Three Thousand Years of Longing

[00:00:00] Blank Check with Griffin and David, Blank Check with Griffin and David, don't know what to say or to expect. All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check. There's no story about podcasting that is not a cautionary tale.

[00:00:26] That's a good quote for us. David, no bits, genuine question. What is the regional accent she's doing in this movie? She's Scottish, isn't she? Is she supposed to be Scottish? Or is she Irish? I'm going to be honest with you.

[00:00:43] It's been a while since you've seen this movie. It's been a second since I saw this movie and now I can't remember if she's Scottish or Irish. She's doing a very specific accent that I at first thought was Scottish and then I was not so sure.

[00:00:54] Her name Alethea suggests Scottish to me. Her last name is Binnie, which is a very Scottish name. Yeah, she's Scottish. I feel like Idris is often cited as one of the great accent actors of our time. He's kind of immaculate but totally low key also up there.

[00:01:16] Yeah, that's true. It calls her a British scholar here but she's Scottish. Is she doing a hyper regionally specific British accent or is she Scottish? No, Scottish accent. Folks, this is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

[00:01:35] It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who experience massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of wishes to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. At least one wish. And sometimes those wishes clear and sometimes they bounce baby.

[00:01:48] He has gotten two wishes out of Fury Road, would you agree? Because Furiosa obviously is a sure bet. Yes. But nonetheless, him getting that funded is not a guarantee even with the success of Fury Road.

[00:02:07] Yeah, it's a little bit similar to Nolan post-Dark Knight where it's like you get to make Inception and you get to make another Batman movie but you really get to do whatever the fuck you want in that one.

[00:02:20] But the difference is that with Nolan it's like you're like clockwork. You pump out a movie every two to three years. With Miller it's like you take a long time to make a movie, pretty much your whole career.

[00:02:32] He's not, I mean like right at the start he was pretty fast, you know, like through to Thunderdome. But you know then it starts. So it's like after Max Fury Road, knowing everything you know about that movie,

[00:02:45] Miller sits down and is like I want to make a prequel. No one in the room including George Miller is thinking like great, that'll be ready to go in a couple years. It took 20 years to get Fury Road off the ground. Exactly.

[00:02:56] And then making Fury Road was very, very involved. Yes. He's not young. No. No and the other thing was at many points in time he was like I'm doing two Mad Max movies back to back. Like he had Fury Road and Furiosa both planned out. Yes.

[00:03:13] And then it was like he's going to do both of them or he's going to make one of them animated or whatever. So then when it just became he's only doing Fury Road, it's like we're never going to see Furiosa.

[00:03:21] And then even when he was like no I might do Furiosa, you're like yeah you might do Furiosa. How badly do you want to go back into the desert and shoot another Flaming Cars movie? Is Hemforth playing Immortan Joe in Furiosa or is he playing someone new?

[00:03:34] He's playing someone new. So who's playing Immortan Joe? Is it Tom Burke? No, I think Immortan Joe's not. No, he's in it. He is? According to the synopsis. Okay, interesting. No because they recently photos came out of Chris Hemsworth's character.

[00:03:48] And he had like a big top hat on or something and he looked wild right? And he's got like a Raleigh Fingers mustache. Really? Yeah. Let me try and find it. He looks like a fictional character who owns a candy store. You know what I'm saying?

[00:04:01] Like you know when like a candy store comes up? A sweet shop. Yes, you know when like a sweet shop comes up with like a cartoon avatar of its owner? Yeah. He looks like that. But his character name is absurd. Wait, what is his character name?

[00:04:13] Look it up. Tom Burke is playing the character that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was originally supposed to play. Which makes me think it is not Immortan Joe. It wouldn't be Immortan Joe one would think. Right. Whereas this kind of looks like it could be Immortan Joe type. It could.

[00:04:29] Maybe. But it also looks like right he's like Willy Wonka's grandpa or whatever. I forgot he had the beard as well. The mustache goes like this and then some of the other photos he had like you know. Oh Dementus is the supposed name. Dementus. Dementus.

[00:04:43] How do you get that name you think? I don't know maybe just by being a super chill normal guy. I don't know there's just something about it where it's like how does 3000 Years of Longing exist? A 60 million dollar movie. It is the big question. A 60 million. 60.

[00:04:59] It's a pretty expensive movie. I mean yeah. You know and it looks pretty fancy. It's a real blank check. Look. Got all those little cutaway story scenes. Sequences. We set up the premise of the podcast right. But a premise we should say that really solidified around Fury Road.

[00:05:16] We've said this before but the night that we figured out what the podcast should be after almost a year of doing only Star Wars prequels was the night that we saw Fury Road for the first time. Absolutely. This is the fucking thing. And it was the fucking thing.

[00:05:30] It really was the fucking thing. And that's a perfect example of a guy who's in a real blank check position where it's like you made this beloved blockbuster that I nominated for and won a bunch of Oscars.

[00:05:43] It's like one of the most critically adored movies of its decade. It's a movie that's going to play forever. Kind of everybody likes it. Everybody likes it. Yeah.

[00:05:54] It's like that rare kind of thing that we talk about sometimes on the show like the Matrix or Sixth Sense or whatever where it's like you just you ticked all the boxes. It worked on every level. And yet even still it took seven years.

[00:06:08] Other factors involved pandemic and such but Miller takes his fucking time and he made about the weirdest movie he possibly could have made with his cachet.

[00:06:17] Even knowing that I think to some degree he was hammocked by the promise of doing another Mad Max which he's doing in a weird way. I'm just interested by the arc of it. It's like you know in one way it's a logical arc right.

[00:06:31] You know it's what we're saying. It's like hey you make Fury Road sure you get to make one for you a little bit right. That's fun.

[00:06:37] And yet at the same time it's like it almost makes sense that he's in production on Furiosa almost to be like you know this won't be the last you hear of me or this isn't the direction I'm going in forever. Yes.

[00:06:51] But then again I also just think he's George Miller and he's in his late 70s. He's not young. No no he's not. And he's like you know got to make this. Yeah. Look we did our whole George Miller miniseries about two years ago.

[00:07:06] More because it was bifurcated by the pandemic right. Like that's the one that yeah. Yeah that was the one. Yeah early 2020. I guess we did almost no no we yeah we because we did like Babe Pig in the City and maybe Happy Feet 2 on Zoom.

[00:07:21] I'm trying to remember. Yeah Fury Road we had done already. And we'd done Happy Feet. Yeah we'd done some of them. Right. We had done an Efron episode remember we'd done like. We had mixed nuts in the can. But we did right. Happy and we still do.

[00:07:33] We always got some mixed nuts rattling around the can. But we yeah no Witches of Eastwick. Happy Feet 2. Babe Pig in the City. Yeah we did a few of them online anyway. Anyway anyway. Yeah so that was when it was early 2020. Right.

[00:07:48] And even at that time there was the lingering like he wants to make this movie. I mean as is often the case with him he'll like verbalize this like project he wants to do.

[00:07:58] And then you just hear of years of delays of him being like well we were going to shoot here but the weather wasn't right or the timing wasn't this. We need the time to do that or whatever. Right.

[00:08:07] But pretty quickly post Fury Road it felt like it was like this is the next thing I want to do. These are the two actors I have attached. We're putting together financing. Yeah. It took a while to actually come to fruition. You're right.

[00:08:22] It was these it was Idris and Tilda were announced from to begin with. There was no luck because this is one of those movies you could see where it's like oh yeah there were like five genies and five. You know professors right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:36] 2018 announced described as being epic in scope. And I guess it's 2018. It's three years from Fury Road. Yeah. Yeah. He gets to do what he wants. He gets to do what he wants. He gets to do what he wants.

[00:08:47] I mean look people more than allowed to dislike this movie.

[00:08:52] But as a thing I said to you over text last night after seeing this film where the one thing that bums me out is I do feel like there has been some bad faith people gleeful reportage of this movie bombing in this like oh he made this self indulgent art film for 60 million dollars.

[00:09:10] There's a bad crowd on the folly of this and it's not an important crowd and it's not even a particularly influential crowd. But there is a certain crowd that seems to take some weird delight in weird projects not working. Right. What were they thinking. Yeah.

[00:09:23] This is a massive Tory thing and I'm just like dislike this movie or not. It's fine. We should be allowing this to happen. I agree to happen if you fucking make Fury Road you get to do whatever the fuck you want.

[00:09:35] My only thing perfect example of a movie where everyone should step back and go you know what. You're right. This worked on every metric. This is what our podcast is about.

[00:09:44] Fucking we trust you and it happens so infrequently these days and beyond that so infrequently does someone take that cache and actually spend it on something like this that would never get made and certainly not at the scale otherwise. Beyond that.

[00:10:00] We should be thrilled that they let him make it that it exists. I agree with all that but beyond that.

[00:10:06] I don't because people have been saying like oh it was poorly marketed and like it's too too bad it got kind of dumped and like that's that's all fair. Yes.

[00:10:17] Like I doesn't seem like it was really aggressively marketed and it is getting kind of like put out in late August. The worst like notoriously. Yeah. Not a good time to release. The first weekend of January the worst movie going.

[00:10:29] But I don't think this was a movie that was ever going to be a screaming success. It's pretty esoteric. I think two things can be true at the same time which is they mangled the marketing and release of this movie and this movie is kind of unmarketable.

[00:10:40] Pretty tough to mark. I don't know. I don't know how you sell this movie and the problem is it's it's a movie made for primarily weirdos like us because it's almost like like here's here's a great encapsulation right.

[00:10:55] I went to see some movie with Romley my sister longtime sister and the trailer comes up and the trailer for this movie the first like 30 seconds make it seem like Mrs. Harris goes to Paris. It's a twinkly. I have I've seen the trailer like one time.

[00:11:09] I told a Swinton sitting alone journaling in the cafes was solitary type you know whatever. No hit of mysticism. It's just like Tilda Swinton takes a nice vacation.

[00:11:21] She's a middle aged academic enjoying her solitude right and then like hotel room gin appears trailer goes into bombastic like EDM music hallucinatory like they sell the fantasy story elements like it's like fucking hardcore fucking intense shit and immediately like when the Tilda stuff is happening.

[00:11:45] This looks like my kind of movie and the second it fucking goes like bomb like eyeballs bleeding you know and like harems and shit.

[00:11:54] She was just like oh never mind and it's that thing where you're just like the people who want to see whack a do George Miller probably are put off by how much of this movie is an intimate conversation in a hotel room and the people who want to watch the intimate hotel movie are probably put off by the crazy mess.

[00:12:13] So you need to be a very particular type of person who comfortably can hold both of these things in your head at the same time and have it fit your taste which is why this movie is really tough to market which is all true.

[00:12:23] But I mean God bless the people the good people at MGM and Film Nation whoever else had to put money into this that they probably won't be seeing back.

[00:12:33] Yeah you know that's movie making sometimes obviously but like it just feels like the kind of movie that will be out there and can be kind of stumbled across over the years in the future and we'll find more fans.

[00:12:47] I think it already has I would say the reaction to this film has been mostly mixed not even like mixed negative kind of a sort of like most of most reviews I have seen have been like it wasn't really for me but I can't stop thinking or I keep thinking about it or I'm impressed that it exists.

[00:13:08] That's the thing. But mostly kind of still a mixed bag experience for people. The people talking about it bombing it feels like have not seen it and the people who have seen it are mostly kind of going like huh yeah yeah yeah okay.

[00:13:20] Yes I walked out of this movie like on a cloud which is like a rare thing for me. You pinned it as like favorite movie of the year I just love it in a way that's impossible to describe.

[00:13:31] No I'm saying when you walked out but it was one of those things where it wasn't like this is a number one of the year by default. But I had the experience and I love it. I mostly see phones or press screenings these days.

[00:13:41] And this film obviously had debuted a can and gotten mixed reviews. I was very interested in is a George Miller film. It's an original film. You know I'm very intrigued by it but I was not walking and being like a massive movie of the coming right.

[00:13:58] And I just you know it happens to me a few times a year that I'm watching a movie and I'm just like oh I love all of this. It's just on your wavelength. Yeah.

[00:14:06] And then this movie does have a sort of like major tonal shift in the third act and plot shift. And I've heard from some people where they're so like and that's kind of that kind of didn't work for me.

[00:14:18] And I'm like yeah I guess I get it but I was even more into that. Oh that's what I love that the most for me. And I also I've seen people being like the ending is such an abrupt rug pull it feels like they ran out of money.

[00:14:31] And I'm like that feels like how movies work. No fuck sake. Sorry I mean that affectionately. His problem was not not being given enough money for this movie.

[00:14:43] I love that idea though he's like I was going to do another magnificent tale of the past but I'm out of money so I guess I'll just melt him in a closet. Yes. I'll just turn him to ash in the basement. Right. Fuck you it's cell phone. Yeah.

[00:14:56] But I also I'm just a little bit for this movie. And thing is the whole point. I mean not not to like reduce it too much but this is a we tell ourselves stories in order to live movie right.

[00:15:07] That's the big thing Miller is saying with this film. But a lot of great filmmakers when they get to this stage of their career start to make the movie if not the autobiographical movie almost sort of the self reflexive movie of like why do I do this.

