Can You Smell What The Rock is Cooking? Is it An Oscar?

Little Gold Men by Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair

Tv & Film

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Rebecca and John discuss The Smashing Machine, Benny Safdie's new movie starring Dwayne Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr. They are joined by Vanity Fair contributing editor Tom Kludt, who shares his thoughts on why sports movies are audience favorites but not always awards winners and what Johnson should do to become king of the Oscar ring. Plus, Rebecca and John share their picks for must-watch October film releases.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men,
0:06.0	Vanning Affairs podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers.
0:09.2	I'm Rebecca Ford.
0:10.1	And I'm John Ross.
0:14.6	Okay, let's quickly catch everyone up with the news of the week.
0:18.2	First, one battle after another, opened this weekend. It opened
0:21.6	at 22 million domestic, 48 million global. That's a little below Killers of the Flower Moon.
0:28.7	However, it had an astronomically high audience score, which, as we discussed, is important in the
0:37.4	weeks to come.
0:40.0	The box office, I thought, was okay, pretty good.
0:45.4	Yeah.
0:46.5	It's Paul Thomas Anderson's biggest opening.
0:50.5	Does Warner Brothers secretly hope and wish that we were in a $30 million range?
0:56.8	Yes.
0:58.7	But I think that with like an A minus or a audience score, that is a very good sign that the word of mouth on this film is going to help propel it throughout the month.
1:13.2	Rebecca, what are your thoughts?
1:15.6	It's so funny because I was looking at the box office headlines,
1:19.0	and they're like all over the place.
1:21.0	It's like, ticket sales are solid,
1:23.2	and then it's like, it liberated the box office,
1:25.5	and then one's like, why nobody saw the biggest
1:27.5	movie of the year? And it reflects exactly what we're talking about is like the narrative was
	...

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