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DigiGods Episode 258: (Twenty) Four on the Floor
144 Plays11 months ago
JFK on 4k? We’ll make your day! That and new Criterions, classic TV, Alexander Payne’s award-winner The Holdovers, plus Wade and Tim and super-special guest weigh in hard on awards season!
DigiGods Podcast, 01/16/24 (M4a) — 67.1 MB
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In this episode, the Gods discuss:
- About My Father (Blu-ray)
- Ancient Aliens®: Season 18 (DVD)
- Anna Christie (Blu-ray)
- Babylon 5: The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
- Battle Kaiju Series 02: Ultraman vs. Alien Baltan (Blu-ray)
- Before Night Falls (Blu-ray)
- Best Birthday Ever (DVD)
- Blast of Silence (Blu-ray)
- The Blind (Blu-ray)
- Butcher's Crossing (Blu-ray)
- Champions (Blu-ray)
- Christopher Strong (Blu-ray)
- The Devil Doll (Blu-ray)
- The Dick Van Dyke Show - The Complete Series (DVD)
- Eddie Murphy Raw (Blu-ray)
- The Exorcist: Believer (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Five Nights at Freddy's (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Flying Boat (DVD)
- Gentleman Jim (Blu-ray)
- The Great Ziegfeld (Blu-ray)
- Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Holdovers (Blu-ray)
- Hotel Transylvania Transformania (Blu-ray)
- In Love and War (Blu-ray)
- Into the Weeds (DVD)
- JFK Collector's Edition (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Joe Pickett: Season Two (DVD)
- Looney Tunes Collector's Choice Volume 2 (Blu-ray)
- Love Actually anniversary 4k UHD (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Mad City (Blu-ray)
- The Man in the Iron Mask Collector's Edition (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- A Midwinter's Tale (Blu-ray)
- The Miracle Club (Blu-ray)
- Mob Land (Blu-ray)
- The Odd Couple: The Complete Series Box Set (DVD)
- Padre Pio (Blu-ray)
- Palmetto (Blu-ray)
- PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (Blu-ray)
- Pet Sematary: Bloodlines (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Rapa Nui (Blu-ray)
- The Red Balloon and Other Stories by Albert Lamorisse (The Red Balloon, White Mane, Circus Angel, Stowaway in the Sky, Bim the Little Donkey) (Blu-ray)
- Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken (Blu-ray)
- The Sandman: The Complete First Season (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Saving Grace (Blu-ray)
- School of Rock (widescreen)
- School of Rock 20th Anniversary Steelbook (Blu-ray)
- Showdown at the Grand (Blu-ray/DVD)
- Strays (Blu-ray)
- A Sunday Horse (DVD)
- Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) (Blu-ray)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- That Girl - The Complete Series (DVD)
- A Thousand and One (Blu-ray)
- A Towering Task (DVD)
- Ultraseven 55th Anniversary Anthology (Blu-ray)
- Varsity Blues (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- What Happens Later (Blu-ray)
- What's Love Got to Do With It? (Blu-ray)
- Wichita (Blu-ray)
Please also visit CineGods.com.
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Transcript
Introduction of the 'Naked Mystery Guest'
00:00:26
Speaker
Okay, we're literally starting this show right in the middle of a conversation and we have the naked mystery guest. Naked mystery guest, please introduce yourself. Nobody wants to see me, even my wife doesn't want to see me naked. Those days are long gone. So what we are, everybody, yes, it's Wade, Tim and Mark and we're having a... Mark, where are you?
00:00:50
Speaker
I know.
Mark's Unique Recording Setup
00:00:52
Speaker
I have two walk-in closets in my condo, and I am in one of them because it gets me away from my wife, it gets me away from the woman who's currently cleaning the house, and plus with all the clothes, I figure the audio will be better.
00:01:08
Speaker
I see. That's very interesting. So you're using clothing as insulation. What's most interesting about this conversation before is that Mark's naked days are over, which means he had naked days.
Downfall of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association
00:01:31
Speaker
Wade got me up to speed on some Hollywood business yesterday, and I just felt like we all, three of us, had to have a conversation about this in the wake of the Golden Globes, which just happened this past Sunday.
00:01:44
Speaker
which were awful, you know, in my opinion, for a bunch of reasons. Not the nominees or wins, I should say. You know, the various different folks who won in various different categories are interesting, but that's not what I wanted to talk about. I want to talk about what Wade told me about the organization that used to own the Golden Globes, the Golden Globes Today, and the way this is all sort of shaped. So, you know.
00:02:08
Speaker
Wait. So here's what a lot of people just were missing during the Golden Globes, because a lot of people are going up and saying, oh, I want to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press. There is no such thing as the Hollywood Foreign Press anymore. The HFPA, which was the organization that stood up the Golden Globes, much like the AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, stands up the Oscars, the Academy Awards.
00:02:35
Speaker
That organization has ceased to exist. It was dissolved last year. The organization went bankrupt. They've been embezzling. It's been an illicit organization for years. That wonderful, very scary story of where we both wrote separate letters to the LA Times lambasting the Globes by weird random coincidence in a county of 10 million people. They put our two letters right next to each other in the Times.
00:03:04
Speaker
And the next morning, the same guy from the Hollywood Foreign Press called both of us on our home phones to harass us. It's like the CIA wouldn't do that. He called me first.
00:03:21
Speaker
And the tenor of the conversation was why did you write that right and i told him why i wrote it and whatever he said and then i believe i called you immediately after i said wait did you just get a call from somebody at the hollywood forum press and you said no.
00:03:36
Speaker
And then your phone rang. And then within like five minutes, the phone rang. It was the creep, I swear, it was like living behind the iron curtain. I felt like the saucy was looking at me. It really, it was a creepy whole deal. And Tim and I have been longtime members of the IPA, the International Press Academy, which started as an alternative to the Golden Globes by Mariana Van Blaricom, who is a former Golden Hollywood Foreign Press president, who was
00:04:03
Speaker
booted in a really nasty little political stuff, you know, like what 1516? Oh, longer. But yes, it was this. Yes, that was ugly. Ugly. So Mariana out of kind of revenge decided to stand up her own new organization and, you know, the International Press Academy and the Golden Satellites and that for since the inception. And that's never really fully competed. But I think Mariana's still around.
00:04:28
Speaker
It's still around. It's still there. Golden Satellites still has its awards show every year. In any case, so what's interesting now is that these Golden Globes, this is a total new organization. This is a new organization. The Golden Globes Critics, I think, is what they call themselves. And this is where it gets
Media Monopoly and the Golden Globes Transformation
00:04:50
Speaker
really weird. So Penske, the Penske organization,
00:04:52
Speaker
Nobody realizes all the trades are owned by the same people. Penske, who's the heir of the racing Penske family, he owns Daily Variety, Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, and Deadline. He owns all four of them. So that's basically excluding the rap. That's like a monopoly on all the entertainment trade. When I was in graduate school, all of that would have been illegal. From the 30s until the 90s, all of that would have been illegal.
00:05:16
Speaker
And in January of last year, he joined with some kind of a hedge fund or investment operation, and they bought Dick Clark Productions. And then in June of last year- Because Dick Clark Productions was in trouble. Yes, because Dick Clark Productions was in trouble, minus the Golden Globes and all the other awards shows tanking, and New Year's Rockin' Eve without Dick Clark, and with lots of drunk news people.
00:05:41
Speaker
Boy, was that embarrassing. They were in trouble. Penske bought them and then through Dick Clark Productions, Penske has now acquired the Golden Globes in June of last year. Around about September, they basically let all the previous Golden Globe members know, look, if you want to be part of this new organization, here's the deal.
00:06:01
Speaker
You're going to take a $75,000 a year stipend. It's no longer a non-profit. It is now a for-profit operation. This is a job. You will take $75,000 to vote and you will not pull all that stuff that you used to pull with celebrities. No more photo ops, no more swag, no more none of the rest of that stuff. This is now a job. If you don't want to do that, then we will pay you $200 and some thousand dollars and you can hit the road and we'll never see you again. Now we know this because we have a very good friend. Wait and I have a question. This was all reported.
00:06:30
Speaker
He was all reported. He was reported. This is public knowledge. It just was not heavily reported for some strange reason. Maybe because the trades are owned by the same organization. I'm thinking. I'm thinking. So, I mean, this is why independent people like us are useful occasionally.
00:06:48
Speaker
So so this now this now is the new operation and that all happened around about september which basically gives you like okay they gotta get there you know they they invited two hundred and some new members. We don't know who these people are we don't know what the criteria is we don't know anything about them we have no idea what the new golden globes press organization represents. Like we know the new york film critics circle represents critics in new york.
00:07:13
Speaker
We know who they are. We know their outlets. It's Time, Newsweek, New York, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times. We understand that. At LAFCA, you can go to our website and we're standing there in a bunch of badly lit photographs. LAFCA, we get it. Same deal in LA. All the other regionals. National Society of Film Critics, well, you look at their names. They're culled from New York. Some people are culled from LAFCA. They're culled from various places.
00:07:38
Speaker
the Critics Choice Association, which all three of us are members of as well. Well, those are broadcast people. They're not even critics necessarily. Many are, but not all are. They are broadcast journalists who work in the entertainment space, many of them critics, and they're from all over the country. All these groups have, they're transparent, they have a profile, and almost all of them are nonprofits.
00:07:58
Speaker
Golden Globes is now a for-profit operation with conflicts of interest galore. It may be less ethical than the organization is supposed to be.
00:08:19
Speaker
Really, it's a very, very strange situation, but they were so desperate to get those ad dollars in the coffers to just make sure that, you know, the damage that was done during COVID that we're, you know, it's like we cannot let this year go by. There's not a reorganization year. So from like September to December, like in an eight-week period, they had to get this new membership together, a new voting process together. They had to get their nominations together and they had to start planning a show.
00:08:46
Speaker
And that's why Joe Coy wasn't hired until like 10 days before the show aired. CBS came in, picked it up from NBC. CBS has no history of doing this. You know, they've done the Tonys and a few other things, but I mean, this is like all thrown together so quickly. So everyone understands these awards shows. Mark, when do you start planning, say, an awards show for television as a TV producer person? On what day do you begin planning the next year's awards show?
00:09:13
Speaker
The day after that year's award show ends. Exactly. Always. Always, always. Wait, before we... 75K, right? And then there was another sort of buyout thing, the 250... Like 200, 220... It wasn't 250, it might have been 220, it might be around 200, but it's somewhere, it's in excess of $200,000 to just walk away.
00:09:42
Speaker
walk away from the organization. I'm almost sure that this scene happened in the Godfather Part 3. I'm almost certain this exact scenario was in that movie. To summarize, Hollywood Foreign Press no longer exists and gone.
Golden Globes' New Organization and Membership Issues
00:10:01
Speaker
gone. That's why everybody who was going up there and thanking the Hollywood Foreign Press because they're publicists either didn't know or didn't school them, big mistake. Which is why Robert Downey Jr. said... He went up and said, you changed your game and you changed your name. It was a good little rhyme, good little rap that he went up there with. It was prepared and it was accurate and because he's a smart guy, he's on top of it.
00:10:26
Speaker
I'm but the others not work necessarily and i thought that was interesting he went up and he any he tried to legitimize the award by distinguishing in that moment saying this is not like what it used to be and and i think that was a very astute thing and welcome thing but the question for us is as observers what is it now.
00:10:49
Speaker
I know what it used to be and what it used to be was crooked and corrupt and a sleazy kind of a shell game that everybody in town knew and very few people, everybody went up there and they reluctantly accepted their awards and they knew that it was like, you know, whatever. I have to go through the motions. A lot of those people this year, they kind of still look like they didn't want to be there and that they really were going through the motions. Like I was saying to some people, I said, Christopher Nolan and his wife, if you looked at them, those very proper distinguished professional British people,
00:11:17
Speaker
They look like they were trapped in a room with preschoolers, except they were drunk preschoolers. Like, if you were trapped in a preschool room with drunk preschoolers, that's the look on your face. Well, because the previous Golden Globes, it was a joke that everybody bought into because it was good for business. Yes. Right. So now the Golden Globes is still good for business. But the thing is that in order to legitimize itself, as you say, people have to have some
00:11:46
Speaker
of where these members come from. They can make it up. It can be people who live in in Baswana, whatever it is. But as long as people feel as if the members aren't just these random people taking swag, I think if they can create that
00:12:00
Speaker
If they create that thing where, oh, I understand where these members come from, they are critics who do this or critics who come from that, then I feel like you'll get a sense of what the organization is about. Because as you say, people know what the CCAs are, people know what LAFK is, people know what the New York Film Critics Circle is, people get it. So at least there's some foundation there. But with the Golden Globes still, see, it used to be with the Golden Globes, it was 97 crooked people.
00:12:26
Speaker
right that's the golden globes now it's three hundred of what if they can define what that would help the golden globes if it's 70k so what does that mean to become a member of the golden globes that mean you've been hired
00:12:43
Speaker
by the Golden Globes? What does that mean? Do I work for you now? Yeah, that's a great question. And it's not answered. I think technically, this would be considered an honorarium or a stipend. If we have to put some kind of a legal term to it, that's what I think they would probably call it. I don't think they're, I mean, how is this on your taxes? You get a 1099, you get a W2, right? I mean, that's what it comes down to.
00:13:13
Speaker
those kind of hair-splitting distinctions between an independent contractor and an employee. And in the world of journalism, this still all matters. There is something called journalistic ethics. And, you know, it's a fine line that we all walk every year this time, you know, and when we get the big books and all this kind of stuff. But a flat-out 75K, I don't know. It's just a... And I want to take a sooner that money out of anybody's pocket. Those journalists, I can promise you, need that dope.
00:13:41
Speaker
The thing is that it's not even just a 75K. According to the LA Times, they also get medical and dental benefits, and they get vacation bonuses. So I don't know what those bonuses are based on. All I know is that the- The vacation from what? I don't know. Well, here's the thing. If you're a member of the New Globes, you get to vote on nominations and winners. You have to write content for the organization's websites.
