Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 2: The Substance with @thenanistate
87 Plays3 months ago
Nani joins the boys to discuss The Substance, Demi Moore's new horror film.
Recommended
Transcript
Analysis of 'Megaslopolis'
00:00:38
Speaker
ah I haven't seen Megaslopolis yet. It's not good, but I can't stop thinking about it. Interesting. Well, I was excited that you even told me about Megalopolis because I've been waiting to hear a straight guy say something about Megalopolis. Oh, he's frozen. Or am I frozen? But you don't like it. No, he's frozen. Okay. Do we lose Manny?
00:01:04
Speaker
Can you guys hear me? Oh, that's unfortunate. Come on, Q. Off to a great start.
00:01:17
Speaker
um How many of these have you recorded so far? um done and i love I dropped out for a minute. Sorry. That's OK. I took a screenshot of your very funny face.
00:01:27
Speaker
Okay. You can show me that later. All right. Let's, let's restart here. Uh, okay. One, two, three.
Podcast Introduction: 'Twink Death'
00:01:35
Speaker
Welcome to Twink death with Vicki's here. Hi. And Nanny's here. Hello. Do you have anything you want to plug Nanny?
00:01:48
Speaker
ah You can follow me at TheNannyState, that's nanny, spelled N-A-N-I, because I'm a weeb. And you can find my music on Spotify and anywhere else you find music as wrong circles, W-R-O-N-G circles. Yes, Nanny did a lovely song once for my other podcast. I still love it. oh Yes, of course. It's beautiful. um Well, welcome, Nanny. We're glad to have you. Yeah, sorry, we were talking about Megalopolis to start, but we're not really talking about that.
Financial Risks in 'Megalopolis'
00:02:18
Speaker
But I was saying I don't think you could you couldn't contain it in one podcast, the discussion of Megalopolis it have to be a series. Well, you're the first like not gay guy I know who's seen it. So I was happy to hear at least. But yeah, it's pretty bad. Although I think it's a ballsy move to spend all that much of your own money on a film.
00:02:39
Speaker
Yes, it's it's unlike James Cameron with Avatar. It's like clearly he he's not made it with the expectation of getting any money back. It's clearly he's just like, I'm going to spend 100 million of my own money to make my own statement about humanity to last forever. But that statement seems to be get married and stop opposing local planning permission applications. Yes, that's... he He's a yimby. Yeah, it's it's there it's the yimby epic that we've all been waiting for.
00:03:08
Speaker
Yeah. um I don't know. I don't really
Plot and Themes of 'The Substance'
00:03:12
Speaker
recommend it either. But we're here today to talk about the substance with Demi Moore. Yes. yeah You guys, well, OK, how do you want to divide this up? How do you want to do it? and So we should probably give an overview of what the film is, just in case anybody isn't aware or hasn't seen it. and yeah Yeah. Either of you guys go for that.
00:03:34
Speaker
when i meet the sos substance is described by a lot of people as being a body horror film um and it's about Demi Moore plays an aging actress who's just lost her job as a fitness ah TV fitness instructor at the age of 50 and she gets offered the chance to do an experimental procedure wherein a um a young clone of her will sort of emerge from her body and then her and the clone have to split their life seven days each. So the clone, the young clone gets to live for seven days and then Demi Moore gets to live for seven days. But um that agreement soon starts breaking down and the younger self starts wanting more time for itself, leading to much sort of squishy body horror shenanigans. Be the briefest synopsis I could give. Yeah, I was
00:04:26
Speaker
one thing that I thought which maybe is just I have to like accept it as movie magic but I felt like Demi Moore's character didn't ask and enough questions before she got on this medication.
00:04:38
Speaker
yeah Many such cases to be fair I think a lot of people don't ask questions before they take myig medication but um yeah yes you're right there's it's not happening in reality it sort of happens in a hyper reality isn't it where sort of certain logic doesn't quite apply Yeah, because the catch is that for every extra hour the clone takes, Demi Moore's body becomes more and more decrepit, basically. Yes. and did um Did you but see it at the cinema?
Cinema Experience Today
00:05:13
Speaker
I saw it um i saw last week at the cinema and it was, I think it was like a Wednesday night and it was completely packed. um Yeah, same. Which was surprising um because I
00:05:26
Speaker
I go to that cinema quite a lot and it's never packed even in the evening. um But it was, it felt like just one of those like really lovely like communal experiences. like I don't know, i've i've I haven't had that kind of experience at the cinema for a really, really long time and it was really, really nice. um Where the kind of, you feel sort of this,
00:05:52
Speaker
sense of like camaraderie with the audience. and Even when the film sort of ended, we were all just kind of like looking at each other in sort of shock at like what we'd just seen. and um yeah cause i My friend who I took with me, he really hated it, like couldn't stand it. He's not into like horror films at all, but I was just like lapping it up the whole way through. I thought it was i thought it was brilliant.
00:06:15
Speaker
and Yeah, I saw it. They do um like preview screenings at the local cinema, so it'll be ah like a horror mystery preview. So you know it's going to be a horror film, but you don't know which one it's going to be. It's usually one that hasn't come out yet. ah When the title card came up, there it was the substance there was like a a big cheer from the audience, because everyone was terrified that it was going to be speak no evil. do that But it wasn't. And so everyone was, oh, it's the substance. And then, yeah, it was completely packed as those preview screenings are. And there was, yeah, definite moments where the whole audience was, well, half the audience was shrieking in terror. And the other audience, the the horror fans were sort of like laughing and cheering and like, yes, come on.
00:06:53
Speaker
ah Yeah, the guy sitting next to me was having, um he was having some real difficulty with the kind of there's a lot of needles going into skin and then needles going into pussy ah abscesses and stuff. And he was he was really struggling with that.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, i've seen it I saw it twice. um And the person I went with is also very squeamish about needles. It passes out a lot the first time ah when he gets needles done. So he was like really stressed. Although I found the grossest scene personally, like something I couldn't watch was the and had to like close my eyes, was the very beginning when Dennis Quaid is eating the shrimp.
