Disclosure Day

[00:00:01] Day, Blank Check with-

[00:00:33] Podcast. Uh, very good. I perfectly understood all of that. You knew that? I understood all of it. Everything out there. Yeah, I was speaking mathematics, David. What the fuck? It's easy. You couldn't hear that? That didn't sound like anything to you? That's so crazy. That was me saying 2 plus 2 plus 10 minus 1 equals- This is- I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. I lost the track.

[00:01:01] But I said 2 plus 2 plus 10 minus 1 is 13. And then I was going to add one more thing to it. I was going to do times zero. Tricky! This is my bit I do with Asa Ehrlich, son of David Ehrlich. I did it one time- He loves math. I'm now three years into him insisting I do it every single time. He loves math. He thinks math is the best thing and the funniest thing. And my bit is that I take out the calculator on my phone, and I come up with the biggest number I can, and then I go watch how big this is going to be.

[00:01:30] And then I times it by zero. Oh, sure. And then when the number disappears, I go, what are you doing? You're using some kind of prank calculator? Right. You spoofing and goofing me? You're doing math fits? And he hasn't caught on yet? He likes pointing at me and saying, you're so bad at math! Right. Okay. That's what he likes. He likes that I become the fool. Ah, okay. Right. I'm hoisted by my petard. I will say in the film Disclosure Day, Yeah, a movie about math. when you have the reveal that there are two people that have been gifted,

[00:01:59] you know, the knowledge from extraterrestrials, and one of them got math and the other person got empathy, I was just like, fuck, if I was the math person, I'd just like kill myself. But, but, but wouldn't, I feel like you're thinking of this as a, because I'm bad at math. And you're an empathetic person. Well, true. But it's like, but then you'd be good at math. Well... I don't want to be good at math. Well, but you're already empathetic. I actually do want to be good at math.

[00:02:28] There are a lot of things I'm not good at that I don't care about. It would be great to be good at math. For me, that's dancing. Oh, I'd love to be great at dancing. My number one thing is languages. Like if I could like snap my finger and suddenly be able to speak like 50 languages, that would be so cool. Which Emily Blunt can do in this movie. Yes. So I was like, she definitely, and also I'm nosy as hell. The fact that she like can be like, David Sims, tonight's your wife's birthday. You're going to take her to a musical. Apologize. Like, you know, All of that's actually true. For me, play all the instruments.

[00:02:58] You want a one man band. I can just like grab a violin. Yeah. Grab a guitar. Pick up. Well, I could play a tuba. But you know what I'm saying. Wait, I'm sorry. What? Yeah, Ben Whale's on the tube. I was a band kid in middle school. I feel like I might've known this, but I forgot that it was the tuba. It's a tuba guy. Oh yeah, Ben, big tuba. You've never seen the picture of Ben in his school band where he looks like a little porcelain Christmas ornament? Aw, was that ruddy cheese? He's ruddy faced. Aw! Yeah.

[00:03:27] He's very ruddy faced and we love that about him. We love that about him. You're not really a ruddy guy now, but... No, thank God. I mean, I suppose if you get a few beers in you, a few pints in you, you might get a little ruddy. Yeah. If the Irish whiskey starts flowing. But the emotions kick in. I feel like if you're laughing really hard, you're proud of a joke, you're getting emotional. Yeah. Yeah. It'll happen. I referred to you as a ginger recently and you took umbrage. It's not a ginger. I'm not a ginger. I thought he was. No. I feel like... I've got some like little...

[00:03:56] You're not like a proper, as the Brits would call it, ginger. You've got reddish hair. Wait. What? It really sounds... That sounds offensive. It sounds violent. It is. In like, in a weird way. Yeah. Because it's like... Are you... I don't believe you. You don't believe me? What? It's real. It is real. That is totally real. It's real and we're just ginger. They call them all of it. They call them gingers? They call them dirty gingers. It's said with spite. I'm sure I've said this on the podcast before. I came home from school when I was like 10.

[00:04:24] And I was like, to my mom, I'm like, they're so mean. Everyone is so mean to this kid who has red hair. You know? And she's like... That's what he deserves. Yeah, she was like, you listen to me. That's what you call him. No, no, no. She was like, it's 1,000 years of hating Irish and Scottish people. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Because I was like, why do they... And she was like, they don't even know it, but it's just, you know, decades, centuries of like, well, those are the, you know, the Gallic. You know, we don't want them.

[00:04:50] It all traces back to a couple missing pots of gold that they, just no one has ever gotten over. I'm trying to be empathetic and explaining this. It was so shocking to me as a child of like, what the fuck? He's just got red hair. You're all, you're all pasty English people. You know, it's, I don't think it's just the red hair. It's the red hair and the freckles. It's the freckles. It's the, that you look a little different. You know, I mean, what do children's do? They, children's, what do children's do? They make fun of people who look different. It's not nice. They shouldn't do it. I think...

[00:05:18] They're, they're, they're obviously not playing literal siblings in this. And I think they're both very good at American accents, but does it not kind of help that Joshua Connor and Emily Blunt are both British in this movie? A little removed from reality. That they both have the same exact kind of like pitch of their performance. Mm-hmm. I think that's very fair. I'm trying to think of, I feel like there's a lot of other examples recently of this, of the, like two Brits in the lead, both doing it.

[00:05:47] You want two fake Americans. Like, isn't... Who are paired. I feel like I just watched a movie like that. Like, does it, I mean, obviously, everyone's always complaining about the Brits getting the, the plum rolls, but... Sure. Yes. Isn't there something on that? I mean, the one that's crazy that I think about all the time, of course, is Daisy Ridley not doing an American accent and John Boyega doing an American accent in Star Wars, which is not set on Earth. No. But they decided like, only one of you can do your own voice. It's a tribute to Carrie Fisher. Sure. They were like, what if this doesn't line up?

[00:06:18] I think what you were thinking of actually was the Mandalorian and Grogu, because Pedro Pascal is not actually a Mandalorian. Or acting. Right. Or in it. But Grogu is a Yoda's species. Talk about nice work if you can get it. Oh, okay. So, I'm looking through my... Pedro Pascal and the Mandalorian. I'm looking through my Letterboxd diary. Okay. Uh, backrooms. Oh, yes. Although Renata is... She's not... She's not...

[00:06:46] She's not British, but she's also not really doing... She's doing something with... Another good example of a movie where it's like, they should feel a little off. They should feel weird. Everything about this movie is a little off. Right? And it's sort of set in like, before. Yeah. But like, we're not gonna get too into like, you know, those kinds of details. It feels very old in that way. Right. It's just a little off. Both of them talk a little strange. And with the original... It was originally someone else. It was, um, uh, uh, Krista Milioti. It was Krista Milioti. Yeah.

[00:07:16] And Renata was gonna be in Weapons. I just think of it, like all the shuffling of the sort of, uh, you know, intriguing actresses. Was she gonna be the Julia Garner part? Yeah. Interesting. Which I'm sure she would've crushed, but Julia's great. And Brian Tyree Henry was going to be Benedict Wong. Sure. And, uh, why am I forgetting his name now? Um... The original cast of Weapons. Tom Burke was going to be Alden Herrick. Which like, I mean, these are all good actors. And then he got other good actors. And then Peter Pascal was gonna be Brolin. Yes. Pascal was gonna be... He probably would've been pretty good, but Brolin's really good in Weapons.

[00:07:45] Because Brolin's really good at playing, um, a fucking masculine guy who's neutered. Like, he's really good with that. And also just kinda sad at Brolin. He's good at playing a tough guy too, but like, he's better if you kinda neuter him a little Can I ask you a Brolin related question? Please. Um... This is an installment of Brolin with the Homies. Brolin with the Homies. Um, I have not watched the trailer for Whale Fall. Oh. I haven't yet. What if there was a whale fall? But I'm hearing great things. I'm so excited. That's what I wanted to ask.

[00:08:14] If anyone has seen the trailer... I have. Yes. Does a whale fall? Yes. Yes. Thank you. From where? Higher up in the water. Correct. To just deeper in the water? Yeah. Yeah, like, what if a whale came up, went... And then like, you know, starts going back down and you're inside of it. Oh! How do you get out? They're... So they're Jonah's. Yeah. Very much so. It's a Jonah. Austin Abrams, uh, is looking for Brolin, I think is what's going on. I think, yeah.

[00:08:44] He's looking for his... Inside a whale? In the ocean. He doesn't know. And then whale get him. You don't know. And then they both deep in the whale. They both in whale. And then they gotta get out of the whale? Yeah. Oh my God. And it's Brian Duffield. Are the deep in whale gotta get out of a whale movie? Are tickets on sale yet? Uh, yeah, you have to... You have to go to a whale. Yeah. Yeah, Marie, Marie, it's really easy to get the tickets. Just go down the bottom of the ocean and nothing bad will happen. Go to whales. Get really close to whales. I really like that guy's last movie, No One Will Save You. Brian Duffield.

[00:09:14] Which was a movie that I was on... That was on Hulu where I was just like, this should be in a movie theater. Yeah. And so I'm glad that his next movie is in a movie theater. Well, sure. I mean, you're thinking in a very traditional kind of elitist way. Hulu was merely trying to wish you a happy Huluween and you were not appreciative. I'm not a happy Huluween. And a happy Huluween to you all. Happy Huluween. It is of course disclosure day. But I want to wish all of you a happy Huluween. Oh boy. Disclosure day. Disclosure day.

[00:09:43] There's a new film by Steven Spielberg who we've covered on the podcast twice. One plus one equals one in this case. Should we do it? We've now covered one complete filmography. Should we do two episodes of this just because we've actually covered Spielberg on two separate miniseries? I feel like we could. Yes. Cover it once through the prism of early Spielberg and once through the prism of late Spielberg. That's fine. Indeed. Because there's definitely like a post Fableman's reading and then a pre Fableman's reading in my opinion. Yeah. I'm sure almost anything you ever made. Yeah. This is great. More work.

[00:10:12] You love it David. You keep going add more episodes. Let me clear my schedule. And like, it's like me trying to find new spots in my schedule now. It's just like fucking like, you know, like my shovel hitting rock. Like I dug to the bottom of Minecraft. Do you know there's another Minecraft movie coming out next year? Yeah. Do you know what it's called? Minecraft Movie Squared. Pretty fucking good. Oh, I love that. That's fine. That's actually pretty clever. So the next one can be cubed, right? Yeah. You get that Ben? Ha ha ha.

[00:10:40] I was just building out my first 2017 list. Your first of, sorry, 2027. Okay. You know, it's like, all right, let me, it doesn't really matter, but what's going to be coming out. And yeah, I was, I was like, oh, they, they got that fucking done quickly. Yeah. They're filming it right now with Kirsten Dunst, who's about to start a kind of historic, historic finally getting that bag run. Yeah. Give her the bag. She's got house made. Yeah.

[00:11:10] The house made secret. Yes. So like, that's another one where they were like, roll this back as fast as possible. I feel like she's got three sneaky sequels of things that weren't obvious slam dunks. So she's doing kind of the rock in like 2010. Yeah. Except she's not like franchise Viagra, which is what he of course loved. The rock was in GI Joe to journey to the mysterious island. There's another one. He kept being in sequels to movies that he was not in. And there was one, what was the other one? You're right. Journey to the mysterious island.

[00:11:39] Of course is the one where he's like, you know, the, the, the Twitter joke was like, Hey, we've got a part for you. Journey to the mysterious. I was like, I'm not interested. And it's like, okay, well how can we sweeten the deal? I want to ride a B. Okay. What? You're on the poster riding a B. The poster was him riding a giant B next to Michael Caine. I want to ride a B. I'm sorry. This is one of those classic Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson vehicles. The big three. Hold on. And the plus a B, the big three plus a B. It was a B movie. It was a B movie. Um, I'm not seeing him riding a B.

[00:12:09] I'm seeing him running away from a giant, uh, like lizard creature. Oh, I got the B. You found it. Here he is. Oh, wow. People said, my daughter was reading her rock book just last night. People said he couldn't, he couldn't ride a B. He does it. Vanessa Hudgens too. Of course. The billing order is. He was like, get Hudgens, get a B, then I'm interested. The billing order is Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine's second billed. I assumed he'd be the aunt, but he's second billed.

[00:12:39] I want second billed. Joss Hutcherson returning from the first film. Yeah. He's like, hi guys. And everyone's like, what is the first bill called? Vanessa Hudgens. He's like Brendan Fraser was in it. Maybe returning. I don't know. Luis Guzman and Kristen Davis. She got the aunt. Kristen Davis. Okay. Charlotte herself. Yeah. Good for her. Journey to the mysterious island. Vanessa Hudgens is not in journeys to the center of the earth. Was Brendan Fraser. Yes. So did she replace Brendan Fraser? Yeah, she's replaced.

[00:13:07] The rock is actually replacing Seth Meyers. Who's also in the movie. No, Journey, as I'm sure said on this podcast before, has one of my favorite trailer jokes, which is- The Pecs? No, no, no. With Brendan Fraser. Oh, oh, oh. Yes. How are we still falling? No, it's just they fall. Ah, then they stop. And then Brendan Fraser goes, we're still falling. It's so funny. Both of those movies made a hundred million.

[00:13:31] Next time we're looking for like, end of year, like what's a fun, like a two slot. Like, you guys should just journey to where- The two journeys. But isn't there, there must be an original, like, because it's the HG Wells, like, was there like a 50s journey to the center of the earth or whatever? Probably. Oh, oh, sure. So you could fold that in. Right. Because Journey 2 is adapting a different HG Wells book, retrofitting it. I'm sure very faithfully. No, I think there's an HG Wells book called The Mysterious Island. I think you're right.

[00:14:00] I'm just saying like, I don't know if they really even opened the book. The book opened, the opening line of the book is, Dwayne Johnson was riding a bumblebee. And at the time, audiences were very confused. They went, I don't get what this means. Is this a foreign language? Is he speaking in tongues like Emily Blunt in Disclosure Day? And then decades later, it became clear. It's not HG Wells, of course. I'm sorry. It's Jules Verne. What if we did a Jules Verne Patreon series? What are some film adaptations of-

[00:14:28] The 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea, around the world nowadays. 20,000 Leagues. 20,000 Leagues. You just knocked off 18,000 whole leagues. So you're, so like the whale started at 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Yes. And then he fell to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. There are too many Hunchbacks. Okay. Oh no, that's Victor Hugo. That's Victor Hugo. You guys are out of control. Okay. So, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You got the Kirk Douglas, James Mason movie. So there you got that. Okay.

[00:14:56] There was also a James Mason journey to the center of the earth in 1959. Yes, I just saw that. Okay. Do any of you guys have a good James Mason? I'm sure I could work on one. I don't know, is this one of his vibes? The answer is yes. I'm thinking we do. Then there's, oh, this is a problem. What? We have a huge problem. Okay. There's a huge problem now that we're doing this miniseries which I've committed us to. We've been having an inserious problem. We've been having an inserious problem.

[00:15:22] There are two works, two versions of another work of his, Around the World in 80 Days. So there's the interminable best picture winner. Yes. And then the horrendous Steve Coogan, Jackie Chan one. Jackie Chan, Stevie Coogan, Cecil DeFrance. Another big three. When's the last time those three made a movie together? Coogan Chan and DeFrance. DeFrance is great. I like Cecil DeFrance. Who is DeFrance? She's a different actress. Did you ever see Haute d'Action?

[00:15:52] Haute d'Action? I like skipped over all of the French horror from the new French extremity. The new French extremity. She was the barbed wire lady in Haute d'Action. There's also a Ray Harryhausen Mysterious Island along with the, you know. And then there's a Joseph Cotton from the Earth to the Moon from 1958. Okay. That could be fun. That could be fun. So this sounds like a really quick 12 movie series. I think it's like nine. I think we're overcomplicating it.

[00:16:22] Premier to the Moon is the one in the book where they just get in a bullet and shoot it at the moon, which I always thought was pretty cool. Yeah. That's what happens in the Melies. Yeah. Well, yeah. And we throw that in too. We break these into sub-franchises. We go from the Earth to the Moon. We go journey. We go to leagues. We go days. These are separate. Maybe to save time, we can play them at 2X. Yeah. Or 4X. Or just play them on a simultaneous screen. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Just be like, I see. I think there's a bee over there. Okay.

