Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
DigiGods Episode 259: Pre-Oscar-Palooza
364 Plays9 months ago
Who else has John Sayles, Robert Altman, Chantal Ackerman, Johnnie To, Eric Rohmer, the Coen Brothers and Danny Boyle on tap? Who else brings you Footloose, Trolls, Gomer Pyle, Abbott & Costello and Sharknado? Who else mixes Nic Cage and Willy’s Wonderland with new Chinese classics? You know the answer… #DVD #Bluray #4k #TV #Movies
In this episode, the Gods discuss:
- Afire (Blu-ray)
- Alanis Obomsawin: A Legacy (DVD)
- Aporia (Blu-ray)
- The Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, Apu Sansar) (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Assignment K (Blu-ray)
- Bad City (Blu-ray)
- Blonde Ice (Blu-ray)
- Blood Feast 2016 4K Ultra HD (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Blood Simple (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Bone Cold (Blu-ray)
- The Book of Harth (DVD)
- A Bullet for Sandoval (Blu-ray)
- Cause for Alarm (Blu-ray)
- Chantal Akerman Masterpieces 1968-1878 (Les Rendes-Vous d'Anna; Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; Le 15/8; Hotel Monterey; La Chambre; L'Enfant Aimé, Ou Je Joue À Êntre Une Femme Mariée; Saute Ma Ville) (DVD)
- A Creature Was Stirring (Blu-ray)
- Creepy Crawly (Blu-ray)
- Crocodile Island (DVD)
- Darkman [Collector's Edition] + [Limited Edition Steelbook] + Pin + Prism Sticker + 2 Posters + Lobby Cards (Blu-ray)
- Day Zero (Blu-ray)
- Diamond Head (Blu-ray)
- Dreaming Whilst Black - Season 1 (DVD)
- Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons (A Tale of Winter, A Tale of Spring, A Tale of Summer, A Tale of Autumn) (Blu-ray)
- Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman (Blu-ray)
- Famous Western Gunfighters: Desert Trail / Ride Ranger Ride / Roll On Texas Moon (1935/1936/1946)
- The Flying Swordsman (DVD)
- Footloose 40th Anniversary 4k UHD (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.: The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
- Goodbye Monster (Blu-ray)
- The Heroic Trio / Executioners (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Imagining the Indian (DVD)
- In The Cut – Unrated Director's Edition (Blu-ray)
- The Johnstown Flood (DVD)
- Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Kill Shot (Blu-ray)
- Lenny (Blu-ray)
- Life with Father (DVD)
- Lone Star (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Lords of Dogtown - Steelbook (Blu-ray)
- The Man in Half Moon Street (Blu-ray)
- Maximum Overdrive (Blu-ray)
- McBain (Blu-ray)
- McCabe & Mrs. Miller (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Mercy Road (Blu-ray)
- The Moon (Blu-ray)
- Mudbound (Blu-ray)
- Nothing but a Man (Blu-ray)
- Obsessed (Blu-ray)
- Our Town (Blu-ray)
- RAD - Steelbook (Blu-ray)
- Requiem for a Heavyweight (Blu-ray)
- Ride On (Blu-ray)
- Rider on Dead Horse (DVD-R)
- Rider on the Rain - aka La passager de la pluie (DVD)
- Robot Monster (Blu-ray)
- Rookies (DVD)
- Sharknado: 10th Anniversary (DVD)
- Special Ops: Lioness Season 1 (Blu-ray)
- Street Fighter - Steelbook (Blu-ray)
- Three Days in Malay (Blu-ray)
- Trade Winds (DVD)
- Trainspotting (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Trolls Band Together Sing-Along Edition (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Vogues of 1938 (DVD)
- Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Hard As Steel Ultimate Edition) (Blu-ray)
- Warhorse One (Blu-ray)
- Willy's Wonderland [Limited Edition Steelbook] (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Wolf Pack (Blu-ray)
- Your Lucky Day (Blu-ray)
Recommended
Transcript
Preparing for LAist Film Week Oscar Preview
00:00:26
Speaker
And here we are. It's been a little minute. We've just been busy with a lot of stuff. We've been doing film weeks and Oscar stuff. It's that time of the year. We're recording this now. Actually, it is March 1st.
00:00:41
Speaker
And this will probably go up March 2nd. And then on March 3rd, Tim and I will be on stage at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles with the rest of our Film Week colleagues doing our annual LAist Film Week Oscar preview show. And then in a little over a week, the big awards will be handed
Return of High-Grossing Films to Oscars
00:00:58
Speaker
out. So without spilling any of your good stuff for Sunday, Tim, what are your feelings about this year's Oscars? Well, we're back to big movies, aren't we?
00:01:10
Speaker
interesting in these nominated American fiction that said the other thing. But we're basically back to big, big, big, big, big, big movies. Some people would say, no, that happened last year. No, not like this year. Billion dollar box office movies, Martin Scorsese films. His biggest movies can get what we're back to this year.
Hollywood Heretic Promotion
00:01:32
Speaker
I, so I've got a new sub-stack, by the way, for anybody who's listening, come on over and sign up for the sub-stack. Do the unpaid to start, read what I'm doing, and then sign up for paid if you want. But it is Hollywood heretic. Go to Hollywood heretic.substack.com. Yes, yes, yes. Hollywood heretic.substack.com.
Introducing NIT Rating System
00:01:54
Speaker
I did a two-piece, a two-part piece over there where I have developed a new metric. I call it
00:02:01
Speaker
the um...
00:02:03
Speaker
the NIT scale, the NIT rating, N-I-T-T for nominees in top 10. And here's how my grading works. And I did this specifically to analyze this year. If you look at every year, the top nominated films and then the top grossing films, if there is a top 10 film, a top 10 grossing film that is nominated for best picture, you assign one point.
00:02:33
Speaker
And if at the end of the Oscars, the film which won Best Picture is also a top 10 nominated or top 10 grossing film, you assign two points. And if the top grossing film of the year, the number one grossing film of the year is also a nominated film, but without winning, you assign two points. If the number one grossing film of the year actually wins Best Picture, then you assign five points.
00:03:02
Speaker
So, for a traditional field of five, you max out at 10 points. So anyway, I did this to sort of analyze all the Oscar years, and you can see everything fall off a cliff around about 1991, 1992, right? Indies come in, and my knit ratings collapse. But the knit rating right now for this year, because of Oppenheimer and Barbie,
00:03:25
Speaker
is off the chart. It's the highest that it's been since 1997 with Titanic, which is way, way off the chart. And here's a more interesting little nerdy tidbit, because I was sitting there the other day. This is what, you know, other people will like go to bed or they'll drink or they'll do some other thing. I sit there and I look at movie data because I'm an idiot. This is what I just, I'm like, I got to figure there's something here.
Top-Grossing Films as Oscar Nominees
00:03:53
Speaker
Because Barbie was the number one movie of the year, Oppenheimer the number three. Oppenheimer the number one film in terms of nominations, Barbie number four. Both of them are top five for grossing and top five for nominations. The last time that happened was 1991.
00:04:14
Speaker
The last time it happened where it included the number one grossing film and the number one nominated film was Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979. Oh, okay, okay. So this is where we are. We're in a really interesting place. I mean, it could just be a one-off, but I don't feel like it is. I feel like we're turning the corner on something
Trends in Oscar Nominations
00:04:33
Speaker
here.
00:04:33
Speaker
The gist being that popular movies that make a whole lot of money at the box office are likely both nominees and winners of major Academy Awards. Did I just stop right?
00:04:50
Speaker
That's it. That's it. Because it used to be, and I go into the details there because I went back and looked and I compared the top grocers to the top, to the Oscar nominees. I mean, you have years where it's like four or all five of the Best Picture nominees are top 10 films. Some of them are like 1962 is unreal. Lawrence of Arabia was the number two film of the year at one Best Picture, but the films that beat included number one, number three, number four, and number six.
00:05:21
Speaker
box office like five of the top six grossing films of the year became the best picture nominees that's when people watch it on tv like son of a gun look i went to all of these i wanna see these on tv
Major Contenders: Barbie, Oppenheimer, and More
00:05:35
Speaker
yes.
00:05:35
Speaker
And thus, we have a situation again where, well, at least Barbie and Oppenheimer, and very possibly, to some extent, Killers of the Flower Moon, which still actually did well at the box office, are big, big movies with major movie stars and major directors. I think you might even toss Maestro in there. So you have really perhaps at least four
00:06:04
Speaker
pictures that lots and lots and lots of people have seen and certainly of the top two, that one and that four, that box office. Who's that number two in that box office? From this last year? Yeah. Oh, boy. That's a, hold on. Right behind Barbie, I want to say it was... Was it Spider-Verse? Was it the animated Spider-Verse? Was that Spider-Verse? Yeah, it might have been the Spider-Verse. Okay, interesting, interesting. Which of course is nominated in the animated category. Interesting, okay. Yeah.
00:06:34
Speaker
Or Mario Brothers, I can't remember. Anyway, it was something blockbuster-y, but we're all kind of focused on Barbie and Oppenheimer. And it's the Barbie and Oppenheimer all over again at the Oscars, right? It's fascinating. So yeah, I mean, it definitely feels like a turning point.
Best Director Predictions: Christopher Nolan?
00:06:51
Speaker
We'll see. This year has a lot of interesting stuff happening. Dune getting out of the way in November and December, I think, is the best Christmas gift that Oppenheimer could have had. Yeah.
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, Dune would have given Oppenheimer a real run for its money, at least in tech categories. But I think now it looks like it's just wide open Oppenheimer. Well, yeah. Look, a lot of things, you had a shot there for a while. You told us the Flower Moon, Maestro, as we say, as time has ticked on. I think it has to wound down to those two big films in terms of that best picture category anyway.
00:07:28
Speaker
Best director, I suppose probably Chris has a fairly large lock on them. Then again, Greta's not nominated. If she were nominated now, then I don't believe that he would have a lock. For one, if she were nominated, it would suggest that the Academy thinks that it's worthy. But given that she's not nominated, I think he does have a lock.
00:07:57
Speaker
A lot of time people will be talking about Scorsese, but I just know not a lot this year for him. It's like Nolan, it feels like he's due, right? This is his Schindler's List moment. This is the one. We're going to give it to him for this one, because if not this one, then which, you know? And it's his most serious film. It's his highest grossing film. And I think people want to reward him for this.
00:08:16
Speaker
in hopes that he makes more of these and fewer films like, you know, Tenant and freaking, you know, all the, all the puzzle-y, weird, you know, sci-fi things. This is, you know, this is like a more grown-up version of Christopher Nolan. I think this is where everybody wants him to live from here on out.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, so it's gonna be a real interesting year. Well, anyway, if you're in LA and there's still tickets, come on down to the Orpheum on Sunday. What is it, one o'clock that we go and stay? Yeah, one o'clock and then we get to stay, Jeff. All right, one o'clock. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be terrific. We're all gonna make fun of each other and we all get along. You know, we do get along. We have fun.
00:08:52
Speaker
Even though Charles and Justin get into it. The funny thing is when Charles and Justin are on opposite ends and all the rest of us are in the middle. They're kind of looking left to right and say something nasty and Justin will smile and you're like, gosh, guys, I'm going to get whiplash if you keep. I think they see this that way on purpose. I really do.
00:09:13
Speaker
It'll be interesting. Justin and I might have an interesting
Recognition of 'American Fiction'
00:09:16
Speaker
moment because Justin's not a particular fan of American fiction, of which I am a very big fan. He is not really. Justin's not a particular fan of American fiction. Well, he has a PC. He talks about it, and I think I have an interesting reply to that, so we'll see what happens.
00:09:35
Speaker
I'm dying to hear that because I love American fiction. I love everything about that movie. It doesn't have a shot, but what I love about it is it won the Toronto Film Festival Audience Award. It got its Best Picture nomination. Cora Jefferson, first time writer, director of a feature, long-term TV writer, but it puts him right now. He's in the mix. Now his career is off to the races. Jeffrey Wright won Best Actor at the Spirit Awards.
00:10:05
Speaker
It's rewarding a lot of the right people and I'm just glad that, you know, I'm glad anytime there's a writer-director of Kord Jefferson's talent who gets it, is now thrown into the mix. So now we've got, you know, another one of those hyphenate threats who's going to make more great movies and people are going to give them money and I think that's great.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, I agree completely,
Debate on Oscar Snubs
00:10:26
Speaker
Cord, because of the way that it's all shaped, Cord, one of five directors, in that direction that he's not nominated. Now, it was funny, I had this conversation with Alanis, we were on the show today, and we were like, oh, if anybody didn't snub, snub.