00:07:31
Speaker
This happens in like three or four minutes into the film and they do like a lot of close-ups of Dennis Quaid eating this like really sauce. I'm getting sick just even thinking about it right now. And the sound design of it, there's all this sort of like...
00:07:44
Speaker
because he's like dipping the shrimp in the butter and the stuff. And like, yeah, no, that is one of the most horrific scenes in the film. Yeah, it's really disgusting. And um yeah, I just I don't know. um That was really hard for me. to I hate mouth sounds. I hate when people like when they're like eating and stuff. So it was that was that that to me was the most intense ah part of the body horror.
Debate on 'The Substance' Final Act
00:08:11
Speaker
um but yeah i don't know i the second time i saw it and i think i want to hear what you guys you guys loved it it sounds like but like the second time i saw it i ended up leaving like 20 minutes early because i didn't like the last third yeah i think ah so i saw it twice as well and i the second time i saw it didn't hit quite as hard which i think is fair enough like not every film is meant to be re-watched lots of times but yeah i did find myself thinking um i guess spoilers for anyone that's that's listening to this before they've seen it but um in the last sort of quarter of it when she becomes the sort of really monstrous version of herself that's actually less impactful than when she just became a really old woman in the the third quarter like that the both the makeup is more impressive on the the old demi more and actually as a reveal that's scarier because it feels closer to home like it still feels like
00:09:02
Speaker
somebody realistically could look like that if they lived to 100, 110, whereas like once it goes into the end but it also loses that hyper reality and just goes into unreality, like suddenly you're in this sort of much more fantastical realm. I think it does but that was the, I mean I don't know how much you guys like laughed while you were watching the movie but the first I was sort of the first person in my screening to start laughing at anything. And the first scene that I started laughing at was the scene where she's in like full hag mode and she's like angry at the television and she's cooking all the French food in the kitchen and yeah screaming. I was howling and nobody else was laughing and I felt like a little bit embarrassed and then other people started sort of chiming in. But the whole like,
00:09:53
Speaker
last quarter with the monster. I was in absolute bits like I literally couldn't stop cackling and it just it felt like as it kept ramping up I was just laughing more and more and more and more and there were a few other people in the theater who had they had the giggles as well and like could literally couldn't stop but like the the moment where she puts like the the torn, like, portrait thing over her, like, horrible face. Oh, my God, I was just, I was screaming, i literally. Something about it just, like, tickled me up. So I i think even though, like, on a sort of scary level, it definitely wasn't scare as scary towards the end. I think, like, I wouldn't take away that.
00:10:39
Speaker
section at all, because I just, oh, it was, yeah, I don't know. I i guess, I don't know if, again, maybe a perception like American and British audiences, but like, my theater definitely started laughing pretty early, and I think the first scene they laughed at was when Margaret Qualey, who plays the younger ah clone, um she bends over and the chicken bone kind of like,
00:11:04
Speaker
like almost like makes her ass look out as a bump. And then the director is like, all right, let's take this screen by screen. And they like have a huge image of Margaret Qualey's ass and they're like clicking it forward. Yeah. Screen by screen. That's when people started laughing in my theater um because it is absurd. I think like the hyper reality world is worth mentioning because like this is obviously a world like where that type of fitness show is still exists.
00:11:32
Speaker
um yeah I don't think that that type of show really exists anymore, at least not as popular as they made it seem. um Because she's doing sort of like an 80s, like, jazzercise show. And when Margaret Kweli comes in as the clone, it's like they don't change the format of the show that much, you know? So it's cool where that type of stuff is so popular. I felt like in terms of like the setting and stuff,
00:12:02
Speaker
Um, initially when the movie first started and they, there were, there were a few things that I was sort of like, Oh, that is so on the nose. I don't know if I like it. So like her name being like Elizabeth sparkle, I thought, Oh, that's a bit like cringy. Um, and the, the, um, Dennis Quaid character being called Harvey felt like a little bit on the nose, but like, as I sort of got into it, it kind of.
00:12:28
Speaker
the whole like sort of fantasy, sort of hyper-reality setting of it, like it kind of feels like, like a it's like a woman it's like a woman's idea of what the world is like now rather than what the world is actually like. Because you you don't really have you don't really have people like Dennis Quaid's character anymore. like They don't exist. yeah kind of That kind of um like rampant misogyny like hasn't existed for, I mean, outside of like corners of right wing Twitter. It hasn't existed for sort of decades, I think. But I think certainly not like a professional setting either. No, not at all. But I think that women really like indulging in the sort of fantasy that the world is still like that. And I think that it kind of because if you look at like society and the a lot of the
00:13:24
Speaker
the sort of negative things that women are sort of doing to their bodies and things to sort of make themselves look a certain way and like sexualize themselves. It's all driven by other women and by the women themselves. It's never really driven by men because it kind of exists mostly through like Instagram and social media and stuff. But I think for them kind of having this villainous ah man sort of figure to to kind of excuse their behavior, I think is kind of interesting.
00:13:53
Speaker
It reminded me a lot of the Barbie movie in the respect that like it's this like it's this like woman's idea of what the world is like, that the world isn't really like
Casting Choices and Patriarchy Themes
00:14:05
Speaker
at all. And I don't mean Barbie world, but like the the real world in the Barbie movie I felt like was so...
00:14:12
Speaker
The idea of like the patriarchy was like so exaggerated in what was supposed to be sort of the real world. I felt like the universe of this movie kind of felt very similar to that. Yeah, I described it as being like Barbie when I was talking to a friend. I said it's like it's like seconds meets dumplings meets society meets Barbie with a little bit of possessor in there.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah. sure and look And that sort of hyper reality and the boosted colors and stuff are all quite like this in the Barbie world as well. Yeah. i mean And if there's no social media, I guess it's worth mentioning that despite them having iPhones, there's like seemingly no social media in the world in this. Yeah. you know Yes, that's true, actually. I almost thought it was a ah mistake for them to have the phones because if you take the phones out, the film could sort of be set any time in the last 40 years really. like it could easily You could set that film in 1984, you could set it in 1991. It's only the phones really that date it as being now.
