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DigiGods Episode 261: Spring Breakin’ 2 Digilectric Boogaloo
325 Plays8 months ago
Wade and Tim wrestle with the legacy of The Juice, have no such trouble with the legacy of Laurel & Hardy or Edward James Olmos, talk 80s Hanna-Barbera and more recent anime as well as some badassploitation 4k #DVD #Bluray #4k #TV #Movies
In this episode, the Gods discuss:
- 3 Godfathers (BD)
- Akiba Maid War (BD)
- Amélie Steelbook (BD)
- Anaconda Steelbook (BD)
- Black Bullet (BD)
- The Boob / Why Be Good? Silent Classics (BD)
- Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker (4k)
- Carole & Tuesday (BD)
- Cathy's Curse (4k)
- Chihayafuru S3 (BD)
- Cobweb (Blu-ray)
- The Dangers in My Heart (BD)
- A Day at the Races (BD)
- Deep Blue Sea / Long Kiss Goodnight, The / Snakes on a Plane (BD)
- The Devil's Honey (4k)
- Distant Tales (BD)
- Dream Scenario (BD)
- Easter Parade (BD)
- The Edge of the World (BD)
- Eileen (BD)
- Ernest & Celestine: A Trip To Gibberitia (BD)
- Faithless (BD)
- Farming Life in Another World (BD)
- Fear the Walking Dead: S8 (BD)
- Fortunes of War (DVD)
- French Revelations: Fanfare d'amour & Mauvaise Graine (BD)
- Gatchaman (BD)
- Giant Beasts of Ars (BD)
- Good Burger 2 (BD)
- A Good Person (BD)
- The Good, the Bad and the Huckleberry Hound (BD)
- The Great Alligator (4k)
- Green Lantern - Extended (BD)
- The Hangover Trilogy (DVD)
- Himouto! Umaru-Chan R (BD)
- The Hobbit Deluxe (BD)
- Hollow Man Steelbook (BD)
- I've Somehow Gotten Stronger When I Improved My Farm-Related Skills (BD)
- Insomniacs After School Complete Collection (BD)
- Is It Wrong to Try and Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? S4 P2 (BD)
- The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones (BD)
- Joe's Apartment (BD)
- Journey to Bethlehem (BD)
- Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invislble (BD)
- Laurel & Hardy: Year One (BD)
- Lisa Frankenstein (BD)
- Looney Tunes Collectors Choice: Volume 3 (BD)
- Love Flops (BD)
- Masaaki Yuasa: Five Films (BD)
- Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar (BD)
- Money Talks (BD)
- My Life as Inukai-San's Dog (BD)
- Otaku Elf Complete Collection (BD)
- The Persian Version (DVD)
- Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Time (BD)
- The Picture of Dorian Gray (BD)
- The Prince and the Pauper (BD)
- Priscilla (BD)
- Rahxephon (BD)
- Redo of Healer (BD)
- Rockin' with Judy Jetson (BD)
- Rolling Thunder (4k)
- Rover Dangerfield (BD)
- Rozen Maiden (BD)
- Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (BD)
- Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf (BD)
- Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers (BD)
- The Shamrock Spitfire (DVD)
- Silent Night (4k)
- The Spanish Dancer (BD)
- Spirited Away: Live (BD)
- Stand and Deliver (BD)
- Stand! (DVD)
- Star Trek: Lower Decks S4 (BD)
- Superman: Brainiac Attacks (BD)
- Tears to Tiara (BD)
- They Drive by Night (BD)
- Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Complete Series (BD)
- Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats (BD)
- Tsurune the Movie (BD)
- The Tunnel to Summer, The Exit of Goodbyes (BD)
- Urusei Yatsura Season 1 & 2 (BD)
- Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (BD)
- Yogi and the Invasion of the Space Bears (BD)
- Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose (BD)
- Yogi's Great Escape (BD)
Please also visit www.Cinegods.com and Substack.HollywoodHeretic.com.
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Transcript
Cultural Experiences and Spring Break
00:00:26
Speaker
Oh, and we are back. And it is now April. I just had a great spring break. Tim, you had a great spring break, I hope. I did. I did. The kids, you know, I'm teaching so the kids won't have to do their thing. And so I was left alone to my own devices.
00:00:45
Speaker
Well, more dangerous than it sounds, by the way. Well, I was, we did some traveling and I had the privilege of going to the opening night of Disney's Tarzan stage musical in Prague in Czech. And if you think it's weird when apes speak English, it's even weirder when they speak Czech.
00:01:10
Speaker
I'll leave you with that, but that was actually a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun, and it's a beautiful city, and I feel very refreshed.
OJ Simpson's Complex Legacy
00:01:17
Speaker
But we have literally one obit today. And what an obit it is. Man, oh man, oh man. And you know what?
00:01:26
Speaker
I don't know why I was surprised. I wasn't paying a great deal of attention when they announced in February that OJ Simpson was, in fact, dealing with cancer. That was announced on February. I was right over my head. Right over my head. So I did it. So I missed it. Thus, the announcement yesterday just came out of nowhere for me. And, of course, triggered a whole lot of conversation about a whole lot of things.
00:01:56
Speaker
We can talk about it because O.J. was an actor. So sweet. 38 roles there. Did you hear what David Zucker said about O.J.? It's a very interesting quote. David knows naked gun movies of course. He said
00:02:19
Speaker
Let's see i'm trying to get the quote exactly right without looking it up. He said his murdering was a lot like his acting. He got away with it. Oh gosh how was it was something like that he like he got away with it but you weren't fooled or something like that it was.
00:02:44
Speaker
You know what's great about that quote? Just the first part of it. It's murdering was a lot like his magic. Since it's done, the rest of that is funny, but he's already nailed it. His murdering was a lot like his act.
00:03:02
Speaker
You know, it's, and I'm inclined to go back to the great Dave Chappelle line where, you know, Dave Chappelle has that great bit where he talks about the, what, the five times that he met O.J. Simpson. And it's all seated through the whole show. It's just absolutely brilliant community structure. And at one point, J.J. walks in and shakes his hand, and he's with a bunch of his, you know, his reps and his agents, and the one, this one lady says, how could you even shake the hand of that murderer?
00:03:32
Speaker
And Chappelle looks at him and he says, with all due respect, that murderer ran for over 2,000 yards. But what's great about all of these jokes is that they're all going to the same place, which is that they're underlining the ambivalence and the conflict of how do we deal with somebody who in point of fact was found innocent
00:03:57
Speaker
But almost every, but then found guilty in a civil court. But about, but who still? Sound, sound, sound, sound, for being ridiculously specific, right? Sound liable for civil damages. And I know, it's a bunch of lawyers listening right now, but even that's a very, very specific thing, right?
00:04:22
Speaker
Well, you know, we wrestle with these things, and obviously murder is a really, really big thing to wrestle with. It's not like, you know, Roman Polanski and so, I mean, there are all these other figures who have something dark about them, something that people, like, I still fight with people over Woody Allen. They want nothing to do with Woody Allen. New movie release? Yeah, right, this week, right? Yeah, this week, today.
00:04:47
Speaker
Well, my wife is even having a hard time listening to old Cars tunes now because of how Rick Ocasek treated Paulina in his will. He tried to deprive her of anything. So we get to this place where it's like, how do I acknowledge a historic achievement or a legacy
00:05:07
Speaker
if the person was in any way in their private life or even in their public life, if they did something to damage my opinion of them personally, can we separate those things? Can you separate the art from the artist, the athlete from the private? I mean, can you do that? And it's a really difficult question. And I think all those jokes are getting to the crux of that dichotomy, which I don't know that people can easily resolve.
00:05:32
Speaker
Which is unfortunate, too, because, look, for me, it's very simple. For one thing, it takes maturity. And in order to sort of evaluate these things, one has to engage them as the complicated things that they are, and then call them apart. Now, this is also true. Whatever the individual answer to the question is, whether or not you want to go out and see that Woody Allen movie, whether or not you want to, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff, your answer, where you land on that,
00:06:02
Speaker
It's the correct answer. Your answer is correct. Whatever it is you want, that's correct. You have not made a mistake. Now, what you don't get to do is decide what anybody else is going to do. That you don't get to do. You don't get to decide whether or not I'm going to watch that Woody Allen movie, which I, by the way, missed for the show, but now they sent me a link, so I'm going to check it out. First movie, first movie all in French. All in French? All in French. And obviously, I guess shot in France with all in French.
00:06:32
Speaker
And look, why Woody's made his last few films elsewhere is because you can't get any money to make him here. Because there's a belief in this town by those who would give him money that there are too many people, that it would be too costly in other ways beyond the cost of a movie. And that's just a belief, you know.
00:06:54
Speaker
It is. It is completely a belief. It's not actually true. It's true at all. It's an erroneous belief. And to bring that back to O.J., I still enjoy the Naked Gun movies. Sure. And the point I'm making is I don't sit there watching the Naked Gun movies and then O.J. comes on and I don't sit there and go like, oh.
00:07:15
Speaker
I'm in the movie i'm totally absorbed in the movie like i don't i don't watch chaplain films and get all i rate about his his dalliances in his young girls you like to get you know that's all just silly and um.
00:07:31
Speaker
And I really think that the problem in those circumstances is really our guy and guy, so I'm just going to have to be brutal with this. It's the immaturity of the people engaged in the medium. But that's the way I feel about that. Not only do I – OJ was tweeting. I think it's one of the reasons why I didn't know he had cancer. OJ was tweeting about all kinds of stuff here, or texting or whatever we call it, recently.
00:07:57
Speaker
And you know, I got O.J. Simpson on my feet. I don't really care what O.J. thinks about anything, but he is funny. Very funny. And Dave Chappelle's entire, that entire show, I think it was his third Netflix show, the five times I met O.J. Simpson. I mean, it is a masterpiece, and his impression of O.J. is pretty great too, because he gets the voice kind of that low, that low.
00:08:20
Speaker
But it is really a masterpiece of stand-up comedy and it is structured entirely around the times that he met OJ. I think it goes right to the heart of what everyone still struggles with and I think OJ is more so than Woody, more so than Polanski, more so than
00:08:40
Speaker
than Harvey Weinstein, more so than any of them. He is the one that is going to define how we wrestle with these things going down because you're talking about somebody who made an impact as a performer, as an actor. I mean, look, Capricorn won. I'm sorry. That is a terrific film.
00:09:01
Speaker
Oh, I love that movie. Terrific film. But he's not bad. He's not bad. He has a convincing presence in it. So he made an impact as a media figure. He made an impact as an athlete. And then, of course, there's the horrible, horrible murder and trial, which is what he will probably be mostly remembered for, at least by this generation. But in time, we'll see how it all shakes out.
00:09:29
Speaker
Buckle, who of course didn't even do the things that he was trying for. But it's all stuck around forever. When I think about OJ, and of course you and I, we were here. It was very present working as journalists at that particular time.
00:09:50
Speaker
It was a very, very present thing. I think what people never quite got right back then regarding the black community, vis-a-vis OJ, is this. The black community didn't really think a whole lot about OJ Simpson.
00:10:06
Speaker
He didn't hold the stature in the community to say Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali and so on and so forth. We had reasons for that, things that had to do with OJ, things that OJ said about his relationship to the black community.
00:10:22
Speaker
And you famously said, I'm not black, I'm OJ. And this shaped it. Michael Jordan had a moment like that too later on. Tyler Woods had a moment like that later on. So the black community, we crafted very particular relationships with these black folks who decided that they wanted to have a very particular relationship with their black heritage, right?
00:10:47
Speaker
OJ, all of that goes down. OJ goes to trial, gets acquitted. There were all kinds of things that happened in that trial that black folks felt were happening because OJ were black, was black. We all know what these things were. Now, this is where we came down.
00:11:05
Speaker
OJ is plainly guilty as hell. Most black folks are not walking around saying OJ didn't do it. No, we're not crazy. He's guilty as hell. The forces arrayed to convict him use race.
