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DigiGods Episode 249: New Year, New Groove
58 Plays1 year ago
The Gods ring in 2023 with new anime, Jackie Chan and House of the Dragon on 4k, Hogan’s Heroes on Blu-ray and an unprecedented obit-palooza.
DigiGods Podcast, 01/24/23 (M4a) — 69.5 MB
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In this episode, the Gods discuss:
- 200 Meters (DVD)
- 3 Films by Mai Zetterling (Loving Couples, Night Games, The Girls) (Blu-ray)
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Ancient Aliens: Season 16 (DVD)
- And Just Like That… The Complete First Season (DVD)
- Andy Richter Controls the Universe: Complete Series (Blu-ray)
- Beyond the Boundary (Blu-ray)
- Big Time Gambling Boss (Blu-ray)
- Black Adam (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Borgias: The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
- Carole & Tuesday (Blu-ray)
- Chaika: The Coffin Princess (Blu-ray)
- Cooley High (Blu-ray)
- The Deer King (Blu-ray)
- Dragons Forever (2-Disc Special Edition) (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Dunwich Horror (Blu-ray)
- Emergency Declaration (Blu-ray)
- Evil: Season Three (Blu-ray)
- The Executioner Collection (Blu-ray)
- Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya 2Wei! (Blu-ray)
- Fear (DVD)
- Free Puppies! (DVD)
- Girls Und Panzer Der Film (Blu-ray)
- Good Girls: The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
- Groundhog Day Steelbook (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Gunbuster the Movie (Blu-ray)
- Gundam S Destiny - Collection Two (Remaster Project) (DVD)
- Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song (Blu-ray)
- Halloween Ends (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Highlander (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Himouto! Umaru-Chan R (Blu-ray)
- Hogan's Heroes: The Complete Series Box Set (Blu-ray)
- House of the Dragon: The Complete First Season (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- House of the Dragon: The Complete First Season - 4k Steelbook (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The House of the Lost on the Cape (Blu-ray/DVD)
- Humanity Has Declined (Blu-ray)
- Ida (Blu-ray)
- Imitation of Life (1934) (Blu-ray)
- Invaders from Mars (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Invisible Witness (DVD)
- JFK Revisited: The Complete Collection (Blu-ray/DVD)
- Just Because (Blu-ray)
- Kinmoza! (Blu-ray)
- Kinmoza! Pretty Days (Blu-ray)
- Kinmoza! The Movie (Blu-ray)
- L'Innocente (Blu-ray)
- The Last Bookshop of the World (DVD)
- Listen to me girls, I am your father! (Blu-ray)
- Love, Election and Chocolate (Blu-ray)
- A Man Called Ove (Blu-ray)
- Michael Haneke Trilogy (The Seventh Continent, Benny's Video, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of a Chance) (Blu-ray)
- Miracle (DVD)
- Missing (Japan) (Blu-ray)
- Monthly Girls' Nozaki-Kun (Blu-ray)
- Moonage Daydream (Blu-ray)
- Origins of Hip-Hop (DVD)
- Paul Taylor: Creative Domain (DVD)
- Peaceful (DVD)
- Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Time (Blu-ray)
- Players: Season One (Blu-ray)
- Ponette (Blu-ray)
- Prey for the Devil (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Princess Principal: Crown Handler 2 (Blu-ray)
- Rental Magica Collection (Blu-ray)
- Revue Starlight the Movie (Blu-ray)
- The Roundup (Blu-ray)
- Sakura Trick (Blu-ray)
- Santiago, Italia (DVD)
- Say Amen, Somebody (Blu-ray)
- Sex & Lucia (Blu-ray)</
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Transcript
New Year Greetings and Awards Season Overview
00:00:11
Speaker
Happy New Year and Happy 2023, everybody. We are back. It's been a few weeks. Lots going on. Happy New Year to you, Tim. Indeed, indeed, indeed, indeed.
COVID-19 Concerns at Award Events
00:00:23
Speaker
2023, awards season well underway. A couple of our organizations have already done their thing. Neither of us were there. We didn't go to either. We didn't go to either the Critics Choice or to the LA Critics. I lost the critics at all. Mark went to both.
00:00:39
Speaker
Mark went to both. Mark is newly married and he's trying to impress the new wife. So he's dragging around the fancy events and stuff. What's funny is all of those plays, and there were a few events prior to that. And every single one of them were just COVID hotspots. And I'm like, I knew it.
00:01:00
Speaker
People weren't showing up the Critics Choice Awards. Both Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason got COVID, I guess gave it to each other. And who else? Oh, Michelle Pfeiffer came down with it. It's not killing people anymore. People still don't want to get it.
Tributes to Recently Deceased Icons
00:01:16
Speaker
So anyway, Tim, we have also had an unbelievable, like truly, it's like we did the last podcast, we were complaining that people weren't dying at a Fast enough clip for us. And then suddenly, everybody dies.
00:01:29
Speaker
Here's the list. You tell me where we start. In fact, one was just as I was coming to the end of the show, we had another one, which you may not have heard about yet. Here we go. Pele. Barbara Walters. Adam Rich. Pope Benedict. Owen Roysman, legendary cinematographer. Exorcist and Tootsie and on and on and on. Anita Pointer.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yes. Vivian Westwood. Yes. Tatiana Petites, otherwise known as just the great supermodel Tatiana from the Freedom video, George Michael. Jeff Beck. Yeah. Lisa Marie Pressley. Perfectly ludicrous. Yeah. Gina Lola Brigitte. Gina Lola fucking Brigitte. Yeah. And then just within the last few minutes, Edward R. Pressman.
00:02:23
Speaker
Yeah, Ed Preston. I did that. I was looking here and it popped up there and 79, you know, just, just, you know, and the thing about, I used to relate to him all the time when I was doing, you know, junkets over at the Four Seasons because Ed produced all the movies in Hollywood.
00:02:41
Speaker
He was at every junket because he was either a producer, executive producer, or something on everything. American Psycho, Dust Boot, Decro, Wall Street, Badlands. You name it, going back for probably, what, 40, 45 years? 40 years, easy 40 years, yes, since he was in his 30s. He's old school. He's one of those old school producers that just
00:03:02
Speaker
Cranked them out and and they were interesting every time, you know, bad lieutenant, right? I mean, he was just he always had his fingers in something really interesting and really, really unusual and novel and and always very commercial. And yeah, I mean, you know, like, I mean, it's it's it's it was so sad to me. The World Cup ended.
00:03:20
Speaker
on just, you know, kind of a low note for me because France lost. But my boy Mbappe still, you know, got a hat trick in the World Cup, only the second time that's ever happened on the men's side. First time since 1966. That's worth something. And then of course, for Christmas, I got an Mbappe jersey. My daughter got an Mbappe jersey.
00:03:42
Speaker
We now have father-daughter matching Mbappe jerseys to annoy all of the kids at school who wear the messy jerseys. So there is that. And then Pele died. Oh, man.
Pele's Legacy in Soccer and Society
00:03:53
Speaker
And the thing about you and I, or I, anyway, I don't know why I keep dragging you up this mountain. I'm old enough to remember when Pele was a very young player and spent some time here in the United States, you know. Yeah, at the Cosmos, New York.
00:04:06
Speaker
And, you know, I didn't put you in the early 70s, what, middle 70s or something like that? Kind of mid to late 70s, yeah. He more or less retired from, I mean, his whole, you know, it's fascinating. He, like, Messi is primarily known, even though he's from Argentina, he's known as a European player because he's played in the European leagues this whole time. He plays for Paris Saint-Germain right now. He's with Mbappe. He and Mbappe are on the same team right now in Paris. He played for a long time, you know, at Barcelona. So, I mean, he's known as a European
00:04:33
Speaker
player. Pele never had that chance because he played for Santos in Brazil. And when the European League started
Influential Women in Media and Cinema
00:04:41
Speaker
calling and offering him money, the Brazilian government matched their offer. They took money out of the public purse to pay Pele to keep him in Brazil because he was such a national icon. He was so important for the sport, but also for young black players.
00:04:58
Speaker
because it was the road out. He was an inspiration for a whole class of people, for a whole racial class of people in Brazil, for whom soccer then became a driving hope and an aspiration. And he's just one of the great figures, not just in sport, but of all time. I mean, there's that famous Ronald Reagan moment, right, where he said, hi, my name's Ronald Reagan. I'm the president of the United States of America, and I don't need to introduce you because everybody knows who Pele is.
00:05:26
Speaker
Which is one of those great self-deprecating moments. But Pele, he's one of the great iconic figures of the last 100 years. I mean, the only person ever to win three World Cups made a movie, made a really good movie in Victory.
Challenges of Child Stardom
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah. In Stallone. Yeah. Yeah. There's this weird moment that I associate with Pele, a movie called Vision Quest.
00:05:53
Speaker
I remember the wrestling movie. The wrestling movie, Matt Modine, and then young, young Matthew Modine, and all the years off, Ron Cox, all these young, Linda Fiendino. And there's a moment in that movie when this guy that Matthew was working with in this kitchen at this hotel where he's making burgers is talking about Pele. And watching Pele run down the field and leap into the air and flip upside down and kick a ball into a soccer net.
00:06:21
Speaker
and how the entire stadium went insane and how it was insane that any human being could do that. But he not only could do it, he did it all the time. It was just an easy thing to run past all those people, all the way to one of those plays where he would just run the length of the pitch.
00:06:40
Speaker
You're making people fall down and trip over themselves. Outrun everybody. Outrun everybody. And what warms the cockles of my heart, and I don't know what cockles are, but whatever they are, I've got them and they get very warm. Someone asked him fairly recently, everybody's always like, oh, that guy's the next Pele. That's the next Pele, like the heir apparent. And they ask him, are there any players in whom you see yourself today? And you know what his answer was? Killian Mbappe.
00:07:09
Speaker
No, because he says he's fast like I was, he just outruns everybody. And I just, you know, I love that kid. I just love that kid. So I think Mbappe will eventually surpass Bailey. I think he's going to win three World Cups at least. I think he's going to win two more for France, I'm hoping.
00:07:27
Speaker
So look look for it in four years i can't believe it's all about being healthy stay healthy and play it was healthy for a very very very long time when we went downhill we went downhill yeah but but he was like we was very healthy for a very long time.
Passing of Historical and Cultural Figures
00:07:44
Speaker
So Barbara Walters, you know, that was, I mean, you know, she was out of the public eye for a while. So I think we all assumed that that was probably in the offing, but that was, I mean, another icon, you know, shattered all kinds of boundaries. We have a whole generation or two of female journalists who are just busting it up at networks and national and local who are all inspired by Barbara Walters.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, just doing amazing things for a very long time. And not always particularly inviting environment. Barbara Walters and a long line of female journalists go all the way back to Nellie Bly. Yeah, I guess or further. And, and I don't know, dude, I remember, and again, this is one of those things where sometimes I don't mind, you know, having having been on the planet a little while, I remember her sitting down with Mike Tyson.
00:08:39
Speaker
I do too. All those post-Oscar interviews. All those post-Oscar interviews. That was it. In the biggies too, I mean, you know, Sadat, you know, I mean, that was, so like the queen, she bridged all of that, you know, but she was completely and totally approachable. I used to talk to Barbara on red carpets all the time. I feel like all of these deaths this week, the 20th century is finally dying.
00:09:06
Speaker
Well, there you go. That is actually quite profound, my brother. You should write that one down, because I'm definitely going to be quoting you. Gina Lola freaking Brigida, she won a little dingbat there, but you know what? The Gina
Oscars Speculation and Film Industry Insights
00:09:22
Speaker
Lola Brigida that we know and love and think about, extraordinary, exquisite. And I noticed she was a sex kitten and beautiful and all of that, but people do sometimes forget that she could really act.
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah. No, she was, she was a tremendous actress, uh, older by about eight years than Sophia Loren. So she was sort of the first great Italian actress, this great screen beauty who captured international attention. And she set the stage for Sophia Loren. She made it possible for Sophia Loren and you know, just so, so stunningly, perfectly beautiful in all those movies. And you can easily forget how good she was at what she did. Um, yeah, that's that one.
00:10:02
Speaker
But you know, 95, good, long life. Adam Rich, not a good, long life. No, Adam. 54. That kid. You know, this is the one that just kills me. I watched the, because Adam Rich is one of the kids in the closing child stars on your television song at the end of Dickie Roberts' child star, you know, the David Spade movie. They did one of those we are the world type things at the end, except it's all child stars.
00:10:31
Speaker
I'm watching that i'm thinking holy cow they're all almost all dead like they're truly it's really depressing to watch it you go okay
Fashion and Cultural Icons Remembered
00:10:40
Speaker
there if they're either. All dead or they're messed up like there are a handful of people still there like you know kamiki what's the mid.
00:10:48
Speaker
Jeff Conaway. Jeff Conaway is gone. Rerun is gone. You just one after another after another, they're just all gone. Then Adam Rich was one of the last. His line in that song is, eight rehabs isn't enough, but I've done and seen the most killer stuff. It's haunting because at 54, you go, oh man, did you really? You probably did. You probably fell off the wagon and there it is.
00:11:16
Speaker
Well it's he was from that generation you get five or ten years before after that was really that hollywood was really tough on. I'm in bay include the you know the chorus to chorus yeah exactly i got one of them the other one made out of a they include dana play no.
00:11:37
Speaker
It includes Dana Plato. It got Dana. It almost got Todd Bridges. Yeah. But Todd, maybe. Got Gary. Got Gary. Got Gary. Yeah. Got Gary. And, you know, and there's a hole. There's a hole. There's a hole. Todd Bridges is one of the last ones in that video who's still around. And I feel like I should write him a letter and just say, Todd, take a look at this video. Pay attention. Take care of yourself.
00:12:04
Speaker
Todd did have his corner, his mother. Todd's mother was my wife, Bridget's agent. Oh, I think I knew that. Todd's mother and his father, Jim Bridget, were agents back in there. If you were black, actually, between the late 80s and the early 90s, one of the Bridges was your agent. For at least a little while, Sherbert, our guy, is there Abe? Yeah.
