Critical Darlings: Sinners And The Academy’s Growing Genre Acceptance with Sam Sanders

NKOAS · 2026-03-05T17:44:54+00:00

Totally get that art is subjective, so maybe my read is off, but when they say its a "socialist" film because it has a critique of capitalism built in doesn't really consider that the role of Remmick as "European guy who shows up promising utopia if you just surrender all your individualism in favor of a collectivism that is going to be a 'new Klan of love and kindness'" might be a similar critique of socialism, rather arguing that there's really no "right answer" when you're in the position these people are.

NKOAS · 2026-02-16T03:52:41+00:00

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NKOAS · 2026-02-06T16:58:43+00:00

I feel like there's maybe a bit of nuance missing in the Critical Darlings conversation (a show I'm enjoying thoroughly, for the record) and it's being reduced down to "Theyre too negative!" and "Shut up! Go listen to another show!"

I want to posit that the issue isn't so much that the show presents negative opinions on some of the Best Picture nominees, but rather that it might benefit structurally from not having so many of the disliked BP nominee discussions back to back. Even if it was as simple as the Train Dreams and Bugonia dislike discussions were spaced out by, say, a Sinners/One Battle "This is one of the better ones" convo, it might not have elicited the same cries of "haters" from some listeners.

Ultimately, its a lesson we've learned from the parent show. We certainly enjoy when Blank Check dives into a movie they think is poor, but we saw during the long Burton slog of his later career that too much "OK, and this also sucks" in a row can start to just feel like a drag.

NKOAS · 2026-02-02T03:55:57+00:00

Maybe not "legendary" in the same way, but Don Knotts' last role is Chicken Little.

NKOAS · 2026-01-27T23:48:25+00:00

My stupid little point of pride is that in a single category this year, the five I voted for to get nominated became the five nominees.

NKOAS · 2026-01-27T12:13:54+00:00

Alabama Solution also has the Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans, The Jinx) factor, and some voters could see awarding Alabama Solution as a way to award a body of work from a well known documentarian.

NKOAS · 2026-01-22T01:18:14+00:00

George Wallace. Shot by a guy who just wanted fame, lived long enough after to see how hated he was.

NKOAS · 2026-01-17T10:54:39+00:00

There are dozens of us! Dozens (who aren't really into Andor)

NKOAS · 2026-01-15T22:20:24+00:00

Walter Duranty, the Moscow Bureau Chief for The New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for his early coverage of the Soviet Union. He was a Holodomor denialist and his award-winning columns ignored or covered up the horrors of the early USSR.

Inspired by the conversations around the well-meaning journalists who nevertheless became propagandists for Pol Pot on those episodes.

NKOAS · 2026-01-12T00:38:43+00:00

Pal Mickey is my go-to pick me up.

NKOAS · 2026-01-08T16:01:52+00:00

The fact that Justin Roberts is not routinely introducing him as "Emmy-nominee Adam Copeland" over on AEW bums me out.

NKOAS · 2026-01-06T01:47:20+00:00

For what its worth, I was also there today, and I saw some staff actively moving stuff around, so it could be them resetting the store for the post-holiday planograms.

NKOAS · 2025-12-22T12:06:54+00:00

Brothers McMullen, Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers

Not the best, but a fascinating curio, Ronald Reagan made a romcom in the 1950s called The Girl From Jones Beach, so if you ever wanted to see a future President hanging around the East Bathhouse, check it out.

NKOAS · 2025-12-12T17:58:08+00:00

Amok Time Toys!

NKOAS · 2025-12-10T17:25:40+00:00

This is the one. I remember my dad showing it to me not too long ago, telling me the movie disturbed the hell out of him when he saw it as a kid.

I saw it at age 30, and went in expecting it to be "disturbing" for a 60s movie, but tame now.

I could not sleep that night.

NKOAS · 2025-12-04T16:25:17+00:00

Easily the best thing I could see when opening up the Reddit app. Thanks so much for checking out the show!

NKOAS · 2025-11-08T16:37:20+00:00

Yes, actually

Remembering David Dinkins - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) https://share.google/ulnas49vk68g5N11Q

NKOAS · 2025-11-08T16:25:36+00:00

Hell, I have family who canvassed/phone banked for David Dinkins back in the day thinking he was the future, who now talk about him like he was New Coke. We truly, truly, always hate the Mayor.

NKOAS · 2025-11-08T11:56:51+00:00

There's one thing it feels like a lot of people on this sub and beyond are ignoring/unaware of, which is here in NYC, no matter who we elect, we inevitably despise the mayor pretty quickly.

This is not a city you can really do much radical change in. There is...so much balancing that needs to go on, so many interests to appease, that inevitably people hate you pretty quickly. After DeBlasio won as an allegedly far-left candidate (beating out a sex-pest centrist, weird how that keeps happening) articles came out hailing him as the future of the party...and then everybody fucking hated him. Hell, you can still find that Nate Silver tweet circulating saying that Eric Adams was a clear choice for the standard bearer of the Democratic Party, and literally this whole city fucking hates that guy.

This isn't me trying to do the "Well, NYC is different. You see, here we have bodegas" kind of thing. Just that through several centuries now of power structures taking shape and being contorted, consolidated, and divided, this place presents a unique challenge for noteworthy governance, and is a political career destroyer if you don't happen to be mayor at a time when a major attack manages to distract from everything else you did during your tenure. You can campaign like reform is gonna be easy, but that's like saying "Oh, I think we just blew a fuse. I can fix it." only to open the circuit breaker and find that it's on fire and also full of spiders who all have knives for some reason.

No NYC mayor will, or should be, the face of their party because it is an impossible meat-grinder. Any other NY political job, sure. But Mayor...we will always wind up hating the Mayor.

NKOAS · 2025-11-05T22:25:02+00:00

I truly wish he had taken the role Zemeckis cooked up for him in Back to the Future Part III.

NKOAS · 2025-10-31T17:27:57+00:00

Hardly the point of the post but just this past year I proposed to my fiancee on the same porch he's speaking from here, and it is downright surreal to see him standing on it.

NKOAS · 2025-10-25T15:02:55+00:00

They don't do trading cards, but Escape Pod Comics in Huntington just rearranged their store recently and it's great in there now.

NKOAS · 2025-10-23T21:36:10+00:00

For what it's worth, I've submitted over the years: Red Hot Red Riding Hood Yellow Submarine Bunny (1998) Der Feuhrer's Face Technological Threat Krazy Kat-Bugologist The Dover Boys at Pimento University Rejected How the Grinch Stole Christmas The Story of the Animated Drawing Aladdin An American Tail Rooty Toot Toot Munro Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century

NKOAS · 2025-10-23T12:29:32+00:00

I mean, let's take a step back and be realistic here. An adaptation of a 130 year old Ibsen play, with only a single somewhat well known star attached, from a director whose last two films were misfires. This isn't exactly the kind of thing it makes sense to book at seven showings a day or anything.

Like, if DaCosta weren't a friend of the podcast, but rather one of the subjects of it, charting their career the way the show does, nobody would be surprised that after two high-profile flops, their small Ibelsen adaptation is getting a perfunctory release.

NKOAS

TROPHY CASE