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah, they she used it as a landline when she calls the the substance people to like get the substance. I also thought it was the first movie to sort of like contend with Ozempic a little bit. Yeah. Because it's like this injection that's supposed to make you more beautiful. I definitely thought it was like the first piece of you know media to really sort of take on like the Ozempic question, the OQ. Yeah. I thought it was interesting that they um They went the route of like hiring a young actress to play the sort of clone version, and they didn't try and do a sort of like CGI like younger version of Demi Moore. I thought it was interesting that like the the people didn't really look that much like their sort of idealized like clone versions. like You have that the guy that she meets at like the clinic, and he looks nothing like the old guy who's supposed to be him that she meets at the restaurant. I thought that was i thought that was an inch i don't know whether that was a budgetary choice, but
00:16:08
Speaker
um Yeah, I thought that was weird. I thought that that element of the story with where she meets the guy who, um the old the old guy in the cafe who's the person who originally gave her the substance, that was something i I'd like to have seen explored more in the film actually. but the of That there's other people doing this. ah that Have either of you seen them seconds, the Rock Hudson film? No, I don't think so. It's a similar sort of idea about a guy who gets a chance to have a a young body in a completely new life.
00:16:36
Speaker
But it it sort of contends with the idea that once you've done that, you you everyone you meet, you're not sure if they're really them or if they're another version of themselves and sort of the paranoia that that would induce in someone to not really be able to trust anybody else once you've sort of started to deceive people. and Yeah, the idea of there being a whole community of people that are doing this, that feels like if you were going to make it as a TV series, that would definitely be an element that you would you wouldd expand on quite a lot. Yeah, and it's interesting because that guy, I sort of described him as like the demon twin character, the young person. Yeah, yeah. The demon, which is good for our podcast. that um I would have liked to see more because it seems like he's seemingly just doing sort of like a normie job.
00:17:15
Speaker
So for him, he's not getting this like these like fame and accolades that Sue is getting, which is what Demi Moore calls her alter ego. um So I'm like, what does he get out of it? Which I think could be quite a lot, right? like I mean, he's young and good looking. He could definitely be getting laid a lot. and all that stuff, but it would be interesting to see what someone would get out of this if it wasn't a showbiz thing because of yeah he's just like a nurse. So he wants to be, I sort of read him as gay, maybe that was like not right, but I mean, that's he kind of seemed gay to me. And I'm like, so is he just doing this so he can be like a hot gay nurse, which seems like a lot less to get out of the substance than what Demi Moore gets out of it, you know?
00:18:00
Speaker
um I also was curious but how you guys felt about like I was talking with my friend about her apartment right now and we were trying to figure out how much like are we supposed to believe that Demi Moore is completely sharing the consciousness with the younger version do you think?
00:18:22
Speaker
it's It's a little unclear, isn't it, as to how much and I think that's maybe another weakness of it is how how quickly they start to diverge like basically from the second time that she does the swap is already a problem with it and like yes to whether Do they have the memories of each other when they swap? Is it a little bit unclear? and yeah Yeah. Yeah, like can she remember how it feels to wake up and see her like hand all fucked up, you know, because if she can, it's like her actions don't make as much sense, you know, because she knows she's going to have to go.
Clone Consciousness and Body Horror
00:18:54
Speaker
back into that body or whatever. So I was curious about like that. um I was also curious about a few choices they made, and this is what made me feel a little less excited about it. like For instance, in the second time she takes the substance, Margaret Claylee's character spends a good like I would say 15 minutes of the film constructing sort of a layer to keep the old body in um and she ends up using like five of her seven days to do that and I was a little bit like I don't really want to see her building a layer like I want to see her like out doing like hot girl shit you know
00:19:33
Speaker
Yes, very true. That felt inserted into the film to be like, oh, this hot girl can do construction or something like that. you know That went completely over my head in terms of like the the amount of like time that that took and and in universe. um like yeah but She builds the entire layer to go and then only has a little bit of time left, which is the night she goes to the club. but Okay, even we don't even get to see her at the club or like see you know what I mean? Like we're just kind of like I see that's that was something I I think you mentioned I don't know others and like one of our group chats or something that you wanted like a lot more like hot girl stuff and I kind of I Feel like the opposite like I wanted more to me more stuff like just in general because I just thought she was so um Like captivating and interesting to watch and I looked like the especially
00:20:32
Speaker
especially when she goes full like hag mode. I just like all of that stuff, especially seeing um seeing an actress like that sort of really just kind of go for it. I thought it was really, really refreshing and and fun to watch on screen. Like I'm kind of, I feel very like ambivalent about like Margaret Coily. I feel like anybody who's relatively attractive could have played that role. But I thought Demi Moore was like yeah the cast for,
00:21:01
Speaker
um Yeah, I mean, we don't really get, we whether it's hot whether it's hot girl shit or or other shit, we we don't get a lot of Margaret Kweli's character in it, really. Don't really you get much of the idea of like the interiority of her. It's all about how Demi Moore experiences this. And I think, yeah, you could you could definitely have a little bit more of like, what's Sue getting out of this, I suppose. like Yeah. so they Well, they are the same, aren't they, I guess. i get Well, you're supposed to Yeah. And I suppose there's the sort of, as you were saying about whether she remembers the, that she's seeing her old hand and stuff. I suppose there's a kind of metaphorical point to that about um
00:21:41
Speaker
the way that we'd we pay for the choices that we make when we're young, when we're older, whether it's smoking or drinking too much or reckless sex or eating too much that you you do all this stuff. It's the hedonistically, even though you know that it's going to lead to cancer, you know, it's going to lead to obesity, you know, it's and and like no matter how many pictures of lungs people show you, you still keep smoking. It's like the the fact that she knows what's going to happen that doesn't detract too much from the idea that she'd still be sort of hedonistic, because I think we all know what the consequences of most of our actions that we take with our health are and we when we still do them anyway. Yeah. um My kind of reading in terms of what we were talking about before, in terms of like consciousness and stuff like when I when I was watching it, I just got the impression that you're like complete consciousness is just transferred over to this new body and it's the same person you remember everything and the and that
00:22:32
Speaker
the the way that they behave is is a reaction to them being in that body. Like if if you if your consciousness was sort of transferred into this like really hot body, like I don't know whether you would really care that much about what you were like for the previous seven days. Cause you're just like, Oh my God. all of us sudden I don't know. I didn't really sort of question that that much when I was watching it. It's only really listening to you two sort of talk about it. I'm like, oh, maybe maybe they don't quite remember. I don't know.
