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If you’re the kind of person who anticipates awards nomination announcements with the enthusiasm some people save for holidays — come sit by us. On July 8, my colleague Christopher Rosen and I watched the 2026 Emmy nominations announcement together live, and now you can relive every moment of it — from my glee when I realized Widow’s Bay was a true Emmy hit to our outright confusion about Your Friends and Neighbors breaking into the drama series race with no other nominations.

For much more on the Emmy nominations, we’ve got you covered. I shared the biggest takeaways from the nominations themselves, previewed the key narratives that will drive the rest of the season and spoke with several nominees as they processed their shock.

Thanks to those of you who joined us live, and keep an eye out for much more where that came from!

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Hello, After Partiers! It’s a quiet time in the world of Oscar buzz — though we’ve got a midyear check-in coming for you on next week’s podcast, don’t worry — so if you’re seeking drama, we’ve got the perfect place to look: Wimbledon!

As you may have learned from their previous appearances on this podcast, both Entertainment Weekly’s Joyce Eng and The Ankler’s own Elaine Low are absolute tennis fanatics, in addition to knowing absolutely everything about Hollywood. So today, with Wimbledon kicking off next week, we asked Joyce and Elaine to join us for a doubles match to explain just what’s so great about the sport and why people who live and die for Oscar season should go ahead and get on board. Yes, there is a Timothée Chalamet of the tennis world, and Joyce and Elaine are here to tell you who and why.

In today’s After Party episode, which broadcast live Friday morning on Substack and YouTube, we look back at some recent iconic tennis moments, find out why Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer still loom so large over the sport and hear about the comeback narratives — including the ones for Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic — that are worth watching at Wimbledon this year.

So whether you’re an indoor kid or tennis curious, join us as Joyce and Elaine hold court and serve up some aces.

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Happy Friday, After Partiers! Even though we’re in the height of Emmy voting as well as summer movie season, I have to admit that the best thing I’ve seen this week is probably Timothée Chalamet ripping off his shirt while celebrating at Madison Square Garden. Or maybe it’s this guy launching a traffic cone into the air and miraculously landing it directly on the shoulders of an unsuspecting passerby. Maybe it’s this reaction video scored perfectly to “Theme from New York, New York”?

I’m no longer a New Yorker and have never been all that invested in the New York Knicks, but the good vibes following Wednesday night’s nail-biter victory in Game 4 of the NBA Finals have been pretty infectious — and, as I argue to my pal Christopher Rosen in this week’s After Party, might even have an impact on the upcoming Oscar race where he’ll be in the running for Dune: Part Three. As far-fetched as my idea might be, it seems the Knicks’ miracle run has done a whole lot to erase the Chalamet ballet/opera mess from this past Oscar season. Just one more reason to be grateful to Jalen Brunson and company.

I promise we haven’t turned into a sports show though! In the livestream recorded Thursday afternoon — catch this one and all the upcoming ones on YouTube as well as right here on Substack — Chris and I talk about the newly announced honorary Oscar winners, what we thought was a banger of a trailer for The Social Reckoning, and the newly posted Emmy ballots, including some fun surprises in the always-unpredictable guest actor categories.

Relive it all in the replay video above, and stay tuned for more After Party check-ins this summer, including a very fun return to sports talk that we have planned for later this month. As a reminder, Prestige Junkie After Party is now free to everyone, so spread the word!

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Bonjour, mes amis, and thank you again for indulging my extremely limited French. (I promise, this is the last time.)

I’m still recovering from jet lag and a lack of proper nutrition during the Cannes Film Festival. But one of many things I learned from attending my first Cannes is that actually being there is no guarantee you’ll see the most talked-about movies — or have any sense of what people actually care about from the festival. It took until I got home to realize just how omnipresent John Travolta and his many berets had become online, and that even some of my most informed movie friends still hadn’t heard of Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, the undisputed breakout from this year’s fest.

So on Thursday afternoon, Christopher Rosen and I put our heads together to discuss what really mattered from this year’s Cannes — be it genuine Oscar buzz for Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson in James Gray’s Paper Tiger to potential hits that still don’t have U.S. distribution, like Minotaur and The Black Ball. We also speculated a bit about what might win the Palme d’Or on Saturday, as impossible as it may be to predict, and whether this is the year that Neon’s Palme winning streak may actually come to an end (even though they’re backing so many of the movies in competition).