00:14:06
Speaker
Organize and help put on the show and there is some moderate probably bs garbage responsibilities involved you have to earn your 75 and but you know what if they want to hire me to do it i'll do it all day long.
00:14:24
Speaker
Much of what you just said are things that you want to center another someone, as many members of LAFCA are involved in, as we prepare to do the thing that we do. Many of us are writing this and writing that, and many of us, I mean, not just the people on the border, or doing all kinds of things to make that happen. Now, again, we would be perfectly happy for all those people to be getting paid to do all that work, because it's work.
00:14:48
Speaker
And to the extent that we at LAFSA can in fact write and post things on that LAFSA, and we do, or we write things someplace that we post at the LAFSA, I would love to, you know, that would be great. But I'm not sure, I'm not sure. I just don't know, man. What is that? What is an organization that does that? What is that? Interesting.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, it really is a very strange thing and I don't know what to make of it. I'm not comfortable with the conflict of interest that it represents. Even if Penske is kind of putting, even if they're only 50% owners or 49% owners or whatever it is that they kind of put Dick Clark Productions between them and the awards, it's still,
00:15:38
Speaker
There are a lot of questions. There are a lot of unresolved questions. This all happened so quickly with Penske and Dick Clark, and then six months later, the purchase of the Globes, and then three, four months later, throwing the show together, and here we are. Literally 12 months after Penske acquired Dick Clark Productions, and we just had a show that everyone hated. It was horrible. It was badly done. Mark, your comments were hilarious to me.
00:16:07
Speaker
tell the story share your assessment of it. Well as somebody who is a tv show producer i'm always a little more sympathetic i'd like in the show to an eighty eight mile an hour fast ball when the count is three and oh meeting that all you have to do is get the pitch over the plate just get over the plate. Because you don't want to walk the batter
00:16:27
Speaker
They got the pitch over the plate wasn't it what was it a great fastball was it a hundred and two mile an hour or all the shaman fastball no, it was some lame 45 year old pitcher who's on his way out fastball, but the guy got it over the plate and What can you say the rays were up 50% from last year, which is a good start? They couldn't have been worse
00:17:03
Speaker
Yes, and a lot of and look let's face it a lot I know a lot of people who don't care what the brand of the group is and
00:17:10
Speaker
It's just like, well, I like movies and I want to watch people, you know, I want to see acceptance speeches and awards. I said, but don't you care who gives the awards? Don't you care what the award means? I just want to see a red carpet. Most people really don't. Most people want to see the red carpet show. They want to see which, which actress has had work done and what's the wearing. That's really all they care about. So if, if the, if the awards are voted by like a, like a star chamber of Satanists,
00:17:35
Speaker
Who are like spilling goat's blood on the floor while they're voting like you wouldn't care like it just that it now I'm not really just I just want to see people guy go up and accept awards I mean a lot of the a lot of the people watching that's why they're watching. They don't care They don't know they don't know what the Academy is. They don't know what the goal they don't know who's voting They don't know what the tone they don't know the difference between the American Music Awards and the Grammys.
Public Perception of Award Shows
00:17:58
Speaker
They don't care They just want by the way, they want to see stars
00:18:01
Speaker
And by the way, why should they? If you live in crib death, Iowa, if you live in crib death, Iowa, and you got nothing going on in your life, and you see these beautiful people, right in their beautiful gowns and beautiful tuxedos, it's a big energy show, it's got beautiful people, it's got awards, got acceptance speeches, it's got fun and energy and laughs, why the hell not? Why wouldn't you want to watch it?
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. A good deal of this is sort of like inside the beltway chitchat. But look, I do know this. I've got so many varieties in there right now, that stack of varieties from the last town, whatever, three months now. It's awful. It's ridiculous.
00:18:41
Speaker
And that's because of the CCAs that we get those, by the way. You know that, right? Yeah, yeah. Because we're members of this. And if you look inside those varieties, up until the original, you have plenty of Golden Globes ads. Plenty of Golden Globes. That's just ads, but content.
00:19:00
Speaker
And when you start to draw that circle again, you know, Penske, the ownership, all of those varieties, the Golden Globes, the ads inside the Golden Globes, I'm telling you, 30 years ago, in the middle 80s,
00:19:16
Speaker
Most of this would've been illegal. And somebody would've been looking at jail time. But the fair use rules and all kinds of owned and operated rules came into play, which sort of disaggregated all of that, who can own what and how many of which and what city, and all of these kind of things. It was all very complicated. But what we've got now is this bit of a mess. And you're right, Mark. Who cares? We three knoll heads sitting here ranting and raving.
00:19:45
Speaker
But what's interesting when you talk about conflict of interest is Eldridge Industries, which is the Uber umbrella company that owns the Golden Globes, they own Dick Clark Productions, right? And they also own the Hollywood Reporter and Variety, and as Wade was saying, they also, by the way, have a piece of A24.
00:20:04
Speaker
the movie studio now. Which is fascinating because A24 had 10 nominations in the film categories this year. Is that because Eldridge Industries, which owns the Golden Globes, which owns the Clark Productions, which owns the Hollywood Report and write, also owns a production company. That would be more troublesome to me than anything else.
00:20:25
Speaker
I just became more troublesome just literally just made it more troublesome it's something that i think i need to be reported on at least within the industry yeah out there out there in crib death maybe not it's going to be a very interesting trajectory between now.
00:20:42
Speaker
And 2028, which is when the 100th Oscars ceremony will take place. So we are now four years away from that.
Oscars: Changes and Challenges
00:20:53
Speaker
And the academy has exercised an option to abandon its, uh, contract with ABC early. And that's been going on since gee whiz what the eighties late seventies. I mean, it's been, you know, they have been with ABC solid for like over 40 years. It's amazing. And, um,
00:21:12
Speaker
a lot of the problems that we have with the academy awards telecast have to do with the fact that abc swings a big bat they can veto johnny karson they can veto anybody which they did for years they can be anybody is a host to doesn't meet with it you know abc brasses metrics.
00:21:30
Speaker
Johnny was on NBC, so that was a network rivalry thing. Yeah, that's why Jimmy Kimmel is a no-brainer. It's on ABC. He's in-house. So, you know, ABC swings a big bat. How many ads they sell, what they sell the ads for. It was ABC who tried to get them to create that new category that didn't fly, that, you know, biggest blockbuster category. I mean, with- Which did the Globes do and everybody loves? It's just so funny. Stupid category. I mean, what does it even mean? What does it mean?
00:22:00
Speaker
You know, here's what it means. It means that Taylor Swift shows up to the Golden Globes. That's what it means. She got nominated in that category. Here's the other thing that, you know, this is why, and this could not come at a worse time. Did you guys all see the ESPN thing that just blew up a few hours ago? Yes. That's really interesting. There are like 35
00:22:24
Speaker
any awards that would have been one of the past fourteen years by ESPN which must now be returned. Because an investigation by the tv academy determine that ESPN for about fourteen years was putting fake names up as nominees so that they could then get the Emmy award.
00:22:48
Speaker
in the name of a person who doesn't exist, re-engrave it and hand it to on-air talent who was not eligible to even win the Emmy in the first place. That's just insane. This is madness. That's crazy.
00:23:04
Speaker
I mean that that's not even just oh I made a mistake oh I'm sorry I didn't understand the rules about campaigning you know I mean that's not that's not like some oh that I that you know you could interpret the fine print no that is just straight-up fraud yeah that is just straight-up illicit fraud and for no good reason I mean for pure what
00:23:27
Speaker
Real it's insane it's insane so all of that leaves an incredibly bad taste in people's mouths about these awards shows to begin with it suddenly you're thinking okay so it's not an out now it's just it's. It's just completely craving on a level that that makes the whole thing feel dirty.
00:23:46
Speaker
So if the Academy bolts ABC, it looks like they will simply become a streaming show, which will obviously be on some streaming platform, maybe several streaming platforms, as well as maybe another network. But what it does is it gives them control over the advertising. It gives them control over the length of the show.
00:24:12
Speaker
give them more control over the production of the show they don't have abc sticking its nose in there every ten minutes and saying i would need something to please this advertiser we need something to please the young kids this is our key demo advertisers want the youth demo so you gotta hire a host to appeal to you like abc meddling in the show. Is is part of what the problem is always been because abc yes they want the advertising dollars but as we all know there are a lot of ways to slice up advertising dollars.
00:24:40
Speaker
Just because abc says the youth demo is what their advertisers want what doesn't mean much i mean if you have it let's say it would you know would you would you rather have thirty million dollar thirty million people over the age of fifty watching or ten million people between twenty and twenty five. I mean they'd rather have a ten million people over the age of ten million people because in their mind it's yes. ABC because i was telling what.
00:25:06
Speaker
No, I think the Academy wants at this point in this in their sort of a precipice a little bit right there like an inflection point in their existence as they come up towards their 100th anniversary. I think they want they want sheer raw numbers. They want to be able to if it's streaming.
00:25:22
Speaker
which by the way would be a huge come down for the Oscars, but I understand why they'd want to do it. Look at how Netflix cooks their numbers. Oh my God, some crap ass show got 150 billion minutes worth of views, whatever garbage that means, right?
00:25:38
Speaker
If the academy can get in on that, they can make this case that the academy is relevant again, right? The academy needs two things. And they think they need three things, and the third thing they don't really need. So let me say this. Here's what they need. They need legitimacy.
00:25:56
Speaker
right they need to say we are we represent an institution that is meaningful in the culture thirty million people watch this we are important we matter our awards matter i'm getting an Oscar matters it's meaningful it's meaningful the talent meaningful audiences it's meaning they need that they need to be relevant they need to be legitimate they also need money.
00:26:20
Speaker
They need money to run the organization. It costs a lot of money. That building costs money. We've all seen it. The library costs money. There are three or four buildings that the academy operates here in Los Angeles. There's the one in Hollywood. There's the headquarters in Beverly Hills, the library in Beverly Hills, and then whatever warehouse they have their archives in that we went to that one time when we gave them the LAFCA archive. So those are the four main buildings. And that's a lot to operate. And nobody pays dues.
00:26:49
Speaker
to the academy, right? The members don't pay dues. I don't think they do. I don't know if they do or not. They can certainly all afford to, but it wouldn't be about a drop in the bucket. I mean, you know, 5,000 people paying 150 bucks doesn't, that'll pay your rent for like a month on that building.
00:27:06
Speaker
The Oscar show funds that organization for the whole year and I've always said that's a really fragile thing. Like you look at what happened to the California economy, California's economy has been so weighted heavily toward high earning taxpayers that when they have a bad stock year, the whole state gets sick.
00:27:25
Speaker
And it's the same thing with the academy if they're at if those ad dollars from that one night significantly drop they're not making money the rest of the year that impact that's all that said they're literally earning their entire year. In one night and that's dangerous you gotta have you gotta diversify what how you earn money so they have to figure out how to make money throughout the year they can't just all rely on that one pack of ad dollars but will they do get member dues by the way they do get news i guess.
00:27:53
Speaker
They have to pay member dues. In 2018, the member dues went up to $450 a year. Gee whiz. Wow. Can Tom Hanks afford that? Well, yeah. I guess they'll be all right. It's interesting. So basically what they're going to do is they're going to Taylor Swift the show. Get the middle man out. And then you bring in a crew of people to sell advertising, I guess, or whatever they would be doing. And then all that money is just their money.
00:28:22
Speaker
And they can be more flexible about those ad dollars so i mean it'll be it'll be much more interest it'll be interesting to see how they manage that but i think if they get a large audience if you can if you can push back to three million people let's say they can get back to thirty million people there even get back to the forty just get back into the mid twenties to start if you can get back to twenty five thirty million people. Watching that show.
00:28:46
Speaker
I don't care what age they are, I don't care if those are 30 million people who are over the age of 60, sell them Geritol. Sell them vitamin supplements. Somebody is going to buy ads for those people. Somebody wants to hit that. They have disposable income. What I'm saying is that's money to somebody. It just is. You can make that work. That's the one thing. They need money and they need legitimacy. The other thing that they think they need, but they don't really need,
00:29:16
Speaker
is to erase criticism. They are scared of, you know, oh, social media is going to blow up and there's going to be like a hashtag, you know, like Oscar so white is going to now become Oscar so something else. Oscar's not disabled enough. Oscar's, you know, like too many not enough horror films. I mean, that could go, they're terrified that that could go viral. They need to not be.
00:29:40
Speaker
There are legitimate criticisms and then there are trolls and some things have meaning to artists and to audiences and some things don't is just people rambling on social media and it doesn't have a footprint and they need to not be afraid of handful of trolls on social media saying things about the oscars that nobody really cares about.
00:30:00
Speaker
but they're terrified of that so they need to sort of distinguish between the noise that matters and the noise that doesn't matter and the noise that does matter typically matters regardless of what's happening on social media so if they just write off social media entirely and go with the old adage that there's no such thing as bad publicity, they'll be fine. So do away with that, make your money, legitimize the show, bring an audience back, I think then the future is bright but they're still on the precipice, it's still a new academy.
00:30:31
Speaker
Well, for the third point, which I agree with, the smartest thing that they could do, at least would make me laugh, is to hire Kevin Hart as their very first host. You know what? I agree. I totally agree. Kevin Hart got shafted. That was a dumb, scaredy... That's exactly what I'm talking about. They were scared. Social media went little nuts on Kevin Hart and they got scared. Why? Kevin Hart packed stadiums. Have you seen how he packed stadiums?
00:30:57
Speaker
Kevin Hart is an amazing entrepreneur, entertainer, personality. He kills it. You could only be so lucky as to get Kevin Hart. I mean, bring Kevin Hart and suddenly that show blows up. Are there going to be like maybe a million people who won't watch because they're pissed off at Kevin Hart forever? Yeah, so what? Who cares? I mean, more people will come than not. Kevin Hart, that's a dream.