00:11:25
Speaker
We felt, we felt, you know. And then the question became, yes, but a person with two people were actually killed, actually killed. Black people didn't say this. Have you ever heard of anything called strange fruit? Because we all know what that means. And nobody, nobody has ever been held to account for any of that. So we think we can handle this.
00:11:50
Speaker
if you can handle that. And that complicated sort of evaluation of all of this is really what you have to go through to get to where you get on the OJ thing. It's really just not a simple, oh, black people want to let OJ off. No, black people ain't thinking about OJ. Black people are thinking about 400 years of black people. That's what we were thinking about. And so that's my big treatise on that.
00:12:16
Speaker
It's interesting because what you're talking about is something that I think will take many, many more years to have perspective on.
00:12:26
Speaker
I think it's going to take another generation that doesn't have the memory of this in its DNA that can stand there and look back with scholarly hindsight. Scholarly hindsight. Well put. And say, let's evaluate all these differences. This is a moment where a lot of different factors and forces and ideas and histories all kind of collide in this moment, many of which don't have anything to do with this moment.
00:12:53
Speaker
but yet they do, and they're roped in. The bookends are not there yet, but it's all very interesting.
The Impact of Vintage Films
00:13:05
Speaker
Well, let's get into some DVDs and Blu-rays and 4Ks and all that fun stuff. I'm going to go through the Warner Archive stuff right now, which I finally had a chance to over the rest of the spring break to delve into a whole bunch of Hanna-Barbera goodness here. Some of it better than others, obviously, so these are all Blu-rays.
00:13:31
Speaker
And all Hanna-Barbera stuff, classic Hanna-Barbera characters, given the feature film treatment here. The good, the bad, and Huckleberry Hound on the Warner-Archa collection is really, you know, I had seen this when I was a kid. It is so fascinating to watch it again. It's a good little 90-minute Huckleberry Hound Western, which
00:14:00
Speaker
is would probably be better at about 40 minutes to be honest. The jokes in most of these things, they work in small doses. They're like Rodney Dangerfield routines. It's like a zinger and then you pause and you reset and then there's another zinger and you pause and you reset.
00:14:20
Speaker
And when you start stretching this stuff out, it's a little tougher. A lot of the other characters show up here, Quick Draw McGraw and Yogi Bear. I mean, they throw everybody in because you can't really sustain 90 minutes with just Huckleberry Hand. I can't believe I already spent more than a minute on Huckleberry Hand.
00:14:35
Speaker
Then we got Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats. This is like the Aristocats except not. This one's okay. I was never a big huge fan of Top Cat, but you know, it's cute and this one's also probably over long at 92 minutes, but the whole Beverly Hills thing is a little bit amusing. Then we get the Jetsons Meet the Flintstones, which I have always been hugely fond of because why not?
00:15:04
Speaker
That was almost fantastical when I was a kid and I saw it the first time. It was like breaking some sort of reality for me. I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:15:19
Speaker
It's a stretch. It really is a stretch is how they make it happen. This Elroy's little machine malfunctions and somehow they use that to justify the bringing of the two families together.
00:15:35
Speaker
But it's really fun. They really work the whole fish out of water thing very, very well. And I think it's sharp. I think it's just a nice little relic of its age. We also have Rockin' with Judy Jetson. Yeah, I love that episode.
00:15:53
Speaker
Right? Not bad at all. Rocking with Judy Jetson was a lot of fun. It was Judy's chance to shine for a change. And I think they realized that the audience for this really was very much Judy's audience. Yeah, this one's fun. The songs are terrific. I mean, they're ridiculous, but they're funny. Surfing in space? Are you kidding me? It's great. Love that.
00:16:16
Speaker
I got a bunch of Scooby Doos here, none of which I think are any good. I think the Scooby Doo movie concept is just really, really worn out. I don't think it works at all in a movie concept, but if you're a fan, they've got Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School, Scooby Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf, and Scooby Doo meets the Boo Brothers.
00:16:39
Speaker
The Scooby-Doo meets the Boo brothers is maybe the only one of these that I kind of sort of think is okay. Just because you get some relief from Scooby and Scrappy and Shaggy with these weird, this, you know, kind of three stooges as ghosts, Frico, Strico and Meeko. They're not that funny, but it's like, it's something different, you know, it's at least kind of a new thing. But I'm not fond of the whole Scrappy-Doo thing.
00:17:08
Speaker
that never really worked for me. And then lastly, a trio of Yogi movies. Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose. I don't, like, who thought that combining Yogi Bear with the Spruce Goose? They throw a bunch of others in here, you know, Snagglepuss and Quick Draw McGraw and
00:17:38
Speaker
And Huckleberry Hound are all thrown in here as well. It kind of doesn't really make any sense. Oggy Doggy. Yeah, I don't know. The Spruce Goose is what throws me. Yogi's Great Escape is okay. That one's all right. That's kind of more tame in its aspirations. It's still dragged out a little bit. You still have Snagglepuss and Quick Draw McGraw showing up to save the day, but it's all right.
00:18:07
Speaker
And then the one that completely doesn't work at all is Yogi and the invasion of the space bears. This is just a stretch like nobody's business. I don't know. Maybe there are some kids out there that would get into this. This just feels like they felt like they had to do something. They did this in 1973. I don't know who thought this was a good idea. Maybe it was a Jetsons hangover. I don't know.
00:18:31
Speaker
It really, it's a bit much. It's a bit much. So there's all of that. And then some other water archive stuff. Let's get into some better, more real stuff. The Prince and the Popper with Errol Flynn. Oh, yes. You know, did you ever read the book when you were a kid? Oh, yeah. Yeah. See, I never read. I didn't read the book until after I had seen this movie.
00:18:55
Speaker
Oh, OK. Yeah. And I kind of prefer the movie, to be honest. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I'm not. I mean, I love Mark Twain, but that's the one Mark Twain that goes outside the culture. Right. Mark Twain was very much more about, you know, like.
00:19:12
Speaker
Huckleberry Finn, Tom... Midwest to West. American milieu. And Prince of the Popper, I felt like his inability to kind of wrap himself around the European, the medieval English
00:19:28
Speaker
culture of it. I think they kind of got that right in the movie in ways that I didn't think Mark Twain necessarily got it. But, you know, look, Claude Raine's in here, Errol Flynn's in here. It's a terrific movie. Bill Keeley directed it for Warner Brothers in 1937, you know, Warner Brothers 30's Hay Day. It's a terrific film. It's a terrific film. Really, really fun. Then we also have Joe's Apartment.
00:19:53
Speaker
Dude, I never got this. Well, that was the MTV series, right? Yeah, and they did a movie of it in 1996. Oh, yeah. Right. I mean, it was an MTV short originally, and it should have stayed a short. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That movie with Jerry O'Connell and the cockroaches in the air.
00:20:18
Speaker
Well, that was one of those moments where that new technology, which had first showed up in commercials, if I'm not mistaken, like rain or whatever it was. They get to new technology, and then they just gotta take that new technology and figure out a way to jam it into a movie. And they did it with this movie, making those cockroaches stop.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's just too weird and it should have stayed as short. You know, John Payson who wrote and directed it and did the original short, I don't know, did he ever have more of a feature career? Did he go on to do anything else or did that kind of tank his whole deal? I mean, back in the day, he was one of those liquid television guys. That's right. He was one of those producer kind of guys.
00:21:02
Speaker
So speaking of Rodney Dangerfield, the animated film Rover Dangerfield, which was basically Rodney Dangerfield deciding he's just going to do a dog character that's Rodney. Boy, this is just an odd movie. I remember the early 90s, right?
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, this was like right about the time you and I met. This was in theaters, you know, it was through that, it rated G of all things, like Rodney Dangerfield rated G, did all those other ways. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
00:21:37
Speaker
Story was developed by Rodney Dangerfield and Harold Ramis. Then Rodney wrote the screenplay. He co-wrote the songs. He produced it. He did the character. This is a full Rodney Dangerfield deal. I still don't know quite what to make of it. A lot of it's funny.
00:22:01
Speaker
but it is a rated G thing, you do feel like he's pulling his punches sometimes. Just to make it a fan friendly thing. Yeah, look, it's Rodney Dangerfilm. This should be closer. This should have been closer to Ralph Bakshi. Maybe, maybe. There you go. But no, it's like this. What's going on? This is, you know, very, very awesome. Yeah.
00:22:24
Speaker
And then we've also got the Marx Brothers, Day at the Races. This is available in a boxed set as well, but it's nice to have it as a standalone. I kind of feel like if you're going to go Marx Brothers, you got to get all of them because it's like potato chips. You watch one and you want to watch the rest of them. And they're pretty short brisk movies, but yeah, Day at the Races is a whole lot of fun.
00:22:48
Speaker
I don't really know what else to say about it. Sam Wood and letting them go completely nuts and do all their vaudeville shtick. By the way, you know who their agent was? I just found this out the other day. The Marx Brothers, their agent was their mom. Oh, really? I had no idea. And she's the one who taught Harpo to play the harp.
00:23:11
Speaker
I had no idea. She was the harpist, she was the harpist. Their parents were performers, but she was the harpist and there you go. I think of them as going back to at least Vaudeville, right? When they were really, really young, they would have involved Vaudeville guys. Wow, that's fantastic. Crazy, right?
00:23:38
Speaker
Wonderful, terrific noir. They drive by night, Raul Walsh, Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, and then Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino holding it down to the ladies. This is just a terrific film. It's kind of an unusual
00:23:55
Speaker
noir because it's a little, it's more kind of Western and rustic and a little dusty, but it's still, you know what, it's still got the whole, the structure of noir, the feel of noir, the style of noir. So it's a really interesting film from its day. And George Raft is, you know, great. Humphrey Bogart is just beyond belief good. Really, he's a long- He has to perfectly cast those two. Of course your brothers, they even look alike.
00:24:24
Speaker
Yeah, fantastic.
00:24:29
Speaker
Yeah, and it's, you know, Ida Lupino has like a scene in here that basically made her a superstar. I mean, it was this, it was one moment in one scene in this film that just pushed her right over the edge and it was all done. How do we feel about Green Lantern now? And this is the extended cut, by the way. They went back and extended it by like nine minutes and it doesn't make it better.
00:24:57
Speaker
2011 film, I feel like it's still bad. He's one of those actors who they, they mean whoever you want it to be, gave three or four opportunities.
00:25:11
Speaker
at the superhero cloak. He blew this one, or he did not work in this, and then boom, boom, boom, suicide squad. Way back in the day, I think Ben Affleck had a couple of shots by. I think Ben Affleck was daredevil before. He was daredevil for sure, before he was Batman, yeah. Before he was Batman.
00:25:31
Speaker
And then after that, they just sort of tapped out on Green Lantern. Now, you know that I always wanted the Green Lantern to be our brother, John. And I still think that there should be a Green Lantern featuring that guy.
Superhero Films and Nostalgia
00:25:48
Speaker
For one thing, he's my generation's Green Lantern. And we had the Green Lantern from the late 60s, 70s.
00:25:57
Speaker
And then we had John, who actually was like the, what, 80s or something like that, maybe? 80s, definitely the 80s. And he was more the average guy who gets pulled into being a Green Lantern, which was kind of a progression. If you go back to the Justice Society Green Lantern, right, the guy with the cape and the whole kind of Dr. Strange looking outfit.
00:26:22
Speaker
When you go from him to the Justice League Green Lantern, what they're trying to do is forge something that is a little bit different from other superheroes, that these are guys who are given a calling as opposed to who are just given powers. Without that ring, he doesn't do anything.
00:26:42
Speaker
Yeah, you know, so it's a it is a little bit of a different dynamic and you do want something, you know, like take the ring away. Don't don't misbehave because the core will take the ring away, right? That's a it's sort of like you have you have had this calling presented to you as opposed to, you know, powers that are permanently there that you got to figure out how to use. So it's a
00:27:01
Speaker
It's a different thing, and I don't think this movie ever really captured that very well. I'm surprised because Greg Berlanti co-wrote it and produced it, and he did so well with the Arrowverse on television. You would have thought that he could have brought some of that to this movie, but he didn't. I'm still not quite sure why.