00:10:39
Speaker
record, not snubbed. The movie is not a screenplay nomination. Perfectly correct. Best director nomination? No. And not a snub. It absolutely isn't a snub. I'm not a big fan of the notion of snubs to begin with. Sometimes, you know, you just not nominated. That's all it is. Somebody's got to come in sixth.
00:10:59
Speaker
It's just, you know, it's just, you know, it's just not nominated. That's all that was. Yeah, but you weren't snubbed. Not sure about Greta, maybe. It might have been snubbed. But you know, here's why I think I look, I think people look at films, I mean, something has to come in sixth, right? Not everything can be top five. But I think people look at a film like American fiction, and they think what's a writer's piece.
00:11:20
Speaker
It's like a lot of Woody Allen movies. Woody always gets nominated for writing them, not necessarily for directing because Woody is seen as more a writer who directs these screenplays, but the core part of the film is the writing. It's not like a Christopher Nolan film where it's the direction. I think that they look at something like Barbie and they say, well, that's a producer's piece.
00:11:40
Speaker
right that's where that movie really came together was in it was in the producing of it so let's give margo and and you know let's give greta the screenplay and let's give margo the producing and you know it's not really a great directed movies are really a great
00:11:57
Speaker
or an active movie, but we'll give them the other pieces. I think they compartmentalize. We can disagree with that, but I think academy voters compartmentalize those things. Is this a producer's piece? Is this a writer's piece? Is this an actor's piece? Is this a director's piece? That's where I think they sometimes come down in those compartmentalizations.
00:12:18
Speaker
Anyway, all right. Well, let's just talk about some people who picked off for us. Not a ton in the last few weeks, but we did lose Don Murray. I didn't even realize Don Murray was still with us, to be honest. It's one of them for you. Holy cow, really? Ninety-four years old, dude. Yeah. You know, must have, of course, opposite Marilyn Monroe. Both of them ridiculously young and beautiful.
00:12:45
Speaker
And then, of course, you know, the next time I really think about Don Murray is when he plays that dad in endless love with young, young, young, young Burke Shields. He plays her dad in that movie. And a few other things, but around a long time, Don Murray, stalwart guy.
00:13:05
Speaker
And I don't know, did we mention that Glynis Johns had passed away? Did we? I do not remember. No, I don't think we did. Glynis Johns died just right after the first of the year on January 4th. She was 100 years old, the wonderful Glynis Johns, who was, of course, Mrs. Banks and Mary Poppins, but made so many other wonderful British films. She was 100. She was in a rest home in Northridge, man, not too far from you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No doubt you could have popped in and seen her. She was so, she was saucy.
00:13:35
Speaker
If she can be very saucy, you know, we think about those older artists. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know. Mermaid and yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we forget and we get to know these people as older performers and we forget. Whoa. Is that a little heat?
00:13:52
Speaker
Keep going back in the day. And then we lost Carl Weathers. Yeah. That's a tough one. I thought we'd have him for a good long time. And that really just broke my heart.
00:14:07
Speaker
political presence and stature in the Mandalorian most recently. He was just solid as a rock, and I'm thinking, I'd say Carl could take me. I saw Carl Weathers once walking into CVS Pharmacy in Pacific Palisades.
00:14:25
Speaker
I was on the sidewalk and he parked and got out of his car. I felt so small and just weak. He must have been 60 at the time and didn't look it. He was just like the physique. This is the thing. You have got to be a confident man to wear those yoga pants.
00:14:50
Speaker
That's what he was wearing. He was basically wearing those tight-fitting yoga pants which no man would be caught dead in unless you are Carl Weathers and you take that off. He had the legs and the glutes and the muscle and the arms and the whole thing. He was such an impressive physical specimen. That's the only time I ever interfaced with him physically. I didn't even talk to him or anything. I was like, holy cow.
00:15:17
Speaker
weathers. And you just kind of come back for a moment and you're looking at the yoga pants and like you pull it off. You pull that off, brother.
00:15:47
Speaker
That's a great twist to his career. And then you have some late career money on the Mandalorian. That's a lot of love right there. That is. And even something like Action Jackson, which caught a lot of flack, right? The Rocky films were obviously what really made him a star. Because you had to have somebody who could hold the screen opposite Rocky. We're rooting for Rocky. So do we have to? Is he the villain?
00:16:17
Speaker
Well, oddly enough, he's not. That's what I think makes Rocky and Rocky 2 and Rocky 3 and 4 such interesting movies, is because their relationship is complicated.
00:16:31
Speaker
So he's not Darth Vader to Rocky's Luke Skywalker. No. He is the world heavyweight champion in Rocky. Beloved. He is beloved, and he has earned that. And Rocky is just a schlubby pretender. And spoiler here for anybody who hasn't seen Rocky. It's 50 years old, so I hope you have. But Rocky doesn't win. Rocky survives.
00:16:57
Speaker
And you do have to give props to Weathers because he won, right? He did his job. This is why he's heavyweight champion in there. And Apollo Creed is a beloved character, even though he's technically an antagonist. That is a weird, tough, complicated place to put an actor. And to bring him back for
00:17:27
Speaker
For four straight films, I mean, it's quite a thing. And he put on, obviously, in the Creed films. I was going to say, he posted off so beautifully that just the name of the character is heroic enough to spawn an entire, just the word Creed, so it's really, you know, good work, Carl. It was an amazing career, and I'm so sorry that he's gone. You know, he will be terribly missed. Started as an athlete. He was a football player, originally.
00:17:57
Speaker
Followed in the footsteps of Jim Brown. We talked about that some months ago on the show. And then lastly, just within the past day, we lost Richard Lewis. He was not necessarily everybody's cup of tea as a comic because he was so angst-ridden. I know a lot of people that just couldn't watch him when he'd show up on The Tonight Show. It was too much. It was his anxiety.
00:18:22
Speaker
It's not funny to them it was it makes you so they had to turn it off because all you would do is come on and go I don't know you know I got I Can't get a date and he just start complaining about everything
00:18:37
Speaker
in my head. He came from that amazing generation of comics. We were just talking about this before the show. They come after, obviously, the Priors and the Carlins and even before them, the great original comics from the 50s who were on TV.
00:18:57
Speaker
It's Richard Lewis, it's Gary Shandling, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld. That's the class of comics that came out of that. Joan Rivers, even from that group. It's a really, really interesting class of comics. They carried on a great tradition, but they also gave their own modern spin to it.
00:19:18
Speaker
And Lewis had a really, really fascinating career, both as a stand-up and an actor. And I'm really sorry that he's gone prematurely. I know he was just shy of 80, but I felt like he had a good another 10 years in him.
00:19:30
Speaker
No, yeah, look, the late buffettist career from all those appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm, opposite Larry David. Talk about intense and hard to watch. The shtick that Larry does, and the shtick that Richard, when they were in the scene together, it's almost like...
00:19:50
Speaker
He did have some real good acting jobs. I remember being particularly good in leaving Las Vegas. A couple of scenes, just a couple of scenes in this dramatic film. He's very dramatic and he's just excellent at that. And of course, that long run on a really good, but sometimes forgotten sitcom, anything but love, opposite, I think it was Jamie Lee Curtis,
00:20:15
Speaker
if I'm not mistaken. This show for four or five years, I don't see that sitcom very much out there. It was really sexy and really smart. He looked great on that show. I had no idea that he was almost 15 years older than Jamie Lee Curtis on that show. Richard Lewis, excellent work and a great legacy.
00:20:36
Speaker
Well, so on that note, let's shift it. DVDs and Blu-rays. Yeah, man. And a lot of other things. Join me on Hollywood Heretic over at Substack, HollywoodHeretic.Substack.com. Gotta do it. Read my stuff. I'm having fun over there. So I'm going to go through some classic flicks titles here. Classic flicks is doing a lot of really great stuff.
00:20:58
Speaker
And these are movies that you're just not gonna find anywhere else. Their silver series continues to be to just dig up some really, really terrific films. Volumes 24, 25, and 26 here. And 24 and 25 are kind of lost romantic comedies from a pretty great period. Both of them starring Joan Bennett. And they kind of break these into series. So this is the silver series with March and Bennett.
00:21:27
Speaker
And that's Frederick March and Joan Bennett and the film is trade winds and it was made in 1938 kind of a classic. It's almost more of a 1940 style film, but it's really, it's a, it is just an absolutely lovely romantic comedy in the, um,
00:21:44
Speaker
in the Tracy Hepburn mold, except it just doesn't have Tracy and Hepburn in it. It's got a different pair, but Frederick March, great Oscar-winning actor and Joan Bennett, just absolutely lovely. Joan Bennett plays a socialite and Frederick March is this
00:22:00
Speaker
this private eye, this very, very funny private eye, and there's a whole kind of a wacky noir surveillance thing kind of going on and meet cute, and it's very, very clever. It's very, very sweet. Dorothy Parker is one of the writers, and Ralph Belling is walking around this time. Dorothy Parker was one of the writers, yeah.
00:22:23
Speaker
Yeah, the great Dorothy Parker. And then we also have Joan Bennett in Vogue's of 1938, made the year before in 1937, so it could be released in 1938. And in this one, this is part of the Baxter and Bennett
00:22:41
Speaker
series, Baxter being Warner Baxter, who is absolutely lovely here. And he plays a fashion designer, and she plays a debutante. And it's got all the usual kind of highbrow society stuff, farce, and it's quite clever and very fun. So Vogue's of 1938. And then also in the Silver Series, volume 26 is a film that I have loved my whole life.
00:23:09
Speaker
Powell and Dunn, Life with Father and that is Irene Dunn and William Powell and this is a delightful movie made in 1947 based on the play and set in the early, just after the turn of the century, it's
00:23:28
Speaker
a little bit of a period thing, but it's just William Powell is father of this family that just will not behave the way he wants them to behave. The kids drive him crazy. His wife drives him crazy. The line in the film, every time something goes wrong, he goes, God's! And then William Powell...
00:23:45
Speaker
But it's really, it's very, very sweet. It's directed by Michael Curtiz, one of the lighter films that he did. It's just a delightful film, and it's in beautiful color, that 1947 Technicolor. And they've done a great job with it. I wish it were on Blu-ray, but it's on DVD.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah, and she's just a doll in this thing. And then Classic Flix has a bunch of great Blu-rays. I'll go through these as rapidly as I can because we have a lot to get to. The App and Costello show, season two. We've already released season one from Classic Flix. Now season two is out on Blu-ray. Looks terrific. Best it's ever looked. It's only been on DVD before. This is the first time ever on Blu-ray. You got to get this. It's just terrific. Restored by the 3D Film Archive.
00:24:38
Speaker
i'm originally in nineteen fifty three fifty four tons of great guest stars on here it'll really really take you back and why i'm especially enjoying this i gotta get my daughter watching these because we and you know this because i
00:24:53
Speaker
I mentioned it to you and Mark and Ray in email because all of my daughter's friends at school, they all watch YouTube shorts and I will slit my wrists before I let my daughter get caught up in some kind of social media internet garbage. So we got her hooked on I Love Lucy. Tim, she comes home from school. We're probably bad parents for allowing this. She can watch five straight hours of I Love Lucy on Pluto.
00:25:22
Speaker
We're five straight hours. She will, from the time she gets home until the time she goes to bed, she will watch Lucy. We have dinner, Lucy's on. And not only that, she now knows, I kid you not, the episode order. Now, my savant daughter has memorized the episode of six seasons of I Love Lucy.
00:25:44
Speaker
She'll sit there and she'll go, okay, the next one is the one with John Wayne. We're like, how do you know that? How do you know who John Wayne is? This is a beautiful thing. Thanks to this show, my 11-year-old daughter knows who John Wayne is.
00:26:01
Speaker
She knows who Rock Hudson is. I mean, she knows all these celebrities. Yeah, I mean, Charles Boyer. Charles Boyer. Oh, she loves the Orson Welles episode. She knows, gosh, who else? What other guest stars were there on there? Harpo Marx, right? Yeah. Harpo Marx. Yeah, it's fantastic. You'll have to show her. You'll have to show her.
00:26:49
Speaker
And because there's the episode from the very last season where they've moved to Connecticut and Barbara Eden shows up and all the men want to dance with her. That's a thing. And she is just so beautiful. And I'm using that to migrate her over to I Dream of Jeannie to see another show.
00:26:54
Speaker
My daughter knows who Richard Whitmark is.
