July 14, 2025 • 63 mins
Original Release Date: Monday 14 July 2025
Description: Dean and Phil begin by remember "Live Aid" at 40, before celebrating an influential rock star, a chart-topping R&B performer, a journeyman actor with countless credits, a "The Dukes of Hazzard" funnyman, and the composer responsible for all the music of "The X-Files" in "Celebrity Deaths". Then, Dean answers a question from a listener, revealing his favorite two episodes of "The Lone Gunmen", both the one he most enjoyed watching and the one he most enjoyed making. Phil reviews two current theatrical releases: 28 Years Later and The Life of Chuck. Dean reviews the recent smash hit Sinners. Finally, in their ongoing reappraisal of the entire "Mission: Impossible" film franchise, Dean and Phil compare notes on the series' 5th installment, "Rogue Nation" and the episode ends in a cliffhanger, setting up a future disagreement about the 6th M:I film!
Description: Dean and Phil begin by remember "Live Aid" at 40, before celebrating an influential rock star, a chart-topping R&B performer, a journeyman actor with countless credits, a "The Dukes of Hazzard" funnyman, and the composer responsible for all the music of "The X-Files" in "Celebrity Deaths". Then, Dean answers a question from a listener, revealing his favorite two episodes of "The Lone Gunmen", both the one he most enjoyed watching and the one he most enjoyed making. Phil reviews two current theatrical releases: 28 Years Later and The Life of Chuck. Dean reviews the recent smash hit Sinners. Finally, in their ongoing reappraisal of the entire "Mission: Impossible" film franchise, Dean and Phil compare notes on the series' 5th installment, "Rogue Nation" and the episode ends in a cliffhanger, setting up a future disagreement about the 6th M:I film!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And now Your Chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Haglind
and Phil Lareness's.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Welcome to year nineteen, Episode ten of Your Chill Pack
Hollywood Hour, coming at you from a cozy cottage in
Monta Cito, California, where it's actually a rainy morning. I
am Phil Lareness and joining us via the magic of
podcasting and zoom all the way from Birmingham, Michigan. It's
(01:06):
the Motor City adjacent Madman. It's TV's Dan Hagland.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Well, you make these intros sound like such a burden.
Now he's way over there. It's a what this cozy
cottage A bought a sito. Good Lord.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The boulder, the boulder, it's bigger and bigger that we
push up the.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Hill every day. It's a bigger boulder.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Now that you're back in the main house, are you
back to creating art in your studio?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Not quite yet, This says to be defiled the hard way.
My robot vacuum has decided to go on strike as
part of the uprising, and so he's a he's sitting
this one out somehow.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Forty years ago today as we record here on a Sunday,
We yeah, we celebrate the anniversey of Live Aid. No
do we?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Jeez, I didn't know. We did celebrate that.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Hey, there are many many people alive today on this
planet because of the simple fact that many of us
watched a concert. That's incredible. When you think about it,
it's incredible, and the cynic in me wonders if those
people who are alive today, who would not have been
(02:29):
because of famine, if they look around at the world
as it is and think to themselves, you needn't have bothered.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
That's a terrible thing.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, it's a terrible thing that might get cut out.
Did you watch the Live Aid?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I never did. No. I saw clips here and there.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
But it was a pretty incredible show. Pretty incredible show,
especially the UK component of it.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I thought it was all in the UK, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
No, it was. It was in the US and the UK,
London and I think Philadelphia if I'm not mistaken. And
the big, the big finale was in Philly. Yes see,
you should watch it. That's what you should do. You
should watch it.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Okay, watching a live concert series from forty years ago
sounds like way down my list of things to look at.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Wait, would you watch the would you watch Woodstock.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Not all of it. I'd skip Shannanah and maybe Clean's Crew.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Why why would you not avail yourself of the entire
cultural experience of it. Yes, I'm not asking you to
watch farm Aid. Celebrity deaths. Some people who aren't alive
today despite the best efforts of Bob Geldoff and the
(03:53):
entire live team. Mick Ralph's, guitarist and co founder of
classic rock bands Mott the Hoople and Bad Company Oh,
He died in June at the age of eighty one,
following a stroke that he suffered years before.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
If Ralph's had only ever helped form Mop the Hoople,
with it which still does not just trip off the tongue,
and with whom he played on the classic David Bowie
penned anthem All the Young Dudes, he would have earned
his place in music history for that alone, even if
(04:38):
he'd done nothing else. But the year after leaving the group,
Ralph's connected with free singer Paul Rodgers and formed the
supergroup Bad Company.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
They became an even bigger act, and they're still heard
on the radio today. Classics like feel Like Making Love
and Can't Get Another are both stalwart fixtures in heavy
rotation as I understand it, and he co wrote both
of those, and his work creating those enduring hits earned
(05:13):
his entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
where where he will be inducted posthumously in November of
this year.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Ah. Oh, that's nice. I guess posthumous inductee.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Calvin Lee Yarbrough is a very fun name to say.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
It is Yarborough.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Calvin Lee Yarborough was one half of Yarbrough and People's,
an American urban contemporary duo from Dallas, Texas whose biggest
selling release was Don't Stop the Music, which topped the
charts in the US Billboard R and B listings in
nineteen eighty one. Oh, kind of a cool story. Calvin Yarborough,
(05:59):
who died June twenty ninth at the age of seventy one.