[00:15:23] Weren't we talking about this was Zemeckis. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely some of this was Zemeckis. Late career Zemeckis I forget what guest but someone was pointing out that their their life experience starts to become through the lens of being a director.

[00:15:39] I think it was Emily on the Marwen episode. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds right. And that that's what this movie feels like.

[00:15:45] But yeah you know I'm saying like this is not an autobiographical movie but this absolutely feels like the movie of a 70 year old master being like why do I make movies. Yeah. Why do I do this. Why do I tell stories.

[00:15:56] What is the entire nature of doing this thing of putting on shows and spectacles right. People classic late stage director rumination right. Like what is the meaning of a story and why do we do this. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:08] And for a guy who has always done things in such a unique way in such a bizarre way. And when you hit the end credits of this movie you're reminded like right.

[00:16:17] This guy pretty much has built his entire career existing outside of the studio system you know with very selective collaboration with studios which is Vistach is like the one movie that's really him like doing the American studio system thing. But outside of that it's like.

[00:16:36] And even that is an absolutely bananas movie. But it's a Kennedy Miller Mitchell. Yeah. No that is the closest to his regular collaborators. Hopping on a studio project with a script he didn't write.

[00:16:46] You know he's got this sort of under discussed career as a mini mogul even in terms of like how many other Australian directors he kickstarted like Philip Noyce and stuff. You know but it's like he's just figured out his own way does things on his own terms.

[00:17:01] And then now is sitting back and going like why do I do this. 3000 years of long. Yeah that is the name of the movie we're talking about. Returning to George Miller. 108 minutes of pure entertainment. This is Gene Shallot.

[00:17:17] It's a George Miller film written by George Miller and Augusta Gore. Who is his daughter. I don't think I knew that. That's cool. This is a short story he had read a while ago. By A.S. Byatt.

[00:17:29] And his daughter I believe primarily studies like mythology and folklore and stuff. That's interesting. And he had been looking for a co-writer and then he was like I should just do this with my daughter. Which is this other sweet element to this movie.

[00:17:46] It's like you know his wife is his editor. He makes movies with his best friends and his family. And there is almost this kind of generational passing down thing on this movie. This is his daughter's first credit in anything. Yeah it is.

[00:18:01] And it was one of those things where like it started filming like days before lockdown. Like early March 2020. And so it got massively delayed. And I think they restarted filming in the fall. They end up not filming in Istanbul because of the pandemic. That sounds right.

[00:18:20] They like recreated. It was mostly in Australia. There was some deadline review I read from when this movie was playing at Cannes. And the person interviewing him was like I have stayed at that hotel. I know the hotel you're basing this movie on. Sure.

[00:18:34] It is the most immaculate reconstruction of the rooms in that hotel. Right because it looks like a real spot for sure. They recreated that. Agatha Christie room. Yes the Agatha Christie room. Fucking Agatha Christie needs a fancy hotel to write the mousetrap or whatever. Yeah.

[00:18:51] It is a tale of a lonely British scholar who. Well is she Scottish? Yeah well Scotland is in Britain. For now. For now they may be leaving. They would like to or they're certain people in Scotland would like to be independent.

[00:19:06] Who unleashes a gin inside an antique bottle. Yes. That she buys at a local trinket store. Okay right off the bat I'm definitely buying every fucking bottle I can find at trinket stores for now on. And just rubbing them and then like tossing them over your shoulder.

[00:19:24] Trying to open it. Dammit. Smashing them on the ground. I want a genie. Big time. Do you want him to be like room size like he is and then he comes out basically very large. Yeah I want a big boy. Yeah or a girl.

[00:19:37] I want a big genie. Yeah. Not enough girl genies. No. That's a good point. I dream of. Well that's true. She's kind of the queen of girl genies I guess. But you know often classically represented as male. Yes not many. Out comes a gin played by Idris Elba.

[00:19:55] Let's mention also you said she's a scholar but she's like a folklore. She studies. She studies narrative stories. Her whole thing is trying to find the common threads that are shared across the stories of all cultures to figure out the things that unify us.

[00:20:08] She hosts a TED talk that might be the most boring thing I've ever seen. It's not scintillating stuff. I don't know. I mean it's alright. But she sort of breaks stories down in very mathematical. I believe that's the narrative purpose of that TED talk sequence.

[00:20:23] This is a lady who's kind of boiling things down a little too much. I love when you make stories into math. I do think it's interesting that study of like where it's like you know like Cinderella is like a folk tale or you know that might even.

[00:20:39] But like and then you like look at other cultures and you're like oh they have a lot. This myth recurs like there's various types of myths that sort of like clearly are rooted in something deeper because they sort of spread across the world. It's the thing I like.

[00:20:53] Look her TED talk looks boring as hell. But the thing I like that they put a point on is that she's specifically trying to find the commonalities across cultures.

[00:21:03] It's like what are the story elements that transcend time and place that seem to speak to some fundamental human yearning rather than any cultural specificity. You know. Yeah. Out comes the gym. Well she sees some other creatures too. She is occasionally having hallucinations of other things. It's true.

[00:21:25] Right. There's the little man who tries to take her luggage cart at the airport. Yeah. They joke that it's a gym. And then she sees someone at the TED talk or whatever. Yes. Sitting in the crowd right. She like faint. And she faints. Right. They all have this.

[00:21:40] And she's got a slightly she seems touchy or what's the word like she seems like someone who might like suddenly faint like she just feels a little frail. Yeah. I don't know. She's got the thing where she's hyper defensive about how happy she is. Right. Right. Right.

[00:21:57] She's doing great. She's doing great. This is exactly what I want. She's clearly very successful in this incredibly like niche field. Right. Flown around the world. Great glasses. Great glasses. I like Mike get those for her. I like her haircut a lot in this too. Yeah.

[00:22:11] Your whole look is really good. Tilda rules. Tilda rules. Have we talked about Tilda yet on the show? We're going to. We can talk about Tilda. A friend of the show Fran Hofner pointed out it's odd that she puts her hair up in a towel.

[00:22:19] She has very short hair. Yeah. She doesn't need that. She doesn't need to do that. And I feel like it's more just like well she should look really toweled up. I wish I had just put his hair up in a towel. He should do that. Yeah. Lack of.

[00:22:31] Out comes the djinn and you know he wants to give her three wishes. It's his deal. Yeah. But instead as they're trying to figure out what she might want because she's given him the whole what can I even need? I'm happy. Wishing you know that leads to trouble.

[00:22:49] Did you guys feel like you were missing the genie referencing like sort of like cultural like references over like the last 20, 30 years? I always feel like there's a character who's been contained within a bottle for centuries if not longer. Yeah.

[00:23:06] It makes the most sense for them to not only have a complete understanding of all the pop culture they miss but pop culture that will happen centuries in the future. What I think that should happen is when you come out of the bottle you should go.

[00:23:18] You should stretch. Crack in the neck like it wouldn't believe. Yes. Well he does do this. He's watching TV. He does some TV stuff. Yeah but he's like what the fuck is this? I know I like that. Yo he witch hacks my dudes. He goes to the computer.

[00:23:34] He does some vapor ass shit and he knows all the world's knowledge. That's witch hacking if I've ever heard of it. It's gin hacking. It's gin hacking but you know. Gin is such a fun word. Gin. It is a fun word.

[00:23:47] And so well the basic structure of most of the movie is him being like all right well if you don't want any wishes let's talk about my life. I'll tell you I'll take you through my other sort of people I've given wishes to.

[00:24:01] It's kind of this odd reverse like a thousand one nights. Yeah it's very obviously sort of drafting off of that. Yeah. Because I guess he's sort of trying to convince her to wish for stuff. She needs to make a wish.

[00:24:19] She says as I misappropriated the beginning of the episode or butchered there's there's no wishing story that's not a cautionary tale. It's a trap. There's a there's nothing I want and she tries the thing of like what I want.

[00:24:33] I want to eat something and then she feeds herself and she's like they're done. And he's like I only can grant wishes that reflect your innermost desires. Right which I like. Your ultimate wants.

[00:24:42] He's not the kind of genie where I'm like God I wish I just felt a little less sleepy today. Bam wish number one. Fuck you bitch only two to go. I wish I had a Snickers right now. You have a Snickers.

[00:24:56] Right but she can't be like tie my shoes. Right. Right. He's like no no no no no no no this is an emotional relationship that we are now engaged in. Right. And I'm here to help you understand what it is you truly want.

[00:25:08] And I am not a genie who's going to snap my fingers like as we see in one of the stories. One of the people's like I want to like I want all the world's knowledge. He's like all right let's get some books. Yeah I'll go get them.

[00:25:18] It's a process. He's not right. He's not going to Matrix style download all the knowledge into your brain. But she like immediately deflects on to him like I don't know what's your deal. Right. Right. She makes the comment. She's kind of right.

[00:25:34] She's kind of doing the like like he's a mobster gonna kill her. She's like well let's have a conversation over. You know she's sort of like it feels like she's just drawing it out. Just talk right.

[00:25:42] He's not trying to hurt her he's trying to help her but she's very resistant to help. I am fascinated too. And of course because it's like especially her she's a fucking specialist in this stuff. I haven't seen Leo Grande. Sure. Yeah. Good luck to you.

[00:25:58] Leo Grande is the people comparing these two films. And this early stuff does have that energy of someone who is like in a hotel with a sex worker being like we don't we don't have to do anything. We could just talk. Yeah.

[00:26:10] You know where she's just immediately like listen to the wishing thing. You tell me about you. What's your deal. Right. He makes the comment about like I'm a fool. I've been tricked into the bottle like three times and she's like interesting.

[00:26:22] Let's let's hear your therapist to be fair. I would also want to hear about that. Like if a gin came out I wouldn't be like all right buddy here we go. Ten billion dollars. Here's my checking account.

[00:26:32] World peace I guess you know you know I would I would like I'd want to hear about how the wishing process has gone in the past. Absolutely.

[00:26:40] It's an immediate thing I love about this movie is it's not framed as tell me the stories of some of the other wishes you've granted. Right. Or like tell me sort of allegorical cautionary tales. It's like what about you. No one ever asked you about you.

[00:26:58] You know how you got fucked over. And then within those stories you're finding out about other people and the wishes they make and the mistakes they make and all of that. Right. But it's almost like no one's ever asked this guy how he's doing. Right.

[00:27:12] No one's ever been like what's your deal is you just grant other people's wishes. You have to like fulfill their innermost desires. Are you OK. How is that. Also what is it like to be locked in a bottle for thousands of years. Yeah.

[00:27:27] It's just such a crick in the neck. Yeah that's what it is. Trying to think if there's any other set up when you guys seem to have both like the movie. Yeah yeah I think this person seemed very positive on it Ben. You guys saw it all separately.

[00:27:40] Yeah. You all saw it alone. I'm guessing it pretty sparsely attended screenings. Yeah there was like two other people there. I think it was OK. I don't know if I would like go out of my way to watch it again. Fair.

[00:27:54] I love a genie story and I love movies like this. The like classic like bedtime story. Let's then cut away to the story. I love that. Yes design and structure in a movie. Yes it's comforting. It's very comforting. It's very comforting.

[00:28:12] I think this is not a case like West Side Story where I'm like wishing I loved the movie more that you're like waxing rhapsodic about. But I think you just do like this movie more than me. Yeah. No but that's you're like over the moon for it.

[00:28:25] I guess so or whatever. It's just sort of like my but this isn't like West Side Story at all because with West Side Story I'm just like well this thing is just like an absolute masterpiece. Sure.

[00:28:36] Like it's a little more like three thousand years long and it is very craft is is I would say pretty great. Like you know George Miller is good at that stuff. Yes. But no I just you really connect to it. Yeah. I love these two freaks.

[00:28:50] What that you've started to tell stories you're starting to become your own storyteller with your daughter. You have to start telling stories and tell their stories.

[00:29:00] If you pick up the spices out of the spice rack and throw them on the floor they might break and I don't want you to do that. It's a great story that I tell her because the spice monster she's upset. Well that's the thing she doesn't.

[00:29:12] I couldn't yet be like the spice monster will get you because you know she's you know. Imagination has yet to really enter the story. The story now is if you do that you make me upset. I'm the spice monster.

[00:29:26] She is obsessed with walking into the kitchen and just picking up spices and just like like throwing them around. That's kind of a good bit. Little rat tooey. Yeah it's getting fancy with the spices.

[00:29:38] I saw this film with a friend of the podcast Jordan Hoffman who was like I guess I need to see it. I'm not a Miller fan though I'm not into that guy. He's just not my flavor. And then he walked out and was like I really like that.

[00:29:53] And it is funny how much it's a quintessential Miller movie but also in certain strange ways it is his most reserved film.

[00:30:01] I would say I would put it on the same shelf thematically as I guessed Eastwick and Babe Pig in the City in that all three are like kind of like about you know different characters and sort of like they're painted very boldly. Right.

[00:30:21] But they are about like I mean well they pick in the city is about animals but still like about like people having feelings and I'm like Mad Max is Mad Max. That's its own category of there's Mad Max stuff in here. There's a little bit there absolutely is.

[00:30:35] I'm just saying compare this movie to like Lorenzo's oil and Lorenzo's oil is so operatic shot like a fucking Looney Tune like doesn't stop moving.