00:23:05
Speaker
I mean, I think to be fair to the film, that's not something I was questioning when I was watching it. That's something I thought about after I got home. When you're watching it, I think you should say that as an experience to watch it, it's pretty engrossing. And I thought very well paced as well, because the film is like two hours and 20 minutes. But if you told me it was 90 minutes, I believe you, it's really, really well paced. And the music and all the shots and the editing really keeps it going. Did you kind of... I was just going to say like,
00:23:36
Speaker
So I saw the trailer a bunch of times. I go to the cinema quite a lot. I know Nanny does as well. and I think you do as well, Q. But like I feel feel like I've seen that trailer like. Must have been at least 10 times before I actually went to see the movie. I thought I thought they did a really good job of like giving you just enough of the concept without really giving anything of the movie away um because you don't get that a lot nowadays with like movies. But I just kind of wanted to ask you like both like Was it what you were we expecting or were you very surprised by the movie when you were watching it? It was what I was expecting. I honestly thought as much as this might form crazy because it is so gross. like I thought when they said body horror, I was like, are we going to see like Demi more like shitting and stuff? Oh, no.
00:24:30
Speaker
And I thought it was like a little bit of a like not a not brave choice to like do all this gross stuff and avoid that, because she's eating all this like absolutely disgusting stuff. you know yeah um So I don't know. I guess I was like, how far are they going to go with the body horror? How much are these like hot actresses going to agree to? And they kind of stopped just short of like really, really, really making it as disgusting as they think they theoretically could have. What did you think, Nanny?
00:25:00
Speaker
ah It was funnier than I thought it was going to be. I didn't expect it to be to have a sort of um as a so of sarcastic kind of tone to it as as it as it did. um And i was after I watched it, I was really excited to go back and watch her previous film, Revenge, have either of you seen that? Yeah, I've seen it. It's like a rape revenge film. Yeah, I watched it this week. It's fucking shit. It's really bad. I'm so annoyed that I wasted my time watching it. it's um i die and I feel like I liked it when I watched it but i can' I couldn't tell you a thing about it in hindsight and it's been a few years. It's another one that's very much um
00:25:39
Speaker
It's very much a woman's idea of how the world works and how she might like it to work as well. and the so like oh It would be so awful if but a rich man took me to his his his getaway home and then, oh, his his horrible like gross but still slightly sexy Mexican friend raped me. That would be so terrible. I'd have to take such revenge on them.
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think- Yeah, I thought about, one thing I was happy they didn't do, when I saw the producer's name was Harvey, I was like, oh, this is gonna turn into a Me Too film, but they really avoided that. Sue doesn't really deal with unwanted sexual aggression of any kind. In fact, they made- No, that's true. They made Sue seem really like her power came from her sexuality, which I thought was interesting.
00:26:29
Speaker
I also think that a lot of the reasons that I mean, because I think the like the messaging is a little out well, a lot outdated, I think, but I think that the reason the reason the kind of messaging of the film isn't annoying is because it's so such a sort of like hyper reality setting. I feel like whereas like, if it was If the storyline was the same, but it was set in literally like the real world and it was shot like the real world, I think the kind of like messaging about sort of man and women and sort of interactions with each other, I i feel like I would find that more irritating. Whereas because it's in such a like high fantasy setting, it just feels like this like power fantasy of a woman, which I don't actually mind watching, I don't know.
00:27:17
Speaker
I like to be made LA like when Sue is in LA, LA feels really glamorous and sort of glittering. But when Demi Moore is in LA, even though it's almost always shot in the daytime, it seems really like jarring and like the sun is like glaring upon her.
00:27:33
Speaker
I really appreciated that. It's like how they decided to depict LA. They do it very well with the sound design as well. I mean, Moors in there, you can hear like dogs barking and cars going past and the horns blaring and look at it yeah makes it a much more oppressive to the city to be in.
00:27:51
Speaker
Definitely. um Yeah. So, but like that was another missed opportunity. I thought, and again, I liked the film. I enjoyed it. I do recommend it, but another missed opportunity that I felt was that we don't really get to see either character interact that much with other people. um And I was a little bit curious. I was like, is Demi Moore's excuse me, life, like really so hollow that she has like no friends or anything. I mean, that sort of seemed a little bit unbelievable to me. Yeah. It's a common thing with films these days actually is that like often they only have three or four characters in films now. Yeah. There is like in there was basically one character, if you if you consider Sue and Demi Moore to be the same character, there was essentially one real character, you know. Yeah, you yeah you're right. you have that um
00:28:43
Speaker
There is the kind of like subplot with the guy that she went to school or college or something with that she sort of tries to go on a a date with. and But yeah, outside of that, there are there aren't really too many sort of discussions. Yes, and we're we're supposed to believe as the audience that that's the only man that would be interested in Demi Moore, as she looks now. its It's like this sort of balding guy, and it is sort of the late 50s. No other man in the world would be at all interested in this incredibly glamorous woman.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I just didn't quite buy that, that Demi Moore would be like so isolated. Like I just, you know, it's like so they they, I mean, I get why they did it because if Demi Moore had a boyfriend or a husband or whatever, anything like that, um or a child, an adult, an adult child, she could theoretically have. Anyway, the film wouldn't really work, right? They had to have her be incredibly isolated. But I just was like, I don't really believe this character would be that isolated. And then with Sue, it's like we get some shots of Sue going out with the dancers from the show. We see at one point that she has a boyfriend, but we don't really get a ton of like how these how she interacts with those characters, you know? And there could have been more like how is she explaining at least early on why she has to leave every week?
