The Rolling Tape

The Rolling Tape

The Rolling Tape podcast is a TRT production covering weekly film reviews, industry updates, and awards season news.

  1. 12h ago

    The Awards Tape: Ten Years of La La Land & The Legacy of the 2017 Oscars

    Is it another day of sun? Or is there someone in the crowd on this lovely night, as a city of stars shines bright for those who dare to dream? If that gives you any indication, we're talking about the Oscar-winning musical La La Land, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. It's a bittersweet romantic tale about two creative artists in Los Angeles who pursue their dreams while falling in love. With the film celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, we're taking a look back at the movie that captured Hollywood's imagination. La La Land first premiered at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2016, where it received rapturous acclaim. Critics immediately praised the performances from Stone and Gosling, Damien Chazelle's dazzling direction, the catchy original songs and score from Justin Hurwitz, Linus Sandgren's lavish cinematography, the vibrant production design, and the colorful costumes. The film quickly established itself as the frontrunner throughout the 2016–17 awards season as more and more people fell in love with this dreamlike original movie musical. It paid homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals while bringing a contemporary sensibility to the genre. Its box office reflected that enthusiasm, with the film ultimately grossing approximately $447 million worldwide during its original theatrical run. Of course, La La Land's legacy doesn't stop there as its awards run has become a piece of infamous Oscar history. But there's no denying that, ten years later, La La Land has left an enormous mark on movie culture from the careers of Stone, Gosling, and Chazelle to the renewed interest in movie musicals, and even the way Oscar envelopes are handled and double-checked before they're opened onstage. Let's take a look back at La La Land, its legacy, and the cultural phenomenon it became. On this episode: Paul Rai Mariana Fabian Justin Duggan Adam Patla Timmy Lee Support the show Subscribe for Early Access and Video: The Rolling Tape Patreon Listen Here: Spotify Apple Podcasts All Listening Platforms Have questions? Email info@therollingtape.com Podcast Website Link Website & Publications: www.therollingtape.com Social Platforms on Linktree Credits: Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl VincentArtwork: Danny JarabekEditor: Danny JarabekAssistant Producer: Evan Miller

    The Awards Tape: Ten Years of La La Land & The Legacy of the 2017 Oscars
  2. Aug 12

    The Awards Tape: Pre-Fall Festival Oscar Predictions 2026-27

    In just a few weeks, Venice, Telluride, New York, and Toronto will kick off a new cycle of anticipated awards contenders, with premieres and early reactions that will reshape our already exhaustive Oscar predictions. This is where some of our assumptions about certain films will go to die, or be validated. Who's to say? Even though films like Digger, The Social Reckoning, and Dune: Part Three will premiere later in the fall and winter, movies like Wild Horse Nine, Ink, The Debut, Behemoth, and Elsinore will be shown to audiences for the first time over the next several weeks. And yet, all of that may feel somewhat moot, because every other film is being overshadowed by the Trojan horse that is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The big-budget epic has already passed $1 billion at the global box office, including more than $400 million domestically. It boasts a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, an 88 on Metacritic, and a 4.4 average on Letterboxd. Perhaps we're just spinning our wheels here, and Nolan is once again going to sweep the industry awards—we just don't want to admit it to ourselves. Whatever happens, we still have more than 70 slots to fill across 18 categories, and today we're going to focus on half of them. We're giving you our pre-Fall Festival Oscar predictions for Best Picture, Best Director, all four acting categories, and both screenplay categories. We'll also touch on some of the below-the-line technical categories as an extra treat. This is our last chance to truly theorize, fantasize, and project our hopes onto some of these films before we've actually seen them. Once the fall festival season begins, we'll have reactions, reviews, and new information that could completely change the race. Our guest: Dean Coburn On this episode: Paul Rai Owen Wilczek Jacob Diedenhofer Adam Patla Claire May Lewis Support the show Subscribe for Early Access and Video: The Rolling Tape Patreon Listen Here: Spotify Apple Podcasts All Listening Platforms Have questions? Email info@therollingtape.com Podcast Website Link Website & Publications: www.therollingtape.com Social Platforms on Linktree Credits: Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl VincentArtwork: Danny JarabekEditor: Danny JarabekAssistant Producer: Evan Miller