00:27:08
Speaker
Yeah. About a decade later, I dream of Jeannie. And you really need to watch those, too. Well, let's get you on to another show. And by the way, she's still alive. Yeah. I'm dreading that. Well, I'm dreading that. I'm dreading that. You and I will sit here, and we will cry for another half. Oh my god, yeah.
00:27:25
Speaker
Oh, well. So also Blue from Classic Flix. Loretta Young, Cause for Alarm from MGM. Pretty great little kind of oftentimes overlooked film. Loretta Young never really gets the credit she's due. This is from 1951. It's super short, hour and 15 minutes long. And this is one of those kind of post-World War II
00:27:53
Speaker
melodramas, quasi-noir. Anyway, there's a – gosh, I'm not going to give anything away. It's a little kind of double indemnity-esque a little bit, but it's a nice little gem from the period and feels a little bit more like a 40s film and it was actually co-written and produced by Tom Lewis who was actually married to Loretta Young at the time.
00:28:22
Speaker
and would later produce Loretta Young's show. So there's a nice little bit of trivia to that one. And then also still from Classic Flix, we've got Blonde Ice, absolutely terrific noir. I love this film. It's not one of the more famous noirs, but it is one of my favorites. Leslie Brooks, Michael Whalen, Robert Page, really good, just kind of tough
00:28:47
Speaker
tough ice queen kind of thing directed by Jack Bernhardt from 1948, also about an hour and 15 minutes long. Really, really terrific. Recently restored from the original elements and preserved by the BFI National Archive. Really, really terrific. One of the great unsung noirs of the time, great lead performance. And then also the great Our Town, by the way, William Holden.
00:29:11
Speaker
That's another one that my daughter knows. She knows William Holden from I Love Lucy, and a very young William Holden in our town, along with Martha Scott. Not a typical William Holden performance, but this was directed by Sam Wood, beautifully done, production designed by the great William Cameron Menzies, 1940.
00:29:29
Speaker
And the legendary Thornton Wilder play done in great fashion as a movie absolutely belongs in your Blu-ray library. This is just a beautiful All-American stage classic done as a beautiful movie.
00:29:46
Speaker
And then lastly, David Ferrer and Geraldine Fitzgerald in Obsessed, which is a 1951 thriller. It's not a noir, it's more of a thriller because it's kind of a period thing. It has a certain Hitchcockian quality to it and a little bit kind of dark and
00:30:10
Speaker
Jane Eyre-ish in some respects. This is based on a stage play called Late Edwina Black. That was originally, I guess, the title of the film when it was released in the UK. What is really, really funny about this to me, and it's got a lot of great, I mean, the script is really terrific with just eerie twists and turns, kind of like Rebecca asks, Jane Eyre asks,
00:30:33
Speaker
But at the time, they include the original poster art on this. And it includes a little label that says, remember, the Hays Code era, there's no rating system. There's a little red bullet point on the cover that says, not suitable for children.
00:30:52
Speaker
And I didn't know that they actually had done that at that time. I thought everything had to be suitable for children. Oh, no, no, not this one. Absolutely not suitable for children. So that's all from Classic Flix, F-L-I-X, classicflix.com. Wonderful label. Love those guys. And then a few others, a little off titles here that we've had for a minute. And I want to get through some of these. The 70th anniversary restoration in 3D, Robot Monster.
00:31:21
Speaker
This is such a bizarre, weird, horrible movie and it has two hours of bonus features that are actually significantly better than the film because the film is pretty terrible. This is from Bayview Entertainment, but it doesn't matter. The film is like a guilty pleasure. It's terrible in an absolutely wonderful way.
00:31:38
Speaker
This is just one of those cheesy sci-fi movies, bad alien monster suits and all the rest. A robot monster. It's just absolutely hilarious. It's like, okay, we got a gorilla suit and we got an alien helmet. What do we got to do with it? Put them together.
00:31:55
Speaker
I hate it when a robot monster falls in love with the last hot chick on the planet. That's great. Come on. Oh my gosh. The Johnstown flood from my good friend Robert Harris at the Film Preserve who restored this. This is a great film. Maltese Filmworks and the Film Preserve.
00:32:17
Speaker
put this together for George Eastman Museum. And this is a rather extraordinary, kind of a lost film with Janet Gaynor in it from 1926, like a late silent just before sound. But it's all about the 1889 flood where a couple thousand people died. I mean, we forget, this is one of those tragedies that we've sort of forgotten about.
00:32:44
Speaker
Pennsylvania, yeah. Yeah, it was gnarly. And this is really kind of an extraordinary, all the tinting restored, really kind of an extraordinary film with remarkable special effects for its day. And it's very, very sophisticated. So this is a great, great silent, kind of not always on everybody's lips when you think of great silent films, but got a lot of terrific extras on here. The original score reorchestrated and performed by the Monte Alder Motion Picture Orchestra.
00:33:14
Speaker
It's beautiful audio for that. And a great featurette with sound designer Ben Burt, Academy Award-winning Ben Burt, and FX artist Craig Baron talking about all the things that make this film great. The Johnstown Flood, really worth checking out. A Bullet for Sandoval with Ernest Borgnine and George Hilton. Also, not a great film, but a great exploitation classic because Ernest Borgnine just chews the scenery like it's a hamburger. Yeah, man. He goes to town. This is from 1970.
00:33:42
Speaker
great widescreen kind of spaghetti western basically. I know we don't think of spaghetti westerns as Ernest Borgnine, but it is spaghetti western with Ernest Borgnine. Boy, he is out of control. It's all like a Mexican border thing. Yeah, it's family drama. Yeah, it's silly, but just watch it for Ernest.
00:34:06
Speaker
and remember that he was married to that absolutely dazzling wife. 10th anniversary of Sharknado on DVD. I should have gotten David Latt to come in and talk to us about this, because he's always on my Facebook page. Anytime there's anything that he can use to pimp his association with Sharknado, this is my friend David Latt, who I met in the years. He's one of the founders of the asylum who make the Sharknado movies. You've met him. He's a great guy.
00:34:35
Speaker
Oh yes. Anytime he can sort of pimp his association with like, let's say I say something like, oh, I think there are sharks out today. Weigh in with a comment with some kind of little twinkle in his eye. It's like, oh, tornado.
00:34:50
Speaker
So anyway, lots of stuff in here. They say there's a thing here. It says, fully remastered with hundreds of new special effects. Derek. I love it. They don't take themselves seriously at all. So anyway, there's a director's commentary on there as well. The Jane Campion film, In the Cut, not one of my... Jane Campion films, right? Meg Ryan takes her top off. That's all I remember about this.
00:35:17
Speaker
Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer James Lane. This is the unrated version of In the Cut. There could be an unrated version? No, I don't. Anyway. How's that possible? I love Jane Campion. Don't love this film, but I'm just letting you know. It's out there on Blu-ray from Mill Creek. It's Jane Campion trying to do a noir thing, but it doesn't really work. Dude, did you ever see McBain with Christopher Walken, Maria Conchita Alonzo?
00:35:45
Speaker
Can I see the game? About 1991, early 90s movie, right? I'm almost certain I saw that movie. It's 1991. Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is one of those James Glickenhouse movies, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. James Glickenhouse director who just directed a lot of cheesy action stuff in the 90s, especially late, kind of late 80s, early 90s. I mean, if you went to the American film market, you would just see James Glickenhouse everywhere at that time. You'd be like, holy cow, how many movies does this guy make a year?
00:36:16
Speaker
But yeah, he did a lot of really bad movies, but somehow, because Christopher Walken walks into this bad movie, he kind of elevates it. He's one of those actors who just does that.
00:36:30
Speaker
in a weird way. I remember my client scientist in that movie, my boy Steve James in that movie, the brother, Steve Stevens in a lot of those stuff talking with movies. I remember that about it, that it was better than average for those, like you said, American film markets ourselves.
00:36:49
Speaker
I mean, the title character, which is Christopher Walken, he's a POW, right, who gets rescued from Vietnam by these, you know, after the fact by these rangers, which was a thing, right? I remember, like, movies about, you know, we still got POWs there.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah, and there was, oh gosh, what was the one that played at the theater when I was there with Randall Tex Cobb? What was that? There was the other one. Oh yeah. I remember that. A request for honor or something like that. And there were a lot of these movies, right? Because right into the 90s, there were people who swore, we've still got POWs there, we gotta go rescue them. And by 2000, we kind of figured, and they're probably dead.
00:37:29
Speaker
And then they started returning some remains and whatnot. But anyway, it was, and you know, because walking had been in the deer hunters, so this had a little bit of, a little bit of cred. And so these rangers go in there, rescue him and you know, that's.
00:37:44
Speaker
and things kind of go a little bit sideways. And then there's a thing in Colombia years later. There's a whole deal. It doesn't really make a lot of sense and tries to tie Vietnam to the drug lords and the whole thing. But you know what? Christopher Walken is in it and he's just so good.
00:37:59
Speaker
And then the last little one off I got here also from Mill Creek. Terrific. Absolutely terrific. I'm so glad this is out again. Requiem for a heavyweight. Oh, wow. Boy, does this have a heavyweight cast. Anthony Quinn, Mickey Rooney, Jackie Gleason, and Julie Harris, produced by the great David Susskind, directed by Ralph Nelson, and written by
00:38:20
Speaker
Rod Serling. Rod Serling, yeah. And Rod, you know, put aside everything great that he did on Twilight Zone. When you see Rod Serling's feature writing, you realize it's just this guy had it going on. He was just a pure writer, just a pure writer. So yeah, this was, you know, basically in the vein of the great live television things that had gone on for throughout the 50s.
00:38:45
Speaker
It's that kind of a story. But boy, is it just really, really good. And it's all about boxing and corruption and how it just wears you down. And boxing is a metaphor for life, basically. Jackie Gleason, just a terrific turn as the boxing manager. And Mickey Rooney is a trainer. And Anthony Quinn is just terrific. And Lee is a fight doctor.
00:39:11
Speaker
It's great. Ralph Nelson is underrated, too, as a director. Lillie's in the field, number one. So, you know, that one. Charlie Strauss, yes. And, frankly, an underrated Jim Brown. Take, take, take. Is Ralph, is Ralph Nelson. And I love that movie, take, take. You know, Anthony Quinn as the washed-up boxer, right? It's one of his...
00:39:39
Speaker
It's really one of his, one of his just our most earnest performances. And that's saying a lot, considering how many great performances he gave. But boy, it's a wonderful movie. It's just a wonderful movie. Boy, we got new movies. We got 4Ks. Where should we turn next? That's probably some 4K, man, and see what's going on over there. I see blood feasts, blood feasts at the top of that list there. Yeah. Let me yank that out here.
00:40:07
Speaker
and a few other ones that are a whole bunch of stuff. Oh, hold on. Hang on. Yeah. Wait a minute. I'm not as organized today. I have been in the past, but where were they? Oh, yes. Well, anyway, talk about, hold on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. I'm gonna, there we go.
00:40:38
Speaker
blood feast, not the Herschel Gordon Lewis film. Oh, not the Herschel Gordon Lewis film. It's funny because it was the 2016 film. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is the quasi-remake, I guess. It's not
00:40:59
Speaker
What it shares is there's an Egyptian diner and the guy kills people. That's basically it. The rest of it is just much more of an elaboration on the original Herschel Gordon-Lewis film, which really didn't have much of a plot, really. That was from 1993. They decided to put this sucker on 4K. It's from Synapse because I guess it has an audience following.
00:41:26
Speaker
Well, yeah, sure. You can exploit exploitation over and over and over again. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. And let me get to the next... I don't know how close it is, but Willie's Wonderland, which is another... It's funny because people talk about...
00:41:51
Speaker
Nick Cage and they say, oh, you're Nick Cage, Nick Cage is back. I'm like, Nick Cage has been back for a while now. This is another one of those wacky Nick Cage movies. Kevin Lewis directing. Kevin Lewis is the guy that we know, directs a couple of films. Some friends of ours made Marcus and George and The Accursed and some other films.
00:42:11
Speaker
This was one of the films that really put Nick Cage back on the path to where he wants to be. Nick had a really neat film out this year too called Dream Scenario, which I guess we'll be talking about in a few weeks.
00:42:23
Speaker
But among them, there's this one. He just placed this guy, this drifter, and he gets this gig being the night janitor at this place called Willie's Wonderland. It's kind of like a condemn. And he goes into this place in the animatronics, these sort of animatronic things from the 70s, you know, from one of these kind of places that I remember from my childhood, by the way. There were lots of these places when I were a kid.