00:30:03
Speaker
you know, why is she like, I don't know, like, what what what what was the love affair like with that really hot guy? Like, you know, like, we just, we're, they're all sort of just a accoutrement, you know?
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a film with it's a film with one idea. i think that's It does that idea really well, but it does only have one idea. Whereas in some of the films which have got multiple things they're playing with, where it's like it's just one core concept. And it does execute it, I think, really well. But is um particularly on the second viewing, you realise it is actually quite thin, like what's what's going on here.
00:30:39
Speaker
I also wanted to know about like, cause you said, I think smartly nanny thought, or maybe Vicki said this, I can't even remember now, um maybe I need the substance, but one of you said like, you know, the reason women's beauty standards are like mostly constructed by women, um at least in today and the like the world we used to be right now, um um i that wasn't always true, I don't think, but I mean, I guess,
00:31:03
Speaker
um Where was I going
Beauty Standards and Celebrity Relationships
00:31:06
Speaker
with that? Oh, I mean, I think it's like hot as we're we're supposed to believe Sue is like outrageously hot. And I do think Margot Qualey is really hot, but um we don't see her having any sort of like sexual or work competition with other women, which I think is like a little bit unrealistic. And again, we're assuming this is a totally different world, but I mean, like there's like a hundred girls that look like that on any given day on any given l.a.'s you know what i mean yes yeah you're right whereas demi moore looks spectacular for her age margaret crayley looks like just a very pretty girl of her age but there's hundreds of pretty girls that are in their early 20s yeah you don't even get to see the other women like auditioning which i thought was interesting because it's like
00:31:52
Speaker
I kind of thought it would be interesting, and again, I'm rewriting it now, sorry, I know this is not what we're supposed to do, but like, I thought it would be interesting to see Margaret Kweli as Sue, like, get all this youth and beauty back, but like, still have to compete on like, sort of this intense, like, sexual marketplace, which she definitely would, right? Like, yeah.
00:32:14
Speaker
The industry is even harder. But again, we don't know what era this is supposed to be. Like you said, without the iPhones, it could be set any time. But like the industry, I mean, people I know who are acting now, it's like so competitive. And Margaret Qualey, I don't think Margaret Qualey would like stand out as some sort of great beauty. You know what I mean? Yeah. She's very gummy. She's got a very gummy smile. Yeah. She has real teeth. I saw someone point that out on Twitter. She doesn't have veneers. No, she does have real teeth.
00:32:42
Speaker
He has some real, real teeth representation. I think I do think it's funny that um so obviously the there's a lot of. um Like, I wouldn't call it objectifying women, but there are a lot of like scenes of like ass and boobs and sort of dance like sexy and air quotes like dancing and stuff in the in the movie with like skimpy outfits on. I think it's interesting, like the like Only women really make movies that sexualize a women now. Like you you i you would never get... Only women do what only women are allowed to? Well, I think that's possibly what it is. I think it's like, oh, you're a the lesbian French woman, so we'll let you have some shots of tits and ass. But that was a but was a bloke in his fifties doing it. Suddenly there'd be a lot of think pieces written about why it's not OK for that. Yeah, sure.
00:33:40
Speaker
I mean, definitely if you look back on like the response to Blue is the Warmest Color, um another French film that showed you know full frontal female nudity, like the almost all of the writing about that film was how disgusting the director was, et cetera, et cetera.
00:33:56
Speaker
you know. yeah And there's been no blowback on this film about like how they use Margaret Qualey's body and how much of it they show. I did hear unfortunately that all of its prosthetics or a lot of it is. It was funny because I had heard you say that before I went to see the film and the scene where she's like just been birthed out of Demi Moore's back and she's kind of looking at herself in the mirror I felt like the boobs didn't look real to me. I don't know. I mean, I don't have a ton of experience. So that's not, that's not, Margaret, are these actual breasts in that scene? Apparently not. Apparently they're prosthetic. But once I'd heard Q say that. What a fucking refund.
00:34:37
Speaker
and I mean, I'm just picking up her ass because that would be really hard. baby I mean, I mean, Demi Moore has never had an issue taking a cat off. So I imagine the scenes of Demi Moore are probably not prosthetic. But yeah. Well, I was curious about that too, because when I heard that Margaret Qualey at least used prosthetics for the breasts. And again, I ah don't have a ton of experience, but I'm like, they they looked kind of fake to me too. But like, I um i mean, I've seen a lot of breasts. What am I saying? Everyone's seen breasts. They didn't look like real women's breasts tend to look. but But when I saw Demi Moore naked, I was wondering about, I was like, it is pretty brave if she showed her real body. um Because she's not, I mean, we've all seen Demi Moore naked for decades now, and she's definitely not where she was.
00:35:31
Speaker
um also like She's also 10 years older than the character she's playing, isn't she? she's right And she's had multiple children and all that. like But I liked that. I was like, I bet Demi Moore did go ahead and do real, you know, like really funny. And I thought that was cool. Like this is what a hot 62 year old woman's body looks like, you know, like an incredibly in shape 62 year old woman, like the best you could hope for. This is what you're going to get. Yeah, she like I've watched like a lot of um interviews that they've done on like the press circuit for it. And she is so hot still. Like, I don't know. Obviously, I'm not attracted to women in that way. But I like looking at women. I like admiring women. And and she yeah she's she's definitely still got it. I kind of I was saying, I think I said in like one of our group chats, like I really hope this
00:36:27
Speaker
kind of, she gets some kind of like renaissance from this. And I don't know, I'd like- What do you think of Demi Moore's late career Scream Queen? Yeah, I could definitely see her in a sort of like Barbara Crampton style sort of late career like Scream Queen thing. Cause I don't think she'd ever really, I think she's done like one horror film before this and it was like her first movie, but no, it was really fun to see her doing it.
