Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to episode 182 ofatter, the Hollywood Reporters Awards

podcast. I'm the host Scott Feinberg and my guest today is someone who you

probably wouldn't expect to hear on this particular podcast. He's a man who spent his entire 20-year

NBA career as a shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers,

becoming an 18-time All-Star, winning a league MVP award,

instrumentally helping the team to win five championships, and establishing

himself as one of the greatest basketball players of all time before announcing his retirement

in 2015 through a poem called Dear Basketball that he and his production company

have now turned into a beautiful animated short of the same name with animation

by Disney legend Glen Keane a score by music legend John Williams and narration by the writer and subject himself.

The great Kobe Bryant.

But first let's take a moment to discuss what's happened in the awards race since our last episode.

The New York Film Festival from which I'm recording this introduction kicked off on Thursday night

with the world premiere of Richard Linklader's Last Flag Flying, featuring Steve Correll, Brian Cranston, and Lawrence Fishburn

as old friends who reunite decades after serving together in Vietnam.

The film, which roadside attractions will distribute on November 3rd and Amazon will subsequently stream,

was received respectfully, but like several other films that have been unveiled during the early days

of this edition of the New York Film Fest, including Noah Bombach Dramat the Myruwitt stories new and selected, which

Netflix will release on October 13th, it looks unlikely that it will end up figuring into

the Oscar race in a major way. Thus far, the films that have clicked the most at and around Lincoln Center,

where the Film Fest is held, have been carryovers from earlier festivals,

from Berlin, Anyesca Hollen's Spore, which is Poland's entry for the best foreign language film Oscar

...