00:42:50
Speaker
To me, this is a movie. This is so twisted and deranged. This is Nick Cage going to war with the... What were those guys? La la la... Nick Cage goes to war with the banana splits. That's how I describe this movie.
00:43:16
Speaker
And it's just, and it's funny, and it's really kind of needing a lot of fun, so yeah, we'll at least wonderland. One of these days, Nick Cage, all he's gonna do is make his money just doing Q&A's at retrospectives of all of his insane filmography. It's nuts.
00:43:33
Speaker
Naughty filmography. What do we think about the fact that they have rebooted the Hunger Games with these prequels, the Hunger Games ballad of songbirds and snakes, which I thought, normally I can tell you from six months away whether a movie is going to crash and burn or whether it will be a hit.
00:43:51
Speaker
I said, the Hunger Games is over, this audience doesn't exist anymore, this thing's going to crash and burn, nobody cares. And you called it maybe, you called it clean and tight. But it still made a little bit, it didn't make like original Hunger. It didn't make Hunger Games money, and that was just the best lingering group of Katniss ever, Dean or whatever. It's better than I expected. Obviously it didn't do well, but it did better than I expected.
00:44:17
Speaker
I guess without – because I also thought without Jennifer Lawrence, it wouldn't do well. No one would care. But apparently, there is kind of that core of people who love the books and anything with the name on it, they will rally around. You make these – Cory Elena Snow and they sort of promoted the movie in that way.
00:44:39
Speaker
You talked about the characters in the promotion of the movie, Coriolanus and all this kind of stuff. So, you know, interesting in that way. But I don't know, I still feel like the Hunger Games are over. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, you're just going to see if they try to do more of these, because I think this was an intended new trilogy, wasn't it? Yes, it is. We're supposed to work our way back up to
00:45:05
Speaker
Oh my goodness. You know, I am so glad Sam Raimi's Dark Man is out now. 4K UHD Ultra HD 4K from Shout Factory, Shout Studios and Scream Factory. This is just, this is one of those superhero movies before the superhero movie Cray is really fun.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah. And I think Liam Neeson is great as this weird quasi-superhero dark man character. Francis McDormand, we forget, is also in this. Danny Elfman wrote a great score. Sam Raimi directs the hell out of this thing. It's kind of a wild movie with some very odd humor in it. Oh, man. Dark humor.
00:45:49
Speaker
I did the junkets for this movie back in 1990. It was just fantastic. Larry Drake is a fun, fun movie. Because he was with Lenny on... No, Law and L.A. Law. L.A. Law, yeah. Law, yeah. And then he plays a heavy here and he's so good.
00:46:07
Speaker
Yeah, no that what wasn't you was the junket. It was a junket serious or was it a little wacky? Because there are a lot of Ramey's from your sandwich Sam who's one of the and he has another brother named Ted He was on the cat quest that's right, you know, so so they were like Ramey's everywhere It's one of those families, you know, like there's a lot of fun
00:46:34
Speaker
Well, anyway, a lot of stuff on this. The 4K is on one disc and then they got a Blu-ray here with just gobs and gobs of extras, interviews and featurettes and stuff on the makeup and production design and on and on and on and on, stills and artwork and it's really amazing. I mean, you can learn way too much about this movie.
00:46:56
Speaker
And then, this is interesting to me because this is the latest in the Trolls movies, the third one, Trolls Band Together, the sing-along edition. So, my daughter is also obsessed with Disney films and Pixar films, as you might imagine. Being so obsessive that she would memorize every episode in order of I Dream of I Love Lucy.
00:47:17
Speaker
She also, over the last six months or so, set herself the goal of watching every single Walt Disney Studios animated film in order. All the way, cause she saw Wish, the most recent one, and she has seen obviously, you know, a lot of the, all the princess movies, starting with Snow White, but there are a bunch that she hadn't seen, Fantasia and Fantage 2000. So she watched the rest of them, which is a whole ton. And then she watched all the Pixar's that she's never seen.
00:47:48
Speaker
It's now seen more Disney and Pixar movies than I have. She's got about 20 years with the movies. Oh, it's a lot. And now, all her friends are nagging her, well, you haven't seen any DreamWorks animated films and you haven't seen all of the Blue Sky animated films and you haven't seen, you know, on and on and on and on, right? They're giving her the business. And the Trolls movies,
00:48:11
Speaker
are movies that her friends have seen and that she has not. So she made me watch the original Trolls the other day or if it was any good and it was worth her watching. This is what I do now. This is what I'm resigned to. And this is DreamWorks for Universal. And so I went and watched the original Trolls utterly dreading the prospect of it. You know what?
00:48:31
Speaker
It's cute. Oh, the first Trolls is actually good. It's actually a lot of fun. This one is less fun, you know. What are you going to do? Yeah, the Troll thing over the stage, it's welcome, and it really is all about the songs. That's why it's a sing-along. But this has deleted scenes.
00:48:51
Speaker
hug time bracelet instructions and the original short called It Takes Three. Fourteen songs here with sing-along stuff in them. It's fine. It's fine. It's trolls. I guess if you've seen the first two, you can...
00:49:08
Speaker
suffer your way through this one. It's like the Shrek films, right? The first two were great and then it just did. Well, you know what it is for me and maybe it has to do with this one anyway. It's a little too kinetic for me. It never stops. Yeah, you're right. It never stops talking. It never stops singing. It just never stops. It's never a moment. Yeah, so you add the distance.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yeah, the assumption is that every child has ADD and must be entertained for every single second or else they'll want to leave. And then we've got a couple of 4K steel books here, Justice League Crisis on Infinite Earth Report 1, the animated telling of this, not the one from the Arrowverse. And this is actually better, believe it or not.
00:49:53
Speaker
It's a better telling of it. But this is a famous comic book narrative, and they've now done the animated version of it. And it's not bad. I mean, I think they've tweaked the characters a little bit too much to be like the way they are in the live action movies here. But that being said, I enjoyed this, and I enjoyed having, you know, Martian Manhunter and a whole bunch of other characters in here that we didn't have before.
00:50:20
Speaker
I like her voice. I love Matt Balmer's The Flash and this. Darren Criss plays Superman. He's the voice of Superman. Even Zachary Quinto is doing Lex Luthor, of course, which is extremely appropriate. So, yeah, really cool.
00:50:38
Speaker
And then the last one here on the 4K front is a 40th anniversary. Oh man, 40th anniversary. I can't believe it. But loose. Oh my gosh. But loose. First time on 4K, Steel Book. Kevin has not aged a day since. No. It looks more or less the same age. So this was one of those movies that I saw arguably, I don't know, about 170 times because I was working at the National Theater when it played.
00:51:04
Speaker
And so I saw it or heard it every single day multiple times. And I hated it then. In a strange way, like with Top Gun, I have grown to like it because it's nostalgia for me now.
00:51:20
Speaker
It's nostalgia. I liked it on the day back then. I rather enjoyed this movie, like 20 Logins. And I'm this Midwest guy in St. Louis, so watching the story that's sort of like set in something that looks like my hometown and sort of feels like that Southern Bible belt where I grew up, where some of this stuff was actually real real.
00:51:42
Speaker
I'm like, oh, no, this is real as hell. I know some of those towns. And then there are all these people that are in this movie, dude, that I just, you know, when I think about them, and yes, Kevin, but you got Laurie Singer and Diane Wiese and John Liscato and Sarah Jessica Parker is in this movie. I forgot Sarah Jessica was in this movie. Your boy, young,
00:52:08
Speaker
beautiful Chris Penn, doing that little dance. It's just, you know, I think about them. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And what's so great, so Herbert Ross, who who directed the film, and I remember in film school, you know, Howard Suber,
00:52:25
Speaker
Howard Suber, who just, my old professor in Howard Suber, who just starred in this whole series of The Power of Film based on his book on TCM, if you saw it, it's gonna come, they're gonna air it again, watch it again. You'll know what it was like to be in class with Howard Suber. Howard Suber used to say to us, you're overlooking a major part of the director's style if you don't notice that Herbert Ross, when he directs,
00:52:50
Speaker
He edits to the beat of the music, which a lot of directors don't, kind of a precursor of music videos that way. And Herbert Ross started as a choreographer. He was the choreographer in Funny Girl, and then he was elevated to director of Funny Lady with James Cahn and Barbra Streisand. And then he did The Turning Point, which became at the time the most nominated Academy Award film to not win a single award. It was like nominated for 12 or something like that and won nothing.
00:53:17
Speaker
and would go on to do things like Footloose. And when you watch it, it is because he loves using the music. The songs, those musical numbers, he has a choreographer's instinct for the editing, even if there's not a lot of dancing. But then the dancing stuff is great. So yeah, yeah, that's Footloose and what a fun kind of bit of nostalgia it is now, especially considering that the remake was such a dog.
00:53:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's terrible. But a lot of nostalgic bits here too on the second disc, which has special features on it. They have Kevin Bacon kind of looking back on it. There's a commentary with Kevin Bacon, another commentary with Craig Zann and Dean Pitchford. And an interview with Sarah Jessica Parker. Yeah. So fun stuff and fun stuff for especially for people our age who... Yeah.
00:54:10
Speaker
We just have a few things for TV, one of which is the complete Gomer pile.
00:54:16
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah, the complete Gomer Pyle finally on Blu-ray, which is a bit of a big deal, and it looks terrific on Blu-ray, but you know what? It's funny, Tim. I've been watching some of these things again. Now, this was, everyone knows, you and I, you and I often joke about this because, like, we know this trivia. Like, Gomer Pyle, who's Gomer Pyle's cousin? Goober.
00:55:04
Speaker
See, I was just going to say that. Carry on.
00:55:08
Speaker
It had dramatic touches that included not only Gomer, but the Sarge and other characters. So it wasn't funny, it was kind of absolutely was, but this was a very sophisticated, very poignant show that elevated Gomer. This show didn't make fun of Gomer, pal. This show was Ted Lesso before Ted Lesso.
00:55:33
Speaker
That is an amazing observation. That is a really amazing observation. I hadn't thought of that, but you're right. You're absolutely right. I'll pull one episode out in particular where there are some people who hold up a diner and Sergeant Carter is the one who stops him with his karate chop, but then he realizes he can't be the hero because he's there with a different girl.
00:55:59
Speaker
And he doesn't want his girlfriend to know that he was stepping out on her, right? He was like doing them. And he's like, you go in. So he forces Goer to step up and go, I'm saved today. And Goer has to figure out how to be the hero that Sargent has ordered him to be without being dishonest and actually taking credit for it. So he has to parse his language in a very particular way. So he's not actually admitting that he's the hero.
00:56:25
Speaker
but he's still going to not disobey Sergeant Carter. It's this razor's edge that he's got to walk, and it's really good writing. But the bottom line there is Sergeant Carter was cheating on his girlfriend and is guilty about it. It's a really uncomfortable episode to watch for that reason. You really kind of squirm more than you laugh.
00:56:47
Speaker
What ultimately happens is we, the audience, we are drawn over to Gomer's point of view. It's fascinating. Gomer wins in the end. In every one of those episodes, the Gomer wins. It's the opposite in the early 90s.
00:57:06
Speaker
They did these kinds of shows, which we call lovable loser shows. They didn't do it the way Gomer Pal did it. They didn't do it the way these shows did it. The quote-unquote lovable losers from this period weren't losers. They actually won in every episode. They were always right.
00:57:27
Speaker
No matter how out of steps they were with everybody else because they were good guys and good guys on television in 1964 to 69 when the show was on, good guys won in every episode. Yeah. It's utterly fascinating. It's utterly fascinating. Interesting Showtime series here, Dreaming Whilst Black. Not while.
00:57:53
Speaker
Wildst, LST, the more classic way of saying it, starring Johnny Salmon as Kwabena, who is a guy who just wants, he basically wants to be a, he's a film school grad and he wants to be a filmmaker. And it's this really interesting British comedy series that was originally a series like a web, I think it was a web series originally.
00:58:17
Speaker
And it, you know, made the transition from BBC, British television over to here. I think there's a second season they've done. But it's a really, really interesting. It's a little bit insecure, you know, Issa Rae's show. Well, she did that awkward black girl show, which is the thing that she did on, you know, you do. It's one of those things. And then that becomes insecure. And so it lives right in that. But it's just really
00:58:46
Speaker
well-executed British shows, and it's full of these really, really wonderful actors. And it's one of those, are you going to go for your dreams type things? It's funny, but it's smart. It's one of those shows, and the British do this very, very well. It's one of those shows where you go,
00:59:06
Speaker
There's a little aftertaste to the joke. It's funny, and you laugh, and then you think about it. It kind of lives with you for a moment, and it's more than funny. It's a very particular kind of writing, and I quite like it. It's good. I'm looking forward to it, to another season of it. And then we have got Special Ops Lioness, season one. Yeah.