00:27:22
Speaker
All right. Harry Beaumont's Faithless with Tallulah Bankhead and Robert Montgomery, kind of a sort of forgotten melodrama. But Tallulah Bankhead is wonderful. If you don't know Tallulah, she was one of the original brassy, kind of
00:27:39
Speaker
30s actresses who always had a, you know, she was, she was, I mean, they were all kind of the same. Garbo sort of started it. And then Tallulah Bankhead was part of it. And who else do we have in there? I mean, all those brassy, fast talking days, Carol, Carol Lombard, they're all sort of part of the same class, but Tallulah Bankhead really had a great, had a great much had great body language and great voice.
00:28:09
Speaker
So anyway, the trick here is kind of a Brewster's Millions kind of a deal. She's an heiress and she has to – it's not like Brewster's Millions in the sense that it's the game, but it is sort of in the same dynamic, the same trajectory. It's the Great Depression and money and love just can't go together.
00:28:30
Speaker
And, you know, there's this hilarious bit of Robert Montgomery who only earns $20,000 a year, which, you know, if you go back, that's quite an awful lot of money during the Depression, like $20,000 a year is like good six figures now. So that tells you sort of the conceit of the story. But anyway, it goes to some pretty dark places.
00:28:57
Speaker
it is a really really fascinating film is precode is just barely precode so it has some precode issues where you're like holy cow they could do that back then yeah they could talk about that back then it goes to a very ugly little place but it's a good film.
00:29:15
Speaker
Three Godfathers with John Wayne and Harry Carey Jr. John Ford and Marion C. Cooper working together here. Nice little Technicolor late 40s film western. Does this hold up? You think this holds up?
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah, actually. It particularly holds up in the way that it's a framework that allows itself to be repeated again and again and again and again, which it asks. So I think the framework is an underlying thing. It holds the other, you know? They got a baby, these three guys.
00:29:57
Speaker
who had absolutely no reason to be anywhere near a baby. What was the one in the 80s? Three Men and a Baby. Which is based on Three Men and a Cradle, the French film. Which is in no small way a rip off of this.
00:30:16
Speaker
So, there are two versions of this here. There's the 1936 version, directed by John Ford, and then there is the later version from 1948, directed by Richard Boloslovski, who was kind of one of the original method acting pioneers.
00:30:37
Speaker
and whose version is also very interesting. So it is interesting, and you have trailers for both versions, so it's interesting to compare them.
00:30:49
Speaker
But I don't know which one I like better, honestly. I feel like the original John Wayne from 1936 has John Wayne. The later version has Walter Brennan. I don't know. Is Walter Brennan going to substitute for John Wayne for me? Not really. But anyway, the premise is the premise is the premise.
00:31:14
Speaker
Make up your own mind. Money Talks, Chris Tucker and Charlie Sheen. Oh my god, that film was so funny. Chris Tucker, so skinny, so funny, so unaware of how funny he is. That's why I think makes this stand out. It's not like the Rush Hour movies where he knows who he is and he knows what he does. He knows his shtick. Yeah, and he's kind of doing the bit. This is just insane. Chris Tucker is so phenomenally funny and naturally funny here.
00:31:42
Speaker
And Charlie's playing the great, you know, sort of butt at it. To his, you know, Costello-ish, sort of dynamic, you know, and Heather Lockley here. This movie just cracked me up. It was just sterically funny. Well, this is the movie that gave us Brett Ratner. This was his first movie. He's out now. Will he ever direct again, do you think? Yeah.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah, he's fine. Here's the thing. Brett Ratner movies are, you know, there was a kind of movie that Brett did, you know, has done. He, before he passed away, Jonathan Demme's little Ted Demme, they were all from that same sort of universe of movies.
00:32:34
Speaker
And those kind of movies are not really made anymore. You don't see those sort of, you know, cop buddy, wild and crazy, you know, Jackie Channing. That's kind of, that's kind of out. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, yeah.
00:32:47
Speaker
Easter Parade, Irving Berlin's Easter Parade with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. I don't know what you can say bad about this. I mean, Charles Walters directed it. Arthur Freed produced it. It's technicolor. It's beautiful. The musical numbers are fantastic. It's like one of those perfect MGM musicals. It's a perfect, wonderful movie. Peter Lawford and Ann Miller show up and give great support. But I mean, you know, it's just absolutely wonderful and co-written no less by the man.
00:33:15
Speaker
who created I Dream of Jeannie, Sydney Sheldon. And Judy Garland, among her best moments, she looks great. She looks healthy and fit. She's vital in the film. You have Fred Astaire, young Peter Lawford. All these people just in their prime and just doing good. It was fantastic. I love it.
00:33:41
Speaker
And then Ramon Menendez's wonderful, still timeless, Stand and Deliver, which earned Edward James Olmos an Oscar nomination. And it's still such a good movie. You know, we had so many of those inspiring teacher movies, inspiring teachers in urban jungle movies, right? I mean, and it starts, Blackboard Jungle is sort of like the original of those. But then there's a new phase with the deliver.
00:34:09
Speaker
And then you get, you know, Dangerous Minds with Michelle Pfeiffer and you get, what was the one with Morgan Freeman? Morgan Freeman, yeah, what was that one with Morgan Freeman? Similar deal. Yeah, you had the one with, oh my, Freedom Riders. Yeah, yeah, that too, that too. I mean, there's a whole bunch of them.
00:34:28
Speaker
But I still think Stan and Deliver is the best one. It's just so good. Lou Diamond Phillips is so good. When he walks into the room, and he looks at the board, and with perfect comic timing, he just kind of thinks, and he looks over and he goes, what's Calculus? One of my favorite lines. And of course, behind me, I'm saying who James is. A real guy, a real class, a real situation. Who just died a couple of years ago. Yeah, yeah. So that was really kind of great about it, yeah.
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely terrific. And this, I believe this was originally not even supposed to go to theaters. This almost didn't even become an Oscar contender. This was like made for PBS first run. And one of the theaters and boy did it, it just, it, it was terrific. 1988, 1988, terrific movie. He hung around for a while. He did Teela Soup.
00:35:21
Speaker
which is a very lovely movie. I think he did, oh, Money for Nothing that John Kuzak found, that was him. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good run. All right. And then a couple of animated things here, just coming down to the end of the Warner Archive stuff. We've got Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Volume 3. I wish they'd put all of these things out in a single box set instead of just kind of trickling them out one volume at a time, because there's so many great shorts here. But
00:35:49
Speaker
They don't have all the shorts on Max. I know a lot of people subscribe to Max to see the shorts. You want to collect them on Blu-ray, so they can't take them away from you at any point. Wonderful, wonderful shorts here. Tugboat Granny, total priceless classic. Wet Hair, H-A-R-E. They offer those puns. Really terrific. Hobo Bobo is classic. Honeymoon Hotel.
00:36:16
Speaker
Mexican Joyride, the Mouse on 57th Street, Quentin Quayle, Riff Raffy Daffy, some of these just absolutely priceless shorts. They're all great. There's Roadrunner and Coyote and Elmer and all the rest of them. They're just terrific. A lot of great shorts. So volume three of Looney Tunes Collector's Choice.
00:36:39
Speaker
And then we also have something I had never seen before, Superman original movie, Brainiac Attacks. Yeah, this is from, what year is this? Is this like 1990, I think? Anyway, it's a fairly recent Superman animated film. And what makes this are the voices.
00:37:07
Speaker
And I had to get over trying to figure out how I recognized the voices. And then at the end, I looked at him like, oh, yeah, of course. But the voice casting is excellent. The animation, you know, it's not great. It's OK. They kind of rushed it. But it's it's a reasonably OK Superman versus Brainiac story, but great, great voices. Tim Daly powers Booth.
00:37:29
Speaker
Lance, Lance Hendrickson. Oh, yeah. Delaney. Oh, yeah. Mike Farrell, Shelley. Yeah. George Zunza. I mean, it's a great bunch of the acting talent is sensational. And that's what really elevates this thing. So Superman brainiac attacks. Not great in terms of script and animation, but terrific voice casting. And then we got some multi feature deals here. So first off, the Hangover trilogy.
00:37:59
Speaker
Um, yeah, I only ever knew, I only ever needed one hangover. That first one was tolerable, kind of funny. I'm speaking my kind of thing, but I do the fact that there, I have no idea.
00:38:17
Speaker
I feel like there are some premises which just really, if you try to repeat it a second time, a third time especially, the credibility just evaporates. The idea that this would happen to these guys once is very funny.
00:38:34
Speaker
Right ken jong in that first film is brilliant he let's it all hang out literally. But then once we get to a second one now you have to spend the disbelief you like it right now i don't like you guys.
00:38:53
Speaker
First movie, some stuff just went down. Okay, that happens. Now you're idiots. And I don't know if you want to talk about this. So yeah, it's one of those kind of things. By the time we get to a third one. But these things made money. I just, anyway. Yeah, boys will be boys kind of things. And look, made real careers, I think, for Cooper, Galifianakis, and Ken Jeong at least, at least. No doubt.
Remastered Classics and Forgotten Films
00:39:20
Speaker
Got a silent classics double feature from Warner archive the boob and why be good so There's there a lot
00:39:30
Speaker
This is really kind of sort of interesting. One of these was made by MGM, the other one was made by First National, both of whom wound up having their libraries fall in with Warner Brothers. It is interesting that Warner Brothers is releasing two films that were not Warner branded at the time. If you know that going in, it's a little bit more interesting because
00:39:55
Speaker
William Wellman, who did the boob, is more known as a war guy. He's a war veteran and he directed Wings in 1927, the first Academy Award winner. This is not quite his thing. It's a spoof. It's all dealing with bootleggers and prohibition.
00:40:24
Speaker
You kind of feel like this is a guy who's been hired to do something. He has talent, but he's not quite in his right vein. So it is historically kind of interesting. Why be good? You know, it's sort of, it's okay.
00:40:41
Speaker
It's got some synchronized sound effects on it, which makes it technically interesting. Otherwise, it looks like these are just two silent films that were orphaned. They don't justify being set out alone, so they slapped them together rather awkwardly on one Blu-ray.
00:41:00
Speaker
for historical purposes. And I get that. I get that. But, you know, again, neither one of them particularly remarkable, historically very relevant. Deep Blue Sea, The Long Kiss, Goodnight and Snakes on a Plane all mashed together in one triple feature to showcase Samuel Jackson making really bad movies much better than they have any business being. Renny Harlan. Renny Harlan. Yeah, kind of the back end of
00:41:23
Speaker
decent Renny Harlan movies, Deep Blue Sea. Both of these, Deep Blue Sea and Long Kiss Good Night, both Renny Harlan movies. Renny Harlan now lives in China and makes movies in China. It's a very strange thing. I've never heard of that. Now, the Long Kiss Good Night, that's mid-career Renny Harlan. It's a Shane Black film. It's really a Shane Black film.
00:41:43
Speaker
You're good, you're good, you're good, you're good. And I walked in that, and that's just one of my favorite films. I said, it's a terrible film, but I love it. Jina Davis, Sam Jackson playing that detective, and I just, I just, I just, I just love that movie. It's, I mean, look, and truly, these are movies where, especially Snakes on a Plane, which is on here just to push this thing as far over the edge as it can go. Let's be honest, every single one of these movies, if not for Sam Jackson,
00:42:09
Speaker
would not work. Now Longest Goodnight would still probably work to some degree. It wouldn't be as good. Deep Blue Sea, there is no, and this movie has this Stellan Skarsgard and Thomas Jane and Michael Rapport, LL Cool J. It's got a real cast, right?
