Podcast

This week, the Water Cooler gang looks at the 2020 Limited Series premiering in the tail end of the current Emmy season. Plus, who won the Fantasy Oscar race?

The full gang is back at the Water Cooler this week, and we’re talking about the 2020 Emmy race. The Limited Series categories are traditionally our favorite races. However, the first half of the 2020 Emmy season provided only a few truly strong contenders, led by Netflix’s Unbelievable. So, what awards possibilities do we have in the 2020 limited series? Reigning champ HBO has three high profile series starring the likes of Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, Mark Ruffalo, and Winona Ryder. Will one of their titles defend the crown? What about FX’s Mrs. America and presumed Lead Actress front runner Cate Blancett? And what of Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere? We preview the major titles as we look forward to the 2020 Emmy race.

But first, Joey gives us the final tally for the 2020 Fantasy Oscar race. Clarence and Joey were running close but did Parasite‘s historic Best Picture win put him over the top? Or did Clarence’s acting wins from Renee Zellweger and Laura Dern keep him in the lead?

Plus, we have a special announcement about our 2020 Most Iconic Directors series, focusing on acclaimed director Pedro Almodovar.

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

Thanks for listening and thank you, in advance, for subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you find us!

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Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Cheery Monday” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Jalal joins Megan and Joey at the Water Cooler to dish on the 92nd Academy Awards.

What did you think of this year’s Academy Awards? Was Parasite‘s dominance over the second half of the evening your favorite part? Did a certain presenter make the evening better for you? How about that Eminem performance, huh?

Jalal joins Megan and Joey to talk over everything about this year’s awards–Clarence was resting from his trek to attend the ceremony for the first time. Did we like everything you hated?

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

Thanks for listening and thank you, in advance, for subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcasts!

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This week, the Water Cooler Gang makes its semi-final attempt at predicting the full 24 Oscar categories. They are, of course, free to change their minds until Oscar night.

We’ve only one week left before the 92nd Annual Academy Awards. It’s soon time for Oscar watchers to nail down their final predictions. So, this week, the Water Cooler Gang makes its initial stab at predicting all 24 Oscar categories. Is this shaping up to be a 1917 sweep similar to this weekend’s BAFTAs? Or will Parasite or Jojo Rabbit or even Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood chip away at its potential wins? We gather around the Cooler to break it all down. Until we change our minds again.

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

Thanks for listening and thank you, in advance, for subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcasts!

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This week, the team reassembles at the Water Cooler to cover the enormous wins from this weekend’s guild races. What will they ultimately mean for the Oscar and Emmy races ahead?

Water Cooler Podcast Assemble!!! With Clarence back, the team focuses on this past weekend’s significant guild winners. The Screen Actors Guild, the Producers Guild, and the ACE Eddies all announced wins in both television and film categories. So, what do they all mean? Will Parasite use its historic Ensemble Cast win to run for the Oscar? And is the front runner in Emmy’s Drama Series race Succession or The Morning Show or The Crown? Did any comedy series make gains since Fleabag dominated the weekend? We put our heads together to figure all of this out as we also talk about the Screen Actors Guild ceremony itself.

But first, it’s been a full month since we’ve talked about the Fantasy Oscar race. Who leads? How much of a race is it? And what opportunities do the next few weeks hold to shake things up? Plus, we talk about HBO’s The Outsider, directed by Jason Bateman.

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

Thanks for listening and thank you, in advance, for subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcasts!

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Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Cheery Monday” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Megan, Joey, and Jalal chat about the good…the bad…and Joker…

Well, they are here! The nominations for the 92nd annual Academy Awards have been announced, and people have opinions! Clarence is off this week, so it’s like the loons running the asylum with Joey at the helm.

With Joker leading the nominations, does that make it a frontrunner? Is it still between 1917, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and Parasite? Let’s take a moment of silence for Jennifer Lopez’s miss. The Cooler Gang tries to focus on some positive nominations with the inevitable brouhaha over this year’s announcement.

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

Thanks for listening and thank you, in advance, for subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcasts!

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This week, the Water Cooler Gang talk about the 2020 Golden Globe Awards winners and look at their potential impact on future awards races.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has spoken! The 2020 Golden Globe Awards winners and ceremony are in the books. So, we round the water cooler to dish the winners, non-winners, and the show itself. We talk about Ricky Gervais and the most memorable speeches. Plus, what happened backstage in the press room? Finally, we forecast what these wins mean for future awards conversations.

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

Thanks for listening and thank you, in advance, for subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcasts!

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Tony-winner Jonathan Pryce talks about working with Anthony Hopkins and about the relief behind having the character so vividly constructed on the page.

I first became aware of Jonathan Pryce thanks to his legendary performance as The Engineer in the musical Miss Saigon. He received his second Tony Award for the role (his first was for his Broadway debut in Comedians), and it catapulted him into dozens of juicy roles in film and television. This year, he is in Oscar contention for Best Actor in Fernando Meirelles’ The Two Popes. The role already garnered him a nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama at tonight’s 77th Annual Golden Globes Awards.