00:59:31
Speaker
Yeah, Nicole Kidman's on this and, you know... It's one of those Taylor Sheridan, another Taylor Sheridan. Yeah, Nicole Kidman show up for like 19 seconds to give me a bit of credibility. I love that it says from the co-creator of Yellowstone. That means from the creator of Yellowstone whose name is not Taylor Sheridan. Yeah, that's what that means.
01:00:17
Speaker
But look, in fairness, Taylor Sheridan lends his name to this, and that gets it off to the races. And he doesn't otherwise have a whole lot to do with this, at least not to my understanding of it. Yeah, look, I mean, Nicole Kidman gets to kind of sit there and be a boss, and Zoe Saldana does all the stuff, and CIA, yada, yada, yada. It's one of those CIA shows. It's trying to be, you know,
01:00:23
Speaker
Look, this is one of those shows where these people are all far too attractive to be doing any of the jobs.
01:00:46
Speaker
Jack Reacher, it's trying to be, what's the other one with the- Oh, John Krasinski. Doing all that stuff, so whatever. All right, let's see, where do we go next? Oh, there's a Danish show, Deliver Us.
01:01:04
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Kena Lorber released this, and this is a Danish series, a crime thriller series, which I'm surprised that MHC didn't snatch this up because this is exactly the kind of thing that they would normally grab. But yeah, this is kind of an interesting
01:01:23
Speaker
Look at a community that is completely falling apart because of crime and because of crime that's gone on addressed and there's a there's an interesting kind of psycho social aspect to the perpetrators here and to the people in the community.
01:01:44
Speaker
And it is it is a dissection of the it's like the it's like humanity and microcosm. At the moment when we're all supposed to just completely disintegrate and how we respond it's not quite like a post apocalyptic show it doesn't go to that place.
01:02:02
Speaker
But it does get into some really, really the ugly side of human beings when no punishment is associated with our actions. And it's a pretty bold show and it's Danish, not for everybody's taste. But anyway, there it is. Oh, you know what? I'm just noticing this is MHC.
01:02:25
Speaker
It is released. I guess new contract with Keno Lorber. It is MHZ, but they're releasing through Keno Lorber now, not their own distribution. Very interesting. So, good on MHZ for not letting that one slip through. I take it back. All right. Let's see. Where do we go now?
01:02:43
Speaker
How close are those criterions to you? Let's take a look at some of that stuff because I see the answer with you. I want to talk about Nothing but a Man, the great Ivan Dixon's film. We talk about Ivan Dixon a lot because he was on Hogan's Heroes. He's the black guy on Hogan's Heroes. Yeah, but he was also a filmmaker.
01:03:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Very good and significant filmmaker and a significant actor even before that. And yeah, nothing but a man. Boy, go, go with it. Yeah, Abby Lincoln and Julius Harrison. This is really, really powerful film. When you watch, Jack and Dakota, a young Jack and Dakota was in this movie. And Julius Harrison is really a very powerful drama about this brother and his
01:03:35
Speaker
his wife, who's a school teacher, and what they have to deal with in the early 60s in America, obviously a black couple. It's a Michael Romer film, of course, but Ivan Dixon is extraordinary in this movie, and it's where he began to hone his chops.
01:03:56
Speaker
As a director, I spoke with Ivan, that must be 35 years ago now. I always wanted to make a doc about Ivan Dix. Ivan Dixon was one of the first black, regular directors in network television in the early 70s. Regularly, if you were watching any given network television show, you were watching some of the work of Ivan Dix Medical Center and he was one of the first, him and Michael Schultz.
01:04:23
Speaker
It's the other one. It directs the spook who's set by the door. In any case, this is really just a really, really great film. The great Abby Lincoln, who's a singer too, of course, a wonderful singer, but also a noted dramatic actress, Abby Lincoln. Good movie.
01:04:43
Speaker
It's a lovely Blu-ray. It's director approved by Michael Bromer, and it has archival interviews with Ivan Dixon and Abbie Lincoln and Julius Harris, and a great conversation that was recorded in 2004 between Romer and Robert M. Young, who, of course, would go on to be a great director in his own right, but was a co-producer and cinematographer here. And there's also an introduction to Michael Bromer, a featurette on Romer.
01:05:09
Speaker
it's a no it is terrific and you know the thing that i really really appreciate about ivan dixon is that the particular kind of actor that he was at this time this is nineteen sixty four and nineteen sixty four um the the impulse for most was to sydney poitier the hell out of every single black role right it was like oh yeah we gotta
01:05:28
Speaker
you know, like white guilt bubbling up and we got every black actor has to be a credit to the race. We got to like really build him up and Sidney Pozzi had all that poured on his shoulders. Meanwhile, somebody like Ivan Dickson is the beneficiary of that because he says, I don't have that pressure, so I'm going to be real. And he's incredibly real. I mean, it really, that's the thing is that in 1964, when most people are giving fairly, still fairly elevated melodramatic performances, he's giving something which I would almost describe as a neorealist performance.
01:05:58
Speaker
Oh yeah, the kind of thing that Charles Burnett would go on to call forth from folks like Morgan Freeman and to sleep with anger. Yap and Cotto, again, in this film, there was this opportunity. A lot of that was Romer, too, because Romer, he was all about naturalism, realism. So yeah, outstanding, outstanding.
01:06:23
Speaker
Got another criterion, Blu-ray boxed set here. Chantal Ockerman, Masterpieces, 1968-78. If you don't know Chantal Ockerman and Why She Matters, boy, this is the one you pick up. Ton of films here, and I can't get into each of them individually. Sotmavi, La Chant, Hotel Monterey, the very famous Jeanne Diehlmann 23, K. Du Comouse, 1080 Brückel, which has now kind of been elevated in the Sight and Sound Critics poll and, you know,
01:06:53
Speaker
People are, oh, I've never heard of that movie before. Now you have. So Chantal Ockerman, just an extraordinary French director. And this is basically the first 10 years of her career. And it's just this wonderful body of work that is just so naturalistic and poetic.
01:07:13
Speaker
and yet, you know, kind of low budget and gritty. And it's like, you know, post new wave, new wave is what it is. Very much an outgrowth of the new wave. But these are just wonderful movies, lots of great extras in here, including film school tests by Ackerman. And yeah, I just think this is a wonderful box set. It's an essential for anybody.
01:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, the films that she did in the middle late 90s, the South American films, that one would Bill Hurt and Juliette Binoche. It's a part of that scene, but they're still interesting films. They have the son of an American style and even a bit of a
01:07:57
Speaker
French comedic style. Something I was saying. I couched in New York. I was looking for there that and I found it. So, yeah, she had a real range. I really love Chantal Acrobat. Speaking of Romers, there's Eric Romer, the wonderful French New Wave poet who did Tales of the Four Seasons. This is a wonderful quartet of films, A Tale of Springtime, A Tale of Winter, A Tale of Summer, and A Tale of Autumn. These are just lovely movies. They're gentle,
01:08:27
Speaker
This was a quartet of films that sort of came into life when Tim and I had just started reviewing movies. We sort of lived this whole quartet from 1990 to 1998 and they're just beautiful. I remember seeing these things projected and I just couldn't wait until the next one.
01:08:43
Speaker
And they're just about romance. They're just about people trying to fall in love and struggling with love in each of these kinds of seasonal capsules. And they're just these beautiful, intimate character tales. And he's done this before with the six moral tales and comedies and proverbs. And so this is another one of his film series where he just explores human nature. And they're beautiful. They're absolutely beautiful.
01:09:10
Speaker
bunch of great extras on here, all from 2K Digital Restorations, which is plenty because Romer shot, you know, kind of griddly on film, but beautiful stuff. Yeah, and also the vaguely references to his own life, A Tale of Summer, his own childhood, and so on and so on. It's really beautiful stuff.
01:09:27
Speaker
And then we've got some 4Ks here as well, some criterion 4Ks. And let's start off with Lone Star by John Sails, which that's just from one of the great John Sails films from that period, from his best period. Boy, Lone Star was so good. And gave us...
01:09:48
Speaker
What? Young Matthew McConaughey, of course. Yeah, young Matthew McConaughey. Chris Kristofferson is in that. Chris Cooper, if I recall, but I remember Elizabeth Pena. Pena is amazing. She was the thing in that movie, man. She was the thing in that movie. It was just really, really great. Yeah.
01:10:09
Speaker
She was absolutely terrific. Chris Cooper and Elizabeth Peña are the center of this film. They're the rock center of this film. Really, really wonderful movie. Just so well scripted, so well executed, and with some twists and turns, you do not see it, I'm telling you. Stuart Dryberg, who shot the piano for Jane Campion, also just cleans up here. It's 4K. It's absolutely terrific. Cannot say enough about it.
01:10:34
Speaker
Also, Trainspotting on 4K. You know what? Look, I love Danny Boyle. I love Ewan McGregor. I love just about everybody in this movie. I should love this movie. I don't. I know a lot of people do.
01:10:50
Speaker
back in 1996 or something like that when it came out. Again, Johnny Lee Miller and Ewan, a lot of young British guys, Kevin McKitt, Sothe Rose, up out of this movie, Kelly McDonald, Robert Carlisle, and these irritating junkies.
01:11:10
Speaker
It's irritating. I can't, I can't, you know, I understand it's not necessarily glamorizing heroin, but I just, I can't. I got no use for any kind of irritating junkie. It's just, you know, it's just my thing, but it's popular today.
01:11:26
Speaker
Yeah, it was. Yeah, I just I can't handle it. Also, we've got the heroic trio and the executioners, the Johnny toe films that did the amazing thing during the Hong Kong new wave period of combining Michelle Yeoh, with Maggie Chung and Anita Moy, the late Anita, the glorious Anita. If you're a Hong Kong new wave fan, as I am, I remember when these movies came out. They're just amazing. They're basically female superhero movies.
01:11:50
Speaker
These are three women who are superheroes. The Michelle Yeoh character, who's invisible, is working for the bad guy initially, but comes back to the good side, and they become a heroic trio. In the sequel, Executioners, it's just as good. Johnny Toe was not yet the gangster filmmaker that he would become, the kind of
01:12:11
Speaker
Newvo John Woo, but still a work for hire, but boy, these films are so much fun. They are so much fun. And on 4K, could not say more about them. They're wonderful. There is a new interview with Anthony Wong, the great legendary Anthony Wong who
01:12:28
Speaker
He's kind of nasty in the first one. The wizard's a henchman and he eats his own fingers and there's a whole thing with the flying guillotine. He's a weird character. He doesn't have a line, I don't think. Anyway, there's a new interview with him, which is terrific. New interview with film critic Sam Dayan, who co-hosts the podcast Twitch of the Death Nerve. It's terrific. I just love those movies.
01:12:56
Speaker
We also have Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, K of McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Yeah. Boy, I mean, does this hold up, Tim? Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Robert Altman. It's a film of its time, but, you know, it's set. I wanted to set it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The gamble, the process, if they get together. It's just really, really, really a good film. It feels. How does it look? Good. Looks so beautiful.
01:13:25
Speaker
It really does. It's just so beautiful. And I love it when they really get the film grain right in these 4Ks. That's the thing. If the 4K makes me feel like I'm watching something that's projected, boom, mission accomplished. It is really a beautiful 4K.
01:13:41
Speaker
It captures that kind of nasty, gritty, pre-Heaven's Gate, reverentist Western, pre-unforgiven, reginous Western sensibility, the Pacific Northwest, you know, mining town. It just, you really feel it. But I mean, it's the visuals. Vilmo Zygmon shot it, you know, eventually would win an Oscar for Close Encounters. It was just one of the great cinematographers of all time. And it just, it just has that Vilmo Zygmon texture.
01:14:09
Speaker
And I can't get enough. It's just absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, fantastic, man. Yeah, that's wonderful. Tons of great extras, by the way. Tons of great extras, including a conversation about the film and Altman's career with film historians, Kari Beauchamp and Rick Jewell. I am so sorry to report too that Kari Beauchamp recently passed away. Oh, I did not know that, no. Yeah, she passed away. And also, who else passed away? The other film scholar. Oh my gosh, film art just today.