00:31:23
Speaker
The broad notion I completely agree with. I do have a desire, though, for these shows to move away from necessity, to be funny, to be comedy-forward. We talk about the Golden Globes and the riding, and how Joya threw his riders under the bus.
00:31:40
Speaker
The fact of the matter, that entire show was badly written. All of his jokes were badly written. But the whole show was badly written. The whole show was. And I agree with you. I think what we would all like to see, what it used to be, you know, if you go back to the Bob Hope days.
00:31:57
Speaker
They weren't all, not everybody had to be funny. Bob, the reason you hired Bob Hope was so that nobody else had the burden of being, of having to try to be funny. Bob Hope brought the funny. So everybody else could just bring the- Elegance and sophistication. You know me, the David Niven. Yeah, give me David Niven just standing there with that little mustache and looking good in that tux. And you know what? I go back and I say that.
00:32:24
Speaker
David Divenn was actually very funny. Very dry, very funny. So it's not like he wasn't funny, but I don't think anybody wrote David any jokes. I'm almost certain nobody wrote David any jokes. No. Kevin Hart would bring the funny, and then nobody else has to be funny. And then what you do is let Kevin Hart be the new Billy Crystal. Let him just come on and just do his Kevin Hart thing. I know he's controversial. I don't care.
Potential Hosts and Hosting Challenges for Award Shows
00:32:50
Speaker
I think controversy plays.
00:32:52
Speaker
If you can get Dave Chappelle to just tame his language enough, and to just like, you know, like, if it's streaming, if it's streaming, if it's streaming, Dave Chappelle brings an audience as well. If Ricky Gervais could bring an audience to the Globes, and he did, Dave Chappelle could bring, and I wouldn't say Ricky Gervais for the Oscars, that matchup doesn't make any sense.
00:33:14
Speaker
but I could see Dave Chappelle doing it because he's Kevin Hart's buddy too and he's joked about it. So I mean, you bring those two on, I think then you are establishing something that is sustainable. My fear for the Oscars, if they go to streaming, is twofold. One is, where does it wind up? Does it wind up on the AMPIS website? Does it wind up on does Netflix stream it live? Whatever. Does ABC.com stream it live? They'll figure it out.
00:33:42
Speaker
The other fear I have is that now that the- Wait, hold that thought. Jerry Seinfeld should have hosted the Oscars a million years ago. I've always thought Seinfeld would have been a terrific Oscars host, just saying. In my mind, somehow, he did host Oscars. I can almost see it. I don't know. I guess that's just something I made up. Didn't happen. Didn't happen.
00:33:59
Speaker
That would be great, though. And the other fear I have is that now that the Academy feels untethered from ABC and all their strictures, that they're going to potentially lean into the worst impulses that bore people like me who watch these shows, which is there's an award for every category. There is no time on acceptance speeches. People can say whatever they want and go on forever. It could be a five hour show as long as everybody gets their ass pissed. I really hope it's not bad.
00:34:27
Speaker
It does. It won't be because what they want to do is they want to bring, they want to bring the running time of the show down. And, and what no one talks about is the show is not too seriously, you compare Oscar shows in the past to, to, you know, these ones that go to four plus hours. It's not like people are talking longer. It's not like there are more categories. It's not that the show has become longer. It's that ABC keeps insisting on more and more ad spots.
00:34:54
Speaker
That's what drives the show open. There were Oscar shows that came in at like two hours and 40 minutes because they weren't added up to the gills. If you go to streaming and you make this very, very judicious and you say, look,
00:35:11
Speaker
you're going to have to pay more for your ad spot. But just so you understand, it's an ad spot people will notice because it's going to be one of only a few spots. Yeah, maybe your super bowl. You make it like a Super Bowl ads. There you go. Then you
00:35:26
Speaker
You can manage the time and you can manage the money. Again, it's a little bit of a roll of the dice, but if they can get this in order in time for that very, very spectacular 100th anniversary, because you cannot screw up 2028. You've got four years to get that in order. You can't screw that up or you're done. You're finished.
00:35:48
Speaker
Well, I agree with Mark 100%. Frankly, you've got to shut a lot of people up. So generally speaking, yes, you're Bob Hope and you're Kevin Hart. The only person who's going to be funny in terms of a joke written for them will be that host of that show. Everybody else is going to walk up to that podium and say the nominees are and the Oscar goes to. And pretty much nothing else.
00:36:15
Speaker
more or less, more or less, nothing else. Some people are naturally funny and will do that, but I would not. If I were the god producer of the Academy Awards, I would look at every fucking word of that script and every joke. And this is for sure, and this would be for the host too. Everything and everybody related to this show is fabulous.
00:36:39
Speaker
All the movies are wonderful. All the actors are exquisite. Even the politics. If you want to do politics, the politics are going to be positive. And we're going to be four and we're going to love everything. If you've got to bug up your ass about anything,
00:36:57
Speaker
Talk about it before the show or after the show. Everything about this show is going to be beautiful. And somebody should have told Joy that. All the movies are great, dude. All the filmmakers are fabulous and all the actors are beautiful. I don't know who didn't put that in your inbox when somebody should have told you. Oh, he's done his apology tour for the last couple of days because you don't throw your riders under the bus ever for any reason.
00:37:25
Speaker
Nobody cares that you and the writers met for the first time the day before the show, right? There are monologue writers. I watch Stephen Colbert every night. I think their monologue is so strong. And by the way, half their staff was like young women. It's fantastic. And it's so damn funny. They come up with an amazing 10 minute monologue every night. Okay, you guys, Joe Coyne, you're three writers, you had a huge target that you get hit.
00:37:50
Speaker
And somehow you managed to not even hit it. Yeah, missed the whole target. Missed it completely. But he was trying to be Ricky Gervais. That's what it was. There was the expectation, oh, if you do the Golden Globes, you got to be Ricky Gervais.
00:38:03
Speaker
No, man, do it. Do your own thing. Do your own deal. But there was, you know, again, they threw this thing together in a matter of weeks. And I've seen, I've seen Joy's show. I reviewed that movie that he did not too terribly long ago. For film would kill him. Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday. You also have a whole Filipino culture. You know, funny, but you've been made a thousand times. Here's the thing about his actual routine. All of the human in his actual routine is self-deprecating.
00:38:33
Speaker
He's talking about himself, his family. That's his stick. That's his jokes. His jokes have never been about poking and prodding and kicking and controversy and all of that. Why? And I don't know, man, it seems to me that even as a comedian, you got to have a gut, right? Don't you got a gut?
00:38:53
Speaker
Don't you got a gun that tells you, hey, man, I just met you guys. These are not my, this is not my funny. They were desperate. They went to everybody. Everybody said no. The show is going to happen in a matter of days. They needed somebody. And I guess he was the guy that picked up the phone.
00:39:10
Speaker
You know what? I mean, money talks. Well, let's move on and see where all of this goes in the next few weeks. We've had a ton of Obits, and we got to get to some DVDs here in Blu-ray's. Mark, you're going to stick around for the DVD and the Blu-ray conversation and weigh in.
Tributes to Celebrities
00:39:28
Speaker
You don't have to do that, but you got to weigh in on the Obits. The dead require your commentary.
00:39:32
Speaker
Okay, you know what? I will stick around for the Obits. Since we were up last year, a ton of people have died and 23 beginning of 20. Here's who we lost. We lost Marty Croft at 86. We lost Andre Brower, far too young. We lost Tommy Smothers, God bless him.
00:39:52
Speaker
We lost Shecky Green, one of the last of the Boarspelled comics. I think we're only down to three now, including Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. We lost Morris Hines, who's now dancing up a storm with his brother in the great yonder. We lost Tom Wilkinson, and we lost Glynis Johns at age 100, Mrs. Banks from Mary Poppins. All of those are a little bit surprising, but I guess Tom Wilkinson,
00:40:21
Speaker
That was the one that made me... I was like, what? What? What? What? What? You know, that one. And I don't know why that one. But Tom was the one that said, yeah, it just doesn't make any sense. But he was what, clock of 80? He was, he was like late 70s. He was 75. He was 75. Mid 70s, yeah.
00:40:37
Speaker
He came to us so late, well in my mind, I got about 25 years of Tom, and then he was just, I know he was on stage and all that stuff for so many years, but he came to us so late that I don't know, it's not one of those guys. I can't think of any Tom Wilkinson from when he's 20.
00:40:56
Speaker
Yeah. No, you know what it's to me, he's like one of like Jonathan Price types where he's this English actor who everybody loves. He does everything. He's been there for as long as you've been alive. He's always good. And he's just a mainstay. He's just, he's just one of those little He was solid. He was so solid. And yeah, I mean, you know, I remember the year that, that LAFCA voted for, uh, in the bedroom as best picture. Well, that was the year of, uh, uh, Mulholland drive, which my wife was, you know, an executive on and, uh,
00:41:26
Speaker
I didn't vote for Mulan Drive. I voted for In the Bedroom because I loved In the Bedroom. I thought it was amazing. Todd Field killed it with that film. That was his directing debut. It was unbelievable. Wilkinson is the soul of that movie. You latch yourself onto him and you ride through that movie.
00:41:48
Speaker
Yeah, man. Yeah, man. Yeah, man. The other one that bothered me was Andre Brower and Andre Brower bothered me because I always thought he should have been bigger. He should have been a movie star. He should have won awards or he was so commanding and so
00:42:04
Speaker
great and somehow his career was never as big as I was hoping it would be. Even though nobody else liked it, I thought it was one of the best films of last year, not last year, but the year before. She said, you know, it was all about the Harvey Weinstein thing. Man, Andre Brower is just, he is phenomenal in that film. Phenomenal.
00:42:25
Speaker
Andre, bizarrely, is like a year younger than me. Andre was born in 1962 out of Chicago. Interesting. Him and Shecky both out of Chicago. I love that. Andre, in 89, I guess it was maybe 90, Glory, right? So him and Denzel and Morgan, all these brothers are in this movie. And there are two or three movies over the course of the last 40 years that gave us a whole lot of people, a soldier
00:42:49
Speaker
story was one of them. That's the one that actually gave us Denzel, Howard Rollins, Robert Townsend. And then the next one was Glory, that just handed us all of these actors. These African American actors did for the next almost 40 years, 35, 40 years, would just sort of be this presence in all these. Mark's right. Andre should have been a movie star. He should have been a movie star.
00:43:19
Speaker
He happened to have come up in that time when we had kind of gone back to, look at movie stars, your real good looking movie stars, and Andre had an everyday guy. So in the early 70s, when Dustin and, let's see, Jack and all those guys, if Andre would have been there, he would have been a movie star. That's, you know, but there you go.
00:43:43
Speaker
But, you know, he was asked about why he turned down so many. He turned down a lot of work and he was asked about it. And he said, because I didn't want to sacrifice family time for it. You know, he's he's got kids he wanted and he and you know, it turned out to be the right choice because he was able he died prematurely and he was able to spend more time raising his kids and with his family. And as sad as that loss is, I can't help but but respect it.
00:44:10
Speaker
By the same token, you know, just putting some so we don't drag this all out too far. Glynis Johns, 100 years old, lived a good life. We all know her from Mary Poppins, but let me tell you something. If you watch the old movie Miranda, where she plays a mermaid, she is the sexiest mermaid in the movies I've ever had.
00:44:28
Speaker
Glynis Johns kills it in that film, and we forget she sings the original version of sending the clowns that just, it tears your heart out. It absolutely ripped your heart out, so she did Sondheim right. Morris Hines, not known as a movie actor, really a Broadway guy, but the one performance that he did with Gregory as brothers, basically in the Cotton Club.
00:44:54
Speaker
Never got the credit that it deserved until a year and a half ago when Coppola released the director's cut of the Cotton Club, which restored that story because that became a secondary story to the Richard Gere narrative in the cut that was released theatrically.
00:45:14
Speaker
And it was never supposed to be a balance between that white jazz trumpeter and these two black dancers it was supposed to be like that you know looking at these two different worlds in this one club through these two parallel stories it was supposed to be balanced couple restored that balance and i'll tell you you know who wins in that that cut is morris.
00:45:34
Speaker
He is the heart and soul of that relationship because Gregory is kind of, he's a, he wants to be a star and Morris wants family. And it is such a beautiful performance. He's not known as a movie actor, but he slays it in that cut. And I'm so glad that that performance has now been restored and that his place in movie history is restored. And then lastly, Tommy Smothers, what can, Smothers, I mean, the, the, the, the, I mean, come on, the, just one of the great comedy talents of all time.
00:46:03
Speaker
With Tommy Smothers and Shecky Green, you're starting to see some of these people who we grew up on, and we had Sheckys a little before. I think our time Shecky was a stand-up comic in the 50s, one of the great Vegas acts. It was Shecky, it was Don Rickles, it was Buddy Hackett. All those guys in the 70s play in Vegas all the time.
00:46:24
Speaker
creating what the Vegas stand-up comedy performance act could be, which has now been taken over by all the Carrotops and the Seinfelds and the whatevers. It really started with Shecky. So him and Tommy Smothers, these are people who laid the groundwork for the comics that we love today and who continue to love today.
00:46:42
Speaker
I've said as i said many times the the the two great strains of american comedy both come out of of tragedy and oppression is the jewish comedy and black comedy and both of those things. They came out of originally vaudeville in the chitlin circuit and then they went to clubs the borscht belt clubs up in the cat skills and the inner city club.
00:47:01
Speaker
And in the 50s when television came around, you had the Sheckys and the Bill Cosby's and all of these comics coming out of those clubs in the inner city and the Catskills and getting on TV and going on the Tonight Show and going on all these variety shows. And suddenly what was previously a regional and an ethnic comedy tradition
00:47:27
Speaker
went national. It blew up through television. And that's how we get those two great comedy strains today. I mean, that's how we got Jerry Lewis. That's how we wound up getting Richard Pryor. That's where it all came from. So, you know, Shecky was a huge part of that.