[00:30:44] And when you get to like the conversations in the hotel room which are like 30 to 40 percent of this movie you're like this is kind of the most restrained George Miller has ever been cinematically. Yes. Yeah. I mean it's pretty it's a pretty subdued scene.

[00:31:02] It is and obviously it's intimate and it's yeah low energy in a way and that it's like it is a conversation that's being had obviously we're having these very sumptuous sometimes very exciting flashback. Miller's usually a maximalist. But it's like but this is obviously fairly maximalist.

[00:31:20] This is what's wild about this film. It's why like you might get thrown off by one element or the other but I'm talking about this movie with Hoffman and we're just like how the fuck did he trick people into giving him the money to make this.

[00:31:32] It's obviously just Fury Road Fury Road Fury Road.

[00:31:35] But then when I said to him is like I will give him the credit though if you're going to make this movie and sell this movie and get this movie mostly put together by foreign financing which which is this film was made independently Film Nation you know was sold to and distributed by MGM.

[00:31:52] It was all put together from foreign financing international pre-sales and stuff. These these are the two actors you can sell this movie on. Not only were these the only two people who were ever attached to it.

[00:32:06] But you're kind of like this movie feels impossible to pitch for how uncommercial it is period. It feels impossible to pitch with any other two people. They're both incredibly famous movie stars who also have like weird levels of like serious actor credibility but odd cult personality around them.

[00:32:27] Yeah who like really want to act in our protective of like I got to make blockbusters. True true even though they'll do it take big swings. Yeah and it's hard to think of two other actors who could have sold the different temperatures of this movie.

[00:32:42] What if you flip them? Also could have worked. Also could work. That's the thing I'm like you could gender swap them and this would work with the same two people. Yeah it kind of works. They're the only two people who I think could do this.

[00:32:52] And I think they should do a true West style. They should make the movie again with the roles flip see how it is. Both of these performances are phenomenal. I agree. I want to talk about them.

[00:33:01] I think it's also I mean Tilda has an incredibly varied body of work and she's been in lots and lots of incredible movies.

[00:33:08] But Idris Elba God bless him was a wonderful actor and he's done some smaller things sprinkled in but he does a lot of big movies that I often feel he's a little undervalued in like or like the movies undervalue him.

[00:33:22] He's got this very odd movie star career where it is like this guy is undeniably an international movie star but he so often takes things where you're like do you not understand that you can do better than this.

[00:33:36] Well that's what you that's at least what we think watching him. You know on the inside he might be like this is a big movie. This is a big role. I'm the villain I'm the whatever. Sure.

[00:33:45] And like all you know I'm sure it's good money and I'll do it like I'll do a good job.

[00:33:49] And we have this sort of feeling like but you're Idris Elba you kind of should just be like only headlining vehicles if it's a big movie like you should be at the top of this stuff not the villain in Hobbes and Shaw which you're like totally fine in.

[00:34:03] I think he's pretty good. He's pretty good because he's always pretty good in the right and like same with like Star Trek where you're like why are you hiring yourself to be under this makeup your Idris Elba.

[00:34:12] And then you'll make a movie like Beast which I have not yet seen most people seem to say kind of punches above its weight class.

[00:34:19] I think there's always been this thing with him where it's just like here is this like incredibly charismatic skilled absurdly handsome man right that people are just fascinated by.

[00:34:33] And he like blows up on the wire but then the wire has such a long tail of people coming around to that show and watching it 10 15 years later that he just kind of keeps on getting these bumps in fame from the original thing that broke him.

[00:34:47] If that makes sense. Yes. You know like he's getting cast in like American Gangster as an immediate result of the wire. And then 10 years later he's getting new parts because people are finally coming around to the wire.

[00:34:58] And like Luther's happening at the same time so you're sort of like he's got this like incredible TV career. He works in like every genre. I mean he does his fucking DJing. He does his DJing.

[00:35:09] Not only did he do DJing didn't he then do a TV show about DJing? About DJing. In the long run. Really? No one really. Idris is this weird. That's so weird. What does he DJ? What kind of music? Well I believe.

[00:35:25] You know what let me look up for. DJ Big Driss. Big Driss? Yeah it's like R&B stuff you know. Big Driss. Oh shit. I mean I think he's been doing that to be clear. He's been doing that the whole.

[00:35:37] Like that was like a side gig for him when he was making money and trying to be an actor and all that. Like the thing about him is. He just does everything. He's an incredibly striking actor. He's very very handsome. Yes. He has a really distinctive voice.

[00:35:54] He can do every accent. Obviously when he's in the wire you'd never think like oh this guy's from Hackney London. You'd think like oh sure. He's truly one of the best accent actors. Really? He's 6'2". He's a big guy. Like he's genuinely imposing.

[00:36:09] He was a bouncer at Caroline's. Do you know that Ben? No the comedy club? Yeah. And he's given a lot of performances that I think are really good. And he's been in a lot of big movies.

[00:36:21] So why do I think Idris Elba's career almost hasn't been big enough? Like it's just that weird kind of thing. We were talking about Jamie Foxx the other day. Yes. And it's like Jamie Foxx to me is almost like Shaq or something. I pardon the basketball reference.

[00:36:36] Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq the one basketball player I know. Who you've heard of. He won four titles. Yeah. He won an MVP. He was a very. He was one of the most successful players of all time. And yet everyone who covers that.

[00:36:48] And also one of the most famous players of all time. One of the most famous players of all time. But everyone who covers basketball and people like Phil Jackson who coached him. He should have won like ten titles. Despite his massive success everything about him.

[00:37:01] He actually should have been way more successful. And a lot of people say like. But unlike a Michael Jordan type he just wanted to have more fun. And he wanted to do more extracurricular stuff. And my Jamie Foxx point was like.

[00:37:14] I was like this man has an Oscar. He's like a hit musician. He's like a hit comedian. He's done it all. He's not unsuccessful. And yet it feels like he could do more. And like Idris Elba sometimes you feel that way.

[00:37:26] And also when one of them will come up with like a Jenga or 3000 Years of Longing. Where it's like oh this is a movie that's actually giving them something. That can showcase all of their skills as an actor and their depth.

[00:37:36] You're like right of course they've been here the whole time. Putting TV aside. Putting like Luther in the Wire aside obviously. What are some of the best Idris Elba. Well Beast of No Nation is the one that was supposed to be his big Oscar movie.

[00:37:48] And then he gets every other nomination and most of the wins. It's that weird year where like he wins the Globe and the SAG. And doesn't get nominated for the Oscar. He didn't win the Globe. He did win the SAG. Who won the Globe?

[00:38:04] And in the SAG I feel like Sylvester Stallone won the Globe. Okay so it's the Mark Rylance. That performance is excellent. I think he didn't get nominated for two reasons. One it was the early Netflix thing of like. That was like the first real serious Netflix Oscar play.

[00:38:21] And then two that movie is incredibly grim and maybe whatever. People avoided watching it. People got turned off by it. But like it's an undeniably transfixing performance. I guess before that. Well no so before that he'd done.

[00:38:34] Obviously you know he's in stuff like he pops up in like Rock and Rolla or. American Gangster. He's very good. Obsessed. He's kind of. Obsessed. He is first build and that movie was. The movie was a hit but he has.

[00:38:47] I feel like he has the most boring role because he's the guy who's like. Oh I don't know what to do with myself. Overshadowed by the two of them. But it's almost like okay here you go. There's an Idris Elba movie.

[00:38:54] Even if it was largely sold on Beyonce. That was a big fucking hit. And he's the guy. But like Daddy's Little Girls. Which have you seen Daddy's Little Girls? I have not. I have. Like it's sort of similar to Obsessed where it's like he's playing.

[00:39:05] I mean in Obsessed he falters and he cheats on his wife. Right. He does cheat on her right? Or is she just obsessed? No in Obsessed it's. Right he doesn't cheat on her. Interesting. She truly just like gets. Oh wow. I don't know quite a feeling. Okay.

[00:39:20] But in Daddy's Little Girls you know it's like. He's such a pillar in that movie. Yes. Because that's the whole point. He's just this like unambiguously like wonderful man who's being besieged by circumstance. And he's good at that. It's a little one no. But like.

[00:39:32] This is also the era of Tyler Perry movies where he's like. Who are the best black actors who no one in the studio system is going to let be the lead of a movie. Right. I'm going to write a movie for Taraji.

[00:39:43] I'm going to write a movie for Idris. But yes he would often make these characters too saintly or too cursed. It's like one or the other. Okay. And then like I never saw The Losers a movie that sort of like got forgotten. Yeah. He's in that.

[00:39:58] With a weirdly stacked. Saldana, Chris Evans, Idris Elba. Like five people before they find their. Right before their. Yeah. And then you've got Thor, which is that sort of classic MCU thing now where it's like. Fuck. You shouldn't have had him being Heimdall.

[00:40:11] Not that he's bad, but like you could have had him later. You're like the things you could have done with this guy later. He could have played Mr. Fantastic for Kyle out of the way.

[00:40:17] And they pretty much have to like by Ragnarok be like we're going to make Heimdall into the type of character we wish we had cast. Yeah. He's going to be more. He's going to be in the woods sword fighting people. Because that's the thing.

[00:40:27] Him being cast as Heimdall. It's more like. Well, this is a very imposing guy with a great voice. Right. Stoic. Yeah. He's perfect for the all seeing watchman type. But it's like. Right. Because he's the guy who watches the game. He's got a big sword.

[00:40:40] He's essentially the bouncer at Caroline's. Yeah. He's been a bouncer at Caroline's. He watches the Rainbow Bridge. People forget he's the villain in Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance, but I remember him being pretty fun in that. This is the thing.

[00:40:50] I think any time he does these things where you're like Idris, why are you doing this? You watch it and you're like he is having fun here. Prometheus he's kind of having fun. Prometheus he's really good. He's kind of horny. Yeah. He's got an accordion. Yeah.

[00:41:02] He's got a great voice. And then in 2013 he's in the Nelson Mandela film Long Walk to Freedom, which goes nowhere. Felt like it should have been a slam dunk for him Oscar breakthrough and it's just a nonstarter movie. And he's in Thor the Dark World. Uh huh.

[00:41:16] And I feel like right there are you know. Now he at least has an action sequence, but he's still. Yeah. You know the seventh lead. Yes. And he's in Pacific Rim. Right. Which he's great in. Yes. And that's at least Deltor.

[00:41:29] He's not the lead lead because Hunnam and then Rinka Kikuchi are kind of the lead, but he's a co-lead. He. And he's giving the speeches. He. We're cancelling the apocalypse. He in the studio wanted Cruise to do that. Yeah.

[00:41:41] Because it was right after he had been developing Mountains of Madness for so long. Right. Right. And the fact that it went from Cruise to being like I don't know Idris Elba. Like obviously Idris Elba was not at that level of bankability, but they were like authority wise.

[00:41:55] Yeah. But yes, this is the thing. Like the times that he's been placed in the pole position in his own franchise as it were doesn't work. Dark Tower doesn't work. Not for lack of trying on his part. That's it. All right. I want to keep going. Sorry.

[00:42:11] No, no. But it's all right. No good deed. That's sort of similar to obsessed. That's kind of like a fun trashy. He's the bad guy in that one. Right. Right. Right. A movie called Second Coming. No idea what that is. Truly never heard of that. Yeah. The Gunman.

[00:42:25] That's the Sean Penn movie. Yes. Overqualified supporting cast. Right. Beast is no nation. You know. Yeah. Serious role. Yes. Really good. And then in 2016 he's in Zootopia and the Jungle Book, and it's almost getting tired to use his imposing voice, but it's totally good.

[00:42:42] He fucking kills it in both of them. And he's also in Finding Dory. I totally forgot about that. Yeah. Three voice performances that year. Jesus. He does three Disney. And he's the villain in Star Trek Beyond, which he's great in. He is.

[00:42:55] The makeup is the thing that's kind of annoying, but then of course it has this thematic thing at the end where you see his human face again. He's supposed to be this human who got corrupted by radiation and all that.

[00:43:06] But you do spend most of the movie going like, shouldn't you be the lead of this? Yeah. And then in 2017 ... Look, I don't think The Dark Tower is good. I'll kind of stick up for that movie because it's so bananas. It's a terrible adaptation of the books.

[00:43:23] It's a disaster on that front. And it's like 90 minutes long and it feels like the studio is just like, just put this out and let's be done with it. But I think he's good and he was well cast and it's too bad that didn't happen for him.

[00:43:36] I think he's amazing in Molly's game. Incredible Molly's game. The accent he's doing, it's the one time ... Just because the Sorkin dialogue is so thick, you can sometimes hear his accent kind of bending.

[00:43:46] I believe I also heard that was one of those things where he had two weeks to prepare for that movie or something. Right. But he is fucking great in it. His big monologue he gives- I love that monologue.

[00:43:57] Is so good and it's one of those things, it's like kind of power of acting shit where you're like, it's the one time as you said in his career that he cannot hold that accent down and it doesn't fucking matter. His performance is so transfixing.

[00:44:08] He is so in it emotionally that you're like, I don't care. And then, okay, Thor, Ragnarok, Avengers Infinity War, Hobbs and Shaw. We're getting into this thing where it's like, am I only going to see you in this stuff? Hobbs and Shaw, I don't know man. He's fine.