We also got into Netflix’s announcement that David Fincher’s Cliff Booth movie with Brad Pitt will be released in IMAX theaters for two weeks before it debuts on the streaming platform, essentially taking the Thanksgiving weekend spot originally reserved for Greta Gerwig’s Narnia movie (which has moved to Feb. 12, 2027). As Chris pointed out, the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel is now the first theatrical release for Fincher since 2014’s Gone Girl, a fact I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around.

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Hello, dear After Party subscribers! I’m at the Cannes Film Festival for the first time and happy to have you join me virtually for the fun. To kick off what will surely be a whirlwind weekend of screenings, parties and great conversations at The Ankler’s live Croisette Conversations (in partnership with Brand Innovators), I hopped on a call with Christopher Rosen earlier today to recap what’s been going on in France this week.

You can rewatch that conversation above — we touched on the hottest topics, including the response to Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, the early buzz on Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid and the mistaken coffee order that proves I need to work on my French-language skills before next year’s event.

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Hello, After Partiers, and thanks to those of you who joined Christopher Rosen and me for our live conversation on Thursday about all the news we missed in April while deep in our 2006 Canon miniseries. Among the subjects covered: Zendaya’s big hit with The Drama, our takes on Beef and Hacks and the spring movies we can’t wait to see. For those of you who missed it, you can watch the replay above.

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First of all, welcome to all you new subscribers who’ve joined us this week on the recommendation of our pal Sean Fennessey — and welcome to Substack, Sean! We’re glad to have you, and we’d love for you to join as a paid subscriber, because this week’s a big one: the conclusion to our 2006 Canon miniseries, with perhaps the wildest combination of movies we’ve discussed yet.

To recap: Every week in April, my colleague Christopher Rosen and I have invited special guests to join us to discuss four movies from 2006 — an underrated year of many great movies that featured some of our favorites (Martin Scorsese, Nancy Meyers, Christopher Nolan, Spike Lee and more) operating at a high level — and vote on one to enter the canon.

We kicked it off with our friend Matt Patches to assess 2006 blockbusters, all of us agreeing that Casino Royale deserved the spot in the canon.

Then, Tyler Coates joined us to talk about prestige hits — and when we couldn’t decide on a majority pick amongst ourselves, we turned to you, dear subscribers, to bail us out. (Children of Men eventually won the listener vote; nice job, everyone!)

Last week, Jada Yuan came on to discuss what we called “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore,” a lineup that might have been our strongest group of films yet, but with Inside Man easily making it into the canon spot.

Today, we’re wrapping things up with wild cards, a truly out-there collection of four titles that represent the range of storytelling that was available to moviegoers 20 years ago. Joining Chris and me is Clay Keller, co-host of the Screen Drafts podcast, who, like everyone who has come on so far, has great moviegoing memories from 2006 to share.

Here are the four titles we’ve got on deck to consider:

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You know that incredible thing that happens in movies sometimes, when a star is given the right material and the chance to do something that absolutely nobody else would be capable of?

When it happens these days, it feels like witnessing a passing comet, rare enough that you have to treasure it. But back in 2006, boy, did we ever have some movie stars and some movies that would show them off.

That’s the driving force behind three of our four picks on today’s installment of our 2006 Canon, which we’re calling “They Don’t Make ’Em Like This Anymore.” (The only outlier: Little Miss Sunshine, an ensemble drama that launched countless imitators, and — as we discuss — some television shows, too.)

Joined by Jada Yuan, Christopher Rosen and I take a look at four movies that seemed relatively common for studio films and indies at the time, but now feel like representatives of an art that has died, or at least shifted entirely to streaming.

Here’s what’s on deck, exclusively for you, dear After Party subscribers.

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Hello After Partiers, and thanks for all the comments and feedback on our 2006 miniseries so far — it’s good to know that it’s as much fun to listen to as it is to record!

This weekend, for the third installment of our 2006 Canon series, Christopher Rosen and I will bring you the best in a category I’m calling “they don’t make ’em like this anymore” — a catchall phrase for any movie from 2006 that feels like it represents an entirely different era in Hollywood.

Back then, we had Sundance breakouts rewriting the rules for indies, genuine rom-coms in theaters, emerging new genres and stars who have defined the past 20 years at the movies and all kinds of movies that — as we’ve discussed in our previous episodes — would absolutely be made as limited series today.

We’ll keep our other three picks for consideration under wraps for now, but we’re once again asking you to select the fourth contender in this category. Here are the four titles you can pick from: Vote now and make your voice heard, and come join us again later this week to hear how it all turned out!