00:36:53
Speaker
But it was funny because like if you think about like us talking about Demi Moore's hotness, like she famously was in a massive age gap relationship with Ashton Kutcher for like years. yeah yeah when she never forgot about that When she wasn't that much younger than she is now. I mean, it was probably 15 years ago. So she was probably like 45 or so. But my point is is like she was, you know, like the idea that Demi Moore is so disgusting that no one would,
00:37:20
Speaker
date anymore is a little crazy. I'm sure she has a hot boyfriend now, but I had to guess. Yes. Yeah, I wonder what that would, what the yeah what the film would be like if you had an actress who actually was no longer attractive, like someone who had previously been really like, I can't what she's called, but the the woman in Top Gun, you know, who like, doesn't look anything now like she did then, like if you tell her in it, or, yeah, anymore is told, I'm just I just googled it. She's with some guy, I don't even know who this is, Daniel Hume.
00:37:51
Speaker
um who looks significantly younger than, he's a Swiss chef. Anyway, my point is he's way younger than her and he's very good looking, so. Yeah, but i didn't feel like I didn't feel like the movie was trying to make out that she she was disgusting and unlovable. i think that I think kind of the whole point of it that I got was that that she isn't and she doesn't really need the substance, but she feels like she has the pressure to take it anyway, because sort of things are trying up, which,
00:38:19
Speaker
um which I guess they do in Hollywood over time, I don't know. But not for a Demi Moore level celebrity because like, okay, think about it. Think about Nicole Kidman, for instance. Like, you know, and again, this is the movie showing the world through the director's eyes, not the way the world really is. But Demi Moore could get like the same way Nicole Kidman does any project green lit that she wanted to do. I don't know about that. Cause I mean, she,
00:38:48
Speaker
she kind of got canceled, not canceled, but before canceling was a thing. Like when she's like still like reasonably early on in her career, she was kind of, I think after like Striptease came out and like G.I. Jane came out, people were just like, no, we don't want anything more to do with Demi Moore because she was like the highest paid actress in Hollywood for a while. And then she kind of just went down the toilet. And I think, I think a lot of that was in response to like her because she like posts on the cover of Playboy while she was pregnant. She was in striptease where she was naked a lot. And there was I think things were ah things were a little more sort of like puritanical, I think, at the time. um I just mean that there are actresses. Yeah, there are. But they've but they've had to behave in a certain way, I think, to to kind of maintain that. I don't know.
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's interesting that Nicole Kidman gets a pass and maybe she gets the Scientology pass because Nicole Kidman's also been nude all over. So I don't know why Nicole Kidman gets a special, a special, you can be nude on screen pass the Demi Moore, but you're right. She did totally get. so I find Nicole Kidman's face like borderline unwatchable at this point. I just, I feel like she's had so much done to it. i Like whenever I,
00:40:06
Speaker
Like I remember watching that like Viking movie, the Robert Agnes movie. Oh yeah, the Norseman. I just thought she looked so botched the every time she was in a scene. It just completely took me out of the experience. I don't know. Yeah. I couldn't live with it.
00:40:22
Speaker
okay I mean, Moors had quite a bit of work done too. And I thought i felt that was interesting. they They didn't really get too into into that either. Like they, you know, they could have done more with like body modification.
00:40:36
Speaker
like stuff that she's already done. But I mean, again, they can only, they only had two hours and 20 minutes. And who wants to, who wants to talk about that? Like she's not going to want to admit what she's had done anyway. No. Yes. true I mean, her face has clearly been surgically altered. Yeah. I felt like the scene where she is um like getting ready for the date and then she keeps like going back and like doing more to her makeup. I thought like, yeah, you could kind of tell that she's had a little bit of work done, but she still looks great. I still would. It's funny though because like Demi Moore in that outfit, like let's just say she's not famous, but Demi Moore just in that outfit, a woman who looks like that, could go out with no date planned, go to any bar.
00:41:14
Speaker
and still probably get hit on. Almost everywhere. Yes. There's even that scene of her in that bar, isn't there, where she's just like, um she's looking at the young couple and she's there with all the martinis in front of her. And yeah, we're supposed to believe that she's sat there all night. No one's tried to chat her up with us. The perfect sculpted back there. like Yeah, it's just no, no way. I still think someone would walk up to Demi Moore in that scene, in that beautiful dress. I still think she'd get hit on, even if what they wanted from her was less than what they would have originally wanted from a younger her, but they they still would have been interested. But yeah, okay, other aspects of the film. I mean i think we have to like suspend belief like for movie magic about like
00:41:59
Speaker
how fast sue becomes super famous obviously there's no yeah yeah you just have to pretend that that did happen so in the last quarter i guess the quarter that picky liked um and nanny and i felt a little bit you know not great about sue has totally taken over the like their consciousness now, but Sue's body begins to fall apart because she hasn't kept the substance promise. So Sue goes back and re-injects the substance and what comes out of Sue is like this disgusting sort of like ogre like monster character. And then- Yeah, so the elephant man type kind of creature, isn't it?
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah, and at this point in the film, it's like you have to completely suspend any dis like any, like this is reality at all because the character like goes to the New Year's show that Sue was supposed to host and like manages to get up in front of the audience through all these like security checks and stuff, you know, and no one even seems to like be initially reacting to this like grotesque beast on stage.
00:43:10
Speaker
Um, and then eventually they do start reacting and she basically just like spews blood all over them. Is that a good what happens? Yes. Yeah. Like just an enormous amount of blood, like far more blood than could possibly be in the human body. Just the raining down on everyone. And then she's sort of dissolves into just eventually Demi Moore's face on like a kind of fleshy spider that's crawling on the floor. Yeah. And then she just completely disappears.
00:43:39
Speaker
i I guess I was like, did you feel satisfied by the end, Vicky? Because you liked it the last time. Yeah, yeah i I did feel. i love I loved the ending shot where she's the little spider thing is just like crawling over to the sign and and then eventually sort of dissolves on it. like I don't know. i just that i i I don't know whether I even want to watch it a again, because I think maybe like after hearing you guys talk about it, I don't know whether the last quarter would have the same impact. But I was just having so much fun that I just, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to i don't want to ruin that.
