Best Picture Brainrot - A Countdown to the 100th Oscars

We are 67 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and tonight we dance to the beat of a real musical!  West Side Story, the beloved adaptation of Romeo & Juliet set to music made by Leonard Bernstein, and 1962's Best Picture Winner.This marks our second Shakespeare adaptation, though this one is anything but standard.  Set in modern-day, and layering real life racial tensions onto the story, it puts us in the action between the Polish Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks.  These youth gangs, who do their hard work by meeting in a candy shop, fight over a specific spot of turf because their parents and the system fail them.  In doing so, they also drag down the only one of them who even wants to attempt to make it out.  But then Tony falls across gang lines for Maria, and the rest is history, just like West Side Story's 10 Oscar haul.  It's an Oscar heavyweight, but does that weight hold for us?In this episode you're gonna hear:An immediate rift forming between the pro-musical and anti-musical peopleElvis impressions for a relevant reason we can't reveal yetAdam relive his sixth grade traumaWhich song in this musical inspired a similar song in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's The Nightman ComethFollow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl

We are 68 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and just like William Wyler peaked last week with the movie that is seen as his Oscars masterpiece - so too does Billy Wilder this year.  The Apartment is the Wilder Best Picture winner most associated with him - and it's easy to see why.The Apartment is the story of the meek C.C. Baxter - an insurance clerk with eyes on the way up and a curoius way to climb it.  His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to let all of his bosses bring their mistresses to his apartment for their extra-marital trysts.  This is all well and good (it's not) until the biggest fish in the company catches a whiff of this and wants to join in.  That is all well and good (it's still not) until C.C. finds out that the big boss' mistress is the woman he's been crushing on - elevator operator Fran Kubelik.  It's a movie about the complex relationships we have with both ourselves and the others who we have an effect on.  It's widely seen as a notable winner - but how does it hit for us?In this episode you're gonna hear:Us go down the rabbithole of Streeteasy apartment prices in NYCDiscussion of the quirky lifestyle of Shirley MaclaineAdam steal content from Reddit threads to make good points about the performances in the movieHow all a movie needs to be a Christmas movie is a drunk Santa and a Christmas treeFollow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl

We are 69 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and we bid farewell to our good friend William Wyler who has brought us bangers such as Mrs.Miniver and The Best Years of Our Lives but now brings us his arguably most famous Oscars work - 1960's Ben-Hur.Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ sounds like a curious novel to adapt if you are a famous Jewish Hollywood director.  Alas, William Wyler set out to make "a thinking man's biblical epic" in direct competition to Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments.  Shots fired!  They both even star Charlton Heston.  Ben-Hur is the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince who is send into slavery and returns home to seek revenge against his childhood friend who now rules for the Romans in Judea.  All this while his story intersects with the rise of Jesus Christ in a slightly Gump-ian way.  It's big, it's epic, it's long and it won the most Oscars of all-time.  A big stature to live up to - so does it?In this episode you're gonna hear:The way Wyler saved MGM by creating a movie of unprecedented scaleExhaustive discussion of how painfully hot Charlton Heston is in this movieWhat leprosy is and why everyone threw rocks at lepersIf there's room for another new-age biblical epic in the Oscars canonFollow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl

We are 70 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and... buckle up.  Vincente Minelli's French-Belle Epoque-set Gigi is our 31st Best Picture Winner and I assure you, we have a lot to say about this.Gigi is a (14-year old) girl who is a courtesan (mistress/hooker-in training) under the tutelage of her grandma and great-aunt (pimps) in the roaring French ages where you're either too rich to have real relationships, trying to siphon money off those rich people, or too poor to even be discussed in the bounds of this story.  Weirdly this is an enduring story that adapts a novel, and has been adapted into the stage.  On it's surface, this feels like it could be something subversive, but does the group read it that way, or does it read it to filth?  I'm sure you can guess.In this episode you're gonna hear:How Aretha Franklin's assessment of Taylor Swift informed our opinion of this movieAn emergent new viral hashtag - #FreeGigiThe shortest Brainrot section of all time because the whole episode is rotThree frustrated hosts trying to figure out what the heck was in the water of 1958Follow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl

We are 71 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and today, we go back to the World War II well with a non-Wyler-led epic about POWs on the Pacific front who are forced to build a river crossing in the lovely jungles of Burma.  The Bridge on the River Kwai is our first David Lean, and our 30th Best Picture Winner.  Featuring special guest - Zach!You likely know him best for originating the character of Obi Wan Kenobi, but Alec Guinness was an Oscar-winning actor whose most significant role before Star Wars was in this movie where he basically acts as a summer camp counselor wrangling troublesome youths who need to unite to solve a common goal.  But here's the catch - they are all prisoners of war of the Japanese forces.  Nevertheless, this is the task that Guinness' Colonel Nicholson must take on - keep the men alive and productive in hostile conditions.  Does he take it a little too far?  Let's find out!In this episode you're gonna hear:The real story of Sir Lieutenant Colonel Philip John Denton Toosey and how that inspired (or didn't inspire) the events of the movieWhich Eddie Murphy character vehicle was inspired by one of Alec Guiness' performancesValuable technical camera information from an expert in the craftThe results of the 3rd Brainrot Awards!Follow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl

We are 72 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and today, we're sponsored by Kalshi because we're talking about a bet.  A certain bet, a specific bet about if it is possible to go around the world in less than 3 months.  Yes, Around the World in 80 Days is the winner of these 29th Academy Awards.You may be familiar with Jules Verne's novel - but this movie brings the story to the big screen in vibrant color and scale that has rarely been matched in these first three decades of the Oscars.  It's a vibes and hijinks movie about a colorful cast of characters trying their best to see the world as fast as they possibly can; it's really some bored rich people stuff.  The cast is all-star and was notable in 1956 for introducing us to the idea of the celebrity cameo, so we have this to blame for Marvel, I suppose.  It's a real global romp that carried a lot of charm in 1956 - but can we say the same 70 years later?In this episode you're gonna hear:The gang flex on everyone with how far our global travels have goneWhat Todd AO is, and why it changed the game with this movieHow Mexico's Charlie Chaplin brought a level of global star power to this filmVery polarizing opinions on this film - who will prevail?Follow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl

We are 73 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and today, we've got the meats.  Marty tells the story of a sweet New York butcher who finds love after 34 years of trying, which is a crazy long amount of time, apparently.  Maybe when you're Italian!Marty Piletti and Clara Snyder are both old, busted individuals for the 1950s - or at least that's what all of their friends and family tell them!  They've internalized the fact that they'll never find love and instead spend all their nights hanging out with their parents or, in Marty's case, his bum friends.  But it's a chance encounter that will change everything.  It's a focused story that fits within a tight-90, praise be.  It's a sweet story and one of the smallest to win Best Picture, but will we fall in love with Marty?In this episode you're gonna hear:About our meat plugsIf Marty and Clara are actually as busted as people sayHow director Delbert Mann dipped in and dipped out of the OscarsAdam forget how to say the name of the main woman character of the movieFollow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl

We are 74 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and today we go back to a city we've been in a few times before, New York.  But this time, we're bound for a more working class lifestyle by hitting the docks.  On the Waterfront is Elia Kazan's story about a man who has to make the hard choices when faced with his work versus his morals.Terry Malloy works, appropriately, on the waterfront as a longshoreman.  He lives what he thinks is a good life until a traumatic event shakes him to his core and forces him to confront a world of corruption and making the choice to stand up for what is right.  Elia Kazan controversially tackles this subject by seemingly comparing it to his own life and ostracism for ratting out members of the Communist Party to the House Un-American Activities Committee.  The problem is... he sort of cooked - but you'll hear what we think in the episode.In this episode you're gonna hear:How Elia Kazan's real-life drama impacted the creation of this movieDiscussion on how Marlon Brando's acting still resonates todayAbout where this 8 Oscar-winning movie was still snubbed at the Oscars in some wayA pitch for new dating services from the Brainrot crewFollow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl

We are 75 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and today we welcome a colorful cast of characters all clad in aloha shirts.  Yes, Fred Zinneman's From Here to Eternity is the story of the crew of a Hawaiian military outpost in the looming days of World War II, and our 26th Best Picture Winner.An ex-boxer with the suspicious name of Robert E. Lee Prewitt arrives at the Schofield Military Barracks; he's pressured to join the boxing team but refuses and most of the rest of the men make his life hell for it.  This movie was co-created by the Army but subsequently unendorsed due to its depiction as a giant fraternity.  Which is funny given this was allegedly adapted from the "boldest novel of our time" in the 1950s - so they should have known what they were getting into.  The book may be bold, and some of that boldness may have made it into the film, but how does that land for us today?In this episode you're gonna hear:Discussion around the big "twist" that this movie has at the endHow Montgomery Clift is one of the crew's favorite actors of this eraIf From Here to Eternity compares to all of the other great movies of 1953Bush-era brainrot and how it applies to this filmFollow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl

We are 76 weeks away from the 100th Academy Awards and today we go to the big top - that bastion of family fun, dazzling feats of human agility and... criminal clowns?  These are all part of The Greatest Show on Earth - Cecil B. DeMille's circus epic (for lack of a better word) and the winner of the 25th Academy Awards.A movie about the circus should have a commensurately wacky plot, and this movie delivers in spades.  We get another back-to-back love triangle that features a young Charlton Heston in his breakout role; a character named Buttons the Clown played by Brainrot alumni Jimmy Stewart; gangsters; cavalcades; dogs riding horses - you name it.  That's the circus baby!  Such a chaotic movie is bound to bring the chaos out in us (and it does) - so how does that affect our thoughts on the film and its Best Picture legacy?In this episode you're gonna hear:How Cecil B. DeMille found his lead actor in the most 1950s of placesWhat Hasbulla would have done if he was included in this movieThe activities of the 25th episode Brainrot Reunion for our favorite film charactersDrew giving an impassioned defense of the rating he gives this movie (good or bad?  Tune in to find out)Follow us @bestpicturebrainrotpodcast as we keep delving into Oscars history with a brainrot spinLetterboxdAdam - https://boxd.it/9fMtAlexis - https://boxd.it/I7k7Sarah - https://boxd.it/6VQMl