[00:16:51] We're moving on. I'm going to ride this bee. I can't. How would he say it? Supposed to ride the bee. The bloody bee. I don't know if Michael Caine actually rides the bee because he's not riding a bee on the He does. I'm sorry. There's a character poster right here. Yeah, he does. Look at his face. He's got kind of an idiot. I'm riding the bee. I'm a fucking bee. I'm riding the bee. He doesn't talk like that. The bee doesn't talk like that. We're talking about Disclosure Day. Yes. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Yes.

[00:17:20] Steven Spielberg decided to jump a little out of his comfort zone and make a movie about our relationship to aliens. Hmm. This time he's blowing the doors wide open on this thing. This film is called Disclosure Day. Mm-hmm. It is directed by Steven Spielberg. Yes. It is written by David Koepp, his frequent collaborator. Story by Steven Spielberg. Pretty rare that he takes a story credit. I remember everyone getting really excited when they saw that credit. Yeah. They were like, ooh, Spielberg alien story. Let's go.

[00:17:50] But this has been a real mystery box movie. It was just sort of announced Spielberg Koepp, alien film. It was untitled for a while. Then it was called The Dish, which was a terrible title. The cast was known. Everything else was kind of a mystery for a while. Wasn't there like another project that was also announced and like we weren't sure which one was going to come first? There was like the more historical drama about like Lindbergh, Plot Against America type folks in New York. I mean, sure. There was the bullet. Yeah.

[00:18:20] But it felt like he was unconventionally slow to land on a new project post Fablemans. Usually, that's true. The four year gap is long for him these days. Really long. Really for any days, I guess. But usually he has. I mean, I think he said this in an interview that basically the longest gap he had taken previously was the one in between his crazy 93 and his crazy 97. Because even in the pandemic, he had a movie come out and Fablemans came out quickly after.

[00:18:51] And that was both him building Dreamworks and building a family. There was that feeling of like usually he's got like 10 movies in development. And the second he's promoting one movie, you hear that he's already starting the next one. We're never going to see that kid Pope kidnapping movie, are we? No, he dropped that. That got made. Yeah. It got made? There's like an Italian movie that came out about that story. I feel like he just kind of let it, you know, he was like, forget it. Now he's supposedly working on a Western. Now he's saying he's working on a Western.

[00:19:19] But it doesn't feel as, it feels like he slowed his clip down. And I think it's getting into a little bit more of a, I don't want to work for the sake of working. I want to make a thing I feel an overriding desire to do. He's 79 years old. It is crazy how old all our young guys are getting. I have a correction for you. He's 79 years young. You are right. And you're brave. He's a pretty, sprightly fella. He just moved to New York. He's a New Yorker. He's a New Yorker now. I'm sure he's living 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. No, I don't know where he's.

[00:19:48] My old stomping grounds. I don't think it's pretty crazy that all the boomers are old. I mean, that's life. No, it's life. It just does feel wrong to me. I think of them as being the whipper-stampers, even though they, I was born into a world that they had already claimed. Yes. Right there. The movie Brats or whatever, where they'd grown up by the time you were watching movies. Stevie Spielberg. He's 79. He'll be 80 in December.

[00:20:16] Is this his 40th feature film? What number are we looking at here? Oh, he's gonna make me count. Let's see. No, we're not counting Firelight. No. But we are counting Duel. This is very much a return to, I wouldn't say return to form, but it was framed as a guys, Spielberg is gonna do the Spielberg thing again for the first time in a while. Down to a thing I saw our Redditor's post about, which was a good point.

[00:20:42] The poster for this movie is Spielberg last name only above the title. Yeah. It is hard to think of another case where the director's name is above the title, not yet as a Steven Spielberg film. And there's also not an actor name above the title. He is, it's as if it's Schwarzenegger. You're totally right. I mean, Nolan is that, but he loves the film by Christopher Nolan. And a big long billing block. Yeah. But the Odyssey's teaser poster is just a film by Christopher Nolan.

[00:21:13] It's not that other people couldn't do that, but it's rare that there's a marketing campaign that is just Spielberg eye. I mean, there's disclosure day. I mean, there's disclosure day. Look, there's the number one, Lee Cronin. We all know. Yes. He can't be touched. But that's not a billing issue. It's his mummy, David. We'd be so confused. What if he revealed, I found this mummy. That's why it's called Lee Cronin's the mummy. It's my mummy. I didn't direct the film. I was so scared during that movie. I was screaming. I was shaking. I was convulsing.

[00:21:42] And then someone pointed out to me, don't worry, Griffin. It's Lee Cronin's mummy. And I went, oh my God, I didn't know who it belonged to. Oh my God. I was waiting for the HBO Max drop. Oh, so worried. I didn't know whose mummy it was. Peacock, whatever it's going to be on. Yeah. I feel bad for Lee Cronin. That was a tough break. It's not his fault. Maybe it is his fault. Maybe he was like, my name has to be above the title. But that feels like a real Daffy Duck shirt thing. But I think more like, I mean, what I heard was essentially they were like, they want to make it clear. It's not. The Brendan Fraser. Yeah, Brendan Fraser. I'm like, I would do anything else to make that clear rather than making the public think-

[00:22:11] They should have just called it Haunted Child. Yes. Just call it something else. They were- We found a fucked up thing in the desert. We found a fucked up thing. Remember like the focus features or whatever, like Twitter account kept tweet- Like they tweeted like once a day for two weeks. It was New Line, I think. Or whatever it was, Brendan Fraser is not in Lee Cronin's The Mummy. Yes. And I thought they were doing a bit- Nope. Where they were leading up to like a surprise cameo. Right. I think they were not-

[00:22:40] They were initially going to tweet that once, then they were like, let's make it a bit. And then it was kind of a classic like, well, you made it a bit and that's kind of like, now there's smoke. Yeah. And people think there will be fire. It was classic just to be clear, this is not a movie based on the toy. This is based on the real. But they did it like in all- My t-shirt that says Brendan Fraser is not in The Mummy is answering- They did it like in all caps. They did. I was like, come on. You're like- They did. You're asking for it. They were asking for it. Lee Steven Spielberg, Lee Cronin has made I think three films. Steven Spielberg has made 35.

[00:23:11] Okay. It's 36 if you count Twilight's on the movie, which I don't. Yeah. If you're nasty. But this is his 35th feature from my count. Yeah. And- Pretty good. Right. There was the just sort of, he's doing a UFO movie. He's doing some sort of alien movie. Why is Spielberg going back to this? Well, we were debating this with our editor, Alan Smithy. How many alien films does Spielberg count? If you include Crystal Skull, which you have to, it's five.

[00:23:39] So the five are- Close Encounters- Close Encounters of the third kind. ET. ETV Extraterrestrial. War. Of the Worlds. Mm-hmm. Then Indiana Jones and- The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And Disclosure. Jure Day. Yeah. Remember Gay ET? You bring him back? Yeah. It's kind of crazy. We did like 45 hours of bits about Gay ET and we never landed on LGBT. Sometimes if something's like right in front of you, you just can't see it.

[00:24:09] Well, also we did, but we definitely did say that he was the extra extraterrestrial. Yeah. We did say that. Okay, good. Right. And we won many awards for that. A thing I also noted when I was writing my review is this is his first contemporary film since War of the Worlds. Uh-huh. And then I, so then I started thinking about that a little bit more. Yeah. So you do have The Terminal. That's a contemporary, a fully contemporary film by him with no funny business. It takes place in an alternate reality. In a way- In which Tom Hanks is funny? No, he's very funny. It does have an alien. It does.

[00:24:39] It has an illegal immigrant. That's so true. That is so true. From Kraklosia. Ah. And normal voice? Normal accent on that? Viktor Noworski. Viktor Noworski. Um, because a lot of his, when I was thinking about it, a lot of his contemporary set films, I'm, so here we, you know, Disclosure Day, War of the Worlds. Uh, let's, let's set aside Terminal for a second here. The Jurassic Park movies. Yup. I mean, is always contemporary. I guess it is. Yes. It's always contemporary.

[00:25:09] It's kind of, it's obviously very old fashioned, but it is set, I think in the present day. Yeah. Uh. Sugar Land Express. Sugar Land Express and E.T. Duel. So it's like. And Duel, sure. But, and Jaws. Yeah. But like, you know, things like Jurassic Park, uh, War of the Worlds, Disclosure Day, it's like, yeah, they're set in the present day. Sort of. But Disclosure Day is kind of set in a slightly different world from our own.

[00:25:34] It's got alien tech and kind of, you know, like it feels like Jurassic Park's a little bit the same where it's like, yeah, yeah, this is our time. But you're like, yeah, but it's not. We've got a couple of great dinosaurs in it. Right. I think that was part of the pitch on this movie is Spielberg's gonna talk about our times. This thing that we all love that Spielberg could make these very emotional character driven blockbusters that felt like they were in conversation with our world.

[00:26:01] It's also just the thing of like, hey, so few people get to do an original big movie like this. So it's awesome that he wants to. Yes. Like when he was like, I might remake Bullet. I was like, I bet you will do a good job if you do that. I don't really want you to do that. I'd rather you took a weirder swing. I also I think that now I'm so emotional about it. Yeah, you're you're gonna burp. There are I would say two modes that Spielberg has been operating in since this century started.

[00:26:31] One is him sort of trying to become a classicist, right? Trying to become like a Hawks or a Hughes or a Ford and to focus on maybe sort of neglected genres or more classical filmmaking styles and making kind of grown up movies. And this whole feeling that he and George Lucas are complaining about IP culture and franchise blockbuster movies. But there's some guilt about maybe what they created.

[00:26:58] And Steven is trying to actively put the opposite type of movie into the system, which for so long his name was so big that no matter what basically anything he did became a massive success. And that has fallen off the last 15 years. A little bit. A little bit. He's still Steven Spielberg, but there's no longer a guarantee which there used to be. I mean the fact like Lincoln made. Lincoln was humongous. Like 300 million dollars or something crazy, right? Lincoln was like 180 domestic. Yeah, but that's like crazy. That's that's when he still was like anything he does becomes a blockbuster.

[00:27:29] Obviously, right. West Side Story and Fableman's were not blockbusters. West Side Story was very much the COVID hangover. Fableman's was one of those things where it's like it. I think that movie should have done better. Yeah, because it did quite like nothing. Nothing, but it was right. And it was still, you know, 2022. And it was that thing where Universal put it on. Yeah, the release schedule was bad after 17 days. And they were like, well, this is what we do with all our movies now. And it was just like, guys, Steven Spielberg made this. Yes.

[00:27:58] Like have a lot of respect. It's running for Oscars. Yeah. What was the other one I was going to throw out? I mean, The Post and Bridge of Spies both did well, but sort of like well for adult dramas. They both did like 60-70 domestic, 100 worldwide. Oh, well, you know what? I'm going to look this up on the website where it's easy to look it up. Just kidding. They don't exist. Great. There are two modes. There's that. And then the second mode is for the last 25 years, he's constantly tempted by, can I go back and do a classic Spielberg family blockbuster?

[00:28:27] And varying levels. Posted 81, Bridge did 72. Okay. Those are both good numbers. Yeah. Yeah. There have been varying levels of success and people disagree about which ones work better than others. But I would say like Tintin, Crystal Skull, Ready Player One. These are sort of good. The BFG. These are like, he's trying to go back home again and also trying to find a new modern mode of how can I be in conversation with what's happening right now in blockbuster movies,

[00:28:56] but like Return for My Crown. And this feels like him making a 70s movie. It's what's fascinating about it. Yeah. Is that it doesn't feel like him being like, fuck, what did the kids like today? No, totally. He's not. Ready Player One was a little bit more of him being like, let me get in the current sandbox and see what I want to do about it. The second thing is I want to use these new tools. Sure. Indiana Jones is, what does this look like in a modern context? Sure. You're right. This is more like Close Encounters.

[00:29:23] It is a blockbuster adult drama. Now, the other sort of qualifier here, as we talked about when we did our original series, is that when he does the two... I just got an insane text message. When he does the two... For who? Would you believe it's about my grandmother? Yeah. When he does the two Tom Cruise movies where it's like the biggest director and the biggest star in all of Hollywood are doing something together, they make these two very haunted dark movies.

[00:29:51] They're awesome, but they're not traditional audience pleasing blockbusters, right? He makes haunted films. So this is like the promise of kind of Spielberg face wonder, humanity driven, character driven, performance driven, classic Amblin blockbuster. Was from the moment they start actually putting out trailers, posters, the promise of what this movie was. David, I think you and I pretty unabashedly loved this.

[00:30:21] Huge fan of this movie. I think it's fantastic. I'm curious to see it a second time because it is a movie that is, you know, like 80% slow burn. And I was loving the unraveling. I would disagree with you. Really? This is a very fast movie. I thought it was... It drops, first of all, the craziest opening shot of any fucking Spielberg movie ever. It's true. You could bet a billion dollars. What do you think the opening frame of this movie is? His dick. I would sooner bet that than...

[00:30:51] I would sooner bet his dick. I would sooner bet that than that it is. The opening shot is... A like... An AEW wrestler kicking the camera. It rocks. It really is so fun. But it's, it drops you in media res and then you're on the run the whole time. You're on the run. It's very propulsive. It reminded me of Minority Report. Yes. Yeah. And like, and obviously it has that Minority Report vibe also of like, I want to talk about what I'm thinking about right now, but with a sci-fi lens. But it's got the Twilight Zone thing of where is this going?

[00:31:20] Yeah, sure, sure, sure. We're in the middle of the story. We'll tell you stuff as we're moving. How are these things connected? But we gotta keep moving. Right. Gotta keep moving. And that's what's smart about the construction of the movie is that it's able to play both sides of the coin. Yeah. It does the thing that I'm sure, you know, people don't like where no, you know, everyone's like, so what's going on? And the guy's like, I'm gonna tell you, we gotta get to this house and then I'm gonna tell you one more sentence. It's also- And then we gotta do another thing, but it does it pretty well.

[00:31:47] It's also mirroring the characters themselves who don't actually know why they're being compelled to go somewhere. Totally. What you're describing, David, usually pisses me off. And in this movie, why it works- It usually pisses me off too. ...is that no one has the complete picture. Everyone has pieces of it and they're trying to strategically use what they know to get the support and the allegiance of the others, but no one has the full view of everything. Not even Colin Firth. Not even Colin Firth. Gritted teeth holding onto a stick.

[00:32:17] I'm grumpy today. Do you think Spielberg's jealous that he's probably only gonna end up being the second most powerful stick of the summer movie season? Uh, go ahead. I mean, One Wish Willow fucking whipping the disclosure stick. That's a bundle of sticks. It's One Wish Willow! Yeah! But he's got like the little kind of- It's got some thorns. You can see through it. It's not a bundle. It's got thorns. It's got a little thorns. Yeah, he's cute. It's a One Wish Willow. These kids are obsessed with these One Wish Willows.

[00:32:45] Look, you know, that movie, I saw it with no hype. Yeah. Beyond like fantasy being like, it's pretty, it's good. Like you should check it out. You licked your finger, you walked out of the screen and you held up to the wind and you went, I think 340 domestic. More than Baby Yoda. I just walked out being like that. That was very like unpleasant and effective. That was like a pretty, yeah, yeah, sure. I get it. I get it. Right. I did not walk out being like, well, the world just changed. Generationally, everything is changing.

[00:33:11] But I'll also admit it's not my vibe of a movie, I suppose. So I was maybe never going to feel that way. Back in my day, kids were using ChatGPT to do their homework. Nowadays, they're using One Wish Willows. They just got One Wish Willows. They buy a One Wish Willow and they say my one wish is to write my next paper for me. Just one paper. Okay. So Trump administration- Heard of him. Is actually like releasing UFO files. Sword of. Well, they love releasing files. That's all they do is release files. Yeah.

[00:33:41] Every file that anyone would want to see, they're releasing. So if you go to war.gov slash UFO- War.gov? We live on stupid earth. It's so stupid. The promised planet. So he just actually did a second release on May 8th of like a bunch of stuff. I haven't gotten through it. And all of the like images and video, it's, you know, what the fuck is- It's something we need to talk about right away.

[00:34:08] Cause people have been like, there's already been a disclosure day and like no one cared. And I'm like, well, the images are basically just like some blobs where they're like, I don't know. These blobs were weird. It's so weird how people have not cared. Because there's nothing to look at. I know, but still they're acknowledging weird phenomena. It's why- That's not the same as we, aliens crashed. Yeah. We took the aliens who were alive to a room and tortured them. Well, right.