[00:44:26] Yeah. I've just seen you do a villain. And at this point, it's also like his career is starting to become emblematic of the movie star problem in general, which is like- Right. If you haven't found your franchise- You don't have my pee, right.

[00:44:39] You don't have your distinctive thing, you're in this position where it's like, I'm picking up third string hero roles or villain roles in other franchises where I'm going to be unimportant or only in one movie.

[00:44:51] And then like the Oscar, I haven't gotten the Oscar juice enough where I'm getting movies financed on the idea that it's a slam dunk nomination every time. There's cats. We can't forget cats. He was Macavity. Someone tweeted- Popping in and out of existence.

[00:45:09] Something last week about Tom Hooper and George Miller being the only two directors brave enough to cast Idris Elba as a shape-shifting magical tricksters without genitals. Yes. Does he not have genitals? It doesn't look like it in this film. But also they make love.

[00:45:25] Yeah, they might just pop up at some point. But it seems like with smoke. Well, that sounds fun. It does. Sounds different. Of late, he did Concrete Cowboy, he did The Heart of a Fall, he did Beast this year. And obviously this.

[00:45:42] I think he did a Luther movie. It feels like he's leaning more into slightly more interesting projects. Obviously he did sensitive and textured work as Knuckles the Echidna in Satanic Dad Drug 2. I thought he was excellent in that film, genuinely. I thought he was really funny.

[00:45:59] And he did do Suicide Squad, which is another franchise movie. But he's good in that movie. He's phenomenal. But it's another one where you're like, okay, this feels like you finally built a perfect Idris Elba. And then the movie doesn't do that well. I think that movie works.

[00:46:12] I think it's a good movie, but it's not a hit. Commercially. There's probably a world where that movie would have been more of a commercial hit. That's one of the biggest pandemic hits. But he's really good in it.

[00:46:21] And James Gunn, I feel like, was the first person to really kind of figure out how to use his emotional depths in a blockbuster. Yeah, he's got a daughter or whatever. There's some real emotional stuff there.

[00:46:39] But this movie, he comes out of this bottle and I immediately, from the first line he says, go, I believe this guy is 3000 years old. It is that ineffable thing. It's like undefinable.

[00:46:53] And I don't even feel like it's like, well, I did the prep work to try to... It's just you have the command or you don't. When Idris Elba says shit, you believe it. Right? Absolutely.

[00:47:05] There are some actors who can pull that off, but it's not a long list. He just truly from that first moment, I'm like, you have the weight, the presence, the authority, the intelligence, the pain. I look in your fucking eyes. He's hotness.

[00:47:19] But I'm like, I look in your fucking eyes and I'm like, I believe this guy has spent a thousand years in a bottle talking to no one. Now how often have we talked about Tilda? Have we ever talked about her on the main feed?

[00:47:32] Obviously, we talked about like Doctor Strange on the Patreon or whatever. Have we not covered a Tilda movie before? I think the only instance I can really remember is just like shouting out how incredible she is in... Michael Clayton. Exactly. Yeah. Obviously, I recently rewatched... The Boss.

[00:47:50] One of the coolest Oscar wins ever. We talked about that, obviously. No, I guess we've never talked about a Tilda movie. Wow. Huh. Yeah. Okay. I think I, like a lot of people, was first really aware of her.

[00:48:07] She obviously had already done the Derek Jarman movies and Orlando and had her whole amazing 90s art movie run, but I was too young for that. But when I'm a teen and I'm a little Oscar boy...

[00:48:21] And she is in the beach in a fun weird role, but I think I didn't really clock that, but The Deep End was this sort of like... I never even saw that movie. Oh, it's a good movie. This undersung Oscar contender.

[00:48:33] She kind of came close to a nomination for it. It sort of felt like she was sixth or seventh that year in a little movie that could kind of way. And that immediately... That was when I took notice of her name.

[00:48:44] She's obviously got a very distinctive name and a very distinctive look. And then right after that, she starts showing up in smaller parts in bigger Oscar-y movies like Adaptation. That's right. It's like, oh, clearly that movie was the call in the... Vanilla Sky, Adaptation. Exactly.

[00:49:00] Young Adam, that's a bigger role. So Vanilla Sky is the one we've covered. That's right. She is in Vanilla Sky. Not a big role. No. But yes, this run of... Now she's working with American auteurs, big stars, supporting roles. Broken Flower, she's in for like five seconds.

[00:49:17] That's a movie I saw once. I saw it at the AMC Lincoln Square because I was on vacation in New York! What? Because I lived in Britain. Too tired to do the bit today. Fair enough. And I saw it front row. I remember I didn't have good seats.

[00:49:35] I was amped. I was amped too. And I remember thinking it was pretty good and I haven't thought about it much since. Is she one of the exes? My memory is that she is absolutely one of the exes. My memory is that she literally opens a door...

[00:49:51] Yeah, she punches him. Or she gets guys to punch him. Larry Fessenden. The great Larry Fessenden, scary Larry Fessenden, horror filmmaker, head of Glass Eye Pics, plays her redneck boyfriend. Yeah, biker boyfriend. Right. He like cold cocks Bill Murray.

[00:50:06] She opens the door, she goes like, what the fuck are you doing here? In my memory, she has one line, Larry Fessenden cold cocks and Bill Murray wakes up with a black eye. She's not in the movie. Fair enough.

[00:50:17] But maybe I'm wrong and she has more in it. She did make the poster, but that was sort of the brag of the poster. That's why I remember being like, here we go, tilde, final X. And then they like don't do anything with her.

[00:50:26] But yes, she's in the rotation at this point. And then I guess then she has in the mid 2000s, Hollywood is like, be a villain in Constantine. She's incredible. Which she's wonderful and she plays the Archangel Gabriel.

[00:50:43] Be the White Witch in the Narnia movie, perfect casting, very impressive performance in a franchise that never got to be S tier. But it's also one of those things where it was like Disney's making a Narnia movie. They want Nicole Kidman to do it.

[00:50:57] And you were like, obvious, obvious, obvious. Nicole Kidman was like the number one choice for every one of those fucking things in the 2000s. Right. Ends up doing Golden Compass instead. Right. A couple years later. But like passes on Narnia.

[00:51:07] They offer it to Tilda and you're like, huh, that's kind of cool. She's good. That they actually went with Tilda who has not been like a name person movies of this size. And then that first movie is such a surprising, ginormous blockbuster that I do think it's surprising.

[00:51:22] It's got some rings and potteries. She's really good in it. She's good in all three. I mean, she's barely in the other two. Yeah, but like it gets her a little bit of makeability, surprisingly.

[00:51:32] And then she is in Burn After Reading and well, she's in Michael Clayton and she wins an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. And it's one of those things where you're like cool nomination for a great actor who's

[00:51:42] always been good doing really skilled work, the kind of unshowy performance that the Oscars are never going to give the trophy to. And that very odd year where it was like Blanchett versus Amy Ryan, both giving excellent performances but much showier performances. And it was back and forth.

[00:51:59] The two of them were winning every other award. Tilda fucking slips through and wins. I mean, having just rewatched Michael Clayton, which I've seen many times. It's like that whole movie. Obviously she's in the first, basically the first scene of the movie. It's her practicing. Yeah.

[00:52:15] And she's peppered in through all those scenes are great. But that whole movie is you waiting for the hammer blow scene of Clayton outfoxing her. And that scene is just such an unbelievable scene. It's incredible.

[00:52:30] And they're both, I mean, Clooney and her are both just like fucking guns and Navarone, just like absolutely detonating. But it's also the incredible thing where it's like... And her face, the way it changes. What is arguably Tilda's Oscar moment? The moment...

[00:52:46] Which happens out of focus in the background of a shot. And you're like, that just won her the Oscar. I mean, I watched that movie with Forky and Forky was like, why are we watching this slightly grim...

[00:52:58] Happens every time I try to convince someone to watch Michael Clayton. Right. Like, you know, like movie about... And I'm like, see, so what he is, is he is a lawyer, but he's not really like a trial lawyer. He's like, you know, kind of a fiction guy.

[00:53:08] He had these failed dreams. He tried to get out, but the restaurant didn't work because his brother can't get out of his own way. And again, Forky's just like, yeah, sure. This seems like a seven out of 10. And I'm just like, just sit. Let it go.

[00:53:19] But people who saw Michael Clayton came out of that being like, good movie. And then two years later, we're like, best movie? We have had no idea how good we had it. And then since the Oscar win, I would say she's had one of the most interesting and

[00:53:34] exciting careers an actor could have. Agreed. I Am Love. The Guadagnino. Which is this surprise art house crossover success. Little bit. And it's become this like champion, like saint of, I feel like middle aged women. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Yeah.

[00:53:54] But I think that movie crossover in a much bigger way. And it was like, oh, like women really want to see a Tilda Swinton erotic drama. Yeah, right. Oh, it's an erotic drama. Oh yeah, it's got some sex.

[00:54:07] It's Luca Guadagnino who then does Calling By Your Name and Suspiria with her. But there's also this whole thing. She has this interesting marriage structure. She lives this very free life. She'll do like fucking moments, installations where she like sleeps in a box.

[00:54:21] That's what I'm waiting for us to get to. That's when I'm like, okay, this lady, I can fuck with this lady. She's different. She's sleeping and making and living in a box and making that into an art installation. That's cool as hell.

[00:54:36] She's doing her own film festivals where she was like, I don't like all these other film festivals that are about like free gifting sweets and stuff. We're going to film festivals, just a bunch of beanbag chairs and we watch movies. Here's some other movies. Movies are good.

[00:54:47] Let's just talk about movies. We need to talk about Kevin. She's really good in that. Phenomenal performance. Once again, comes very close to the Oscar. Moonrise Kingdom playing social services. I think she's so funny in that movie. All of her fucking West drop ins are always good.

[00:55:01] Only Lovers Left Alive, a phenomenal performance in a great movie. Has amazing chemistry with Hiddleston. Great movie. The Piercer, so funny and weird in that movie. Playing like mutant Margaret Thatcher. So good. Granbury to Pest Hotel, you know.

[00:55:17] Bigger Splash, like giving an almost silent performance as a singer whose voice is gone. Fucking incredible. Have you seen Bigger Splash? No. Love it. You gotta take the dive. Another Luca. This is the other thing.

[00:55:29] And she's like, I don't know, maybe I'll do a supporting role in Trainwreck that's funny. Maybe I'll be in Doctor Strange and no one will object to that. Yeah, no one. Neil Caesar, I'll play dual roles as like dueling gossip columnists.

[00:55:39] Isn't she dual roles in Okja as well? Or am I misremembering that? Yes, she plays sisters in Okja as well. This is the other thing. You look at director Muse. Like, she's got four or five different really top level directors who use her multiple times.

[00:55:52] Every time they're like, we're gonna use Tilda. The Coen brothers are gonna come back to Tilda. Luke is gonna come back to Tilda. Wes is gonna come back to Tilda. You know? Jarmusch, like, she's collecting really good collaborators. And she kills it every time. Yeah, man.

[00:56:06] Like, Okja, as you mentioned. Isla Dogg, she's a voice. Suspiria, she's incredible. Three roles in that one. Pops into Avengers Endgame. Why not? Dead Don't Die, I think she's funny in that. David Copperfield, she's completely delightful in that if anyone has ever seen it.

[00:56:22] Then the souvenir, heartbreaking, incredible performance. Playing her alongside. Both of those, yeah. Uncut Gems, she's on the phone. Don't forget. I did forget if I ever knew. Yeah, she's on the phone. She's the auctioneer on the phone. That's funny.

[00:56:38] You know, Souvenir Part 2, French Dispatch, she's fucking hilarious in. The bit where she does a slideshow of a naked picture of herself, it's so funny. And then, Memoria. She's an absolute, have you seen Memoria? I still haven't. Alright, you gotta see Memoria.

[00:56:54] And then this, I'm just saying, I don't know that there are a lot of actors with runs like that. Last 15 years. No. Especially when you consider that she's this like, you know, elfin, fucking, how old is she these days? You know, in her 50s, right? Oh, 61. Yeah.

[00:57:11] 61 year old, sort of late in life, quasi star. I'd say star. I'd say unqualified. Just incredible. But who will do a ton of supporting stuff, you know. But then when she gives a big, meany role, she's so incredibly transfixing. And I also think she gets movies financed.

[00:57:26] I think she's so big overseas. She can get a small movie financed. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. She can get very esoteric movies financed. She can find, you know, foreign directors, independent directors. And then she builds relationships with them that pay off over years and years and years,

[00:57:40] you know? I don't know if this is necessarily like one-to-one, but we've talked about Buscemi as somebody who is so recognizable. No, that's a good call. Especially, Buscemi has a similar kind of run in the 90s and 2000s or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

[00:57:54] But I feel like Tilda and him are kind of similar career wise and complexion wise. Well, true. She also just, she has the healthy kind of cult of personality around her. Yes. You know what I'm saying?

[00:58:07] Like people are kind of fascinated with her and delighted by her in a way that is not bad. But I do, it adds the weird mystique of her. Yeah. This is what I'm saying though. It's like, who else gets this movie financed and is right for it?