00:42:27
Speaker
But for some reason, nobody is ever able to float this thing until Sam Jackson shows up. Somehow he picks everybody up and just says, get the hell on my shoulders, we're going to have some fun. He elevates it. He elevates it. Deep Blue Sea. I guess there's five or six people out there. Was it 1999 or something like that? They haven't seen it. His big moment in the Deep Blue Sea is absolutely outstanding.
00:42:55
Speaker
It really is. It's just wonderful. There you go. Thanks for playing. Oh, wow. By the way, we should point out that Sam Jackson now officially holds the title that Joe Pesci used to hold. You know what that is, right? No, which title is it? The record of the person who has appeared in the most number of movies that have made $100 million or more.
00:43:17
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah. I do remember that about Joe Pesci because all the weapons. That's right. That used to be Joe Pesci. It was those Lethal Weapons and a bunch of other stuff. I mean, it was like somehow Joe Pesci wound up in all these movies and you would have thought, oh, it's got to be Tom Cruise. No, no, it's Joe Pesci. That's why that was like such a great bit to use at parties and trivia. You're like, who's been, oh, Tom Cruise. Nope, Joe Pesci. Joe Pesci. And you go down the line, you're like, holy cow, Joe Pesci has been in a lot of big movies.
00:43:44
Speaker
somebody to look at, I want somebody to run both of them, Sam and Joe, against Joey Pants. Joey Pants, we know. I think somebody hasn't brought Joey Pants into that mystery. Joey Pants goes back to the 70s. You're right, you're right. And the movie's big. He's in the new, he's in the new, uh, bad boys. The toys will be bad. He's in that again. Uh, so I don't know. I think if he's not in the top three,
00:44:13
Speaker
you know, I would be extremely surprised. Yeah. And then lastly, on the Warner front, got a couple of DVDs, remastered deluxe edition of the original animated The Hobbit, which is perfectly fine. This is a Rankin Bass production. All the people who did, you know, Santa Claus is coming to town and Frosty the Snowman and all that, they decided to try to take a swing at
00:44:40
Speaker
They're doing the hobbit and they do a pretty darn good job. Romeo Miller who wrote all those original, you know, Little Drummer Boy and Santa Claus is coming to town and all those originals. There's a really pretty decent screenplay here, a really good adaptation. It's obviously not fully faithful. It's not, you know, brilliant or anything, but Orson Bean does a wonderful job. Oh, John Houston, great voice again. Otto Prebinger. Yeah.
00:45:03
Speaker
Hans Conride, who did tons of stuff for Rankin Bath. I wish it was on Blu-ray, but it's not. It's DVD, but still worth having. And the picture of Dorian Gray with the late George Sanders. Very, very sad demise there. And a respectable adaptation of that.
00:45:26
Speaker
very legendary story, Angela Lansbury looking young and absolutely stunning, Peter Lawford. Yeah, good solid film, good solid film, the picture of Dorian Gray, but wish that were also on Blu-ray. Where do we go next? We got some TV, you got 4K. Let's bump over, there are only a few 4Ks, let's bump over there real quick, I think.
00:45:46
Speaker
Yeah, and it's mostly a collection of classic horror and exploitation titles from Severin, who is now going hard into the paint on 4K, which I find fascinating. It's four of these, including Lucio Fulci's The Devil's Honey. I mean, this is kind of a nasty, sleazy,
00:46:11
Speaker
Icky naughty film but it's on 4k is that Tim Cogshell is there a 4k audience for a film this nasty.
00:46:27
Speaker
And I got to tell you, they had turned to the Vinci, so to speak, and the blood was dripping. It's that era when the blood was actually red, you know? And so actually, if you're into the study, I kind of got to be into it in the first place. But if you're into this, the colors are popping. And on that 4K, they're going to be super popping. The blood, the blood, yeah, the palate is fantastic.
00:46:54
Speaker
It is nasty, sexy, dirty, bloody, gnarly. And it's, you know, if you know Lucio Fulci, it's everything you would expect. We also have Cathy's Curse, which I had never seen before. Totally unfamiliar with this, but this is a 1976, very, very 70s era, creepy,
00:47:20
Speaker
like, evil child movie, pre-Omen, because Omen was the following year, was it? 77, 78? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's pre – it's post-Village of the Dam, you know, with all the little creepy kids. But it's pre-exorcist, that first exorcist.
00:47:42
Speaker
It's, no, Exorcist. It's after the Exorcist. It's after the Exorcist, but it's before the old man. Okay, yeah. Yeah. He lives in that spot. You guys creeped a little movie, dude. I remember this movie from back in the day. Yeah. Even my own movie. Yeah.
00:47:57
Speaker
Yeah, well, anyway, this has all kinds of nasty stuff in it, you know, evil dolls and it has the director's cut and the R-rated release. I don't think they know they make a whole lot of difference. It takes place in 1947. It starts in 1947 and then it flashes forward to the 1970s and, you know, this
00:48:18
Speaker
The the the brother of a girl who was I'm not gonna get too much into it but but there's there's a car accident that it's up with a fallout from the car accident decades later and this family and it's Whatever that whatever whatever that Kodak is that they're using back then Yeah, they're filmmakers now who go to all ends to get that look and
00:48:43
Speaker
They do. Back then the film just looked that way. I know, I know. Now, it's like, what can we do to get that look? Back then they just ran the film through the camera. In 1979, they made this hilarious Italian horror film.
00:49:03
Speaker
I wouldn't really call it a jello film it's just a monster movie the great alligator yes and boy that alligator is great it's like the italian said let's just do jaws with an alligator which we did here too.
00:49:19
Speaker
Because I was in, you know, Alligator 2. I'm an extra in Alligator 2. I'm very clearly seen in the wrestling scene in Alligator 2. Camera goes right on me. I'm wearing a double-breasted suit that does not fit me very well at all. Thought it did at the time, but anyway, no, it's... They were cut big at the time and you were ridiculously skinny.
00:49:44
Speaker
Yeah. But anyway, the great alligator. Hey, Barbara Bach, Mel Ferre. You know, and it was a thing, you know. At the time, there were alligators, piranhas. There was something in the water that was going to kill you right up to Spielberg put that big-ass shark in the water.
00:50:04
Speaker
You know what I love more than this movie? The movie is not very good. But yes, the 4K is there to just show off how rich the film stocks were at the time. And what I love is the artwork that is on the back of this. It should have been the artwork on the front, but I think they are afraid that they might get kicked out of Amazon or something if they use this as the front artwork. But Tim, look at that.
00:50:30
Speaker
I mean, it is an alligator's gaping jaws with a nude woman lying in the mouth. It's just fantastic. That's the poster. That's the poster. It's just absolutely hilarious. And the last of these seven titles, Butcher Baker, Nightmare Maker. Oh, dear.
00:50:54
Speaker
Butcher Baker, Nightmare Maker from 1981, something happened from the 70s to the 80s in terms of these films. And I've never quite been able to explain it to people. Do you have a way of like, when we talk about the slasher gore horror movies, monster movies of the 70s, the exploitation stuff, and then what they became in the directive video era of the 80s, those 80s. Yeah, man. What changed?
00:51:20
Speaker
they definitely got to be more salacious, more sex. This is William Asher. William Asher is like, you know, beach blanket bingo in the 60s and by the 80s. William Asher directed I Love Lucy.
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, because my daughter, as we all know, is obsessed with Isla. Dude, I got to tell you this, I'm going to take an aside. You know what? So first of all, just for security, there's a whole thing, wait till eight, which is you wait until eighth grade to give your kid a cell phone, right? That's the new thing.
00:52:01
Speaker
And so we haven't given her a cell phone. She's 11. She's starting middle school, but we did give her an Apple watch so that she can text us, you know, she can do voice to text thing like, I'm waiting to be picked up or, you know, are you late? We can, we can text her this traffic. I mean, right. Yeah. And we can, we can basically get a sense of where she goes and if she's, you know, on the move.
00:52:25
Speaker
She now is, she has basically all 180 episodes of I Love Lucy memorized. Like the titles, the episode order, the whole thing. So my wife and I, we were, you know, middle of the day yesterday, we get a text from her. It's snack time at school so she can be on her watch and she texts us and she goes, can you check and see what episode of Lucy is on Pluto? I'll bet Lucy raises chicks.
00:52:55
Speaker
And my wife and I look at each other and we're like, is she kidding? Like, what? Like, what are the odds? No. And we turn it on on Pluto, son of a gun. Lucian Ethel chasing chicks around the floor of the Connecticut house. And we're like, how did she know that?
00:53:15
Speaker
They just counted. She just counted from what she saw that morning in her head. She's like, oh, well, and I bet by like, you know, snack time, it'll be Lucy raises chicks. Cause they're doing it. And you know what? It's like, it's like, it's just doing the math. They go in order. This is how much time has gone by. This is where we should be. That is insane.
00:53:35
Speaker
It is insane. We have a Lucy Savant on our hands. Anyway, how did I even get into that? Oh, William Asher, director of The Isle of Lucy's. And then Bewitched. And, you know, yeah. And for some reason, he's a Butcher Baker, Nightmare Maker, which makes no sense at all in 1981. I guess times were hard.
00:53:55
Speaker
Well, most of the time, Susan Tyrell was Jimmy McNichol, younger brother of the actual acting McNichol.
00:54:10
Speaker
Well, anyway, this is a very strange, you know, Bosevenson is a heavy here as he often is. Bill Paxton, I think was like maybe 20 or 21 when he made this and that. It's kind of a nasty film. It doesn't really work. But
00:54:38
Speaker
It is very much an atypical film of its moment. It's two discs. You got a bunch of extras on the second disc, interviews galore. So, I mean, I guess from a historical standard standpoint, we could probably say that Butcher Baker, Nightmare Maker, is a significant film. Just don't expect to be scared or necessarily horribly entertained by it. Lastly here from Shout Select, beautiful 4K of Rolling Thunder.
00:55:04
Speaker
Oh, wow. Right. In a 1977 film, somewhat forgotten, but co-written by Paul Schrader, very much a Paul Schrader kind of movie directed by John Flynn, who's mostly forgotten. But this was done for AIP, for Sam Markoff's AIP.
00:55:21
Speaker
It is a post-after taxi driver. It's one of his follow-ups to Taxi Driver. As a result, it kind of sits in the shadows of Taxi Driver. It's a little bit forgotten, but honestly, it's really a pretty darn good film.
00:55:43
Speaker
It's 77, so it's that period a couple of years after Naam. This is part of that early, what would become a run of about a decade of films that had hooks and features.
00:55:59
Speaker
cats who were in NAM out of NAM and things that happened in the United States because of their time or while they were in NAM. This is one of the early ones from that. It would push us right on through.
00:56:29
Speaker
This movie has that scene where they do what they do with William Devane's hand.
00:56:39
Speaker
Tommy Lee Jones and William Devane make a great tandem here as a guy, a couple of guys who've, you know, got all the scars of the war and they're coping with them. And Tommy Lee Jones, you know, he became kind of a caricature of himself at a certain point in the 80s, but he really, some of his performances here in the 70s, very, very sensitive, very nuanced.
00:57:00
Speaker
Really, pretty, very strong film. So anyway, I do think this is a sharp movie. I'm thrilled that Shout has put it out in a 4K. I think that shows a lot of respect for the period. Notice all these films we're talking about here today, they're all 70s into the early 80s. Like they really are from a moment when we, you know, the film stocks were just rich and they have a real texture and grain to them. And you're putting that on 4K, I think shows a lot of respect for that moment. So I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
00:57:33
Speaker
A few things here from Milestone. Let's just make a quick mention of this, because as long as we're talking about important films, there's some really important stuff here. Martin Scorsese presents The Edge of the World, which of course he would, because Thomas Gunmacher is Scorsese's editor, and she was married to Michael Powell. This is a forgotten Michael Powell film that has now been released by the Milestone Cinematheque Collection in BFI.