[00:34:36] And then stole their spaceships to make technology. To make cell phones and shit. Sorry, we didn't tell anyone. We used the old spark. Versus like, yeah, a plane was flying in the air and it's all blob and the blob was weird. Yeah. And the blob kind of moved in a weird way. And we do have a video of that if you'd like to see, which is sort of currently. This is why I think the ending of this movie has to go as hard as it does because it needs to be like, what if all networks were co-opted by 15 minutes of just decades of footage?

[00:35:05] You know, so much shit. Of it looks like little guys in little alien costumes. There was the moment in the film where you start to see, and we're getting into spoilers and all this, but there was the moment in the film where you start to see the aliens for the first time. I forget what the first image is. You've seen it more recently than us, Murray. Yeah. The first image is for like the torture- It's the torture. You know, sequence. I started pumping- Right, right. It's Josh O'Connor showing Eve Hewson on the laptop, right? Yeah. And I started pumping my fists and I was like, so he's just fucking doing it. Yeah.

[00:35:33] He's just putting a gray, almond-eyed, saucer-man alien. Right, like a saucer-man alien. I didn't really appreciate that. Right, right, right. He's not overthinking this at all. Yeah! The aliens are looking like everyone's default cultural cartoon alien, and he's just rendering them realistically and is like, yeah, you know, aliens. David? Yes?

[00:36:01] They say that the eyes are the window to the soul. They do say that. What does that make our glasses? Uh, the windows? The window frames? I don't know. The curtains? Uh, yeah. The curtains. The point is, if you are glasses wearer like I am or like our own producer Ben is- True. It's a big decision. Sure. Because this is how you introduce yourself to the world. This is how you engage with other people. You make eye contact through the frames. Sometimes it's just time for a refresh. Totally agree. All right.

[00:36:30] Well, so what about Zenny Optical? Oh! The Fine Folks' Zenny glasses. The eyewear. They got fun shapes, sizes, and colors. They got a lot of colors. Right. Statement pieces. Bold statement pieces, they call them. Right. And they're inexpensive, I would say. They're an online eyewear shop with prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light lenses, all starting at under $30. That's crazy. That is very low.

[00:37:00] I feel like glasses often cost more than $30. Way more. But you go to Zenny.com, you pick a frame, you upload your prescription, they ship it to your door. No appointment, no store, no upsell at the counter. Easy. At that price, something kind of shifts. You're not like, do I need new glasses? You're like, why don't I try something fun? Right? Sometimes you got an old pair, they got a scratch on them. It's annoying, but you're like, am I going to go through the hassle? And what's so nice too about the glasses I got is just the price point. I feel so good. So good.

[00:37:29] That I'm not over paying for a great quality pair of sunglasses. Exactly. They've got 150,000 five star reviews. Yeah. And if you've never run glasses online before, they have a virtual try on so you can see how it's going to look on your face before you commit. If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, now's the time. Go to zenni.com slash podcast and use code podcast 15 for 15% off your first order. The style sell out, so don't sit on it. That's zenni.com slash podcast promo code podcast 15.

[00:38:05] So disclosure day, you were saying that you both are, you know, fully on board. I feel like you and Ben are moderate positive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right? And I was not like, holy fuck, this is like a perfect movie. There were moments of it where I was like really emotionally affected and like very enraptured.

[00:38:29] And there were other moments where a like nurse asks Emily Blunt, did the trauma that happened in your childhood, did you ever seek help for that? Or like the last, you know, 15 minutes of the movie? The last 15 minutes, I was on the edge of my seat. I mean, I, this is the thing we saw with a bunch of people, you know, the great, the king, the king of TikTok himself. Reese, I was sitting next to Reese. Yeah. Alan Smithy was there.

[00:38:57] A lot of our critic friends, Esther and her soon to be husband, Bob. So we were all talking after the movie. And it was one of these things where like, I really think this boils down to the last 15 minutes. Either you're 100% on board and that wins you over or you push back on it a little bit. Cause it's Spielberg going full Spielberg. It's, it's him going hard, not in spectacle, but in his emotionality and his worldview. And we'll get into it.

[00:39:23] But I just want to say the religious stuff at the end. Yes. And the, and the, the nuns, nun being like aliens are also God's children. I was like, boo, that stinks. I loved that part. And I usually, that's usually a thing I bristle at in movies. Cause I'm a dirty leftist coastal elite even, but like, like that's the thing on Shyamalan movies where they get too spiritual.

[00:39:52] And I'm like, this stopped being my language. I just, this is not an in for me. I feel like I'm being recruited in this. I bought it as a storytelling thing. It didn't feel like being like it was being pushed on me. They also got me like when, uh, Elizabeth Marvel's like, She's so good. Uh, in Genesis, the line is, you know, God, God's greatest creation on earth. Yes. I'm like in the theater. I'm going like, Oh shit.

[00:40:20] Like I never thought about that. It was right there in the text. Oh fuck. God was writing about aliens. God was like, God fucking aliens. That's fucking crazy. That's what God was like. I think the movie, like what religion is supposed to do historically, it has not, but it's supposed to make you love your fellow human and have respect for humanity and other people.

[00:40:45] So like, believe that there, there is some sort of higher power out there that is governing all of us and bringing us together. I think it's even like the aliens in this film are used as a device as a, this is now the thing that is bringing everyone together. And I love that unity. That's totally true. I think it's also just kind of like, he's running at the idea of like, the answer to weird shit isn't aliens or God.

[00:41:16] You know, it can be both. You know what I mean? It's sort of like, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Like, we could find out that, I mean, sure that right, that aliens exist on earth. And that doesn't mean like, you have to abandon your belief system or like the way you think the world was ordered or whatever like that. It's like, you know, God can fit into that however you like. I think this movie is about- God can fit into a lot of stuff. In my reading, this movie is about two things primarily. If you want. So Marie, what you were saying about like, what religion in theory serves to do, right?

[00:41:46] I think even beyond that, it serves to give us a language, a shared language of understanding for how to be alive, right? That is the basic underlying purpose of any organized religion is a set of codes and ethics and morals and values through which to understand human existence. That gets distorted and weaponized in a million different ways, which is why I get really uneasy with religion and when movies feel like they're pushing religious text on me. I don't think this film is pushing a theological reading of the universe.

[00:42:15] I think it is using characters with theology to explore what it's actually saying, which to me is two things, right? There's a kind of personal story in this of what Spielberg's going through in his life. And then there's a sort of larger, this is what Steven wants to say about the current state of the world. The personal story is Spielberg has always said that he doesn't like therapy or that rather, he went to one therapy session and didn't find it useful. And that for him working through his issues through his movies is always what felt productive to him.

[00:42:43] And that's why you got these movies where people went like, huh, Steven Spielberg still seems really hung up about this divorce thing because it was basically men will become the most successful director in the history of Hollywood to avoid going to therapy. All this time, he's avoiding making the movie about the real thing, which is the Fablemans. He gets that out of his system. He makes the movie where everyone who works on that is like he was crying on set all the time. It was a really difficult process. He exercised something from his system and he's promoting that movie and he's like, I actually don't know what I make next.

[00:43:10] To a certain degree, I've been avoiding making this movie my whole career and I don't know what I have to say. And this is a movie about two people processing trauma. It is a movie about two characters who end up being the ones who can serve to create a catharsis for people at large through reckoning with their own trauma and their own history. Things that they have pointedly just been saying like, I don't want to fucking think about that shit anymore. I don't need that. I'm fine. I'm functional. That's thing one.

[00:43:36] Thing two in this movie is Spielberg talks a lot about having his existential crisis during the pandemic as many of us did. What do I fucking do now? I've just been work, work, work, work, work. And now I'm slowed down. I can't make movies. If I only make one movie again, what is it? What's the one movie I have to make? Fablemans, but also really reckoning with the world. He said he would leave his home and just drive around for hours because he didn't know what to do with himself.

[00:44:00] And I think what this movie is commenting on is we are living in obviously a very fractured world in which people live in alternate realities and it's very impossible to get any agreement on anything. Religion is one of these things that's supposed to unify people. It has only pushed people further apart. It has only made things more violent. And we went through this collective trauma of this horrible global pandemic that affected literally everyone on the planet to some degree. And it fractured us even further.

[00:44:28] And I think he's creating a simulation of is there anything that could happen, a form of communication that actually unified all of humanity for a minute? And I think this movie builds to a note of and what happens now. The last word of this movie, I believe, is listen. Listen, of course. And it's sort of like the next step is what do we say now that we have everyone's attention? Because for one brief moment, for 15 minutes, we have collectively gotten everyone onto the exact same page.

[00:44:55] There is now a reality that has just adjusted that we all have to understand. And I think it's basically saying there's now something new that's like replacing religion. Not that the aliens will become their own religion, but that part of it is that the Elizabeth Marvel character is someone who's not fighting this. And that's like, this doesn't negate my worldview because my worldview is less about the dogmatic text here than it is about the ideas of what we're trying to get at, which is a unification of empathy.

[00:45:23] Which this movie is about like, is there any fucking way that empathy could win again? Right. Is there any fucking way that we could all just get on the same page about everything? I think that's a sort of fantasy from a lot of movies of like, if we learned about, you know, extraterrestrials, would that somehow unite us? Because I think Spielberg is a sort of, I mean, is he religious? Is he spiritual? He talks about this, like, you know, he's spiritual. He's also, you know, Catholic. He is famously Jewish.

[00:45:51] But he was raised, you know, a little more religious than he was. And then he says he kind of reconnected with it. And, you know, like, there's a lot of spiritual thought in his movie and kind of like, how do we reconcile, you know, spirituality with, you know, science and modernity? Right. It's also, it's the dynamic of his parents, you know, computer programmer and musician. The scientist and the artist. There's that incredible clip. Emily Blunt and the Josh O'Connor. I mean, truly, it's one of them. It is. It's a communicator and a mathematician in this movie. Yeah. Right?

[00:46:20] And it's as he's confronting or thinking about what you're talking about of like, could empathy triumph and how could this, you know, go over today? And he's picking a whatever DOD subcontractor, whatever Josh O'Connor is, basically someone who got sucked into the deep state because he's good at math. Because he was a hacker and it was the one way he was going to get his prison sentence. Hack the planet. Obviously, we all agree. Yeah. And then she's, what is she? She's a weather girl.

[00:46:49] She's a, you know, local meteorologist. Yes, she's a meteorologist, of course. But, you know, like, she's a, you know, she's a media figure. She's a TV person. It's almost old fashioned at this point. Yeah. But like, I don't need Spielberg making a movie about like an influencer anyway. You know what I mean? No. Like, I'm fine with him alighting on like, she's this kind of mainstream TV face. Look, we're going right to the end in certain ways.

[00:47:10] But I think one of those moves that this movie makes that is so smart and is a move indicative of a Spielberg level of confidence and intelligence is that she breaks the story. And very quickly, it gets transferred over to the actual, like, national network news. Yeah, that was something. I'm sorry. A lot of my issues with this movie were like, yes, I am aware that I am watching a movie about aliens.

[00:47:36] So, already there's a level of suspension of disbelief. But there were other things where I was just like, you know, like kind of squinting and screaming like, is something doesn't pass the smell test. Like, I haven't watched local news in years. Same. I can't say I watch a lot of local news. Sure. Do, like, the news people in Kansas City report on what's going on in North Korea?

[00:48:04] I mean, if nuclear war was about to break out, possibly. Yeah, I would think so. They don't just hand it over to the national news? No, I mean, they're competitive. I think it's both. And I think this movie, you know, it's this other fascinating thing that you hear for years and it's been more and more open secret lately that, like, Steven Spielberg is obsessed with SNL and attends most tapings of SNL. And now has moved to New York. He is a New York resident. That was my first thought of why he moved to New York.

[00:48:34] Just in time for SNL's best season. He was like, I can't keep doing the like weekly flights. Because I would hear that from people that he would fly in just and he'd sit behind the monitor with, you know, the people who like work on SNL and like, it's weird. Spielberg's just always here. It means he said like the words Doja Cat or whatever, right? You know what I mean? Like if he's having to watch like current SNL. Also, why isn't he hosting? He's been like, I love, you know, Anita or whoever is like, you know. Can you imagine Steve as Domingo's dad or some shit?

[00:49:04] Didn't Domingo host SNL this year? He did an SNL, didn't he? Oh, Coleman Domingo. I meant Domingo. Oh, that's true. There's also the great character of Domingo. Yes. Wait, did they address that on the Coleman Domingo episode? I think they didn't. Coleman Domingo was great in that episode. I believe it. You know, Coleman Domingo was a cast member of the big gay sketch show on Logo. I did not know that. Of course. Every single thing about the big gay. No, I didn't know. Coleman Domingo is like a five tool player. I didn't know he had a comedy background. Every kind of experience you could possibly have as an actor.

[00:49:31] And it took him like 40 years to hit as one of our undeniable guys. Kate McKinnon also, of course. I love him. Yes, McKinnon. Yes. I love him in this movie. I think he's great in this film. He's great. Of course, he's in Lincoln. I'm trying to think if he's worked. Right, he's got a small part in that. He's like the first thing you see in Lincoln. Yes. Is it David Oyelow too? He's also, yeah. Yeah. In that opening battle. I don't think he's worked with Spielberg since then. I don't think so. And since then, he's been nominated twice for best actor. Yes.

[00:50:00] Once, I think, you know, I think he kind of snuck in there. He's a great actor. The other one wildly deserving. Very good in Sing Sing. He's incredible in Sing Sing. Very good in Sing Sing. I did not love Rustin. I didn't either. That felt like a sort of- I didn't see it. It felt like a kind of- Richard Jenkins, The Visitor. Yeah. Yes. Kind of a, you know, better performance with Colin Firth in A Single Man back in the day where it's like, you know what? You've been around for a long time. You're a great actor. Here's a nom. And then the next year, they're like, oh, you're even better in this thing.

[00:50:29] Oh, here you go. Colin Firth was the opposite, arguably. But he's good in both of those films. I think The Single Man is a silly movie. I think it's a silly movie. I think it's an incredible performance. He's good. I like that movie a lot. It's so fucking bad. Oh my God. Tom Ford. He's got a new one coming. Yeah, he does. Right? I'm very much looking forward to it. What's it about? Like a guy who wears pants or something? How fat women are disgusting? And reads a book and is sad. God. Remember he was gonna make The Whale with James Corden? I do remember that. What? Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep.

[00:50:59] The UN intervened on that one. Honestly, I might have- We went full disclosure on that one. I might have preferred that. Possibly. You know what? I'll see it. I'll see it. I'll evaluate. Could it be better? David- Can I ask? Please. What do you think that would look like? Wait. Can you do it towards me so I can capture this? Do it towards me. I'm trying to do like a sort of a cordon face. Yeah.

[00:51:25] His new movie is called Cry to Heaven. Oh, perfect. And it's an adaptation of an Anne Rice book. Great. So I imagine it would be rather sumptuous. So it's kind of fun. Nicholas Holt. Mmm. Aaron Taylor Johnson. So, so far, former collaborators. Don't sound like his kind of guys. Adele. Ooh! Okay. Kieran Hines. Okay. George McKay, who I always liked. Yes. Mark Strong. Okay. Colin Firth. Colin Firth.

[00:51:55] Grabbing the thingy. Yeah, the stick. Paul Bettany. Our guy. Yeah. Hunter Schaefer. Love her. Julianne Moore. Oh my God. A lot of his guys. Yeah. Love that. I, this is interesting. I didn't know that you were anti Tom Ford, David. He sucks. Dangerous animals. I feel like that is because maybe you're not gay enough. Uh, I don't think that's true. Okay. I'm going to be honest with you. Okay. I really don't think that's the problem here. Okay. I'm pretty, I'm going to, I'm pretty sure that's not why I don't like his movies. I'm going to throw out.

[00:52:24] He's a pretentious asshole. Yeah. I'm going to throw out a counter argument. Here's my counter take. His movies are not, not bad enough. Yeah. I, I, both of his movies, they look pretty good and I kind of respect that about them, but they're pretty stupid. A single man is like Firth kind of really convinces you it's a good movie. Yes. And then when you kind of lay out the plot, you're like, this was a little silly. So much just the Firth performance. It gets a lot further.