He and Alisa de Lois I'm gonna say de Lois Peoples,
but Elisa Peoples both grew up in Dallas, Texas. They
knew each other since they were very young children when
they had met taking piano lessons. Ah, and they remained
(06:22):
friends all through their childhoods. It was Charlie Wilson of
the Gap band who discovered Yardbrough and People's. He brought
them to the attention of Lonnie Simmons, who signed them
to an LA based label, Total Experience Records. And they
started just by gigging clubs in Los Angeles. And so
(06:42):
these two people who just were tiny little kids who
became friends in piano lessons, they like, spend their lives
making music together. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It's not dissimilar from how we met.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
All right. I was taking drum lessons and you were
on the Triangle and who knew that I went off
to form a punk band and you're headed debating team.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, because I was studying the triangle because it was
extra credit. I was having a lot of trouble in geometry.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
So why not played the geometry?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The Geometry is not a bad band.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Name, Oh, now that I say it out loud.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Jack Betts a journeyman actor who was in countless films
and shows, including soap opera's Western superhero movies, including two
thousand and two Spider Man. He died June nineteenth, at
the age of ninety six at his home in Los Osos, California.
We talk about character actors. This is one of those guys.
(07:45):
You may never have known his name, but the moment
you saw his face, you go, oh, that guy, And
my goodness, did he keep his face till all his life.
He was a dashing, handsome man and green figure. His
career spanned seven different decades, and you would see him,
(08:06):
like I said, and you would know immediately, oh, I've
seen that guy before, without necessarily even realizing where. His
screen debut was nineteen fifty nine, he was in a
run of westerns and police dramas, and in the sixties
on every TV show, including Gun Smoke and Perry Mason,
before he acted in a string of spaghetti westerns in
(08:28):
the nineteen seventies, and then as the eighties dawned, he
became a fixture on the new popular genre, which were
the TV soap operas at night, the nighttime soap operas
right Alice, So he did like Falcon Crest while still
appearing in the daytime on All My Children and One
(08:49):
Life to Live and countless more. In the nineties, he
starts showing up in all these superhero movies Batman Forever,
Batman and Robin and it really was highlighted by his
work or capped off by his work in Spider Man,
in which his character is the one that ousts Norman
(09:10):
Osborne from the board at Ozcorp.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Oh that guy.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, and he also did many sitcom appearances too, So
you're talking about a guy that did every Western, every
superhero movie, every soap opera, and he was in sitcoms
including Seinfeld and Frasier. So a guy who knew what
the hell he was doing, and casting directors no matter
(09:37):
what type of work they were casting, gravitated towards this guy.
He's the sort of, like again, work about Journeyman actor
that I'm fascinated by, right, because he never becomes a star,
but he never stops working, which means he knows what
he's doing. And I feel like that's such an intro
(10:00):
sting like needle the thread that I bet, I bet
he has or had the coolest stories about about making
movies and making TV around the world.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yeah for sure. Well, yeah, because that's a working actor
that used to be Charlton Hester. Right. He didn't want
to be a star. He wanted to be a working actor,
just work all the time, and something propelled him and
to start him one.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
The fact that to be a working actor, you have
to be able to act, and so he'd better be
a star. That I mean, it seems like a mean joke,
but it was Orson Wells saying this about his good
buddy Joseph Cotton, his best friend, Joseph Cotton. You know,
I mean, he basically told Joe at one point, you know,
as an actor, you're no great shakes, but as a star,
(10:51):
you might well hit the jackpot.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Thanks for that compliment, yeah, Joseph.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And I'm sure I've mentioned this before. My favorite title
of any memoir ever, its vanity will get You Somewhere.
That's Rick Hurst, the actor who played Boss Hogg's cousin,
Deputy Cletus Hog, on the nineteen eighties hit The Dukes
of Hazzard. Died June twenty sixth at the age of
(11:22):
seventy nine. His rubber faced antics on the show made
him a fan favorite over the course of five seasons,
plus of course, multiple reunion movies, including nineteen ninety seven's
The Dukes of Hazzard Reunion exclamation Mark. He also appeared
in shows like Murder, She Wrote, melrose Place, The Wonder Years,
(11:45):
and older generations might remember him as cleaver from the
nineteen seventies prison comedy on the Rocks. Now this I
do not know what?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Prison comedy on the Rocks?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Are you fun?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Composer Mark Snow I Know, died on the fourth of
July at his home in Connecticut at the age of
seventy eight. He composed the iconic theme song to The
X Files, as well as working on the show's score
for its entire original run as well as its revival.
