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Air Dates: March 4-10, 2024

Hollywood’s annual night-of-nights is upon us with the Academy Awards around the corner. Pete Hammond helps us take stock of the film industry and the films singled out for their powerful storytelling this year.  

Hammond, widely considered the pre-eminent awards analyst for film and television, is Deadline’s Awards Columnist covering the Oscar and Emmy seasons. He is also Deadline’s Chief Film Critic, having previously reviewed films for MovieLine, Boxoffice magazine, Backstage, Hollywood.com and Maxim, as well as Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide where he was a contributing editor. In addition to writing, Hammond also hosts the KCET Cinema Series and the weekly KCET television series “Must See Movies.” Previously, he held producing positions at “Entertainment Tonight,” “Extra,” “Access Hollywood,” “The Arsenio Hall Show,” “The Martin Short Show” and AMC Networks. He has received five Emmy nominations for writing and is only the second journalist to have received the Publicists Guild of America’s Press Award twice, in 1996 and 2013.

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Hammond breaks down the ten films nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards this year and some trends to be aware of this award season. Most notably, Hammond observes the success of the movie theatre this year, acknowledging that at the height of COVID, many in the film industry asked, are movie theaters dead? And the answer is no.” Hammond continued, saying he talked to many filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg, who said he wasn’t sure if theaters were going to be viable again. He adds the Academy’s increased determination to “bring in new members from around the globe and making themselves into a truly global organization. He said, “we saw from the early beginnings of this Oscar race that this was going to be a very good year, particularly a good year for the international films.”

“Story in the Public Square” broadcasts each week on public television stations across the United States. In Rhode Island and southeastern New England, the show is broadcast on Rhode Island PBS on Sundays at 11:00 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 4:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m., 9:30 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a project of the Pell Center at ������. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.