanted to highlight and discuss over the course of changing the Academy’s nominations, with films such as The Nest, Tenet, Miss Juneteenth, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Clemency, Dick Johnson is Dead, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, The Father, Sound of Metal, Minari, Judas and the Black Messiah, and more.

In their in-depth discussion, the AW team talked about the film year of 2020, briefly discuss talk about Nomadland as a Best Picture winner, how this year is full of celebrities that are problematic or “cancelled” and how that speaks to the legacy of their nominates and or wins, do an extensive conversation over the below the line categories and nominees for the year, and then the new version of the AW Shoulda Woulda Coulda game, where instead of individual replacements, they must decide as a group who the nominees and winners should be in the top eight categories. The rules of the game state they can only replace two of the nominees that year from each category, except in Best Picture, where the group could replace up to four films to make up the final set of eight nominated films. Like past retrospective episodes, it was a fascinating, fun conversation including spirited debates, alliances, vote swinging, celebrating various movies, performances that aren’t normally talked about and more that we all hope you enjoy.

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This podcast runs 2h41m. We will be back in next week for a review of the last big film of the year, Avatar: Fire and Ash. Till then, let’s get into it.

Music: “Modern Fashion” from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).