[00:52:51] Nocturnal animals truly was one of those classic, uh, yeah, like one of those things where I'm like, so he took a script written by an 11 year old. Right. And then he cast like really good actors and you know, got like, you know, got it looking really slick and fancy. But like that is a really, really silly movie. Every time I bring this up, there are always nocturnal animal defenders who get mad at me. But when I, I think I saw that movie with Joe Reed reading Ray and Joe. And when I realized, oh, the structure of this movie is just going to be Amy Adams where reads

[00:53:20] a chapter of a manuscript while wearing a cocktail dress. And then it cuts to her going like, oh, she makes a phone call. She gets a voicemail. She's like, hey, I read this crazy chapter. I just want to talk to you anyway. Call me back. Reading glasses back on time for another chapter. Sounds great. We love, we love women who read. That's true. We do support. Can I put, just to get us a little bit back on the rails here. I want to talk about. That is giving me the thumbs up. Can I throw out a take and I want to get your read on it.

[00:53:49] I'm currently holding the photo of Mike Myers naked in Austin Powers. Looking pretty cut actually. Looking pretty cut. Deep V. And we're getting back on track. We are getting back on track. Yeah, this is about Disclosure Day. Okay. My first thought when I see Colin Firth in Disclosure Day with the beard, with the turtleneck. I'm like, is this kind of the hottest he's ever been on screen? It's a good look. I'm going to go with no. When do you think? Because I think Colin Firth has been very handsome. Firth, Firth, Firth.

[00:54:18] I think Colin Firth has been very handsome in a lot of movies. I think he's very handsome. And I guess we can't count Pride and Prejudice because that's not a movie. I'm like, okay, maybe not ever, but like... Right. It's a great look for him. But like, of late. Of late. Well, I was honestly kind of thinking like, where's Firth been? Kind of. Because he's obviously very good in this movie. Because he's good at this kind of shit. And this is an installment of Firth Things Firth. Just to be honest. And I was just, I was like, I know if I look it up,

[00:54:48] it's not like there'll be gaps. Like, I'm sure he works consistently and I'm sure there's some weird TV and stuff. Yeah, I was gonna say there is some weird TV in there. Uh, and like, forgive me for forgetting about Empire of Light, you know, which was only a couple years ago. Of course. And like, you know, he does a lot of British shit that barely makes it over here. Like movies called like Mothering Sunday or, you know, where you're kind of like, well, I assume that was fine. It's a real title just so people know. That's not a thing that David made up. Yeah. Like lovely jubblies.

[00:55:16] But I feel like we've not been, you know, using our Firth well enough of late. Um, it's a great take. I mean, just looking here, it's like, God, yeah. I mean, like Kingsman 2, he is, you know, kind of the lead. But then you're like, he's in five movies in 2018. The Happy Prince, in which he played Oscar Wilde's friend. Uh. That's Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde. The Mercy.

[00:55:46] The Mercy, where he's on a boat. Mm-hmm. That was directed by James Marsh, who did Theory of Everything. Well, I mean, here we go again. Obviously, you know, something wrong with that. Smaller part. Have you guys seen Rylan? Yeah, Rylan's fun. Yeah, Rylan's good. He has a cameo in Rylan. He's a tiny role, yeah. As a tortilla chef at a Mexican restaurant called Love Guachili. They credit him, they credit him as burrito maker. Yes. It's very funny. That movie's really cute. If you want to see a picture of him in it, I will show you.

[00:56:16] But like, Mary Poppins returns, he's the villain that's kind of thankless. 1917 is like an extended cameo. I mean, this is kind of a better version of his Mary Poppins thing. Yeah. Of kind of like, can you just come in and kind of go like, well, I don't know about that. Play against him. It's just very specifically, it's the amount of gray in his hair. Oh, Operation Mincemeat was good fun. Yeah. That one's good fun. But is he hot in it? Oh, no, no, no. I was just saying. This is what I'm talking about. When he shows up. I mean, wait, wait, wait. He's not unhot. He looks lovely. But I'm just saying. Is he hot?

[00:56:45] The turtleneck. The beautiful lines of his shoulder. I think it's fair. The grooming. No, I think it's a great look. I was like, hmm. The last Bridget Jones, was he a ghost? Yeah, he's dead. He's dead. He gets eaten by a fucking shark. Basically, if you're not considering what he fell inside a whale. Do you think he's hot in Fever Pitch way back when? A movie that was very formative for me as a child. I think he looks pretty doofy. Yeah. He's got this sort of like puffy hair. Yeah. I mean, the idea is he's doofy. He kind of looks like Dominic Sessa there, but without the interesting bone structure. Well, yeah. I was going to say, be still my heart.

[00:57:15] I mean, Sessa. I mean, yes. That's a striking boy. We're big Sessa fans. But again, he's got like striking features. And the idea of him in Fever Pitch was kind of like, yeah, he's a bit of a dork. Like he needs to clean up his act. You know who's next to him there in Fever Pitch? Mark Strong. Yeah, great. From the way back. If you discount what are basically cameos, Rye Lane, he's credited for Barbie where they reuse footage. There's a documentary he narrated and Bridget Jones. He doesn't make a movie in between Empire of Light and Disclosure Day. Okay. What he does do in that time. He made some TV shows.

[00:57:45] The Staircase I Forgot About, the Antonio Campos. It was pretty fun. I liked it. I thought he was good in it. Never watched it. Obsessed with the documentary. He did something called Lockerbie, A Search for Truth. So that was a British thing. You know, Lockerbie is a very famous British, you know, a plane was blown up over Scotland. Okay. Over the town of Lockerbie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then this is really important. It's a big deal. The Force plays Mycroft's employer, Sir Bucaphalus Hodge. Bucephalus, I believe.

[00:58:13] Bucephalus Hodge in Young Sherlock, a Guy Ritchie Amazon Prime original series that has no connection to the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes franchise. Guy Ritchie has two different Sherlock Holmes. Yes. In which there's boxing in both, I think. And Hero finds Tiffin played Young Sherlock. I thought you were gonna say that he shows up in Watson. No. Watson, unfortunately. Watson! He plays his boss. Yeah, Watson's been canceled.

[00:58:43] It's been axed. But now Young Sherlock is here to pick up the gauntlet. And now, fucking Doctor Who's been axed. Like, I'm like... Has it? Britain's gotta... Yeah, they finally... I thought they just were like, oh, we're just not bringing back and shooty Gatla and we're gonna start over. Well... It's back to the starting board. It's back to even right. You know, the last episode ended with him turning into Billy Piper. And then when everyone asks like, oh, so what's the plan there? They're like, yeah, we don't know. We just kind of filmed that and figured out... Placeholder. We figured that out later. Next year, just a Christmas special. And they're like, is he the next doctor?

[00:59:13] And they're like, maybe we're... It's possible. And Russell T. Davies was supposed to stay on for many more years. 100%. Yes. And the fan backlash to that moment was so intense. They also clearly just didn't have anything. Well, and then, of course, right, the lack of a plan was so apparent. And finally, BBC was just like, I think we're gonna just like blank slate this. Like, Doctor Who's sort of out to pasture right now. And if someone's got a pitch, let us know. Can we talk about the most important thing here? Yeah. Are we gonna get back to disclosure day?

[00:59:42] Is this Emily Blunt's best performance ever? Oh. Ooh. Ever. It's conversation. She's very good in the film. Yeah. She's phenomenal. I would... I immediately was like, okay, this is edge of tomorrow level. It's... I mean, that's the conversation. But for me, it's like edge of tomorrow. I haven't seen my summer of love. That's the other one. Those are the three. Apparently, she's quite amazing in, but I haven't seen it. Yeah. And she's obviously like unbelievably good in Devil Wears Prada, but I'm giving those other three movies the advantage because she has more screen time. She...

[01:00:12] For me, it's all about pain hustlers. No, I don't know. She totally blew me away. Like... She's really, really incredible in the movie. I think... We got... A little bit of a we take her for granted moment. It is. It is. I have to address the elephant in the room, which is she's one of those actors who comes up a lot when you're talking about how... Everyone looks like a member of the Duracell family now. Lots of cosmetic procedures have made actors, specifically actresses...

[01:00:42] Struggle to emote because they don't have... They are less expressive. Right. Although, more and more leading men these days. That's why I was like, you know what? It's happening. It's having a gosling. You know? I guess, fucking Rosie O'Donnell, when she was like, everyone wants to see my facelift. I'm like, yeah. It looks great. They have a good facelift. You look incredible. Yeah. I haven't seen her. She's looking good. She looks great. She looks great. Congrats to Rosie. But I think, one, it works for the character. I agree. I was... That she is a... A meteorologist.

[01:01:11] She's someone on television. Yep. When I saw the trailer... It really fits the kind of local news famous... I bought it. Yeah. There is something so affecting about having someone who looks kind of plasticky... Yes. ...end up being the most empathetic... Yes. ...connector. And that you see her face ultimately, her emotions transferred to her muscles break through all of the work she's had done.

[01:01:38] There is a scene in this movie that took my breath away and that is after a pretty crazy action set piece where they are in a car... Where Emily Blunt and Joshua Conner are in a car chase and then the car ends up hitting the side of a train and then they get pulled along in the train. So cool. And then another train is coming in the opposite direction and they have to like get... They have to survive.

[01:02:01] And they end up like climbing inside a train car at the last minute and it is a train car full of like pianos being delivered. Yes. And she has a panic attack. It's really good. Which... It was crazy to see a character have a really understandable human reaction to surviving an action set piece. You never get that. And as she's...

[01:02:31] As Joshua Conner is like helping her breathe and she's like, I can't feel my hands. I can't feel my hands. He's rubbing her hands against piano wires. Right. I was like... I was like on the edge of my seat. And I'm like, I've had panic attacks. Me too. Many times. And I'm like, this is the most accurate like feeling. It's a really hard thing to perform and not look hammy as hell. It's hard to not make it just feel like a ton of fucking business.

[01:02:59] But what I also liked about that scene before, it's just like the first minute of it, you're like, okay, what's happening now? Right. Like you had that thought like, well, she's got magic power. Right. Like what is something... Is something happening to her alien abilities? And then you sort of start to settle down with Josh, right? Yeah. As the viewer and you're kind of like, no, no, right. She's just having a human reaction. Right. As Marie said. It also helps that the guy he hired to play the mathematician is naturally one of the most empathetic actors alive.

[01:03:27] He's like the most sensitive bedside manner guy. He's doing that Spielberg thing of like, he's the co-lead, but he's very much like, I am very happily the second lead, kind of the off ball. Like, you know, right, the emotional support character. Because it starts with him and the actions invested in him. He stole the data. He's on the run. He's the snowman. Oh, he's the hero. And then as Emily Blunt's story unfolds, you're like, oh, she's kind of... Right. He's the condo. She's the alpha here. Right. Should we start to talk about the plot? Yeah.

[01:03:56] So an AEW wrestler kicks in the camera. We see Josh O'Connor's at a match. He's with a backpack. He's trying to negotiate a handoff, but he's surrounded by government agents. Colin Firth does show up here or is it all his underlings? Colin Firth shows... He's there. He shows up in like the back alley. Because he's kidnapped Eve Hewson. Eve Hewson, who if you don't know, is Bono's daughter. She sure is. Oh, okay. Yeah. I told you, Ben, but you didn't listen. Whenever I talk about you two, this is what you hear. Yeah.

[01:04:25] And you know what's funny? Yeah. You know what's funny, Ben, is she actually, she's biologically Bono's daughter, but she wasn't conceived in the traditional sense. One day she just showed up on an iPod. That's a pretty good joke. Thank you. That's a pretty good joke. I started thinking about it and I was like, I better not trip over this wording because I'm sitting on a fucking hot hand. Suddenly I got a royal flush. I just gotta slap this thing down on the table. You know, she's been acting for a while.

[01:04:53] Yeah, she's phenomenal in the nick, which was I think most people's first exposure to her. That's what I knew her from. Bridge of Spies. She's worked with Spielberg before. She's one of the daughters being like, Dad, I got a date. She's the main one. She's the one who's got the boyfriend. She's recently, well, she was on Bad Sisters on Apple TV. She was in Flora and Son, which is half a good- Never saw that. Everyone liked her in that. She's great in it. It's half a good movie. All the parts with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in it made me want to throw something at my screen, but she's great. What, Marie? You don't want to hear me play music?

[01:05:21] I just want to share my music with you. Marie. I liked her. I wrote a song. And why don't I have a conversation about AI? What did I like her? Wow, your joke, Olav, is really good. Yeah, it's my one good impression. I don't really remember her in J. Kelly. She plays the woman, the actress in the flashback. She's the one they fought over. Yeah. She's the one who left Crudup. She's good in it. She's got that one big scene. Yeah, I think she's a good actor. She's definitely like a good actor. I saw the mother of the daughters, right?

[01:05:50] I think it's implied that she's the mother of the daughters. Or at least one of them. I think they were like J. Kelly. I don't remember. I like J. Kelly. Yeah, he's good. J. Kelly, remember who? That's a movie that... Bring him back. What if this is like J. Kelly 2? It's on the schedule. It's not a perfect film, but I think that film's a lot darker and meaner than people think it is. 100%. The movie ends with him crying saying, you fucked up. But whatever. Yeah, I enjoyed it. But okay. So back to disclosure.

[01:06:17] Eve Hewson plays Jane, the girlfriend of Daniel, played by Josh O'Connor. And she has been held hostage to use as a bargaining chip. Yes, because he's stolen some stuff. He's got an alien stick. Right. He's stolen a function data and an alien stick. We don't know what any... At this point in the movie, we don't know what the hell's going on. We just know that he's got a stick and you can't touch it with bare hands. He's got to use a glove. They all go, you don't know how to operate that thing. Right.

[01:06:46] And he tries to do this handoff and get her back to safety. And she basically is like, I just had to fucking survive being kidnapped because of you. I'm not leaving your fucking side. It is such a great Spielberg kind of setup to be like, here's a relationship that's at a bit of a crux point of is this about to get really serious or not? And now they're being tested in like a world altering event. And they're trying to use this event to establish better lines of communication. Right?

[01:07:13] Like it's basically a young couple being like, are we really going to make this work or not? They also, you realize that they don't really know anything about each other. Totally. So she did not know that he was, she doesn't know any, why any of this is happening. She also didn't know that he was previously in jail. Didn't know that, she knew he had a mysterious government job. He didn't know that she was a novitiate. So she had spent the time to potentially become a nun.

[01:07:40] What would you think if you're dating someone and they dropped that info? Like I actually was almost none. I almost went none. Honestly, I think it's kind of hot. Yeah. I think it depends on like, what's your relationship to all of that today? It's all true. Would be my first question. But I think, you know, it's like, oh, most people who I know, like are no, the whole like, oh, I lost the calling thing. I'm like, nah, you wanted to have sex. She says we've had sex. It's a brutal.

[01:08:10] They're never going to overcome that in the marketing, right? Um, the vautacity thing. It's just a horrible sell. Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, but like, I mean, I really liked when Regina Hall. Yes. Regina Hall. Yes. Was on, um, Amy Poehler's podcast and she talked about how she almost became a nun. Regina Hall almost became a nun? I really recommend it. It's really funny. It's amazing. And she talks about how like a lot of convents, not every convent, but a lot of convents, they guard against the like, we're not your backup.

[01:08:41] So if you're like 38, they sniff you out of like, hey, just because you're not happy with like, however things have gone, you don't get to just like be a nun now. Like, you know, just kind of be like, well, I want to just live with you guys and who cares about dating or like, you know, having a job or whatever. It's kind of like a Saving Silverman situation if that helps translate it, you know, where the nuns can kind of sniff out. Yeah. Oh, you, you're not, you're avoiding something. Right. And then at one point Regina's like, and some of them, like if you've had more than three

[01:09:08] sexual partners, which I don't know about you, Amy, but, and Amy's like, oh, I've, you know, and it's very funny. There's that moment where Amy Poehler goes, what was it like working with Leonardo DiCaprio? And she like scratches her eyelid and she goes, you know, the problem is he's just very green. Yeah. Yeah. I did see that clip. He doesn't have a lot of experience. Speaking of Regina Hall and Leonardo DiCaprio, I was thinking about one battle after another a lot during this movie. Yeah. Because it's like, beyond the run nature, the alien sticks kind of look like the device,

[01:09:38] the music devices. There's a lot of, they hide out with nuns. There's a lot of like, dodge, like car chases. This is true. And so I was like, oh, okay. It's cool. I know why Spielberg liked one battle so much. This movie has like four or five kind of classical set pieces that are like beautifully Spielberg stage. It's got some proper, you know, right. Like blockbuster stuff. But they're not super long in a way where we've gotten so used to a creep of if a sequence starts.