00:57:51
Speaker
Uh, let me grab
00:58:00
Speaker
And it is a wonderful movie. Michael Powell just, you know, usually paired with Emmerich Pressburger. They're classic movies of the 30s and 40s. But this from 1937 is just a straight up Michael Powell movie. And it is purely wonderful. Shot entirely on location in the Shetlands. So beautiful. And that was not a thing in 37. You're shot on stages and you shot on back lots.
00:58:29
Speaker
So Michael Powell going to the Shetland Islands, which are not the most hospitable place to shoot. I mean, it's cold and windy all the time. It's going to give you sound problems. If you look at all of that in hindsight as to what was accomplished, it's really quite extraordinary. It's a real landmark film.
00:58:46
Speaker
And the Shetlands are up there north of Scotland and in the middle of the North Atlantic. And this is just a wonderful, wonderful kind of melodrama. Small-scale melodrama. And it feels very brawnty-esque.
00:59:08
Speaker
I just think it's an absolutely wonderful look at these two families and all the politics between them. It's fantastic. Trevor Burrus We always talk about social realism or – in terms of those kitchen sink traumas of the late mid-60s. I'm thinking of Ken Lochu. I think we were talking about retiring him, Peter Wiess. Ken Lochu has a movie. He says it's his last movie.
00:59:35
Speaker
Michael Powell, he did all kinds of movies, but a movie like this really suggests that social realism. It's about a dying fishing community. That's in the people who don't want to go to the mainland. They want to stick it out, just like those dying cold communities and dying ... It's just beautiful stuff. Gorgeous black and white.
00:59:58
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Absolutely beautiful stuff. Beautiful stuff. And another wonderful milestone Cinematheque release is A Spanish Dancer, which is a Herbert Brennan film with Paula Negri, one of the great silent stars of all time and Antonio
01:00:13
Speaker
Mil Moreno, a forgotten silent star. This is from 1923, has a brand new score, a brand new silent orchestral score by Bill Ware, which is beautiful. What a fantastic transfer this is. It really, really restores the film. It's sparkling, it's crisp, it's just perfectly tinted, and it has all the richness that you want out of a restoration of a silent film.
01:00:39
Speaker
almost a nitrate kind of a sheen to it. It's fantastic. It's absolutely beautiful. So if you have a great TV, this will absolutely show off all of the nuances of the TV. You know, Paula Negri was a huge, huge, huge silent star. And sex symbol. Oh my gosh. So beautiful. One of the first movie sex symbols that dance that she does and she's just astounding. She lived in 1987. She had a very long life. Did she really? She lived that long? Oh yeah.
01:01:08
Speaker
Wow. Born in 1897. Oh, my gosh. Well, good for her. Good on. She saw the whole history of the movies. Yeah. And this is also noteworthy. This is one of the early efforts by James Wong Howe, who made his mark, really, as a sound-era cinematographer. But he started in the silence. And this is just beautiful. And it's a period romance. It's got a lot of kind of swashbuckling moments in it.
01:01:37
Speaker
So it's very much a movie of its moment, but boy, you really, really see the star power on display here. It's terrific, really terrific. And then three here from Flicker Alley. Flicker Fusion has French Revelations, which is fanfare de mour and Mauve's Grand, otherwise known as Fanfare of Love and Bad Seed.
01:02:00
Speaker
These are from the 1930s, mid-1930s, just a couple of great 1930s era French films. What is significant about the movie is Grand Bad Seed is it is the French film that was directed by or co-directed by Billy Wilder. So yeah, it's really nice to see Billy Wilder working up, playing his trade here. There are seeds of his future movies here as well.
01:02:30
Speaker
And I won't tell you what they are, but it's very, very interesting. You're like, oh, he's kind of working out, you know, this idea and that motif and that theme. And you can draw a straight line from Moby's guy and all the way to Billy Wilder's great Hollywood class. It's fantastic. And then the reason that Fanfare du More is on here
01:02:52
Speaker
is also for a Billy Wilder reason, because that was the film that inspired Some Like It Hot. So a lot of people don't, which is also now a big Broadway hit, which they've changed a little bit, but it all begins in this 1935 French film, directed by Richard Poitiers. So you're learning a lot about Billy Wilder's future career by watching these two films. And then lastly, there is Foolish Wives, which was the
01:03:23
Speaker
they allegedly, and they even put it right on the cover of the box here, the first real million dollar picture.
Celebrity Culture and Modern Films
01:03:30
Speaker
So, from 1922, that's right. Stroheim, who, you know, what was the famous quote that he said is like, why are you making the actors wear period underwear? No one will know. And his answer was, but I don't know.
01:03:49
Speaker
I don't know how true that is, but it's a great story. Foolish Wives from 1922, long movie, big von Stroheim epic, but very expensive film. They advertised it as the first million dollar movie. I don't know if it was, but boy, they did a wonderful job restoring its 4K restoration on Blu-ray here. It was originally screened at MoMA.
01:04:15
Speaker
and for good reason. I mean, it's quite a movie with a ton of bonus material comparing the restoration from before and after and looking into the whole process of it and whether it really was a first million dollar picture and how it was made and on location with Stroheim. It's pretty terrific. So, Foolish Wives, wonderful,
01:04:44
Speaker
And then lastly, we're going to get a lot more of these volumes, so start collecting them. Flicker Alley, Laurel and Hardy, year one, the newly restored 1927 Silence. If you've never seen Laurel and Hardy, you've got to start with The Silence because to understand why they were so funny in their sound films, you have to start with The Silence and realize that they are basically silent comedians and learn to talk.
01:05:06
Speaker
Just really funny, super funny stuff. Audio commentary here for each of the films by Randy Skretveldt, Skretveldt. I'm mutilating his name, so I apologize for that. But yeah, these are just hilarious shorts. They're all really super funny. And it's two discs, and you just kind of appreciate how amazing these two guys were. Just one of the all-time great comedy teams.
01:05:31
Speaker
All right, Tim, where do we go next? Well, what do you think? You want to do some new movies? Yeah, let's hit some new movies. That sounds good to me. Dream scenario, which is a Nic Cage movie.
01:05:47
Speaker
to have it there. To the Nick Cage movies, though I thought it might have been a part of the Oscar discussions this last week. I thought so too. I thought he'd be in the mix. I thought he'd really be in it. And it wound up being just Killian Murphy and Paul Giamatti in a two-man race. And then by the end, it was just Killian.
01:06:04
Speaker
That was, he kind of owned it. Then Nick Cage fell out of that conversation. Why? I think maybe they might have something to do with you. Look, the movie, which I like a lot, by the way, Christopher Borghely. Is that the way you say his name? And Christopher Borghely, I think.
01:06:23
Speaker
Really something interesting movie about this guy is a regular guy. He starts appearing in people's dreams. He's not doing anything in their dreams, but he's in them. At first it's his family and then it just starts to be sort of a worldwide phenomena that this regular professor guy just showing up in people's dreams doing nothing whatsoever. We sort of move into this
01:06:51
Speaker
into this movie that's an interesting sum of exploration of several things, including to some extent the notion of cancel culture, because eventually he does something in someone's dream. Which he didn't do in real life, but he did in a dream. And the culture responds to that in a particular sort of way. And I thought that this was a very clever way of exploring all of that.
01:07:15
Speaker
It is a very smart, clever movie and very interesting in what it does. Cage is, if you think that Nick Cage has just become kind of a parody of himself, no, he can still act. The boy can still turn in a performance like nobody's business and he does here and it is a really, really difficult thing that he does because he's balding and he's a professor and he's all kind of not very charismatic and he's
01:07:42
Speaker
He has all these issues, and so he really, really addresses himself down to an incredibly sympathetic place, and then he takes the character to a very unsympathetic place, and then he has to bring it back to a sympathetic place again. It's really interesting. But I do love what it says about the nature of celebrity and our obsession with celebrity, especially empty celebrity, unjustifiable social media celebrity. If you think about it, it's really a
01:08:10
Speaker
an analog way of being a social media influencer. He just shows up in people's dreams. He could just as easily have showed up on their TikTok feed. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, even that whole sequence. You were nothing. You were nothing. Yeah, exactly. That whole sequence in the film that's all speaks to some of that, you know. Anyway, I thought it was, so I think, I hope people will check it out.
01:08:33
Speaker
It's interesting that this, in the sort of commentary by Nick or anybody, Nick did a really wicked thing where he read Tell the Tale's Heart at the South by Southwest. I was wondering if they might have put that. So, no, it has a featurette. It has an audio commentary by the writer-director, Borgley.
01:08:54
Speaker
And then it's got deleted scenes. And that's it. So it's not a lot, but it is a good audio commentary. I didn't listen to the whole thing. I heard a little bit of it, but he goes deep. He goes deep. He answers the questions. So he goes where you want him to go. Collective edition of Lisa Frankenstein. Oh, Tim, what are we going to say about that? Yeah. This didn't work for Diablo Cody. Yeah.
01:09:19
Speaker
directed by Zelda Williams. Yeah, who was Robin Williams' daughter and a very gifted voiceover artist. I mean, gifted at the level of her dad. Just look her up and see. You've been listening to Zelda's voice for a very, very long time and she's very, very good. Anyway, this movie,
01:09:42
Speaker
It's set in the 80s and it's shaped like all of those 80s. Who was it, John? What's his name? He made all those movies in the 80s. It's shaped like one of those. Here's the thing. It's about this girl who resurrects this poet using some sort of spell and all that shit.
01:10:05
Speaker
I'm not quite sure why it's set in the 80s. I loved all those movies. John, what's his name? He did all those movies in the 80s. I'm having a block on it, but I loved all of those movies. I'm not sure. I would think that the album, Cody would have loved all those movies, but she doesn't seem
01:10:28
Speaker
to love all those movies and watch these movies because she seems to be making fun of those movies and the people from Valley Girls and all of that. Anyway, other than that, this just wasn't particularly funny or romantic because they go on a killing spree and I'm like, wait a minute. Why are you sending my kids on a killing spree? Anyway, this Diablo film. It makes some odd missteps and doesn't really
01:10:56
Speaker
land its punches very, very intelligently. But I do like Catherine Newton, I'll say that. I think a wonderful actress and I think funny actress. I hope we see continue to see more of her but in better movies. For some unknown weird godforsaken reason, Nickelodeon said, Hey, you know what deserves a sequel? Good burger. Oh, man.
01:11:22
Speaker
And they picked up the phone and they called up Kenan and Kel and they said, we know you guys are all like grown up now and you have other careers and the good burgers by the last thing that you want to explore, but would you be interested in done? Yes, we're there. And for some reason Kenan and Kel said, we're coming back. We're going to do a grown up good burger sequel. And there it is. I can only hope that they were offered some obscene amounts of money.
01:11:52
Speaker
This was actually a pretty popular guy. Keenan, of course, has been on. I think he is now. Yes, he is. You're correct. The longest tenured SNL cast member in history. I don't know if that's anything to be proud of, because typically people go on to do other stuff, but apparently, and he has gone on to do other stuff. He's at a sitcom, he shows up in movies, but apparently he loves it.
01:12:17
Speaker
And that's the thing, like everybody on SNL, they'll be like, oh, it's a meat grinder, man. It's just, it's a mess. It's hard to use rehearsal and you're working like 18 hour days and it's just your work shopping. And like, they burn out. And Keenan, when he interviews with Keenan, he's like, no, I love it. It's good. I saw him at a point, exactly what she said. And he looked at the camera and he said, nah, you're funny.
01:12:46
Speaker
And I'm like
01:12:50
Speaker
You know what, son? And you know what? Every week, funniest thing on that show, he's probably involved in it every week. Every week. That's just funny. So here they are. Good Burger 2. For Paramount Plus, Nolan. Look, this is what's interesting about it. I mean, this movie is whatever. But Dan Schneider.