01:14:36
Speaker
Oh, I missed it. Oh, gosh. Hold on, hold on. David Boardwell. Oh, really? David Boardwell died today. And film art, his book, Film Art, which he wrote with Kristen Thompson. Yeah, that was one of my textbooks in film school. And I used some of his other stuff when I taught. I mean, David Boardwell,
01:15:02
Speaker
such another horrible loss. And our last criterion 4K here is the Apu trilogy from Satyajit Ray, the great Indian director, the great Bengali filmmaker. His first trilogy, you know, Para Panchale was his coming out and then Aparajito and Apu Sansar, the world of Apu. I always like to point out to people that
01:15:23
Speaker
The world of Apu is, if you've seen My Family Me Familia, with... Edward James Olmos and Jimmy Smits and the rest of them, that is quite literally a remake of the world of Apu without giving credit for it. It's extraordinary to me. There was a point, I'm watching My Family Me Familia and I'm like,
01:15:48
Speaker
This is the world of Apu. He just straight up ripped it off. Couldn't you at least have given him a nod? Apu of course is the boy and he grows up and it's a little bit like what Truffaut did.
01:16:03
Speaker
beginning with the 400 blows. The evolution of this one character and it's just beautiful. I love Ray. He's not a Bollywood filmmaker. He's a Bengali filmmaker. He's our very neorealist and poetic and beautiful and the black and white cinematography is just- No songs, no dance routines. No. They're lovely.
01:16:25
Speaker
And then our three Blu-rays here, starting with Mudbound by Dries. Why are we getting more movies from Dries? She's a big deal. She was the big cheese, and she's having such a hard time getting these movies made. Yeah, it was heck of a thing. Fariah, her first film back in 2007, it cut her loose.
01:16:46
Speaker
And she made a really good TV movie with Queen Latifah, Bessie, and then Bloodbath. And since then, you know, I don't know. This is a thing that can happen sometimes. It's not like she hasn't been working, but it's mostly been on television. But in terms of feature films, no, yeah.
01:17:03
Speaker
I feel like there's someone who is just a complete filmmaker. She's got the full command of all the tools, the whole palette. So, I mean, if I've got money and I want somebody to make a movie, I'd go, Dee, what do you want to do? Tell me what you want to do. She does have one episode of Masters of the Air, which is actually a fairly neat series. Oh, that's right. She did one of those. Yeah, yeah.
01:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, well anyway, Mudbound is a really, really great movie. It's just absolutely terrific. It was made for Netflix. They have, thank goodness, allowed it to be put out on Blu-ray by Glanterion. And I wish it had gotten a theatrical release, but I understand Netflix were the ones that were willing to put the money up. So there it is.
01:17:42
Speaker
But no, D is all over this thing, this new documentary and talking about the story. This all kind of takes place in the 1940s in Mississippi Delta. White landowners, black tenant farmers and the
01:17:59
Speaker
the entanglement that their relationship has under Jim Crow laws in the South. It's quite a portrait of a snapshot of a moment in American history.
01:18:19
Speaker
Anyway, you've been back from World War II with that uniform on, expecting a little respect, and so that is at the center of all. This is a hell of a thing.
Coen Brothers' 'Blood Simple' Analysis
01:18:32
Speaker
And the Coen Brothers, Blood Simple. Great review. Heavy on 4K. I don't know why it isn't, but here it is on Blu-ray from Criterion 1984. Man, yeah. I had costly talking about that today or last year, whenever we did the radio, that came up. And Blood Simple is from that, I mean, early Coen Brothers, obviously, as early as you can get. But it was from that
01:18:55
Speaker
period when the Cullen Brothers movie were nastier, meaner than they were funny. Slowly over the years, they switched places. By the time you get to the big Lebowski, they're mostly funny.
01:19:19
Speaker
This is a nasty little movie, dude. This is right there with Miller's Crossing as far as the intensity of their screenplays. Those two kind of stand apart. And Blood Simple is a hell of a movie. It's a noir. It's a straight up noir. Not a comedy.
01:19:38
Speaker
Barry Sonnenfeld shot it. He was their DP for their first few films and did a great job. He's a big part of their success at this time too. All three of them are involved in approving this transfer, so that should put your mind at ease. I just wish it were 4K. It's just absolutely terrific movie, wonderful screenplay, great performances.
01:20:01
Speaker
What else can you say? I remember Walsh is just his nasty noir detective. He's really great.
Review of 'A Fire' and Oscar Eligibility
01:20:10
Speaker
Then from the criterion adjacent sister line, Janice Contemporaries, these are the first run films that they're now releasing as well. A Fire, the Christian Petzold film from last year, which I...
01:20:24
Speaker
This is one of those foreign language films that should be eligible for the Oscars, but it's not because it's not the official submission of the country. But you know what? This should have been eligible. I know they're afraid that it'll just be nothing but like French, German, and Italian movies or something, and maybe an occasional Japanese film. But you know, look, you got to qualify more movies. They really do. Because this is terrific. This is terrific. It was really just extraordinary.
01:20:51
Speaker
executed film with this, it takes place in the Baltic city. And there is a fire that's relevant in the story line. Yes, yes. But yeah, it's about a forest fire that's
01:21:07
Speaker
pushing closer and closer to our characters and their proceedings at this holiday getaway in the Baltic Sea. It's a very, very smart, well-written film. It won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival last year. It's worth checking out. Definitely give it a look. Give it a look-see.
01:21:29
Speaker
We got some steel books here and then I'm going to go through some Asian titles because it's been a while since we've really hit up the Wellgo library. We got some steel books here. I'll go through this really quickly.
Stephen King's Directorial Debut
01:21:41
Speaker
Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive from Vestron Video. Not a great movie, but it's- Taking on a cult following. It has to.
01:21:53
Speaker
My favorite story of Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King directed this. It's the only film he's ever directed. He has no idea how to direct a movie. There's a story of Stephen King when he got the job to direct it. He put a call in to David Lynch to say, how do I direct a movie?
01:22:14
Speaker
Apparently, if I remember the story correctly, somebody had told him while they were shooting, you can't do that because you're crossing the line. And Stephen King said, what line? He had no idea. He had no idea. And then he puts the call into David Lynch. And Lynch, of course, tells him, yeah, that's stupid. Cross the line whenever you want.
01:22:35
Speaker
That's the story. And then we've got Lords of Dogtown with Emile Hirsch and Heath Ledger and John
Portrayal in 'Lords of Dogtown'
01:22:44
Speaker
Robinson. Basically, it's the whole Dogtown story, how the great skateboard
01:22:50
Speaker
I remember
01:23:11
Speaker
that was the film that when I saw Raul in the film, it's dying. You knew, you knew. I was like, oh, he's looking gone. It's like there's something wrong. There's something going on there, yeah. And then also Rad, the off-road
01:23:33
Speaker
motocross bike movie director. Hal Needham, the great Hal Needham, yeah, produced by Jack Schwarzman, Jason Schwarzman's dad. So another kind of Coppola adjacent film this week, also on Steel Book. And then John C. Reilly in Walk Hard, the Dewey Cox story, which continues to be, this is the hardest Steel Ultimate edition, which continues to be a movie that I know so many people who swear this is the funniest movie ever made.
01:24:01
Speaker
Now, I don't get it, but I'm amazed at how many people I know, personally, who think,
Comedy Debate: 'Walk Hard' vs 'Spinal Tap'
01:24:09
Speaker
if I only had this, I don't need any other comedy as long as I live. Tim, do you think that is? I do not understand. Look, I've gone through this, and it's not just this movie, it's what I call bit funny. There are these bits in the, but it's this, no. There are people who talk about this movie in juxtaposition to Spinal Tap.
01:24:31
Speaker
And I'm like, you're insane. Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a bit of a kind of a spoof of the the whole biopic deal. Yeah, I mean, you know, written by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan, directed by Jake Kasdan. And I like both those guys. But yeah, yeah, I mean, you know,
01:24:54
Speaker
I get it, some people love this movie, they love it like crazy. It's funny because they're kind of biting mostly. This has less to do with what's going on in Spinal Tap than it does with what's going on in any given airplane, naked gun, that kind of stuff. It's more in line with that than it is Spinal Tap.
01:25:16
Speaker
So I'm going to roll through some Wellgo movies here.
Review of 'A Creature Was Stirring'
01:25:18
Speaker
Wellgo has continued to put out not just a lot of great Asian stuff, and I'm going to get to that here soon too, but a lot of great kind of first-run stuff, a lot of which makes its way into theaters. And it's all over the map. It's mostly kind of genre-y or genre-adjacent thrillers and things of that sort. But boy, they're really, really getting some sharp films and giving them really good releases on Blu-ray.
01:25:44
Speaker
And the first one here is a creature was stirring dot dot dot and it wasn't a mouse.
01:25:54
Speaker
No, this is one of those films that gets a little bit of a short shrift because it doesn't have any stars in it. These people raised money and they put this thing together. It is a really, really sharp movie. I don't want to call it a hillbilly noir. It's sort of insulting in a way, but that's sort of what it is. This actress, Chrissy Metz, is amazing. This is us, right, that's her?
01:26:23
Speaker
Is she on This Is Us? I think yeah. She's on This Is Us. She's the big gal. Yeah, she's big. She's great. She's a mom. She's named Faith, which is a bit of a giveaway here. But she's got this daughter and the daughter is
01:26:45
Speaker
messed up and we don't quite know why.
Overview of 'Mercy Road'
01:26:48
Speaker
And so she's got her daughter all drugged up and next thing you know, uh-oh, it's Christmas. And in a weird twist on Home Alone, you got a couple of burglars who break into the house and oh my goodness, it becomes Home Alone without a kid and without jokes and with lots of violence. Like Home Alone, the real version. Holy cow.
01:27:13
Speaker
Super, super good movie though. Really just tight and well done and well put together. And then we got Jared Moshe's Aporia. Reality is a continuum. Judy Greer is in this and does a fantastic job. She's the, she's basically the main
01:27:33
Speaker
She's the closest thing to a star that they've got in this. I've always loved Judy Greer. Oh my god. I always played the girl next door, the girlfriend of the girl who's the lead. I always remember I saw Judy Greer. I always thought to myself, she should be the lead of this movie. Totally true. Well, this is a really interesting kind of a weird genre movie. She's a widow.
01:27:57
Speaker
And it feels like a total straight up kind of indy drama until it gets into this whole like time machine thing and it's not a typical time travel movie it's about a time machine that can.
01:28:14
Speaker
that can bend time. It's not like time travel, it's time bending, and there's actual physics to this, and the way they describe it in the film, like one side of my brain is going, that I'm not buying it, but the other side of my brain is going, no, that could work. It was weird, it was weird, but really a smart screenplay. Jared Moshe wrote and directed it, does a great job, very, very sharp film, Aporia, super worth checking out.
01:28:42
Speaker
A movie called Mercy Road with Toby Jones and Luke Bracey. It's a crime film and it's a person on the run movie.
01:29:01
Speaker
It hits most of the beats of that until you get to this really weird psycho twist in this thing. There's a series of strange phone calls. It's a sharp script.
01:29:20
Speaker
because it has a parent trying to save a child angle to the story, it goes in some directions that you don't expect it to go. And so I'm going to be a little bit circuitous here in describing anything further, but really, really interesting movie Mercy Road, very interesting psychological thriller stat slash crime film.
Critique of 'Crocodile Island'
01:29:39
Speaker
We got a DVD, not a Blu-ray, but a DVD of Crocodile Island, Edge of the World. There's a reason why they didn't do this one on Blu-ray. It's not very good. It's a Chinese film that just kind of does what a lot of modern Chinese films do, which is try to imitate Hollywood blockbusters and do it in a really
01:30:00
Speaker
creepy way. And this is people who just, they crash land their plane in the Bermuda Triangle and the island is filled with crocodiles and they're, you know, Jurassic crocodile. But I guess there's a following for that kind of thing.
Plot of 'You're Lucky Day'
01:30:17
Speaker
You're Lucky Day. You ever see this? This thing I think got a theatrical release. You're Lucky Day with Angus Cloud and Sterling Bowman, Jason Amara. It's a Dan Brown film right about the lottery ticket.
01:30:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's about how don't buy lottery tickets if you don't want to fight with your friends and everything goes south. That's the message here. Yeah.