00:47:43
Speaker
Yeah, I'm checking. Boy of Chicago died in Vegas. That is perfectly circular. It's just perfect. I love it. Well, let's let's get into some Blu-rays here. I'm going to hit a bunch of a bunch of Warner Archive stuff real fast. These are all relatively recent ish movies. And by recent, I mean that they were there during our lifetimes. You stick it around. Wait, wait, hang on. Be honest. How long will this take? I don't know.
00:48:13
Speaker
an hour 20 minutes about an hour an hour yeah that's that i'm leaving well don't stop recording wait let me tell you something i have a very very busy life i'm unemployed i do nothing
00:48:32
Speaker
That's my life. And yet somehow, yet somehow I don't want to see you and hear you for an hour talking about Blu-rays that no one will ever buy or rent. I just want, I just want everyone to know that the name you attach to your, to yourself here is, to your track is Rufus Roughcutt. Just genius. That's absolutely hilarious. Rufus, we'll
Review of New Releases: Blu-rays and Documentaries
00:48:53
Speaker
see you. Have a great weekend. All right, guys, take care. Bye, YouTube. Bye, guys.
00:48:58
Speaker
All right, Tim, we got we got a bunch of here's a bunch of stuff. So I'm going to roll through this. First of all, before the night, which is the the the Julian Schnabel film with Javier Bardem. You know, I'm just up and down on Schnabel. I really like to do it. Butterfly. That's my Schnabel. And then I'm done. And then. Yeah. And see, before before nightfall. Sorry, not before. Yeah.
00:49:24
Speaker
Before Night Falls, which is basically the story of the Cuban poet, Ronaldo Arenas, and how he was imprisoned, and his books were banned, and all this stuff, and his experience. It's a very interesting story. I just don't know that it sustains me through the whole movie, but nonetheless, Bardem is great in it. That's Alan Bluray.
00:49:47
Speaker
Saving Grace, in which Brenda Blevin and Craig Ferguson grow some weed and sell it. It's kind of funny. They turn her greenhouse into a pot. Those little movies used to be all the... I don't know. There's a minute in the middle 90s when those little movies, particularly the ones with British people, Irish people, they were all the rich. I loved those back in the day.
00:50:15
Speaker
That one's cute. That's cute. Mad City with Hoffman and Travolta. What an odd thing this was. I mean, Costa Garber has directed this. I've done a DVD commentary with Costa Garber. He was a wonderful man. But this feels like just a for hire job. It's very strange mixing of talents, the director and the two actors. It's not as amazing as it should be. It's basically, it's not a set.
00:50:45
Speaker
Santa but one of these movies about the the the excesses of media yeah right hoffman is the tv reporter who is is becomes a hostage of travolta who's very disturbed guy and you know it it's.
00:51:01
Speaker
the media circus that blows up, but it never quite rises to the commentary that I think it wants to. Yeah. It wants to say something about something, but it's not sure what it wants to say about that something. It also doesn't want you to be mad at anybody. It doesn't want John Travolta to be the bad guy. There's no bad guys, but you know what? There's got to be a bad guy. Children have been taken hostage.
00:51:27
Speaker
And speaking of great European directors doing strange American projects, the next is Palmetto with Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Shue and that was directed by Volker Schlondorf, who is also a great director who see here seems a little bit out of his depth with this very strange kind of
00:51:47
Speaker
caper gone wrong story doesn't really feel like what he should be doing but um decent performances and you know chloe sevigny in a in an early uh young performance is fine too but it doesn't work for me voker voker uh he directed that movie version of the very popular now television the handmaid's tale wait yes he did that was vocal uh there was a moment when these little movies this trigger effect or a bunch of them so
00:52:15
Speaker
X number of days in the valley, what was it? Two, three days in the valley, four days in the valley. It was like a thing for a moment there. So it started coming out, I guess Tarantino kind of launched it. It's romance or something like that. And then for a while, we had this little, these movies, these movies are not theatrical movies anymore. Now these are streaming movies.
00:52:36
Speaker
The very unusual Rapa Nui. Kevin Reynolds attached to the hip for many years to Kevin Costner. I mean, what parts of Costner's films Reynolds directed is always kind of a trivia question. How much of Dancing with the Wolves was Reynolds, and how much was Costner? How much of Waterworld was Reynolds, and how much of all that?
00:53:01
Speaker
Yeah, and so it's always an open question. Here, it's just straight up Kevin Reynolds and there is stuff in this movie that is so good and there is stuff that is so embarrassingly like worst film of all time bad. And it's so strange. It presumes to be an epic about the people.
00:53:20
Speaker
on, uh, responsible for the, uh, the, the sculptures on Easter Island. Um, it's a little mystical. It's a little, I don't know. It just at times it feels too much like Zardoz. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have Sean powder in that little red speedo. I felt like, I felt like I was expecting Connery to show up at any moment. And one of those, one of those Easter Island statues would just turn into the big stone head. I honestly thought.
00:53:47
Speaker
I appreciate Yung Esau Morales' role. And of course Jason Scott Lee. Jason Scott Lee, yeah.
00:53:57
Speaker
In Love and War with Sandra Bullock and Chris O'Donnell, this is basically, this is a Richard Attenborough directed film, another European director, beautifully shot by Roger Pratt. But really, this is the story that is presumably the basis of a farewell to arms. So you've got Chris O'Donnell playing the young Hemingway and Sandra Bullock as the young nurse. I gotta tell you.
00:54:21
Speaker
There's a reason why we have a farewell to arms and not just a straight diary of the events, because a farewell to arms is Hemingway making that otherwise mundane story really interesting. If you're just going to tell me that story and not go with a farewell to arms, it's not that interesting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then lastly, on the new- I did not buy Crystal Donald as a young- No, no. No, of course not. That soft kid that you killed.
00:54:49
Speaker
There's no way. And then I got to tell you, man, I've been waiting for this next one to come out on Blu-ray forever. Kenneth Branagh's Black and White, A Midwinter's Tale. This was written by Branagh and directed by Branagh. It's a little movie that he made in 1995. It's not considered like one of his great films. It should be because it may actually still be my favorite of his movies.
00:55:15
Speaker
It is so insanely funny. This movie rips me to pieces. It's just a silly little black and white comedy about a group of actors who are going to put on a production of Hamlet.
00:55:33
Speaker
Everything that goes on around it is just absolutely insane. It's just a, it's a complete actor's indulgence, but it is a brilliant farce. It is so funny. And what it says about acting and big budget acting and, you know, when you take the little gig versus the big gig. And I mean, some of the jokes here just absolutely ripped me to pieces. And some of it gets so heartfelt. I love this movie. Midwinter's Tale is so brilliant.
00:55:58
Speaker
and some great Jennifer Saunders and John Collins, some really great old wonderful British actors. Terrific. And then we also have volume two of Looney Tune Collector's Choice. I'll just make this real quick. There's a bunch of great classic shorts here. You're going to want to get this because there's no telling how long some of these things stay on max. They might start mixing it up.
00:56:25
Speaker
But you get Brother Brat, which is super funny. Rabbit Rampage, also super funny. The Wacky Worm, total classic. And a hick, a slick, and a chick is also priceless. So a lot of great stuff. Not really a lot of...
00:56:46
Speaker
rhyme or reason as to why these were selected. You know, they kind of mix it up in a random way, but there's a lot of, I mean, you know, eventually you're gonna want all this stuff. So go for it. The older movies, we start with the great Ziegfeld, which won Best Picture, one of the earliest Best Picture winners of the Academy Awards with William Powell as Flo Ziegfeld. This is an amazing transfer and an amazing movie. And they just don't make them like this anymore.
00:57:17
Speaker
Gosh, 1935, 36. 36, yeah. Yeah, one of the very, very first, I mean, priceless. I mean, it's weird thinking that this movie is almost 90 years old. Yeah, man. But it really is. This is just one of those first great biopics and it's magnificent and it's a wonderful transfer. You should get it on Blu-ray and treasure it. Greta Garbo and Anna Christie, I've got a Garbo bio sitting next to my bed that I need to start.
00:57:43
Speaker
But this is, here's the thing about Anna Christie. This is where you understand, this is one of those very early silence, or very early talkies coming out of the silence in 1930. And this is one of the few people to actually make the transition, and then to throw in the towel almost immediately afterwards, was Garbo. Garbo was a silent star. And then as soon as she showed up in the talkies, oh my gosh, she was even more popular. You know, I want to be alone.
00:58:12
Speaker
Oh my gosh. So, so amazing. And this is such a beauty. And she switched up her game. She changed her acting style and was able to make that transition. And Anna Christie shows you exactly how. It is a wonderful, wonderful movie. Maybe I'd almost go so far as to say the best pre-code sound film that there is.
00:58:34
Speaker
Yeah, Francis Marion from the Eugene O'Neill is just really, really great. I'm a big fan of Francis Marion. I am too. As an actress and as a writer, sometimes we forget about these women. These women were doing things, man. They were amazing. Yeah, they were.
00:58:49
Speaker
I got a few here that don't really warrant too much discussion. We got Madame Bovary with James Mason and Jennifer Jones and Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan. It's an all-star deal directed by Vincent Minnelli. It doesn't really hew that closely to the book. I mean, it nominally does. You're really watching just a splashy Vincent Minnelli period film, beautifully shot, nicely staged with a lot of stars. So if you want a more accurate
00:59:15
Speaker
Madame Bovary probably watched the Claude Chabral film. This one is perfectly fine. Jennifer Jones is lovely. Tarzan the Ape Man with Johnny Weissmuller is just ridiculous. It's a horrible movie. It's nothing at all like the book but Weissmuller was a star athlete and he was showing up in the movies and they put him in a skin outfit and it's ridiculous movie. It's ridiculous but it is historic so I guess it's worth something.
00:59:41
Speaker
That's the one from 32. The Van Dyke film, the WS Van Dyke. It's absurd. It's ridiculous. Lionel Barrymore and the Devil Doll. This has been showing up over and over for the last 30 years on DVD and now Blu-ray. It's always looked terrible because it was always public domain transfer. This is taken from archival elements at Warner Brothers.
01:00:06
Speaker
it's it's okay it's not it does it i just don't know if it it could look any better tod browning directed it perfectly fine i don't think it's a very good movie but uh... you know uh... uh... you know it co-written by ariquan strohan yes and the weird on browning directed a strohan script and i feel about that that is crazy that's just so
01:00:28
Speaker
Catherine Herper in Christopher Strong, a movie I had completely forgotten existed. She's super young here. This is from 1933. Fantastic though. It's really lovely. Dorothy Arzner again, these women. Dorothy, one of Hollywood's, you know, to one of the preeminent directors.
01:00:44
Speaker
Was she still teaching? No, she's down at USC where she really went to school. She wasn't at UCLA, right, Dorothy? I can't remember. It should have had a longer, stronger career. Really a lovely, lovely director. It kind of blows people away. They're like, wow, 1933, a major feature film with a major star directed by a woman. Yeah.
01:01:06
Speaker
Yeah there were there were a few of them and they just didn't get the chances they they should have had but this is a this is rock solid great archaeo film. Catherine Hepburn is perfectly lovely and Christopher Strong, which is you know a kind of a feminist film in the 30s. It's about it's about it's about it's about a famous female flyer now that was the thing in the 30s there are lots of famous female flyers in the 30s which is weird because we're in 2024 I cannot name one.
01:01:40
Speaker
Gene Simmons and Robert Mitchum in Angel Face from 1952, which I'm perfectly fine. Otto Preminger did just about everything in his career, and this is one that doesn't feel fully Preminger, but it has some dark edges to it that I guess reflect his sensibilities.
01:02:01
Speaker
Um, but, uh, yeah, that's a, you know, that's another good one. Um, and then, uh, just two more arrows, Errol Flynn and Alexa Smith in gentlemen, Jim directed by Raul Walsh in 1942, right in the middle of the war has some, it takes place in San Francisco, the 1880s. It's all about a gentleman, Jim Corbett, the famous boxer, Errol Flynn does a pretty decent job. Honestly, he's not usually like a biopic guy, but.
01:02:29
Speaker
You know what? He really kind of sells it. He makes you forget that he's Errol Flynn for a bit. Yeah. Both The Skipper and Fred Mertz are in that movie. That's right. Alan Hale is in it.
01:02:47
Speaker
And of course they had done Robin Hood together. So that's fun. It's an interesting life. And then the last one here is Witch It All with Joel McRae. The one color film this week from 1955. I am not a Joel McRae fan. Joel McRae.
01:03:09
Speaker
And you and I have talked about this. Joel McRae is one of those actors from that period who got work only because the other five guys passed on. He was like your fifth option. He was like, oh, well, let's see, Gary Cooper passed and Flynn passed. Landcaster available. All right. Well, we're down to Joel McRae. What about Van Heff on this? Heff on the round.
01:03:35
Speaker
Exactly. But, you know, another European, one of these European directors kind of doing something he's not necessarily suited to, but doing a decent job, Jacques Tourneur. Not really his thing. It's a Western, it's color, but somehow he makes it all work. And, you know, here, Joel McRae basically is, you know, playing Wyatt Earp and not even remotely convincing his Wyatt Earp.
01:03:59
Speaker
But it's fine. It's one of many Wyatt Earp films. Everybody's got their take. So I've got him some slack. Oh, let's hit. Let me go through these.
01:04:10
Speaker
The docks stuff real fast, because that's sitting here kind of on my periphery. Flying Boat by Dirk Braun, who apparently is a local neighbor of mine, but this is a terrific little documentary about amphibious planes, which I guess are becoming extinct. I mean, they're all kind of dying, and the people who are restoring them from where they're sitting in this Arizona
01:04:38
Speaker
Boneyard, they call it this this graveyard of these planes. But you know, this was a thing for a long time. You could take these planes to where there are no airports where there are no landing strips. That's what Howard Hughes was doing. That big old spruce goose. And it was kind of a big old thing. The
01:04:57
Speaker
Even when I was in the military, these were very effective planes when I was associated with the Navy. Because yeah, as you say, you could literally land these planes and then just sort of scoot right into the water. Got a body of water? You can land. That's it. If it's a lake, it's, you know, even a big wide river.