[01:10:07] It's gotta be like 20 minutes. 20. Yeah. Yeah. Truly. And I kept thinking like, I know your big takeaway David was like, it's so tender. I was surprised by how tender it was. I think was the word you used. Tender. Tender ass movie. And I was just like, it's, it's really like classical. It feels like really kind of like simple and focused in its own weird way down to like, oh, they're trying to like cross this train comes. It's clipping them. The train is being, the car is being dragged by the train. And you're like, this is fun.

[01:10:36] Is it going to be 15 minutes? And you're like, no, it's four. It's, it's pretty brief. There's a, yeah. They, they handle it in a way that regular people at their absolute adrenaline limit might be able to handle it. And then they're really freaked out after. There's a secret. They're not like, oh, that was crazy. Anyway, you know, like. A car turns invisible and you're seeing the effects of water and stuff. I really like that. It's so cool. But I was like. Oh, so is he going to do 15 minutes of invisible car chase now? And you're like, no, three. Try another day did.

[01:11:06] Try another day handled that. It's so funny to the physical comedy of it where they keep running into the invisible stuff. I really enjoyed that. It's very goofy. Oh, I loved it. It's that, but that's Spielberg tonal management. Can I tell you? Please. Just derailing the pod here, but I just want to tell you why. The four winners of this year's honorary Oscars. Oh, were they just announced? Just announced. Okay. Did Harrison Ford get it? No. Can you give us the, can you give us the categories of profession? First. Okay. She just guessed one of them. Wow.

[01:11:36] They're finally giving Glenn the award. It's a little rude to Glenn. It's actually a little rude to Glenn. Show up in November. It's maybe the meanest thing anyone has ever done to her. She's not going to win a competitive Oscar or she will in the classic, like, well, now that we gave you an honorary, the Paul Newman. I threw out to Marie, is there any chance that there's a stealth candidate in Sunrise on the Reaping? Yeah. And I was like, I don't think she's probably in it enough. And my whole thing is like, she was really good in the fucking Wake Up Dead man. And they just didn't. You know, they didn't even try. They didn't even try.

[01:12:06] Because it's kind of like, all right, so Glenn Close is one. Okay. Another is a producing team. So to be elected. Is it Kennedy and Marshall? No. You probably won't. Indie producers. Legendary indie producers. Christine Vashon. There you go. Oh! And Pam Kostler. And Pam Kostler. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Oh, that makes me so happy. Another is a very, very esteemed workaholic director who's still working even though he's old and he's a bit of a grump and he has no competitive Oscar. Similar to Glenn Close. But a lot of nominations.

[01:12:35] I can't believe he doesn't have an Oscar. Yes. Ridley Scott. Ridley Scott. Wow. And I'm sure his speech will be sunshiny. Well, the problem is they're going to have Grover present the award to him and get his order wrong. David's doing the face. The fourth I think might excite you, Griffin Newman, because it's an animator. It's an animator. An animator. He makes the cartoons. Feature films? Don Bluth. No. Don Bluth. What medium of animation is his primary?

[01:13:03] He worked at Disney for very many years and he's worked at Hanna-Barbera and... Is it Glen Keane? Even with Pixar? Nope. He's also a pioneer in his field. An African-American animator. Oh, oh, it's Floyd Norman? Floyd Norman. A legend. 90 years old. A legend. Worked on Toy Story 2. Yes. But also worked on like, you know, Sleeping Beauty or whatever. He's a bit of a Forrest Gump in animation. Oh my god! That's a very cool one. That's a very cool one. It's a good four. Yeah. Or five.

[01:13:30] Marie just had a really funny reaction, which is I pulled the name Floyd Norman and she looked stunned that I could know a name of someone that obscure and then I saw her face settle into like, if he doesn't know that, then who is he? That was the arc. You were like, how did you pull that? Well, right. You're fucking you. That's the shit in your brain. Floyd Norman, that's awesome. But now I'm also really excited to learn about this guy. Yeah, he's a really cool guy. I think he's written a book. He might have been the first African American animator at Disney. It's something along those lines. He was a clean up artist on Sleeping Beauty.

[01:14:00] He's been everywhere. But also like, Alvin and the Chipmunks in the 80s? And Robot Chicken? That's so fucking cool! Yeah, it was like when Pixar got big enough that they needed to hire more animators, it was such a big deal that it's like, we can get Floyd Norman. And I think he worked on like two or three at that point in time. Disclosure Day. Disclosure Day. Okay, so Josh and Eve escape. And then we got to talk about our introduction to Emily Blunt. Mm-hmm. That's where it's kind of taking us. So they escape and they hide out in a convent.

[01:14:30] We now jump over to meeting Emily Blunt. So her and her boyfriend, Played by... Wyatt Russell. David's boyfriend. Wait, you know what I mean? I mean, I do love the guy. You love him. Yeah, he's great. He's great! They're hanging out in their cool loft in Kansas City, Missouri. Yeah. And she is... I'd be a Royal Season ticket holder. It would be fun. That sounds like it would make the movie a lot more interesting. I'm gonna say... If you were this character and you had season tickets. Have you ever been to Kansas City? No, I've never been to Kansas.

[01:15:00] I've never been to Kansas City of Missouri. My aunt Dawn and Uncle Ken moved out there for a bit and I went to visit them as a child. A lot of fun like art museums and stuff for kids there. Sure. Kind of like an underrated art city. I'd like to go. I want to go to Kaufman Stadium before it closes. I want to get some of that BBQ. I think they got a big old zoo and aquarium. Like I think they got some cool stuff. Oh, that's right. Because they have their own BBQ. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is it like... Kansas City style. It's a rub. Less saucy based. Yeah.

[01:15:28] Friend of the show passed in future guest Heidi Gardner from there. Oh, no, it has a fix. Oh, yeah. And she has like a house there. Yeah. But invests a lot into the community and has a lot of cool projects in particular coming up. Shout out to Kansas. Yeah. But Emily Blunt... Why didn't you ask him? He's the barbecue guy. Right. Oh, fuck, man. That's not my school. That's not my school. What's your school? What's my school? Low and slow.

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[01:19:34] Emily Blunt, she is a meteorologist. She wants to be a serious news reporter. She's trying to get that break. I like this couple. Yeah, he seems to be, Wyatt Russell seems to be like a little laid back. A blacker musician, younger dude. She witnesses a cardinal. Lands on their open window. Comes in the room. Yes. And then all of a sudden she starts speaking in Russian. This scene rolls. It's a really cool scene.

[01:20:01] Our buddy Sean Fancy was talking on Big Picture about the end of Oak Street coming out. Yeah, the David Robert Mitchell dino. I kind of think that looks good. I think it looks awesome. Okay, cool. And he was talking about his optimism for that movie. You guys are down for it. And he put his finger on a thing that I've felt for a long time and I've never been able to verbalize. But like, he's like, my single favorite thing in the movies, the best feeling I can have is that sort of extended Twilight Zone thing of where is this going?

[01:20:29] Like pieces are being laid out and I don't understand how they fit together. And even if a movie sticks the landing and satisfies me with the answers, he was like, there's no feeling I like more than being in the middle of a movie like that. Totally. And this movie is so good at doing this shit. We're like, why is suddenly everyone reacting really weird to this bird? The movie gets really quiet. The John Williams score in this film is excellent. Yeah. It barely kicks in until the second hour. But it is a very good score. The first hour is kind of silent.

[01:20:58] You know, after, you know, like his post score is so minimal. Uh huh. Right. And it's sort of like, and didn't he not do obviously West Side Story like, you know. He did Dial of Destiny, which. That score, as I've said. Got the fucking rules actually. Rocks. Yeah. But that wasn't for Spielberg. But I'm like, did he do, I mean, his Fableman score, I just kind of remember being like, lovely. I think it's really lovely. Um, but not like, I don't like, I can't summon any themes from it or like, you know, not like sticking in my head. And I was like, I wonder if he's just kind of moved to this, you know, right.

[01:21:28] Like he does softer, quieter stuff. This requires a little more. It felt, it felt like the, I felt the jazz slash atonal. Yeah. Sort of stuff coming, which. Totally. Johnny music. I have always appreciated about, about him. Um, but this moment with the Cardinal landing, you could imagine a version of it in which the Williams score starts swelling already and the camera pushes in on her face of wonder. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And instead everything is just kind of slow and eerie and quiet. And then this moment of her speaking Russian goes on way longer than you'd think.

[01:21:58] They also like, okay. So to talk a little bit about the trailers for this movie, they reveal that she does the speaking in a weird alien dialect. That was the first trailer, which was otherwise pretty vague, but was built around the set piece of. Did I had, I, that might've been the only trailer I saw. Did they show her speaking other languages? No. Like that to me, I was like, oh. Totally. Right.

[01:22:22] And you know, that, that, the scene of her speaking in the alien language while live on air recalls so many videos that tend to go viral now of like local newscaster has stroke. Yeah. That are always so strange and odd to watch. Unfortunately, right. Yes. Like we found there's an odd, and it's like, it's not even so much that you're watching someone suffer, but it's kind of like watch reality break. Yes. Right. Like watch everything just be normal and then not normal. Oh, you know, like, yes.

[01:22:52] I think it has to be inspired by that. And I even wonder if that was the starting point for this character being a broadcaster. But the things that are so strange about those moments is not just the reality is breaking, but it's people who are so trained and polished and composed. And you see their survival instincts kicking in where they're still kind of like carrying themselves correctly. But what they're saying no longer makes sense. And so we know that moment's coming because it's in the trailer.

[01:23:18] You start speaking Russian, which is this other thing you hear that sometimes people have these bizarre medical side effects where they wake up and they're fluent in another language or they start speaking tongues or whatever it is. And the scene's just very odd. She gets in her car to drive to work. She's running behind. A cop pulls her over. And then she does this fucking emotional reading of him. You're trying to arrest me because you got in a fight with her and she knows every specific detail.

[01:23:45] And for a second, you're like, is this this character sort of like party trick that she's learned how to read people and she doesn't know it's a mentalist thing? Right. But she's getting close enough. Yes. And instead, she like is shaken by it. What just came out of me? And then she goes into her workplace and starts the broadcast and and first she starts speaking to someone in Korean. Right, right, right.

[01:24:09] There's there's a Korean war that's we're on the brink of and they have a Korean guest who's speaking as an expert and they're having trouble with the translator. And she jumps in and like clarifies everything. And everyone's like, since when do you know Korean? She said, what are you talking about? I don't know Korean. All this is fascinating where you're like you're watching Emily Blunt pivot so fast to do things hyper competently and then immediately have no memory of what she just did or understanding of how it came out. Well, I think it's not that she's hearing it as English. Yes. Right.

[01:24:40] She doesn't know that she's like, yeah, she's not like forgetting. It's similar to later when Josh O'Connor is like, I know what she said. Right. When it's like no one knows what she said. They've been given the codex. The way that information is revealed in the movies, I think is really cool because like we don't learn that Josh O'Connor is someone who has also had an alien encounter until further in the film.

[01:25:05] We don't learn that he was able to understand her alien language on the TV broadcast until a little later. Um, and we also, the way that they reveal that this stuff, like I think I assumed that Emily Blunt always had this power, especially when she's like talking to the police officer. Uh huh. But then to realize that it just came on. Like it just kicked on. I think the Cardinal activated it. Yeah. Totally.

[01:25:34] It was like a sleeper thing. Yes. I mean, I had really avoided any advertising for this movie. Yeah. I didn't watch the full trailer, but I'd obviously seen the teaser a couple times. The full trailer also literally dropped while we were in the screening and I watched it afterwards. Uh huh. And I was like, there are 10 things in this trailer that I never would have put in the marketing in a way that bummed me out. Yeah. I mean, early stuff was vague. You're trying to get people in. I get it.

[01:25:59] And that early trailer was heavy on the animal stuff, almost to the point of abstraction where you're just kind of like, is this movie about, I mean, I get that it's aliens or something, but like, is this movie about animals being in league with aliens or something? Well, it's not just the animals. It's the shot of the home that looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting. It does. Yes. And everyone's like, the fuck is this? Like. There were CGI complaints. Yeah. It makes sense in the context of the movie, the way the scene plays out.

[01:26:26] But it's somewhere around this concurrently we've set up that Colin Firth is the head of the agency. Everyone's gone into sort of crisis mode. It's called Wardex. Wardex. Wardex is in crisis mode because stuff's been stolen. Yes. And people who work for it are missing. And in particular, Coleman Domingo, a manager. Coleman Domingo, who's high up, is missing. Hugo. And he's a guy on a headset. He is basically has the air of a stage manager. Right. He's literally in a warehouse and they're making something. They're building a set around him. Right.

[01:26:55] And he's sort of talking to Josh O'Connor and saying like, you know, follow the plan. It would be okay. Everything's going to be okay. I love this guy. It's going to be all right. Yeah. You're just going to make it happen. Yes. You'll know where to go. It's also a very fun subversion to have his character be so like warm and chill versus like, we need you here ASAP. Right. You know? You have to go. So often, man on phone is like really like kind of riling up the tension.

[01:27:23] And this every time he's like, it's okay. This is the first place I felt the manifestation of 50 years of Steven Spielberg studying SNL. Because like Heidi is one of the people who would tell me about him coming to visit. And I'd go like, so what does he do? And she said, he just is obsessed with how the show gets made. He loves just watching it come together and the stuff you can't see unless you're in the studio. During the commercial breaks, how calmly people construct a set out of nowhere. Right.

[01:27:52] All these sets are like in slats that have to be rebuilt and dressed in like 90 seconds. No, obviously it's been much covered over the years. Yeah. The way that SNL is made is crazy. Insane. And he loves the dance of that. And he loves the hyper professionalism of that. And it certainly manifests in the final, final sequence, which we'll get to. But I, everything about Hugo felt very, this is like SNL AD. You know, this is floor manager. This is just watching the team just do everything very calmly and be like, it'll get done.

[01:28:22] And like at this time, Hugo and Daniel are in contact with each other. But Emily Blunt is kind of on her own. You don't know how she's connected. And then, so, Hugo and his employees get Josh and Eve to a safe house, which is like a farmhouse. And then we learn what the stick, the alien stick does. Sort of. I feel like the impression is it actually probably does more stuff. Yes.

[01:28:51] This is just a thing you can do. They've figured out. Yeah. But it seems to, all the alien stuff seems to kind of amount to sort of an empathic power of like, they can kind of see in your head or talk to you in your head. Right. This sort of classic gray big head thing of like, maybe they're telepathic. Like, right. You know. Yeah. Psychic abilities. Right. Right. But that's what makes them more powerful than us is that they've cracked empathy. Maybe. At a time where we've become more divided.

[01:29:17] And like, the stick is maybe like an amplifier, like a radio antenna that just kind of like zaps your brain to a thousand. Colin Firth will hold the stick and he'll look at a photo of someone. They call it diving. And then he can kind of present in their like personal space and talk to them, but no one else can see them. So it's kind of like, I guess it's just like they're you're he's in their heads.

[01:29:41] They also make it clear that Coleman Domingo was the main one who operated this, that it's like a high skill level thing. And Coleman Domingo probably you sort of get the idea is like is a more empathetic person. Innately. So he's probably better at it. He's innately more empathetic, but also by wielding this, he has now learned more. He has absorbed their feelings. Their message has gotten through to him. And that's why he has basically become radicalized of we got to open the doors. We got to let everyone know. So they're explaining the stick, but they're also setting up with the videos of the stick.

[01:30:11] Of really why they're forming this resistance. Which is that this company, this private company has been torturing aliens. Yes. And look, I think I think David Koepp and Spielberg are smart about it. It's like we're going to do the classic conspiracy theory. It's going to be the basics that even an audience member who doesn't care about this stuff might know. Just to sort of lay out what we kind of learned is like there's definitely was like a crash. Area 51 definitely is a place where alien stuff is.

[01:30:41] Richard Nixon brought fucking Jackie Gleason there. Yeah. Richard Nixon maybe brought Jackie Gleason there to see an alien because he was drunk and was like, I want to see an alien. Is that like any? That's a conspiracy theory. Yeah, totally. That Nixon would get drunk and be like, get the alien box out. I want to look at it, you know, or whatever.

[01:30:58] That and that like there's a company or a subcontractor in the DOD that is basically men in black style move beyond government of control by making money off of like patenting tech. Sorry. Right? Like that's how they do it. The first thing that comes up. I don't even tell them what they're, you know, what to do anymore. When I Googled Nixon, Jackie Gleason, UFO is a clip from the Joe Rogan experience. Good. Yep. Good. I thought Joe Rogan was very good in this movie, by the way.