01:30:48
Speaker
There's 156 million at stake and the lottery ticket just launches this whole fascinating rivalry and fight and hostage situation. It's pretty intense. Yeah, it's good. I haven't bought a lottery ticket since watching it. At least not one I'm going to share with anybody. How many Mandalores are there? Is it just the two?
01:31:15
Speaker
Oh my, it cost us some Lewis. I hope you're only those two,
Review of 'Three Days in Malay'
01:31:21
Speaker
but yeah. I always get them mixed up. I always get those two mixed up. This one is Lewis Mandalore. Yeah. And Lewis Mandalore, Cowboy Cherone, and Quentin Jackson, otherwise known as Rampage Jackson. Hell yeah. Three days in Malay. Rampage is a movie I wrote.
01:31:39
Speaker
This is a World War II movie. This is all about the United States Marines fighting one of their famous battles in Malay during World War II, during the Operation Watchtower event. That's all it is. It's like a classic old John Wayne style, heroic World War II battle movie, guys in impossible, facing impossible odds, holding down the outpost.
01:32:03
Speaker
Japanese, you know, fighting the daylights out of them. And it's fine. You know, Lewis Mandalore directed this as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's not bad. I mean, it's not like, you know, he's not gonna win an Oscar or anything, but it's fine. Perfectly, perfectly serviceable. Got, let's see, five more here. All of them really worth talking about. Kill shot. A little bit, a little cheesy.
01:32:31
Speaker
But a very attractive cast, so I can forgive it. It all takes place in Montana, which, you know, like nobody, isn't it funny, certain states, are they just, if a movie takes place in Florida, people are having a good time. If a movie takes place in Montana, go wrong.
01:32:49
Speaker
It never has a good time in Montana. They get lost to the mountain. Some pedophile locks them in a cage or something. Things go south in Montana. It's gonna involve long guns. I can promise you that. It does.
01:33:04
Speaker
Well, anyway, Rob Hill, Rib Hillis, I guess is the actor's name, Rib Hillis, is on a hunting trip in Montana. Now, Rib Hillis is also both a wilderness guide and a former Navy SEAL. Yeah. And you know that when you have those kinds of credentials, trouble follows you.
01:33:25
Speaker
And of course there's, you know, there's like a, they stumble across some money and there's gang that wants money and then everything goes south. But no, no, it's very well done. It's a good solid thriller. You pretty much know everything that's going to happen, but that's fine with some of these movies if the cast is attractive. Brandon Vera.
01:33:47
Speaker
who kind of wants to be Ving Rhames, he's trying to steal Ving Rhames' look, stars in Day Zero, which is a zombie movie. It's a reasonably serviceable zombie movie. We've had so many zombie movies that I think they all sort of blur together at a certain point.
01:34:08
Speaker
But, yeah, you know, he's kind of a thing Rames want to be and he's being chased by zombies at some point in the future when he's gotten out of prison and civilization has just succumbed to some horrible, horrible virus.
01:34:23
Speaker
And there it is. He too is a former elite soldier. That always comes in handy. I'm a former soldier but there's stuff that'll lead about me. Just once I want all of this stuff to go down and for the person in charge to be like a high school music teacher.
01:34:45
Speaker
I don't know what to do. I teach band. I teach band. I've never touched a gun in my life. What am I supposed to do? Zombies are chasing me. Terrorists are chasing me. I want to see the story with that guy. Richard Dreyfus from Mr. Holland's office. Let's throw it to him and see what goes down. Oh my goodness. We got an animated film here called Goodbye Monster, a magical adventure.
Mention of 'Goodbye Monster'
01:35:12
Speaker
Which is, you know, serviceable. This is, you know, all Chinese animation and they cut corners like crazy and don't really have the know-how to do this right. But it's, I guess, if you like
01:35:33
Speaker
foreign animation and you like things that deal with sort of the mystical aspect of Chinese mythology, you'll probably be able to get with it. But it's, you know, goodbye monster. It's all right. It's not amazing.
Synopsis of 'War Horse One'
01:35:49
Speaker
Let's see, last two here. Last two well-go titles. War Horse One with Johnny Strong and Athena Derner. I know you don't know who Johnny Strong or Athena Derner are,
01:35:59
Speaker
They are good actors. They are absolutely good. You know what? That's another SEAL team thing. They're all SEALs. They're all retired SEALs or former SEALs here. But no, this is sharp. This takes place right after the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
01:36:15
Speaker
And it's, you know, there's a sealed helicopter that is shot down and the last guy on it is kind of caught behind enemy lines and has to save this little Afghan girl. And there it is. That's the story, basically. It's an action thing. It's a little bit ridiculous, but it is very, very well done. And Johnny Strong, who, you know,
01:36:41
Speaker
co-wrote and co-directed it and stars in it, he's got some chops. I hope this guy gets some other opportunities as well.
Overview of 'Bone Cold'
01:36:51
Speaker
Then the last one here, you may have seen this because I'm pretty sure this got a theatrical release as well, is Bone Cold. I love the tagline here, sometimes we make our own demons.
01:37:05
Speaker
Billy Hanson movie, yeah. Another Black Ops guy, another guy. I think those camouflage suits must be really inexpensive. Buy a camouflage suit, yeah.
01:37:22
Speaker
Yeah, this is about a couple of snipers who, they're given bad intel and then they wind up realizing that there's like a, I mean, it's basically like Predator. It's almost a Predator kind of story, but they realize that there's something after them. Something's chasing them.
01:37:41
Speaker
It doesn't have the budget of Predator, but it's got kind of a similar vibe and it's well put together. I mean, somebody got a budget and they had some chops and they made things happen. Let's see. Gosh, we've got so many other things here that we've got. Oh, you know what? Here, we should make mention of this because Imprint is a wonderful line of classic titles from Australia.
Imprint's Classic Film Releases
01:38:06
Speaker
We are really grateful because they release a lot of stuff that our
01:38:10
Speaker
companies, our labels don't get to. They just, they're stuff and these guys, they love movies. Imprint is a great label. And so we've got a relationship with Imprint and they're like, yeah, we'll send you our stuff. You know, you can buy it in the US. It's region free. Go for it. So I'm going to start with Lenny, freaking Lenny. Where is our amazing like collectible criterion Blu-ray of Lenny? I don't know where it is, but Bob Fosse directing Dustin Hoffman.
01:38:37
Speaker
in one of the great biopics of all time. Very hard to do a classic stand-up comic and do him justice. And boy, I'll tell you, Dustin Hoffman nails it. He is Lenny Bruce. He is Lenny Bruce. And he completely inhabits the part. It's a terrific film. And the company, the umbrella company for the Imprint line, by the way, is VIA Vision, but Imprint is the line, like their criterion line.
01:39:03
Speaker
and it's absolutely terrific. Wonderful Blu-ray from Imprint. Look for it on Amazon or wherever you buy your Blu-rays. We also have Diamond Head with Charlton Heston, Yves Mieux, George Shakiras, Frantz Nguyen, and James Darin. What a great all-star cast that is.
01:39:24
Speaker
1962 great year year of lawrence of arabia in the longest day and so many other great films. This one gets lost in the mix sometimes but directed by guy green basement great novel by peter gillman really really terrific movie screenplay by marguerite roberts and i have to say france newian.
01:39:45
Speaker
It's still alive. She's a therapist now. Did you know that? I did not know that. I did not know that. Still alive. She has a second career as a therapist and one of the most beautiful women of all time. Oh my God. Not just great in this movie, but great when she kisses Captain Kirk. I was going to say, what's the name of the episode? Yes, Alon.
01:40:07
Speaker
Absolutely terrific in the season premiere of season two of Charlie's Angels, Angels in Paradise. Oh my gosh. As the Hawaiian mobster's wife who kidnaps Charlie and then she shows up in a bikini. She is in her 40s and she rivals the Angels who are all in their 20s.
01:40:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I'm just going to say, and I love Franz Nguyen. As a mom in the Joy Luck Club, I am... Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's a ballast in the final game, so I'm going to guess it's a great thing. All the way back to South Pacific. So, yes. I had no idea that she was a therapist now. That's amazing. She steals this movie, and she and George Shakiras are both still alive. Wow. Oh, yeah. George, of course. Yeah, sure.
01:40:50
Speaker
Yeah. Also from Imprint, The Man in Half Moon Street with Nils Asther and Helen Walker, a very cool, long forgotten noir, totally rediscovered, 1945. It's
01:41:08
Speaker
It's like a noir science fiction thing. It's really terrific. And the premise is that you've got a guy who discovers that as long as he does this surgery every 10 years,
01:41:23
Speaker
he can be immortal. He's got to find unwilling donors though, right? Yeah. He's got to get those lands maybe. A little Frankenstein, a little film noir, and then you kind of throw in this great romantic twist and it's a good movie. The Man in Half Moon Street, really cool flick.
01:41:44
Speaker
And then lastly, Steven Boyd, Michael Redgrave, Leo McKern in Assignment K, which is another one of those really cool 60s era spy things. It's pretty great. I mean, they're all kind of quasi James Bond adjacent, right? Everything's kind of stepping in the bond
01:42:08
Speaker
in the Bond realm at this point, but it's really cool. It's like we were talking earlier, why isn't it ever a band leader? Okay, so this is a guy who runs a toy company, but he also happens to be the head of a British spy operation.
01:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't quite cut it. But anyway, no, no, he has to... It's a cool James Bond kind of thing. Val Jest is speaking about... The day the Earth caught fire, he wrote that. But he was also an uncredited writer, speaking of Bond, on Christina Royale. Oh, I did not know that. Yes, he is uncredited. Really? Oh, look at that. That makes total sense, yeah. Makes a lot of sense.
01:42:52
Speaker
Let's see, what else do we have here? I'd like to get through, hang on. Because there are a lot of these one-offs that are worth mentioning. This is a really interesting thing. Let me just put a poke in for this from the National Film Board of Canada. Alanis, and I'm going to mutilate this, Obama-win. Okay.
01:43:15
Speaker
I know. This is really interesting.
Alanis Obomsawin's Anthology
01:43:18
Speaker
Three languages, by the way, on all parts of this. A legacy, and then they've got... When you go on the back and there's the summary, it's in three languages. It's in English, and in French, and in Cree, because this is, as they say in Canada, First Nations. This is a First Nations thing. It's 21 films on 12 discs. Oh, wow. All of them by Alanis Obamswan, who is
01:43:42
Speaker
who's a First Nations female filmmaker in Canada. Most of these films have probably never been seen in the United States, but because they're really serious about trying to do right, not always successful, but they're very serious about trying to do right by an often abused population in Canada, which lives in some very, very remote places.
01:44:06
Speaker
Finding these filmmakers and doing right by them is very interesting. This is a wonderful immersion in the world of a particular filmmaker, but a particular culture, a particular place, a particular people.
01:44:21
Speaker
And there's a lot here. I haven't watched all 21 films, watched about 10 of them, but it's all over the place. It's just wonderful. And hopefully we get some more attention on this. And the National Film Board of Canada is doing some really great work, and this is part of it. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah.
01:44:40
Speaker
All right, let me see what else we've got here. You want some mews or some docs?
Discussion on 'Imagining the Indian'
01:44:48
Speaker
Oh, let's do the docs. We got some docs here. Yeah, let's do the docs. She just mentioned, she's a Native American imagining the Indian. Yeah.
01:44:59
Speaker
I think I see on that list there. Yeah, yeah. No, this is great. And this is really interesting now, because obviously, the Chiefs just won the Super Bowl again. Did you see what Lilly, our soon to be best actress Academy Award winner, what Lilly Gladstone said about this? It was very interesting. No. A pasta thing. She says, I don't really have a problem with the title, the Chiefs. I think it's a perfectly fine title name for a team. It's OK with all the Chiefs. Just don't do the Tomahawk chop.
01:45:28
Speaker
It was the chop in the stands that bothered her, not the name of the team. That's interesting. Anyway, you've seen the film, go on. It's an interesting exploitation of that. The Native Americans and their relationships with sports culture here in the United States. Many of the sports we play here in the United States have their roots in Native American culture, but you wouldn't know that.
01:45:56
Speaker
in the way that they saw Highline, Lacrosse, and these other things. Of course, many extremely important sports figures have been Native American who we jumped on. We go straight to gym and we more or less stop there.
01:46:16
Speaker
fascinating exploration of all of those things with respect to the logos and the names of franchises and the actual human beings who brought us and invented and participated in some of these sports without being recognized. They're very interesting stuff.