00:12:32
Speaker
So he had that going for him. He had this, you know, he had this actual mother who was not one of those, you know, bad mothers. And she kind of drug his ass out of that before it ate him. Todd used to always be in those ABC athlete. That's right. It was the stars, but they would do athletics, like the Olympics. What the hell was that called? You remember that. Battle of the Network stars. Battle of the Network stars. I went to many of them.
00:13:02
Speaker
I got a lot of autographs. I was actually at the one where Rick Schroeder, who I would later become friends with, but where Rick Schroeder, young Rick Schroeder, he must have been 12 at the time or whatever, on the base on the softball dunk. Who do you want to put in the softball dunk? And God bless him, he broke the rules and said, I want both Heather Thomas and Heather Locklear. And he dunked him. And I was standing like 20 feet away and I thought,
00:13:29
Speaker
Schroeder's my man. Two Heathers, one of which made it out and one of which didn't. Oh man, anyway. So Pope Benedict, not much to say they're not an actor, but you know, high profile passing.
00:13:45
Speaker
Yeah, and then what, 600 years, a thousand years, something ridiculous. Yeah, first one to resign in like 600 years. Owen Roysman, the legendary cinematographer who shot so freaking much. I mean, you know, The Exorcist and Tootsie are the two that I keep coming back to, but, you know, Pelham one, two, three, taking a Pelham one, two, three. I mean, so many other great movies, just, you know, all New York stuff, right?
Cinematic Nostalgia and Era Reflections
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah. That's just horror.
00:14:13
Speaker
He captured New York and it's crazy because when we were in New York last summer, you know, I was walking around and getting like, you know, taking selfies of myself in front of like various spots, like brushed tea room. Where's Tootsie? Then, you know, going over to, you know, like three blocks away is where they shot, you know, the exterior day of the jackal. I'm like, oh, that's fine. And at a certain point I realized I'm like, you know what? Owen Roysman shot like every location that I've been to today.
00:14:39
Speaker
Except for Ghostbusters. I was the only one on my little tour of that part of Manhattan. But it's like, you're like, wow, Reusman really was the man who captured New York at that time. It was amazing. Such a great DP. Great guy. Anita Pointer, you know, we're down to one Pointer sister now. And that's sad. We're down to one BG as well. And that makes me very sad. That makes me feel old.
00:15:06
Speaker
Well, look, what did you call it? The 20th century is dying before our eyes. Right, right, right there. I don't know. And in a weird way, it just is all very sad. But in a weird way, I feel so, I guess, call it privileged. And I suppose every generation will feel this way about their generation. To have all of these people that we're talking about, even these
00:15:29
Speaker
She was younger than me. Adam Rich is younger than me. But I watched Aydus enough in 1977 when it came on. I watched that kid at the beginning of his career. There was no Adam Rich and now there's an Adam. I remember when Lisa Marie was born. I remember it. I remember it being on the cover of the Inquirer. I remember that photograph of Elvis.
00:15:57
Speaker
Somehow, if you've literally, these things have literally been a part of your existence, they just sort of matter more than just a pop culture kind of way. Do you think, and I know it sounds craven and insensitive to even say this, but we have to, you know, this is our job. We do make these speculations. Things happen and these things do matter. Does Lisa Marie's passing in any way
00:16:24
Speaker
help Elvis's Oscar chances because they literally like yesterday was when the polls closed for Oscar nominations. Now we know Elvis is going to get a pile of them. It's going to get Best Picture. It's going to get, you know, a whole bunch of nominations and Austin Butler is going to get a Best Actor nomination. So the question is, does this now help that film's chances going into the awards? Of actually winning. Of actually winning. They're winning Best Picture. Winning Best Picture is wide open right now.
00:16:52
Speaker
I think so too. But my gut still tells me that there are a lot of folks out there that just really, really love Top Gun. And I think Top Gun is going to get a nomination. Yes, it will. And there's something about the Oscars, the Academy that I feel like knows that we need to go big. Oh, they do. They know that. We need to nominate and have win.
00:17:21
Speaker
Not that they can control who wins, but nominate a really, really big movie that millions and millions and millions and millions of people saw and are rooting for and really like a lot. I think that the Oscars ultimately are going to be the evening of Tom Cruise. That would be something.
00:17:40
Speaker
And then it wouldn't bother me at all. I got other favorites, but I love Top Gun. And I've been doing those little Oscar buzz things for the LA Times. And Austin and Elvis have been in my mix at the top. Does the passion of Lisa Marie, is it going to get that sympathy vote?
00:18:04
Speaker
I think Austin definitely, definitely, definitely is going to win Best Actor. Yeah. I think so. And then he's going to give a lovely speech that will include something beautiful about Lisa Marie Preston. That's my prediction. I think you're right. Vivian Westwood, probably not that familiar to movie people, but huge, huge factor in punk and creating kind of a punk look, making it mainstream. So that was like a legendary designer person.
00:18:34
Speaker
Tatiana Petites, Tatiana who was how most people knew her. I mean, you probably know her mainly from the George Michael freedom video where she's there with all the other supermodels and just looking spectacular. I went early to breast cancer as they often do when you see it. I always get terrified when I see a famous woman very successful and beautiful and then they die in their 50s. And it's just, I know it's one of those female cancers that they're just,
00:19:02
Speaker
just are so devastating and that's so sad. Jeff Beck, let's just close on Jeff Beck because a lot of people, one of the great guitarists, top 10, possibly top five of all time. I was watching some Jeff Beck things online the other day, just in awe of what he was making that guitar do, like Eddie Van Halen, although not quite as showy away.
00:19:27
Speaker
But it's like you're like how are you even getting that sound out of a guitar i don't understand you are more guitar guy you know that whole world really well i mean talk about jeff back for a second well jeff along with jimmy and eddie and are the top of the the folks who be became drove me to want to play the guitar and what jeff did that was particularly extraordinary.
00:19:51
Speaker
is that he played a pure electric rock and roll blues, jazz, whatever genre you want to talk about guitar. Jeff plugged a cable into his guitar and his guitar into his amp, and he was done, and he turned it up loud. You never saw Jeff walking around the stage stomping on a bunch of pedals.
00:20:12
Speaker
and stuff like that used to do back in the day. You know, you got all that kind of stuff and, you know, today running it through the computer. I can know, you know, somebody like, who's, who's YouTube's guitar player? Who's name? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, you know, he runs his stuff through all kinds of, and it's beautiful and I love it, it's fabulous. Jimmy used to have fun with that, you know, the wah-wah's and clapping sometimes would get a little interesting. But Jeff, no, he plugged his guitar into his amp and turned it up loud.
00:20:48
Speaker
It's just, you know, and it's just, I mean, it really amazing sounds that just came out of that guitar. I don't know. I mean, we've lost so many great guitars. It's kind of there. There's sort of, I mean, Jimmy Page is still around. Yeah, Jimmy's clapping still around, but we've lost, we've lost Page. We've lost Prince. We've lost Eddie, obviously. Yeah. It's gone. Yeah. It's,
00:21:15
Speaker
And the thing of it is, and I know you would know this, but a lot of people don't. It's not like we're making great guitar players. Guitarists aren't the thing it was when you and I were kids. Everybody wanted to be a... But it's not really anymore. Who's that kid?
00:21:37
Speaker
smashing pumpkins. He's a very good guitar player. Oh, yeah. And the kid, a couple of the kids who play. Look at me, the kids. These people are all 50 now for the Foo Fighters. Pat McPhaney over at the Foo Fighters and John Fichante over at the Foo Fighters. Beautiful guitar players, but they're all 50.
00:21:57
Speaker
I want to give a shout out to the young man that you've been sending me videos of. How old is Ryder? Oh, Ryder. Ryder is six years old. Ryder B. Goode. G-O-O-D-E. Yeah, if anybody wants to look up his Instagram. Yes, go look it up and look at some kind of way I feel like we should pull a link or something because that six-year-old kid plays drums like my dad.
00:22:26
Speaker
It is that this is a writer be good he's he's basically a drum prodigy is playing playing all around town place live he's six years old he plays with adults. And he said he's a clock he's younger he's classmate of my daughters and you know it was I for it and he's the neighbor of some friends of ours and he first fell across my radar. At the school talent show which is you know if you've ever been to an elementary school talent show.
00:22:49
Speaker
It's an elementary school talent show. Kids come out and they sing a song and some kid will come out and tell some really silly jokes and everybody kind of treats them with a courtesy laugh. And then there's some cartwheels and some hula hooping and it's an elementary school talent show and parents are happy. And then the curtains open up and there's fog and you're like, okay, what's this gonna, and there's this little blonde kid sitting behind some drums. You go, oh, isn't that cute?
00:23:16
Speaker
Six-year-old is gonna play some drums and then next thing it's like it's it's like you're it's like it's you're watching Keith Moon. It's insane. It's just shredding the drums. You go, how is this even possible?
00:23:31
Speaker
It's like, unbelievable. And then at the end, he's got his headband on. At the end, he's like lifted both of his sticks in the air, comes to the edge of the stage, pulls his headband off, throws it into the crowd of parents, and then jumps off the stage like he's jumping into a mosh pit. Funniest thing ever. This kid is like a boy. He's a heavy metal Mozart. That's why I call him a heavy metal Mozart. Amazing. Ryder, be good. He's great. He's just terrific.
00:23:57
Speaker
So, all right, well, let's get going on some movies and I'm going to just roll through some foreign stuff. It's been a while since we've really covered a good chunk of foreign stuff. So I'm going to roll through some of this stuff and just make some recommendations that people might want to pick up.
00:24:12
Speaker
Great old Japanese classic here that's probably not on a lot of people's radar from a fascinating new label, Radiance. This is Big Time Gambling Boss by the Japanese director, Kosaku Yamashita, or Yamashita, however you want to pronounce it. Yamashita is my preferred
00:24:30
Speaker
I prefer spelling you know this is just an absolutely terrific late sixties japanese new wave era. Japanese genre film i think it's absolutely terrific if you like that whole that whole yakuza moment that whole samurai moment big time.
00:24:52
Speaker
That's right. Made in the 60s, set in the 30s, but it's an absolutely terrific genre film. It's right in that pocket of all of those samurai and those gangster movies that were made during that time. Big time gambling boss from Radiance. Look for more really cool stuff from them. Don Lee, not a bad action guy on his own, kind of a heavy set guy for people who kind of followed his career.
00:25:18
Speaker
This is a Korean film. It's a Korean cop film. He stars in The Roundup, which is out from cape light. This is a good, solid knockoff of what they used to do in Hong Kong, what they still do to a limited degree in Hong Kong, but Korea has picked up the baton. It's a good, tough cop story there.
00:25:42
Speaker
Silvio from Music Box Selects. This is by Albert Berni and Kentuckier Oddly. This was a 2017 hit at the South by Southwest Film Festival. It didn't get a huge theatrical release from Music Box, who usually gets a little bit of a profile.
00:26:04
Speaker
But this is a very very strange movie and it's based on a series of avant-garde vines, those little movies by Albert Bernie. And it's all about this gorilla in Baltimore who became ridiculously famous, it's a totally bizarre thing, it's got a commentary on it, some deleted scenes, really really just bizarre and fascinating.
00:26:37
Speaker
You gotta see it. I'm not gonna give anything away. It's weird and hilarious and funny and totally eccentric, and it speaks to our whole social media-driven moment. It really does. Got a movie here called Missing, which I also missed.
00:26:57
Speaker
Shinsou? Yes. Okay, yeah. I thought this was from the show. It was a very, very powerful film. It is, right? I mean, I missed this one when it was released. I don't even think I heard it on the show. Go ahead and talk about it for a second. Well, it's a very strong film about this young girl and her father, and the father is this guy who's having all kinds of problems, and he goes missing. She goes looking for her father. Meantime, there's a serial killer.
00:27:20
Speaker
uh... roaming about uh... radio reports and everything it's going on there father is involved with that serial killer is very small uh... in a particular kind of way uh... and how these stories all sort of weave themselves together is what's so powerful that that that that that young girl's name i'm not gonna i'll leave i'll leave all that up to you uh... it's just extraordinary in this movie and so is giro sato the god plays her father's really really
00:27:46
Speaker
Interesting weaving together of a father story, father-daughter story with a serial killer story. It's pretty intense stuff. It's pretty intense stuff. I also got a really interesting film here. This is from Distrib Films via Icarus Films Home Video. This is called The Invisible Witness. It's an Italian film, international co-production, but it's Italian language.
00:28:16
Speaker
Really, really, really, I could see somebody remaking this in Hollywood or even turning it into a series. It's fascinating. It's a murder mystery, it's a thriller, it's definitely procedural, but it is so deeply, deeply psychological. And it's about this guy that's a really, really wealthy Italian businessman. And he finds himself,
00:28:44
Speaker
basically waking up at one point next to the body of the woman he's having an affair with. And there's all kinds of interesting artifacts and evidence and it's about
00:28:58
Speaker
really trying to reconstruct what happened, get to the bottom of it in this vertigo, Hitchcockian kind of way. But it takes these fascinating twists and turns, and it just goes into really unusual places. And I could see somebody really, really, I mean, look, forget about all this, you know, glass, whatever, Brian Johnson stuff on Netflix. Something like Invisible Witness is for real. It's really, really intense.
00:29:24
Speaker
We also have a Jet Li double feature here. A couple of classic old Jet Li films that Eastern Light has brought here in a double feature. Fist of Legend and Tai Chi Master. Fist of Legend of course is Jet Li playing the same character that Bruce Lee played earlier in his career and legendary Chinese hero who
00:29:46
Speaker
holds it down against the Japanese, and then a Tai Chi master with Michelle Yeoh, who's about to get an Oscar nomination, possibly a win. A very loose telling of the story of the guy who created Tai Chi.
00:30:01
Speaker
was not a fighting art at the time, but nonetheless, they did. Beautifully young Michelle Yeoh. Oh my gosh. Such fun stuff in it. It's so fun. Tai Chi Master is a great movie. I remember when it came out. Fist of Legend is great too, but it's more, you know, less wire work, more real fighting and whatnot. Yeah. A movie called 200 Meters by Amina Naifa. This is from Film Movement.