[00:58:23] I can't think of anyone. I don't know. I don't want to know. I don't want to know. She's good. She's coming up. She's got another Joanna Hogg movie. Great. She's got, she's the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio. The del Toro one. The del Toro one. Okay.

[00:58:38] She's in the new West. She's in the new West and she's in the new Fincher. This is, I mean. Damn. Which you know what the Fincher is about? It's about a guy who kills people. Guess what his name is? The Killer. The Killer. Whoa. 10 out of 10.

[00:58:53] Guess what the movie's called? The Killer. The Killer. Perfect. I mean, I'm like, do you like Mac? And most people are like, eh. He's like, fine. Fucking Michael Fassbender as the Killer. People are like, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Yeah. It sounds exciting.

[00:59:08] So you start this movie with her narration saying, this really happened to me, but I'm going to tell it in the form of a fairy tale because it's easier for people to digest that way.

[00:59:21] So he's almost sort of like sewing his heightened George Miller style into the movie from the beginning. Yeah, yeah. This is true. This is not allegorical. I don't view this movie as a life of pie type thing where it's like, I'm telling you a

[00:59:34] story in a heightened form so you can understand the lessons of it. Yeah. I think this is all meant to be taken literally. Yeah. Flying around the world giving boring TED talks. Goes to one of these markets. I like that scene a lot. I love that scene.

[00:59:51] I love that line where she's like, there's 79 streets in Istanbul and 4000 shops. And in one of those shops, there's three rooms. And in the back room, I found a thing. And I just like, I don't know, I guess because the movie knows how important it has to be

[01:00:04] for her to... It can't just be her being like, and I'll take this thing too. The guy is almost like, you don't want this thing. It's not that good. But I love all the chants of all the stores. You find the thing. They're trying to upsell her.

[01:00:18] And it's like, there's something about this little bottle. It calls to her. Yeah, exactly. In contrast of the mundanity of this very nice, but very modern, clean hotel room. She's there with her electric toothbrush trying to clean off this artifact from Marketplace.

[01:00:39] And out comes a man with gold fingers and scaly legs. Yes. Pointy ears. Yep. He's a djinn. Is he even going to have a proper name? No, he's the djinn. He's the djinn. The djinn of myth.

[01:00:54] You know, invisible creatures in pre-Islamic Arabian religious systems that then got carried over to Islamic mythology. And they're not a strictly Islamic concept for that reason. They kind of have some pagan beliefs swirling around in them. And I think in classic mythology, they're like shape changers.

[01:01:17] They're like invisible shape changers that can appear as all kinds of animals but as humans. And they have sex with humans and they make offspring. This djinn has sex with humans, certainly. I mean, I'd have sex with him. I would too. Same.

[01:01:34] But I don't think it is necessarily always like, three wishes! That is sort of specific to certain tales or whatever. There's this element, too, which is very important to the film. A lot of genius, it's this sense of like, I was tricked, I was trapped.

[01:01:53] Which happens to him. It's how he ends up in the bottle for too long. But my entire existence as a genie is one of sort of indentured servitude. Yes. The whole thing with Aladdin where it's like, freeing the genie is the happiest ending you can give this movie.

[01:02:12] That he doesn't have to be a fucking genie anymore. This djinn, it's like his whole thing is on an emotional level. His entire existence is about being able to make people happy. Right? Yeah.

[01:02:26] It's this idea of this man who too selflessly loves and gets hurt in the process. Yeah, he's a sensitive soul. Yeah. He's very emotionally bound up in the relationships he gets sucked into by being a djinn. Yes. It's about truly wanting to fulfill people's greatest desires. Right.

[01:02:48] Not just having to. There is this sort of classic Aladdin influence concept of the genie is like a concierge and you are the client. And it's kind of a curse on this weird creature. Right. And then there's the comic book fables. Do you ever read that?

[01:03:07] Yes, I've not read all of it. I started it and it's one of many comics I should have finished and never did. It's by Bill Willingham. That has this fun thing where at one point, fables is set in a world where any fairy tale is real.

[01:03:21] All of them. And most of the fairy tale creatures live in a big apartment building in Manhattan. And these guys come from the Middle East and they have a genie in a bottle. And everyone is really freaked out because they're like, that's like a nuclear weapon.

[01:03:34] It can do anything. We have to deal with this. It's like unlimited power bound within the specifics of wishing and all that. But still, here it's a little more like you get this weird friend. And he's your companion now.

[01:03:52] And you guys got to figure out together what it is you want to do in your life. And he's going to try and help you. But there is this like, because it's stories and he's telling stories, it's like,

[01:04:02] it's going to get tinged with tragedy and pathos and like ironic. That's what she identifies in me. I study stories for a living. They all have some message to send. Some moral. Everyone, there is some ironic fucking Twilight Zone twist.

[01:04:20] And I'm going to get hoisted by my own petard. The hubris of the wish. She's like, the only good wish is no wish. Don't make me wish. What would you guys do? Oh shit. I've thought so much about this. I'm sure. Well, all right.

[01:04:38] I initially was going in pretty confident like I would wish the best. My wishes wouldn't be bad. They would turn out good. Yeah, of course. But you know, the more you start to like question the logic there, it's like it could actually go pretty dark.

[01:04:53] So I'll say number one thing for me is I want to be able to like travel at the speed of light. You want to be able to travel at the speed of light. So I can just go anywhere I want at any moment.

[01:05:07] Okay, but can I ask you a question? Want to enter the speed force? Yeah. Is it a thing where you go like you have to run? It's not teleportation. It's kind of, but it's just like, because light moves fast. No, I know.

[01:05:22] But do you want to have to go through the physical motion? That's what I'm saying. Of moving, just doing it at a rapid. Like if I'm like, I can travel at the speed of light. I want to go to Istanbul.

[01:05:32] Can I move my body through space or can I just zap there? Are you the flash or you night crawler is the question. I would like to bamf. Is that night crawler? Yeah, where you just go like poof. Essentially instantaneous movement is one of your things. Yes.

[01:05:50] That is pretty cool. Because I feel like also that's for me. It's not pushing my shit onto the world or onto other people. Like I just I want to be able to experience things instantaneously.

[01:06:02] Can you imagine how frustrated you guys would be if I had teleportation powers and I was still late? That would happen. That's why I said. Yeah, that would happen. I mean, I'd be like, hey, I'm sorry. I took a while to bamf. I just delayed doing it.

[01:06:22] Do you have your other two wishes Ben? And then wish and Ben wishful Ben. Yeah. Part of me was like, maybe I could like breathe underwater in space. Breathe underwater? So you mean like. So I could go through space, but I feel like that would get boring.

[01:06:41] You want perfect lungs. Because space, even if I could travel the speed of light. Yeah. You know what I mean? If I get really out there, like, I don't know all of the logistics with that. So I don't know. What about you guys?

[01:06:55] Give me some of your wishes. I do watch this movie and go, I have no idea what I would wish for. Me too. That's exactly why I asked. I don't know what I'd wish for.

[01:07:05] Because of the way this movie actually sets up a dialogue with the notion of wishing. Okay. All right, here, I'll throw out another one then. I wish that I could experience another point of view perspective, essentially live in someone else's shoes, another thing's shoes for an hour.

[01:07:20] Anytime you want. That's a cool. Like I want to be a squirrel. I wish I could like go and collect nuts and have fun being a squirrel. Can you get out? One hour, you get one hour.

[01:07:34] But can you like say you go into squirrel in five minutes and you're like, all right, I get it. I want to leave. Or are you stuck for an hour? Is an hour the maximum or is it also the minimum? You're right.

[01:07:47] Well, because I feel like with genie stuff, it's tricky. Right? So it's like, it probably it's like an hour on the clock. But now here's the thing. This is what happens. All right. Just being a squirrel and then like an osprey devours you.

[01:08:02] This is why we're pulling back on our wishes. I'm top of the food chain then. All right, I'm a lion. Oh, the poachers. Better hope you don't meet the address. I know. He's the one guy who can stop.

[01:08:16] I'm just picturing a genie being like, trying to write all this down and being like, I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to tell me. There's the classic thing where they say like, you can't wish for more wishes. Right? Can you wish for more genies?

[01:08:26] Has anyone ever explained this loophole before? Genie says you only get three wishes. This is 100% where the genie's like, oh, you're one of those. You're one of those fucking people. I wish for ten genies. Or what if he's like, fine.

[01:08:40] And then he's like, ah, and then like genies start to like emerge from his chest. It's like Freddy's chest of souls. It's like body horror. And each genie kills the last genie. Yeah. It would be something like that. You have to watch the genies before you reach them.

[01:08:56] You get ten dead genies in your room and then there's one. And he's like, all right, here I am. Right. The final genie you go like, obviously my last wish, clean up all these dead genie bodies. Get these out of here. He's like, I agree.

[01:09:08] I love even just, it's such a George Miller thing, but this movie is like, the physiology of the genie. There's this sort of arc of what they say, what it's like. The powder and then the gas and then the electromagnetic energy. Right. I'm getting the order wrong.

[01:09:24] And then the formation of the organs. Like this movie actually has an internal logic to like, how does smoke coming out of a bottle form into an organism? Right. That breathes. Yes. Let's walk through the stories he tells. So as he's like, let me give you some wishes.

[01:09:44] She's like, well, tell me about the other times you got to end up trapped in a bottle. First time, the queen of Sheba, his cousin and girlfriend. The famous figure from the old Testament. I heard she was beautiful. No, she was beauty herself. Right.

[01:10:02] Is played very strikingly by Amito Lagum is the name of the actress. She's a Ugandan actress and model. She just looks absolutely outrageously cool. Yeah. She's got the hairiest legs. She's got genie legs. Horse like pony legs. Yeah.

[01:10:22] She's being wooed by King Solomon as is, as is a part of her legend. Right. He's like, some of it's not true. Right. That he wooed her rather than her wooing him. Exactly. So he's like really trying to win her over.

[01:10:38] There's this incredible sequence where he like plays music for her and then animals come out. Motherfucking guitar plays itself. Instruments got little arms. And then he starts doing all of a sudden. Yeah, it's like the guitar starts playing. Yeah.

[01:10:52] But then other elements of the chair he's sitting in starts to play. He becomes a one man band. I have no idea how to verbalize this. Uh huh. I was like a child and you read like just so stories or like Arabian nights

[01:11:05] or these sort of stories that have these elements of magical realism where logic is kind of slippery and things like that are very just tossed off. Right. And then there's this instrument with arms that played itself. And as a kid, you're like, what the fuck?

[01:11:19] Anytime I've seen someone try to put something like that in a movie, it feels like an effect, an idea, a shot. And then this is like the one movie I've seen where I'm like, this is how this stuff feels in my mind's eye.

[01:11:32] Somehow this all feels weirdly kind of organic despite it being very heightened stylized film. That's a good compliment. But it also speaks to why this movie is like so insanely expensive for how esoteric it is. Because there's a version of this film you could easily see someone doing

[01:11:48] where you're like, okay, half of it takes place in a hotel room with two actors that is relatively cheap to shoot. And then everything that takes place in their stories, we shoot like in a more stylized theatrical style rather than going for any sort of detail.

[01:12:04] But it feels very old Hollywood, right? Like these big sets with big costumes, very stately characters kind of just like in the background looking cool, arranged. There's a version of this movie where I could see the stories feeling more like the Joel Cohn Macbeth.

[01:12:20] Where you're like, you found a very impressionistic, minimalistic style to represent otherworldliness. And George Miller was like, no, I'm going to make this like Cleopatra. That's what he's doing. He's doing the opposite. And I feel like with Macbeth also,

[01:12:36] there's the whole theme of like, they're all fighting over nothing. It's cool that it's minimal because it's sort of like, what is this shit anyway? It's all about the contrast. Because anytime you cut from just the level of ornate sort of world

[01:12:50] building in these stories back to the hotel room with its sort of like flat white lighting. That white lighting was getting to me. Yeah. But unlike Mad Max, Mad Max Fury Road. Great movie. It's all movement. No one's ever slowing down and having a conversation. Correct.

[01:13:10] Everything in this movie, as sumptuous as it gets, is people having conversations or, you know, these sort of like recollected memories that are basically like montage. Like you don't really see the dialogue even. Within the stories. And they're all so thoroughly Idris's telling from his perspective

[01:13:28] and his experience and he is the voice. And with the Queen of Sheba thing, it's like he's kind of lurking. He's hiding. He's peeking. He's watching this play out and he's like, well, she's not going to go for him. Like, you know, and like,

[01:13:44] she's sort of watching them, right? Like that's really all there is to it with the Queen of Sheba. Because like eventually the idea of Solomon bottles him up as a way to get him out of the way. It's one of those things where it's like, he's like,

[01:13:57] I give my love so thoroughly and selflessly to this person. Surely that cannot be betrayed. Right? It is the first time he understands that he can be hurt by loving people. Through loving people. And then he's in a bottle for thousands of years. Yeah.

[01:14:14] Because he gets picked up by Gulten, who is a concubine in the palace of Solomon the Magnificent, who was, you know, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. So it's a long time later. And she wants classic genie wish.

