Lights, Cameras, A-Holes

The boys discuss the movies The Zone of Interest, Civil War, and more. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The gown beat on ninety seven onefreak. A lot of nb W NBA
talking here, a lot of alot of w NBA Google imaging in here.

(00:20):
I'm a fan of all of allthese players coming in the league.
You are. I'm wishing the bestfor Cameron Brink Stanford, the second pick.
That picture of her, how toldis she compared to? Kevin says
criminally short? It actually says CameronBrink hot. I meant height when I

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was image searching six' four andshe's definitely wearing some heels in that photo.
Yeah, she's got a lot ofapps, Kevin. That's what I
was saying. Maybe we should havetaken Angel Reese. She's the second most
marketable player in that thing, andshe's sitting there. I was really hoping
to Ohio State. She's some shooter. She's a guard. We got all

(01:03):
guards. That's draft. Let's gowings, Let's go wings. No caveo.
Today he is beginning the adventure Oha lifetime. He's headed to Italy.
We are tracking his flight. They'rearriving in one hour, in fifteen
minutes. He took off three anda half hours late. We are moments

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away from them crossing over land,meaning that his greatest fears are going to
be absolved in mere moments, ashe will not plummet into the Atlantic Ocean.
He will soon plummet onto the plainsof Spain, which I guess is
preferred to him. I don't knowhow it works, but he's about to

(01:48):
cross land. They land in justover an hour, and his whole trip
is kind of screwed from a threeand a half hour delay. But because
he's gonna miss the Barcelona Connector,it's going to screw up his golf outing,
which I know he was really excitedabout playing Spanish golf or Italian golf.
He may eliminate the Lake Como portionof his trip, which that's supposed
to be the very psyched for himto enjoy. But Kevio's off until next

(02:13):
Thursday. It's you and I today, you and I tomorrow. We are
off Friday and Monday, and thenit'll just be you and I Tuesday,
Wednesday next week and Cavo back onThursday. JJ is gonna be with us
the whole time, so we'll holdthis thing together. One thing JJ really
likes is movies, and you've seena couple, Danny I did I'm on
a new show. Let's kick afew around here in lights, camera,

(02:34):
a holes, the hot flicks.I have one little slab of movie news
before we get to the reviews,because it does have been watching the new
stuff intrigued by the reboot of TheNaked Gun, right, Yeah, I

(02:58):
think this could work, I hope. So we haven't seen any of the
Zucker Brothers reboots. Yeah, theyhaven't really done that, Like they haven't
remade an Airplane or a Naked Gunor because there's that's a unique brand of
comedy. Well, you know,the black filmmaker has embraced it a little

(03:21):
bit with kind of scary movie andsort of that slapstick, real wacky,
over the top style, and Ithink they've been the only ones to kind
of keep it alive for a while. You're right, we haven't had that
just real absurd, silly, wayuseless comedy. Yeah, but I love
Airplane and Naked Gun and they apparentlyare going to re up. And who
have they cast in this? Okay, well we knew the lead, so

(03:43):
no more Leslie Nielsen, rest inpower, Young King. We have Liam
Neeson taking over as Lieutenant Frank Drebbens. That's an odd choice. Dude I've
seen haven't seen him do comedy,have we? He has done h self
with Ricky Gervais on Life's Too Short. I believe it was one of the
BBC shows where Could You Raise It? Which was funny as hell with the

(04:08):
little guy. No, I knewthis was gonna happen there now keep going
the little English guy Billy Bardy fourgreat guesses. I don't know. Oh,
I want to say it before Ilook it up. The British dude,
I think he played like, ahfine wise too Short. You'll know

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when I say it. It's uhWarwick Davis. Oh yeah, yeah,
okay? And is he Weeman?No, he's not we Man. He's
Warwick Davis. I just gave youhis proper name. But there's some outtakes
Liam Neeson and he is the bonedriest but really funny. Okay, because

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those are massive shoes to fill andalso the Robert stat character, those are
massive shoes to fill as well.But who's going to take over for Julie
Haggerty. Yeah. All we haveis the announcement that we have the love
interest of Liam Neeson for the upcomingreboot of Naked Gun and it is going
to be well, no, andthis would have been a striker, Priscilla,