00:30:25
Speaker
This is a Palestinian film, takes place in the West Bank. The title 200 meters refers to the distance between his wife and his children who live in Israel.
00:30:40
Speaker
he has to use a work permit to get to them and it's really, it's a fascinating film, it's dramatic, it doesn't overly politicize the situation but it does humanize it and I think it's really well worth seeing. It's a really, it's utterly fascinating film. It has a bonus short film on it as well but it's really solid, 200 meters, well worth watching if you want something that
00:31:03
Speaker
story that you don't often see. The Student and Monsieur Henri or Mr. Henri by Yvonne Kalberak. That is oddly enough, it's not a French film. It's a, no, I'm kidding. Of course it's a French film. This is also from Distrib and Icarus. This reminds me a little bit of Nellie and Monsieur Arnaud, which I love so, so dearly.
00:31:24
Speaker
uh it's it's kind of in that same thing clod busser who's just still so wonderful um plays this this crusty old guy and he just doesn't like uh his son's girlfriend and uh so he he he concocts a
00:31:42
Speaker
to bring another young woman into the picture to break up his son and his relationship. Anyway, this winds up being funny and poignant and just such a sweet film. The Student and Monsieur Henri, really, really good. And Claude Basset, who's just, he's fabulous. And then, you know, the young lady, Noémie Schmidt is really good. I'm looking forward to her doing some stuff in the future too, because she's just a great young actress. Let me hit a few more here.
00:32:13
Speaker
We've got the last bookshop in the world, which I found to be absolutely charming by Mac Racks. Oh gosh, I mispronounce his name every time. Rinnekangas, something? I don't know. Anyway, this is a Finnish-Spanish co-production. Did you see this by chance?
00:32:33
Speaker
I saw that one. Yeah, I forget who was on Film Week this week. Anyway, this is a really, really cool documentary that's all about the disappearance of bookshops and bookstores. It's quite poignant, but it's interesting. It's a wonderful tribute to literature and physical books and why you probably should focus a little bit on some paper.
00:33:00
Speaker
Not something that will, you know, the battery will run out at some point. The Witch, the other one, there are too many movies called The Witch, and I lose track of which ones are connected to which ones. But this is a Korean film. It's a science fiction action multi-genre hybrid. The film that came before this was The Witch Subversion, which I did not see, so I had to kind of reconstruct my understanding of that.
00:33:23
Speaker
This is really, really well done. It's not about supernatural witch stuff. It's a little deceptive. It's about the witch program. It's a whole- Secret laboratory type stuff. Yeah, it's secret lab stuff. This girl who's part of it and trying to rescue her, and it starts to feel very stranger things at a certain point.
00:33:47
Speaker
you know, 11 and all that kind of thing. So some great CGI, great effects, really intense action. As long as you understand, it's not like a witch casting spells and brewing a cauldron, the witch, the other one.
00:34:01
Speaker
Got another, let's see, another one here from, another from Distrib and Icarus, the wonderful Emmanuel Berco stars in Peaceful, which was screened at the last Cannes Film Festival out of competition. This is mainly known because they, this is one of the most, you know, Catherine de Neuve doesn't act a lot anymore and she occasionally comes out and when she does, she's just as magnetic and amazing as always. And,
00:34:29
Speaker
This is effectively the story of a man played by Benoit Majimal and his mother played by Catherine de Neuve and their struggles with her augmenting illness. It's really intense family drama. Emmanuelle Barcode is a beautiful job staging this and directing this. Terrific film all the way through. Great cast, beautiful script. It's called Peaceful, appropriately enough.
00:34:57
Speaker
Another, let me just do a few more here. You see you have a man called Ove.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, I want to get to that. Yeah, let's let's let's let's jump ahead to that, because that's that has an adaptation right now. I mean, I happen to have reviewed that, you know, in 2015, thereabouts with Andy, our boy Andy Klein on the radio and then total happenstance. I'm on the radio a week or two ago with Andy Klein. And we were reviewing Tom Hanks and a man called Otto.
00:35:29
Speaker
I'm like, man, that was really, really weird. Interesting thing about that movie and the gala movie, Tom Hanks, this movie, I swear to God, if you put them in and you start them at the same time, they are almost scene for scene, the exact same.
00:35:45
Speaker
movie, which is perfectly great because the first one a man called love was a older guy. His wife has died. His job has sort of aged him out and he's ready to tap out. He lives on the street. He's this grumpy old guy. This couple moves in next door with a couple of kids and they're quirky and they sort of get involved in his life. He gets involved in their life.
00:36:10
Speaker
And before you know it, he doesn't want to kill himself anymore. So it's one of those. And they're literally exactly the same.
00:36:20
Speaker
That is, you know, I have not seen Man Called Otto, so I'm glad you have. But a lot of people are not liking Man Called Otto, so which one? I love a man called Ove or however you want to call it. I think it's great. I was Oscar nominated. It's really fun. It's very sweet. It's very Scandinavian. I thoroughly enjoyed it. But what's your take on how the two films compare?
00:36:41
Speaker
I can't see how you wouldn't like Otto if you didn't like Ove. They're literally the same movie. A couple of changes. Something to do with his father and this and the other thing. But other than that, you're walking through the exact same movie. And I'm sorry. I think Tom is really, really good in the Otto movie. I haven't seen him scowl so much. Not even in a war movie, does he scowl as much as he does in that movie. So interesting. People are not into it. I kind of dug it.
00:37:10
Speaker
A very, very sweet film from 1996, which makes me sad because this is the Jacques Duion film, Ponet, and I just thought that this movie got the cutest girl in the world, Victoire Tivisol. Sweet little four-year-old in this movie, it's that little girl, she loses her mom, and then she gets bounced around the family, and it's
00:37:37
Speaker
It's such a sweet, touching movie. And what's so compelling about it is that this little girl is such a good actress at four. Like so good. She's just so compelling. And I thought this was such a wonderful thing. It's finally out on Blu-ray from Keno Lorber. And it has a great, you know, Sam Dayan does another great audio commentary on it. And then I realized, oh my goodness, this girl is now pushing 30.
00:38:06
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm like, holy cow. No, she was four at night. She was four in 1990, you know, 695, 96, yeah. Man, it's unbelievable. So, yeah, she, I mean, she's over 30. She'd be over 30 now. So, I mean, that's just, she probably has a ponette of her own. Anyway, ponette, P-O-N-E-T-T-E, such a sweet film, such a beautiful, pure little movie.
00:38:31
Speaker
which you know the skantes a little chante is also out from film movement classics uh... jennifer o'neill costars along with laura antonelli and jen carlo jenini uh... great movie just a great movie of this content is uh... a filmmaker i think is going to continue to sort people's esteem over the years he made such just
00:38:51
Speaker
just beautiful, beautiful floral, you know, opulent movies. They're just beautifully shot, beautifully acted, just meticulously made. And Lino Cente is, you know, an adaptation of a very, very famous Italian novel.
00:39:07
Speaker
And it was Visconti's last film. You know, it takes place in the thick of the Italian aristocracy and it's just a wonderful, one of those wonderful kind of 19th century torrid romance and drama things. It's really good stuff. I want to talk about a Romanian film here that I had a very close experience to, Miracle by Bogdan George Apetri, who teaches in New York.
00:39:34
Speaker
Columbia, I believe. So this screen in Los Angeles, and I had the great privilege of doing a Q&A on both nights of the opening here in Los Angeles, did one with Apetri, he was here for the Saturday night screening, and then I did both nights with Ioana Bugarin, the
00:39:52
Speaker
the star of the film who is luminous absolutely luminous this is the second film in a trilogy but you don't need to all see them it's kind of a keselowski like trilogy of things that think that movies that are sort of not a single story they're connected thematically and by some interlocking characters and this is this is a fascinating fascinating powerful film i'm very hot and cold on a lot of Romanian movies i think the whole Romanian new wave thing gets a little bit
00:40:19
Speaker
precious in the hand of some filmmakers. The death, I don't think. Death of Mr. Lazarescu. I kind of love that, but yeah. Well, in this one, this is a story of a woman who runs away from a convent
00:40:38
Speaker
may or may not be, you don't know at the beginning of it, may or may not be a full nun, might just be a woman who's starting the path to become a nun, because there's a process. And something terrible happens to her. And then the story kind of takes a second half where there is an investigator who is responsible for focusing on what happened to her. So I leave that with you. It's kind of bifurcated that way.
00:41:08
Speaker
There's something near the end, and I wish I could talk more about it because it was a huge part of the Q&A, but there's something that happens near the end that is some of the best filmmaking you will have seen in years. It is really extraordinary. And to hear Apetri talk about it and how they did it was really fascinating. I mean, done completely without CG, just so that people understand. It's a moment, it's a long shot. I'll tell you that much. It's a long take.
00:41:35
Speaker
But it's all done in camera. And it's one of the most fascinating single take things I've ever seen. And you'll see why. Because it's not the camera moving all over creation. It's very subtle. And you almost wouldn't even notice it. So a really, really great movie. Miracle from film movement. I think the third film in that trilogy has just been completed.
00:41:58
Speaker
and the first one has not been released here so anyway but look for you want to be a big thing she speaks perfect english i just wanna point out wonderful actress perfect english
00:42:11
Speaker
Also, Sex and Lucia, the unrated director's cut. It was already pretty steamy in the rated cut. You and I saw this together. We saw Sex and Lucia at the same screening. I remember that. Yeah, this was absolutely terrific by Julio Metem. Yeah, this was a great film. One of the great foreign language films of, geez, it's been a while, hasn't it?
00:42:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, the last 20 years. But anyway, this is great. This is from Music Box as well. It's got featurette, interviews, cast and crew, trailers, the usual. But it's a beautiful, Paz Vega is wonderful in it. This was her breakout role. And it's got beautiful Mediterranean locations. And it is deeply erotic. And the unrated cut is even more so.
00:43:03
Speaker
Tim, let's talk about Fear for a second. The Bulgarian film, which was by Ayalo Hristov. Did you see Fear by chance? Let's see, which one are we talking about here? Fear is the Bulgarian film, Oscar submission for Bulgaria. And it's about this, it's all black and white, beautiful black and white.
00:43:28
Speaker
But it's about this woman who lives close to the Turkish border in Bulgaria and she bumps into an African refugee who's trying to make his way and he's not in great shape. And so she helps him out, gives him something to eat and gives him place to stay. And then they just kind of have this
00:43:50
Speaker
It's this fascinating fish out of water thing at that point, this guy from Africa and this small Bulgarian village. It's really very interesting. I'm not big on Bulgarian cinema because there are so few Bulgarian films. But I'm like, all right. It's a little bit like a touch of Romanian and a little Hungarian influence in it. And you can see a little Turkish influence in it. But it is otherwise a really, really interesting film. And I never thought about it. But if you think about it,
00:44:19
Speaker
All the refugees from from africa and from north africa and even the middle east anybody who's arriving in on the mediterranean shores most of them are going through france or through italy or through greece. But if you're going through europe bulgaria is gonna get a fair chunk of them to think about bulgaria as a transit place for refugees but it's fascinating film.
00:44:41
Speaker
Emergency Declaration is another Korean film. This is like a Korean version of Airport and Die Hard, all wrapped together with a little bit of COVID thrown in there. Basically, it's really well done, by the way. This thing is insanely well done. This thing is fast.
00:45:10
Speaker
But you think of something like this shootout scene in Heat, Michael Mann's Heat. There are four of those in this movie. It opens to one of those. And if you're as old as I am and you either pay attention to history or spend some time in the military like I do, you know the incidents in this movie. This movie alludes to several incidents that happened between North and South Korea
00:45:36
Speaker
And that actually happened in the early mid-80s, including the defection of a North Korean fighter pilot to South Korea. It was a big deal. I remember that. I was in the Air Force when that happened. We scrambled fighters. So there were two or three of those
00:45:53
Speaker
And then you have these two agents in this sort of, you know, who's the sort of deep cover super mole, you know, working for the North Koreans? Is it me? Is it him? It's all that kind of stuff. Again, set against the background of these actual historical moments. And the guy who stars in this, if I'm not mistaken, has something to do with the, he's one of the
00:46:15
Speaker
What is it, Squid Game? He's one of the Squid Game. Yeah. I mean, pretty much everybody in here, you're going to go, OK, that's the guy from Parasite. Yeah, that's the guy from Parasite. Who's there, everything, right? OK, they're from Squid Game. Like, if you've been watching anything Korean for any period of time, you're going to recognize everybody in this movie. It's like, if Erwin Allen were Korean, this is what he would have made. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, effectively, it asks the question, what would happen
00:46:43
Speaker
if a psychopath infected himself with a virus for which there is no cure and then decided to spread it among all the passengers on a plane. What do you do? Do you let the plane land? I mean, what happens at that point? And how do you help the people on the plane? I mean, it's really, it's a great
00:47:05
Speaker
It's a great contrivance and you're dealing with the Korean government, you're dealing with the journalists, you're dealing with all the people. Suddenly this just taps so many different places and so many lives. You're on the plane, you're off the plane, you're in the press conference, you're back on the plane, somebody else is dying. It's so intense. It's just so freaking intense. Implausible, sure, but who cares?
00:47:32
Speaker
And then let's see, I'll just wrap out the, pull a couple of these here.
00:47:40
Speaker
We're trying to do some few things. So the Academy Award-winning Ida, I also want to make mention of that as we're coming up on the Academy Awards here, Pawel Pavlakowski's wonderful Ida. And a Polish film is again in the mix. And Ida, it was a wonderful award-winning black and white Polish film. Tremendous, beautifully shot movie, takes place in 1962. It's about a young woman who's a nun.
00:48:06
Speaker
you know, trying to reconnect with her roots and what happened to her and, you know, the possibility of her Jewish parentage. Anyway, really great film. Beautifully, beautifully made. That's from Musicbok. That's on Blu-ray. Definitely want to check that out. And then lastly, the great Italian director Nanny Moretti.