[01:14:30] She wants to fall in love with someone. Yeah. She has a crush on Mustafa, his son. But like this puts forward something that I'd never really thought about before. But I really liked, which is like, what if you die before you're done with doing wishes? Yeah.

[01:14:49] Right? Like, you know, and then like the genie's just fucked. He's just kind of like turns into a ghost. She's just hanging out waiting for someone to pick him up. That's cool. Right. She gets pregnant with his child. Yes.

[01:15:00] But it's like, yeah, but the court's not going to recognize her. Yes. They don't want this child to be the heir to the throne. Like this doesn't the mere fact that he fell in love with you does not change everything. Right.

[01:15:13] I mean, so much of what this movie is sort of talking about is like what is the impact of love? Why do we love? Why do we want it? What can it change in our lives? Can it not? Mustafa, of course, is a real figure.

[01:15:29] That's a real person who was executed by his dad because his dad saw him as a threat. Sure. Because he was a very popular warrior and so on and so forth. Weird times. And gruesome death too. Yes. He's played by Matteo Bocelli. The son of Andrea Bocelli. Really?

[01:15:50] Yeah. That guy? I thought he was in the room with us for a second. It's Andrea. Hello. Do you think that's what he's like? Can I have a tuna melt? That's what he's like at a restaurant. I asked for waffle fries. Sparkling, not still.

[01:16:15] What else is there about this? Because I feel like well, this has the section of auditioning the different storytellers, doesn't it? That sounds right. Again, I saw this movie a month ago. The third story is about the...

[01:16:29] We're still on the second story because this is also where you have the harem. Yes, the crazy harem. Oh, I thought that was in the third and final folktale. No, because the final story is the girl in the tower, Zafir. There's sort of three sections.

[01:16:43] It's like Queen of Sheba and then it's like the Ottoman Empire section which is like the death of Mustafa, Gultan gets pregnant and runs away. The story Stop and Start also let's mention. Yeah, because they're cutting back to them.

[01:16:54] And of course there is a little sprinkling of Tilda Swinton's character's background as well in her boarding school, you know, like being a sort of lonely girl. But I think that's such an important piece. It is, yeah, of course.

[01:17:09] At the beginning of the film when she tells the story about creating the fictional character that's her friend at the boarding school who's represented as like illustrations. Yes. Like he looks like he's literally ripped out of pages. Yeah, yeah.

[01:17:22] But that she like narrativized a character of a friend beyond just being an imaginary friend but it was like a way for her to develop her abilities as a writer and as a storyteller but also creating a sort of fully flesh person to be her companion.

[01:17:34] And the more details and the more world building the less and less she believed. Yes. And she says like at some point she just felt silly and gave it up. Right. To speak to my confusion, it's when he becomes invisible when she can't

[01:17:50] make this two wishes he stays in that world for like a hundred years as a ghost. He's intangible and he's just the bottle is hidden and he's just like anyone want to find it? It's under a flagstone, you know.

[01:18:05] I love the first time also with Shiva they throw him out of the window and he ends up over centuries or whatever in a cobblestone wall. And she finds him by accident. Right. I love that and that's always that's like true of every it's like he

[01:18:21] gets found again by chance every time. It's weird. Yes. Rube Goldberg series of coincidences. Yeah. So yes, you're right. Eventually you've got Ibrahim the next another Sultan. Right. Who's looking for an heir. Right. Right. That's when he's like what am I going to do about this?

[01:18:44] And another concubine. I feel like the concubine finding him is not even that important because she doesn't even want to deal with him. She doesn't even want it. She throws him in the sea eventually.

[01:18:56] No, they so badly need an heir that they like lock this son in a room walled with mink. Well, so like 15 women and are just like just stay in there until you give us a fucking heir. I mean, we're getting it mixed up and it's like not important.

[01:19:10] Really? I just like we'll say like the Ottoman section. It's like there's two sons. There's the bloodthirsty one. Yes. And there's the one that is so just baby that he's literally a baby. Yeah. Comes in a room of like just like yeah that concubines and he's like

[01:19:27] mink lined walls. That's Ibrahim. Ibrahim is the one who gets locked in the harem essentially and just let right and then it's his. So his dad I guess is Ahmed maybe and like I think that's right. And then right.

[01:19:40] And he's got the brother who is like a crazy warrior. But so really what this part is just entailing to us is that he gets this close to getting discovered. Yeah. Right. Hoping that he will then be let out finally being able to give in a wish

[01:19:57] instead of concubine finds him and she just kind of throws him into the ocean. And again this is all like I wish you get on my fucking face. This is all real quote unquote in that like that's a real person. Sure.

[01:20:10] And he truly did apparently love fur so much that he like wanted to just live in like a fur lined room. It looks gross. And he was obsessed with overweight women and they would be like provided for him. Yeah.

[01:20:21] I mean it's not you know and so like he just spent all his time in like total sort of like extravagant luxury just sitting in his furs with his many concubines and his harem of women. Whereas the older son he comes back from war and he's just like

[01:20:34] totally ruined. Right. Broken. That's when the storytellers come into play. Yes. Right. When he's holding court and they're auditioning basically people to amuse him. But it's but it's essentially like right this guy is so despondent and broken from his experiences that he's like I need someone who can

[01:20:53] distract me from the reality. Once again this like why why go to the movies? Why do we need stories? Why do we hear stories? I need someone to help me make sense of my my broken sort of sense of reality now. Right.

[01:21:06] And if he doesn't like their storytelling puts him out in a little paddleboat shoots an arrow. It's it's very high stakes. Yeah. But it's also like if you found the gin and rich wish for power. Yeah. It's sort of like this. It's like what would you get?

[01:21:22] You would get like two or three of these. You would get like to be a part of this palace intrigue where you're constantly looking over your back anyway and you're surrounded by crazy you know warriors or right. Like it's like there's nothing at the top anyway because like

[01:21:31] the first concubine who finds him she's like I want to I'm in love with that guy. Right. Make it happen. And he's like OK. Then the second one he's like please please make a wish and she's like go back in your bottle like you know like she

[01:21:45] doesn't even want to deal with him because it's like when are you going to you know. And then the third one is like I'm in love with this guy. And he's like OK. I think he goes I wish you were back in your body. Yes. Yeah.

[01:21:59] And then he gets cast into the sea or whatever. Can you just imagine how fucking annoying that is. You're a genie and you're like here we go. Ready been waiting a fucking thousand years. Ready ready to get ran some wishes and it's like my wish

[01:22:09] go back to your fucking bottle. Go get your goddamn shine. Don't don't grant any. He actually should say do you have any wishes. Just to be clear except for wishing me back into the bottle which is the one where there's literally one wish I hate so much.

[01:22:23] Please don't make it. Yes. Yeah but no. And so then he is locked in the bottle and he's recovered in the mid 19th century and given to this wife of a Turkish merchant Zafir and she's like all right baby I want to learn

[01:22:39] like I want to be you know I want to be smart. I want to like gain all the world's knowledge and which is a cool wish. Much better much better. And so he's just like great. You ever read Oliver Twist. It's a page turner. Start there.

[01:22:55] Then I don't know you know the Koran. That one's good. Yeah he's just kind of like getting books right. Yeah. Lady Chatterley's lover this one's spicy. Yeah he's given her books and then she's then then they're like that this is like maybe my favorite part of this whole

[01:23:10] dynamic is maybe my favorite part of it. Well no the ending is kind of my favorite part of the movie. But we'll talk through this. But but right like like the idea of the movie is like like the idea of the genie.

[01:23:22] And what do you call the person in charge of a genie. Because master is kind of like a weird loaded word at this point. That's what they do in Aladdin right. Yeah well you know. No I know this is different. No I know.

[01:23:38] Like that of course that relationship would be emotionally fraught and intense and possibly romantic. But also it's like in a world where the genie snaps his fingers and you're the smartest person. Right. And sure yeah the genie is just like nothing but a computer program who writes it.

[01:23:55] But like in a world where learning is you and the genie you know pouring over things together and learning things together and like you know like then it's it's just so romantic. And so the whole problem with this guy is problem I say.

[01:24:07] But like his his issue is that he cares too much and too deeply. Right. And but how else could he be a genie. I mean that's such a cool dynamic. Yes. Yeah yeah. And she's great that actress again I don't know if she's a Turkish actress.

[01:24:26] I'm gonna I'm gonna butcher her name Berku Gölgeder. Okay. But I'm sure I'm getting it wrong. Yeah. Gölgeder. But isn't she she's such a firecracker. Yes. I love her. Yes. Oh I should read this article 20 year quest. Yeah.

[01:24:48] I mean it's like probably in the early 90s. Yeah. He describes it as the opposite of Fury Road. I mean it is. Yeah. But it is it's just the scale is still there. The magic is still there. Like the sequence with the giant bodies you know. Yeah.

[01:25:06] It's very Mad Max. Yes. Don't you think you know. Yes. Like and just the exaggeration of almost every like costume that's kind of stayed you know traditional costuming. Yes. Yeah. The royalty is really dysfunctional and messed up in this movie similar to Mad Max. He hates rulers. Yeah.

[01:25:31] Right. Like he hates power systems. Right. Yes. He hates the people who place themselves at the top of it. Those are always going to be rotten. And they're raw and grotesque. And he's like a bad guy at the beginning. He eventually shrinks down.

[01:25:48] But I feel like it's so well done. It is really well done. I think the CGI is really good. I've seen complaints about it being junky and I almost want to watch it again. Not junky throughout but like having and like there's a couple of awkward moments.

[01:26:00] It's painterly too. I mean you're like getting into like artistic style. You know. He's telling you fairy tales. I agree. I agree. Right. And I think the last story I think it leads into the end of the movie well in that Idris falls in love with this girl.

[01:26:21] Yes. This woman. Yes. Well with Zafir you mean or do you mean with Tilda's character? First with Zafir. First with Zafir and it's very logical and the way he tells these stories is so swooning. Yes.

[01:26:35] And you just I mean the thing with Idris Elba is like how would someone not be falling in love with this man. And then he playing this character who's so like you said overwhelmingly emotional that it makes sense that he's falling in love.

[01:26:44] But I have seen a lot of people complain that they don't buy the third act development of like OK now these two are in love. I mean. Which I disagree with. I totally am like after hearing all that I'm like all right baby take me away. Yeah.

[01:27:01] Crack me open. I want a bone. Tilda's backstory is she was married to a guy. They had a child that didn't go. Pregnancy didn't go their relationship. They focused and it was like they focused all their energy on trying to conceive when it didn't work.

[01:27:15] Everything was sort of falling apart. Yes. Which he tells so gracefully. I feel like visually in such a short sequence. Yes he does a very very.

[01:27:25] The arc of their relationship seeing her with the other seeing him with the other woman but even just the baby book all that shit. And then the closing the box. All of it. Yeah. And then like this one doesn't want to talk.

[01:27:37] She's going to get the story over with as quickly as possible. She's not going to fucking embellish this the way the gent does. But but back to her you know like creating this fictional friend as a child. Yes.

[01:27:48] And then she's just really really adamant about like I like my life. I'm happy with my life. I don't need someone else. What are you talking about. And the thing that he unlocks in her is just like anyone who doesn't quote unquote by the twist.

[01:28:01] Not the twist but the development of the turn in the story. Right. Sure. Yeah. That they fall in love. I'm just like well this first of all this is his fundamental essence as a character. Yes. You fall in love with him. He falls in love with you. Yeah.

[01:28:17] It's kind of you're right. It's kind of like bound up in just the experience of having coming into your life. And I think the greatest point this movie comes to is like what is she falling in love with more than anything. It is the idea of love.

[01:28:28] He is reigniting in her the notion of being in love with another person. Right. Because it's ludicrous. She's like come live with me. It's like come live with you. He's a fucking genie. Right. Like what is this.

[01:28:42] And then there's these like almost comical like her coming home being like how are you doing. And he's like oh you know I went to the large Hadron Collider today. Pretty cool. Right.

[01:28:49] And you're like what this is going to be their life like but that's what romance is. We're like my we'll just figure it out. My wish is that you could love me fully and like endlessly. And then they have like amazing fucking magic cloud. Smoke sex. Right.

[01:29:03] It's incredible. And then she's like come back to London with me live in my flat next to my two shitty neighbors. Right.

[01:29:10] She gets this she gets some jabs into the neighbors the who are like the neighbors are like ultimate little Englander biddies who are like we don't like foreigners around here.

[01:29:18] The ultimate you know vulnerability for her is to admit like I think I would like to share my life with somebody. But the thing she had not considered the reason she'd call herself off to this possibility is like I've been hurt before.

[01:29:30] I do not know if I can find someone who will love me so selflessly and thoroughly and not hurt me. I would rather not try than get hurt again.

[01:29:41] So she's like well if I can wish for that love it's less that like I have fallen in love with him in having this conversation with him.

[01:29:49] It's that he has ignited in her the notion of falling in love and he represents the ideal of what you would want from a partner in a magical sense.

[01:29:58] But then this sort of profound point she gets to of just like your love is a lie because I wish for it. It cannot be real if I asked it of you.

[01:30:09] Aside from the fact that you are turning into dust and dying because the cell phone signals hurt you too much. This isn't love because I wanted it. Right. The dynamic is sort of broken fundamentally from the start which makes sense and that's his sort of curse.