(05:17):
No, you're all over the place, You're I'm thinking of an airplane.
I'm so sorry, Priscilla Presley.Yeah, and I don't know if
it's a different role or how itis, but the love interest of Liam
Neeson will be Pamela Anderson. Okay, I could see this working. Liam
Neeson's seventy one years old cast asclueless police detective Frank Drevin with pam Anderson

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fifty six slated to play his loveinterest. I did get stuck on airplane.
I want this who's played striker?Yeah? Yeah, So anyway,
I don't I think twenty. Ithink next year that's supposed to pop and
come out. I am at leastcurious. Good chance it comes out.
Absolutely sucks whenever you watch it.But you know, for eighties and nineties

(06:06):
boys, that's a fun one.All right, that's a future movie,
current movie. I think you guyshave both been rocking a few j It's
JJ on Air is always on topof movies, one of the best movie
reviewers and most reputable inn DFW andwe love having her here. How what
are gonna start with? Man,I know you've seen a couple. If
you've seen one, you I wantto jump in real quick with this one

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because this has been out for awhile. It did really well at the
Oscars. I'm gonna play this rightnow. JJ. This is the score
to the opening scene opening credits ofJonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest. Now.

(06:49):
This was nominated for at the AcademyAwards Best Picture, Best Director,
Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International FeatureFilm, and Best Sound. Now it
did win for Best International Feature andit won for Best Sound. The score
is a huge part of why thisis the great. Michael Levi a younger

(07:14):
composer that works with a lot ofinteresting orchestration. It's kind of a he's
a laptop composer, so a lotof these sounds are synthesizers, but it
is integral to creating the tension inwhich is one of the if not the
most tense movies that I've ever seen. Now. The Zone of Interest is

(07:38):
about a family, a family thatthe patriarch of the family is a man
named Rudolph hass He is the commandantof Aschwitz, the concentration camp that was
established by the SS in World WarTwo and they're home is right next to

(08:01):
it. In fact, the wallof a portion of their land which they
are mere feet from, borders theactual concentration camp. Barre, yeah,
razor wire on top. It's avery very high, apparently fifteen to twenty
foot tall, thick, thick cementwall. And on the other side.

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You never see what is on theother side, but you hear it,
You see the smoke. They smellthe smells. And this is a family
of a man, his wife,what's her name, Hedvig, and their
five children, I believe four orfive children that they're raising in this idyllic,

(08:48):
basically beautiful garden. And it's literallya garden. They grow their own
food. They have gorgeous flowers,a greenhouse, a swimming po you can
bring that down to just kind oflet it play underneath a swimming pool.
This wonderful, beautiful home. Itis day there, and his sole job

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is to exterminate prisoners by the thousands. All I knew is it was they
lived adjacent to I didn't know thatthat was his job with his lovely family.
And this movie really doesn't have theelements of what make a Hollywood movie

(09:35):
enjoyable to the masses. It's essentiallya snapshot of life of these people and
how they conduct their lives on aday to day basis in full knowledge of
what's going on on the other side. And I don't want to give away
too many of the key moments inthe film, but there is one element
in the film that just thinking aboutit gives me absolute chills, because to

(10:00):
be able to get to that mindset, to do that job, and to
have your family buy in what's goingon on the other side of those walls
is the ultimate case of dehumanization.You have to look at what you're doing
as you're exterminating something that is nothuman. Is it about his kids knowing

(10:22):
or not knowing? It's not really. It's not that it's a secret.
It's the fact that this is theirway of thinking. So to the children,
they're thinking in terms of these arenot people that are suffering over there.
They are essentially subhuman. And thereis one scene that'll break you up
is when the older brother, theoldest brother is playing and he's a member

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of the Hitler Youth. He's goton the full uniform with the silly shorts
and the dumb armband and all thatand he's playing with his little brother and
they're in the garden, in theyard, and he chases his little brother
and pushes shoves him into the greenhouseand his brother is yelly, no,
no, no, I don't wantto go in there. I don't want
to go in there, and lockshim in the greenhouse and sits up front

(11:11):
and watches his little brother and startsmaking a hissing sound to intimate the gas
of the gas chambers. It's chilling. It's the most it's so incredibly uncomfortable.
It's very in line with the workthat Jonathan Glazer does. I'm a
big fan of his. This isonly his fourth film. His very first

(11:31):
film was called Sexy Beast, whichhad Ben Kingsley in it. When he
was nominated for Best Supporting Actor inthat film, that came out twenty four
years ago. So this guy hasonly made four films in twenty four years.
I've seen three of the four andhe he's directed two Radiohead videos.
He's done a lot of music videostuff. But his style is very unique.

