x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Screen Test of Time

Suzan Eraslan and David Daw

The Screen Test of Time is a podcast where Suzan Eraslan and David Daw set out to watch every movie ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, in order, from the first awards season to eventually the present day. Each week, they watch and review a different movie, and when they"ve watched everything nominated in a particular year, they tell you whether the Oscar went to the right one!

tv & film film history

All Episodes

00:57:21

Episode 56: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Screen Test of Time ·

2019/01/27

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

en

00:57:42

Episode 55: Top Hat

Screen Test of Time ·

2019/01/20

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.

en

00:49:11

Episode 54: The Broadway Melody of 1936

Screen Test of Time ·

2019/01/13

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

en

00:50:36

Episode 53: Alice Adams

Screen Test of Time ·

2019/01/06

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.

en

00:30:19

Episode 52: The Informer

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/12/30

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.

en

00:51:41

Episode 51: Les Miserables

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/12/23

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?

en

00:39:23

Episode 50: Naughty Marietta

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/12/16

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.

en

00:35:01

Episode 49: Ruggles of Red Gap

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/12/02

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.

en

00:37:54

Episode 48: David Copperfield

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/11/25

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.

en

00:39:36

Episode 47: The Lives of a Bengal Lancer

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/11/18

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.

en

00:36:38

Episode 46: Flirtation Walk

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/11/11

Whatever you do, do not play a drinking game in which you drink every time our hosts sigh dejectedly this episode. You will be hospitalized. That Flirtation Walk was nominated in the same year as Here Comes the Navy is straight up confounding. Actually, that it was nominated at all is confounding. But David and Suzan wrap up the 1934 nominees and tell you if the right movie was rewarded.

en

00:59:12

Episode 45: Imitation of Life

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/11/04

The final Claudette Colbert nominee for 1934, Imitation of Life attempts to deal with issues of racism, passing, and white supremacy in America. The first movie in this project that really had its claws removed by the Hays Code (a full year before it was universally enforced), this is at least a fascinating artifact in the history of Hollywood’s failed attempts to tell stories dealing with racism.

en

00:53:47

Episode 44: The Surprise Halloween Episode!

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/10/28

The movie they should have watched this week, The White Parade, is unavailable to watch (outside of the super secret UCLA Film Archives vault that they still haven’t managed to crack), so our hosts chose another movie from 1934 with a spooky Halloween theme! What is it? You’ll have to listen to find out!

en

00:47:46

Episode 43: The Gay Divorcee

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/10/21

Our hosts' first foray into the world of Fred and Ginger, The Gay Divorcee is a bit of a mixed bag, but at least it's an improvement over the last two weeks! The good: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sing and dance a bunch, Alice Brady plays a hilarious one liner machine named Aunt Hortense, and the sets are so beautiful the movie single handedly increased the sales of Venetian blinds (no, really). The bad: some outdated and frankly dangerous tropes, a frankly nonsensical plot, and a desperate

en

00:36:14

Episode 42: The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/10/14

SToT favorites Norma Shearer and Frederic March star in this unfortunately agonizing biopic about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Charles Laughton returns in a brutal role that entirely erases the memory of his jovial and sympathetic-ish Henry VIII in this period drama torture porn. But there is a cute dog.

en

00:48:07

Episode 41: One Night of Love

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/10/07

Grace Moore stars as a helpless aspiring prima donna who runs away to Italy to study with a famously cruel and abusive vocal coach, while consistently rejecting a genuinely good rich guy who just wants her to live her own life in this deeply misogynistic trash fire.

en

00:58:08

Episode 40: Cleopatra

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/09/30

Last week, Suzan predicted this was going to be 100 minute of Claudette Colbert fan service, and for once, her instincts were spot on. An absolute burlesque of a film that specifically pushed the limits the year before the Hays Code was going to be enforced, Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra is gorgeous to look at, but has an absolute mess of a script. But does that matter when there’s so many beautiful costumes and so much cleavage on display?

en

00:33:29

Episode 39: Here Comes the Navy

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/09/23

The aircraft carrier and the airship featured in this movie both figured into horrible accidents after this film was shot. And that's the most interesting thing about Here Comes the Navy. A confusing romantic comedy(?) that seems to center more on two boys making each other miserable than a guy and a girl falling in love, this Jimmy Cagney vehicle is not just nonsensical and filled with unlikable characters, it’s also super racist. The worst movie our hosts have watched yet.

en

00:55:53

Episode 38: The Thin Man

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/09/16

The Thin Man is almost perfect: main characters Nick and Nora Charles, are perhaps the world’s most charming detective couple; they have an adorable dog; the banter is fast and witty; and the multiple side characters are fleshed out and fascinating… and yet there’s one little problem. David realizes that a B+ movie frustrates him more than a solid C, while Suzan comes to the disheartening revelation that the history of film is not, in fact, a straight line toward cultural and political

en

00:38:50

Episode 37: Viva Villa!

Screen Test of Time ·

2018/09/09

Another in a long line of Hollywood white wash casting, Viva Villa! is an absolutely infuriating, stereotypical portrayal of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa by Wallace Beery (The Champ, Grand Hotel). Not going to bury the lede— this movie fails the Screen Test of Time hard, but at least this episode will remind you of a minor Looney Tunes character you probably forgot about…? (Editorial correction: Katherine DeMille’s father died in World War I, not World War II.)

en

216 results

Similar Podcasts

BEHIND THE VELVET ROPE

David Yontef

Nerd Culture - A Gamekings Podcast

Blammo Media

UPodcast

UPodcast

The Writers Hangout

Sandy Adomaitis

The Sarah Fraser Show

Sarah Fraser