01:05:16
Speaker
You could land this thing on the Mississippi, any part of Mississippi. The versatility of these things and where they could go really is utterly fascinating. Even snow could land these suckers on snow. I had no idea. This is a really, really interesting
01:05:33
Speaker
fascinating doc made by a guy who is a pilot, a documentarian and a pilot, so he's bringing it and a lot of good stuff going on here. So yeah, man, Flying Boat, good documentary on DVD. We also have The Weeds, which is all about Dwayne Johnson and his fight with Monsanto.
01:05:55
Speaker
Anything about mon santo just makes for a good documentary that company just they hide so much and they are so opaque about everything that you it just it's a challenge to a documentary i grew up in saint louis capa in the headquarters of mon santo and it was like it's in saint louis oh yeah it was in saint louis and my entire child was always a thing always a thing that company.
01:06:22
Speaker
Well, anyway, this is, this is quite a story. It is obviously one of many Monsanto stories, but, um, you know, it, I mean, it's, it gets into that whole, they could probably do this as a narrative film too. It's about, you know, whether or not the, uh, the Roundup herbicide is cancer causing, which we now know it is in my community. It's actually banned.
01:06:41
Speaker
And it's actually pervasive. There are... Roundup is likely to land in a crop, whether you want that Roundup in that crop or not, because it's so pervasive. And it can be spread by the wind. So I put a Roundup on my crops. You will have Roundup on your crops, whether you want it or not. So it's a whole thing.
01:07:07
Speaker
And a great Peace Corps documentary here, A Towering Task by Alanna DeJoseph, with beautiful narration by Annette Benning, who just has that beautiful, beautiful voice. But if you don't know the story of the Peace Corps, it's quite a story. It is a really wonderful story. And whether or not you like the Peace Corps, I know they have their critics and they have over time, but wow, it just all begins from the Kennedy's Initiative in 1961, and it moves forward.
01:07:36
Speaker
Sergeant Shriver, Sergeant Shriver, right? What's like a brother-in-law or something like that? Brother-in-law. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And it basically confronts what has happened to the Peace Corps now because it does kind of feel lost in a lot of other NGOs at the moment. So it does address what's going to come of it.
01:07:56
Speaker
And then a couple of other new films here, a concert and steelbook. We don't have any other concert or steelbook titles this week, so I'm just going to throw these out there. School of Rock, 20th anniversary steelbook, limited edition, Jack Black, hilarious, wonderful movie. They did a Broadway show out of this that was spectacular as well. And I still love this movie. I say this is Richard Linklater's best film. I know it's not his most Oteri film.
01:08:37
Speaker
That's right. That's right. But you know what? He serves the script. He really does. He serves the script well. And what I will say about Jack Black is Jack Black is a guy who can very easily take over a movie. And he has. Big personality, big voice. He could very easily walk into a movie and just take the whole thing over. In two cases, Jack Black has taken a step back and said,
01:08:42
Speaker
But it's a great movie.
01:09:01
Speaker
I am not the most funny interesting or meaningful thing about this movie i'm gonna share this with the ones who are. This is one of the other one is tropic thunder where he said this is insane cast and i am not gonna try to show it up stage anybody i'm just gonna i'm just gonna do my thing and let everybody else do their thing we have a blast here he looks at these kids and he says these kids are amazing.
01:09:24
Speaker
I'm gonna do my thing and then I'm gonna hand it off to them and I'm just gonna let them take the spotlight and he does and it is just so good. So if you don't already have it, get the Steel Book, it's fantastic. And then on Blu-ray for the very first time, I don't know why it took so long, Eddie Murphy-Raw.
01:09:41
Speaker
From nineteen eighty seven eddie was in his absolute prime he was owning the box office all through the nineteen eighties. I mean we done beverly hills cop and you know we we don't.
01:09:56
Speaker
it just every, I mean, Golden Child, what else do we have? Oh dude, yeah, yeah, yeah. 48 hours movies, another 48 hours. Crazy. He was, he was, he was at the moment, and you know, and Rich was still around in 1987, but he was the biggest comedian in the world. This is directed by Robert Townsend, who we interviewed not too terribly long ago. I think we talked to Robert about this. And produced by Kenan and Aubrey Wayans. And produced by Kenan and Aubrey Wayans. Written, co-written with Kenan and Aubrey Wayans. It's just, it was just the whole thing. And yeah, and look, Eddie,
01:10:24
Speaker
At the time, Eddie could really do no wrong. And at the time, frankly, it was just a little, it's a little easier to just be funny. And there were a lot of sketches in this movie. You got Sam Jackson and Tatiana Ali and all these other things, these people doing sketches all through this thing. And it's just really, really, really funny.
01:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's raw is a great, great, great concert. I mean, it is great. It's just legendary. There's not a bad joke in the whole thing. And you know, this is when those concert films were getting theatrical releases. I mean, now it all shows up on Netflix. But I mean, you know, they were in prior is the one who sort of set the stage for that.
01:11:05
Speaker
Prior as a guy who did, you know, Live on the Sunset Strip and all that stuff, and those things are showing up in movie theaters and people are buying tickets. And I went to see every, JoJo Dance went to see every one of those movies in the theater. And people were like, wow, you could sell tickets and you could pack theaters for concert shows. And then HBO rolled around and kind of unraveled all of that. But what's interesting now, that exact same framework, we look at these young ladies, Taylor and Beyonce, and what do they do?
01:11:35
Speaker
That's what it is. It's so circular, dude. It's just nothing is right. You're right. You're right. We got TV. We got a little bit of, we got some new stuff. We got 4k. What do you want to jump to next? Let's jump over and do a little bit of TV because we haven't done that much. I saw Dick Van Dyke on something. Yeah. Dick's still with us. I don't know if he goes back his fourth check.
01:12:00
Speaker
Let me tell you something about Dick. So first of all, Dick lives in my community. Dick is a treasured member of my community. In fact, it used to be an annual event that Dick Clark, Dick Van Dyke, my head is still stuck on me. It used to be an annual event that Dick Van Dyke would write a letter to the local papers saying, why can't I find any place locally where I can buy a screwdriver and some underwear?
01:12:25
Speaker
I've seen him driving around and he also does a thing on Halloween, which we went to not last year, but the year before. He doesn't come out, but he hires a whole lot of Vegas acts, ventriloquists and puppeteers and impressionists. He has all the animatronic monsters in front of his house.
01:12:46
Speaker
And they set up a little stage and for kids to gather around and two different showings on Halloween, you can bring the kids in front of Dick Van Dyke's house and they can sit there and it's like a full lineup of vaudevillians from Vegas doing their shtick for these kids.
01:13:03
Speaker
And it's amazing, and the kids love it. And it's a really fun time. So also, the local high school is now going to name the performance center, the Dick Van Dyke Performance Hall. They're naming it after him, raising money to do that. And he has given his full endorsement and support to that. So Dick Van Dyke, a treasured member of my community, and we're very happy to have him here. And the Dick Van Dyke show, which has been out before,
01:13:32
Speaker
Now on Blu-ray, this is not the Blu-ray, this is now from FilmRise. FilmRise got the license and they put the complete series on DVD. And in addition to that, we have the complete series of That Girl on DVD, also from FilmRise, and the first ever Blu-ray release of the original The Odd Couple from CBS Paramount.
01:13:57
Speaker
All three of these classic sitcoms are now out in complete sets. Whether you like the Blu-ray DVD thing, they're all worth buying. We haven't had the full Dick Van Dyke set out in ages, and it's wonderful to have it. And that girl, I think, is a totally underrated show. A lot of people thought it was like a second tier Mary Tyler Moore show.
01:14:16
Speaker
No, no, no. Mary Talamore actually built from the platform that that girl, Marlo Thomas and her dad, you know, they built that platform that Mary Talamore James Brooks. That's James L. Brooks, right? Mary Talamore? No. Yeah. Yeah, more with James L. Brooks.
01:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to look that up people and follow this Danny Thomas was a freaking genius. And there are very lot of lot of very famous people who we know better than Danny Thomas built. He built those people. Yeah, and and I think that girl was a fantastic show. Dick Van Dyke show. Let's just say something about this for a second because
01:14:52
Speaker
This was a Desilu production. This was Lucy and Desi getting behind a new sitcom that wound up actually achieving, if not surpassing, the heights that I Love Lucy did in its day.
Celebrating the Dick Van Dyke Show
01:15:07
Speaker
Dick Van Dyke's show not only gave us Dick Van Dyke, it gave us Mary Tyler Moore.
01:15:11
Speaker
But the whole premise of the show, he's a TV writer, Carl Reiner basically channeled all of what was originally gonna be the star of his own show. And then Carl Reiner stepped back and they hired Dick Van Dyke and Dick brought the charisma and next thing you know, this show is up and running and it is just, it is a wonderfully funny show. The only difference between this and I Love Lucy,
01:15:34
Speaker
is that the wacky neighbor couple, that's Morrie Amsterdam and Rose Marie. They're his work buddies. They aren't neighbors. And the front door is not next to the kitchen. It's screamed left. That's the only difference. But you know what my favorite thing is on the Dick Van Dyke show? My absolute favorite thing was when Jerry Van Dyke would show up and do the sketch deck as Dick's brother.
01:16:03
Speaker
Those things just slay me with narcoleptic, dual personality, Jekyll and Hyde shtick is so funny. Look, Mary Tyler Moore, who, while being breathtakingly beautiful, right? I mean, just in the time, breathtaking was ridiculously funny. Her timing was every bit as sharp as all of the rest of the very famous, all those other people were already very famous comedians, Rosemary and obviously Carl and Dick too, for that matter.
01:16:32
Speaker
And Mary was like this very fresh new, new, new, new, new, new thing. She was also quite a bit younger than Dick Van Dyke. But she was up to the task 100%. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, totally true. And, you know, let's not sell short Ted Bessel on Pearl.
01:16:52
Speaker
He made me laugh every single time. That was just brilliant. Great straight man, great straight man. And the odd couple, now on Blu-ray, I mean, look, I will say this too. I have all these local stories about these people. So Jack Klugman, one year we had a, we had like a local city council election here and Jack Klugman, and I was handed a list of people to call, right? I was like, gotta call these people, get them out to the polls. So I looked at the list, I'm like, holy crap, Jack Klugman is on my list.
01:17:21
Speaker
There was a list of like 40 or 50 people, right? Small town. And I'm like, I'm calling Jack Klugman for it. So I picked up the phone. And I called Jack Klugman. And I'm like, I hope he picks up. I hope it's not a machine. I hope he picks up. Hello. I'm like, yes. Mr. Klugman, hi. Wade Major Collin, just want to urge you to go out and vote today at city council election. Oh my god, thanks. Click. Admit my life, man.
01:17:51
Speaker
My life. I talked to Jack Klugman on the phone. That must have been the Quincy years. It was post Quincy. It was like around 2000. Oh, yeah. But you know what? Look, have we ever had a movie that successful that was turned into a TV show with different actors that became even more successful? I mean, Jack Lemmon and Walter Mathau in the movie,
01:18:18
Speaker
And you replace them with the incredible choice of Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And it worked beautifully. Worked beautifully. It worked. And they've resurrected this show how many times? Oh, let's see. The black one was Ron Glass. And I want to say. No, it was Demont Wilson. Demont Wilson.
01:18:39
Speaker
And I think Ron Glass was the other one. But I think there have been two black versions, one female version. And then there wasn't just like the last year or two, didn't they try doing like a younger version?
TV Shows and Their Adaptations
01:18:59
Speaker
It's like a latino young latinos is over like that was crazy It works man, it's it works. It's a it's it's it just works. It's great. Um Also on TV, we got the Sandman. Have you watched the Sandman?
01:19:15
Speaker
I did watch that literally the first season of that show. It was kind of interesting. And also the event character, some of mythical, and we meet a whole bunch of other mythological characters and whatnot doing the series. I thought it was actually kind of interesting and I enjoyed it a little bit.
01:19:32
Speaker
Back in 2022, I think that series was the Sandman season one. Is there going to be a season two of that? I think there will be. I mean, it's a well-liked show. I caught a few episodes. I get what they're going for. I like Tom Sturridge a lot. I really do, especially at this age. I think he's really interesting. He plays the master of dreams in this thing.
01:19:56
Speaker
And it's a DC-based thing. I'm not familiar with the source material. Well, game, and it's game and gory you're doing a meal game, and yeah. Yeah. So yeah.
01:20:07
Speaker
Yeah. And, and I, you know, I, it kind of surprised me when Patton Oswalt shows up, you're like, Oh, what are you? All right. Um, didn't expect to see you on a, on this show. But, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, uh, I think it's, I think a second season will probably work better for me. I gotta, I gotta finish this first season and get all the way through it, but it certainly has a vibe. I think it's, uh, I think it, uh, it could be one of the more interesting DC adaptations on TV. Cause it doesn't feel like the Arrowverse or any of that stuff.
01:20:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know we need to do some things with all of these universes, man. We do. Babylon 5, the complete series on Blu-ray, now in a nice 100th anniversary boxed set. A lot of people kind of felt like this never got the chance to become, I mean, it ran for five seasons.
01:20:58
Speaker
It ran for five seasons. I was a big fan back in mid-90s or something like that. You know, I had a couple of different inspirations. A lot of people kind of felt like this could have been the new Star Trek. And I don't know if it really wasn't on the path for that, I don't think. But it is what it is. And I thought it was kind of cool. But it exists in that space.