He composed music for many hit series, including Heart to Heart, Smallville,
(12:39):
One Tree Hill, Blue Bloods, I could go on. He
also did the music for at least four features. I
haven't looked further, but for feature films by the legendary
French director Alam Rene, who began his career making all
(13:01):
time masterpieces like Hirotia, Mommona More and Last Year at
Marion Bad. This guy, who's still alive in his nineties,
was making movies from two thousand and six to twenty fourteen,
and Mark Snow was his go to composer.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Isn't that something? Yeah? You know? It was Chris Carter
who made Mark. Mark first proposed a theme song. Chris
apparently hated it. I never heard these original versions, but
the more and more that Chris had him redo the song.
The farther and farther he got away from his original
(13:39):
idea till he got that haunting synthesizer thing, which was
kind of just him riffing. He said on the keyboard.
He was like, I don't know what to do. I
don't know what he wants, and so he handed this
thing in and that became so iconic. You heard it
every How many times have I been introduced on stage
with that music playing in the background. You know.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
The thing about that that's interesting is him wanting to
go in one direction and then being urged in a
totally different one and directed in a totally different way,
is that The X Files was so unique at its time,
especially for you know, making basically these mini movies so
often that would have such wildly different tones and settings
(14:24):
even and sometimes eras because we would span eras in
this that he was able to delve into a lot
of different musical palettes, oftentimes just making an entire sound
for an episode that would be unique to that episode alone.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Right, Yeah, and yeah, So they really worked them over time,
because I know, he really you know, some of these
episodes really cut together pretty quick and got to air,
so so he was Yeah, he was on call all
the time for every episode to fix it or change it.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Sticking with the world of the X Files, we have
a question from listener Eli Koenig. Oh, Dean Hagland.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
That's me.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
What was your favorite episode of the Lone Gunman series.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Oh, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, I don't know if we've gotten that one.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
No, I don't think so. You know, there's a well,
there's two. One that was fun to shoot and one
it was fun to watch. So the car that ran
on water was fun to watch and the monkey one
the super intelligent chimps, those were fun to work with.
(15:51):
Though the handler he had to be this alpha aggressive
and it really upset a lot of the women on
set because it seemed he was being over aggressive to
make sure the monkeys are in their place. But it
kind of terrified it when you see it up close
to a guy really and also yelling at his wife
(16:12):
in order to get, as he said, a pack mentality.
And he's the head of the pack so that everybody's
safe in case an older monkey decides to hell with this,
and you know they're strong, right, One monkey pulled a
one hundred and ten pounds person straight out of hole
(16:32):
with one arm. In another shoot, not our.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Our friend French Stewart tells a story about working with
a monkey and the monkey was older than they're supposed
to be to be working. Yeah, and yeah, he almost
lost an arm as a result because he had to
spend He spent the whole movie basically holding hands with
a monkey, right and pretty soon on the monkey considered
(17:02):
him like a toy, like a pet. Oh, so he
was yanking him around. Yeah, exactly what the monkey really
wants to do is direct.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Well, that's the thing the older monkeys to keep the
family together. There was like three or four monkeys on
set that were just sitting in lawn chairs and they
had since retired, but it was their children who were
on camera because there are you kind of once they're three,
they retire because then to become a bit unruly.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I think it's weird that you wouldn't watch Seanana, but
you'll spend this much time talking about the monkeys.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I know, but Bowser somehow, So so let.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Me make this clear. So the Running on Water and
the episode with the monkeys were episodes that were the
most fun to watch.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
For the running on water is fun to watch, and
the one with the monkeys was fun to do, was.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Fun to make. Okay, even though even despite that.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Despite the terror that monkeys could kill you.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
To the fund, Yeah, in retrospect.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yes, totally nobody got murdered. Oh, thank goodness, there wasn't
a monkey murder.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Okay, Eli Koning, you have your answer, and I'm gonna hazard.
I guess you're sorry you.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Asked, stand and deliver. There you go.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Okay for the first time, Dean. In a couple of weeks,
I caught a new release in theaters.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
What that's not?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Like you? I actually ended up catching two of them.
I was determined to see twenty eight years later in theaters.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Why because I knew I would enjoy the world building aspects, okay,
you know, and probably the tone. I certainly would enjoy
the tone more on the big screen where I could
immerse myself and I usually really like how Danny Boyle
(19:17):
handles tone. Like I said, I knew I would appreciate
the world building of where did you go? With those
earlier stories?