00:48:24
Speaker
who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for The Sun's Room. A couple of films out from his catalog as well, from Film Movement Classics, is Caro Diario, Dear Diary, which was at Cannes one of the years that I was there. Hilarious. It's basically Nanny Moretti starring in his own movie on a travel log. It's very funny, and it keeps going back to the Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, which is a movie he hates, and he keeps hating it.
00:48:50
Speaker
There are a lot of references to henry porter serial killer there cuz he just can't stand it very very funny and then santiago italia which is more recent film this is the new york film festival and the vancouver film festival and this is a
00:49:07
Speaker
He is very politically active to car Dario not so much on that end but he's very much part of the italian left and he lets that hang out every once in a while and this is one of those films this is his,
00:49:24
Speaker
his look at what happened in Chile in the 1970s, and with Pinochet and all of that, horrible, horrible stuff, and who was responsible for what, won't rehash the history, but it's an unusual film from Nani Moretti, Santiago Italia, that delves into that episode, which not even Chile has really delved very well, but he sees in it
00:49:51
Speaker
a mirror of fascism in Italy. So he sees kind of the reverberations of what he and so many other Italians loathe from their past, echoing into another country in the recent past. And so he decides to tackle that. It's really, really a fascinating film. Lots of firsthand testimony and whatnot. So really, really cool. Anyway, so there's that for foreign language today. Wow.
00:50:18
Speaker
drop into some 4K or criterion. Either one, and I also popped open some documentaries here, some interesting stuff there, but yeah, wherever you want to go. Let's start with, let me get these two arrows out of the picture and then we can talk about the criteria. Oh yeah, the execution of the collection and the Dunwich horror. Yeah, so the Dunwich horror.
00:50:41
Speaker
You know, I had to, it's been a minute since I saw this. So I had to kind of get back into it again because it's one of those movies that I, excuse me, I didn't have fond memories of.
00:50:57
Speaker
You know, it's like it's an old, it's Daniel Haller who directed it. No, 1970, this movie goes back. Yeah, this is 1970. Daniel Haller who directed it is a Corman acolyte. So he kind of brings the whole Corman school with him to this and it feels very much like a Corman thing.
00:51:20
Speaker
I had not realized until I rewatched it that Curtis Hansen had written this. When he was calling himself Curtis Lee Hansen. He dropped the lead at a certain point. Curtis Hansen, one of those guys that came out of the Corbin factory and became much more legit. I still don't quite like it, but for different reasons now that I didn't like it then. Do you have any opinion on the Dunwich horror?
00:51:44
Speaker
Well, it's funny because you and I are, but in 1970, the film, you and I are involved in a documentary that's about a thing called Cosmic Horror. Yeah, that's right. Yes. And you know, I won't give anything or anything, but this is one of those films, Cosmic Horror film, the Necronomicon and all that kind of stuff.
00:52:06
Speaker
that's going on. Look, what I like about this film is Sandra Dee and Dean Stockwell and Ed Begley. But it's really sort of a classic film out of that style of horror film that was being made, you know, in the late sixties and early seventies. So yeah, you know. See, I originally didn't like it because I was too young at the time and it scared the daylights out of me. It doesn't scare me anymore. And I like exploitation film. I think quite a lot. So all of that. But here's what I didn't like. I didn't like seeing Sandy Dee in this.
00:52:36
Speaker
You just gotta ruin Sandy D where I was like, you know what? I didn't, when I saw it before, I didn't really know who Sandy D was. And then I fell in love with Sandy D and all those Gidget movies. And now I see her in the Dunwich horror and I'm kind of turned off. You're getting all oozed on. Tally Shire too. I forgot she was in this movie. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's got, it's got a, it's got a great cast. Anyway, a terrific bunch of extras on this thing. There's an audio commentary from the creators of Arkham County, Guy Adams and Alexandra Benedict.
00:53:04
Speaker
conversations, interviews, all kinds of great stuff. There's a really cool interview here with science fiction and fantasy writer, Ruthanna Emery's, who wrote the Innsmouth Legacy series, who talks very much to the whole cosmic horror thing. There's the
00:53:28
Speaker
an analysis of the score by Les Baxter. Really interesting stuff. So all the extras really make this thing worth watching probably, I would say. And then the executioner collection, this is Sunny Chiba. We've got a lot of Sunny Chiba coming out lately. We have the Sunny Chiba collection of films not too long ago. Sunny Chiba starred in
00:53:52
Speaker
in these two rather shockingly violent movies. Really pretty intense. And it's all out now in a single set. Does it hold up? I guess if you're a Sonny Chiba fan, which I am, but I mean, it's really, you're not watching this for the plot or anything. I mean, it's all kind of standard procedural stuff. You know, 70s era narcotics trafficking and,
00:54:20
Speaker
you know, mercenaries and all this kind of stuff. But you're watching it to just see Sonny Cheeba just bust people up, crack heads and break bones. That's all you're watching this for. And I'll tell you, I think this is better than the Street Fighter movies by far.
00:54:36
Speaker
Sonny, Sonny fought with anger, not with not with style. Exactly. Things that, you know, Bruce Lee or no, Sonny was just mad. This box is just along with the box. It's basically like a fireball. Yeah, that's it. And Sonny's face right in the middle of it. And then he's got the nine chips in his face. And he's just got this look in his eyes. And that's the way Sonny fought.
00:55:02
Speaker
Everybody, as if he was literally just going to rip them to pieces. And I loved it. It's funny because, you know, when I want if I were watching this with a crowd, I'd be cheering left and right. When I watch it alone, I'm much more subdued because I don't want to freak my family out, especially my daughter, who's scared by everything. So I'll sit there with, you know, kind of the headphones on and something horrible happens. You go, oh, well, that was brutal. And then, you know, somebody will walk in the room and I quickly push pause.
00:55:29
Speaker
That's how that goes. So, let's get these criterions. Let's start off with Cooley High. Oh, Cooley, Cooley, Cooley High. Interesting, though, because you and I are also involved with the project that may involve the great Michael Schultz. Indeed. Director of Cooley High, among many other things. Who is still a force? Oh, man. No, of course. Nearly five minutes later.
00:55:50
Speaker
And, you know, Michael Michaels, producer on Black Lightning and all kinds of stuff, just very important. So Cooley High, written by the wonderful Eric Monte, he gave us it gave us Glenn Turman. It gave us Lawrence Hilton Jacobs. Garrett Morris is walking around Cooley High. A very, very, very, very, very, very, very young Robert Townsend is walking around Cooley High. Steven Williams. It's a story made in the 70s, but set in that during that sort of
00:56:19
Speaker
That middle 60s Chicago period with all that great music, you know, Marvin Gaye, all that kind of stuff. So the soundtrack is quite a thing from Coolie High. When I saw this movie in 1976, when it came out, something like that, you know, I was 14, 15 years old.
00:56:36
Speaker
And in the black community, this movie was just the most important thing out there, that soundtrack of the story. And it's the kind of movie that when I saw it as a teenager, my parents saw too, because it was literally their generation that the movie was about. Which was smart, which is smart.
00:56:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. You're pulling those generations together in one film. You know, you and I have talked about this too because this is often roped in with Blaxploitation, which is kind of a catch-all for all films either made by black filmmakers or featuring black actors or both made between about 1968 and about 1978, 79, if you kind of rope in penitentiary on the far end, you know, maybe 1980 on the outside.
00:57:21
Speaker
But a lot of those films are not exploitation films. And Cooley High is one of them. Cooley High is not exploitation. Shaft is not exploitation. Shaft is not the learning tree is not. So a lot of these films, and you just don't belong under that categorization, even though they're lumped in because they're from the same moment and because a lot of the same people show up in them and work on them. But Cooley High is a legit drama.
00:57:47
Speaker
a legit snapshot of a moment in time a legit period film and a really really fascinating movie from the period that is absolutely survived the test of time and you know unusual film i think for shultz because he was you know he made so few films at that time but they're all different.
00:58:05
Speaker
Yeah. And look, I hate to say this, but I will anyway, because I didn't know it for a very long time. I certainly didn't know it when I was 14, 15 going to see this movie. Michael Schultz is black, all right? His father was German, and his mother is black. But Michael Schultz is relatively speaking, you know, like a mom or whatever, but black.
00:58:25
Speaker
And it's sort of an important thing because for a very long time, like I said, I didn't realize that he was relatively speaking in the context of what we're talking about, black, until like the 80s. You know, and because I just assumed and then, you know, and but yeah, so there you have it, you know.
00:58:46
Speaker
Got a couple of multi-film collections from Criterion here. Michael Haneke trilogy, which always scares me. Because as I've grown to like Michael Haneke, I still don't like a lot of his earlier films. And this has the seventh continent, Benny's video, and 71 fragments of a chronology of chance on it. This is the director-approved Blu-ray collection of those three films.
00:59:08
Speaker
And you know these are important in his body of work. I still prefer obviously his later films. I'm trying to look at some of these which all come from the like 89 to 94 period. I'm still trying to look at these through revisionist eyes and see if I can
00:59:27
Speaker
not be absolutely horrified by how cold and just cruel his view of the world is. And I'm, you know, I can kind of get there a little bit. They still leave me colder than I would like. I'll say that. But anyway, there's a wonderful documentary on here about his career, which has all kinds of great interviews with it from all, you know, great people he's worked with, Juliette Minos, and Ms. Billy Pare.
00:59:52
Speaker
Oh, the thinest of our times thing. Yeah. It's a wonderful, wonderful doc. And, you know, otherwise, I mean, it's, you know, it's a pretty cynical view of humanity in these three films. But Benny's video is a particularly interesting kind of film to look at in hindsight. We also have a wonderful set here of three films by Mai Zetterling.
01:00:17
Speaker
And Maya Sederling, one of the, you know, probably the only great female Swedish director of note over the last 50 years or so. These are all from the early to late 60s, 64, 66, 68. The films are Loving Couples, Night Games, and The Girls. And Maya Sederling really is still very influential, not talked about enough.
01:00:44
Speaker
a pioneering director on many levels, not just breaking gender barriers, but also because of the issues that she tackled, which are mostly feminist issues and things that had to do with a lot of changing moors in the 1960s, especially in Sweden.
01:01:01
Speaker
And, but they still the film still hold up. They're really, really still very powerful and really worth discussing. So a lot of good stuff on here. Great actress too. Fantastic actress too. Yeah, that's Yeah, for sure. For sure. It came out of acting like a like, like, like, leave omen. Yeah. So yeah, yeah.
01:01:21
Speaker
A lot of great interviews on here, great 1996 documentary that brings back together all of the original performers from the girls. And there's even some behind the scenes footage that Swedish television shot on the set of Night Games, which is pretty cool. So yeah, really, really, really good set. Three films from Mai Zetterling.
01:01:45
Speaker
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the Terry Gilliam film. Yeah, on 4K. 4K, yeah. 4K, Baron Munchausen. I wonder how does that look? But there's a lot of stuff going on in that movie, a lot of makeup, a lot of special effects. I wonder if the 4K, you tell me, is revealing more than we would like.
01:02:14
Speaker
Yes. Because Terry always did his visual effects kind of retail, if you know what I mean. When you watch Time Bandits today, it's still really awe-inspiring. When you watch Brazil, it's awe-inspiring how he did those visual effects in a pre-CG era. But if you know what's going on, for example,
01:02:39
Speaker
If you know that Jonathan Price in Brazil when he's fighting the giant samurai, turn the podcast off right now if you don't want this spoiled for you. If you know that the close-ups are Jonathan Price waving a sword, wearing armor, and that the long shots are a little person in armor, that he's playing games with you, right? That he's staging that with a little person to change the perspective, well, then you pay attention to it. You go, oh, that's a little person.
01:03:10
Speaker
And it's immediately obvious. So, you know, a lot of he didn't really, he wasn't forward thinking in terms of I'm going to do some visual effects that will stand the test of time. And yes, it does. But that said, I still think that is crazy. And as much of a failure as this movie was, it is a fascinating film and a fascinating failure.
01:03:31
Speaker
And I like watching it in 4K. I think it's beautiful when it's beautiful, even if it's crazy and nonsensical when it's crazy and nonsensical. I'd rather enjoy it at the time. Look, I had forgotten that she's a little girl at the time, Sarah Polly, who of course now is going to get an Oscar nomination for director. Women talking and whatnot. I forgot that she was the little girl in this movie.
01:03:57
Speaker
So many folks there, Eric Idle and Jonathan Price. Robin Williams, of course, running around the movie and staying. I'd forgotten how many people just saw her walking around this movie. They come in, they do whatever they do, and they're gone.
01:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's true. Terry Gilliam once said, I made Baron Munchausen for my daughter. And I think this film was like $50 million at the time or some outrageous amount. Yeah, Terry was notorious for going way over budget. Yeah.
01:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, Todd Haynes Velvet Underground from 2021. Just a few years ago, Todd Haynes decided to give us a look at the underground 1960s scene in New York.
01:04:46
Speaker
which has been plumbed by a few films, but not quite like this. Got a lot of performances I don't think anybody's ever seen before. You're getting all Lou Reed and Andy Warhol and the whole thing. I mean, it's a scene. He really takes you into the middle of it. I don't know that I came out a better person for having seen this, but I certainly came out a more informed person. And I like,
01:05:10
Speaker
I like seeing, you know, like there are people who show up here, Jonas Meckis, who we met at a LAFCA evening one year. Yeah. It's a history. It's a history. And of course, it connects back to his film, you know, in a certain sort of way, Velvet Goldmine, back in the 90s. And you can probably even work your way through. I'm not there. So it's obviously thematically a thing that he is into and for a good chunk of his life.
01:05:36
Speaker
And then lastly, from the criterion angle of things, imitation of life, the fantastic, beautiful John M. Stahl original imitation of life, not the 34 film, not the 59 film. Yeah, this is the 34 film that inspired the other one. And in many respects, I feel like this is better. This is Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers.