01:21:16
Speaker
between, you know, I'm a big fan of these Stargate series. Yeah. Series. And then, and then Star Trek, this exists in the space sort of between that, that Deep Space Nine kind of thing, because we're in the, we're in Babylon, we say like a space station, this whole thing going on, all these different people. It's a lot, it's very political. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Doug, we have Babylon 5.
01:21:39
Speaker
And speaking of that, now that we're into space, we have Ancient Aliens season 18. I think season 18 is where this show finally turns the corner. For 17 seasons, we're just the setup.
01:21:56
Speaker
Season 18. Honestly, I don't know how there's anything left to even cover on this show. I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't know. I don't know. I don't get it. Anyway, there you go. 10 episodes from season 18. This show just keeps finding stuff. Well, what's interesting is the one thing they never find are any aliens. Never find any Asian aliens. That doesn't happen.
01:22:24
Speaker
I wonder if on some distant planet they have a TV show called Ancient Earthlings. They never find any. They never find any.
01:22:36
Speaker
Joe Pickett season two, if you haven't started watching Joe Pickett, that means that the title Joe Pickett doesn't work for you and probably shouldn't watch the show. This is not a show. It's for the Downton Abbey audience. No. Let me just explain that.
01:22:55
Speaker
Joe Pickett is exactly what it sounds like. That's a well-chosen name.
Animation Celebrations and Critiques
01:22:59
Speaker
This is a redneck show and 10 episodes and not exactly my speed. It's a rural cop sheriff. It's like one of those Westerns in the modern day thing. This is not Yellowstone. All these people are poor. It's very middle-class.
01:23:23
Speaker
For the kids, we have Best Birthday Ever, which is an animated thing that I am completely unfamiliar with. It's apparently a European deal based on a book series by someone named Wroetraut Suzanne Berner. From the publisher named Karlshien, I'm going to just
01:23:44
Speaker
right out of there. This feels very German to me. It's like little kind of rabbity people. They're a little bit too human to be rabbits and they're a little bit too rabbity to be humans. That kind of thing usually creeps Tim out. No, deeply. I'm going to say right now, Tim, I understand why you get creeped out. Santa Mission is creepy to me.
01:24:06
Speaker
It's so creepy. Jennifer Saunders doing a voice. Jennifer Saunders is everywhere now. But yes, the animation is just no. It's just a little bit creepy. Let me just show you something. You see that face right there? Can you see that?
01:24:20
Speaker
Oh yeah. You see that face? Look at that nose. That nose. That's a dude's nose. And then you see here like five fingers? What are you kidding? I'm creeped out. Opposable thumbs. I can't work with that. And then lastly on the TV front, we got a whole bunch of Ultraman stuff. Oh my gosh. We've got the 55th
01:24:47
Speaker
the 55th anniversary of Ultraman, the Ultra 7 Anthology, which is the 55 best episodes and specials of Ultraman. 27 hours from all these different shows, Ultraman 80 and Ultraman Tarot and Ultraman, Ultraman X and Ultraman Genga, and you realize, holy cow, there are like
01:25:10
Speaker
There are like a dozen different ultra man series over the years you lose track of them it's just it's crazy so they went and chose the fifty five best i don't know what the standard is but they put them all together this is a great sampler i guess anything else. And then we also have the ultra man battle kaiju series number two which is ultra man versus alien balt on.
01:25:34
Speaker
This is two movies and 11 episodes of Ultraman fighting something which looks like a cross between, well, it's a person in a suit, probably a woman judging from the shape of the suit, but basically looks like a lobster crossed with a rooster. Tim, what do you think? Yeah, perhaps eaten by the alien from Predator.
01:26:00
Speaker
Well, it's the strangest looking thing I've ever seen. Anyway, I guess if you're into Ultraman fighting Kaiju, there's you. Oh my gosh. That's your deal. So let's see, we got new movies, we got four, oh criterion, let's hit a few criterion real fast. Yeah, let's do some of that.
01:26:18
Speaker
Did you ever see the red balloon when you were a kid? Oh, goodness gracious. Yes. They showed it actually in grade schools. I remember that. Yeah, all the time. I did too. I was wondering if that was just a weird California thing or not. Yeah. You get the red balloon here along with a bunch of other five other films by Albert Lamorice, who is the filmmaker behind the classic red balloon, all made between the early 50s and the mid 60s.
01:26:46
Speaker
This is nearly five hours of stuff here. It's a pretty well-packed double Blu-ray set. And you get the red balloon, along with BIM, the little donkey, stowaway in the sky, white mane, and circus angel. The only other one here that is kind of classic is white mane. White mane is really quite lovely. But here's the thing that I remember about, and there's a lot of extras on here, wonderful interviews with
01:27:15
Speaker
Pascal memories and the director's son documentary with memories and his daughter i mean a lot of great stuff from french television so i mean there's a lot here to contextualize all this but here's what i remember from the red balloon as a kid watching class and there's a scene where the other little kids are picking on him and they grab him and wrestling to the ground or pick him up and it's a crotch move right it's like they get their arms right through his legs and
01:27:45
Speaker
You know, it's not something that we as adults would necessarily consider humorous. But I remember the third grade or whatever age I was at the time, oh my gosh, all the boys in the class couldn't, they were inconsolable.
01:28:00
Speaker
And it was just all, it was nonstop, all that stuff. And that's what I still remember of that film today. I was traumatized by it. Oh my gosh. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, which won the award in a 4K Blu-ray combo set.
01:28:19
Speaker
Give me your thoughts on it. I never cared for that. I did not care for that move. For one thing, it's not our Pinocchio. The narrative is different. This whole portion of it that begins before our Pinocchio begins, it's also at the end of the day, the title is correct, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, because this is a Guillermo del Toro movie.
01:28:44
Speaker
And at the end of the day, it's set in that fascist world of the Spanish Civil War that many of his movies have been in and about. And that's what this movie is about. And it has a whole lot of stuff going on. And it just has everything to do with Walt Disney's with my Pinocchio.
01:29:05
Speaker
It is incredibly well animated. I have to say, I find the animation really compelling. I do wrestle with a lot of the same issues, that it kind of comes at you sideways and you don't, you sort of need to know where he's coming from and what he has done with the narrative. I'm still not sure what I feel about it, but I do think the animation is very, very impressive and I love the Alexander DePlasse score. I mean, the scores have become a little bit,
01:29:32
Speaker
generic over the last few years, but he suspends that here and kind of gives us something very unique and special. I was also surprised by the, there's a really interesting panel on here that includes not Noli del Toro, but a bunch of his technicians, including De Pla, and the moderator of this panel is none other than James Cameron.
01:29:56
Speaker
Interesting. You're like, all right, well, OK. I didn't know Cameron was doing that, but good on you. And he does a really good job of it. Cameron, he gets into the nitty gritty that only a Cameron would get into. Clearly, he's asking questions about the things that he's curious about. And you're like, I would never have thought of that.
01:30:12
Speaker
So the it's very instructive it's really really good so the four k is spectacular especially for this animation so you know reservations not withstanding highly highly recommended yeah and then a blu-ray director approved of allen baron's blast of silence from nineteen sixty one.
01:30:31
Speaker
This doesn't have a ton of special features on it. It's got a little making up featurette and some stills and a trailer and that's kind of it. But an amazing screenplay here and very, very well directed. This is one of those low budget noirs from the late 50s, early 60s period. Short film, 77 minutes.
01:31:00
Speaker
But it really shows you where things are about to pivot from the 50s and into the 60s, into these grittier films, which dovetails into everything from from Black Spoitation to Dirty Harry and all these things that we get in the 70s, you know, Serpico, all of that. You kind of see the seeds of all of that in this film. And it's basically a hitman movie. It's a hitman
4K Releases and Niche Film Reviews
01:31:21
Speaker
on Christmas.
01:31:23
Speaker
And that's good. Oh yeah, dude. I love this movie. Waldo Salt, co-writing. He's Serpico. Didn't get a credit because he's Black. Yeah, because he's Black. Back in the day, but we know he's Serpico. He's Midnight Cowboy. He's coming home. Yeah. But yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah.
01:31:42
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's a really tough, tough, gritty movie. 1961, you know, entering the 60s, giving you a whole different vibe and black and white. It's 1961 in black and white, which you don't often see. So, pretty terrific. Pretty terrific movie. Well done, Criterion. Good job. So, yeah, 4Ks. 4Ks? Yeah.
01:32:07
Speaker
All right, so I don't know why, maybe you can tell me why. I got it right on the top here. Man in the Iron Mask, why is this on 4K? Yeah, we're talking about the Randal Wallace number, Leo and all that kind of stuff. There you go. I mean, why is it on 4K? This is a fairly young Leo movie, Jeremy Iron, John Malkovich, all these guys. Why is it on 4K?
01:32:31
Speaker
Now, it is a shout select release. I get why it would be a shout select. It has kind of a cult following. It was a great cast. I'm not a fan of the movie personally. Randall Wallace wrote and directed this. Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart, won an Oscar for it and pushed it to Best Picture. I get it. It's one of Randall Wallace's period things. I just didn't particularly care for this film. It's a beautiful new transfer from
01:32:55
Speaker
The original negative 4K looks great. Audio commentary with Randall Wallace is fantastic. I get why this would be a shout select title. Dave Progira, Gabriel Byrne, Jeremy Irons, Leo DiCaprio, classic original material, Alexander Dumas, but 4K? I don't know.
01:33:14
Speaker
The thing about this film is, it's star-studded, but this film didn't have much of a scale to it. Great costumes, nice sets, but this film didn't take up cinematic space in the way that Braveheart or some of the other films around this period did.
01:33:33
Speaker
No, I think you're right. I think you're right. It doesn't elevate the novel because the novel has some certainly intimate stuff to it, but it doesn't feel epic. Maybe that's what it is. I don't know.
01:33:45
Speaker
Pet Sematary bloodlines. They keep making Pet Sematary movies. They do. And I guess there's an audience for 4K with the people who like kind of higher end horror. I don't know. This is a prequel to Pet Sematary. It takes place in 1969. It's, you know, I mean, it's kind of all the same stuff. I like the original film. Oh, yeah.
01:34:13
Speaker
But, uh, you know, I mean, I guess, I guess, uh, this is, it's straight to video. I guess there's an audience for it. Not necessarily mine here. I'm going to say shout select made absolutely spot on call 4k big old, beautiful three disc boxed set for JFK, Oliver stones, JFK. Wow. Is this awesome? And I'm not even that big of a fan of the movie. Yeah. But the box says.
01:34:38
Speaker
That's fantastic, yeah. Oh my gosh, all the stuff on here. I mean, really, it's pretty great. You get the director's cut. Most importantly, fantastic new scan of it, Dolby Vision audio, Dolby Vision picture.
01:34:55
Speaker
i don't be audio dts audio it's fantastic i mean really it's it just kills it i'm and then on this to you get a blu ray of the directors cut. This three is the theatrical cut disc four is special features and where are there a ton of them so.
01:35:14
Speaker
But the director's cut really, I still think, is the better film here. And the theatrical cut was already pretty long, but the director's cut really feels less... And tell me if you agree with this. The theatrical cut felt more like a conspiracy theory. The director's cut feels like...
01:35:34
Speaker
I think you got something there. Yeah, a little bit more historical, as opposed to, like, what was that movie that he made not long after that? The one with Woody and... Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know the one. Not California, but the other one. Which was like the sole sort of notion, again, about these things, as opposed to the director's, which is like, we're going to try to lay out some history here.
01:36:23
Speaker
So you are going to have to explain to me the 4K Ultra HD Night Shift edition of Five Nights at Freddy's. Oh man. I got to tell you dude, for one thing, this is based on a video game of course. So there's the whole thing there. But right before this came out, or maybe, I don't know, six months before this came out, there was this really neat
01:36:26
Speaker
as best as we can anyway.
01:36:45
Speaker
movie with Nicolas Cage that came out, right? Yeah. And it's the same exact movie. This one, you know, there's this place called Freddy's. It's this child's place. And you got to get in there with Five Nights at Freddy's and all the jazz stuff, just this whole thing. Now, look, if you play that game and you're of a certain age, I suppose all of this is really, really funny. You know, it's sort of creepy or whatever. But all I'm thinking is this would be way better if Nick Cage was in it.
01:37:14
Speaker
when they made it last year. So, you know, but I guess the kids who watched the movie kind of did the animatronic that they come alive and he's got to get his little sister back from this place. It's the whole thing is ridiculous.
01:37:28
Speaker
Well, there it is, Five Nights at Freddy. Shout select, really killing it with the 4Ks this week. Clue, that was one I didn't see coming. And you know, I remember, do you remember how the whole deal with Clue was? They released it theatrically with different endings. And so you could go see this movie several times and not see the same ending. And that I thought was pretty great, three different endings.
01:37:55
Speaker
So they include all the different endings here so you can you can you're not you're not gonna have to go by the desk multiple times jonathan linn really good director terrific director my cousin vinnie many other great films was the was the.
01:38:12
Speaker
wrote this with John Landis, brings a lot of, you know, credit and then directed it. And I really think the movie feels better today than it did then. At the time, I thought it was kind of gimmicky. I looked at the cast. I'm like, it's basically a game. I get what you're doing. I was really cynical about it.
01:38:45
Speaker
Jason Curry, Christopher Lloyd, Martin Mull, Michael McKeon, Leslie Ann Warren, Eileen Brennan, you know, it really, I mean, it's a hell of a cast. And a lot of very funny people. I mean, just Martin Mull and Madeleine Cahn alone would have been enough for me. So, you know, throw the rest of them in there. It's a lot of fun.
01:38:58
Speaker
Now there's kind of a nostalgia.
01:39:07
Speaker
It really is a lot of fun. So this movie is, I'm really warm to it. And John Morris wrote the score. John Morris who did all those Mel Brooks movies. It's a wonderful score. You are also a big fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem, I believe. Yeah, I am. I am.
