Blank Check with Griffin & David · Blank Check Productions

Critical Darlings: Marty Supreme And The Precursor Circuit with Griffin Newman

·1 hr 45 min·5 clips

Amy Madigan keeps getting stronger and stronger and stronger for Weapons.

1. Blank Check with Griffin & David guest Griffin Newman joins Critical Darlings for an awards-season conversation built around the New York Film Critics Circle dinner. 2. Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore host the show, and Griffin Newman brings a Blank Check perspective on how film-critic rooms, publicists, and winners read the same night differently. 3. The episode asks what precursor awards are for, and the running question is how real each body feels when the Oscars race starts to harden. 4. They open with the Tao Downtown dinner in New York City, where Ethan Hawke introduced Rose Byrne for Best Actress and then stepped into the fountain. 5. The hosts describe the room, the small stage, and the official after party, then compare Tao Downtown to old theme restaurants like Ninja and Mars 2112. 6. From there they rank the New York Film Critics Circle, Critics' Choice Awards, National Board of Review, Gothams, and SAG by how much each one can move a season. 7. Richard Lawson says the lead performance in Secret Agent now looks like a serious Best Actor contender after the recent political parallels around Brazil and a South American kidnapping. 8. They also note that the international race may place more than one non-English-language film in the Best Picture conversation. 9. The conversation turns to Amy Madigan, whose Weapons campaign gained force after a 10:30 AM guild screening and a Q&A with Esther Zuckerman. 10. Griffin Newman says the room reaction to that screening made it feel as if Madigan was already winning. 11. Alison Wilmore and Richard Lawson compare Madigan's late-movie turn, which starts frightening and ends funny, with Tiana Taylor's much larger role in One Battle After Another. 12. They point out that Taylor dominates the first 30 minutes, disappears for about 90 minutes, and then returns in voiceover at the end. 13. Regina Hall becomes the example of a smaller supporting part whose impact depends on the film's structure rather than on big speech moments. 14. The hosts bring up Beatrice Straight in Network, Judd Hirsch in The Fabelmans, Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, and Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls as reference points for awards positioning. 15. They argue that supporting performances now live or die on category placement, screen time, and whether the movie ends on the actor's face or leaves them behind. 16. Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, and Matthew Lillard all enter the discussion as examples of how campaigns can widen or collapse across precursors. 17. The tone stays loose, with gossip about award dinners, recalled speeches, and repeated side trips into the history of critic groups. 18. The style is conversational and comparative, with the hosts constantly testing how real each awards body feels against the larger Oscar narrative. 19. Listeners who follow Oscar precursors, supporting-actor races, and awards-room politics will get the most from it. 20. Listeners who want a film plot recap or a single-movie deep dive may skip it.

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