01:06:04
Speaker
deeply, deeply moving in hindsight. I've got to say John Stahl was not a, one of the great directors of the 30s that I kind of, you know, centered my life on, but really it is, it is an amazing look at motherhood. If you sort of, I mean, most people know the Cirque film. That's the one that they really focus on, which is a beautiful film and very much of its moment and had a lot to say about that point in time. But for 1934, that's what I keep coming back to. I'm like, wow, that is,
01:06:33
Speaker
This is an unusual, I mean, I can see that this is a movie that kind of grows out of the depression in many respects, but it feels bigger than that. I don't know about your thoughts. Oh, I mean, the Freddie Washington, of course, who plays the, you know, the fair skinned, a green eyed daughter.
01:06:51
Speaker
of Louise Bier. People thought she was white. She wasn't. Freddie was African-American. She was actually African-American. People thought the white one was playing that part. No. Freddie was an extremely fair-skinned, green-eyed African-American woman and perfectly appropriate for the part, unlike the 1959 movie.
01:07:16
Speaker
No, I think this is because it's 1934. 1934 is five years before my dad was born. Because it's 1934, it resonates in a completely different way because that was a completely different time. By the time we get to the 1959 movie, where we are post-row, not row, brown versus education.
01:07:41
Speaker
So the politics in the nation are all different. This is 1934. The politics are not different at all. So yeah, in that way, it's a completely different sort of film set at a completely different time.
01:07:56
Speaker
out this is based on a novel which was ahead of its time as well. I mean a best-selling novel. So I mean there are a lot of really interesting contradictions about the culture at that point in time. The extras on here are a few but really, really interesting. There's a new introduction from Imogen Sarah Smith.
01:08:12
Speaker
who's a contributor to a John M. Stahl book. There is a new interview with Miriam Petty, who wrote Stealing the Show, African-American performers and audiences in 1930s Hollywood, very specific. She talks about Freddie Washington, Louise Beavers, and what they meant at the time. And what I think is fascinating, there's a separate trailer on here.
01:08:34
Speaker
Because audiences were segregated at that time, although you wouldn't know it by watching babble on the news. Just don't seem to remember that. But audiences were segregated. So they they cut a completely separate trailer for black audiences.
01:08:48
Speaker
And it's really, really interesting. It gives you a glimpse into 1930s marketing and everything that they were doing right and wrong. And it's quite interesting to see how they elected to market it. But I also want to point out that when this was made, this was produced by Carl Lemley, the founder of Universal.
01:09:08
Speaker
And good on him for getting behind this. Carl Lemley was the first great studio mogul to die. He died soon thereafter, didn't make it into the 1950s like the rest of them. But very forward-thinking man and good for him. That studio chain still working its way out into the world. I'd forgotten that Alan Hale, the skipper, is in this movie. Very young. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is Alan Hale Sr. That's his dad.
01:09:33
Speaker
That's Alan Hill, seeing us as Alice's dad? That's his dad, yeah. Oh, yeah, just because I would be Junior. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's Alan Hill, seeing you there. I mean, they're spitting, spitting image of each other. They could be twins. No, Alan Hill Senior, if you remember, was Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:51
Speaker
Well, let's go to 4K. Straight off the bat, because I am a Jackie Chan fanatic, I'm just going to tell you. The 4K of Dragons Forever is amazing. It is absolutely wonderful. I am so grateful for this. I love this movie. Every previous DVD or Blu-ray that I have, it has not been great. Man, this is just absolutely spectacular. Cannot be happier.
01:10:15
Speaker
with how this turned out. 4K of, and it comes with a booklet, a really great booklet as well. But Dragon's Forever is just a great three brothers film. If you don't know the three brothers, it's Jackie Chan and Sam O'Hong and their childhood
01:10:34
Speaker
buddy from school, Yun Bu. And then there's also, you know, Yun Wa, who was also at the school with them, who plays one of the bad guys. He's always puffing on a cigar in this thing. There are some of the great fight scenes of all time in any Jackie Chan movie in this. It is epic and wonderful.
01:10:53
Speaker
And this is just, I mean, Dragon's Forever is a true, true classic. Cherry Chung is in this. She's just gorgeous. I love it. This is one of the great Hong Kong New Wave favorites. And it comes loaded with extras in this thing.
01:11:08
Speaker
It's got an international cut. I mean, just it doesn't really matter. The fight scenes are all the same. Don't worry about all the different cuts. That's for nerds like me to deal with. But yeah, it looks absolutely terrific. Tons and tons and tons of interviews and behind the scenes stuff and everything that you could ever want. If you're a Hong Kong movie, not like I am, Dragons Forever on 4K is a dream come true. Tim, Black Adam.
01:11:33
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. We had this conversation of you and you. I think it was you, me, maybe Ray. Because Black Adam, really Black Adam comes out. Everybody hates Black Adam. Everybody says it. And I went and looked at the numbers and looked like Black Adam was kind of doing OK. The reviews are notoriously bad. The question came down to, and I watched it. I finally got around to watching it. It really is not a good movie. It's not a good movie at all.
01:12:00
Speaker
in a bunch of different ways, particularly narratively, but it's also visually a very unattractive film. Very unattractive film. And I'm interested to see what it looks like in 4K because, you know, I didn't see it there. And so the question became, is this a hit or miss for Duane? And I don't know, the numbers are still vexing to me because it still looks like it's making money to me when I look at the numbers like right now.
01:12:31
Speaker
I'm thinking of the studio makes this much money back and it's not like big numbers in terms of some of the other big films, but it's making money. It's making money, but it still exists in the perception of the world as a flop and it's also literally not a good movie.
01:12:53
Speaker
I think this was such a misguided attempt to try and reboot a new DC trajectory independent of the Snyderverse. And they try to start it up with the Justice Society. The Justice League is tainted, so let's now try the Justice Society. And let's put Dwayne Johnson in the middle because he's a big star.
01:13:14
Speaker
what you're gonna put doing just a little movie let him be doing johnson doesn't really get to be doing johnson here i mean black and i don't even know is is that popular grade of a character i mean it yes it connects to shazam and shazam with but doesn't have shazam's with.
01:13:29
Speaker
And then you got Pierce Brosnan kind of miscast, and you got a couple of young stars in here who are a little bit miscast. And Hawkman, do we really want to go Hawkman? Because Hawkman didn't even really survive past like the first half season of the TV show, right? So, you know, and it just seems to fall prey to that idea that lots of action scenes are a substitute for plot.
01:13:59
Speaker
Problem and CG and CG. Yeah. Anyway, there's not going to be another one. We know that now because Walter Hamada got canned and there's a whole new new team over at DC. But anyway, there's Black Adam. What else we got here on 4K? Halloween ends. Did you see Halloween ends?
01:14:15
Speaker
I did, I did, I did. Is it really going to end? You know, look, Halloween has been ending for quite a while now. And as much as I am a big, big fan of Jamie Lee, who's probably hopefully going to get nominated for Best Supporting Actress for a really fun performance and everything everywhere all at once, as much as I love Jamie.
01:14:37
Speaker
This series of movies has really milked it. In this last series of the series, which I think are all David Gordon Green, if I'm not mistaken, right?
01:14:49
Speaker
have really been irritating to me. And this is what's irritating about this one in the last two or three, is that they seem to want to attempt to explain it all. And the explanation that they have for it, the reason for Michael Myers and this family and what is it, all these 40 years of
01:15:08
Speaker
of mayhem is us, we, the people. Because we here on Earth, Americans or whoever, are such bad people because we harbor such war and this and that. We are the thing that keeps reanimating Michael Myers. You know what, David Gordon Green, you can kiss my ass, all right?
01:15:29
Speaker
and bullshit. Actually, don't blame this crap on me. No, Michael Myers is just some evil thing. He almost exists in the context of that cosmic arc. He is because he is because he is because he is. And you can kill him whenever you want to kill him. And frankly, it's really sort of silly. And I think at this point, and I wouldn't have thought this over the last, you know, all of my career, at this point, it's really kind of insulting.
01:15:56
Speaker
It's insulting. Michael Michael Myers exists because you guys can keep making money from making these movies. And that's what's going on here. And that's the only thing that's going on. Yeah. And don't try to make it and don't try to make it some sort of existential societal reflection on bullshit Jungian. No, no, no. Just kill the guy and let the movie die.
01:16:19
Speaker
What I love about the Halloween franchise is that William Shatner got to anchor yet another franchise without ever showing up in any of the movies. I just hope he gets a royalty man. I hope he gets a piece of that mask. That melted mask. Yeah. Deleted and extended scenes on here and that is that. In betas from Mars. Which one?
01:16:41
Speaker
This is the classic 1953 invaders from Mars. Ah, yes, yes. This is out on 4K from Ignite Films, features a restored version of the film from the George Eastman Museum. And you know what? It's one of those sci-fi Cold War analogies
01:17:04
Speaker
that just still works, I guess. I always loved it.
Evolution of Film and Television
01:17:08
Speaker
I still do. The colors just pop off the screen. They do. Movies from no other era. Those early color films, whatever stock they were using back then, 1953, it was just coming out of a black and white
01:17:21
Speaker
a couple of black and white decades and they had saturated stocks and it was really, really great. But yeah, you know what? I mean, it's got all of that post-World War II early atomic age paranoia and all that stuff. It's just a wonderful kind of Cold War allegory in the same vein as things like Invasion of Body Snatchers and Day of the Earth Stood Still and all those other great sci-fi movies from that moment.
01:17:46
Speaker
And, you know, there's a ton of really, really terrific stuff on the extras. This was directed by and production designed by William Cameron Menzies. We should point out one of the great all-time designers in the history of Hollywood. So it has this amazing look to it.
01:18:03
Speaker
And the design is just fantastic. My favorite thing here on the extras is this feature that features Mark Goldblatt, the editor, along with John Landis and Joe Dante, and Robert Skotak, the special effects guy, all of whom have these really interesting perspectives on the film. It's really, really interesting. And then there's John Sayles' introduction on here and just tons of other great vintage materials.
01:18:30
Speaker
Really, really great. And the 4K is fabulous. It's perfect. It's never looked more beautiful. Never looked more beautiful.
01:18:39
Speaker
It's Groundhog Day in that stack. Yep, right here. 30 year anniversary. We're into the 30 and 93. So this would be the 30 year anniversary. But this is not the, is this a 30 year anniversary release? Yes, it is. It is an anniversary tin. It is a steel book. And you know what? I mean, Bill Murray's been taking a lot of heat lately. I'm not getting any of that stuff.
01:19:05
Speaker
Bill Murray is Bill Murray. He's a perfectionist, and he's pissed off a lot of people. But Harold Ramis, I miss Harold Ramis. Oh, wow. I miss. I miss. Ramis had a, he was an Oter, and we didn't realize he was an Oter. You know, Multiplicity is a movie that doesn't get enough credit. I love Multiplicity. I think that's just a fun film. Oh, the Ice Storm, when he decided to do a darkly comedic Ice Storm with Billy Bob, that's Harold. And he's in that movie, too.
01:19:34
Speaker
might be close to his last movie, but it's wicked. I'll tell you, I just, I miss him. I had this screenplay, which you wrote with Danny Rubin. I thought I was thinking something like that. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah. He wrote this screenplay with Danny Rubin, and it's such a smart movie. It's been imitated so much three times in the last couple of years. We've had, you know, knockoffs of this. I mean, even the Tom Cruise film with Emily Blunt, the title of which is Escaping Me Right Now, is basically- Oh, yeah.
01:20:03
Speaker
Oh, Edge of Tomorrow. Edge of Tomorrow. Even that is basically Groundhog Day. It's a big sci-fi Groundhog Day. You know, it was revolutionary. And God bless them. They've got the commentary. The Harold Ramis commentary just makes you miss him all the much more because you hear him talk about this. And it's just such a smart, agile filmmaker. It's got deleted scenes. They've got an actual thing on real life marmots and groundhogs. And I don't know that I needed that.
01:20:33
Speaker
But whatever, that's fine. And there's even a, it's gimmicky, but it's cute. Needlenose Ned's picture in picture track. It's a little gimmicky thing, but you know, Ned, Ned Ryan, it's, yeah. So anyway, and then you got the weight of time documentary on here, which is nice too. And it's a steel book, it's pretty great. So Groundhog Day, love the movie, still holds up. Tim, House of the Dragon, you been watching House of the Dragon?
01:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, I ran through it real quick. At the same time, the other one was at the Lord of the Rings. Let me see what's going on with these things. House of the Dragon is better.
01:21:18
Speaker
It's more consistent. I'm not a big, big, big Game of Thrones fan in the first place, right? I mean, I just never was. I watched some Game of Thrones, most of it. I think I eventually actually saw all of it. But, you know, I didn't live in it the way a whole bunch of other folks were. And this, of course, has said what? So many hundreds
Comparing Modern Fantasy Series
01:21:42
Speaker
of years. Two hundred years earlier. Game of Thrones time is like about, you know, 14 seconds.
01:21:52
Speaker
And it's more consistent than the other one, episode to episode, some really good performances. That prequel thing bugs me a little because I'm like, I know how it ends. I agree. I know how it ends. I know how it ends. So, you know, but I don't know. I guess people are digging it.
01:22:11
Speaker
Well, this is the first season. It comes in both a regular edition and a limited edition collectible steel book for people who care. The steel book is more narrow. It'll fit on your shelf if it's getting bloated. The others in a regular keep case, which is just a little wider. But HBO continues to go to the well with this stuff. We got another steel book here, which is an anniversary edition Best Buy exclusive.
01:22:36
Speaker
of Highlander. Ooh. Yeah, you know, I love that first Highlander film, man. I just love that movie. I was in France when this thing got released and, you know, Christophe Lambert, a huge star at the time, it was the year that he also did Subway, the Luc Besson film, and he won best actor for it. And man, did this movie just it was lines around the block. It was unbelievable.
01:23:02
Speaker
You know, the TV Highlander, not so much, but boy, this first film, notwithstanding the sequels, this first film, Russell Mulcahy, who's coming out of a music video directing career, you know, did a lot of- Just the soundtrack to this film. Just the soundtrack. Did a lot of splashy music videos, and he was the first music video director, along with Steve Barron, to kind of come out. Steve Barron and Russell Mulcahy were the guys. They had done everything.
