All hail the return of Oscar Poker…Jeff and Sasha relaxed about everything, a lot of chuckling, etc.  We tried to cover the whole award-season waterfront and bounced all over the place, as usual. I said that after Interstellar I’m not sure I want to see another Chris Nolan film ever again. We discussed Ed Norton‘s recently-voiced notion about shutting down all award-season campaigning. We discussed Marnie, Miles Teller and the temporary destruction loop, transgender cultural issues, Michael Keaton, the persistence of Love & Mercy, Eddie Redmayne and The Danish Girl, etc. I’m not going to try and summarize any further but Sasha came up with two interesting observations. One, a current stand-out strategy is to run a Best Actor-level performance in Best Supporting, two examples being Jason Segel and Paul Dano‘s performances in End of the Tour and Love & Mercy, respectively. Not to mention Carol‘s Rooney Mara, Best Actress winner at last May’s Cannes Film Festival, being run as Best Supporting Actress. And two, there are seven strong Best Actor contenders now — Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs, Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, Johnny Depp in Black Mass, Bryan Cranston in Trumbo, Joseph Gordon Levitt in The Walk/Snowden and Tom Hardy in Legend. And possibly one of the actors in Spotlight (Mark Ruffalo?). So who might not make the cut? Again, the mp3.