01:13:18
Speaker
of course, was the Good Burger. The creator of that and a whole bunch of other shows. One of the writers on this, and of course, Dan and others have come under into some scrutiny, having to do with the way they show-ran and the things that they let out and did regarding shows like that, including the Good Burger show. And Keenan has had some things to say about that period and those shows and all of those people. That's always very interesting because this is all
01:13:45
Speaker
in relation to a documentary that's on one of the streaming services, you know, about kids in the business, you know. And you, I mean, you're lifelong here. Not only do you know kids in the business, you knew kids in the business when they were kids in the business, you know. And me not quite that long, but all of these kids,
01:14:10
Speaker
Going back 35 years, when I was covering all those red carpets and junkets for all of these TV shows, I would see these kids, and I would see these Hammers.
01:14:22
Speaker
and I got to tell you, you should watch that doc. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as long as we're on a creepy subject, we need to poo blood and honey. Yeah. So this is a thing that we're getting into now, which is that certain things are entering the public domain. I have some very strong feelings about that, which I will make known soon on my sub stack. If you haven't subscribed, come on over to
01:14:49
Speaker
The Hollywood Heretic at Substack, Hollywoodheretic.substack.com. That's where I rant about things and subscribe. If you want to read some of the paid stuff, that's behind a paywall, but a lot of stuff I post is not for pay. I don't think things should be public domain, personally. I know that's controversial, but I feel like
01:15:11
Speaker
If I build a building to take care of my posterity, that never goes into the public domain. If I make a movie, it does, and that discourages people from making movies and from writing books and things that can take care of their families. Winnie the Pooh really should never have been the subject of a horror slasher movie.
01:15:34
Speaker
thanks to public domain law. I don't think that's what the idea was. It wasn't like, oh yeah, we need it to expire after 100 years so that people can turn your precious, iconic, culturally beloved character into something totally depraved. No, that was not the idea.
01:15:49
Speaker
A.A. Milton, of course. It's just the long gone A.A. and this and other things. One of the Mickey Mouse's finally fell into public domain, the very, very early Mickey Mouse.
01:16:07
Speaker
Yeah. Seeing what Willie style Mickey Mouse fell into public domain. You're right. It's a very controversial subject and there's a whole set of reasoning behind it in both directions. Definitely we need to consider the reality of things as they are today and adjust all of these laws to reflect the reality of the way these things work today.
01:16:33
Speaker
Yeah. The story here is that Christopher Robin, when he grew up, he abandoned Winnie and Piglet and all the rest. And now he's grown and he comes back with his fiancee in tow and in his absence, all of his precious childhood characters, Winnie and Piglet and the others, they have become basically Jason and Michael Myers.
01:17:00
Speaker
and they have gone psycho in his absence and the rest is just not
Independent and World War II Films
01:17:06
Speaker
pleasant. But some people apparently love the subversive nature of that. Generally speaking though, I think this movie, because it's not particularly good and it's not clever, it's not being subversive for a reason.
01:17:26
Speaker
It's just hacking and slashing and taking the Winnie the Pooh characters and giving them chainsaws. Now, I can imagine there might be a way to be subversive, but purposefully subversive.
01:17:45
Speaker
is using the Winnie the Pooh dynamic. And that I have no use for. But somebody who's more clever than these filmmakers might have figured something out, but not these folks. They didn't. They're just crapping on Winnie the Pooh.
01:18:05
Speaker
A couple of interesting low-budget indie films on Blu-ray as well. One is Stand with an exclamation point at the end, which it takes place in 1919, but it is reflecting obviously on the current crisis in Russia and Ukraine. It's sort of like history is repeating itself. It's a Romeo and Juliet
01:18:26
Speaker
tale set in Canada dealing with refugees from Ukraine and Russia is on the war path there again and it is meant to focus on what is happening in the here and now. To that degree, it's interesting. It cuts corners a lot with its budget, but it's
01:18:46
Speaker
But it's worth checking out. And Distant Tales is another one of those movies that was made during and about the pandemic with everybody in different places. And the idea is that this takes place in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future where people can't meet face-to-face. And I'm thinking,
01:19:07
Speaker
That is the dystopian future that was basically the last three years. We just went through that. So anyway, Distant Tales is the film. Interesting, kind of well intentioned and it'll go down as part of a sub genre of pandemic movies.
01:19:27
Speaker
I want to make a quick mention of this. We've done this in the past before and where companies make movies that are almost identical and the marketing for them is almost identical. I've got a company here, 101 Films, which has made two movies.
01:19:45
Speaker
One is the Shamrock Spitfire and the other is Fortunes of War. And they have workshopped these through a lot of very small festivals and whatnot. So here's the thing. They're both World War II movies.
01:20:02
Speaker
They are both one is you know ground-based fortunes of war is on the ground, but it's got some aerial stuff in it and Shamrock Spitfire is the true story of Spitfire Patty who was a pilot, you know He was you know in the Australian squadron and Battle of Britain and anyway They're World War two movies. They're they're respectively made, you know, they're not they're not low budget, but they're not super high budget but both of them are
01:20:30
Speaker
use, Tim, I'm going to show you this. Both of them have the exact same font for their titles and it's diagonal on the cover of both. Right. And then we have on the back, it's the exact, it's a war shot and text. It's just plug and play. You know why?
AI in Film and Psychological Horror
01:20:54
Speaker
Because they're designing this stuff with the AI now. Somebody's saying, give me a, you know, and the AI is looking at this thing and they're coming back and not for nothing, that's been going on even in the business, well before the AI. All of those films, those romantic comedies would have the guy and the gal and they'll be standing on that cover and he'll have his arms crossed and she'll be looking like, you know, it's...
01:21:22
Speaker
really so generic. But there it is. Oh, it's just disappointing. Not terrible movies, though. They're fine. They're fine. Those World War II planes. So they actually get them up in the air and they're flying them around and stuff. So they spend a few bucks on some jet fuel. Did you see a cobweb by chance, the Lizzie Kaplan thing? I don't think I saw that. Let me see.
01:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, you know what? Not a bad little psychological horror film, actually. This kind of came and went. This was a long-opening film. Not bad at all. It's about this eight-year-old kid who hears this sound, this tapping sound, and it's driving him crazy, and he's just terrified of it. His parents are like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about?
01:22:12
Speaker
And from there, it goes sideways in just a totally brilliant way. I mean, really a smart little psychological horror thriller. It's very, very well made, well directed, well put together all around. A nice little movie called Cobweb, Lizzie Kaplan, and Antony Star, S-T-A-R-R. So check that out if you want a more sophisticated, intelligent, thriller, chiller for a dark evening sometime.
01:22:41
Speaker
The Persian version from Sony Classics was supposed to be kind of a little award contender, I think, for a minute. And it's one of these, it wants to be my big fat Greek wedding with a Persian family. I'm not sure that it comes anywhere close to it. Did you get a chance to look at this?
01:23:00
Speaker
oh yeah yeah yeah it was yeah my big fat Greek weather going back a long ways it's it's it wants to be an Iranian American big fat yeah let us let us let us show you our our culture and how you love it and all this beautiful immigrant family yeah yeah yeah it's like you're wacky
01:23:21
Speaker
family. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's quite literally what it is. It just it but it still feels a little too derivative. It's well intentioned. I think Mariam Keshavarz, who wrote and directed it has a future. But, you know, try to go a little bit more into into a do something a little different. I mean, moments.
01:23:44
Speaker
I imagine that in the Iranian and the Persian community, this is one of those films that they adore. And then everybody's, you know, it's gotta be, I'm almost certain.
01:23:58
Speaker
Let's talk about Priscilla for a second.
Award Season and Overlooked Films
01:24:00
Speaker
Sofia Coppola's film that was supposed to be a big deal and it got no love in awards season from anybody at all, at all. It had a good festival run in, right? People were writing nice reviews coming out of, I think it was Venice and Toronto. I mean, it was getting some good love. It's Sofia Coppola. It's coming on the heels of Elvis, except it's about Priscilla. It's like the woman's point of view. Why did this film not get more love?
01:24:24
Speaker
Yeah, you know, look, there's something, so I saw this film, interesting, that Kaylee Spanning, who's in this film, plays Priscilla, is the young one, is in the current Adam Skarland film, Civil War.
01:24:43
Speaker
which is interesting, because she actually made Civil War before she made this film. So this film happened. I don't think I knew that. It has that whole run. You should have really launched your career, but her career started being delayed because it failed to launch because of this. But now, I think Civil War will kind of take care of it. Look, one of the things it is, I'm sorry, but to the extent that the events in Priscilla Presley's life
01:25:12
Speaker
are interesting. They are interesting as they are connected to the events in Elvis Presley's life. If you take Elvis Presley out of any moment of Priscilla Presley's life, that's a moment that I don't care about. I only care about the moments of Priscilla Presley's life that are directly connected to Elvis Presley's life.
01:25:39
Speaker
I don't mean to be mean about that, but it's literally true. Because otherwise, why am I talking about you at all? You're a woman who I will have never heard of who would have lived a perfectly lovely life, I'm sure, but whom we would not be making a movie about because she wasn't married to Elvis when she was like a baby or whatever the hell it was. To my mind, that's what it is.
01:26:05
Speaker
Very, very good point. That had never occurred to me, but I think you got a point. I think you got a good point. Well, it's got a digital copy on it. It's from Lionsgate. A24 normally does a great job of pushing their films to awards contention, but didn't happen for that one. If anybody saw the Ernest and Celestine animated film a few years ago, they've done a sequel to it. This is Ernest and Celestine, a trip to gibberishia.
01:26:35
Speaker
Yeah. It feels, you know, it's nice storybook animation. They still they're still doing that really very sweet storybook animation. The first film which got an Oscar nomination was really very charming and kind of fresh. This feels a little belabored. Did you did you have a chance?
01:26:56
Speaker
No, back to that well. Now, there are a few of these, because it was a television series, and they sort of like are what they are, but this is not, there's not enough material here. The first, the 20, whatever it was, film, 12, I guess, right? The one you got to be asking about. That film carried the weight of a feature.
01:27:21
Speaker
There's not enough material here for a feature. The idea here is that Ernest and Celcine is a bear and a mouse who are friends. It's a cute little animal friendship deal. They go back to Ernest's homeland and find that music has been banned. How do we bring the music back?
01:27:48
Speaker
you know, suddenly I started having all kinds of American pie flashbacks. So it was, I mean, it means to be sweet. They're trying very hard, but they keep kind of trying to invent things that make it work and it doesn't quite.
01:28:03
Speaker
A good person with Morgan Freeman and Florence Pugh came out some months ago. We were not furnished to this necessarily to review, so we are covering it many, many months after the fact. Because a friend of mine reached out to me and said, why haven't you covered this? This is amazing. This is my favorite film of last year. And I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
01:28:34
Speaker
Zach Braffi. I mean, that's the thing. Zach Braff wrote and directed it. It's this best film since Garden State. You've got Florence Pugh, who's amazing. You've got Morgan Freeman, who's a legend. Why did this not catch fire? This is another one of those awards season things. I'm like, why didn't this
01:28:53
Speaker
Yeah, this is a great movie. This is a terrific movie.
01:28:58
Speaker
It's a tragedy at the center of the film. It is a film about two people in mourning and going through a very, very, Morgan Freeman is the father of the fella that Florence Pugh is engaged to. There's going to be a car accident. People are going to be killed.
01:29:22
Speaker
It's just going to be questions of culpability and internal – heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy stuff. So maybe it's just that but it doesn't mean that it's not a very, very, very good film exploring these extremely difficult sort of issues. All of these folks have really so difficult backstories. Morgan Freeman was a cop but he's also a cop that used to drink. So very interesting stuff.
01:29:52
Speaker
We also have Journey to Bethlehem, which was a musical from last year, a Christmas-themed musical with Antonio Banderas playing Pontius Pilate. It's just a strange movie. It's not bad. It's just strange. The music kind of is very anachronistic.