[01:30:26] But there is the suggestion like there has been an evolution in his experience here because every other story it's like well I was in love with someone or I was trying to help someone be in love. And then it fucking ends up with me back in the bottle.

[01:30:40] And this one feels a little different. But the yes the big twist beyond them moving in together is that he can't exist in our modern world because of the damn 5G signals. Damn fucking signals. Damn cell phones which are basically turning him into ashes.

[01:30:59] I guess right. They're melting him. Wish number two is I wish you could speak because his mouth is all dusty and he can't talk. Yes. And then wish number three becomes what I find very touching.

[01:31:11] I'm going to get the exact detail of this wrong but she basically says I wish you are wherever you would be happiest. Right. And he goes back to his like realm. Yeah. But then it's not as simple as a genie or free thing.

[01:31:26] It's a like you you need what I want for you is your happy number one in your own life again. I can't say what that is. Hell yeah. But I want the thing that you want. She's figured it out.

[01:31:37] She's figured it out. It's it's kind of the perfect wish. And it means he can come visit her which I think is lovely like you know like there's that code of like you know yeah sure we're not together but

[01:31:46] Which I think is kind of a direct mirroring of the fucking friend she creates as a child. Right. He exists in the state of the little paper cutout boy almost you know. Right. And you know they can hang out on Parliament Hill.

[01:32:00] Which I also by the way I do want to say I feel like most of this movie is meant to be taken literally. Right. Sure. I do think there's interpretation.

[01:32:07] Yeah it's not like I don't buy that it's like oh she's having some big fantasy of this and it's like her emotional development is no of course no yeah. No even if the other people can't see the things in the earlier moments and whatever right.

[01:32:19] But she's narrating this film. We then see her in a park with a book drawing the jinn closing it up first page is the first lines of narration we heard at the beginning of the film. Book close. She turned this into a story.

[01:32:33] We tell ourselves stories in order to live. This is how we process the events of our lives. Right. This is how we make them palatable to ourselves.

[01:32:40] And we put them out in the world and hope that they can help other people or at least entertain them or distract them or whatever. And then he shows up again and she says the thing of like and he still comes to see me sometimes.

[01:32:51] At that point I think you can interpret it as she has turned him into a story so that he can be with her selectively at times.

[01:33:01] Right. He might not literally be there anymore or if he is is it is in the sense that like being able to bottle things into stories help us carry them around in a cleaner way.

[01:33:13] We've taken something large and unwieldy and intangible and turned it into something sort of portable and understandable. And they have an actually healthy dynamic. Yeah. They both helped each other. They forged an actual relationship. In emotional and rewarding ways.

[01:33:31] Another thing about this movie I found really fascinating is it's like one of the first movies I have seen that feels like it reflects a quote unquote post pandemic world. I say this with full awareness of the fact that there's a few like this that are acknowledging.

[01:33:49] There's something. Like that you might pop on a mask to go in a shop or whatever. It's that balance. Like early when she's giving her TED talk there's the shot of the crowd and you're like oh like 40 to 50 percent of the people in the crowd are wearing masks.

[01:34:03] That new sort of weird reality where it's just like you're gonna see masks. It's not everyone mask. It's not peak you know like pandemic. And then even the airport it's like one of the security guards she talks to has a mask the other one doesn't.

[01:34:17] She's taking it off when she goes out of the shop. You know there's that kind of thing. It was obviously in the hopper for 20 years. They started filming it they were ready to go before the pandemic.

[01:34:28] But I think the effects of the pandemic have bled into the movie in slightly interesting small ways. And I do think it's like you know I'm not gonna fucking get full messy griff here.

[01:34:39] But it is one of those things of like spend like a year and a half lockdown being single. And then the last year and change or whatever it's been. I've been like trying to date people.

[01:34:50] And I constantly come back to basic questions that it feels like the characters are dealing with in this movie. Where it's like what do I even want out of a relationship? What am I looking for in another person? Why do I want to be with another person?

[01:35:05] What do I think that gives me? What do I want to give someone else? Yeah these are complicated questions. They're like complicated questions and I find this movies sort of reckoning and questioning with it. Without any neat answers.

[01:35:18] But that's the thing it's like this isn't like if I'm... What's that movie about? Oh it's about the stories we tell each other like fucking do you have a bed nearby that I can fall? But that's not just what it's about. It's not just about that.

[01:35:34] It's about like right the quality of romance like with a person. I also think the difference between love as it exists in like stories and how it exists in reality. I'm not even saying stories and fiction but I'm saying the way we talk about being in love.

[01:35:49] The way it is narrativized. People falling in love, the wedding, the marriage working or not. How relationships work or don't. Versus like what on a fundamental level what are you actually looking for? Is there any tangible way to describe it?

[01:36:06] Is it just whatever weird ephemeral thing you feel with another person in that moment in that place? In that time? Is it the idea of the commitment and the everlasting and the selfless fully giving? Is ghosting someone when you're just like I wish you back in the bottle.

[01:36:22] Get away from me. The ultimate ghosting. Yeah exactly throw it in the ocean. Yeah and then like with online dating there's less randomness to meeting someone. You're curating kind of around very specific needs.

[01:36:39] Whereas you might just see someone at a bar on the street and it'd be like someone you really have this connection with that you would never like necessarily swipe. Basically how you met your girlfriend. Well yeah we met at a bar on Sunday afternoon. Doing a bit.

[01:36:56] Sometimes you just gotta say yes to the bit. You do have to say yes to the bit. But he's got the ultimate dating app which is just every thousand years bottle opens up and here's your blind date. Hello. The movie is a little horny.

[01:37:11] I remember when it was being talked about it was like oh he's making a horny genie movie. But it's also swooningly old fashionedly old romantic. Yes. Don't see a lot of that these days.

[01:37:24] It's got a lot of weird contradictions in its very existence and I think the movie is very much of a piece. And gels with itself. But I think it contains such a weird collection of things. And contradictory sort of feelings and moods and such.

[01:37:40] Not even tones as much but certainly vibes. Yeah you know it's jarring at times to go back to them in the hotel room. Like even the lighting like I was saying earlier like it was the whiteness was like giving me a headache at some point.

[01:37:59] Yeah but like intentional and this is how we used to fucking make movies. Things were not algorithmized and there were not proven franchises on a large scale. So if the right stars wanted to make something studios would fucking throw some money at it and hope that worked.

[01:38:16] And same with a director coming off a big hit. They have a combination of all the above. All the better. You know they look at something and hope it works well on paper but sometimes you take a fucking flyer on someone.

[01:38:27] Because you're like well the guy made Fury Road. I don't know that movie must have seemed crazy on paper. It's that thing we talk about where it's like the true blank check thing is you have a success that almost can't be quantified.

[01:38:39] The only reason it worked is because this director hit on something. Where they go I don't know I guess do it again. We just have to trust you. And so rarely when people get to that position today do they actually get to make something like this.

[01:38:54] So often it's like they just re-up for the franchise again. And as much as he's doing Furiosa now. Which he is. A lot of people just don't even do the one for me anymore. That's the depressing part.

[01:39:08] Whether they don't want to or they can't get it made or a combination of both. Is it too hard to get it made or is it more it's like well.

[01:39:15] You can do a one for me but you actually need to do three for us because we need sequels fast. And we actually need to get you on that treadmill quickly.

[01:39:23] And then there's like the more depressing thing of like James Gunn's one for me is making a Suicide Squad movie. That's the ultimate example I was about to bring up because it was already brought up in this episode. It's not true. That was kind of a personal movie.

[01:39:38] And I'm excited for Guardians 3. But it's also kind of fundamentally depressing. That I'm like. Guardians is sort of. Arguably Mad Max-y within the Marvel tapestry of like characters that no one fucking knew. Totally very different from the other movies.

[01:39:55] Work so much because of your voice and your style and your sensibility. Clearly the James Gunn thing has been quantified. And is a sellable thing now. And he has chosen to reapply that to different superhero characters. Like he's going to do fucking Suicide Squad and Peacemaker. Yeah.

[01:40:13] And now when James Gunn has talked about it's just about like. Well is he going to go back to DC full time or do you think he'll ever do a Marvel movie again or whatever.

[01:40:20] I want to see the thing that James Gunn wrote 20 years ago that he couldn't get financed. Yeah me too. There are tons of those scripts. Let's do it. Some of them he's like fucking passed off and like you know produced Brightburn or whatever.

[01:40:33] You know half developed ideas the Belko experiment. But I'm like direct something that is something you can make now because you've made these films. Rather than making another one of those films. Well it doesn't help that this movie isn't doing very well. It doesn't.

[01:40:49] But I'm so happy it exists. I'm so fucking happy it exists. Let's do the box office game speaking of. Oh wait can I quickly though I thought of at least one better wish. And I think David in particular liked this wish. A sandwich. A magical sandwich. Okay.

[01:41:07] Not interested. Somebody's interested. So you have this magical sandwich. Anytime you want it you can just design a sandwich and it materializes. You eat it and then it resets. Basically you have a sandwich for life. Any sandwich you want. That sounds fine. Why can't we think bigger?

[01:41:29] Why can't I make any food I want in front of me for life? I love sandwiches. Yeah that's fine. I'm sitting there being like I don't know. I'm sitting at fucking HBO Max. What the fuck do I want to watch? Analysis Paralysis. I always want a sandwich.

[01:41:47] But there's a lot of kinds. But I guess you'd just be like whatever. I'm bound by the parameters of the sandwich. But wait a second. Can you make a hot dog with this power? Is a hot dog a sandwich? Can you make a hot dog?

[01:42:02] The question is a hot dog a sandwich? I don't want to harp on this but I just want to say this quickly. Talking about the release of this movie and then the performance and everything. Which I think we all agree is kind of unavoidable. Weird movie.

[01:42:16] It was unavoidably not going to do well. It maybe could have done better than it did. Right so the one thing I want to spotlight within this is Mike DeLuca had this 18 month, 2 year run as the head of MGM.

[01:42:27] Mike DeLuca we talked about wrote In the Mouth of Madness and was a New Line studio exec and has sort of bounced around for years. Did a lot of movies at Sony. But like went back to MGM and was sort of like

[01:42:38] I think we can fill a hole in the marketplace. What are the movies that aren't being made anymore? Teamed up with Annapurna. You know we're like we want to make like movies for grown ups. Small to mid-sized films that the studios are dropping

[01:42:51] but are a little bit too big. So they make like House of Gucci which works at the box office. Liquor's Pizza which does okay but obviously works critically gets Oscar nominations whatever. And it kind of felt like oh here's like a new force

[01:43:03] of like getting shit back up. They get the distribution for this movie and you're sort of like okay MGM's like slotting into an A24 adjacent space with maybe slightly more commercial things. And then Mike DeLuca has now been hired by Warner Brothers to sort of take over

[01:43:18] their film division. MDM is sort of abandoned. And it already feels like the dream of this thing is maybe a little bit out the window. And now he's just back into the Warner Brothers thing which all we're reading in the press is all the Warner Brothers hand wringing

[01:43:33] of how do we just re-establish the franchises in the biggest ways and get rid of anything that feels even slightly risky. I don't know. But I do think that's partially the reason this movie has been a little orphaned. Yeah it's partially.

[01:43:48] It's kind of like the last movie of the DeLuca run but DeLuca's out the door already. That's part of it. The other part is it's just weird. It's up. It's yes and no. It's good that Warner Brothers is like we need to release movies in theaters again. Great.

[01:44:06] It's not great that they're like oh my God what do we do about Aquaman. But that's also it's what the trades care about now. So like that's all they fucking care about. That's all they ask about. It's all they think about. Yeah.

[01:44:20] What's the flash Aquaman you know what. You know and it's like it just becomes this like overwhelmed. It's like it's like whenever non-franchise stuff actually making money that like that will reflect. It always does. Like the winds do always shift. We talk about the interest thing in this

[01:44:37] like why hasn't he quite had the gotten the sort of hold as an A-list star. And it is like the weird element of like in a certain way the most important thing about being a bankable actor is having a big enough franchise that is everlasting ongoing indefinite. Right.

[01:44:55] And so like if you're a fan of one of those movies they can ask you questions about the next movie in that franchise and those answers go viral. It's what you're talking about. It's like it's a self-fulfilling prophecy of if these are the only

[01:45:11] movies we report on they're the only movies that are getting oxygen. Yeah. But I just think that's not gonna be true after this year. This year is great. This is just a slow time. Yeah. I lived through 2020 and 21 box office reporting like I

[01:45:31] won't I'm just simply not going to be cowed. Oh it's been a lean September. I'm like bitch the twisted was like number one for six weeks or whatever it was called. Absolutely. And I was you know it was all theaters are gonna die.

[01:45:48] Top Gun Maverick just made a billion and a half dollars not without China. And then you get to this year and you're like oh yeah right. So recently every movie but below number six the box office was making less than a million dollars.

[01:46:03] And no one's talking about the Warner Brothers things like it's they got sold. AT&T has more money than the Discovery Channel. Yeah. They got sold by one of the most powerful companies in the universe to the Discovery Channel to a company that's smaller than they are.

