Welcome to Oscar Talk.

In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

Today Anne and I are joined by In Contention’s own Guy Lodge who is knee-deep in the London Film Festival these days, catching up on a number of titles he missed along the festival circuit. And, of course, he caught a certain highly anticipated film that’s opening in the UK next week. Let’s see what’s on the docket today…

We start off today with the awards news of the week: the Gotham Award nominees, which were announced yesterday. We go back and forth on the relevance of the awards in the season, the meaning of “indie” and the surprising snubs throughout.

The Gotham Awards will take place on November 28, which is the date the New York Film Critics Circle has decided this week to stake out as their date for voting, which puts them out front of the National Board of Review and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. We discuss the implications and the motivations of the move.

Steven Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn” is set for release in the UK next week and Guy has plenty to say on that. He caught the film last weekend and was surprised how taken he was by it.

Speaking of which, Guy has caught up with a number of films at the London Film Festival that he’s missed along the festival circuit, particularly a number of the foreign language film contenders. He waxes on about those for a bit.

And finally, reader questions. We address queries concerning the foreign films aiming for other nominations, the animated feature category and its contenders as well as the idea of a “line” on a film coming to identify it early on.

Have a listen to the new podcast below with a taste of the UK leading the way. If the file cuts off for you at any time, try the back-up download link at the bottom of this post. And as always, remember to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

“London’s Burning” courtesy of The Clash and CBS Records.
“The Adventure Continues” courtesy of John Williams and Sony Classical (UK).