“The Oscars are fascinating and important. People dismiss them as trivial, but they are snapshots of what we actually value.”
Nathaniel Rogers, The Film Experience
And so begins a new series of audio recordings, where I grill, or at least prod at, various film-loving folk. The Filmotomy Seminar opens with four Oscars pundits (not counting myself) plucked from the movie writer’s wilderness. A kind of roundtable, a film critics circle – only an audio version. Here are today’s guests:
Thelma Adams – Film critic, and author of The Last Woman Standing, and new novel Bittersweet Brooklyn. “I remember being around at the beginning, with Tom O’Neil at GoldDerby, when there were not many reporters on the beat. So I have seen a huge growth.”
Nathaniel Rogers – Founder and Editor of The Film Experience. “It started as a hobby. I was an armchair pundit until I went online. I got going with the Moulin Rouge year. And by the time of Brokeback Mountain, my site broke through in a big way.”
Tom Beasley – Freelance film journalist for The Guardian and Flickering Myth. “I started as a “real” journalist, in the newsrooms, did a degree in Journalism. This is my favourite time of year, I get the rare chance to be nerdy and granular. A complete circus, and love being part of it.”
Paddy Mulholland – Film writer for Awards Daily, Editor of Screen on Screen. “[Oscar season] satisfies the nerd in me. The game of it all – the strategising, the statistics – always being surprised by that, and how it actually unfolds, not conforming to what you expected.”
Enjoy the show. Please subscribe on iTunes and SoundCloud, and we always welcome your comments, reviews, and ratings.
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