[01:46:21] It's not because cinema is dead. It's because stupid corporate nonsense. Get over it. You get over streaming is the thing I love Discovery Plus. They have great programming. Ben's been watching fucking Chip and Joy games. Yeah. I love a house hunter international. He's not even joking.

[01:46:42] Number one at the box office is the invitation. The invitation. It's just one of those weird tiny number one grosses. Is that what it was? It changes name to the invitation which is the name of a better movie. Yes. Bad time. There's a show called Good

[01:47:01] Bones but don't let it fool you. It's about the house. It was called The Bride and then it was renamed The Invitation because supposedly like the bride tested poorly with men. That sounds like some made up shit though. Absolutely. But anyway, it's a Dracula movie.

[01:47:20] It's like she's a modern bride of Dracula sort of. You get invited to the manor and people think we're spoiling it. The trailer spoils everything. It's one of those trailers where the trailer has three acts and the last shot of the trailer you're like that might

[01:47:38] be the last shot of the film. I feel confident that might be the final shot. I want to see it. I feel like people say it's not very scary but kind of good. You love her. I'm happy she finally got a leading role. Absolute charmer.

[01:47:53] Number two at the box office is an action film based on a comic book. Is it a comic book? I believe it's a novel. Bullet Train which has made $80 million and almost $200 worldwide. Have you seen it? I haven't. I found it pleasantly distracting.

[01:48:12] Basically is what I ask for from movies like that. I was on vacation when it came out and I was harsh enough that after being excited by the trailer I was like oh is this going to be a real fucking bummer. And I watched it and I was

[01:48:27] like this kept me entertained the entire time. It has good performances in it. Yeah. I'll check it out. I love Pip. Number three at the box office stars the star of this movie. Star of this movie. It is Idris Elba's Beast. Which I hear is fun.

[01:48:44] I've also heard is fun. Fights a lion. With rabies I think. This lion is like Yeah he's like taking his daughters on a safari and there's like a lion that's out of control and they're like stuck in a car and he's like I gotta figure out how

[01:48:58] to fucking kill this lion. It's about to start a Comic-Con movie and that guy kind of makes good watchable thrill. Like Everest is really good. Contraband is one of those movies better than it should be. I haven't seen the last but people stuck up for Adrift.

[01:49:12] People thought Adrift was fun. Oh yeah. Like you know that guy. It's like you know the guy's not going to punch above his weight. He makes you a fun little you know. But he arguably does punch a little above his weight. He just knows what his weight

[01:49:24] class is. That's what I'm saying. Like he's not he's not gonna make anything too fancy here. So Idris Elba is gonna punch a lion or whatever. You wanna see that? Almost to his credit and I know this will sound bizarre coming from me.

[01:49:35] I hear he was like one of the guys Universal really wanted on Fast and Furious. Maybe for eight. Because most of his films have been at Universal. Sure. And he was like no I wanna work small. I don't wanna make something that big.

[01:49:49] He just kind of was like I don't I don't want to be Jeremy Cullet's era. I like making movies where I can punch a little bit above expectations. Right. Right. Number four at the box office has been out for 14 weeks. OK. It's made four point seven

[01:50:03] million dollars and it's fourteenth weekend. It is Top Gun Maverick? Top Gun Maverick. Which is kind of getting just boosted at the end of the summer. Yes. It's getting a little bit more to it. You know why? Why? It's a very very fun movie to see.

[01:50:18] It is fun. Very fun movie to see at the movie theater. Yeah. They've like put it back in more screens. I think they have been putting it back on premium formats. It's ranks. Here's its rank at the box office over the 14 weeks. Yeah.

[01:50:30] One one two three two two three four five five six two four four. I mean. It has not dropped out of six. Six is the lowest it's been in 14 weeks. It's just chilling. Yeah. And then it went up. Yeah. It's wild. Have you seen it? No. Wow.

[01:50:49] You're pretty good. You're like the only person in America. Yeah. You're kind of the only one. I saw it three times in theaters and it's not even like I was. I saw it twice and I kind of want to do one more. It's just it's just like

[01:51:00] it's not it's not anywhere close to my favorite movie of the year. It's not the movie I enjoyed the most. But but I'm like it's you know what's fun? It's up there for me. Going to a theater and watching that. I'm doing the gong.

[01:51:11] You know from the theme song number five of the box office was number one the week before. Huh. It's from crunchy roll studios that major distributor. I forgot that this was number one. Is is the title just Dragon Ball Super? Dragon Ball Super colon superhero. Obviously I couldn't

[01:51:26] remember if there were two supers. Remember Broly? Yeah. How's he doing? OK. It's made 30 million dollars in two years. It's a movie that's been in theaters for over a year. It's a movie that's been in theaters for over a year. It's made 30 million dollars in two weeks.

[01:51:42] I mean that ain't nothing. I agree with you that everyone needs to calm down about death of cinemas and I think the rise of these short run anime releases making tens of millions of dollars in theaters prove that like no people want to see things in theaters for

[01:51:55] the right movie. There are underserved audiences. Yeah. For example. There are genres that have always been viewed as not commercial enough. But if you put in theaters people will fucking vote with their dollars and rush out to see it. The League of Super Pets is number six. Yeah.

[01:52:12] OK. Three Thousand Years of Longing is number seven. Not great. Open to two. Two point nine. OK. So almost three. This is not that I'm any sort of fucking distribution genius but this is the classic example of a movie for me where I'm like you should have released

[01:52:28] this on 600 screens maximum. That would be the apparently a wide release was either built into its contract or demanded by theaters and then it was released. And then it was demanded by multiplexes. Both of these things have been reported. OK. The latter makes a

[01:52:43] lot of sense to me the multiplexes were like hey do you have a movie of movie stars can we have it. Yeah. We need stuff. I'm like 600 is a reasonable size and then you can pump it up weekend two or three but it's like this is

[01:52:55] a movie where you want fewer screens more full the first weekend to build some word of mouth from the people who like it rather than having everyone report on this fucking 60 million dollar movie later turds. I'm like I'm not going to make a movie later turd.

[01:53:08] Number eight of the box office hate that they sound like that. Yeah I don't like that they sound like that is minions the rise of crew. Another big hit huge huge massive fat titties hit. Exactly. Titty so big. Number 10 million titties flopped around the box office.

[01:53:25] Number nine is Thor Love and Thunder which despite horrible buzz and bad reviews has also just kind of made 750 million dollars worldwide. You know it's another way that people are like a flop a flop. You're like a flop and you're like the highest grossing Thor movie. Yeah.

[01:53:41] And it's barely but highest grossing Thor movie without being released in China Russia and maybe two other territories. It outgrossed Ragnarok. Now number 10 I just wanted to get to number 10 is a film that has outgrossed Scream Bullet Train DC League of Super Pets Morbius. Yeah. Jackass Forever. Yeah.

[01:54:01] Everything everywhere all at once. It is quietly we know it's been at the box office this year. Elvis. Elvis has done very well. It's done way better than this movie. Nope if it's even nope. Nope. So number 11 it's made 120 million dollars. Yeah. This is quietly the little engine

[01:54:21] that could have 2022. Yep. Where the crud ads sing. Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp. Over 80 domestic. Yes. For a movie that got horrible reviews and literally the day it came out my book possibly murdered. Yes. And he's still wanted for murder. Holy shit. And yet people are like car

[01:54:41] ads are singing I'll go. It stars Daisy Edgar Jones. Wow we love her. Of course but like the biggest name attached to this movie is Reese Witherspoon as producer. Correct. Yes. That's like I mean that's a movie that most places would go you punt this to streaming.

[01:54:58] There's not a place for this in the theatrical marketplace. People are leaving their homes to go see where the crud ads thing. I wouldn't. But they did. They went and saw it's encouraging. Number 14 the box office Rogue One a Star Wars story. Re-released tie into Andorra they put

[01:55:15] in IMAX only. IMAX has been in this weird zone of just like so what do we do. CET. Yeah. Jaws coming back this weekend. That's cool. In 3D. Jaws 3D. Guess you Jaws 3A. It's Jaws 1 in 3D not Jaws 3D in 3D. That's it. You've seen a lot

[01:55:34] of movies lately. Yeah. I'm in now 3000 years of longing of sort of weird exception because because when it came up and now I'm now in festival mode where the movies are getting loaded into my mouth like donuts. You said you're not sure if this is still

[01:55:48] your number one. No might not be. Do you want to say or is it too premature? The thing you told me was was fighting for the spot right now. Yeah. Tar. You love tar. Love tar. You want to talk tar. Tar is going to be very divisive.

[01:56:02] I think. Can't wait. It's about it's a two hour 40 minute movie with Cate Blanchett as a conductor who gets canceled. Oh this is an avatar. It's not avatar although I'm excited for avatar. And we will be talking that tar at the end of the year. We sure will.

[01:56:16] I was like damn James had a take. All right. I don't know what he did. Here we go. Avatar 2 baby. It's about classical music. Yeah. I do love tar and I'm just about to see a bunch of movies so we'll see like how it all settles down

[01:56:30] and it's always an unsettled time. Funny Pages we were just both talking about Funny Pages before the record which Ben is on scene with love but I want to shout that out because that's a movie in limited release but it's it's playing in many cities. It's in like 20

[01:56:43] different cities right now. That movie is fucking hilarious. It's wonderful. I'm biased. Owen Klein is an old friend of mine but Oh well sure. I think it's a wonderful wonderful movie that I highly recommend to our listeners. And I said this before the record but yeah

[01:56:57] incredibly funny movie good movie to see with the crowd. Yeah great movie to see on a big screen. Yeah. But it also feels to me like when we watch someone's first film in a miniseries and you see the rough first film where the whole thing is there.

[01:57:10] You know? Yeah. Like when we go back and go like oh the whole voice and the perspective and the point of view and the style is there. I think Owen Klein's gonna have a really interesting career as a filmmaker. It's a wonderful movie. Recommend that.

[01:57:24] I think it's a great movie. I think it's a great movie. Just a lot of excitement. You know? I'm about to see The Fablemans baby. Look you're not it's not like three thousand years of Lonnie but three weeks of break from Kubrick is what this is kicking off.

[01:57:40] That's true. Next week we're talking Pinocchio. I don't think I'm gonna like as much as this movie. I also am feeling that way but what a surprise it would be. If it eclipsed our high. If we were charmed by Pinocchio. Should I rewatch the original? Yeah.

[01:57:56] It's a good movie. I think we're gonna do The Woman King because Gina Prince-Bythewood has a movie coming out in September as well so they all come. We're all coming week after week after you know and then we will be back to Kubrick with Doctor Strangelove. Yeah.

[01:58:09] With Sean Fantasy. Fuck it I'll just say it. Get excited. Dorks. Yeah. We fucking got him on. It's a good episode. Yeah. But see you next week Pinocchio and let's say this. Should we say it? Yeah. I don't know what but okay. I think they'll show up. Yes.

[01:58:28] Barring any catastrophe if this has not been cut out. Griffin isn't lying his nose has stayed the same size. Long overdue the podcast The Ride guys the good boys themselves Scott Gairdner Jason Sheridan Mike Carlson all three of them will be talking Pinocchio with us. That's right. Yeah.

[01:58:48] Woman King I think we'll do solo. I believe so. And then yeah back to Kubrick and you know yeah it's gonna be a little bit of a clockwork orange Barry Lyndon the shining Full Metal Jacket Eyes Wide Shut it's quite a run you know what's fucked up what

[01:59:06] let me just double check here to see Full Metal Jacket will be our 400th episode is that right? Wow. Isn't that sick? Yeah that is sick huh? Isn't that sick in the head? That's sick in the head that's totally twisted out of control fucking twisted

[01:59:23] all right I gotta eat something I mean Ben's right it is kind of the ability I want mid record is just like give me the exact same which I'm thinking of Chicken Parm yeah this is a wonderful masterpiece and I can't wait to watch it many more times

[01:59:36] look go see it in theaters if you can yeah go see it in theaters if it's even available look it's not gonna be there for long try to catch it when you can if you're gonna see it it certainly benefits from being seen on big screen yes yes

[01:59:49] absolutely vote with your dollars yeah please do and tell us your wishes guys I have no wishes within reason and here's my greatest wish no wishing for being on this podcast yeah no wishing for that no and if you say longer episodes oh oh baby oh boy

[02:00:07] I'm gonna go bad genie I'm gonna go Jafar genie on your ass no and if you say I wish I could be on the blank episode you're banned banned banned new rule of the podcast we only book people who don't wanna be on the show and here's my

[02:00:24] deepest darkest desire I wish that you would rate and subscribe I wish that you'd show your appreciation to Marie Barty for social media helping produce the show A.J. McKee and Alex Barron for our editing Joe Bowen and Pat Rounds for our artwork Lane Montgomery and the great

[02:00:41] American novel for our theme song I wish I WISH you'd type blankcheckpod.com into your browser for links to some real nerdy shit including blank check special features and more on the series on franchises like Roger Moore James Bond and some fun Kubrick bonuses we have coming up

[02:01:01] and confess Fletch this month the new Fletch movie yeah we're gonna do a little one-off fun bonus episode about the new Fletch movie doing that at the end of the month cause that's when it's coming out uh and as always I think all three of us really really

[02:01:18] want a sandwich right now