We sat down at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles shortly before he was to attend a BAFTA tea and the extremely well attended Netflix pre-Globes party at Cecconi’s in West Hollywood. It’s a whirlwind experience for a man who recently wrapped an acclaimed stint on Broadway in The Height of the Storm.

Here, Pryce and I talked about becoming Cardinal Bergoglio / Pope Francis. For a man raised in the theater, he was traditionally accustomed to building a character from scratch. Improvising beats of dialogue. Determining backstories and the subtext of the script and conveying all of that through subtle stage movements. It came as something of a relief that the character of Bergoglio / Pope Francis was so well defined in both Anthony McCarten’s script and through so much publicly available footage. The combination made it much easier to find the character.

He also talks about working with Sir Anthony Hopkins after working adjacent to him for so long.

Please enjoy this podcast interview with Jonathan Pryce, the Golden Globe-nominated star of Netflix’s The Two Popes.

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This week, the Water Cooler Gang returns to bid farewell to 2019 by listing their top 10 television shows of the year. Plus, what media did we consume on vacation over the holiday week?

We’re back at the Water Cooler on a holiday vacation. As such, we’ve had time to construct our list of the top 10 television shows of 2019. Joey, Megan, and Clarence each reveal their favorite shows of the year. Will there be an overlap between the three? What will emerge as their favorite shows of 2019? The team goes around the Water Cooler and justifies their reasoning behind each selection.

But first, it’s been a minute since we’ve gotten together. What media did we catch over the holiday week? And what did Joey think of his most anticipated movie of the holiday season, Cats?

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

Thanks for listening and thank you, in advance, for subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcasts!

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Netflix’s fantasy thriller The Witcher features a stunning score by the acclaimed composing duo of Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli.

Netflix’s The Witcher is a hotly anticipated new fantasy series that, in many circles, is mentioned as an heir apparent to HBO’s Emmy-winning Game of Thrones. Whether that lofty prediction bears fruit remains to be seen, but the series, based on the novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, will have its fans and will inspire a similarly rabid fanbase. Contributing to the authentic look and feel of the series is its lush and memorable score, jointly composed by Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli.

The pair received much acclaim for their work on Amazon’s The Romanoffs, but with The Witcher, they’ve taken on an enormous challenge. They’ve fashioned a score with a truly international feel, learning and employing over 60 instruments from around the world for the project.

“As soon as we received the script and the scripts were so unique, we were immediately like we wanted to be involved in this. We wanted to be immersed in this universe,” Belousova explained. “And because the universe of The Witcher is so vast and the continent is so diverse, basically we learned a lot of instruments from all over the world which were custom made for us.”

Belousova and Ostinelli create a score much in the same manner as they conduct an interview. They finish each others’ sentences. They interrupt. They complete missing thoughts. They laugh together and bounce ideas off of each other. It’s a partnership that drove the creation of such a successful score which also includes nearly a dozen original songs.

Audiences will undoubtedly obsess over the main character’s (Geralt of Rivia, played by Superman‘s Henry Cavill) theme, appropriately titled “Geralt of Rivia.” But the series also contains multiple songs sung by characters within the film. “Toss a Coin To Your Witcher” initially comes across as a wandering minstrel’s song, but it builds into an extremely dramatic and gorgeous conclusion.

“That was done in a way on purpose because [the character] is a bard, and he’s a very theatrical character,” Ostinelli explained. And don’t think that The Witcher: The Musical didn’t already cross their mind.

Here, Belousova and Ostinelli talk more about creating the score, their inspirations for the international flavor to the work, and adapting “Geralt of Rivia” for each unique episode. It’s a fun conversation between two incredibly talented composers. And it’s a conversation you have to hear for yourself to truly experience how tight their collaboration really is.

The Witcher drops Friday, December 20, on Netflix.

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This week, the Water Cooler Gang revisit the SAG Awards nominations in TV and film as well as take looks at HBO’s Mrs. Fletcher and Netflix’s Marriage Story.

We’re dishing on the SAG Awards in our latest Water Cooler Podcast. On the TV front, what’s going on with the surprise Big Little Lies omissions? What’s going on with the love of The Morning Show only to leave it out of the Ensemble race? And who’s ahead to win in each category? Plus, on the Film side, we ponder the omission of Marriage Story from the critical Ensemble category. And just how did Bombshell do so well?

Then, we deep-dive into two recent acclaimed films/series now that everyone’s caught up to them. First up, HBO’s brilliant Mrs. Fletcher serves up something we all love, thanks to a smart script and astonishing lead performance from Kathryn Hahn. Then, we finally discuss Marriage Story as a group. One of us likes it, one is mezzo-mezzo, and one hates it. Find out who!

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

Thanks for listening and thank you, in advance, for subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcasts!

Also, we’ve hit our FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!! Thank YOU all for being loyal listeners and for giving us a reason to keep going. We love each and every one of you!

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