[01:31:28] And no one's really used him as an actor this well since Zookeeper, maybe? Is he in that? Yeah, he is. He plays the villain. He's actually incredibly bad. It feels like he won a contest or lost a contest and was forced to be in the movie. When you look up what's called the disclosure movement, which is people who believe, you know, this is government covering up for aliens. I sent this to the big, you know, to the news and deals thread. Sure. You know, this is the first guy pictured on Wikipedia.

[01:31:54] And I believe Chris Ryan said this looks like a guy who runs a boutique physical media website out of his garage. And I think I said blood discs dot shop app. I don't know. I think he looks more like a pawn stars kind of guy. Right, right. Kind of like, I can give you 22,000, you know, like, yeah, that kind of thing. These things aren't mutually exclusive, Marie. Guys buying pallets of discs from Europe and also he's doing some pawning on the side.

[01:32:19] And, you know, and Sean and Chris or Sean and Alex are like, oh, yeah, that guy's like the star of the documentary. Age of Disclosure. Age of Disclosure. Which got very big on Amazon a year or two ago. He's a guy who worked at the DOD and is basically like, well, I know people who knew things. Right. Because as much again as I was like, well, stuff's been disclosed. Like the big hearing that Congress had a couple of people testified with like, well, someone I worked with told me that they saw an alien. You know, there was never the compelling thing.

[01:32:49] It was more just hearsay, kind of indirect testimony. Nobody sat down and was like, I worked at the Department of Defense and my job was cover up aliens. And I'm going to admit it now. And I dacked up an alien and it was chill as hell. And when I touched his skin, I got powers and I saw rainbows. I saw new colors. Reticuli or whatever. I think another thing this movie is doing. Yes, this movie is playing in that pool.

[01:33:16] And it's a bit of a pool where when you yeah, it's a Joe Rogan pool. It's a Joe Rogan pool. Because Joe Rogan loves that shit. Is there too much money at stake? And then you have what feels very Spielberg and for some people might be a little too corny. And I bought that because I felt like they did just the right amount.

[01:33:32] The idea that this all of this behavior was justified by a sense of self-preservation or defensiveness that then has sort of justified perhaps in advanced interrogation techniques and such. But also there's so much money at stake that they're continuing to justify all of their reasoning while also hiding behind this. It's for the good of the people. That's the thing. Right. People are dumb, panicky animals and you know it. Others would just kind of be like, okay.

[01:34:03] I'd dap them and I'd say, thanks God. I'd be like, oh my God, this is incredible. Life is magical. Yeah. The universe is incredible. I'm trying to think of like what it would take for me to believe it. I'd either have to like. So this is the big question, right? Would it work on you? The disclosure. I'd have to like meet an alien face to face. Sure.

[01:34:23] Or it would have to be like a like legitimate press conference like Obama saying we killed Osama, but just not Trump. Someone else walking out and being like. If any of it happens during the Trump administration, then I don't believe it. But here's, here's what it would take for me. Okay, go ahead. And then I have a thought. LGBT absolutely eating at Snatch Game. Like he comes out like Waylon Flowers and Maddom. At the Tony's. At the Tony's. Yeah.

[01:34:53] LGBT host the Tony's. Right. I thought Pink did a great job. I didn't watch. I also, it was one of those things where one minute I was like, why is Pink hosting that? And I was like, well, you know what? She's a board entertainer. Yeah. She's doing well. Like, Ben and I were seeing a Zodiac with a friend of the show, Leslie Hadlin. We were hooting and hollering. We were having a grand old time.

[01:35:15] Do you think we will, we will find the Zodiac killer or like believable evidence of aliens? Well, it was Arthur Lee Allen and we all know this. Well, what's that? Those knives in his car were for a chicken he killed for dinner. Doesn't the DNA not match on the post? Who cares? David, what were you going to say? So, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but right, like the end of the movie, which

[01:35:43] will, you know, we'll discuss things we're missing. But, you know, like, yes, they show a bunch of clips and you could kind of explain away clips. But then the movie is ending with them pointing a camera at an alien who is then looking down the lens going, listen to me, I am an alien. I think that would really would start to move the needle a little bit. There's just so much footage that is ultimately revealed here. But then, right, I've already debated this with some people where they're like, oh, I don't think, you know, in this age of no one believes anything in AI and Trump.

[01:36:12] And I'm like, right, but people believe that things are getting covered up. Like, why would they not believe that it's like, hey, it's true? This is one of the things that Spielberg is like setting for himself as a challenge is what could you do that actually would grab everyone's attention and hold everyone together? Make a movie about a guy who snaps a twig to have a girl like you. One wish, Willow! Is there is there something happening where Emily Blunt is using her like powers of empathy

[01:36:41] to then make everyone like to connect with everyone over the airwaves? I think it's getting a little metaphorical more than actual. I think it's not like she's sending the vibes through the TV. She can definitely like read the alien, you know, and kind of translate. It's just the thing where I'm like, oh, this is a moment where every like he shows like people on the subway on their phones. People they've stopped walking. They are just all glued. And I'm like, I don't know. No, I don't know. Aliens? You don't know what? I buy it.

[01:37:10] But this is the moment. I'd be like, oh, there's someone on like a Kansas City news channel who's talking about aliens. The movie is going to live or die on this. I 100% believe that if I was on the subway and like I could see the moment where like someone's phone pings and another person's phone pings and then everyone in the car is like, are you seeing this? There have been moments like this. And this would be the biggest one that had ever happened in the history of humanity. Definitely.

[01:37:35] By the way, it plays out down to even just the transferring of like, oh, no, this is getting bumped up to the nightly news. This is no longer Emily Blunt's broadcast. She breaks the story. This woman, I think, is so fucking good who plays the newscaster at the end. Yeah, she is really good. The newscaster, she's having to play like, I don't know what's going on. I'm processing this in real time. And I'm overwhelmed as this happens. Would you cry? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I kind of think so. I got choked up watching this film when that happens. I got choked.

[01:38:04] I didn't get choked up during the disclosure part. I got choked up during the, when they're in the house. Which, oh, the truth in the, yeah, yeah. What happens? And so it's, oh, wait, before we get there, we just have to acknowledge another thing, which is that Eve Hewson has been at one point is taken over by Colin Firth's directives to she needs to eliminate.

[01:38:33] He's trying to jump in her brain. Yeah. And get her to. Basically kill her boyfriend, Josh O'Connor. And she's, she's, she is. This is, this is why I wasn't bumping on this, is that there's, the movie's a dangerous risk of getting into can faith overcome all. But I think you can read it more literally that it's not that like the power of Jesus is stopping the alien technology from being used in a bad way.

[01:38:59] It's that like the way she is squeezing the, the cross necklace and causing like, you know, pain in her hand and actual like lacerations is like the, the literalization of how she applies her beliefs to be able to guide her through situations. Not the inherent power of those beliefs, if that makes any sense. That was the distinction for me. And it's down to the fact that she's causing herself pain, right?

[01:39:28] That it's not a self punishment thing as a sacrifice. It's that like the idea of the cross doesn't really do anything. It's what you apply it to that is made manifest then. But she basically, yes, is like using a tremendous amount of willpower to stop Colin Firth from making her kill him. And there are a lot of cool shots with like reflections and a knife.

[01:39:50] And it gets into them, right, them needing to like evolve their level of communication, their relationship where she's like, I don't trust me, tie me up. I should be withheld or, yeah, restrained. And I love the bit of him and the, they go to like a random motel and he immediately tries to find every single item in the hotel that has the name or the address because he's like her eyes are a transmission device. Right. Yeah. That's really cool. How does he eventually, he like moves something.

[01:40:20] It's, he's holding the, um. Stick. The one wish willow. The diving stick. Oh, no. Uh, he's holding a piece of paper that he wrote down. Oh, right. His, because he is able to, he sees the clip of Emily Blunt speaking alien language and is like, oh, that's a mathematical equation. He starts translating it by hand on a piece of paper from the hotel notepad. While he thinks she's sleeping. He's holding it in his hand and he drops it. And so she can see. Immediately. Immediately. Yeah.

[01:40:47] Um, this was the thing I forgot to, uh, finish setting up. But this notion that the, but Colin Firth character is so completely curdled that he is so kind of like Colonel Kurtz died in his beliefs. Largely in the wake of his wife's death. That he eventually learned this. Right. This man's completely corrupted now. And, and the way that Coleman Domingo tries to relate to him of like, you used to actually think about things and now you're so concerned with losing your position, your money, your status, your power.

[01:41:15] These people who just then, you know, the, the desire for security, uh, even when you become a billionaire, just completely rots your fucking brain. And you'll do anything to make sure that no one takes a dollar from you anymore, basically. Yeah. And I think Spielberg's commenting, obviously on like people who crave power and government and then we'll do anything to keep it working for say. Donald Trump. Sorry to say his name. You heard of this guy?

[01:41:43] If you say it too loudly, Robert De Niro is going to break into the studio. He's no good. Kool-Aid man style. Throwing up his middle fingers. Um, but I also, the implication I sort of got is like, you know, maybe back in the day, Hugo and Converse Carcinoa, you know, were like, we're gonna one day figure out. We're trying to get the public ready. How to finesse this out. And then at some point, Hugo realized like, oh no, you're never right. Your plan is to just keep making money on this shit. Yes.

[01:42:13] Keep operating in the background, but never actually let people know about it because like that you're just too scared of losing control of it. And he argues strongly that this is, I am correct. It will destroy society if we allow them. And one of my favorite things is at the end when he's finally cooked. Who plays the underling? I don't know, but he looks mean. That guy was very good. Oh, yeah. Okay. His name, I think is Henry Lloyd Hughes. You know, he's just like the guy with the gun, right? Like the guy who's kind of his fist. Henchman. Yes.

[01:42:42] But like, there's just that moment where finally, when the broadcast is starting, where Firth just sits in the chair and he's like, fine. He's British too. It's over. Yeah. A lot of British cats. I mean, Spielberg respects the Brit. Where was this filmed primarily? New Jersey. Was filmed in New Jersey. Well. Shout out. Huntington, New Jersey, Ben. Also a little Atlanta. Mm-hmm. A little New York City. Mm-hmm. But yeah, like the Cape May Seashore Line Railroad was used for the railway. Shout out to the Jersey Shore. So there you go.

[01:43:11] Did that in a little accent. You did? Yeah. Janusz obviously shot it. Mm-hmm. Oh, Janusz Kaminski shot the same seashore line? She did. Did you know that? I did, yeah. Yeah. Edited by Sarah Brother, who directed, who edited like the last bunch of Spielberg movies with Michael Kahn, but is getting the solo credit here. I mean, Michael Kahn is like 96. Michael Kahn is 95 years young. He's 95 years young. John Williams is 94.

[01:43:41] Like there was something striking looking at the credits of this movie and realizing like the guys that Spielberg has been with for decades and Janusz is a little younger than Steve. Yeah, Janusz is still out there. But when he started, he found a bunch, Steve was the young guy and he found a bunch of collaborators who had 10 years experience on him. Right. And these guys are getting really, they're dancing around retirement. Right. These are sort of the final laps around for a lot of them. They get captured in the hotel or at least Daniel does. Yes.

[01:44:10] Jane escapes with the stick. We got back to Margaret who has left the hospital, ditched her frigging lame ass boyfriend. Sell her down the river. Yeah. I mean, he's sort of, you know, you sort of, it's a good Spielberg character because you empathize that he's like, well, I think my girlfriend's having a mental episode. It also starts and it feels like this couple's going to break up in six weeks. Yeah, definitely. They're already kind of weird because she's like, I think we should move again.

[01:44:38] And he's like, but I want to like sell guitars in Kansas City or whatever it is he seems to do. It's unclear. But, you know, the thing we've sort of mentioned, but there's, you know, like it's like when they're in the gas station, it's pandemonium because everyone's prepping for what seems to be maybe not the end of the world, but some kind of escalation in a foreign war, like Russia, North Korea. That might be like a nuclear exchange or something like something crazy is happening. None of our main characters care. No. Ever. No.

[01:45:07] You know, so it's all backgrounded. And I love that it's all kind of just like, you know, North Korea, you kind of just hear this sort of vague, like, you know, yeah, the situation continues to escalate. It's also, if anything, and they make it, you know, textual at one point, but there's a concern of, will anything we do even be able to cut through the noise? Right. It's like, there's already such a big story happening. Yeah. But so, yeah. So like when Wyatt Russell is finally kind of clearly like, I think I need to, you know,

[01:45:33] hand Emily off to the authorities, they're in a gas station where it's all popping off. Yes. So she can kind of sneak out. Calls and reports her. Right. Emily and Josh link up. Wait, do we, I'm sorry, one more. Do we like the scene where it takes him three times to run over the phone with the car? Oh, I love that. Such a loser. I love that. She's like, you didn't fuck it. The wheels didn't even get it. That was so funny. Drive forward. And like, I was watching it being like, I also would struggle. It's like, I don't know exactly where the wheel is when I'm sitting in the car. It's really good.

[01:46:02] She's really funny. Yeah. At this point, they establish, you kind of see what the other people are seeing as they're talking to Emily Blunt. Where there's like that shot in the trailer where you see like an old woman turn into Emily Blunt. Oh, sure. When the camera passes a guy's, the back of a guy's head. And without any context, you're like, oh, is she a shapeshifter? She's like, oh, yeah.

[01:46:28] But really, that is just like the visual way to represent that every time she is connecting with someone, she is, they are seeing her as someone. I read it as it's one of her powers, much like the language thing. It's like when that's what she needs to do, that's what it is. Because you have the scene later where she gets out of custody and she does it by looking at 15 consecutive people. And to each of those people, she is the one person who a silent look from would make them stop in their tracks.

[01:46:57] I thought that sequence was insane. I thought that sequence was incredible. That's another time when I started to like kind of tear up a bit. I think this movie is so beautiful. That's how she frees Josh. Yep. Yes. And then they are like, we just got to get back to Kansas. She started off leaving Kansas, but now she's got to get back to Kansas. They just find each other in the way that Hugo said of like, you'll know where to go. She'll know how to reach you. There were always two. Yeah. When they get to Hugo in his little warehouse where he is, we find out that he has been reconstructing her home.

[01:47:27] From childhood. And it is important that they reconstruct the circumstances. Circumcision? Nope. In fact, David, I have to push back here. They do not reconstruct Steven Spielberg's circumcision. What if Spielberg's like, the problem is the aliens have been circumcised. And then you're like, wait, what's he worried about? This was his problem? It's an anti-circumcision street.

[01:47:52] And he starts going on like weird TikTok interviews, you know, like with like circumcision influencers. I must, I must call out who else recently reconstructed their childhood home in exacting detail to then restage the events of primal trauma? Huh? Wait, who? Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg. Yeah, that guy. And the Fablemans. Yes. Right? I wonder if, because like, I feel like this movie was entirely built post Fablemans. Yeah, correct.

[01:48:19] If he's like, right, reckoning with like, what a strange emotional experience that was for him. To reenact these things. To build these things. Yes. Right? Like, you know, because like so much of the magic trick of the movie. And what I love also is that when Emily Blunt is confronted with her home, she's not just like, wow. She's like, all right, so it's my house. What's going on? Why is this my house? I know this is my house. She's like totally overwhelmed. Yes.

[01:48:43] And yes, I am the exact age that like, they say that she's 38, which Emily Blunt is not 38. How old do you think she is though? I think she's like 43. Yeah, she's not that much older. But I am 37 and a half. I'm 37 and a half as well. Marie and I are very close. We're very close. You're 40. And Ben's about to turn 41. Welcome to the club, brother. Yeah.

[01:49:09] But just like the way that the house looked, the TV, the stacked VHSs. And then when you got to her bedroom, I was just like, oh, I started thinking like how I would react if someone reconstructed. Because my home was torn down. Yeah. My parents gave up where I grew up. Yeah. So I can never go back. All my homes. Yeah. And I just, I started to think about what an overwhelming experience. No, totally. I know.

[01:49:39] Like I could, I know I always visit my house in London. I visited your house in London. I stood outside and took a picture for you. Well, it's in Dislington, right? Yes, it's in Dislington. No, it's in Kansas. And there's a little, there's a little, there's a little blue plaque outside saying David Sims. My street does have a blue plaque on it. It did. Not in my room. It's a, I think it's Kwame and Karuna. It's a very interesting person. It says bark, bark, woof, woof, the dog lived here. Maybe one day there will be a blue plaque. Maybe. Maybe.