00:44:19
Speaker
No, that's fine i think I think there are some films that are only meant to be watched once, and like particularly films that rely on them some moment of shock and the moment of reveal, which which this film does it at quite a few points, rely on a sort of like, oh my God, fuck, I wasn't expecting that. That doesn't hit as hard the second time. But I think that's fine. I think like, yeah, not everything is meant to be rewatched dozens of times. um Yeah. Yeah, it was interesting. It definitely it definitely felt well paced because I I went to the cinema like twice last week. I went to watch this and then I went to see, I went to watch the Terrifier 1 and 2 double bill that they did for like one night. Oh oh yeah. The like art, the clown movies. And I felt, um, the first one of those movies is like 85 minutes long or something. And then the second one is like 135 minutes long. And the first one fucking dragged, like I've seen them both before, but by that by the end of the first one, I was like,
00:45:17
Speaker
I can't sit here for like another two and a half hours. Like I feel like I want to go home. But then as soon as the second one started, which is much longer and much better paced, I was right in it, like right till the end. And I felt fine. I felt like this movie kind of and felt the same. I was never sort of like clock watching and thinking like, Oh God, I can't wait for this to end. Um, cause there's nothing worse than that. So I think to make a movie this long,
00:45:42
Speaker
that doesn't make you feel like that towards the end. It's quite an achievement because I've said this, I think I can't remember what we were talking about Q when we talked about this, but like so many movies nowadays are like half an hour longer than they need to be.
00:45:58
Speaker
um yeah it's It's like a constant problem and I'm usually the first person to complain about it. but i um What's funny is you can always you can always tell what the half hour that needs to go is. never i watch a film i like My most common critique is that it could be 20 or 30 minutes shorter and you always know which 20 or 30 minutes it is. You're like, yeah, just cut out that scene or cut out that first 20 minutes or cut out the bit where they go do this. so I also think i think a lot of the time when I watch a lot of contemporary movies as well, they There's a very natural ending, and then they kind of keep going. Yes. Yeah, yes. It's weird. It's like they just don't know when to stop. I don't know where that's supposed to go. I think they theoretically could have stopped this film when the two characters have their fight soon. No. No. It feels like the third act, and then they have a fourth act afterwards, and they're like, no. They need the fourth act. They loved it.
00:46:51
Speaker
I'm just mentioning there was sort of a clear end to this like fight between the two sort of persona. I did love the cat fight between the two of them. I thought that was brilliant, but but yeah, I still won the ugly crazy monster thing. So out of interest, I know we all go to the cinema quite a lot. I was interested in what's what's been your, for both of you you, your best film of the year, your worst film of the year, and your biggest surprise of the year.
00:47:22
Speaker
You can go first, Q. I need to think about that.
Yearly Film Highlights
00:47:26
Speaker
I'll go ahead and get the substance, my biggest surprise of the year, because it was definitely more transgressive than I thought it would be. um I have to i'm want to make sure I don't like miss anything that I saw. I think my worst film of the year was probably Speak No Evil, because it just had such a...
00:47:51
Speaker
ridiculous um sort of morality tale that I really hated. I was like, why is this like rural couple like just supposed to be you know evil and this yuppie, ridiculous, like long-housed couple from London supposed to be like good? and So I really, really, really hated that.
00:48:20
Speaker
um My best film of the year so far. This is hard. How many times have you been to the cinema this year? and Probably been 60 or so. um So I'm trying to think of what I really just, well, I'll give another, okay, before I answer best film, I'll give another surprise. I was surprised at how fun Twisters was.
00:48:46
Speaker
the most right-wing film of the year as well. like which is's Having the moment of epiphany at the rodeo, I was like, oh wow, we are we are locked in. Yeah. And Vicky, you answer your first couple while I, I want to look through this list. Okay, so my favorite film of the year, I would say, well, I would say that this was my most fun experience at a movie this year, but my favorite movie of the year would be The Beast, the Lia Sedou movie. Yeah, that is great. yeah i I really, and that's, again, another really, really long film, but i was I was so in it when I went to see it. I thought that was fantastic. My um biggest surprise of the year, I think, would be like the first omen, because I i actually really enjoyed it, and I thought it was going to be a god-waffle. Yeah, same. It kicks the shit out of Immacula. Everyone was going on about how good Immacula was. That probably sucked, first omen. It was Immacula this year.
00:49:46
Speaker
they were but They were in the same month, I think, yeah. was that but If you could staple the end of Immaculate onto First Omen, I think you'd have a perfect non-disploitation film. Yeah. But yeah, I really liked that. And I thought the the main girl, I don't know her name is Tiger, ty Princess Tiger Lily, or whatever her fucking name is, the actress. I thought she was fantastic, like really, really good. um Yeah. My worst film of the year was Late Night with the Devil, I really hated it. Ooh, okay. I know a lot of people really liked it. I hated it. I can't even remember why now, but I felt like I had a lot of things to say about it when I finished watching it. But yeah, no, I didn't enjoy it at all. I came away feeling like, ugh, I wish I'd just never been to the cinema. Okay, interesting. All right. You loved that.
00:50:40
Speaker
Before you go, I'm going to commit. So I think my best film of the year was um ah Dune Part 2. I thought it was like, I thought it was stunning. I thought the scene um I thought the scene where ah like they're in the other planet with what's his name, Austin Butler. um I thought that was like amazing. um And then there was one other film I wanted to mention that that I'll just give my honorable mention to. And I want to make sure I get the name right. It was called Club Zero. I haven't heard of that. I don't know how many of that. um It was in like some indie theaters in New York, but basically it's this really, really, really bizarre film. It doesn't really say where it's, ah
00:51:28
Speaker
that I'm trying to figure out if it's a British film, technically. um Anyway, whatever. It's about a teacher who convinces her kids that they don't need to eat food in order to survive. Okay. I'm i'm in. That sounds great. Yeah, it does sound great. And I thought it was a really like well done like art film. So art film wise, indie film wise, it would be Club Zero, and then Dune 2 would be like my big release best. What about you, Nanny?
