Blank Check with Griffin & David · Blank Check Productions

Critical Darlings: Hamnet And The History Of Oscar Villains with David Sims

·1 hr 15 min·5 clips

Hamnet ultimately becomes a story about Hamlet and stagecraft.

1. Critical Darlings, with Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore, uses this episode to examine the Golden Globes, Hamnet, and Oscar-villain season. 2. Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore host the awards-season discussion, and their roles matter because the show is built around named contenders rather than broad entertainment chatter. 3. The episode asks whether the Golden Globes are real awards or just a glossy televised stage for campaign messaging. 4. They argue that the Globes feel real because nominees show up, wear gowns, and turn speeches into live career moments. 5. The conversation cites the old Hollywood Foreign Press Association voting body, described as 70 to 90 people, and its reputation for bribery, scuzziness, and weak diversity. 6. They note that Penske Media bought the Globes and that some original members were reportedly paid 75,000 dollars a year for five years. 7. The new on-air Polymarket odds and Mark Malkin's live commentary are treated as a strange attempt to make awards television feel like sports betting. 8. The podcast-award segment lands on the idea that these new categories mainly extract money from podcasters who have to apply. 9. The hosts also question the Globes' box office award, especially when a title like K-Pop Demon Hunters barely reported grosses. 10. Their comedy-versus-drama digression runs through One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme, and The Martian, along with the problem of calling serious films comedies. 11. Hamnet enters as the season's biggest prestige wrinkle because it beat Sinners and complicates the expected One Battle After Another versus Sinners front-runner story. 12. The hosts define an Oscar villain as the movie the public and press fear will flatten a better narrative, usually because it feels safe or boring. 13. They point to 2017, when Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri felt like a threat against Lady Bird and Get Out before The Shape of Water won. 14. They also revisit 2019, when 1917, The Irishman, Joker, Little Women, and the Tarantino film crowded a fraught Best Picture race. 15. Pre-internet examples like Shakespeare in Love, Crash, and Green Book show how Oscar backlash can recoil against the wrong target and then correct itself. 16. Their Hamnet discussion centers on Maggie O'Farrell's novel, Jessie Buckley's audiobook version, and the film's choice to rearrange the book's chronology. 17. The tone is wry, argumentative, and full of interruptions, with Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore correcting each other's Oscars takes in real time. 18. The format moves from Globes mechanics to Hamnet spoilers to Oscar history, so it feels like a live awards roundtable rather than a formal interview. 19. Awards-season listeners who track Globes and Oscars will get the most from it. 20. People wanting spoiler-free Hamnet recaps or casual celebrity chat will probably skip it.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Blank Check with Griffin & David