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Alison Stewart: This is All of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm grateful you're here. I'm grateful for today. I wanted to mention a couple of upcoming conversations that you should have on your radar. Join us tonight at 8:00 PM for a special All of It broadcast devoted to one of New York's most engaging and media savvy mayors. We'll learn about the life of Fiorello La Guardia, who was born on this day in 1882. I'll speak with Terry Golway. He's the author of the book I Never Did Like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America's Mayor, and Why He Still Matters.

We have a lot of great archival tape because at the time WNYC was owned by the city of New York and boy, did La Guardia take advantage of that fact. Be sure to listen tonight at 8:00 PM. On this show on Friday, Sunset Boulevard star Tom Francis joins us in studio. We'll talk about his performance as Joe Gillis, which involves an epic live sequence that spills onto 44th Street. That is in the future. Now let's get this hour started.

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Alison Stewart: This year's Golden Globe nominations were announced this week and, well, they appear to be a new and improved Golden Globes. You may remember that the Golden Globes were canceled a few years back. The LA Times found that the Hollywood Foreign Press engaged in some wild behavior and didn't have any Black members. Well, welcome to 2024 and let's just say they've had a little work done. The Netflix musical/opera Emilio Perez, about a Mexican cartel leader who transitioned, got the most nods with 10, and big stars in thoughtful films, Kate Winslet, Zendaya and Nicole Kidman lead the way.

Nate Jones is a Vulture senior writer who covers film and has written about the renewed Golden Globes in the last few years, or what he calls, "A critics circle with a TV deal." He recently co authored the article, The Biggest Snubs and Surprises of the 2025 Golden Globe Nominations. Hi, Nate. Nice to talk to you.

Nate Jones: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: Let's start broadly. You write the Globes have remade themselves in the past few years as an awards show. How so?

Nate Jones: Basically, yes, if you may recall, a few years back, they were literally canceled. They put out their awards just on Twitter because they didn't have a TV deal anymore. This was over the fact that, yes, they were just blatantly corrupt and not very diverse. Just very willing to be bribed. Then after those scandals, they've remade themselves. They have new members and new voters. The old ones are still mostly there and they're now salaried employees, which takes away some of the bad behavior. There's a little more accountability.

The organization itself still has its own little corruptions. It's now part of a corporate media monopoly that also owns all of the Hollywood trade magazines. There's a lot of payola scandals around that. Like many multinational corporations, they're willing to get in bed with authoritarian regimes overseas. These are not perfect bodies by any means. They have not become morally pure or anything. They still have awards and they still have nominations. Yes, that's all we're here to talk about.

Alison Stewart: What about the format this year? It's a different format, yes?

Nate Jones: The format is more like what we would see at the Critics Choice Awards where there-- the Oscars have five nominees and the Critics Choice and the Golden Globes now often have six that way basically to ensure that they don't leave anybody out and they cannot be accused of leaving anybody out. Of course, with the way these things go, you always do leave someone out.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. What is the best thing you've seen this year and why? It could be a movie or a TV show. Call in and text us now. 212-433-9692, 221-433-WNYC, or maybe there was a standout performance from an actor that just blew you away. Who was it? What about their performance was moving or funny or sexy? Pascal, I'm looking at you, Pablo Pascal, 212-433-9692, 221-433-WNYC. Let's get into some of the nominations. We're talking about The Substance. You wrote, "Voters took The Substance and loved it."

The film star Demi Moore was nominated in the best actress in a musical or comedy. It's also one of only four films this year nominated for best picture, director and screenplay. Why do you think they ate this up? The Substance?

Nate Jones: I think one of the things we know about the Golden Globes orders is that they are mostly overseas journalists working in Hollywood. I think there's now more of them who are just overseas journalists plain. They have a certain, what you could say, maybe European sensibility where they love things that are gonzo. They love big wild swings. This is a movie that if you've seen it, it is the definition of a wild swing. It's a body horror satire about aging in Hollywood. It climaxes with the reveal of this very grotesque monster. The last 30 minutes are probably the grossest thing that you will see in a movie theater this year.