01:23:27
Speaker
And okay he really really lit it up with this and then his career went nowhere after that i don't know what happened but a lot more of these. Yeah but still you know i mean the immortals and connery is great and lombard is great and i it chills me that they're talking about doing a remake of this thing cuz i just i don't know. Yeah they can be only one.
01:23:50
Speaker
Literally, it's literally in the mic. They should pay attention. Oh, well. Touche. And then the last 4K that we've got here isn't really worth talking about. We're going to make a message out of it anyway. It's Pray for the Devil, P-R-E-Y. Get it? It's a word play. It's a pun. Pray for the devil. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
01:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, this is just kind of a cheesy exorcisty knockoff with the novelty of, oh, you have a nun who wants to be the first female exorcist. Okay, I guess. I didn't know there was a rule against it, sweetie. I mean, you know.
01:24:33
Speaker
Anyway, apart from that, it's just pretty standard issue. It's moody. It's a little, you know, scary and whatnot. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, all the horror films today are very polished. Unlike, you know, 50 years ago when everything was just dirty and nasty and cheesy and barely getting by and it looked like they bought their film stock the day before. Everything now is very polished and high tech and great effects and tense and whatnot. So, I mean, it's got all that going for it. I just, I don't know.
01:25:00
Speaker
It's got Virginia Mets and it's got Ben Cross walking around it. They can act.
01:25:08
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, it's, I guess it's fine. Tim, some docs that you said you're looking at. Oh, yeah. Let me pop over. For one thing, I see amongst that stack, Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, which of course is a feature, lends the document to the explorers.
Cultural Impact of Music and Film
01:25:27
Speaker
But yeah, it's about Leonard Cohen. But it's about him during the time when, which took decades to write that song.
01:25:36
Speaker
Yeah. And the many, many, many more verses of that song than we generally speaking here. There are many verses of that song. And he sang different verses at different times in different places, recorded it with different verses. And it's a sort of an iconic song. It's an anthem. It's an anthem. I suppose it's become an anthem over the years, right?
01:26:04
Speaker
Look, there's a version of it that closes Zack Snyder's Justice League as a tribute to his daughter. It shows up in that way in so many films and situations.
01:26:18
Speaker
So yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything other than the movie with that movie? You know, not excessively. It's not really. It's pretty much just the movie. But, you know, it's a good film. We got another doc here called Free Puppies from First Run Features, which is really, really sweet. Is it an important documentary? You know, not really.
01:26:44
Speaker
It's about dogs and look, there are enough cats on YouTube. So, let go of the cats for a second and come and check out this movie shot in Georgia where you got a bunch of women who have kind of pulled together to, you know, there's no animal shelter there by. So, they're going to try to, you know, create a
01:27:10
Speaker
greatest, better situation for dogs in this particular area in Dade County. And it's a really, really sweet, wonderful, I mean, look, forget about what they're doing. It's got dogs, got cute dogs, tons of cute dogs. That's what you're watching it for, free puppies. It's beautiful. It's really, really beautiful.
01:27:31
Speaker
Oliver Stone also made JFK Revisited. This hasn't probably gotten enough attention, I don't think, because Oliver Stone can't let the whole JFK thing go. Forget about the JFK movie movie. This is a
01:27:49
Speaker
a mini-series and a feature-length film. The film is JFK revisited through the Looking Glass. And then the mini-series is JFK Destiny Betrayed. And it goes all into much, much more intense detail than the film obviously ever could. And there's a great audio commentary on here with Stone and James D'Ugenio. And this is all really intense. Whoopi Goldberg and Donald Sutherland narrate the film.
01:28:19
Speaker
But the miniseries goes into even greater detail, CIA, Pentagon stuff, you know, all of the, I mean, you know, the JFK papers still aren't out, Tim. That's the problem. What do you think is in there?
01:28:33
Speaker
And there was a date specific, well, good question, but there was a date specific after which, and if I'm not, you know, X number of years, I'm saying, you know, X number of years. They keep extending it. And they keep extending it. Yeah. And that's in their last one, you're waiting. I'm like, who's left to die? Who's left to die from? Well, who's left to die the entirety of the CIA?
01:28:57
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, really, is anybody left from the from the from the war and from the war? No, right. All this was the last one. Yeah, I just can't think of anybody left literally from that era.
01:29:15
Speaker
who was active and adult engaged in the business of what was going on then, who's not dead. So I just can't imagine why you would keep extending it. No, I don't know. It's a mystery. But people are increasingly, look, Jackie always thought that LBJ was behind it.
01:29:35
Speaker
Now that's quite a thing when the first lady thinks that the vice president is plotting to kill your husband like banana republic stuff now you know and then of course everything that we also know about pretty much most of the assassinations from that period are they all have.
01:29:53
Speaker
I mean they're all political assassinations but they all have big questions to them you know with JFK it's obviously not to rehash it all but right you know jack ruby is what throws that whole thing in the desert jack jack killing killing killing killing on tv the next day.
01:30:09
Speaker
Yeah, and the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald had, you know, traveled so extensively and then, you know, when you go to, we just had Martin Luther King Day, when you go to Martin Luther King's assassination, you know, James Earl Ray and you think, oh, he's just, you know, a redneck racist good old boy who had two passports. And, you know what I mean? Like suddenly there are all of these other
01:30:30
Speaker
these other things that make you think, okay, maybe there's a lot, maybe a lot of these guys are just stooges and they're being, you know. Well, they did that. They did that. And I know, and I know we're falling away from the actual movie we're talking about, but they did that all mock trial or mock investigation of the James Earl Ray, you know, killing of MLK. And it was, it was done on PBS. And it was, you
01:30:53
Speaker
You remember this was maybe the 80s, maybe the 90s or something like that? And they came to the conclusion that he unequivocally, absolutely, certainly did not alone kill MLK. And I forget who all the heavy hitters were, but former this and former that.
01:31:10
Speaker
And so, you know, and then we had so so yeah, there you go. It's yeah, no stone to get us back to what we're actually talking about. It has not let it go. And I think that's that's perfectly appropriate because they're the questions that still need questions. Yeah.
01:31:29
Speaker
Paul Taylor, Creative Domain. This is also from First Run Features. Kate Geiss made a wonderful, wonderful documentary that is a look into the creative process and everything about one of the great choreographers of all time. And it's really a wonderful look at just what
01:31:53
Speaker
choreography is all about, what dance is all about. We've got a lot of documentaries about choreographers and dance, but they're all different because they all approach it differently. Taylor's been at this for generations. 50, over 50 years. Over 50 years, close to 60 years, and maybe even over 60 years. He's probably not as well known as some others, but he's definitely more than influential enough.
01:32:20
Speaker
It's wonderful and you know dancing is just a visual of visual medium to begin with so it makes for a really terrific movie. Yeah, yeah, we have to talk about Nina and called Nina. Wicked 3D thing. Maybe five, six years ago. That was the vendors. Yeah, the vendors thing. Great. And there was a great one about the
01:32:41
Speaker
of the black choreographer. Just a year or two ago, that one. Yes. Yes. It'll pop in my head, but yeah. It will. Anyway, great talks.
01:32:53
Speaker
The story of film, A New Generation, Mark Cousins, who previously did the story of film, which is really pretty vain, but it's still interesting. What Cousins does is basically he has like these really elaborate theories about how films sort of represent a socio-political tapestry of our times and all these connecting themes and interconnecting concepts. And he takes you through this collage of his stream of consciousness
01:33:22
Speaker
and all the movies that get folded into it and sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever sometimes he's making connections that are profound and sometimes he's just grasping at straws and so you know you sit there in this case i mean and i covered this on film week i mean it's a long movie it's close to three hours long about two hours forty five minutes.
01:33:43
Speaker
and 97 films. He puts their clips of 97 films in 167 minutes. So do the math. You're pretty much close to, like there's a new movie being clipped every 90 seconds about. I mean, it's really this very elaborate thing. And yeah, sometimes it's a little bit crazy, but
01:34:05
Speaker
it's a it's his journey so you're going on he's not saying this is true this is just his opinion so you go on this amazing journey and you know you're connecting everything from black panther to gravity to moonlight mad max fury road and these all over the map
01:34:20
Speaker
He's very comprehensive, I'll give him that. Frozen even gets folded in here. I don't want you to cut into his take on these things, except for when he does this in these series of films. Sometimes he will find the actual connective thread, the through lines.
01:34:38
Speaker
through images even, right? So images, and then he'll take you from the images that he knows that a filmmaker experienced and then show you how that filmmaker then used those images in his film and then how the next, and how they juxtaposed them. And he can just walk you right through it. And those moments I really, really enjoy because you can actually see the hard connections.
01:35:05
Speaker
you know Scorsese loved Michael Powell, Michael Powell did this, Scorsese made a movie, he did this, this is not unlike the thing that Michael Powell did in those movies that Scorsese, you know what I mean? And you just walk through decades worth of filmmakers and there's a reason why the Palma movies look like Hitchcock movies.
01:35:25
Speaker
It's true. It's very, very true. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you. It's a little, I'm a little mixed, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A&E's Origins of Hip Hop documentary series, eight episodes is out and it's perfectly fine.
Critiques of Media Representation
01:35:41
Speaker
I don't know if it's as, you know, comprehensive as it probably could or should have been for eight episodes, but I mean, it hits some interesting figures. It's not the end all be all, but I mean, you know, it's,
01:35:52
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no. It's not even close actually. I'm not going to get ridiculous about it, but this needs to be much deeper. I look at the list of folks here. I don't even see some of the most important cats.
01:36:10
Speaker
Because a lot of what they're doing here is about cats who are on the mic, and a lot of hip-hop is about cats who are on the turntable, or cats who are the hype men, not necessarily. And a lot of those cats are not here. And so I appreciate it, but this does not go nearly as deep as it needs to go. It focuses a little too much on the 80s, for my taste. Oh, yeah. And you got to go back to 71, 72, man.
01:36:38
Speaker
I mean, where's the Grandmaster Flash, you know? Yeah, and cats. Anyway, I'll fly off the forehead. Moonage Daydream. Is that going to get an Oscar? And Grandmaster Flash is in the film, but the connections are not made. No, no, no. I was going to say Moonage Daydream. Is this going to get an Oscar nomination?
01:37:00
Speaker
Uh, well, yeah, the Bowie, the Bowie, uh, you know, I don't know, Brett Morgan's film. I deeply appreciated it and, and, and, and everything, but no, I don't think it's going to get an Oscar nomination. It's, it's, it's, it doesn't make my cut.
01:37:13
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't make mine either. I enjoy it. I'm not a huge Bowie nut, you know, but I thought it was perfectly fine. I feel like something more than, it's like, it's a little too fawning. It's a little too in love with Bowie and it doesn't really get to the meat of who he was. And I think it's a little superficial, but it's visually really, really pretty amazing. So as a tribute, yes. As a dissection, I would say no.
01:37:39
Speaker
Really quickly, I just want my Bowie story is when I was an usher at the Man's National Theater, first year in college.
01:37:48
Speaker
We showed Greystoke and we were the only theater in Los Angeles showing it, beautiful platform, packed house every weekend, it was just nonstop. And so one weekend there's a call that comes in from headquarters. We have somebody who's going to be showing up, like you reserve two seats in the back, they'll be showing up once the lights go down, please reserve those seats so that they can be escorted into them.
01:38:11
Speaker
Oh, all right. Okay, very good. Who do we know who? And one of the assistants, one of the assistant managers knew who and somehow caught wind and figured it out. She was losing her mind because she's a huge David Bowie fan. It was Bowie and Iman. And sure enough, you know, I'm sweeping a popcorn on the stairs like the movie's already started. And I look up, sure enough, Bowie and Iman walk right past me.
01:38:35
Speaker
The stairs into the end of the theater like that's interesting and then when the movie finishes i'm opening the doors outside movie is barely started finishing they come roll it like a limo pulls up they run right out of the end of the thing and it's like one thousand two one thousand three one thousand.
01:38:54
Speaker
It's like a Beatles crowd of people. Like you couldn't even get into the theater in the dark without people. And we'll get ripples through the theater like wildfire, you know? And next thing you know, there's a bunch of screaming people, boys and girls, all going nuts, chasing that limo down the street in Westwood Boulevard.
01:39:11
Speaker
1984, that would have been Bowie in that red suit. That's that Bowie. Post Ziggy. Post Ziggy. It was Bowie in the fabulous suit. Yeah. Yeah. China Girl. China Girl Arab. China Girl Bowie. That Bowie. Cool. Cool.
01:39:32
Speaker
Last couple of documentaries here, Say I'm Men Somebody from the Milestone Cinematheque Collection is just a wonderful doc. This was Oscar-nominated, I believe. Yeah, back in 82? Yeah. Yeah. I'm almost certain it was, yeah. Yeah, just an absolutely beautiful movie. Still totally just works. This is just a wonderful, wonderful tribute to gospel and
01:39:59
Speaker
everything that it represents in American culture, this transcendent form of American expression and singing, the way that it ties music to the church to to every every culture, but I just think it's a beautiful, beautiful film. Along along along along with jazz.
01:40:18
Speaker
One of the three original American music forms, jazz, rock and roll, and gospel. We actual Americans did that. And so, you know, it's just a beautiful film. And all these people, when I was a kid, people knew who
01:40:38
Speaker
you know, Thomas A. Dorsey was, you know, you actually could hear him on the radio. If you listen to gospel stations and stuff like that, and Jackie Jackson and Bertha Smith and all these folks, but you know, they sort of slip off into the, you know, into the ether a little bit.
01:40:55
Speaker
Let's wrap out with TV, shall we? And then at the end of the show, I'm going to let Tim go and take some time to just roll through the anime. We've got a ton of new anime come in. I'm not going to keep Tim locked up for that. I'm going to lock up all the listeners for that. But let's talk about some TV here. Anything you want to start on?
01:41:14
Speaker
What do we got here? Is any of this stuff new? The staircase, limited series. Is that a new thing? Although, if you got that Hogan's Heroes complete series close, I'd love to know what the special features. And I hope there's some special features on the Hogan's Heroes. There are. So there are select audio commentaries, which are fine. Who did we just lose? We lost one of the heroes. Yes, LeBeau. LeBeau.