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It relies heavily on it's very surrealistic, but it relies heavily on soundtrack
and sound but you hear it allMan. You hear the screams, you
hear the gunshots, you hear allof that, and it's it's it's a
distant echo, but it's a partof these people's day to day lives.
And there is a scene at theend that kind of leaves it open to

(12:20):
interpretation, very much like a radioheadlyric. I think this guy is a
massive radio fan, by the way, But you don't. You leave the
movie not really having any real resolve. It doesn't really have a big payoff
or anything like that. But it'ssomething that I feel is important, and
it's something that has after seeing ita week ago, has absolutely stuck with

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me. Is it great? Ithink it's I think it's perfect. Yeah,
but it's not what it's if you'reexpecting a film about World War two
or concentration camps. It ain't aboutthat. It's a snapshot of the life
of a family that has convinced themselvesof something that's not real. Jeez.

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It's incredible, it's moving, andit's something that it needs to be seen.
And and just like I said,it sticks with you. It's emotional.
Is it a jerker? It's emotional, not in a way where I
didn't ever feel like I was onthe verge of tears. But it's very
provoking. It's it's a very provocativefilm and and and it made me think

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a lot, and it didn't makeme feel a lot, but not that,
not to that level. Let's moveon, though, because two nights
ago I took in a film ata theater and I got to see civil
efing War. Now, JJ,I know you have seen civil war,
yes, yes, And I don'tknow what you know about this film.

(13:45):
But people that are expecting to gointo this and see a big, grand
scale imagination of what civil war wouldbe like if it happened in this country,
my be a little bit disappointed.This is a film about war journalists.

(14:05):
That's what this is about. Thisis about a group, a small
group of journalists that and they're noteven embedded. They're kind of acting on
their own. It's a photographer playedby Kirsten Dunst, and she with a
small team of others are basically documentingwhat's happening in this war. Now.

(14:30):
It apparently happens sometime in the nearfuture, because you see city scapes of
New York and the New World TradeCenter is not the tallest building in the
city, although the cars that arein the film are not futuristic at all.
In fact, most of them appearto be from current times or even

(14:50):
before, So you get the ideathat maybe auto product this war has been
going on long enough where auto productionall but stopped or they had to use
those facilities for other types of warefforts. But I believe the lines are
intentionally blurred on what caused this war, who's the good guys, who's the
bad guys. You contextually can figurethat out as the movie goes on,

(15:15):
and in the end you have apretty good idea of who the good guys
and who are the bad guys.But I think the lines are kind of
intentionally blurred on how this happened andwhy these certain states are aligned to kind
of not create a template for peopleto act upon this in the future.
It's a little nebulous in the waythat it's presented, because you just don't

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know who's fighting on who's fighting forwhat cause, and their whole mission is
to get to DC because the wallsare closing in on the current president,
which is played by Nick Offerman.He's in the movie for a total of
what maybe five minutes and the restof the film is about these journalists and

(16:02):
then what they have to go throughto get to d c H. I
know you saw this as well.JJ. Yeah, all I keep hearing
is the last like half an houris the craziest thing anyone's ever seen.
And I don't know what that means, and I don't really want to know,
but you'd agree with that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Danny,
I think you know he nailed it. It definitely is. It's following more

(16:23):
of the journalists and you're seeing,you know, kind of what they're seeing
in their eyes, and it's theirjob to report what's happening in the world.
And yeah, they really blow thelines of you don't know what caused
this, You don't under I mean, you don't know why these states have
a line together to you know,to stand against the US and the White
House and the President. But you'reall in, You're you're you're in on

(16:45):
this journey, on this ride withthese journalists, and the last thirty minutes
it just ties it all in.But I'm curious of what you thought of
Jesse Plemons. I thought Plemons wasgreat. He's in it for a very
brief amount of time. I heardthat he only got booked for that film,
maybe a couple of before they shothis scene. But I thought his
performance was really chilling. And it'sjust a small part of the overall trajectory,

