The Nose

It's been a year of aborted missteps for the Academy Awards. There was going to be a new Best Popular Picture category. But now there won't be. Kevin Hart was going to host. But now there's nobody. They were going to present four awards -- including Film Editing and Cinematography -- during the commercial breaks. But now they aren't.

Oh and there're the actual movies. Roma and The Favourite lead the field with 10 nominations each. A Star Is Born was once the favorite (no "u") to win in a bunch of categories. But now bettors' odds seem to favor Roma. Or maybe Green Book? And A Star Is Born? Its Best Picture hopes have fallen all the way to 40-1 against.

Colin's away this week, but The Nose must go on! Or maybe "must" isn't quite right, but in this particular case, The Nose is going on -- with excellent guest hosts: The Arts Paper's Lucy Gellman and the New Haven Independent's Tom Breen.

The long list of luminaries who have played the Super Bowl Halftime Show includes Michael Jackson, Prince, Beyoncé, Madonna, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, The Who, U2, Tom Petty, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Bruce Springsteen... and as of Sunday: Maroon 5.

Whatever artist finally agreed to perform, it was going to be seen as controversial. Maroon 5 is defending their decision, even in the face of petitions asking them to drop out.

And: Alfonso Cuarón's Roma is nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including plenty of big ones -- Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay. Its 10 nominations tie it with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the most ever by a foreign-language film. And this hour Roma becomes the 12th Oscar-nominated movie The Nose has covered.

Where We Live producer Carmen Baskauf had been badgering us to do a show about The Good Place for months on end. (It had gotten kind of weird, to be honest. We were a little worried about Carmen, to be honest.)

Partly to get her off our back, partly because The Good Place really is "a sitcom that's also a profound work of philosophy," and partly because its Season Three season finale aired last Thursday night, last Friday afternoon we finally did a show about The Good Place.

...And then we got preempted by the president halfway through the forkin' show!

So this hour, we try again.

Where We Live producer Carmen Baskauf has been badgering us to do a show about The Good Place for months on end at this point. (It's gotten kind of weird, to be honest. We're a little worried about Carmen, to be honest.)

Partly to get her off our back, partly because The Good Place really is "a sitcom that's also a profound work of philosophy," and partly because its Season Three season finale aired last night, this hour we're finally doing a show about The Good Place.

On Monday, Imagine Dragons played the Halftime Show at the College Football National Championship Game. The reviews were... not great. In fact, the performance has raised the question: Is Imagine Dragons the worst band ever?

And: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure-style, science fiction, psychological thriller film. It's streaming on Netflix, on some devices, as a standalone movie in the Black Mirror television series. The Nose has seen... a number of different versions of it.

Louis C.K. has done another thing. He did the thing a few weeks ago, it turns out. But this week the thing appeared on the internet, as things do. And so The Nose, as it does, must cover the thing.

And we've gotten to that part of the year where all the awards-season movies all come out at once. (I guess it's called... "awards season"? Huh.) But then the rest of pop culture keeps keeping on at the same time. 

As 2018 draws to a close, The Nose makes its final appearance on our schedule this year. And so we've brought in a nine-person Nose to do a special, live, nighttime broadcast of our best ofs (and maybe worst ofs?) of the year.

Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton: An American Musical is, simply, a phenomenon.

The Broadway production was nominated for a record 16 Tony Awards, and it won 11. The Original Broadway Cast Recording is certified five-times Platinum and won the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, and The Hamilton Mixtape debuted at number one on the Billboard 200.

The first episode of Doctor Who aired on November 23, 1963. Since then, there have been 37 seasons and 849 episodes of the show. The current Doctor, the thirteenth, is portrayed by Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to take the role on.

Is a show with this much history impenetrable, at this point, for new viewers? Is Doctor Who nerd culture for nerds who think nerd culture isn't nerdy enough? Are Jodie Whittaker's Doctor and her diverse group of companions a fresh, compelling way into the series for new audiences?

Bernardo Bertolucci directed The Last Emperor (which won nine Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director), Last Tango in Paris, The Dreamers, 1900, and Little Buddha, among other movies. Bertolucci died on Monday. He was 77.

In the years since it was released with an X rating in 1972, the infamous Last Tango in Paris -- and its infamous "butter scene" -- have complicated Bertolucci's legacy. In the days since Bertolucci's death, our friend David Edelstein made a tasteless butter-scene joke on Facebook, retracted the joke and apologized, and was fired from NPR's Fresh Air.

No Country for Old Men. Fargo. The Big Lebowski. Raising Arizona. O Brother, Where Art Thou? Miller's Crossing.

Over the past 35 years, Joel and Ethan Coen have reliably been among the most recognizable voices in moviemaking.

Their latest, the anthology western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, hit Netflix last weekend.

This hour: a Noseish look at the work of the Coen brothers.

Last weekend, Saturday Night Live did a thing it rarely does: it apologized for a joke it had made in poor taste. Pete Davidson, the comedian behind the joke and the apology, is a unique figure in the history of SNL.

This week's biggest pop culture story is probably the death of Marvel Comics's Stan Lee. The Nose also wants to take a moment to acknowledge the death of the voice of HAL, Douglas Rain.

And: Academy Award-winner Melissa McCarthy? Is that a universe we're headed toward? Her turn as Lee Daniels in Can You Ever Forgive Me? just might get us there.

Last week's Nose painted itself into a bit of a rhetorical corner and somehow found itself arguing that Idris Elba is too old to be James Bond. And while historically that's true, it's not an argument we're proud to have made. Thankfully, this week, the universe has been kind enough to redeem us with the announcement of your new Sexiest Man Alive: Idris Elba. Of course, that's no reason not to make a new bad argument about Elba, like that he's, say, too macho to be the sexiest man alive?

And: The Amazon Prime series Homecoming is a few firsts. It's Julia Roberts's first TV series. It's the first scripted TV drama based on a podcast. And it's Sam Esmail's first new television project since Mr. Robot.