On episode 255 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch contributors Dan Bayer, Jay Ledbetter, and Josh Parham to go back 15 years to take a look at the 82nd Academy Awards, celebrating the films of 2009.

Fifteen years ago, after the Academy made an egregious snub and didn’t include The Dark Knight in the Best Picture lineup, the Academy expanded the category to include ten films, in an effort to include a wider range of films that audiences had seen. The results ended up with one of the most balanced, representative selection of nominees in some time, with the biggest, highest grossing film of all time going up again the indie-war film, that would go on to win and make Academy history as the first female director to win Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow). In their in-depth discussion, the AW team talked about the film year of 2009, briefly discuss talk about The Hurt Locker as a Best Picture winner, 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.

You can listen to The AwardsWatch Podcast wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and more.

This podcast runs 2h40m. We will be back next week to do discuss the latest film release, Anora, and discuss our Top 5 Palme d'Or winners.

Music: “Modern Fashion” from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).