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Welcome to part two of the 2006 Canon! Last week, we drove laps at Talladega and cruised through Radiator Springs, pondered the mystery of the rabbit’s foot and the rules of Texas Hold ‘Em and eventually decided that Casino Royale should reign supreme as the blockbuster entered into the 2006 Canon.

This week, as we are wont to do around these parts, we’re making it much more about the Oscars: Four new movies are up for canon consideration in the category we’re calling The Prestige Hit.

On today’s special episode, only for After Party paid subscribers, Christopher Rosen and I are joined by Tyler Coates to consider four titles that we think deserve a place in the permanent record — one selected by each of us, plus another that won the listener vote. All four films received Oscar nominations in 2006, but only one can make it into the After Party canon. Here’s what’s up for consideration:

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“Some critics like to spend their time longing for the good old days and wondering why nobody makes pictures the way they used to.” That’s how New York Times film critic A.O. Scott began his list of 10 favorite films in 2006, possibly knowing full well that 20 years later, we’d be looking at that very list and saying, “Wow, those were the good old days.”

That’s not necessarily what I expected to think when we first had the idea for our 2006 Canon, which we’re kicking off today exclusively for you, dear After Party subscribers. But life is a series of surprises. For this first installment, we’ve identified four blockbusters that we think perfectly represent what 2006 had to offer, and in this episode, we attempt to choose the one to rule them all.

To help Christopher Rosen and me on this quest, we’re joined by Matt Patches, the editor-in-chief of Polygon, my co-host on Fighting in the War Room and a real-life friend to both of us. All three of us picked a blockbuster that we thought deserved a place in the canon, and for the fourth title, we put it up to a listener vote, which went overwhelmingly in favor of Casino Royale. Here’s what we’ve got up for consideration on this week’s episode:

• Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (directed by Adam McKay) This was my pick, and not only because it’s filmed in my state of North Carolina. As the collaboration between McKay and Will Ferrell that was released between Anchorman and Step Brothers, it’s been a bit overlooked, but it is also incredibly representative of the goofball comedy that dominated the mid-’00s, with an added dose of the political commentary that McKay would dig far deeper into later in his career. It’s got some of the hallmarks of that era of comedy we’d rather leave behind — casual homophobia, scenes that run on for way too long — but also some inspired silliness and surprisingly great performances from its main female stars. But is that enough to get it into the canon?

• Cars (directed by John Lasseter) A smash hit in 2006 — it was the second-highest-grossing film that year, behind the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel — Cars is arguably even more important now than it was back then, having driven two sequels, two spinoffs and an upcoming new land at Disney World. It’s also arguably the start of an entire attitude shift at Pixar, which has leaned so heavily into sequels now that Toy Story 5 is coming this summer. Plus, as Matt argues, it’s got a lot more thematic depth — for good and for bad! — than you might think. Maybe that’s what helps it earn a spot in the canon?

• Mission: Impossible III (directed by J.J. Abrams) Intended as a swan song for Tom Cruise’s time as Ethan Hunt, and a box office disappointment that definitely seemed like it was ending the franchise following Cruise’s couch-jumping antics the year before, Mission: Impossible III is a pivot point for the franchise, more aligned with Mission: Impossible’s TV show origins than the stunt-spectacle future installments. It’s a strange one, but also the one with the electric Vatican heist sequence and Philip Seymour Hoffman as one of the all-time movie villains, plus the emergence of J.J. Abrams as one of the most significant Hollywood forces of the past two decades. Canon-worthy, perhaps?

• Casino Royale (directed by Martin Campbell) And speaking of the fate of franchises! Daniel Craig’s debut as James Bond was intended as a gritty reboot for the series, and it worked spectacularly — laying the groundwork not just for four more Craig Bond films but also arguably for many, many other “grounded” franchise films in the decades to come. The clear winner of our readers’ poll (over Night at the Museum, The Da Vinci Code and The Break-Up), Casino Royale is a little overshadowed these days by Sam Mendes’ Skyfall, which came out six years later. Still, there’s clear love for it, as you’ll hear, and some hot takes about its place in the Craig series. Will it make it into the canon? You’ll have to listen to find out!

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Hello, After Partiers, and thanks again for being part of our monthlong experiment of looking back 20 years to see how many of the era's top titles hold up.

This Friday, you’ll get to hear the first installment of our 2006 Canon series, in which Christopher Rosen and I are joined by special guest Matt Patches to pick the blockbuster that best represents what that year had to offer. We selected three major contenders — Talladega Nights (me), Mission: Impossible III (Chris) and Cars (Matt) — and had you all vote on the fourth. Your pick: Casino Royale beat out The Da Vinci Code and others to make it to the final round of consideration, but you’ll have to listen to find out how it fared in the final four.

