On episode 280 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch Associate Editor Sophia Ciminello as well as AwardsWatch contributors Jay Ledbetter, Josh Parham, and Karen Peterson to go back forty-five years and take a look at the 53rd Academy Awards, covering the films of 1980.

Throughout Oscar history, there have been Best Picture wins that have become “controversial,” with some being about the quality of film that won or because of the films that lost Hollywood’s top prize. The latter has become the case, as many cinephiles believe that Raging Bull should’ve won Best Picture over Ordinary People, which sets up a perfect challenge for the team to see if they believe this call for injustice by the Academy holds any merit.

In their in-depth discussion, the AW team talked about the film year of 1980, briefly discuss talk about Ordinary People 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 2h24m. We will be back next week for a review of the new A24 comedy, Death of a Unicorn, as well as talk about some of the best comedies of the decade and century 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).