01:39:26
Speaker
Most mutant ninja turtle stuff over the past 40 years, the early cartoon is fine. And then they decided, OK, we got ourselves a franchise, and they started doing all these things. I remember doing The Junket for the first live action one way back in the 90s. And these movies have really just been a mess.
01:39:45
Speaker
ever since, including a live-action one that they did not too terribly long ago. This is really, really good. For one thing, they're teenagers. The actual actors who are doing the voices are teenagers. And I really dig the animation here, too. It's really striking animation. It's animation. It's not trying to be super 3D animation. It's mostly sort of like 2D, sort of flat, but very scratchy and very urban and very gritty.
01:40:11
Speaker
uh, Frank Miller sin city kind of thing that it is some big fancy, you know, and see, we were, when we were all swapping emails and awards time and I'm like, Oh, what do you like for animation? You know, we're, we're all asking each other. I'm like, cause I, you know, I like, I, and I'm, I'm going for all the, you know, I don't want to vote for anime again. I'm tied like boy in the Heron. Really? Is that what it's going to come down to? Like,
01:40:30
Speaker
What about a Zume? What about, well, does anybody see migration? I don't want to vote for a Pixar. Was there any Pixar this year? What about Illumination? They got migration. And you know, all the Spider-Man movie is Spider-Man. It's a Spider-Verse. We've already done that. And then you came out of the blue and said, TMNT, mutant mayhem. And I was like, what?
01:40:52
Speaker
Okay, and I went and I checked it out. Son of a gun, you were right. It's so much fun. It's the look, it's the style. They did hear what I thought the Spider-Verse movies were also doing, which was finding a still aesthetic, a comic book aesthetic, an art aesthetic, maybe even kind of a graffiti aesthetic, and saying, let's adapt that to animation.
01:41:19
Speaker
We don't have to, like 2D animation and 3D animation don't have to be these totally separate categories. We can split the difference now. We can use CG technology and 2D aesthetic and we can find all these other looks in books, in art, on the wall of a mural. We can find this and we can somehow create an animated aesthetic that splits the difference and goes there. Computers let us do that now.
01:41:47
Speaker
And that's exactly what Spider-Verse did, and I thought this took it another step. Yep, and I really just appreciate it. So yeah, you got that franchise back for me. Thank you very much. We are past Christmas, but Love Actually also came out with a 4K Ultra HD. I am one of the handful of people that defends this movie. You could tie me to a stake and light me on fire. I will not reject this movie. This is such a fun movie. I laugh at it every year.
01:42:16
Speaker
I can't get enough of it, and I especially enjoy watching the young Hugh Grant here, which is the older Hugh Grant that plays the Oompa Loompa in Wonka. It's a wonderful contrast during the holidays, but love actually is great. Nothing new here by way of the extras, it's just that the movie's on 4K, and it's just gorgeous. Richard Curtis, oh yeah. We lost him not too long ago, Richard. No, Curtis is still around. Is Curtis still around? I must be seeing somebody else there.
01:42:43
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, Curtis still around. Still good. Still good. Still good. Thank goodness. You scared me for a second. Yeah. The Exorcist believer. No, did not know. No. Yeah. They went and they made
01:43:00
Speaker
Poor, poor Ellen and poor Linda come back for this. Yeah, this is David Gordon-Green, man. That guy's career is just bizarre to me. Gosh, I cannot for the life of me figure it out.
01:43:18
Speaker
I feel badly because George Washington was such a good debut film. And I think somewhere somebody convinced him that he was not going to have a career doing that and they got him off onto bad comedies and bad horror. And that's what he's been doing since.
01:43:39
Speaker
And then I guess he had his finger in the, um, in the resurrection of the Halloween films there for a while. And now he's over here messing around with this and I just don't get it. And Lamar Odom Jr. And I guess, I guess, I guess, Leslie, Leslie. I'm sorry. Thank you. It's Lamar. You know, I suppose if you
01:44:00
Speaker
think of this in terms of being a serious, elevated horror film, as I suppose the first one was 50 years ago. But it just doesn't live in that space anymore. That space is occupied now by the conjurines and the- Yeah. I feel so badly for Ellen Burstyn because they drag her out and make her play the older version of her original character.
01:44:27
Speaker
it just feels like it's just undignified and we didn't need this movie we didn't need it and then the last four k here is varsity blues twenty fifth anniversary on four k you know i.
01:44:44
Speaker
I know this movie has kind of a cult following. Football hits love this stuff. This Friday Night Lights, they love this stuff. I mean, it was never my thing, but I've grown because I know enough people who really
Film Reviews: Critiques and Recommendations
01:44:56
Speaker
love Friday Night Lights and really love Varsity Blues and I kind of understand where they're coming from because for a certain part of the country,
01:45:04
Speaker
This movie is their experience. This is what happened. This is it. This was it. Look, I didn't go to a single football game when I was in high school. I ditched pep rallies so I could go and see movies, right? Like, pep rallies? Go to Westwood and see a movie. Then you sneak out, right? And so that was my thing. I wanted nothing to do with it at the time.
01:45:28
Speaker
You know john white man he's he's he's really good and there is there is something here there is something here so i get it you know scott con is really good. This is that moment when i thought you know that brian robin brian robin system is an act is an act it was.
01:45:48
Speaker
And if you go look up Brian, you'll know his face immediately because you were watching him in sitcoms all through the 80s. And Brian frankly made a whole lot of bad movies, Dave and Eddie Murphy. I mean, every now and again, Brian would knock one out of the park.
01:46:05
Speaker
But plainly, he was a very ahead of the class. That was that. Yeah. And he produced some big movies, produced Norbert. I mean, him and Eddie had this thing, Coach Carter, the stuff. And I don't know, he's a bright guy, very, very capable because he worked his way up from being a fairly bad sitcom. Because Brian was not good at that either. Worked a lot.
01:46:31
Speaker
to being a fairly noted director in television and then in feature films. And now run in the freaking studio, dude. I mean, that's almost that Brandon Tarnikoff kind of story that you used to hear about, you know, back in the 70s and 80s. But there he is, Brian Roberts.
01:46:49
Speaker
Yeah, it is our age, you know, I'm talking about like, you know, but there is. Yeah. Well, it's some is somewhere in his wicked childhood. He must have done something good. Yeah. Let's hit a few of the new movies in the limited time we have left. The the first of the Oscar-y nominated stuff is out and it is The Holdovers by Alexander Payne, my old classmate, making a huge comeback after that little miniaturization movie.
01:47:19
Speaker
down sizing and all that kind of sizing. Yeah, that was, that was a disaster. You know what? He just got it. It got himself another DGA nomination man with this. And I think this is, this is an amazing movie. Yeah. Beautifully. What he did is he got Paul Giamatti and Dave vine. Joy Randolph, Golden Globes.
01:47:36
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, he did something for them, even more than for himself. Absolutely. I mean, for those who don't know, the whole the whole marketing of this thing from the trailer all the way to the soundtrack and to the just the whole style of the movie is it evokes those those kind of dramedy commas of that, like a Mike Nichols film from the early 70s.
01:47:59
Speaker
So it wants to look even the palette of the colors is the early seventies in the opening the copyright i think they even have a phony copyright bug during the opening titles that says nineteen seventy one on it.
01:48:14
Speaker
to take a look at it again. But it's, I mean, it's a great movie. It's a great movie. It's all about an elite prep school back East in the early 70s. And the people who are stuck at school when everybody else gets to go home for the holidays. And Raul Giamatti is the teacher who has to stay there and babysit all these people. And this one kid in particular who thought he was going to be, you know, going home and turns out he's not because his mom and her new boyfriend are going to instead go on vacation. So he's stuck.
01:48:42
Speaker
And Divine Joy Randolph, who was so freaking amazing on Netflix with Eddie Murphy in, uh, in, uh, Oh my gosh, she was so good in that total complete reinvention.
01:48:57
Speaker
I mean if you saw her in that you see her in this you would never imagine it's the same actress yeah she there she was so broad and so funny here she takes it all the way down it is like it is minimalist acting the kind of that my father love my father would love her performance in this.
01:49:14
Speaker
And she's the woman who basically works the kitchen at the school, and I won't give anything away, but there's a tragedy that she's a party to, and she is a big player in the lives of these other characters.
01:49:33
Speaker
She just holds it all in until this one moment of the film and then it just blows up. It is so brilliant. It may be my favorite performance of 2023, what she does here. It's just so extraordinary. But I love this movie. Alexander Payne did not write it. He's working with a
01:49:55
Speaker
with a separate screenplay by David Hemmingson for a change. So, you know, normally he co-writes these things, not here. And son of a gun, Mark Johnson, you know, another great producer after all the way back to Rain Man and all those great Barry Levinson movies, Mark Johnson, who runs the Foreign Language or the International Film Committee now for the Academy.
01:50:15
Speaker
another great director, another great producer. The Holdovers is for real and you got to watch it. It's just great. A few other newish films here, Padre Pio. Did you see Padre Pio? I did not see that one, Padre Pio.
01:50:32
Speaker
Yeah. By Abel Ferrara. Oh, Shia and Abel doing the thing. I wish I had seen that. This is a movie about an actual individual named Padre Pio, a kind of a legendary monk, kind of around the end of the First World War. And this is the movie that led Shia LaBeouf to overcome all of his demons and convert to Catholicism. Playing this character, researching this character, he converted to Catholicism.
01:51:01
Speaker
Okay. Craziest thing in the world, I know. Like, I wonder if Abel Ferrara was like, dude, I think it's taking a little too far. Shai has all kinds of issues, but nevertheless, he has always been, though, a really good actor.
01:51:18
Speaker
I've always said that about him. I don't like this movie. I will just say that. I don't like this movie. But it's a weird movie that I think some people will like. So I'm going to try to be fair to it in this sense. What's odd about this movie is it's two totally disconnected stories taking place at the same time that have nothing to do with each other. And I don't really understand why they're slapped together. There's the very tortuous experience of Padre Pio himself, who is just
01:51:44
Speaker
You know, he's just, he's miserable and he screams and he hates himself and he's just trying so hard to get over issues. And then there's a whole thing that's taken place in a small town, this political stuff in Italy, which the
01:51:59
Speaker
I'm sure enables mine something ties those things together but it doesn't really work in the context of the food it's very frustrating but maybe for somebody else that will work i will leave it to you and try to be fair i'm strays.
01:52:16
Speaker
featuring the voices of Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx as dogs. This is the Unleashed edition. I don't know, Tim, my talking dog movies. No, you know what? You know what? You know I'm not doing that.
01:52:31
Speaker
I am not doing that. And this is one of the ones, because the technology is a little fancy now, so they can try to make the dog's mouths. It's not the name. Yeah, you know, it's no better now than it was then. No, the dog isn't talking. So cut it out.
01:52:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this is produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who, of course, you know everything from the frickin' Lego movies and all that, Jump Street, right? I mean, I don't know. Anyway, all right. If you like the actors, I guess you could put up with it. Woody Harrelson in Champions, a Bobby Farrelly movie that is not as good as the last one that won him Best Picture.
01:53:20
Speaker
But I guess there's something to this. I like Woody Harrelson and sports films and Ernie Hudson is in this and he's wonderful. And there's a lot to like in this and the whole underdog story about the basketball coach and he's coaching people who have disabilities and really sweet and meaningful.
01:53:47
Speaker
I just don't know that it all works. It still feels a little saccharine. Mm-hmm. Mostly, it made me uncomfortable. And all I know is that's not my fault. If I'm uncomfortable, it's not my fault. That's the filmmakers' faults. So that's what that movie did. And it really has nothing to do with people and their disabilities. It's just the way it's shaped.
01:54:16
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think you're right. 1001, the AV Rockwell movie with Tiana Taylor. Man, this thing, it won Sundance and was expected to be an awards contender. I watched it. I think it's terrific. It's a very Sundancy film, but man, this thing just fell out of the conversation during awards season. I don't, and I'm not quite sure why.
01:54:38
Speaker
I mean, me either. There were a few along these lines. And it was right there. She's great in this movie. And she was also in White Men Can't Jump, the remake of that. But here, in this movie, I just really felt it. But no, it just sort of slipped out of the conversation.
01:54:59
Speaker
It's about a single mom and her six-year-old kid and just trying to keep him out of the foster care system. It's a love story about a mom and a son. You can't help but just really feel it, and I thought Rockwell just killed it, but somehow just, I guess, too many other movies.
01:55:21
Speaker
too many other movies. Did you see Showdown at the Grand? I don't think I saw that one. John Savage, Terrence Howard, Dolph Lundgren looking utterly ridiculous. Dolph Lundgren looking like some kind of heavy metal guy. I don't know what the idea is there. Man, this is another one of those strange movies that some
01:55:43
Speaker
Very talented people probably thought was gonna wind up being better than it was. Written and directed by somebody I've never heard of named Orson Oblowitz. Anyway, yeah, so I think this is another one of those things that wants to be a Tarantino film, but can't quite figure out what a Tarantino film is. Terrence Howard is a total Tarantino construct in this thing. He owns a movie theater, he loves movies, and
01:56:10
Speaker
Then suddenly his livelihood is put at risk by a bunch of developers and next thing you know he has to turn into a different kind of Tarantino character to hold his own and stave them off. But it never quite gets there.
01:56:30
Speaker
never gets over it and Dolph Lundgren is just utterly ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. It's the most misguided wig I've ever seen. Where do people get the money to make these movies? That's got to be a $13, $14, $15 million. It looks like it. It looks like it's at least 10. It is an easy 10. Like a soft 10 just to pay your cast. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
01:56:54
Speaker
A movie here that I'm only going to recommend for one reason. I'm just going to say, first of all, this movie is called A Sunday Horse. It's based on a true story about a young woman who has a very promising career riding horses and then tragedy strikes and all of this kind of stuff. It all set around the national jumping championships and so forth.
