Episode 511 - NYFF64 Ends, "The Exorcist: Martyrs," "Godzilla Minus Zero," "Heartland" & "La Gradiva" Trailers

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And the Oscar goes to...

Larry Fried (1:01)

Oh, thank you so much.

Katie Johnson (1:03)

This might be the one time I'm speaking.

Larry Fried (1:05)

This is not a joke. Moonlight is One Best Picture.

Katie Johnson (1:07)

Could you double check the envelope?

SPEAKER_1 (1:09)

And I can't deny the fact that you like me.

Katie Johnson (1:12)

Thank you, life.

SPEAKER_1 (1:13)

Thank you, love.

Matt Naglia (1:14)

Where did we fall in love with you?

Larry Fried (1:15)

At Maria C.

SPEAKER_1 (1:17)

Oppenheimer.

Katie Johnson (1:18)

At the movie theater. This is nuts. It's a tie. I'm the king of the world.

SPEAKER_1 (1:23)

And the Oscar goes to...

It's time. The Oscar goes to... One battle Oscar and I die.

Matt Naglia (2:12)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 511 of The Next Best Picture Podcast. I am your host, the owner, editor and chief of nextbestpicture.com, Matt Naglia. And the time of recording is 11:15 a.m. on Sunday, October 11, 2026 And here to join me for this week's episode as we say goodbye to the New York Film Festival, I have Larry Fried.

Larry Fried (2:35)

Howdy, everyone.

Matt Naglia (2:36)

Dan Bayer.

Dan Bayer (2:37)

New York, New York. It's the hell of a town.

Matt Naglia (2:40)

And Katie Johnson. Hello, hello.

So, the New York Film Festival has concluded. We had closing night finally. My God, finally, because that festival, man, I love it. It's home. But damn, does it go on for way too long forever.

Seriously. But we also have other interesting stuff to talk about this week, too. I mean, I think we're at a point now where the dust has really settled on certain elements regarding the Best Picture race. At this point, we really only have Dune left on the schedule now as far as world premieres that could impact everything. So lots to talk about on that front. We are going to talk about some trailers that dropped this week. The Exorcist Martyrs unexpectedly dropped over the weekend, which was pretty cool. We're going to go over the polls. We're going to answer some fan questions. But before we get to all of that, oh, and by the way, the fan questions are actually on Powered Mailbag Monday. I have to get used to saying that now. Sorry.

Yes, before we get to all of that. What have you all been watching this past week? None, New York Film Festival related, anything you want to throw out there for the class. Larry, what do you got?

Larry Fried (3:49)

So I actually did a major catch up this week and finally watched Backrooms, which I hadn't seen until now, and I really dug it. I really liked it. And as somebody who had no-

really, I had no familiarity with the Backrooms lore, the Reddit stuff, any of that. I found it endlessly fascinating.

It's bizarre because the movie came as a result of the big fandom, translating it to the screen. That's why H24 made it. But as someone who's not a fan, I could totally see someone seeing this and being like, well, I'm going to dive down the rabbit hole because now I'm just like, this is such a cool universe, such a cool way of trying to make sense of the world. Also, very weirdly timely, given everything going on with AI and generative AI, everything backrooms to me felt like AI. It felt like the slop that AI gives us in trying to recreate things. Also, I mean, you got Tewetel and Renate giving fantastic performances. So I'm really glad I finally caught up with it. The only other film I saw was History of Concrete. I finally got around to seeing that. I love John Wilson, love his work, thought this was really funny. Not sure if we needed a feature-length episode of How To at the end of the day. I'm not sure if they can fully sustain a feature-length runtime. But I still really enjoyed it. I thought it was really funny and I really do hope he gets to continue making feature-length documentaries.