    The Awards Tape: Pre-Fall Festival Oscar Predictions 2026-27
  3. Aug 10

    EP 201: One Night Only (2026) & Ranking Rom-Com Movie Couples

    You know what's more romantic than living under an authoritarian government where you can only have sex for one night of the year? Finding your true love for life. Time to nut up for Will Gluck's One Night Only, starring Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner.  Written by Travis Braun and based on his Black List script. The film follows two hapless romantics, Monica Barbaro's Allie, a hopeful romantic looking for something more, and Callum Turner's Owen, a recently dumped hopeless romantic. They happen to be two aimless singles navigating the one night of the year when premarital sex is legal in their society. As the night stretches on, what begins as a quest for a hookup turns into a series of awkward encounters, side quests, and run-ins with a society built around enforcing the government's strict rules on sex. Allie and Owen eventually realize that what they really want is each other, and that maybe they don't need to take advantage of the twelve-hour window at all. They can wait until the next morning, or, if necessary, the other 364 days of the year. Love and fascism are in the air, and to help me celebrate our new puritanical reality, we're going to take a look at One Night Only and some of the greatest romantic-comedy couples in cinema history. We review the latest dystopian romantic comedy and rank some of cinema's best romantic-comedy couples.  Our pre-episode Patreon exclusive conversation features: Wonka 2 DelayedPrimetime TrailerX-Men Casting AnnouncementsOn this episode: Paul Rai Des Mack Nadia Arain Risa Bolash Support the show Subscribe for Early Access and Video: The Rolling Tape Patreon Listen Here: Spotify Apple Podcasts All Listening Platforms Have questions? Email info@therollingtape.com Podcast Website Link Website & Publications: www.therollingtape.com Social Platforms on Linktree Credits: Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl VincentArtwork: Danny JarabekEditor: Danny JarabekAssistant Producer: Evan Miller

    EP 201: One Night Only (2026) & Ranking Rom-Com Movie Couples
  4. Aug 5

    The Awards Tape: The Invite (2026) Awards Assessment, A24 Campaign Priorities & Fringe Best Picture Nominations Ranking

    It's the opening weekend of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but I don't think we can conclusively say it'll be part of this upcoming awards conversation—outside of a potential Best Visual Effects nomination. So instead of focusing on that amid the hundreds of millions of dollars being made by The Odyssey and Spider-Man, there's a much smaller film quietly holding its own at the box office, The Invite, directed by and co-starring Olivia Wilde, alongside Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz. A24 acquired the film of the Sundance Film Festival for more than $12 million, and it has quietly become one of the studio's biggest success stories of the year. It's now approaching $40 million worldwide, including roughly $20 million domestically and nearly $16 million internationally. Critically, the film has been a standout as well, earning a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, an 82 on Metacritic, and a 4.0 average on Letterboxd. Its performance is starting to resemble another Sundance acquisition from A24: Past Lives, which went on to earn Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay nominations at the 96th Academy Awards. So, today we discuss The Invite's Oscar chances, as well as A24's broader awards strategy this year. With a slate that includes Club Kid, Primetime, and The Debut, could the studio once again land multiple Best Picture nominees once again? We also discuss films like The Invite and Past Lives more broadly—movies that live on the fringe of the Best Picture race and ultimately sneak into the lineup thanks to widespread passion and strong overall support from Academy voters. We rank 17 of our favorite (or not so favorite) fringe Best Picture nominees that fit that mold. On this episode: Paul Rai Danny Jarabek Support the show Subscribe for Early Access and Video: The Rolling Tape Patreon Listen Here: Spotify Apple Podcasts All Listening Platforms Have questions? Email info@therollingtape.com Podcast Website Link Website & Publications: www.therollingtape.com Social Platforms on Linktree Credits: Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl VincentArtwork: Danny JarabekEditor: Danny JarabekAssistant Producer: Evan Miller

    The Awards Tape: The Invite (2026) Awards Assessment, A24 Campaign Priorities & Fringe Best Picture Nominations Ranking
4.8
out of 5
20 Ratings

About

The Rolling Tape podcast is a TRT production covering weekly film reviews, industry updates, and awards season news.