00:51:58
Speaker
um I'd say top one so far is probably a toss-up between the Beast and challenges so far, although obviously we're just going into kind of awards season now, so I think there's probably going to be quite a few heavy hitters in the next couple of months. um But yeah, so we're probably between the Beast and challenges and then biggest surprises would be, so worst one would be Millers Girl with Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman as quite possibly one of the worst films I've ever seen. very yeah Yeah, I said to my girlfriend, oh, there's ah there's a there's an aro erotic thriller with Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman, should we watch it? Oh, yeah, that's great. And then 20 minutes later, I'm so sorry for making you watch this, its this is terrible.
00:52:41
Speaker
um like Bad fan fiction almost. um And then biggest surprises would be um there's a film called The End We Start From with J.D. Comer which is a British post-apocalyptic film where essentially there's ah there's a flood that lasts for like a week in Britain and all the cities get completely flooded and everyone has to flee to the countryside.
00:53:01
Speaker
it's like a really low key children of men. um But she's fantastic in it. And it's sort of my favourite genre, which is science fiction without any kind of action adventure elements. So that was really good. so And the other film that was a real surprise was Hitman, the Glenn Powell film that ah I thought was absolutely fantastic. I've watched that twice. I thought it was a really, of one of those films where it's actually quite formulaic and traditional, but it's a formula we've not seen for about 25 years, which is let's get two incredibly hot charismatic people and put them in a romantic comedy as ah as a vehicle for these stars. um But because it's Richard Linklater directing it, it's got that little bit of dark weirdness to it as well. So yeah. When you mentioned, you mentioned Hitman to me the other day and asked whether I had seen it and I was in my head, I had
00:53:51
Speaker
What was that movie with the Prometheus guy where he plays like an assassin? but like I'm sure it was. Oh, the The Killer. Oh, i was good I thought you meant that. and i was like i really didn't I didn't super love that movie. No, that wasn't great. That was last year. Yeah, that that was rubbish. hi So let's do what we're most looking forward to in the next couple of months. And I have mine already. I'm really excited about Nosferatu, and I'm going to be so sad. and bad I'm hopefully going to go and see that with my dad on them the day after Christmas. Yeah, I can't wait for Robert Eggers, Lily Roast up. So that's mine. What about you guys next couple months? ah This weekend, I'm seeing a different man, the film with Adam Pearson in who was the guy from under the skin with the weird face.
00:54:39
Speaker
um and that looks really good like a sort of it sounds a little bit similar to the substance actually it's about a guy who gets some procedure where he goes from being so deformed to being really handsome and then those two sides of his life sort of come into contact but it's also it's listed at least on my cinema as being a comedy so um yeah i'm interested to see what that's that's like um i think i think nosferatu looks good as well see as as much as i am appreciating the vampire renaissance i I have a feeling that this might be his first dud, so I'm, like, cautiously. I'm nervous. I am nervous about Nosferatu, but I definitely will be going to watch it, and I am sort of curious to see so whether it's good or not. The film I'm most excited for is probably, like, Terrifier 3, because I really loved the second one a lot. And I've heard... Christmas Forest, classic.
00:55:34
Speaker
Yeah and I've heard that they i i've heard that they like ramp up the gore which I'm not sure how they could without murdering countless children. See let's say but the way I see it is like if it's getting a cinema release and an 18 certificate in the UK I don't get how bad it could really be because like yeah. Yeah that's it that's interesting because I don't know I mean obviously the The first, the second one is definitely gorier than the first one. And the first one has that scene where the girl gets like cut in half from her like vagina to her head. So I don't know. I don't know how they're going to top that and how they're going to get around like sensors, but we'll, we'll see. I'm curious. That's next week, isn't it? That's out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:56:22
Speaker
I'm looking now, in this case there's anything else I missed that's worth mentioning, because maybe we could have you back to do one of these. I'm hoping that Spratu's not bad, but I agree it could it could be bad. Yeah, we should do an end-of-year round up, because I've been yeah i been absolutely keynote-maxing this year. I've been to the cinema so far 125 times.
00:56:40
Speaker
Wow. I read Night Bitch, the book, and I think that's going to be awful. Yes. I thought the book was really interesting. And then I cannot wait. And this movie seems like it was made for me. I cannot wait also for Baby Girl. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Why is Baby Girl? There's a MILF appreciator. I am very eager to appreciate it. I mean, she looks like she's going to be hot in it. And then on top of that,
00:57:08
Speaker
That actor, I always forget his name. Harrison Dickinson? or Yeah, i've always been like he I've always felt like he should get the type of attention that like Jacob Elordi gets um because I think he's so much hotter than Jacob Elordi and he hasn't really had like a big, big role yet. so i I'm just googling him now and I really, he has the kind of nose that I just hate on all men where like I call it like, I call it the like the tiny Brad Pitt knows where like it's very, very small for like the nostrils flare up inside them. I don't know if he is American, but he has this look of like white, like America. He's English, actually, but he has this look of like American white trash boy that I guess I just grew up around and sort of, I don't know. He has sort of printed on you like a baby duck.
00:58:03
Speaker
yeah Um, anyway, I'm excited about that. So we'll see. I mean, I, I do like you guys try to, I don't know if, I don't think I've seen as many as Nanny, but I try to go at least once a week. So Nanny's always good for a recommendation. If you're curious about what to see, cause he's literally seen everything. So yeah. Um, Arielle, we could call it. We'll have you back for our end of year round up Nanny.
00:58:28
Speaker
Yeah, that would be great. Thank you for coming on. We like to keep it sort of around an hour. So yeah, we keep it around an hour. So happy. So overall, are we we're recommending the substance to the listeners if they haven't seen it and listen to all of this. But yeah, I think we are recommending it, right? Yeah. but thumb up but that I would give a five out of five big keys. I loved it. Excellent. Bye, Bye.