[01:50:07] Famous podcaster, David Sims. And people go like, another new low for blue plaques. God, I didn't think they could get any stupider. Famous podcaster, Jesus Christ. Used to just be like Charles Dickens. Now it's fucking this guy. Co-creator of gay ET, David Sims. And then someone's like, oh, actually, that's pretty funny. He's like, all right, all right. Maybe it's funny. They didn't even land on LGBT. And they're like, he caught up with it like two years later. Does Ben, does your dad live in the home that you grew up in? He does.

[01:50:36] Not only does he live in the home he grew up in, he lives in like a family home that's generation. It was my great grandmother's home. And that's where the genes were buried. That's a home built. Hollowed ground. Built by Hosley. Is your bedroom still your bedroom or has it been converted? Does it have like Ninja Turtles posters and shit? No, that all has been taken down. It just functions as a guest room. What happens next? You basically, you get the chase, the train.

[01:51:03] And then they're in the house and they both are, you know, they're holding the stick and they have to like, they have to kind of go back to the moment of what we learned to be their first alien encounter. Coleman Domingo has been focused on her. We're trying to find her. He knows that there was a human, a child that was abducted by an alien. What he realizes when Joshua Conner calls him and tells him that he can understand what she said on the broadcast, there were two. There were always two.

[01:51:31] Of course, there were that they were abducted together as children by a bunch of woodland critters in their Thomas Kinkade Christmas cottage. That's how they visualized it to them so that the children would not be terrified, which is why it looks so artificial. And they were imbued with these powers of communication to hopefully be able to someday. Maria, are you about to cry at this idea? I don't know. I'm thinking about like... I think this movie's incredible.

[01:51:56] I'm thinking about how because they're animals, it's often brought up as kind of like a failure of humanity that we have more empathy for animals than we do for other humans. Right, right. That people get more upset when they see animals being hurt in movies than they do... Like the classic Hurricane Katrina, people are more freaked out when they saw a dog on a roof, you know, even though they've been watching suffering. And there is something... It's very purposeful. Yes, that the aliens have chosen to present themselves as like... I know just...

[01:52:25] If there's like a scene where you see the way the fox is looking at them, you're like, I like that they stack up on top of each other. I like that they make a little kind of like... There's like a little raccoon at one point. Interesting. The animal stuff never really works on me, which probably means I'm a monster. Although, I mean, like I can find an animal cute and not want to see an animal be in peril. But like, for me, I was much more just like... The kid stuff gets to me of just like the idea of a kid not knowing what's happening and all... You know, like now that just like freaks me out so much.

[01:52:54] You're right, Murray, that there's the thing of like, if they presented to us as aliens, would we be terrified? And if they presented as humans, would we be distrusting? Only by presenting as a magical deer, cardinal, and raccoon who all stack up on top of each other and are good friends. The big three, deer, raccoon, cardinal... Sure, of course. Um, would we feel safe and comfortable enough? Yeah. I want to share because I've said on this podcast many times that I am jealous of people who've been abducted by aliens. Yes, you have said that.

[01:53:23] And that is something that I've always wanted. Friend of the show, Chris Berube. The great Chris Berube. Uh, producer and sometimes host of 99% Invisible, great podcast. A person who is so nice, he makes you feel like an asshole. The, yeah, Raz would say the friendliest man in the world. There's no more genuine friendly person than Chris Berube. Was he abducted by an alien? Probably. No, but I was talking to him about this movie and my relationship with aliens and he did challenge me where he said, wouldn't that be really scary? Obviously.

[01:53:53] I was like, huh. Obviously. Uh, maybe. You are more talking about like, kind of, again, like, I feel like we're all nostalgic for the 90s aesthetic around alien abductions, which. Bright light. Right. Which also bled a little bit into, and I'm not going to call you out here, Ben, but, uh, you know, drug subcultures, right? Of kind of like, you know, T-shirts, uh, where there's a gray alien and maybe he has a joint and he's got his fingers up and he's coming in peace.

[01:54:23] Who's the fifth lead of this movie is that guy. There's also like the SNL, the SNL skit, the alien encounter skit where it's like three of them had had a, like, I was bathed in a warm light and I felt held and cared for and it was magical. And then you have Kate being like, uh, actually they stuck stuff up my butt. I was Donald ducking it. Like, I guess in my mind, I'm like, I'm going to show them Sega Genesis. And we're going to have a blast. They'd love it.

[01:54:53] Tocham and Earl. They'd love Tocham and Earl. Yeah, dude. They would. They would. Those are the kind of guys. Sehr gut, sehr gut, sehr gut. Sehr gut? Wieso Steuer ist sehr gut? Das sagen ganz viele. Cool. Wer sagt das? Stiftung Warentest, Computer Bild, Focus Money, Chip, Finanztip, such dir was aus. Mega. Aber das ist doch bestimmt kompliziert. Nö. Einfach Foto von der Lohnsteuerbescheinigung machen und fertig.

[01:55:23] Klingt sehr gut. Ist sehr gut. Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Mit Wieso Steuer. Okay, yeah, disclosure day. Little kids getting abducted by aliens. Yes, that seems very effective. It's very effective. They remember everything. They remember everything. Colin Firth is still trying to fucking fuck with their shit. They have to, like, make themselves invisible, which is another thing you can do with the alien stick.

[01:55:54] So that was really fun. Yeah, invisible house. Bunch of guys get bonked. Good. A lot of guys get bonked. I do want to say, and this is like, if we're talking about, like, empathy in cinema, one of the guys that plays one of Hugo's assistants, I think his name is, like, Brandon Wilson. Mm-hmm. The entire movie, every time they showed him, I was like, I know this guy from somewhere, but I don't think that he's an actor. I think he's someone that I know who, like, happens to be in a movie.

[01:56:21] Like, I just felt like I had some sort of different connection with him. This guy? No. Brandon Wilson. Well, I don't know who Brandon, he's not showing up. All right. Maybe his name's wrong. No, you're, you're going to. No, yeah, no, you're right. Brandon Wilson. Here he is. Yeah. Okay. He's in Nickel Boys. That's the whole thing where I thought I knew him. Oh. Because that movie's so empathetic. The movie placed you in his head. And so the whole time, well, you're placed in the other guy's head. Yep. For most of the movie, and that guy's your friend. And then only after the movie when I looked it up and I was like, oh, it's the guy from Nickel Boys.

[01:56:50] I was like, God, that's a crazy reaction that I had. Thank you for solving this. That's a really good movie. Yeah, it's an excellent movie. You know, no shit. Like, you know, good movie. That I have not felt the need to rewatch, or not felt the desire to rewatch because it's so emotionally demanding and all that. It's such a complete experience. Yeah. But just throw it on. Yeah. I don't know. If you're listening to this and you've never seen Nickel Boys, you should watch Nickel Boys. Nickel Boys 40X. If we can get it back in theaters for a little 40X. Make it even more of an empathetic experience.

[01:57:17] So funny how interested you are in ruining movies with 40X. I'm sorry. You pronounced preserving the art of theatrical movie going in a very strange way. Hoppers is now on Disney Plus, and I was watching it with my three and a half year old nephew. Yeah. It must have sucked sitting in a stool chair. Well, the whole time I was having PTSD flashbacks to being jostled around. We had a great time. We were hopping about. You guys saw Hoppers in... Yeah. Yeah, with the Ehrlichs.

[01:57:47] Still to this date, my only 40X experience. Both Ehrlich and I were like, we don't know how you do this. I'm going tonight and I went last night. What are you seeing tonight? I'm doing two consecutive nights. And what did you see last night? I took my little cousin to see He-Man, Masters of the Universe last night. And then tonight I'm going to see Scary Movie. In 40X. Yeah. Are they going to smoke up that theater? Yeah. 100% get better. And I'm going to laugh. I'm going to laugh. That's pretty funny. Thank you.

[01:58:15] One of the other people in Hugo's crew. No, Robbins. Her name? Gabby Beans. That's a great name. Oh, yes. Yes. She's a very good actor. Yeah. Yeah. I like her. I was just looking her up. Gabby Beans. We've also got... Because it is the classic Spielberg. He's so famous. He doesn't have to worry too much about star power thing. Hettien Park, who I really like,

[01:58:41] who plays this character a lot. Plays the kind of like... Call him first, number four. Right. The person next to the boss on the phone being like, okay, get it done. Get it done. Right? You know, like... But, you know, she's really good. You're saying that he doesn't need to cast Major Star, but... Jeremy Seamus. Gabby Beans, of course, was Honeydont's personal assistant. Honeydont's secretary. You don't get more famous than that. And they have like bits about coffee or whatever. They do the coffee bit. Spider. Her secretary.

[01:59:10] Jeremy Seamus, you know... I love him. Who's a great theater actor. I mean, he's done TV. Yeah, but great local New York actor. Incredible New York theater actor. Yeah. He's like... What is... I mean, he's in charge of the local broadcast. You know, he's like Emily Blunt's boss or whatever. He's so fucking good. And because... I like when he doesn't want to... He's like, why am I going to get off the air right now? Right. Because he has basically two scenes. And scene one is him being like, why are you late? And like, this is so stressful. You know? And then scene two is her returning and being like...

[01:59:40] Oh, you're talking about the manager. I'm talking about the guy anchor. Oh, well, he's funny when he's doing it. Yeah. But no, no. And her returning and being like, this is what we're going to do. And he's like, I don't really get it, but okay. And you watch him snap into action. He's so good. Yeah, I agree. Don't you think? Yeah. But he's also reacting to her suggestive power somewhat too. Of course, she's working on him. She's working on him. But that's okay. But that's where you realize this movie is going to build to a final set piece of... They just have to get on the news and they have to show everyone everything.

[02:00:09] And this is the real SNL thing because this becomes a sequence that's a tribute to live switchboard editors. Totally. So that's... Oh, I found that so thrilling. It's incredible. So cool. And like, look, I'm someone... SNL for sure. I love sports. Like, it's something where sometimes in sports you'll see a behind-the-scenes look at that. That of like... And here's how that play was, you know, called live in the broadcast where you see the guy... There's that Oscar clip that will go... You know, ready? 10, 10. Yeah, yeah.

[02:00:38] Like, the Oscars is perfect for that. Could be getting junior speech where he's in real-time directing. Right. Get a camera over to her right now. You know, I want to see the mom. I want to see the... You know, like, you know, like... Cut to Cruise. Right. But just the whole, like, ready? Three. Three. You know, like, just the way they have some kind of internal metronome. So cool. I'm going to invoke it. Uh-oh. It reminded me of Sully where you will cut to a sequence where the hero of the sequence is a guy you met 30 seconds ago, not the lead character. You know? Where it's like, suddenly, who's pulling this off? People were just meeting for the first time.

[02:01:07] Our characters have taken us to this point, but this is new. You know who else pulled it off? Sully. Sully. 100. Chesley, Sully, Sully. 100. I thought when they cut to the, like, NBC headquarters in New York, I thought we were going to get, like, a cameo from, like... From Lorne? No, maybe not from Lorne. Or Domingo. Can I do my impression of Lorne at the Tony? Yeah. Okay. Marie, phone out. Phone out. Marie, get a picture. Okay, wait. Sorry. He was sitting low, low and slow,

[02:01:36] barbecue style. Dude, when Schmig... Say... You know, they announced Schmigadoon. Yeah. And for some reason, he accepted. I mean, I know he's a producer, but, like, I don't think he's the lead. No. But it just cuts to him. Radio City just... It's just, like, fucking Lorne? Like, really? Like, I love Lorne. Like, I was fine with Lorne. Lorne's cool. It was a very anticlimactic final award. That was just one of those Tonys.

[02:02:06] I love the Tonys. Me too. But every year, there's this strain to the Tonys, even more of the Oscars, of, like, we're really trying to sell mainstream America on the things we have on offer right now, right? On, like, what Broadway's got for you. And some years, it rocks. Like, they're like, look at all this cool shit. And you're like, yeah, this rocks. And some years, it's like, Schmigadoon's the best musical. And, uh, unfortunately, we must also contractually, because it was nominated, present, like, a number from Titanic or whatever. Your Titanic hate...

[02:02:36] So bad, dude. Have you seen it? It's the most epic bacon millennial, like, loser shit. Throw it in the ocean. I saw Titanic, like, four years ago at the old UCB thing. That's where it belongs. That's where it must... Stay. Not on Broadway. What will you say? But what is Frankie Grandi supposed to do? If we don't give him the space... You don't like the fact that the character is named Victor Garber? That's so funny to me. That's funny. That sounds like a funny joke. It's so funny. I'm laughing. Listen to me laugh.

[02:03:05] You guys suck. No, I think that does sound kind of funny. I haven't seen it. Romley texted me that she was watching it the other day and said it was terrible. It's one of those things that, you know, it broke containment. Like, it belonged, you know, on Off, Off, Off, you know, like Broadway. Did you know that, yeah, Lord Michaels has two Tonys. He also produced Leopold Statt. Oh, that's wild. So we see a montage. Yes. It's really long. Of the whole history of aliens. Different video quality, different formats.

[02:03:35] large and other stuff I'm not familiar with. I feel like if you're a real head, you're probably really recognizing a lot of this stuff. Joe Rogan would have a lot to say about it. Yeah. I was telling the guys... Or I would prefer to shout out Tom Delonge. Oh, sure. Yes. Tom would have a lot to say about it. And I did say this before we started recording, but I watched a documentary by James Fox last night to prepare for this. And it was called?

[02:04:04] I don't remember the fucking name of it. I'm going to have to look it up again. And what did the Fox say? And it was not... Griffin got a different joke out before I was going to say and it was not the star of Rey and Collateral. Right. Oh, Jamie. No. Go see the kingdom. James Fox. It was called The Phenomenon, but it was narrated by Peter Coyote. Oh, right. And I was like, there really is something crazy about the guy who narrates Ken Burns'

[02:04:33] historical docs narrating a thing about like, you know, New Mexico, Socorro, New Mexico, like alien encounters or whatever. To me, it's more crazy that it's Keyman from fucking E.T. being like, this is real now. Yes. Yeah. Griff said this to Marie and she went, hmm, sure. I went, yeah. But he's mostly a Ken Burns guy. I was plotted for my bravery. Is he also in Bitter Moon? I think so. He's the other guy in Bitter Moon. I believe so. Is that right? Checking. There's a long sequence. It's just him and Hugh. What I like is that fucking awesome.

[02:05:03] I like that it goes into real time basically. That the movie slows. They're not even showing you this really from the perspective of our characters. You're seeing people see it but you're also just seeing it. And you're seeing ships. You're seeing cell phone videos. You're seeing Super 8 footage. You're seeing like bad DV camera footage. You're seeing everything. Yeah. You're seeing the aliens. You're seeing the torture. And then they start to wheel in to the television studio. An old alien in a wheelchair. And I did kind of grab

[02:05:32] Reese, the king of TikTok and go like is he going to fucking do it? This is so when I said the ending didn't really work for me I just had trouble buying all of it. That people are affected by it? That it would work. That it would go over. There's like a moment where like someone at NBC News is like I put the footage through our AI filter and they confirmed it's 99% not AI or whatever. And I'm like okay. Like that. You think people wouldn't believe it because of AI.