01:30:10
Speaker
But it's very family friendly. So, you know, if you want to see a great musicalized birth of Jesus movie, working at some musical charms on a very limited budget with colorful costumes and, you know, that's, again, super family friendly. No, I mean, you could do worse. It'll become a canon of Christmasy. Yeah, it'll become a part.
01:30:36
Speaker
It's Antonia Banderas who just kind of sticks out. You go like, that is hot casting. John Woo is back making American movies. And I'm not sure he should have. I hate to say that because I love John Woo. I grew up on John Woo. I treasure all of my John Woo Hong Kong movies. I even like a lot of the American stuff once he came over hard target and face off.
01:31:00
Speaker
And he was doing some good work here. Mission Impossible 2. And then Hollywood fell out of love with him and he fell out of love with Hollywood. He went back and started making a lot of big epic Chinese movies like Red Cliff and stuff like that. And now he came back and he made this thing called Silent Night.
01:31:21
Speaker
which feels like a half sincere imitation of what he used to do. And it's almost like, and he did it with the producer of John Wick, but it almost feels like he's behind the curve now. Like he's trying to keep up with John Wick movies, which were imitations and expansions on his movies. And I just don't know what to make of this, Tim. It's a very weird choice for him to come back and make a movie like this.
01:31:49
Speaker
Yeah, and it feels like a movie from the middle 90s, late 90s, back when he was doing all that. And not for nothing, stylistically, he hasn't really changed a lot in terms of
01:32:09
Speaker
Over the course of these directions, they have this really sort of long career. Some of them some like keep up in terms of style. Who just died not too long ago? Freakin. Freakin was still very – was a very modern filmmaker for all of – in all of his last films. This feels like a film that John Mu made in 1998.
01:32:33
Speaker
Yeah. No, you're right. You're right. It does. Yeah. Well, anyway, it's too bad. But, you know, John Woo is still making movies and I guess that's better than nothing. That's better than nothing. I lean.
01:32:49
Speaker
with Thomas and McKenzie and Anne Hathaway, another movie that just got away from everybody. Anne Hathaway is an Academy Award winner. And for whatever reason, this just got very little attention. This is based on a book, which I've never heard of. And it takes place in 1960s in Boston. And it is a pretty gritty melodrama.
01:33:16
Speaker
about this woman and her – I'm going to do this without getting into any
01:33:29
Speaker
Thomas and Mackenzie plays Eileen, the title character. And Anne Hathaway plays a woman on the staff of the prison where her father is being kept. And it's about the nuances of that friendship and where it goes, which I don't want to kind of reveal too much. But it's very interesting. It's very dark.
01:33:54
Speaker
And it's quite well written in this kind of circuitous, they're trying to call it, they're pitching it as Hitchcock in noir. Hitchcock didn't make noirs. So that's kind of a dumb thing to say in the beginning. It is definitely a quasi noir, but it is also a, I don't want to call it a psychological thriller.
01:34:14
Speaker
It's a psychological mystery, I guess, is maybe the best way to put it. But anyway, it's a very interesting film. I thought it would get a little bit more love at awards time, but no, didn't get any. Why? Why? Why are some of these films falling through the cracks? Do we have too many films at awards time now? Is that the problem? Well, it might be. Look, there was a whole stack of films this past awards season.
01:34:41
Speaker
A lot of them, you know, indie films, but very, you know, The Salt of the Earth, Excellent, Excellent New Earth Mama, Excellent, Excellent Movies, The Inspector. And there was just a lot. And it seems like the organizations want to get to a few films quick.
01:35:06
Speaker
And it seems like there's this rush to these two or three or four films, and those are going to be the two or three or four films that we talk about. Obviously, you have these big movies, your barbies or whatever. And then we're going to all agree on poor things, or everything everywhere, all at once, or menari, or etc., etc., etc.
01:35:29
Speaker
Well, you know, another dozen films, every bit is good. But for whatever reason, we have not all agreed on that film. We've all agreed on this one. And that's what we're going to do. And it really is, you know. I don't know. It becomes a thing of where everyone just sort of like follows the leader.
01:35:50
Speaker
Very frustrating. Very frustrating. We got to get out of this rut. It's a rut. So let's do some TV and some steel books and then I will let you go and I'll wrap everything up with a few anime. We got a bunch of anime in. Finally got a chance to get a look at some of it and I will
01:36:08
Speaker
I will wrap things up with a little anime segment. But the Steel Books, we got three here, Anaconda and Hollow Man. Oh, Hollow Man, I love that movie. Yeah, Hollow Man with Kevin Bacon, probably in Elizabeth's shoe, probably one of the better Invisible Man attempts in the last
01:36:29
Speaker
I don't know, 30 years. And Paul Verhoeven's film, because Paul's kind of gone, but Paul was still at the top of his game for that one. Yeah, I mean, it's very effective. It kind of reinvents the genre a little bit. And then Anaconda with a very young Jennifer Lopez, John Voight, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, with the worst Anaconda I've ever seen in a movie.
01:36:57
Speaker
I still think this movie is ridiculous. But you know what? I guess it's got kind of a weird cult following now. I don't really understand it. Is it J.Lo? Is she the reason it's got a cult following? Well, you got J.Lo and your boy Cube. So that's interesting, all right there. But J.Lo, for sure. Young J.Lo was something to see, man.
01:37:27
Speaker
So I think Jack is also a top nut, right? He's one of the writers on this. I think Jack was one of the writers on this. That's one of the writers on this? Oh, yeah, McCaldum. You're right, Jim Cash and Jack Epps. My gosh, it looks like they wrote the original draft. Holy cow. Isn't that crazy? Cash and Epps.
01:37:48
Speaker
It's sort of like a reach back to an era where these guys, you know, you have these kind of writers who could do these kind of movies and, you know, it's kind of, yeah, Louis, what did he do? He's the specialist, the director. Yeah, Louis Losa. Louis Losa, yeah. Is he that Kurt Russell
01:38:13
Speaker
Um, why the art movie? Is that Luis? I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe that's not Luis. I think he might be that Kurt Russell. Anyway, all these guys are gone, man. Nothing's going to work anymore.
01:38:28
Speaker
And then we've got Amelie anniversary release on Steelbook, which is Jean-Pierre Genet's wonderful, charming Amelie, just one of those most delightful French films with Audrey Tatou and Mathieu Cassavetes. This is a classic film, beloved film. It's now 25 years old or almost 25 years old. I know it's crazy, right? Anyway.
Anime Industry Developments and Trends
01:38:55
Speaker
Just terrific. A little bit, some extras here. A commentary with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a featurette looking back, and 11 behind the scenes featurettes. It's terrific. It's a wonderful, wonderful steelbook. And then on the TV front real quickly, we've got Fear the Walking Dead, the complete eighth season. I think this thing is on fumes, but they somehow keep dragging this story out for those who need more and can't get enough.
01:39:26
Speaker
And then Jack Ryan, the final season, and then there's also a complete series Blu-ray of it. Boy, yeah. I mean, has this show worked? Did this really expand the Jack Ryan character in ways that we wanted or needed?
01:39:41
Speaker
Well, look, you and I go back to the original incarnations of Tom Clancy's adaptations. And we went through a few Jack Ryans, didn't we? Yeah, we did. Who was Jack? We had Alec Baldwin. We had Harrison Ford. We had, I think, Ben Affleck was the Jack Ryans for a second. In the movies, in the big movies, in the big movies.
01:40:05
Speaker
I suppose it's fair for, I just never bought, I just never bought John as Jack Ryan really either. You know, I was okay with Ben, I was okay with Alex, I was okay with Harrison, but John Krasinski, I just never bought him. And maybe it's because he, you know, I came to know him as that funny guy, you know, in what was it, the office
01:40:29
Speaker
the American person. Yeah, exactly. He made it hard to get away from that character. Yeah, particularly and become this character because this guy, you know, Jack Ryan, Jack Ryan, man, Jack Ryan, Harrison Ford, he might even be Alec Baldwin, he could even be Ben Affleck. He is not the guy from the office.
01:40:47
Speaker
Well, it's 30 episodes, four seasons, and I think that about is what it should have run. Four seasons feels right for that. And then last on TV is The Lower Decks, season four. I don't get it. Star Trek is a funny cartoon, doesn't work for me, but I know people who love this. They feel like this is the Futurama version of Star Trek, which
01:41:07
Speaker
A lot of inside jokes. I don't need inside jokes, you know, Star Trek jokes. That's okay. I'm okay. Anyway, it's in fourth season now. So clearly somebody likes it. Somebody likes it. All right. Well, Tim, with that, we will call it quits this week. I'm going to let you go and then I'm going to dovetail now into some anime stuff and just give people a few highlights onto what's new in the anime world.
01:41:33
Speaker
Some interesting business things have happened with anime titles, which have switched. Some different companies have migrated to other companies and merged and some things have happened. But anime continues to be a big performer in the world of DVD and Blu-ray. Absolutely. Otherwise, I think we're looking at a big summer. We'll be back in a few weeks and we'll hopefully have some insights on things like the Civil War, which I know we have both seen and we'll have some thoughts that we can share at that time.
01:42:01
Speaker
And we will see everybody else then. All right. See you soon, brother.
01:42:08
Speaker
I'm going to cover some anime right now. A lot of stuff has changed in the world of anime in recent months. The Sente library, which constitutes most of what we're going to be talking about today and what we do cover, has always been sort of the dominant library, but it then was purchased by AMC. Whereas Section 23, which used to distribute it, was purchased by AMC Networks. And so now the Sente label is its own label, entirely its own label.
01:42:33
Speaker
going to go through a few things that we're enthusiastic about, some things we're not so enthusiastic about, then some things that we are very enthusiastic about, and then a bunch of very special box sets. We're enthusiastic about Rezefon, which is, I don't want to compare it too much to Ultraman, but this is the complete collection of Rezefon, sent to a collection. Basically about a kid who controls a mecha. He has this,
01:42:57
Speaker
power to control a mecha known as the Rezefon and it is a wonderful student wish fulfillment fantasy series along with the movie. It's the TV series and the movie. Wonderful animation.
01:43:12
Speaker
Also, wonderful animation is the Tunnel to Summer, The Exit of Goodbyes, which is a lovely drama, very oriented toward young adults, maybe even older, about the Hiroshima Tunnel, which is a phenomenon. It's not really science fiction. It's not even really fantasy. It's almost psychological, but it is certainly a fantastic goal.
01:43:33
Speaker
phenomenon that connects you to the past and other dimensions and your own sense of reality, and it's about loss, family loss, and how you restore family. It is beautifully rendered, wonderful animation, very, very sharp.
01:43:49
Speaker
Then we have a bunch of stuff that's sort of set in the world of the travails of Japanese students. Not something that is terribly accessible. It's got a certain following. It's very genre-specific. Go through this really quickly. Kubo won't let me be invisible. Love flops, insomniacs after school, and season one of The Dangers in My Heart.
01:44:12
Speaker
All of these kind of sort of live in the same world, the travails of students and their issues at school. Very, very kind of the only one that's sort of a little bit above the others, insomniacs after school. And that's only because it's all about their struggles and putting together their astronomy club. But otherwise, very, very, very narrow audience for most of this stuff.
01:44:38
Speaker
a little bit more enthusiastic about redo of healer. Not exactly for kids, this one, this is about a, there is sexual abuse
01:44:55
Speaker
narrative to this, but it is still a fantasy and it's, you know, in sense of being a fantasy world, it has a lot going for it. But, you know, there is, of course, the hero's journey, all that usual Joseph Campbell stuff. It's all very formulaic, but the sexual abuse angle is one that people might want to be aware of. Don't let the kids necessarily watch it.
01:45:23
Speaker
is a little bit too close to the bone, I think, especially after the pandemic. This takes place in the aftermath of a pandemic, which has been devastating to mankind, a little bit post-apocalyptic, dystopian. But then there's an angle that sort of dovetails into some kind of X-Men sort of things, the people who are
01:45:53
Speaker
The virus that has caused all of this has created sort of a mutant generation of children. It takes a little while to get into to sort of learn all the parameters of what's going on, but it is very well written, it's very well rendered, and that is the complete collection of Black Bullet.