Yes, coming into this week, there was a question about whether awards voters would be into it. The Golden Globes at least, I mean, they don't have any overlap with the Academy. The Globe's voters at least have said, yes, this is right down our alley.

Alison Stewart: What did they like about Demi Moore's performance?

Nate Jones: My guess would be it's a very-- I mean, this is a cliche, but it's a very fearless performance. It's a very naked performance, both physically but also emotionally. She has to go to some very deep dark places. It's a performance dripping with self hatred in a way that is very palpable. There's also a comedy to it and there's a lightness to it that I think is very accessible. You know that when you see this film, you're going to have a good time. It's not just a dark, depressing slog.

Alison Stewart: It makes me wonder if Hollywood institutions are interested in self reflection. You have to be young and gorgeous or is it just a good performance?

Nate Jones: I think they are interested in self reflection to a limit. I think if you have it in a film that is gopher broke and gonzo and wild and features copious female nudity, I think that maybe will go down a little bit smoother rather than things that are operating more in a more realistic tone that maybe will cause them self reflection in a more uncomfortable way.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Steve calling in from Montclair. Hi, Steve.

Steve: Hi there. Frequent listener, frequent caller. How's it going?

Alison Stewart: It's going forward. How about you?

Steve: Pretty good. The best thing I saw this year was actually a Golden Globe snub. It is called Kneecap. It is a film about a Irish rap trio, Belfast. It's a really good movie. I was sad to see it non nominated.

Alison Stewart: All right. Love the name of the movie, Kneecap. You said Kneecap it is. Why do we call it Kneecap?

Steve: Yes. It's a foreign language film to an extent. The whole movie is just about Gaelic and rapping in Gaelic and keeping the language alive.

Alison Stewart: Got you.

Steve: I think at its core, it is a foreign language film. The name of the movie is derived from the rap trio named Kneecap.

Alison Stewart: Got you.

Steve: It's actually the actors are also the rap trio, so they're playing themselves.

Alison Stewart: Love it. Thank you so much for calling.

Nate Jones: Yes, Kneecap are a real rap trio from Northern Ireland. They play themselves in this autobiographical biopic. The term Kneecap, as you may be familiar, is they name themselves after the IRA's traditional punishment for drug dealers, which is shooting people in the kneecaps. It's sort of a dark joke in that regards. Yes, that film got no nominations at the Golden Globes. I would say it is not entirely out of the Oscar race. It is Ireland's official entry for the Best International Film award.

I think it's in a mix of Irish language and English, but I think the rule is you have to have over 50% not English or must 55% Irish. Yes, it is still on hunt. That's going to be a hard award to break into just because there's a lot of very classy art house films in that race. This is a more of a wild, good time, but there's certainly a lot of love for it. That is not the first time I've heard someone mention that that is one of their favorite films of the year.

Alison Stewart: We got a text that says "Shogun", exclamation point. [unintelligible 00:08:48] "Anora was such an achievement, such a great combination of hilarity and action, extreme honesty and heartfelt moments, performances, directions all excellent. Sean Baker continues to deliver and he deserves the success." Your thoughts about Anora?

Nate Jones: Yes. I think Anora is coming into this season as one of the ostensible frontrunners. There's still obviously a lot of season left, but I think most people believe that it should do well. It's been doing really well with critics awards. I believe it won Best Film at the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle this past weekend, and I think it won Best Screenplay at the New York Film Critics Circle last week and it did really well at the Globes. That was one of the four films that also got picture, director and screenplay as well as it got a Best Actress award or nomination for Mikey Madison. It got , who, if you've seen the film, plays this charming, very quiet Russian goon.

He got a supporting actor nod, which many people were not quite expecting. They weren't sure if his performance was big enough to make it into the field. The fact that it's showing up in all these places, yes, people think Anora will be very strong. It's a very likable film. It's a crowd pleaser. It's got romance, it's got heart, it's got laughs. Those traditionally are things that do pretty well, especially in the past decade. Now that the Oscars go to their preferential ballot, it's very important that you are a likable movie. Yes, for all those reasons, people think Anora should continue to do well into March.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Nate Jones. He's Vulture's senior writer who covers film. He co authored the recent Vulture article, The Biggest Snubs and Surprises of the 2025 Golden Globe Nominations. We want to ask you our listeners, what is the best thing you've seen this year and why? It could be a movie, it could be a TV show, or maybe there's a standout performance from an actor that just blew you away. Our number is 212-433-9692, 221-433-WNYC. You can call in and join us on air or you can text to us at that number.