(17:11):
which is essentially and I read somethingabout this earlier. But when the
camera zooms in on Kirsten Dunce,right, Kirsten Dunst's face in this film,
and she's older now, she's notthe young girl that we remember from
twenty years ago. She's right,she looks different, and she looks badass,

(17:36):
and she's got to get some typeof recognition for this film because she's
perfect in it. But she lookslike someone that has seen everything that this
war has taken a massive toll on. But she also realizes that it's incumbent
upon her to let the let thecountry know what is really going on,

(17:57):
and it's a responsibility and it's acommitment, and it's just as important as
the people that are fighting the battleswhat she's doing to let us know what's
truly happening. And that type ofjournalist, they're not trying to frame anything
to mislead anyone. They're trying togive you a true account. Of what
this devastation is doing to the country. But it's a it's short. It's

(18:18):
like an hour and forty forty fiveminutes something like that. I was in
and out of there in two hours, including previews, which, by the
way, I sat down when thedamn thing was supposed to start at seven
o'clock and previews these days, Mikeyguess when the film actually started. Twenty
seven twenty seven minutes of previews andwere they kick ass? Though? No,

(18:44):
maybe a couple I was interested in. But man, I'm kind of
dying. You will love this film. Feel like an hour and forty four
I'm not saying it felt long,but it just felt like there was a
lot there. It was Stephen Kingdescribed it, and it didn't feel it
too much. It didn't feel overwhelming. Steve, Yeah, Stephen King saw
this film and he tweeted about thisand his brief review was, this movie

(19:07):
is all muscle and no fat.I disagree with it a little bit because
this movie is not without flaws.Because I did feel there were a couple
of elements in the film that it'slike they got the Hollywood virus just a
little bit, where you've got thisreally interesting story that's being told from a
very organic, raw way, andthey use some damn Hollywood tricks to make

(19:32):
it have a little bit of massappeal, so it's not just this true
hardcore visceral experience, which it doesn'tdetract from the film at all as an
overall, but it would taken itfrom like a if I was giving it
a grade. Those elements of Hollywoodkind of screw doing what they do.
In my opinion, it took itfrom what would have been maybe a nine

(19:53):
to about a eight point three eightpoint four, okay, but it's from
a four and a half dumpling toit. It's for a quarter. Yeah,
it's effing brilliant. I know yousaid no spoilers, but I assume
the Florida Alliance is on the goodside and saves the day at the end.
Probably it's kind of a built spoiler. That was weird because it just
made it seem like they were it'sneutral. But yeah, yeah, it's

(20:18):
mainly the Texas California Alliance, whichyou which look, I'll say this,
it's a very unlikely pairing. Yeah, I don't understand, which makes you
realize that whatever the government, whoeverwas running the government must have been doing
some really bad stuff for these twostates to come together. My guess is
I think they're gonna make the thewhat's the guy's name, the with the

(20:41):
red glasses who because he look scary, and they're gonna make the gun I
guess the gun guys look bad forthe beginning, like these are the nuts
with guns who, you know whatever, And then by the end, I
think you might realize that they werethe ones on the right side, fighting
against something that you didn't even expect. Jesse Pleman's scene and experience is kind

(21:07):
of an outlier. I think theydid a good job of the kind of
showing you what war can do withinyou know, your country, because obviously
you know you see him, he'sin military gear, but the actions that
are happening, you're like, okay, that's not exactly by the book,
and you know, so it reallydraws that picture, that narrative of when

(21:29):
a war is happening in country,like people, it's pretty much every man
for themselves. You're gonna do whatyou're gonna remember you're crazy or whatever the
case is. I want to speakreal quickly to the last thirty minutes of
this movie. I'm telling you asfar as intense imagined American city battles stuff
that we see in Syria but fromCNN and all of the other in the

(21:52):
Middle East crap that's been going onfor decades. To imagine that happening in
Washington, d C. It's dude, it is the most intense battle.
Yeah, but for thirty minutes thatI have seen since the opening scene of
saving Private Ryan. Jesus right,and I'm not kidding. It's not as
good, but it is hardcore,intense and great that a civil war.

(22:17):
Go see this film out now,all right, top of the next segment,
I want a quick a couple ofminutes before Dinga's warning news on Ministry
of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which I know, I thank you for. I got
the title right, JJ saw thatlast night, and I am definitely curious
about that. When we'll do thatright before we get started with Dingo's morning
news. Is Tony Soprano really dead? We'll find out next