On episode 355 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch Editor-In-Chief Erik Anderson and AwardsWatch contributors Josh Parham and Karen Peterson to go back 20 years and take a look at the 79th Academy Awards, covering the films of 2006.
The AW team goes back twenty years to take a look back on a time that was a nail biter of a season that resulted in Martin Scorsese coming out on time, winning his long awaited Oscar for the crime, gangster thriller The Departed. Alongside that, it was a fascinating five films in the Best Picture line-up that made up a pretty deep year of films that rank as some of the best of the decade of the 2010s upon retrospective. Films like Notes on a Scandal, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil Wears Prada, United 93, Little Children, Half Nelson, and more from the nominations are talked about in-depth on this week’s episode alongside Maria Antoinette, The Prestige, Miami Vice, Casino Royale, Children of Men, Inside Man, The Holiday get more attention from the group than their original award season run or get more nominations past their original snubs. It’s a stacked conversation, and it makes for a fun episode of deliberation amongst the group.
In their in-depth discussion, the AW team talked about the film year of 2006, briefly discuss talk about The Departed as a Best Picture winner, and how that speaks to the legacy of their nominates and or wins, do an extensive conversation over the below the line categories and nominees for the year, and then the new version of the AW Shoulda Woulda Coulda game, where instead of individual replacements, they must decide as a group who the nominees and winners should be in the top eight categories. The rules of the game state they can only replace two of the nominees that year from each category, except in Best Picture, where the group could replace up to three films to make up the final set of five nominated films. Like past retrospective episodes, it was a fascinating, fun conversation including spirited debates, alliances, vote swinging, celebrating various movies, performances that aren’t normally talked about and more that we all hope you enjoy.
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This podcast runs 2h44m. We will be back in next week to talk about the latest film from the MCU, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and talk about the best films of 2026 so far. Till then, let’s get into it.
Music: “Modern Fashion” from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).