We have to talk Challengers. It's nominated in the best musical comedy category. You write, "Light category fraud as the movie is not especially funny, but we'll take it." All right, first of all, explain category fraud.

Nate Jones: Category fraud is a thing that happens where awards campaigns maybe slot themselves into places that they possibly don't belong just to make it easier to get nominations and awards. It's a debate that happens every year. You see it especially in terms of like, what is a lead performance and what is a supporting performance? All of these things are so subjective that there's never always one answer. The Golden Globes, because they divide their nominations between dramas and music or comedies, there is a lot of wiggle room there.

In the case of Challengers, I would say that the reason it is in comedy is perhaps because there's a lightness to it, like it's not especially funny or laugh out loud, but it is not super serious. I think it's been slotted in that side of the ballot, one, to make it easier because traditionally that's a little bit less competitive over there. Also, it's not the brutalist. It's not a very dark drama about Holocaust survivors. It's just a tennis movie where people almost have a threesome.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a little bit of the Challenger score. It was nominated for best score.

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Alison Stewart: What does the score capture about the story and the character so well?

Nate Jones: I think the score is very propulsive and it's very intense. It puts you in the mindset of these three very driven people who will all, in various modes, stop at nothing to achieve their goals, whether that is success on the tennis court or whether that is success in the field of love or in Zendaya's case, it's a little unclear. She just wants to mold these people into clones of herself in some way. Yes.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call from Linda calling in from the West Village. Hi, Linda, thanks for calling All of It.

Linda: Oh, thank you. I was awed by Ellen Kuras's film Lee about Lee Miller, the photojournalist for Vogue during World War II. She had been a model for Vogue, then became photojournalist. Amongst beautifully well done lighting, we saw the challenges and obstacles female journalists had to face at that time during the war. Oh, my goodness. I was awed. I'm still awed talking about it. I have to see the film again. I usually don't do that.

Alison Stewart: That's a good.

Linda: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling. We actually had Kate Winslet on to talk about Lee a little bit. Lee Miller, one of the first photographers to document the concentration camps in World War II. Let's listen to a little bit of her interview.

Kate Winslet: We knew that it was going to be impossible to tell a cradle to grave story about Lee Miller. We also knew that we didn't want to make a "biopic", but we wanted to focus on the defining decade of Lee Miller's life. When I believe Lee truly became Lee. This was a woman who had walked away from the labels that were placed on her in her 20s, former muse, ex lover of man Ray, former cover girl, these slightly sexist reductive terms that history was in danger of leaving Lee in that way under the male gaze. I knew it was important to lift her out and not only give her her place at the table, but to place her at the head of that table.

Alison Stewart: Kate Winslet is nominated along with her performance in the HBO miniseries The Regime. You called her nom's globetacular pic. A globetacular pic, yes?

Nate Jones: Yes. I would say in the best actors in a drama category, it features both Kate Winslet for Lee and also Pamela Anderson for The Last Showgirl, which is a smaller film that takes place in Las Vegas. They are globetacular picks, not in a terrible way, but in the very old Globe style way where if you are a famous person who has a long track record and they would really love you to show up at their award ceremony, that usually has given you a better chance to get nominated. The most infamous case came around a decade ago with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp for The Tourist.

I would say I think Lee has generally more fans than The Tourist. Lee has also been campaigned very hard. I don't know if you remember the two Leslie scenario from a few years back where there was a bunch of famous Hollywood actors all came together and launched this social media campaign to get Andrea Riseborough in Oscar Daub, which was ultimately successful. In a funny little echo, many of those same people are also stumping very hard for Kate Winslet's turn in Lee. Then also as a somewhat echo of that experience Andrea Riseborough wound up pushing out Danielle Deadweiler of Till and Viola Davis of The Woman King.