And today we need your help picking films to consider, deconstruct and debate for our second episode, which we’re calling The Prestige Hits. We’ve already selected three films that we’ll keep secret for now, but now it’s your turn: Which of these 2006 movies should be the fourth contender?

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Happy Friday, After Partiers, and thanks to those of you who joined us for another live Thursday afternoon recording, in which Christopher Rosen and I were joined by our Ankler colleague Kelsey Stefanson to do a close read on some of the much-hyped trailers that have dropped in the past two weeks. We watched one of them together for the first time (thanks for the dinosaur reveal, The End of Oak Street!) and made sure to go silent to catch all the dialogue in Wild Horse Nine, the next film from The Banshees of Inisherin filmmaker Martin McDonagh. For the live-action Moana, the first look at Dune: Part Three and the Harry Potter HBO series, we shared our thoughts live as the trailers played out. It was a fun experiment, and hopefully one we’ll repeat in the near future.

A few hours after we recorded, though, some major Oscar news dropped that we didn’t get a chance to discuss. Starting in 2029, the Academy Awards ceremony will move from its longtime home in the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard to the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles, which has hosted the Emmys since 2008 and was the site for this year’s Grammys. The move coincides with the Oscar ceremony’s shift from ABC to YouTube, so many changes will happen all at once.

An Oscar traditionalist at heart, I can’t help but feel a little sad about the Dolby Theatre exit. What will happen to those columns bearing the names of all the best picture winners? How can the stage at the Peacock Theater (or whatever it will be called by 2029) match what the Dolby was able to accomplish by basically being custom-built for the Oscars? And how much complaining will we have to endure from Angelenos who hate having to go downtown, even for Hollywood’s biggest night? If you thought you’d already heard too much about traffic on the 101, get ready for so much more.

The Dolby Theatre has its limitations, sure, mostly because of its smaller size (the Peacock Theater has a much larger seating capacity, which will help as the Academy’s membership heads toward 12,000) and what surrounds it — the Forever 21 and Hard Rock Cafe are blocked out by curtains during the Oscars, but walking past the cheap souvenir shops of Hollywood Boulevard while in formalwear always feels a little weird. The area around the Peacock Theater is more “loading dock” than “tourist trap,” and also hosts the Grammy Museum, the Los Angeles Convention Center and the still appallingly named Crypto.com Arena. In the end, there’s probably no physical location that can both seat thousands of people and capture the glamour an awards show hopes to present, or in the words of the great Americana at Brand Memes…

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Hello, After Partiers, and welcome to what, for awards nerds, can feel like “the off-season” — the period between the end of the Oscars and the start of Cannes when the buzz can at least fade to a dull roar. (That is, unless you are covering Emmy season as Christopher Rosen and I are, in which case there is no respite; the emails are already plentiful and overwhelming.)

But for the purposes of this podcast feed — and this lovely community we’re building — it’s time to have a little fun. So we’re introducing The 2006 Canon, a four-week project that Chris and I are embarking on to pick four movies that best represent what that moviegoing year had to offer, with the benefit of 20 years of perspective, of course — plus the help of some special friends.

Each week we’ll be talking about four different titles released in 2006, each of them fitting one of these categories:

• The Blockbuster

• The Prestige Hit

• The “They-Don’t-Make-Them-Like-This-Anymore”

• The Wild Card

We’ll look back on where we were as moviegoers back in 2006, how the industry has changed since then and how the inescapable stars and directors of that moment have fared in the two decades since.

The first episode, dedicated to blockbusters, will drop on Fri., April 3. But before then, we need your help! Paid subscribers can vote below to pick which of these four titles will be up for consideration, along with three others we’ve already pre-selected (we’re keeping our editorially chosen three under wraps for now so as not to influence your vote on the fourth contender).

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It’s rare for anyone to get everything right about the Oscars — there’s a reason Oscar pools are won with 21 of 24 categories correct, and you would have sounded insane predicting the tie that happened this year in best live-action short.

But there’s a difference between biffing a prediction at the last minute and making an assumption all awards season that turned out to be incorrect, especially for those of us who spend months talking about the season into a microphone, leaving ample receipts for all the ways in which we were flat-out wrong.

So on today’s episode of Prestige Junkie After Party, for paid subscribers only, Christopher Rosen and I are taking stock of what we got oh-so-wrong this season, with contributions from some special return guests. (Chris took a huge L on Michael B. Jordan, as he admits, without me even having to say, “I told you so.”)