01:41:43
Speaker
Robert Clary, Robert Clary, yeah. Who was Jewish and who lost family in the Holocaust. I mean, never really talked about it until later in his career. But yeah, we just lost Robert Clary. So we've kind of lost them. Have we lost them all now? Oh, Werner. Is Werner going? Werner's been going for a while. Yeah, Richard Dawson a couple of years ago, Bob Crane and that whole nutty thing that he got involved in. Ivan Dickson, we lost. Ivan Dickson, yeah, a couple of years ago, yeah.
01:42:12
Speaker
I think they're all gone. Larry Hoyle, yeah. Yeah, they're all gone. Well, you know, I mean, great series, kind of one of those amazing 60s shows that fuse things together. I mean, and there are a lot of them that did this, you know, that said, let's take some dramatic movies.
01:42:34
Speaker
And let's figure out a way like bewitched, for example. Bewitched is a very, very clever combination of the Jimmy Stewart movie, Bell Book and Candle. And my wife, the witch, right? It took those two movies.
01:42:50
Speaker
and kind of combined them, and they came up with Bewitched. It was very, very clever. And didn't have to pay any royalties because it's not technically based on them. And with Hogan's Heroes, they said, why don't we take Stalak 17, the Bill Holman film, and The Great Escape, and let's see if we can mash those things together. And sure enough, they made a comedy out of it, and it's fantastic. I can watch this show forever.
01:43:12
Speaker
And it's the making it into a comedy that's really, I mean, mashing together. And while still, there's an edge in this show. You know, there are missions, goofy, funny, yes, absolutely. There's missions and all that kind of stuff. And there's always a little, it might not work, it might not.
01:43:32
Speaker
And what I had not realized is, because they've got interviews on here with Richard Dawson, and the series co-creator, Al Ruddy. Oh, really? I didn't even realize that. I'm like, really? Al Ruddy? Like, godfather Al Ruddy?
01:43:48
Speaker
Before he was the godfather already. I had no idea. I know. So, you know, hats off to Al Ruddy, but what a just absolutely wonderful, wonderful show, you know. So many great lines. I still, this is how I know I'm getting old, is I still reference this?
01:44:05
Speaker
and only a handful of other parents at school will know. If I go, I know nothing. I know when the other parents are close to my age, start giggling. I'm like, sweet, Gen X-er. Thank you. Oh, you millennials have no clue. What a great show. So anyway, yes, all six seasons, I'm surprised didn't run longer, but ran long compared to a lot of shows during that period.
01:44:33
Speaker
I'm gonna waste a lot of time over the next few weeks doing that. Yeah, the staircase. Let's talk about the staircase, which was an original series for HBO Max.
01:44:43
Speaker
limited series, might have been turned into a longer running series, if not for the upheaval going on over there. This is on DVD, not Blu-ray. And it's all about a war veteran named Michael Peterson, and it gets into, well, I don't want to give this away.
01:45:10
Speaker
There's a, something happens that's tragic and it becomes a legal matter. Let's do that. Cause I don't, you need to kind of watch it to see what's happening. It's a lot of good performances. So much great performances. Great, great actors. You got Colin. Tony Collette. Michael Stuhlberg. Yeah. He's just, you know, and Patrick Schwarzenegger.
01:45:32
Speaker
Um, uh, which, you know, yeah, you give the kid as do, um, uh, though I hate it. Uh, and, uh, and, uh, you know, so that's, that's one of the things this has going forward. It's a very, very sort of moody and it's what's going on kind of thing. Yeah. Uh, because you know, the veteran needs a crime into the crime novelists and he's accused of killing. And then we, and we have to figure
01:45:52
Speaker
figure out what happened. Yeah. I mean, I think it would have done better as a longer series than a limited series if they had been able to continue it, but it was not meant to be. So, it's a limited series and isn't going to get a second season or anything. Well, it should have been. It's conceived, because you can tell that it was intended to be a longer series. It should have been conceived as a limited series, and then that way they could have tightened it all up.
01:46:17
Speaker
You know, right. You're right. And then aim at a target and go for it. But it's a little loose and it strings it out because it thought it had more time. Speaking of stringing it out and just like that, a new chapter of Sex and the City, the complete first season.
Revival of Classic TV Series and Audience Appeal
01:46:31
Speaker
I'm terrified that this is going to get a second season because.
01:46:35
Speaker
Really? Like, why? Why did they do this? Why? Are we done with this? Why? Well, they had all the movies. They had all the movies there, and you figured, and then you would string this thing. Look, I was a big original series, Sex and the City fan. Way back, me and Bridge, you know, she'd love that show, Sarah Jessica, you know, all that kind of thing.
01:46:55
Speaker
Stuff like that man and then the world's movies was actually okay i kinda tapped out on the series before i've heard and then after that the just kept streaming along and then this and of course there's the whole problem with you know kristen up north and everything you went down there with respect to this.
01:47:10
Speaker
Um, uh, and they had to, you know, do what they had to do in order to get his scares out of the show. But you're asking the question is why did they make it in the first place? Yes. You know, in the actual answer is this, because women of a certain age,
01:47:25
Speaker
Say no more. You know. And they will be serviced. They will be serviced. It's one of the reasons why the whole how Stella got her groove back thing is happening again with all of those women of a certain age again. And why the new movie 80 for Brady exists. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So I just want to say this about Ancient Alien season 16.
01:47:50
Speaker
He's sixteen aliens if you're going to work live today he would be a trillionaire. You know that it's just like it's unbelievable. I'm so sorry in season sixteen if you think that there is anything in season sixteen that you haven't seen in the first fifteen seasons. You are why there is a season six.
01:48:11
Speaker
So, so I came to this conclusion. I was my brother-in-law who watches a lot of this, you know, basically watches a History Channel all day long. I was watching some stuff over and, you know, seeing him, he's watching TV History Channel. And I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. You know, they're like examining, you know, Mesoamerican sites and whatnot. That's really interesting. And then like the last 20 minutes of the show, but who built them?
01:48:40
Speaker
And I'm like, are you kidding me? Are you seriously kidding me? And I realized everything on the History Channel, it basically has the same structure. Isn't this interesting?
01:48:55
Speaker
Why is this interesting? Because aliens, every show on that network is ancient aliens. The one called ancient aliens just happens to be called ancient aliens, but they're all ancient aliens. The most interesting thing about that show, ancient aliens, 16 seasons of ancient aliens, most interesting thing about it is it never once, not once is there ever an alien.
01:49:21
Speaker
16 seasons. They never find one. They post questions. I'm like, really? 16 seasons? You couldn't find just one? Okay. Are you ready for this segue? You know where you do find aliens? Star Trek Prodigy season. Which I love. I'm the Star Trek.
01:49:41
Speaker
track, you know, extensions. This is the stuff that's most fun. But hard, you know, the live, no, discovery, hit and miss at best. This animated stuff, I'm having a fabulous time.
01:50:03
Speaker
This is Lower Decks. Yeah, well, Lower Decks I couldn't really get with. It felt like the Simpsonization of Star Trek. I love that. But Star Trek Prodigy, OK, I love the original Star Trek animated series, the filmation thing. I totally got down with that. I really enjoy that still. Because it was like an extension of the original series. Oh, yeah. All the same characters. All the same characters and the voices. A little bit more high tech equipment. They could space walk in an energy suit.
01:50:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this is 3D animation. I feel like it's a little too jokey for me, but at the same time, it feels closer to that original animated series than something like Lower Decks, which is just, you know, totally gonzo comedy.
01:50:49
Speaker
So, uh, yeah, I kind of feel like there's, there's something interesting here and they're, they're onto it and maybe they'll do some more interesting things with this than what some of the live action stuff is. They do stuff like, you know, we get, we get Captain Jameway as a hologram.
01:51:06
Speaker
This whole camp. So you still got your captain. And there's a lot of that sort of pops up. It's very referential. It's fun that way. You get Captain Shikote and all that kind of stuff. Tons of extras on here. My girl Deborah Wilson is in that show, too. That's a big deal to me. Anyway, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
01:51:23
Speaker
Yeah. It's 75 minutes of extras. A lot of great stuff. Season one of Reacher on 4K. So Jack Reacher is a non-Tom Cruise character. Well cast. Very well cast.
01:51:40
Speaker
by a guy who's actually six foot five. And he played somebody in Titans, first season of Titans. He's more in line with the way the character was written in the books.
01:51:54
Speaker
than Tom Cruise. Yeah, ever was. Yeah. Yeah.
Diverse Storytelling in TV and Anime
01:51:58
Speaker
Yeah. Jack Rich is a big guy in the hole. And in all those, I read one or two of those. That's the thing that they talk about how Tom Cruise, they tried to get the camera low and shoot up and they would put them on Apple boxes or whatever the hell they were doing to try to make him seem like a bigger guy. But Tom Cruise is not a physically imposing person. He's just he's just literally not. And what I think is
01:52:22
Speaker
What's his name? Richson? Richson? He is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a name, but yeah. Alan Richard, something like that. He's a big guy. He's a big dude. What's interesting about this season is that this is based on an actual book. They actually took one of the novels and adapted it across the span of the first season, which I think, OK, that's solid, because usually you're taking a book and you're saying, how do I pair this book down to fit it into a movie?
01:52:50
Speaker
Or you're saying let's base a series on the book but not really be faithful to the book let's just go off and do it they actually were very very faithful and it has a good feel to it i don't know if they can keep that going for the run of the series but it's certainly a good try. Season three of evil.
01:53:09
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, we talked about seasons one and two. Yeah, you know, Mike Cole having a really interesting career trajectory. We talked about seasons one and two. I feel like season three is kind of hitting its stride. I think this is an interesting show.
01:53:28
Speaker
Didn't that show move networks or something? I think it was ABC. What did it do? It moved from CBS to Paramount+. And when it got to Paramount+, it got darker.
01:53:44
Speaker
Because CBS is CBS, and all these networks have a subtle way that they do things. But over on Paramount, so whatever season it was, it got way edgier and darker, sexier, the whole sort of sexual dynamic thing between Mike Coulter's character and Katya Herbert's character. She's sexy as hell, by the way. And Asif Mandiv in the show. That whole thing got sultrier. So that move allowed it to become a more interesting show to me.
01:54:13
Speaker
I agree. I agree. And I don't watch it a lot, but whenever I catch it, it's like, all right, I'm, you know, I like where this is going. And I like what Coulter's doing with his career. I really do. I thought he was going to be power man for the whole, for, you know, like 10 years. And that turns out that, you know, getting the, uh, getting that series canceled, uh, kind of helped him make some more interesting. Oh, uh, Luke Cage, Luke Cage. Yeah.
01:54:36
Speaker
Uh, the complete series of good girls, which I missed completely when it was on because too much television these days. But, uh, you know, I, uh, okay. I watched a little bit of this. I kind of get where it was coming from. Uh, I had no idea that this, I mean, this went through a four year run and I did, and I blinked and missed it.
01:54:56
Speaker
So, um, four years is about right for what this show does. It's, uh, it's basically, um, four moms trying to make, you know, a difficult situation, uh, by, you know, they resort to a life of crime, basically. Um, it's, but it's a little tongue in cheek. It's got kind of, um, you know, Thelma and Louise vibe to it without, without the rape and the,
01:55:22
Speaker
the existential terror. And it's not breaking bad. It's kind of like a lighter, comedic-y breaking bad with moms is maybe a better way of putting it. But anyway, it's pretty well written. The comedy is dark, so it's not like hilariously funny, but they find some interesting ins and outs.
01:55:48
Speaker
Four years is about enough to make this series work. And then they tapped out when they couldn't really push the stories anymore. And that's good. That's where it belongs. So Good Girls, the complete series.
01:56:01
Speaker
Worth a look, if it's your thing. Let's cover Players, season one, and then I got a couple of vintage shows and we'll wrap it out there. Players, season one. This is kind of a not my particular kind of thing. Have you watched any of this, by the way?
01:56:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, not my thing either. This is this is the one about the the kids in the in the lower the sports league. Yeah, the sports league. Yeah. Or the sports sports. And you look, I'm not that I'm not a tick tock person. I don't even have tick tock. You know, I think that's where they watch.
01:56:40
Speaker
each other playing these games. And I don't particularly care for this stuff being called a sport. Because you're sport, you're sitting there. And I know that it takes some skill to play and win these these games. I'm not saying that, but it's not a sport. And you know, and I guess the behind the scenes machinations of all of this, of this world. I know there's a lot of money involved.
01:57:03
Speaker
In this room in the room in this real world and all that plays out in the series and i get by just can't you know i can't get myself all all jones up on it and so i have to.
01:57:12
Speaker
Yeah, see, you know, my friend Greg Whiteley has been doing very well with his Netflix series, Last Chance You and all of its various spinoffs, which I think are just terrific. You know, he gets up there and he gets into, you know, the inner workings of these sports leagues and, you know, cheerleading and basketball, football and basketball. I mean, he's really doing a wonderful job of letting you see what goes into that. And then I look at something like this and I'm like,
01:57:41
Speaker
I can't really get behind a non-athlete named Cream Cheese who's excelling at video sports. I feel like that's sort of an insult to real athletes.
01:57:52
Speaker
There it is, it's out there. It's a game, it's not a sport, it's a game. It's a game. It's a game. But whatever, yeah. The complete series on DVD of Andy Richter controls the universe. This was for that minute after Conan was off the air and Andy Richter went and tried to get a career of his own doing comedy. I actually think this very short-lived sitcom is
01:58:19
Speaker
Quite funny now. This is now 20 years old. Yeah. Yeah But I actually think it's very very funny and it's just it was odd humor that didn't quite Quite catch on at the time. I'm afraid and that's how many how many 19 episodes? is Yeah, it's like it's like six hours and 57 minutes worth on three discs and
01:58:42
Speaker
It's like, whatever it is, it's like, I forget how many episodes, but it, yeah. And there were five episodes on here that were never actually shown. So you get the full series, you know, it's just- I see my boy, Michael Pena got an episode. Yeah, now there's- So we'll work for Michael back there in the early days, and then the Gail Nunez got an episode, John Cryer got an episode, you know, so, you know, everybody got a paycheck.