In this case, not to take anything away from Pamela Anderson or Kate Winslet, but in this case the Globes went with them over one of the more heralded performances of the year, which is Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths. It's a Mike Lee film, essentially, like many Mike Lee films, it's a very delicate slice of life film about a London woman who's just in a bad mood all the time. It's a very blistering performance. If you haven't seen it, check it out. I think it just opened in New York this past Friday.

Alison Stewart: Also Danielle Deadwyler in The Piano Lesson.

Nate Jones: Yes, she was also left out in the supporting category, which-- You don't want to make too much of it because they did nominate Zendaya, they did nominate Denzel Washington in supporting, they did nominate Colman Domingo in lead performance for Sing Sing. Also when you add up all the so called snubs, there is one unifying factor which is many of them are African American talent. There's a lot of things we can speculate about it for that reason. One of them I think is perhaps that this is an overseas group still. One thing we've seen in awards season for years is that overseas groups do not always reward stories that they feel are quintessentially American stories about the African American experience in some ways.

There's a stat that we always return to, which is that Denzel Washington has never been nominated for a bafta. There's just something for whatever reason, it does not resonate with them as much. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is British. Her story is a very British story. I don't want to make too much of that. Yes, we can speculate reasons, but all we can say is, it's worth raising an eyebrow or giving a side eye to.

Alison Stewart: We'll have more with Nate Jones after a quick break. This is All of It.

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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Nate Jones is with me. He's Vulture senior writer who covers film. He co authored the article The Biggest Snubs and Surprises of the 2025 Golden Globe Nominations. Let me read a couple of texts here. I really, really love the new Ripley. It was so well done. Zoe Saldana and Emilia Perez deserves the award. She was phenomenal. What do you think?

Nate Jones: Yes, I mean, Emilia Perez is one of the big stories out of this year's nominations that got the most nominations of this year's field, the second most all time. It got 10. That's what happens when you are a musical. You have a whole side of the ballot to yourself. In the case of Emilia Perez, if you have multiple songs, those multiple songs can get nominated. Not to take anything away from Emilia Perez, I mean, it's when we said earlier the Globes love glitz and glamour. This is a perfect example. It's a big wild swing that doesn't work for a lot of people. For the people who it does work for, they love it.

I think, again, we can say it has maybe the European sensibility, which is maybe not told with the sensitivity that you or I might tell this story with. If you can get on its wavelength. Yes, those people really love it. They compare it to an opera. They say there doesn't need to be reason, there doesn't need to be sensitivity. You just want these big emotions.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Steve calling from Roselle Park, New Jersey. Hi, Steve. Thank you so much for calling All of It.

Steve: Hi, Alison. Yes, great topic. I've been watching Netflix a lot and I watched The Diplomat with Keri Russell and was so excited when season two came out and I binged that. She's amazing. I was so disappointed when it ended, and Allison Janney, who I love, came on for two episodes and she's amazing. I think they said they're going to come back for season three. That was wonderful. Just this week I found a limited series called Beef B-E-E-F, and it was 10 episodes and had nothing to do with meat, but it had to do with road rage. That was their beef. It was amazing. It was a little far fetched at times, but it was-- I thought it was so well done. Totally watchable.

Alison Stewart: I agree with you on both of those. Let's talk to Willie, who's calling in from Charlotte, North Carolina. Hi, Willie.

Willie: Hello. Sorry, let me get out of the noise there. I was wondering if the guest has seen The Madness on Netflix, a thriller in just one season. I just finished it. It was wonderful. Any chance on that thriller to have a second season or so on?

Alison Stewart: Yeah, it's Colman Domingo series.

Nate Jones: Oh no, I haven't seen it. I do have Netflix, but like so many of us these days, people tell me to see movies and I have the big long list on my phone of TV shows to check out, but I'll add that one to it.

Alison Stewart: Well, he's up for Sing Sing. Yes?

Nate Jones: Yes. He was nominated for best actor in a drama.