01:46:12
Speaker
We've talked before about Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Time. This is a new release of that, the super extra complete collection. It contains uncensored material here, which we don't know necessarily how it would compare against anything else, but it is there and then it has obviously some featurettes on here, actor interviews and promos and
01:46:34
Speaker
some making of material. So Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Stone by no strange coincidence has a title that should remind you of Harry Potter. Giant Beasts of Arse wouldn't go over well in the UK. Linguistically, that would mean something very, very, very different in London. Giant Beasts of Arse, A-R-S.
01:47:03
Speaker
Again, a fantasy series. The animation is stronger than the writing, but it certainly is well worth taking a look at. The arse is the land that all of this takes place in, the sort of mythical otherworldly land. We could call it a little bit like Asgard from Thor, from Marvel Comics, but it's still the hero's journey.
01:47:32
Speaker
In the past, we've also talked about Tirune. This is Tirune, the movie, the first shot. This is kind of a sequel to the original series from 2018-2019. The movie was made in 2022. It is a worthy follow-up. This is, you know,
01:47:52
Speaker
about a Kyoto club in a high school. And if you've seen the series, you're going to completely vibe to it. If you haven't seen the series, it won't mean a whole lot to you. Tears to Tiara.
01:48:06
Speaker
also something I think we have talked about in the past. This is a new complete collection release of it. It is it's based on a role playing game. And so as such, it's a little it's a little bit doesn't quite register. It's got a lot of mythical
01:48:24
Speaker
amalgamations in it. You'll see a lot of bits and pieces of a lot of other materials. But it's, again, fantasy series. And if you if you're not a fan of the game, you will probably be able to enjoy it. If you're a fan of the game, the the inability to kind of intercede and access some of the role playing aspects of it would would be disappointing.
01:48:47
Speaker
Otaku Elf. These are some of the better titles now. This is some of the stuff that is either really funny or really quite engaging. Otaku Elf. I don't know if it's meant to be funny, but it's based on a manga and I actually find the animation very, very funny. It has kind of these
01:49:12
Speaker
these visual bursts that you don't expect and it certainly seems to be deliberately funny in an almost kind of Pokemon Pikachu way. So Otaku Elf recommended. Also, Urusei Yatsura, which is a fairly recent television series. This is seasons one and two together.
01:49:38
Speaker
I don't even know how to get into the premise here. It's just a very, very bizarre comedy that has, it's like a science fiction comedy and the creator of it certainly has a reputation for doing a lot of these kinds of similar things.
01:50:01
Speaker
It's like there's an alien invasion. And then in the certainly in the first episode, it takes a left turn and there's this game of tag. And, you know, they call this a an interstellar rom com in the in the timing on the back. I don't know that I would call it a rom com. It's more like an interstellar animated sitcom. Maybe a better way of putting it. But it it certainly has its its bizarre strange charms.
01:50:31
Speaker
The titles of some of these series are always off the wall. Anime series come up with some unbelievably long, convoluted, very strange titles. We got a couple of them here. This may take the cake. The literal title of this show is, I've somehow gotten stronger when I improved my farm-related skills.
01:50:58
Speaker
that is literally the title. It's based on a manga, fairly recent, and it's incredibly peculiar as the title would suggest.
01:51:14
Speaker
It is, you know, quite literally what it describes. It's farm comedy combined with monster fantasy. So, you know, if you're fighting monsters and you're growing farm fresh food, somehow the whole idea of farm fresh to table takes on a very, very different dimension.
01:51:38
Speaker
So just think about something that combines farming with like fantasy fighting of demons and monsters and dragons and everything else. That's what this is. Very strange. I've somehow gotten stronger when I improved my farm related skills. Very bizarre. Akiba made war is
01:52:00
Speaker
I wasn't quite sure where this was going initially, then I figured out that it is basically about a bunch of young women who are employed as French maids, or at least they dress like French maids, and the world of maids then basically becomes the kind of
01:52:27
Speaker
It's either the Running Man or any of those other television, televised fight to the death movies. Let's say Running Man a little bit. Hunger Games might be closer to the mark. So yeah, let's say it's about, imagine the Hunger Games with French maids. There it is. That's what a Kiba Maid war is. We get more farming.
01:52:55
Speaker
With Farming Life in Another World, I don't know what it is. I don't know if they've lost farmland. I don't understand the obsession with farming, but two farming titles at the same time. Farming Life in Another World is based on a series of light novels and a manga that preceded this. And it is reasonably charming, but also reasonably funny in fits and starts, but otherwise very, very well animated.
01:53:25
Speaker
We also have the last two in this lineup. My life as Inukai-san's dog is, if it weren't funny, it would be prurient. This is not, this is an uncensored edition of this. It is not a hente. People shouldn't be worried about that. But it is, it does kind of,
01:53:50
Speaker
get a little bit risque. And risque in a Japanese pink movie kind of way. If you're familiar with the history of pink movies, this is kind of a PG-13 version of this. And this was fairly recent. This only aired like I think last year.
01:54:07
Speaker
And really, it's about the transformation of someone into a puppy. And he's basically a puppy. And what is his life like as a puppy relating to his human friends?
01:54:33
Speaker
don't know any other way to describe it. And lastly here before we get into the box sets is a new Familia myth special entry part two of season four. Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in a dungeon?
01:54:49
Speaker
This is this various series of this have been around forever. We have talked about this before. This is certainly in the same vein. I think if you pick this up, you are going to have no idea what's going on. This really is, you know, this is season four, part two of the fourth series familiar myth.
01:55:10
Speaker
You have to almost revisit everything before this to really kind of pick up on this and understand where it's going. It's a mythical world with gods and you're not going to catch up with it if you just come and step into this particular entry. Now the box sets.
01:55:31
Speaker
Rosenmaiden we've talked about before. All four series of Rosenmaiden are here on seven discs in a single senté box set. I would definitely upgrade if you're a fan. This is the only way to have them. I don't believe they're going to make any more of these. A lovely box set of Chihaya Furu limited edition box set. This is based on a very, very successful
01:56:02
Speaker
light novel series and this is both series and the live-action film adaptations are not on here. So this is both anime series without the live-action adaptations. So it's not as complete as they would have you believe, but it's a nice limited edition for the animated series. Here's the one I really want to get to.
01:56:31
Speaker
Gotcha Man was most popular. I grew up on this as Battle of the Planets. It was completely recut and redubbed and redone in the United States and never really, if you saw that, you didn't really understand the original Gotcha Man. You didn't sort of get the same sense. It was very simplified, made almost more into a superhero thing, which is not necessarily.
01:56:55
Speaker
When you go to Gotcha Man, it's a much more nuanced and elaborate hero's journey. It is kind of, you know, mecha and science fiction. It's all about fighting this international organization that's a little bit like, it's almost like a James Bond kind of thing, known as Galactor here.
01:57:18
Speaker
the only, you know, the science ninja team are the only ones who can defeat them. And Gotcha Man really is the, is sort of the heroic center of that team. So this is all 105 episodes of the TV series.
01:57:41
Speaker
plus Gotcha Man vs. Turtle King, plus the mysterious Red Impulse, plus Final Count 002, and Gotcha Man the Movie. All of that together in one complete collection box set. It is terrific. If you are a Gotcha Man fan, no other way to go. That's the only way to go. It's a wonderful, wonderful box set. Himuto Maruchen R.
01:58:06
Speaker
Limited edition, much bigger and thicker than it really deserves to be. This skews very, very, very young. If you're eight years old, I think you're almost too old for this. And it's a little bit about, you know, it's about kids, it's about being obsessed with junk food. I think it does translate a little bit. It feels like it
01:58:29
Speaker
it appeals to sort of generalized student, classmate, junk food, the world in which they relate to each other that probably translates to all different cultures. So it's not as uniquely specific to Japanese school culture as a lot of these others, but it skews super, super young.
01:58:48
Speaker
A beautiful box set here. Holy cow, this might be the gem of the week. Five films by Masaki Yuasa. Masaki Yuasa is one of the great anime masters right now, mostly known in the United States for Inu-Oh, which was a big deal in 2021. This is five of his films, his great, most celebrated films, and they are all absolutely superb.
01:59:12
Speaker
Inu O is on here as well as films that have preceded it. Mind Game from 2004, The Night is Short, Walk on Girl from 2017, Lou, L-E-U, Over the Wall from 2017 as well. Kind of amazing two films in one year. And Ride Your Way from 2019. The most amazing thing here is that there are two films from 2017, one from 2019 and one from 2021. That's four films in four years.
01:59:42
Speaker
Sort of extraordinary by any measure, and they're all really, really good. There are filmmaker-combinators for all of these. There are scene breakdowns for all of them, featurettes and directors, interviews, and everything that goes all the way into the whole process of these films.
01:59:59
Speaker
It's really extraordinary, and there are English language dubs of, or at least for one of the films, The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, which I don't recommend anybody to necessarily listen to. The voice casting is not particularly good, but the five films are superb. Yuasa is a genius and one of the great anime masters, and it's really an essential set to have.
02:00:26
Speaker
Something I've never heard of before, Carol and Tuesday. This is a limited edition of Carol and Tuesday. And this is a 24 episode series that along with a lot of extras and a booklet and it's a really nice splashy, weighty box set. It's worth getting your hand on.
02:00:51
Speaker
if you want, if you're particularly attracted to the idea of this kind of, I mean, it's, we've talked about this before, I think we have. It all takes place on Mars. Mars has been made habitable through terraforming in the future. And it's, you know, these, these two girls became basically become kind of a two, two girl, girl band on Mars. And
02:01:15
Speaker
That's basically it. It's a little bit of sci-fi. It's a little bit of music fantasy fulfillment, but it's got wonderful music. It's got terrific animation and a ton of absolutely sensational extras on here. So it's great for fans.
02:01:31
Speaker
Not anime, but certainly in the anime world, is Spirited Away live on stage. So people may not realize that Hayao Miyazaki's first Academy Award, he just won his second Academy Award for the Boy and the Heron at the Oscars this year, his first Academy Award was for Spirited Away. And they did in fact turn it into a live stage production, which remarkably works. This is from G Kids.
02:01:59
Speaker
And it's really, really well staged. It has some extraordinary kind of puppeteering work, very, very different from what you would normally see. It really, it has just a wonderful, wonderful sense of Japanese stylization on it. And this was shot during the 2022 run at the Imperial Theater in Tokyo. So it is during COVID,
02:02:27
Speaker
tail end of COVID, but nonetheless during COVID. So that makes it a little bit special as well. Directed by John Caird, who is a Tony Award winning director. So Spirited Away Live on stage, surprisingly good and fascinating. And then
02:02:42
Speaker
The very last one here is Metalocalypse Army of the Doomstar. Metalocalypse has been around quite a while. This was made in 2023, and it's based on the Adult Swim series, which is not technically anime, but it is definitely anime inspired, so that's why I'm leaving it in here.
02:03:04
Speaker
This is a sequel to Metalocalypse the Doomstar Requiem from 10 years ago. So I do recommend if you go take a look at Doomstar Requiem because I've never seen Doomstar Requiem and watching this I was thoroughly lost. It took me a minute and a little bit of internet research.
02:03:23
Speaker
kind of fill in some of the blanks. So don't do what I did. Definitely go ahead and grab the original. But it is definitely in the vein of Mecha. It is a Mecha series, and even though it is technically not anime, we can probably put it in that genre. It belongs there stylistically and artistically and thematically.
02:03:48
Speaker
And with that, we are done. A lot of great anime there. Hopefully we'll be getting more as they ramp up production again on all this great stuff from Sente Library and lots of really interesting anime titles that are being released literally this week in theaters, which will be on until literally soon enough. We'll see in a few weeks.