01:59:09
Speaker
It was, I just, I miss shows like this because there's not sort of really wacky, quirky human humor on television anymore. Everything's gotten too dark and serious. And then lastly here, the complete series of the Borgias with Jeremy Irons.
01:59:44
Speaker
I don't know why. This is Neil Jordan, you know, and and frankly, it has a sort of the sort of sensibility of a Neil Jordan film. One of those old Neil Jordan. Yeah, I'm a creator. Yeah, you know, it was aired on Showtime. It does. It's sort of like the Borges by way of Lestat. Yeah. Yeah. The Borges are such a huge.
01:59:51
Speaker
Speaking of dark and serious.
02:00:04
Speaker
presence in history. And they're so larger than life. And I feel like it all got sort of watered down to a medieval version of Dallas or dynasty here. And it's more important than that. And if HBO had done this, it would have been better.
02:00:25
Speaker
It wouldn't have been quite so sultry as Showtime did it. But it's not bad. I mean, Jeremy Irons is great, but you do feel like they kind of sleaze it up a little bit. And the Borges are sleazy enough already. You don't need to add any more sleaze. So that being said, I mean, you know, there are reasons to watch it, but there are reasons not to watch it, too. I think this was the first one. It was the Borges. And then there's the Tudors.
02:00:54
Speaker
Yeah. And there was the Medici? Yeah, they were doing them all. They were doing them all. They were popping them all out. So this, I think, started that whole run, if I'm not mistaken. Indeed. Indeed. So all right. Well, that does it for the regular show. If you want to stick around and have me just roll through the anime, I will be doing that right at the end of this show. But Tim, for now, we'll be off for a couple of weeks. We got some
02:01:19
Speaker
We've got Oscar stuff going on and Film Week Oscar shows coming up fast and furious too. So we'll be announcing that as soon as the details on that. We'll have at least one more show before that rolls around. I guess we know it's March to...
02:01:34
Speaker
It's the week after the Oscars, before, I'm sorry, before. So we know that. It's the week before the Oscars. The Sunday before the Oscars, and it will be, if you're in Los Angeles, it will be at the Orpheum. Oh, yeah. New spot. New spot over at the Orpheum, another classic old movie palace downtown. So with that, we will sign off. Hope you all have a good time. Bye-bye, everybody.
02:02:00
Speaker
Welcome to the anime portion of the show. Let me jump right into this, talking about some senté stuff here. We've got Beyond the Boundary, the complete collection, which is beautifully, beautifully animated, really, really powerful stuff in terms of the animation. Storytelling is a little bit more obscure, a little bit more opaque and impenetrable, dealing with
02:02:27
Speaker
Mystical environment spirit warriors world warriors and it takes a little bit to kind of figure out the mythology of the show but it's very good.
02:02:41
Speaker
Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Time is also an interesting fantasy environment. It times this feels a little bit, it's about a guy who becomes the strongest guy in the world and that leads to all kinds of interesting exploits and adventures.
02:03:00
Speaker
I want to say this kind of lives somewhere between Tom Jones, not the singer, the body kind of 1963 Best Picture Oscar winning film, somewhere between that and Barbarella, if that sounds like the weirdest fusion ever it is, but that's sort of the world that this feels like it inhabits.
02:03:24
Speaker
What's got also got chica coffin princess another mythical mystical environment i don't know why she carries this coffin around with her she's a wizard and she cares coffee on her back and this come the narrative here comes at the end of a kind of an epic fantasy war that's spanned.
02:03:44
Speaker
many, many hundreds of years, and now we're in a kind of a post-war semi-piece, but it's not quite a piece. There's a lot of weird stuff going on here, like a dragon, there's a unicorn that eats people. There's no point in explaining any of it, but after many centuries of war, this mystical girl, this white-haired
02:04:05
Speaker
Wizard girl with the with the coffin backpack shows up carol and tuesday c-a-r-o-l-e carol ampersand tuesday like the day these two girls who meet on a slightly terraformed mars and form a two girl band and a great friendship.
02:04:24
Speaker
Really interesting that this takes place on mars is really no reason for it to take place on mars and create the sense of the frontier environment but it's really interesting animation very light anime i want to say that meaning that it doesn't look traditionally anime anime inspired but definitely deviates from the traditional look of anime which is nice.
02:04:46
Speaker
Toka Gaetan, the moonlight lady returns. This is really quite interesting, actually. This takes place, again, in a mythical world, a magical mythical world. And there's this mysterious girl who shows up and joins this one particular clan.
02:05:11
Speaker
And that then of course sets everything off into this fascinating adventure after this stranger shows up. It's really interesting. Very well conceived, nicely paced, pretty cool. Actually really pretty cool.
02:05:25
Speaker
The Prisma Ilya universe has a double complete collection here of Prisma Ilya 2-way and Prisma Ilya 2-way hers. I've never really gotten my head wrapped around this whole concept, and I still don't get it, but for those who do, it is there. Gunbuster the movie.
02:05:48
Speaker
is kind of in this closest thing we have to anything Mecca this week. This is about a girl who is continuing her dad's legacy in fighting space aliens and doing what she needs to do in the expansion into space. It's a little bit, a little bit of, again, Barbarella kind of meets space cruiser Yamato, but this one's actually not too complicated, pretty easy to hang with. The universe doesn't require a steep learning curve.
02:06:18
Speaker
Humanity has declined is this really cool post-apocalyptic story about this girl who kind of communes between humanity and this race of fairies who are hilarious. Really, you know, not deep. 12 episodes gets a kind of, that's enough. 12 episodes is absolutely enough for that. And that is humanity has declined the complete collection.
02:06:45
Speaker
Got some girl band and boy band stuff in Review Starlight the movie, which is great for girls who want to, you know, might have a kind of a performance fantasy and then Suki-Pro the animation too, or Suki-Pro 2 the animation, which is boy band stuff. There's no shortage of that in Japanese anime and we got one apiece this week.
02:07:07
Speaker
Still going through the Sente collection, we have got Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, which is about a girl who goes to help a cartoonist, a manga author, who is actually moonlighting under a female name, and that kind of goes into a semi-Cyrano de Bergerac direction, but it's, you know, a little bit of self-reflexive manga stuff.
02:07:33
Speaker
Listen to me, girls, I'm your father. Story of a guy who has to now raise his three nieces, at least one niece and two step nieces, after tragedy begets tragedy. Pretty well written, some pretty deep stuff here for something that is otherwise has a very light look to it.
02:07:51
Speaker
Himuto Umaru-chan R, a complete collection, very young skewing, very silly, almost isn't even worth mentioning, but, you know, girl who comes home from school and then kind of, she's the perfect girl at school. She's kind of a crazy lunatic when she comes home. Not, it's, you know, it's really very young skewing comedy. It'll probably make your five-year-old laugh if they have an inkling about anime.
02:08:24
Speaker
Love of Action and Chocolate is based on a video game that is famous for kind of having a branching aspect to it where you can pick a lot of different storylines to follow. I'm not sure why it is intended to work here. It gets into high school politics inside a very, very large high school. I'm not really quite sure what the point is. It's fine, but it looks like a million other things.
02:08:49
Speaker
Then you've got some kind of prorient stuff here. This sort of pushes the envelope as far as the schoolgirl stuff goes. Saito-kai Yaquindomo, the movie too. Again, politics, high school politics, girls doing things they probably shouldn't do. I wouldn't recommend this one for the young kids.
02:09:12
Speaker
The Girls Panzer World has now a movie appropriately titled Girls Panzer der Film. You know, it's a girls playing with tanks. It's a strange premise, but it works and it has a following. I guess perhaps because they're World War II tanks, they're vintage tanks. So it's not like they're driving around in anything over high tech. So a little bit of nostalgia factor there as well.
02:09:42
Speaker
And then, you know, if tanks are too much, then you can go with BB guns in Aoharu Machine Gun, A-O-H-A-R-U, which is a little bit of a gender bending story. A girl has to kind of masquerade as a boy to get into this club to engage in these palette gun or BB gun shootouts.
02:10:01
Speaker
not really responsible on any level whatsoever but uh... an interesting story uh... if for no reason it has the kind of gender bending aspect to it kim moza got a bunch of titles this week uh... complete collections one and two from television and the movie as well the premise here is all about this uh... japanese girl and a british girl who have become very very close friends and uh... the british girl comes to japan to go to school and all kinds of wonderful
02:10:30
Speaker
girl shenanigans ensue. A Sakura trick is a girl on girl romance in a school, interestingly handled given the premise and that it is aimed at kids, but it's not terrible. It's not terrible. It requires some adult supervision, but if the adults deem it appropriate, I would say definitely filter this and then
02:11:00
Speaker
Appreciate some of the writing in it. Princess Principal Crown Handler is a kind of quasi-Victorian spy thing. It's a spy girls in an environment that in a world that is not quite Victorian France or England, but it sort of aspires to be. It's a cool look, some good character design, nice art direction, and it's, you know, it's a different kind of a world that it takes place in.
02:11:29
Speaker
just because is much more mature, much more just straight drama here, girl and guy who, you know, aren't close to finishing their school years and have this very, very angsty relationship, a lot of anxiety, a lot of teen issues, definitely aimed at that particular age group to sort of deal with whatever it is that they're dealing with. I find very, very insightful. And it definitely crosses cultural boundaries.
02:11:58
Speaker
Then we've got Teasing Master Tagaki-san, which is kind of, you know, it's just two kids and their mischief. It's in-school mischief. Do they like each other? Do they hate each other? Are they just, you know, just having fun with each other? It's a little juvenile, it's a little thin, but it's, you know, could be worse. It could be worse.
02:12:26
Speaker
Then we've got, let's see, what's up. Waiting in the summer, waiting in the summer is,
02:12:42
Speaker
It's school-oriented. It's about a bunch of friends. Well, they use school friends and filmmaking with a little bit of a sci-fi magical element to it. So I'm not quite sure how to explain how all of that folds together, but you're supposed to sort of get with it on the level that this is a bunch of kids who are falling in love with filmmaking and through their friendship.
02:13:11
Speaker
How that ties in with everything else doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but you know, none of these things make that much sense. Really, really good stuff, by the way, coming out from G Kids and Shout. There's really, really some top tier stuff. The House of the Lost on the Cape is a wonderful story about a teenage orphan.
02:13:34
Speaker
And a young new girl and this old woman who in the wake of tragedy and disaster wind up being brought together at the home of this old woman, and forging a bond and it is absolutely beautiful and poetic and wonderful and really a great terrific work from the director shinya kawatsura so look for that from from g kids and shout factory the house of the lost on the cake.
02:14:05
Speaker
The Dear King takes place in kind of a fantasy universe, might be kind of a future fantasy universe, but it's fantasy universe nonetheless. And parts of it are really amazingly animated and parts of it are kind of more conventional.
02:14:23
Speaker
But the parts that are really well animated are absolutely tremendous and the director is massachi ando this is his directing debut he's worked on a lot of other films previous to that spirit in a way and your name is great animation so i really very promising shows shows a lot of chops and should do some very interesting stuff in the future.
02:14:45
Speaker
In the meantime, it's just kind of a heroic journey and about this minor who has to become a hero, but really very solid introduction to a filmmaker who's going to have a lot to say in the future.
02:15:02
Speaker
Summer Ghost is interesting. They invent this premise here that if you go to this abandoned airfield and you light fireworks, then the Summer Ghost will appear and will tell you all kinds of oracular things. And then, of course, the kids get a little bit too attached to this trick and things spiral out of control. This is also a directorial debut.
02:15:28
Speaker
Quite a good one. The director is Loun Draw, who is a very well-known animator and illustrator, now an animator, and has a great sense of illustration and color and texture and character design. And that's really the strong suit here. The story could do with a little reworking, but visually this thing is spectacular.
02:15:55
Speaker
Goodbye Don Gleese from Atsuko Ishizuka. It feels a little bit like Stand By Me and Explorers and a little bit of
02:16:09
Speaker
What are some of the other ones? Well, even stranger things. Any of the, let's pack a bunch of kids, mainly boys, together and let them go off on an adventure. More stand by me than probably anything else here. But Don Gleese is the name that these guys sort of call their clan, their group. And it follows a very interesting little
02:16:32
Speaker
Little Odyssey and each of them have their own story arcs and they go in some really compelling directions. It's a good little good little film and it gets very very touching and sweet at the end. So that's really worth checking out as well from G Kids N Shop Factory. Goodbye Don Gleese, G L E E S.
02:16:53
Speaker
And coming close to the end here, we've got a couple from the Right Stuff, S-T-U-F, RightStuff.com, and in this case, NozomiEnt.com. This is Rental Magica, which is kind of Harry Potter-ish. It's basically not a school, but it's a family that rents magic or that rents out.
02:17:21
Speaker
Or people who need magic to be done for them. I'm a little bit like ghostbusters except with kids and ghostbusters meets harry potter with magic maybe is a good way to put it anyway. It's cute it's interesting some it's got to go its moments twenty four episodes some better than others but you know you can make your mind.
02:17:45
Speaker
And then lastly from Right Stuff and Sunrise is yet another Gundam. This is from the Gundam Seed line, Gundam S Destiny. The remaster project, Collection 2. I can't keep track of the entire Gundam universe. This is like...
02:18:03
Speaker
You know, I barely I think this takes place somewhere in the chronology close the original Gundam. If I'm kind of trying to take a guess at it, but it's, it's, it's centered around a war between the Earth Alliance and the PLANT plant.
02:18:22
Speaker
And, you know, you've got the Orb Union that now has to come in and, of course, the Gundam suits play a big part. And there's a lot of fancy techno talk that takes you out a little bit unless you're so immersed in the Gundam world. It'll all make sense. But anyway, if you're into Gundam, it's gonna work. If you're not, there's no point in ever even dipping a toe in that world.
02:18:46
Speaker
So that's it for Anna May this week. Tim and I will be back in a few weeks. Stay dry.
02:19:15
Speaker
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Speaker
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