01:57:21
Speaker
Cassie Thompson, lovely young actress. Even sticking Linda Hamilton in this thing wouldn't normally make me recommend it. Even sticking Ving Rhames in this thing wouldn't make me recommend it. But once you put William Shatt in this movie, it's the Shatt. You got to see it. Because the Shatt loves horses. And that's all they need to do is somebody went to his agent and said, we're making a horse movie. Well, yes.
01:57:44
Speaker
Yeah, he's not he's 91 years old now he's he'll he'll do anything. But anyway, yes, I will recommend the the the holdovers the what is it a son not the whole horse horse. I don't even remember the title. I don't care what Sunday horse because Shatner's in it. It was actually
01:58:02
Speaker
kind of moving. Let's see here real quickly. Just gonna knock off three, maybe four more. Here we go. I got I got just a few more. John Travolta and Stephen Dorfer in a movie called Mobland. Oh, I saw that movie. What did you think of it?
01:58:23
Speaker
comes together fairly nicely. Now, this is the kind of movie that, you know, on DVD, not on Blu-ray. The movie comes together fairly nicely. John is the sheriff, and it's all set in the south of Mississippi, Delta, or Slop. Nothing in these NASCAR racing is the thing. You got this guy, and he has his wife and his goofy brother-in-law, his goofy brother-in-law, played by that Dylan kid. Not next, Kevin Dylan.
01:58:46
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it involves him. And then the only thing is he all goes bad and somebody gets killed. And the next thing you know, this guy has a hit man on his tail played by Stephen Dorff. And Stephen Dorff is just kind of doing that thing that he's been doing for a while. But John Travolta in this movie is kind of neat. He's playing this sheriff.
01:59:04
Speaker
And he's kind of, he's kind of, oh, he's kind of McClouding the whole thing, you know, that whole thing. But he's a lot savvier than he seems to be. And as this movie, sort of a brutal little movie, as a matter of fact, sort of wraps itself up. John Travolta is the guy who's figured it all out. And he makes sure that everybody pays their bill.
01:59:30
Speaker
at the end of that movie. And Franklin came together very nicely. It made sense. I loved it. It was set in the mud and muck of Mississippi and everybody looked and sounded like they were right from where they were from.
01:59:44
Speaker
Well, there we go. There we go. And then a little kind of Britishy romantic comedy called What's Love Got to Do With It, starring Lily James and Emma Thompson and Shabana Azmi, the wonderful Indian actress, and Shahzad Latif. This is just a great little working title produced British romantic comedy.
02:00:07
Speaker
that is perfectly endearing. I don't know why this did it. It has nothing to do with the American was love. No, no, no. I don't even know why they use that title. They should have used a different title because that just makes no sense. I'm sure there should have been problem. But anyway, I love everybody in this thing.
02:00:22
Speaker
And I'm watching, I'm thinking, this is just a totally charming, little cross-cultural, romantic comedy. The whole vibe about Indians and Indian families in England and the Prime Minister of England right now is of Indian extraction. And there's a whole history there that is culturally really very interesting, especially in this point in time.
02:00:44
Speaker
And this goes there and I love Shabana Osby. I've met her at press junkets and this is just, I thought this was a really sweet film. And then I look at, gosh, it's directed by Shaker Kapoor. Where's he been? You know, he was directing all these big epics for the longest time, you know, Elizabeth and Feathers. And he vanished. He was supposed to do, he was supposed to do
02:01:06
Speaker
A tale of two cities with mel gibson and that never happened and then he just he got bitter and i thought he went back to india now he made this and good on him yeah sweet little movies it's actually good. It's good i'm a few more here about my father with robert neiro and sebastian manas calco robert neiro just playing.
02:01:29
Speaker
disgusting, wacky, old guys. Again. Again. He did one with that other kid, you know, the kids from a high school musical, the grandfather or something like that. Yeah, my filthy, old, disgusting grandfather, whatever that was. Yeah. It's like, I'm kind of tired of it. I'm sort of tired of it, but I guess they keep paying him and it's the only gig he keeps getting. Anyway, I was just happy to see Kim control here. But
02:01:56
Speaker
Nonetheless, it's just, it's getting a little old. Oh, I guess, nobody, literally, there are no likable characters. But there are no likable men in this movie. The father sucks, the son sucks, all these people are terrible. And there's a kind of, they're doing this whole kind of, you know, Italian, but I'm like, you know, I know a lot of Italian men, they're nice. They're not obnoxious at all.
02:02:24
Speaker
And then Paw Patrol, and Ruby Gilman, Teenage Kraken, and Hotel Transylvania, TransferMania, the three animated films, none of which got nominated for anything or won anything in the animation, the year-end animation Bonanza. So let's talk for a second about why.
02:02:45
Speaker
So Paw Patrol the mighty movie is not getting recognized because Paw Patrol is stupid. Is it well animated? Sure, sure. I have been to so many kitty birthday parties over the last 5-6 years where it was Paw Patrol themed.
02:03:06
Speaker
I'm over it. I'm brutally over it. I don't like the TV show. I should give this thing more credit. I'm sure if your kids love Paw Patrol, ignore everything that I'm saying and just grab this thing. It's like, but I'm up to my eyeballs in Paw Patrol. Ruby Gilman, Teenage Kraken. From the studio that brought you Shrek and How to Tame Your Dragon, which means DreamWorks. So here's the problem I have with Ruby Gilman, Teenage Kraken.
02:03:36
Speaker
Tim, what's a kraken? If you're not actually talking about Greek mythology, it's not anything. It's nuts. And here's the thing about that movie. Ruby Gillman, she turns into this kraken so that she can do all of the things that any teenage girl can do without turning into a kraken. So what the hell is the point?
02:04:04
Speaker
Now I can make a decision. OK, OK, sweetie. See, I thought they would have looked at Pixar's turning red. Yeah, it's not really necessary to turn it to the red thing. Don't really want to go to that place again. Maybe we should pull the plug up. Yeah, maybe you just make a decision, sweetie. Make a decision.
02:04:25
Speaker
Yeah. But my problem is, okay, this is aimed squarely at my, like my daughter's demo. Okay. Like my daughter is what this is aimed at. I showed her the trailer. The look on her face was, it's, it was not even a dish, which is tanking Disney's way. Yeah. I want to see that.
02:04:44
Speaker
She looked at this and it was like this weird kind of expression of I don't know what to make of that. I don't know what that word means. I am very proud of the fact that we have taught her all kinds of worldly things when taking her to great places and taught her about literature and food and culture. You know we have not taught her?
02:05:05
Speaker
what a kraken is. What a kraken is. You don't need to know that, sweetie. You don't need to know that. So right there, somebody at the studio should have raised their hand and said, kids aren't going to know what a kraken is. Nobody's reading that anymore. Nobody knows what a kraken is.
02:05:21
Speaker
Oh, my goodness. Now, Hotel Transylvania, Transfermania? No, yeah. I'm not even sure this made it to theater, is it? It made it second. It had a hot second, yeah. Yeah, you know, I think- It's cool to the, what, 2010, 2012 film? I think this is like the third one, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's got a little, you know, monster pets short thing in it, which I think is cute. I just think this concept has a built-in audience that
02:05:51
Speaker
And you're either with it or you're not. And I guess I'm not, never have been. But, you know. I just think that's Gendy. Samurai Jack. The creator of Samurai Jack. And I look at all these, and he did at least the first one, maybe the middle one, definitely this one.
02:06:16
Speaker
And they are the exact opposite of Samurai Jack. You watch Samurai Jack and sometimes no one would say anything. You'd see Samurai Jack walking around every now and again. Samurai Jack. That would be all the dialogue. These movies never stop talking. They are nothing but Andy Samberg and Adam Sandler, whoever it is, Selena Gomez and this one, and they talk.
02:06:43
Speaker
constantly through this movie. It's nonstop speaking and kinetic action and it's all super irritating.
02:06:50
Speaker
I do not disagree. Um, we still have a little bit of time and we're over two hours, but I'm going to, I'm going to just hit the few of these things. So, uh, let's, let's talk about on the four more titles, four more titles. Then we're out. So, uh, Meg Ryan and David Duchovny, what happens later? Meg Ryan directed this thing and she got a little slammed for it. She co-wrote it. She directed it. It's based on a play, uh, you know, by Steven debt, the deets, I guess I pronounce it. And, uh,
02:07:18
Speaker
Anyway, she's kind of trying to make it come back put herself in a little bit more of a glamorous look even though she's you know well beyond 30 or 40 whatever she was fretting about hitting and when Harry met Sally hmm I don't think it's as bad as I don't think it's that good But I don't think it's as bad as people I think people want to just beat up on her a little bit What do you think I agree to completely this is a perfectly serviceable
02:07:42
Speaker
film that 35, 40 years ago would have been, you know, an okay little movie. It's not remotely a theatrically releasable film. But it wouldn't be no matter who made it at all.
02:07:58
Speaker
these sorts of films don't become big, theatrically-releasable films. But she and David have chemistry. It's a cute film that's well-made. And look, just to get right down to it, I get it. Meg Ryan, our gorgeous little, from way back then, she's in Top Gun. She's in The Data and all that kind of stuff. And now she's a 60-year-old woman. And we want to poke at that. Well, I don't poke at that.
02:08:23
Speaker
I like Meg Ryan. I like her a lot. I think that this is funny. She's a good actress. And you know, it all sort of worked for me. They're
Heartfelt Films and Biopics
02:08:31
Speaker
mostly sort of wandering around an airport, but it's a cool movie.
02:08:34
Speaker
And a sweet little movie that didn't get enough attention. I don't think the miracle club, uh, four wonderful, absolutely wonderful actresses. Um, and, uh, I just, I don't, well, three, three wonderful actresses and one wonderful actor. Um, I just don't think this got enough attention. So basically it's, it's Laura Linney, Kathy Bates and Maggie Smith doing that.
02:08:58
Speaker
Female generational thing right three different women from three different generations different backgrounds and and then steven ray kind of coming in and bringing the the only uh, male The only significant male element in that in that thing, but this is really interesting. They're all very close friends
02:09:19
Speaker
And they are on their way to Lourdes, the French city with the spring and the, you know, legendary religious implications and the miracles and, you know, and all of that stuff. And it really is, and there is a fourth woman, Agnes O'Casey, Laura, but she's kind of not really crucial to, well, I shouldn't say that, that's not fair.
02:09:47
Speaker
You're watching this basically for the interplay between Kathy, between Laura Linney and Maggie Smith and Kathy Bates. Those are the three who are, that really kind of represent the chemistry in this thing. And I'm trying, I'm being very careful here to kind of avoid revealing what the twists in the story. But it is,
02:10:17
Speaker
It's about more than, I think what people missed was that, Lord, it's not literally about women looking for a miracle. It's sort of about miracles as a metaphor in life and where that metaphor may fall at different stages of your life. And I know I'm being really kind of obtuse about this.
02:10:37
Speaker
But if you watch it, you'll understand. I think it's a very sweet film. I think it's a very smartly written film. And well-directed by Thaddeus O'Sullivan, who I guess is some kind of an Irish director. I don't know. Didn't research it.
02:10:53
Speaker
Last two titles from the stars of duck dynasty the blind the true story of the robertson family we now have a biopic about the duck dynasty people now i emailed you and ray and mark a little while ago when i discovered.
02:11:14
Speaker
that it is actually a distant cousin of mine who pioneered duck calling in the United States. Some major was a legendary pioneer in duck calls. So I feel suddenly like I kind of need to like this. I don't know.
02:11:34
Speaker
I don't know. No comment on the Doug Dynasty. Yeah. Well, anyway, I guess if you're a fan, then knock yourselves out. And then Nick Cage, who makes a precisely 72 movies a year. Yeah. In addition to the dream scenario, which I think stands a chance of getting him. It's an outside chance, but he could get another Oscar nomination. Maybe so.
02:12:03
Speaker
That movie, particularly because of him, got a little hitch a chat there. The Independent Spirit Awards is probably going to be paying attention to him in that movie, that movie, him in that movie. And I don't know, I hope that Academy voters will pay attention to it and see it and at least recognize Nick for that movie. I like the movie, but yeah.
02:12:24
Speaker
Well, here he stars in another movie that got no attention at all this year. And I'm a little bit surprised because it's not that terrible. It's called Butcher's Crossing. And it's one of these movies. It's a Saban film. So, I mean, they, you know, it just feeds their pipeline. But it's about buffalo hunters in the Wild West.
02:12:45
Speaker
And it's he plays it he's a really interesting guy here the fred hatching your is the is the other actor who is kind of a new england guy that wants to you know be a little bit more of a frontier e guy and nick cage plays this guy name miller who's this very strange kind of quiet reserved just rugged buffalo guy and
02:13:15
Speaker
It's a, it's a, it's a bit of a, not a, it's a bit of a mismatch. Like there's almost a 48 hours thing going on between these two. You know, the mismatched buddy cop thing, 48 hours, a lethal weapon. You can kind of pick the movie, but it really, it goes into some places I didn't expect it to go. And I give them credit for that. I mean, it's a, it's a much smarter script than I thought it was when it started. So Butcher's Crossing with Nicholas Cage.
02:13:43
Speaker
Good, interesting little indie western, got no attention, but I'm going to put a little exclamation point on it. All right, Tim, that's it for this week. All right, baby. We got a lot coming up. We got our Oscar show coming up. We got all kinds of stuff in the works that we haven't talked to people about yet. This is very weekend. What do we got? Laffka?
02:14:05
Speaker
Dinner. I'm not going. I'm not going either. CCAs is Sunday. I'm not going to that either, by the way. I might go to that one non-celebrity open event that the Critic Choice is doing. Marco in last year, he said it was fun.
02:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, you know, so I don't know about it, but I'm not doing the legit show room now. No, I'm not. A lot of stuff. Yes, let's see what happens. Too much else to deal with, too much else to go. But with that, wish everybody well, and we will see you in a little while with another show.