ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Captain Blood is the 1930s version of a big, brainless action movie— David suggests Jason Statham would star in this today— and yet Hollywood hadn’t yet figured out how to make a big, brainless action movie. Starring Errol Flynn as a doctor named Peter Blood (which Suzan cannot actually say without laughing) who becomes an indentured servant and then a pirate, with Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone, this movie has possibly the most confused politics of anything our hosts have watched thus far. And at the end, they break down the nominees for this, perhaps the worst year of Oscar contenders— find out if the Academy chose right in 1935!

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Captain Blood (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

There are a number of movies where Charles Laughton has been acting in an entirely different film than everyone else on screen, but this is the first where that one seems like the better movie. Based on a true story, Mutiny on the Bounty departs radically from history for all the wrong reasons… if you can find a reason at all. Fraught with white washing British colonialism and naval history, not to mention the cast of white actors playing native Tahitians, not even a shirtless (albeit sadly clean shaven) Clark Gable nor one very impressive boat can save this poorly paced dud.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Won)

Additional audio: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

David: Suzan, I might have gotten slightly  drunk watching this movie over the course of like four hours.

Suzan: I mean, I didn’t, because I don’t drink, but I definitely felt like I had ingested some bad bread mold and was hallucinating.

This week, our hosts Shakespeare-nerd out pretty hard for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A German expressionistic adaptation of the play, directed by a man who literally didn’t speak English, starring James Cagney as a surprisingly fantastic Bottom, Olivia de Havilland as Hermia, Dick Powell as a dreadful Lysander, and a 14-year-old Mickey Rooney in the most enraging performance maybe ever committed to film. Suzan gets frustrated trying to find an accurate enough simile to convey just how bad Puck is, while David apologizes at least half a dozen times for his deep dive into the textual details.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Ten episodes ago, David and Suzan told you to hold off on watching The Gay Divorcee, because once they had watched this week’s movie, Top Hat, they would tell you which was the better Oscar nominated Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. We're sorry to report, they still don't know.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio: “Top Hat, White TIe, and Tails” and “No Strings” sung by Fred Astaire from Top Hat (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

1935 has been a rough year for our hosts, but this week, they have a wonderful, if surreal respite, in The Broadway Melody of 1936! A totally bonkers plot threads through some truly spectacular musical numbers, starring Eleanor Powell, who was such a phenomenal dancer that Fred Astaire did one movie with her, and then wouldn’t work with her again because she was that much better than he was. Rounding out the cast are an adorably sassy Una Merkel, Robert Taylor as a condescending jerk who looks like the prince of the fairies from a young adult novel, and Jack Benny as a strangely influential gossip columnist who can take a punch better than Rocky.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio: “I’ve Got a Feeling You’re Foolin’” and “Sing Before Breakfast” from The Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Happy New Year, Screen Testers! Our intrepid hosts begin their second year of their quest with the Katherine Hepburn vehicle, Alice Adams. Something of a shaggy dog story, it’s a strange little film in which very little happens, with some confused things to say about class struggle and capitalism. On the plus side, Hepburn gives a striking performance as a complicated and largely unlikable Alice, and it is the first film Suzan and David have watched that unabashedly indicts racism.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Alice Adams (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

They did it! David and Suzan have watched a Best Picture nominated film and released their review every week for a year. The final flick of the year is The Informer, the story of a former Irish Republican Army member turns in a friend for reward money, and the fall out that ensues. Suzan is sick, but powers through; David is just sick of the movie.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio: The Informer (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Suzan has been waiting this entire first year for the opportunity to geek out about Les Miserables. This week, she also fell in love with Frederic March, who entirely proved she and David wrong when they assumed, last episode, that he couldn’t off Valjean… unfortunately, they were absolutely right about Charles Laughton as Javert. But how good can a 100 minute Les Miserables actually be?

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio: “La Marseillaise” arranged and conducted by Carmen Dragon; “La Marseillaise” performed by the Red Army Choir (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Primary lessons learned from Naughty Marietta: don’t wiggle raw, unrefrigerated shrimp in a woman’s face as a way of flirting. This very loosely adapted version of a wildly confusing operetta stars Jeanette MacDonald as a French… Princess? who runs away to New Orleans to escape marrying some Spanish duke, and ends up falling for a rakish captain played by Nelson Eddy.  Musical numbers ensue, including a completely bonkers puppet show. 

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio from Naughty Marietta (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

The story of an English valet who gets traded away in a poker game to basically the Beverly Hillbillies, Ruggles of Red Gap stars Charles Laughton in the first of three 1935 Best Picture nominations. On its surface, it’s a broad, goofy fish-out-of-water class comedy, but something more insidious flows underneath.

SHOW NOTES

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio from Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

On this week’s episode, Suzan and David recommend half a dozen other adaptations of David Copperfield you could watch instead of this one. David has a hard time remembering names of real life people, Suzan has a hard time remembering names of characters, and there may or may not be evidence of time travel dropped in this movie (and Dickens’s book). Also, they discuss Hugh Dancy’s relationship to the philosophy of moral particularism and Taylor Swift’s “Most For The PR” Boyfriend.

SHOW NOTES

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio from David Copperfield (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

If you give thanks for only one thing this holiday, let it be that Suzan and David love you, their listeners, enough not to subject you to this terrible, terrible film.

SHOW NOTES

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

(Explicit language, as always)