[02:06:02] I needed a little more skepticism. I mean but the whole movie is built to this idea. We have to you know we have to like just think about like the ensuing minutes and hours. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's not like that all flashes and they're like anyway that was your one look at it. You know it's like this is just the start of all of this is now just out. I think it I think I have this problem generally with alien or monster movies that anytime I see it

[02:06:32] the thing the creature yeah. Then it is like it feels fake. It gets deflated for me. The um what is it Night of the Demon? Oh sure. The classic old movie where they show the demon and you're like ah fuck you didn't have enough money for the demon. Like there's some great movie where it's like the atmosphere is so good. This movie is incredible and they're like and now behold the demon and I'm just like oh it looks okay. Something like under the skin really works for me because like we spend most of the time

[02:07:03] aliens like a human but acting weird and I'm like yeah man who fell to earth like those sorts of things work better. I mean I'm looking at it now it looks pretty fucking good. I don't know. Yeah that looks awesome. I don't know. It's a pretty good demon. Yeah. I think that Steve knocked it out of the park with this alien design. I think it looks great. Yeah I love the design. And I like the ships. I like the weird kind of X ships. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah the ships are really cool. Yeah hell yeah. You get all glimpses up. I love this but we walked out and like half of our friends were like he really went full Spielberg at the end huh? And I'm like

[02:07:33] he went full Spielberg at the end. And it's truly like yeah. My review is Spielberg plays the movie because the end of the movie is everyone watching. And it's just every single face mouth ajar kind of right. You know just yeah. There is a line that I really like from the movie. Elizabeth Marvel says when she's talking to Eve Hewson about how she lost her calling or whatever. And she tells her like you didn't lose faith in God you lost faith in humanity. And that is what

[02:08:02] caused you to turn away from your faith and believing in something. I think I unfortunately am just so cynical right now about other people that I I don't disagree with that but this movie successfully made me buy in the world the reality of the film that it would work. I don't believe it would work in life and I don't feel good about anything. But I did buy it

[02:08:32] within the context of the movie. I think once we got to like once I actually saw like NBC News and then I was like okay now like that's when it started to feel a little more well their programming is totally lost. I mean they wouldn't know what to do with this. So what do you think happens? People are just like whatever. We don't know. And then they just go back into film Twitter and just are posting. Like is that? I mean film Twitter is pretty good. Let them post through it. You know like what if there's a GIF? What if? What if? I am having I don't know

[02:09:02] if I believe that a broadcast in Kansas City would get picked up right away. You got to roll with this a little bit. You just got to roll with this a little bit. I know. I was having trouble rolling with it. These things would move fast. Yeah. They really would especially in an internet age where people can communicate with each other this much. It just I can see it showing up on the internet before it gets put. But I think about I mean you invoked it but I think about shit like the night that they fucking got Bin Laden. I think about Bin Laden which is one of the last times that I was like

[02:09:31] I think I have to turn the news on. Yes. I'm hearing from Dwayne the Rock Johnson. When something crazy happens. Yeah. Which we won't say because we don't want anyone coming after us to invest in us. When it happens. When it happens. Yes. When it happens. Okay. Well the box office game. I really am. Disclosure day. I would guess right now that it's going to open to 40 which feels like in the middle of where the projections are but I really have no idea and I don't know how it's going to play. I've had friends for the last couple weeks because we got to see this early and thank you to the kind folks at Universal for helping us

[02:10:01] with podcast scheduling. But people have asked me what I think about it and then it's followed by do you think it's going to work? Is it going to work as an Oscar movie? Is it going to work as a box office movie? And I went I don't know. It's really classical. It's really old fashioned. It's classic Steve but it doesn't feel in conversation with this moment in a way that maybe is what people want because this feels like a moment of everyone rejecting the traditional blockbuster model the last 20 years. Now they're mostly rejecting it for 20 somethings with One Wish Willows and Backrooms

[02:10:32] and this is literally the elder statesman. I was so excited when Spielberg was on Rewatchables he's like I'm about to go see Backrooms I'm excited it's fun. It just rocks. And then he gave like a red carpet interview where he like shouted Payne Parsons and Cray Barker out and was like they're young guys and I was young and I think it's so great and I'm like you know what good for you Steve. One of the greatest moments in the history of podcasting is on the 2001 Rewatchables where Bill Simmons is like Josh 2's pretty good check it out. No the moment for me that's the best where he goes but 70 millimeters

[02:11:02] back now do you know about this? As if Steven Spielberg isn't I think Bill's I think Bill's having a little fun when he says that. I don't know. It's a great moment either way. The part of the magic of Bill Simmons in my opinion though is you're always kind of like does he know he's doing a bit or not? Half the time he does. I said this movie felt like a Shyamalan movie to me which I am a Shyamalan fan. It does feel Shyamalan. It's very Shyamalan. It's very Shyamalan. Yes. In good ways. I also think that it's going to run into the Shyamalan thing

[02:11:31] of it being so open hearted and earnest that it's going to rub people the wrong way. Yeah. I think it's going to be divisive. Yeah. I really don't know. No I think so. I'm going to cook on that one. Huh? I'm re-watching it. It's like it's got a few sequences that are really hidden. It's just what's happened with all of these movies of his. Even Ready Player One the most hated of them has. I like Ready Player One. I'm a fierce defender. People keep telling me I'm a liar about it. Has its fierce defenders.

[02:12:02] And yeah it's just you know it's just what our man's doing. I re-watched the post last night and I remember being like eh on it when it came out. The ending is still I think somewhat disastrous. I agree with that. I don't really even write is the Supreme Court steps? No it's like they're setting up the like Nixon extended universe and they start with like the Watergate. It's a cliffhanger that he never made good on with the sequel. You have no idea what's going to happen. Well what do you mean what happened? He went to see an alien with Jackie Gleason. He's picking up

[02:12:32] the thread here. There are just some really good shots in it and I'm like oh man this is like You know who's in that movie? Tracy Letts. Lettsy. Yeah. Carrie Coon. Both of them. I have felt even in the Spielberg movies I have loved in the last 20 years that he's had a bit of a running ending problem. Yeah. That he doesn't know how to leave well enough alone. That's true. He overstates things four times. This is a full stop ending for him. It's great. That's rare because usually he loves to nap a lot. Like the disclosure is big but then it just ends

[02:13:01] at the exact moment and I was just like Yeah that's true. He hasn't done that. Kind of the one time he's fully nailed the ending for me since Jurassic Park. One more thing with him on Rewatchables where like I do truly love that he was like I made Ready Player One because I loved to end that because of the ending where he's like By the way it's closed a few days and we can go outside please. He's like that's why I made that movie. He also was like my kids hated me for that one. Yeah. Hell yeah. Fucking tell them Spielberg. So we think

[02:13:31] Obsession is going to be number two at the box office again. Oh right. Yeah I think possibly I think Scary Movie and Masters of the Universe will likely drop quite a bit and so I would put Obsession at two. I'd put those at like three and four. You were asking Marie. Maybe Backrooms is kicking around at five. I don't think there's any other big release this week. You were asking do you think Scary Movie is going to have a big drop? That franchise maybe traditionally has the biggest second weekend drops of any franchise ever. Yeah. My all time favorite stat is that Scary Movie 4 made a quarter

[02:13:59] of its domestic total on its opening day. It made like 20 on Friday and then it went to like 10 to 5 and ended up at 6. Some other movies coming out this week. Stop That Train which was not made with AI. Well not! No! AI! Nope. It wasn't! Made by hand. If I keep saying this people will believe me. And a movie that Alison Willemore told me rocks The Furious. Yes. It's like a Hong Kong action movie. I want to check this out. So did David Orlick and I was like oh cool.

[02:14:30] Gotta see it. Mandalorian and Grogu Oh I'm actually predicting that to Quintupolitz would go jump back up. Everyone's realizing it's good now. That is the next present my daughter is going to get for continuing to stay in bed. Galactic Snack and Grogu? Correct. Which she's very excited to receive. Of course what do you think the first of the fucking bag of toys I brought back that are swag from people who give us nice toys? Let's say mostly Reese the King of TikTok. The wonderful Reese King of TikTok. Gave you a lot of Nintendo swag

[02:14:59] and I gave you Galactic Snack and Grogu. Exactly. What was the first that you gave Bowser Jr.? Bingo. He's an all-star. She's just like fucking Bowser Jr. He's got the paintbrush. The best guy in the world. What was your joke? You made a joke about someone else's son having a magical paintbrush. I can't remember. I just like this as a joke structure that anyone's son has a magic paintbrush. It was the name Junior that activated me but I can't remember. Yeah so Mando and Grogu does exist. Oh Wayne Groh Jr. was my joke. Oh right. The Heat 2 will have Wayne Groh Jr.

[02:15:29] and he has a paintbrush. We were saying we were saying that Tim Simons should read for Wayne Groh Jr. in Heat 2. Wait that's so good. And then Sim said Wayne Groh Jr. and his magic paintbrush. He's got a magic paintbrush. Wait but I don't I haven't read Heat 2 so I'm very confused about the timeline. Don't worry when you read Heat 2 you stay confused. It won't make anything more clear. It rocks to be clear. But you don't read Heat 2 and go I definitely see how this is a movie. You're like whoa okay.

[02:15:59] Alright you know what Mikey man I trust you. But yeah that I mean there's nothing else big this week. So yeah I do think it'll be mostly these holdovers. I do. I just I got the hard number so I just want to share this Toy Story 5 which I do think is going to rule this summer. I do think Odyssey being R-rated kind of solidifies unless Spider-Man is way better than we're guessing. It does feel like Toy Story 5 kind of has the runway now. I mean I know what you mean

[02:16:28] but the Odyssey pre-sale stuff is completely unprecedented and insane. Like it's just kind of insane. Also Oppenheimer is more ostensibly more boring and also rated R. Yes. And three hours. But it couldn't be Barbie and Toy Story 5 might make Barbie numbers. It might. The family movie thing it's just like people you know are like yeah it'll have legs for you know for years because of you know family movie stuff and it's like that can be true but then oddly sometimes it's not.

[02:16:57] Like Disclosure Day is also hoping for its second weekend is a Father's Day weekend. Oh. It's hoping for a nice hold I think because of that. It's a good dad movie. Because right it's going for dad but obviously it will be up against Toy Story 5. I don't think Leviticus or the death of Robin Hood are really too threatening there. And the next week you got Supergirl and I think now with these fucking superhero movies it seems like it's just kind of like they open okay. Yes. Supergirl's not going to get the blank check bump so I think that's really good for it. That's so brutal.

[02:17:28] And I And also there's another thing standing in Toy Story 5's way. My most anticipated movie of the summer Minions vs. Monsters. Minions and Monsters. It's got some time before Minions swings around. It's got two weeks. Okay. But beyond that every time I see a Minions and Monsters trailer I'm like am I into the Minions now? It looks this rock. Strange. I just want to read because I got the actual numbers here. Scary movie 4 opened to 44 million and ended up at 90.

[02:17:58] Nice. It was a straight double and the first four days it opened on Easter weekend it went from 19 to 13 to 7 to 3 on four consecutive days. Look these movies are bad. That's how these movies perform. Yes. But in 4DX smoke. So you saw okay so you saw Scary Movie 4 and 4? No he's seen that tonight. I thought you already saw it though. No he's You're going back? He's seen it for a second time in 4DX. Look it's promises made to friends. You saw it for the first time with Mitchie.

[02:18:27] I saw it with Mitch and Zach Cherry. Right. Annabella Cherry. Yeah. It was great. And Micas. And Micas. The great Micas. Yeah. And what's the what's the other thing you saw in 4DX? I saw Human and Afford which I've also seen twice. Both movies I kind of like. Yeah. Two movies you didn't write really recommend. The movies! No look I'm pro movies. There's stuff in Human I like. It's just it's they fixed half of the script and if they had another year I probably would fully like it as a movie. I'm going to watch it. Yeah.

[02:18:57] But I will say the initial reaction had me push it down the sort of priority list a little bit. Especially with it not being based on things you care about at all. I don't care about these things. It's true. Human is not one of my one of my fellas. I do. I just I really Do you care Ben? No. No. You never had it. I'm really I'm smart from what they did to my boy Oracle. They did not Is he not in it at all or is it a hurting situation? They do an in-credit thing that I think is worse than if he hadn't been in it period.

[02:19:26] Now if there was a Thundercats then I'd be in. I believe Adam I watched some Thundercats. Wingard is supposed to do Thundercats. Really? The one for me is if Matt Johnson really is making a Magic the Gathering movie. He's being serious about it. That is the like sleeper code activated. Do you know what I did the other day? And then this has to be the end of the episode. Yeah. So I went to a baseball card store because I'm obsessed with baseball cards again. So I went to a card store. Yeah. I'm looking for baseball cards. David now just spends so much time buying toys and trading cards. I want to call out the context are different than me.

[02:19:55] For your daughter. For my wife. For your wife. Well, mostly I'm getting free toys for my daughter. But yeah, sure. I buy her a lot. I'm not saying you're collecting for yourself. I'm just saying suddenly. With the card. Baseball cards. Love the baseball cards. I'm in the store. I'm like, hey, do you have this? And they're like, I know it doesn't drop. Series two of the 2026 tops. You know, like doesn't drop till next week. And physically, I'm kind of like, oh, that's fine. I'm walking around and I see Magic the Gathering, which has gone all in much like Lego back in the day on like, they just do like, you know, Lord of the Rings cards now, right? Like they just,

[02:20:24] just license them out. And I loved that game when I was a kid. They had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Magic the Gathering cards. So I bought a fucking box of them. Wow. Wait a second. Yeah. Because we did a role-playing game years ago. And that was kind of a fun format. Magic is a little, because it's like a strategy game, though. It's a little less fun like to maybe record. Got it. I don't know. I don't know. I've never played. All right. Well, we get it. You're cool. No, it's fine. Ben, can you do me a favor

[02:20:52] as we wrap this episode up? Yeah. Can you turn the printer on so I can print the sides for the audition I'm going to run to go do? Yes. Thank you. We have a printer here? Yeah, we do. It's right there. Oh. I mean, thank God we have some things that are useful in this office. Hey! What? An office full of useful things. So next week, we start Andrew Stanton. Yeah. That's right. The Toy Story 5 episode will be coming at a delay. I hope we cut out the part where I basically threatened to murder you about three hours, 15 minutes. Yeah, I also hope we cut that out. In the Finding Nemo episode?

[02:21:21] Yeah, just because if we don't it'll be really... More fuel for the fire of like, oh, David wants to murder Griffin Newman. It's also just like I'm not going to agree to license it out to the Netflix doc in five years. Right. Wait, no. My family. If Netflix wants it. Who murders who? My estate. Excuse me. So you're going to murder him? Yeah. Okay. That's what he claims in the Nemo episode. No! I don't say that. And look, we'll cut all of it out but he gets like detailed. I know. That sounds like a Doughboys episode where Mike starts talking and you're like,

[02:21:51] wait, Mitch, have you planned something? That's when they talk about having songs on the show. That's true. Doughboys is the best podcast in the world. Stanton starting with Finding Nemo. A little known film. Yes. A small one by him. Yes. One of the most successful movies. With the great Rebecca Alter from Vulture. We got Becca. And then, yes, we will discuss, you know, some very successful films and also in the blink of an eye. Yes. Successful. I mean, financially successful. And John Carter. The definitive Hollywood bounce of the last 25 years.

[02:22:21] It's a bounce. I'm really excited to reread that New Yorker article. It's one of the best. And, you know, somewhere in the middle there we will, of course, discuss Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, as previously mentioned. Yes. And that series will end with Toy Story 5, which will obviously be late, but it means I'll have gotten to see it two times. Yeah, you'll have percolated on it because we're recording it next week because he's off. I have tickets. I'm going, well, it's work. I'm seeing it a third time after we record the episode. That is the actual fact. So have you already seen it? No.

[02:22:50] We're all seeing it together. Yeah. And then I'm seeing it the night before we record. Oh, okay. And then I'm seeing it again the night after we record. So I get three in before I go to insert foreign country here. Wow. The printer's running, which means everything's working and I'm going to run out of here. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Pod C. A miniseries on the films of Anderstan that has to be said that way or else it doesn't make any sense. Pod C. Pod C. You can also check out our Patreon over at patreon.com

[02:23:20] slash blank check. That's so true. It's so true. And we are currently covering, I want to say. We just recently released the Billie Eilish Hit Me Hard and Soft. I don't remember the exact title. The Concert Tour 3D. Slash our trip to Wisconsin. Yeah. As well as paired with a live discussion at the Wisconsin Film Festival we did about Babe 2 being in the city. I mean, no offense when I tell you that's what the episode is. I appreciate that, Greg. Of course.

[02:23:51] And then, yes, we're running through RoboCop. Robert Cop. Yes, that's right. Robert Cop. A movie with one really good one and then some bump. Yeah. It's one of the types of commentary series we do. Yes. Failure to ever make one good follow-up. And frustration mounting. Yes. Yes. But I think they're all fun episodes. I certainly go Griff mode on several areas. So does that mean that David threatens to murder you again? No, I feel like we actually had good times on those ones. Generally,

[02:24:20] I think our frustrations are with the Robert Cop franchise on those ones. Yeah. We have a mutual enemy. We started to get a little grumpy on those. The 2014 one is so bad. So bad that I just remember being really mad. You got worked up. Ben got really worked up. Anyway, tune in for that. And as always, Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted

[02:24:50] by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho,

[02:25:20] Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at blankcheckpod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.