01:46:33
Speaker
Very interesting stuff. Yeah, it is fascinating. And what's interesting to me, too, is that the Washington Redskins finally were forced to abandon their name. They're the commanders now. And now there is another group, a Native American group, that is suing to have the name Redskins restored because they feel that they have now been erased from culture because it was a Native American artist who designed the logo and all this stuff.
Debate over Redskins Name Restoration
01:46:59
Speaker
So it continues to be
01:47:01
Speaker
We're not going to be through this debate anytime soon. But yeah, it's a good doc. The Book of Hearth, H-A-R-T-H by Pierre Guillais is kind of a weird doc. Here's what it's about. This guy, David Gregg Hearth, H-A-R-T-H.
01:47:25
Speaker
It took it for 20 years. He carried this Bible around to get it signed by famous people.
01:47:34
Speaker
And he goes to the most outrageous extremes to get this thing signed. And this dock was shot during the last year of that quest. So it's not like this has been 20 years in the making. This is just the last year of him trying to get that Bible signed and finding his way to wherever and through whatever appearance and red carpet and celebrity, whatever, and the people that he is able to get signatures from.
01:48:01
Speaker
And the thing is, I mean, as entertaining as this is, there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to it. It's just like, Noam Chomsky's in town? That's Noam. Kevin Smith? I'm going to get Kevin Smith. Why would you, wait, wait, I mean, Kevin Smith and Noam Chomsky? Like, what's the, I don't know, is there a through line or are you just going for anybody who... Look, Job Waters, you know, Paul Schrader, a theme, no, don't see a theme, but whatever, dude.
01:48:31
Speaker
But it's quite a thing to watch. And then last one, a dance doc called Rookies, which is about a Parisian high school that is basically
01:48:48
Speaker
It's not one of those New York arts. It's not like fame. But what it's doing is it's taking a bunch of hip-hop dancers from the surrounding kind of immigrant areas in Paris, which are really tough neighborhoods. And it brings them into this kind of arts program in this school. And this follows them over the course of a full year.
01:49:12
Speaker
and how they are able to sort of balance the dance aspect of their curriculum with the academics. And it's a really, you know, if, I mean, I'm very close to these kinds of, because I've lived in some pretty tough places in France, and so I know these immigrant neighborhoods, and I know these kids, I know what, I've been around these kids, I've been in the homes of these kids, and so it's,
01:49:41
Speaker
It's a very, very interesting look at what sometimes feels too much like a dead end life. And it'd be really tough if you're part of that population in Paris. But yet there's hope through between the lines. And it's very, very nice. And it's really well done. It's done by the same filmmakers who made the reset documentary, which is all about Benjamin Milpied, the choreographer who's
01:50:09
Speaker
who's, who isn't, isn't it Miele Paibh? Isn't he married to Natalie Portman? Yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So anyway, um, or maybe are they getting divorced? I think they're getting divorced. I can't keep up with Hollywood people. Anyway, this is from Icarus home video. It's a good doc. It is called rookies.
01:50:27
Speaker
I got some Chinese, Hong Kong-y, Asian stuff all over the map here. Let me burn through as many of these as I can in a little bit of time we have left. Jackie Chan in a movie by Larry Yang called Ride On. I've interviewed Jackie a number of times. Jackie, I revered his career right up until the Rush Hour films.
01:50:51
Speaker
Man, he kept saying, I'm just going to give it up at a certain point and direct, and I'll find the next Jackie Chan. But he's not doing that, and I wish he would.
Critique of Jackie Chan's 'Ride On'
01:51:04
Speaker
He's a washed up stuntman here. That part I like, because he's playing with that here. And some debt collectors repossess his favorite stunt horse.
01:51:19
Speaker
And that is supposed to be the beginning of a really kind of funny Jackie Chan comedy. It's not funny though. And I'll leave it at that. It doesn't work for me. Got a Japanese film here, Bad City. It's a newish yakuza movie.
01:51:42
Speaker
This is from well ago. I like it. It's a totally overdone genre, but no, I like this. It has a John Wick kind of vibe to it. It's almost as if some of the Japanese filmmakers saw John Wick and thought, we invented that genre, we can do that better. So they go for it. But it's more plotty. There's a really interesting
01:52:12
Speaker
kind of yakuza versus Korean organized crime thing going on. Anyway, I think this is a sharp film. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was very, very cool. Eye for an Eye, not the Chuck Norris movie. Oh, by the way, have you watched Shogun, the new Shogun? Have you seen any episodes?
01:52:29
Speaker
I'm a big fan of the James Clavell 1980, whatever it was, adaptation with Richard Chamberlain and whatnot, but I have not cracked open the new yet. I'm told the perspective is reversed, of course, and we're telling the story from the perspective of the Japanese.
01:52:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Dave Wiseheart watched the first two episodes, said it's amazing. Yeah. I'm going to be all over that tonight. I'm going to do that as soon as we're done here. I'm going to go in and jump in those. I'm recording it, so I've got the first two episodes. It's going to be about a three-hour epic. Yeah.
01:53:08
Speaker
I want to sit down and get myself some snacks and just enjoy that until the wee hours of the morning. This movie is Eye for an Eye, The Blind Swordsman. There's a Chuck Norris movie called Eye for an Eye, not this one. I like the Chuck Norris Eye for an Eye quite a lot. Professor Tanaka is in it, has one of my favorite lines in all of moviedom where I shouldn't even do this on the show.
01:53:32
Speaker
But Professor Tanaka is wearing like Herman Munster shoes in that thing. At a certain point, he looks at Chuck Norris. I won't tell you what precedes this. You can kind of use your imagination. And Professor Tanaka, just so everybody knows, who started as a wrestler, he fights in movies. He's terrific, but he almost never has dialogue because it doesn't come off well. And in this, he looks at Chuck Norris and he goes,
01:53:58
Speaker
Your woman would be good. And that's the line. And then Chuck proceeds to just do a slow motion flying dick and wipe him up. But that would never happen. Tanaka would snap Chuck Norris in two. With one hand and like a twig. This is more like the blind swordsman of the old Shaw Brothers films.
01:54:27
Speaker
and done, you know, modern style. But it's, no, this is very, very sharp. It's nicely put together. There's a great, there's a kind of a great pseudo noir angle to it, which involves kind of a medieval bounty hunter. And it's a good script. It's a good script. Eye for an Eye. This was originally aired on the Haya channel. It's a Haya original Eye for an Eye of the Blind Swordsman.
01:54:55
Speaker
uh let me uh pull a couple more out of here let's see all right here i'll do these um creepy crawly unmask the monster this is this is a um
01:55:11
Speaker
This is Thai, that's right. I wasn't sure if this was Vietnamese or Thai. This is a Thai monster movie, and it's pretty well done. It's scary as hell. The ghost stories from Thailand always really creep me out. I've seen a few of them, and this one really is just creepy, creepy, creepy. It makes you not want to go to Thailand on a vacation, I'll be honest with that, because it takes place at a hotel where the guests just start disappearing.
01:55:39
Speaker
And apparently, there's a monster in the hotel. Great. Let's book our next vacation to Bangkok.
01:55:48
Speaker
Let's do that. And then The Flying Swordsmen, which is only on DVD, not on Blu-ray, is a wonderful kind of wuxia film. It's in Mandarin, so it's a mainland film. It's not a Hong Kong film, but it has Hong Kong wuxia sensibilities to it.
01:56:10
Speaker
Yeah. And I really enjoyed it. It's, you know, there's a, there's kind of, it's sort of a Western in a way. There's a, you know, there's a hidden fortunate kind of treasure of a Sierra Madre thing that's, that's going on and people looking for it and, you know, roving assassins and whatnot. I mean, you know, a spaghetti Western or traditional Western, it has that kind of a vibe, but it's done Woosha style. Yeah. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. The flying swordsman out for revenge, some great, great action staging.
01:56:41
Speaker
And then I'll just do these last three here and then we'll close out the show. Oh, no, no, I'm gonna do this one too. Yeah, oh yeah. I got it, I got it. There's too much good stuff, right? Too much good stuff, hold on. All right. Here we go. So The Moon is a Korean film by Kim Yong-hwa.
Plot of 'The Moon'
01:57:07
Speaker
And Korean films, of course, getting much more attention here. This almost sounds hilarious, but it's not. It's really good. Visual effects are terrific. So bear with me here because I'm going to actually read the synopsis. Try not to laugh. I know you're going to laugh. And so you're going to laugh.
01:57:26
Speaker
Seven years after Korea's first fully manned mission to the moon ends in disaster, a second human spaceflight is launched successfully until a strong solar wind causes the spacecraft to malfunction. With an astronaut left stranded in space and quickly running out of oxygen, the narrow space center turns to its former managing director to avert yet another fatal catastrophe. Now, the whole premise of there being these multiple Korean manned expeditions to the moon
01:57:56
Speaker
ridiculous in that phrasing. I wish they'd gotten somebody else to write this. It's very credible the way that this takes place, but the staging of it, the special effects, the action, is terrific. Absolutely terrific. It's all set 30 years in the future. The thing with Mars, with Matt Damon, where we left the Martian and we had to go back and get him.
01:58:20
Speaker
But, you know, the thing is, look, not to be rude or anything, but Korea is never going to land on the moon. It's too fixated on boy bands and girl bands. Yeah, boy bands, girl bands in North Korea. Yes, in North Korea. And keep doing that, because let me tell you something. I went to the premiere of Madam Web. I also have been working on Madam Web for weeks now. One of my sub stacks at Hollywood Heretic is also about Madam Web. But I went to the premiere.
01:58:48
Speaker
I don't think I told you this, did I? So I go to the premiere at the Village, which is now owned by Jason. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I go to the premiere, and I come out, and I'm like, this is the worst, most horrible thing I've ever seen. I'm going to go to my car, and I'm getting ready to walk to my car, and I hear people on the opposite side of the street in front of the Bruin Theater screaming. Oh, my gosh. They're behind the ropes, and the guards are holding them back. They're screaming. And I'm like, OK, is it that Sweeney girl? There's nobody in this movie you should be screaming. Oh, there we go.
01:59:18
Speaker
Korean boy band invited to the screening, getting more attention than anybody actually in Madame Web. So if the Korean boy band walks across the street, starts signing autographs.
01:59:36
Speaker
So much better than the movie. Absolutely unbelievable. So here, this is the last one that I'll make a quick mention of. Wolfpack. Max Zhang and Arif Lee.
01:59:49
Speaker
So, just a little bit to preface this, the one thing the Chinese are doing is making super, super jingoistic, nationalistic films that are all about how China is going to just kick the United States' ass and conquer the world and, you know, rah-rah China.
Description of 'Wolfpack'
02:00:08
Speaker
Because they're trying to do the John Wayne thing, right? They're trying to do the whole thing that we've perfected.
02:00:13
Speaker
It doesn't work very well, I'll be honest. But they claim that these movies make a ton of money. Anyway, Wolfpack is one of those. And it's, you know, there's a guy who's looking, trying to solve the mystery of his father's death and, you know, there's a group of mercenaries and there's a whole, you know, international conspiracy against China, blah, blah, blah. It's all, none of it really makes any sense. Not well written. The action is ridiculous. It's like Michael Bay unleashed without any discipline.
02:00:42
Speaker
And that, like, less discipline than he already uses. But anyway, but somehow, in all of its excess, if you can get past the total propaganda nature of it, it's kind of entertaining. Well, they're well-made. It's not like they don't have the resources or the capability or the expertise to make
02:00:59
Speaker
high energy, fast paced, big action films with big special effects. They can do that and they can execute the hell out of all of that narratively. They're telling the stories they're telling. I'm not going to get in their faces about it because you know we do it too.
02:01:17
Speaker
Exactly so, very much so. All right, well that does it for today. For this show, we are done here. Thanks for tuning in. We will be back shortly and hopefully, you know, again, tune into my sub stack and read some of my stuff at hollywoodheratic.substack.com. Sign up for, you know, be a free subscriber or a paid subscriber, whatever you want. And then hopefully we'll have, we've been working on some stuff. We'll have our announcements coming up soon, won't we, Tim?
02:01:46
Speaker
Some interesting stuff. Me, you, Mark. And some interesting people to talk to, too. So all of this stuff is going to come together. You'll be able to find it in all of these very interesting different places. We will have that news hopefully soon. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll have a great Academy Award week. We'll be back after that with our thoughts, obviously, on the winners, the losers, and what it all means. Yeah, we'll tell you what we think of Oppenheimer.
02:02:45
Speaker
After it wins, it's 20. This is ridiculous.
02:03:33
Speaker
Bye!