Alison Stewart: The best movie I saw this year was Blink Twice, a super dark film that I think really held a mirror up to the power dynamics between the haves and the have nots in our society that rings particularly true in light of recent events in the news. It also had impressive performances from Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum and a stunning directorial debut by Zoe Kravitz. I really liked that movie.

Nate Jones: I didn't see it, but that was one of those ones that came out in the dog days of summer, I believe. Yes.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting. Does it matter when a movie comes out for it to be nominated?

Nate Jones: Not a hard and fast one, but it generally does seem to be important to come out near the end of the year, if only as a matter of positioning in that. We have this mental model of, okay, the end of the year is when all the serious awards movies come out. Which is not to say that you have to come out at the end of the year. I mean, at least in The Oscars, we've been on a three year streak of the eventual Best Picture winner coming out from earlier in the year, which helped everything everywhere all at once gain steam.

Oppenheimer was such a steamroller. Also, I think if you remember CODA from the year before, that was a very tiny streaming release from the summer. There's no rule that says you have to be after September, but to get people like me talking about it in a very cynical way, it generally helps to be October, November, December.

Alison Stewart: We're going to speak to RaMell Ross tomorrow about Nickel Boys, an adaptation from Colson Whitehead's book. It's nominated in the best motion picture drama category. There's some really big swings in this film. I don't know if I should give them away. Do you think big swings earn a film more attention or is it like, "Oh, I don't know?"

Nate Jones: I would say that there's a different type of big swing in Nickel Boys than there is in a film like Emilia Perez. Whereas just so listeners have the information, Nickel Boys is told almost entirely in first person point of view. So you basically are in behind the eyes of the main character for the first half of the movie. Then as the movie goes on, we jump into a second character's point of view, and it's very well done. I don't want to say it's like nothing that's ever been seen before. There are a handful of movies in film history, but the fact that there are three other movies in the hundred plus years of Hollywood that have done this, it is a very original conceit.

I think, I mean it definitely earns you credit with especially the more highbrow or auteur friendly voters and voting bodies. RaMell Ross has been doing really well in what I like to call the tastemaker season, which is the Critics Awards and the Gotham Awards. He won best director at the Gothams last week. He also won best director at the New York Film Critics Circle. The movie's been getting cinematography prizes as well because of its POV.

Alison Stewart: It's beautiful.

Nate Jones: Yes, it's beautifully shot. RaMell Ross was a documentarian. He was nominated for his first documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, I believe it's called, from like six years ago. I think that this is a movie where the way it is told and the ambition and the boundary breaking form that it takes is sort of you can't talk about the movie without talking about it. It is a thing where the form is the content. I think that that is 100% this movie. It's a little bit on the Oscar bubble in some categories, but it seems likely that it will be in the conversation and could compete for things like best picture, best director, best cinematography acting awards. Possibly no, because it does seem like the story of it now is unique look, but I think it's 100% getting credit.

Alison Stewart: What is something that got snubbed that you just want to shout out? You just thought, "Man, I'm really sad that didn't get nominated."

Nate Jones: I mean, for the big one, it is Marianne Jean-Baptiste. I just went back last night and revisited Secrets and Lies, which was the great Mike Lee film from 1996. That was their first collaboration. In that she plays a totally different character. She plays a very level headed, fairly successful optometrist who enters this one family and her presence stirs up a lot of buried resentments. In this new film, she's playing a completely different character. She's playing someone that in real life you would want to get away from as quickly as possible. For some reason, when you are in a movie theater watching her for two hours, it's like totally delightful. A review I remember once said, like, at the start of the movie, you hate her and by the end of it, you are rooting for her perversely.

Alison Stewart: There's also a leaning towards her being mentally ill in that film.

Nate Jones: Yes, the movie takes a quite light touch about exactly why she is the way she is. I think it lands at a place of empathy. That's just like the why doesn't quite matter, but we just have to have sympathy for her for being the way she is.

Alison Stewart: Nate Jones is Vulture senior writer who covers film. He's been walking us through the 2025 Golden Globe nominations. Thanks for coming to the studio.

Nate Jones: Thank you very much for having me, Alison.