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Before I get into today’s amazing call-in episode with beloved returning guest Joyce Eng, my colleague Christopher Rosen and some surprise special guests, let’s get a major plug out of the way:

Coming up this Sunday, Chris and I will be live on The Ankler’s YouTube page starting at 3 p.m. PT, talking through the entire Oscar broadcast. (But with respectful silence for the acceptance speeches, of course, because this is a proper Oscar nerd party.) It’s an event open to everyone, not just After Party subscribers — but we hope to see you all you loyal listeners there!

Now, onto the good stuff, only for paid subscribers…

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Even after all these years, there is truly nothing better than the Oscars for a star-is-born moment. From Barbra Streisand crooning “hello, gorgeous” to her Oscar to Jennifer Lawrence tripping on the stairs to Mikey Madison looking as surprised as anyone to be up on that stage, an Oscar win — and sometimes just a nomination — is a fast track to generational icon status.

But when you’re in the middle of a season, it can sometimes be hard to tell which stars are rising the fastest, and who might just go back to where they were before when awards season finally wraps up. I have my own hunches about the biggest stars created by this season, but this week I’m also turning to the experts — Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber, hosts of the Who? Weekly podcast.

On today’s episode of Prestige Junkie After Party, exclusively for you, wonderful paid subscribers, Bobby and Lindsey join me to look back at this awards season and how this crop of acting nominees has embraced newfound fame (or, in the case of Sean Penn, run away from it entirely). On Who? Weekly, Bobby and Lindsey typically limit themselves to the “whos” of the world, the semi-famous (or wannabe famous) stars who, for the most part, don’t get anywhere near the Oscar stage. But today we get to dive into the “thems,” talking about Timothée Chalamet’s possibly flawed Oscar campaign — and the role his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, may have played in it — and how fellow thems like Michael B. Jordan, Leonardo DiCaprio and Elle Fanning have navigated the season.

We also talk about the stars like Teyana Taylor and Wagner Moura who have jumped from “who” to “them” status this season, with Bobby giving an especially great explanation for why the Oscars are so good at enabling stars to make that leap. And because any conversation with Oscar fanatics is bound to ramble, we also speculate on what Conan O’Brien will bring to his second time as Oscar host — and which best picture nominee he’s almost certain to edit himself into, a la The Substance last year.

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Final Oscar voting is happening right now (it ends on Thursday at 5 p.m. PT; hop to it!), and it’s about time. We’re getting to the point of awards season where everyone is a little talked out, both the contenders doing interviews — I can’t tell you how many people have confessed to me in recent weeks that they’re ready to be back on a movie set instead of just talking about one — and people like me, who love awards season but do eventually need it to end. We’ve been on our little hamster wheels for so long now, talking about who’s up and who’s down in the acting races and breaking down individual scenes, that it can be really hard to see the bigger picture.

That’s a problem my friends Richard Lawson (whose newsletter, Premiere Party, is a fast-growing favorite) and Alison Willmore (whose writing at Vulture is of the never-miss variety) have been actively combating on Critical Darlings, their new weekly podcast. Each episode, Richard and Alison explore the Oscar race by looking at an individual best picture nominee and how it fits into the larger narratives. They talked about Hamnet and the concept of Oscar villains, Frankenstein and the legacy of crafts-heavy best picture nominees and The Secret Agent and the Academy’s growing number of international voters.

And today they join me for an After Party episode, exclusively for paid subscribers, to talk about what you learn when you approach the Oscar race that way — and the questions they still have as the season draws to a close, including how political this might get before it’s all over.

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Hello, dear After Partiers! When we first started this bonus tier of the podcast, we imagined it as a place where we could really let our Oscar nerd freak flags fly, diving into the awards’ history and minutiae and trusting that you would follow along.

This week, I’ve gotten a lot of chances to do exactly that all over the internet — you might have heard me fixing Oscar history over on The Big Picture earlier this week, or caught me and Christopher Rosen answering some brilliant questions over on Reddit.

Today, we’re bringing some of that chaotic, nerdy energy to After Party, inviting back beloved guest David Canfield to answer a seemingly simple but very tricky question: If you put together this year’s Oscar nominees and last year’s Oscar nominees, who would actually make it through?

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How much can you really learn about the Oscar race from being inside these exclusive awards season events? That’s the question Rebecca Ford and I are trying to get to the bottom of on today’s Prestige Junkie After Party episode — as always, available exclusively to you, dear After Party subscribers.

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