Speaker 3 (19:28):
And imagine somebody waking up twenty eight years later in
his zombie apocalypse would.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Be no zombies. Remember, Remember that's let's disavalue of that.
Even though the twenty eight days later movies revived the
zombie genre, they were never zombies. They were infected with
the rage virus, the instant the rage virus. And being
(19:56):
reminded of that that here we were, month after nine
to eleven watching a movie where the UK was being
infected with rage virus. Yeah, maybe we should have been
asking I wonder, yeah, is there a metaphor at play here?
And what crops might have sprung up some twenty years
(20:19):
after from such a rage virus Anyway, Danny Boyle again
who directed the first one, not the second one. He
is a big screen director and along with the film
screenwriter Alex Garland, who of course has gone on to
make his own films like ex. Machin on Civil War,
(20:40):
they both have returned to the franchise that they launched
in two thousand and two. However, thirty minutes or so
into the film, which I knew I needed to see
on the big screen, Yes, when I was not enjoying it,
I wondered what on earth made me think I would?
(21:03):
This was the question, because given all that is going
on in the world and Andy in my life, specifically
and within me. Indeed, on the almost daily Dean I
am overcome at some point during the day of a
feeling I can only describe as complete fragility, vulnerable to
(21:26):
everything that sweeps over me and sometimes emanates from within me.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
In the form of a rage virus no more.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Just like really like a strong wind could just wipe
me out of existence, is how I feel. It struck
me thirty minutes into the movie that given those feelings,
I hardly need to see the inhumanity of man displayed
so profoundly and artistically, I compliment. I mean, yeah, yeah, No,
(22:03):
I just mean I didn't I didn't mean no one
would enjoy it. I just wondered what the hell was
I doing to myself? I mean, it is cool to
see how First of all, they discard the global threat
that's suggested by the end of the second film, which
again Boyle did not make, and they explain that this
(22:26):
film would be a back to UK only threat. Twenty
years twenty eight years on from the spread of the
original rage virusk, the UK is a quarantined land ah
with the seas patrolled by international authorities, preventing escape from
(22:47):
any who might have survived the plague and its aftermath
and therefore might be carriers in some way. Right. It's
interesting to see the evolution of the virus and how
they're different strands of infected and offspring of those who
are infected, and what they all have to do to survive.
(23:11):
Less interesting is the village of those uninfected existing isolated
on a small island off the coast, connected by a
tiny strip of land for a few hours every low tide, right,
and that low tide allows the villagers to go ashore
(23:32):
for foraging, hunting, gathering of fuel, et cetera. They will
also bring their young ashore when the young are ready
to become of age by making their first kills of
the various infected. Yeah, they go hunting the infected to
prove their adulthood status. It's dark wow, And again, as
(23:57):
the kids might say, I wasn't there for any of it,
so I really did have thoughts of leaving, Okay, but
knowing that Ray Fine would make an eventual appearance in
the film kept me in my seat. So I tried
to enjoy the work being done by Aaron Taylor Johnson,
(24:21):
who is an actor I really like, and you really
like him. You liked him in Bullet Train a lot.
You remember he was the lead in the kick Ass
movies when he was very young. Oh yeah, I think
he's the movie star that Ryan Gosling is supposed to
(24:42):
be the stuntman for in The Fall Guy. Yeah right, okay,
And he would be my choice to be James Bond
if we are going young because at thirty five, I
think he's a believable age and he has the action
bona fides that we just talked about, he has the charisma,
(25:03):
he has acting chops. So I enjoyed watching the work
that he was doing and really like taking him in
in this. But before long he's removed from the scene
as the focus of the movie shifts. I'm not like
spoiling anything going Oh he dies an act in No,
(25:24):
they just shift the focus of the movie. So after
an act I don't get him anymore. And he was
really what was kind of keeping me entertained. But the
young lead is a twelve year old boy, and the
movie shifts to follow him in a way that actually
(25:47):
ends up almost leaving me bereft. Wow, he's gone ashore
in the first act with his father, Taylor Johnson, who
thinks of his son as a hero after they got ashore,
whereas the boy himself feels he just failed in the
coming of age trial. Oh and the boy sneaks out
(26:08):
of the village with his ill mother and braves the
treacherous trip ashore and through for us and past all
manner of infected to try to reach a doctor who
apparently long ago went fully insane but has somehow survived
the play. Okay. The doctor is played by Ray Fine
(26:34):
love it. He is utterly fantastic. It is absolutely another
in the pantheon of not only great refine performances, but
great rafine characters. Right. And the mother's illness when she
gets to him, is revealed to be rest cancer. Oh no,
(26:59):
and it has metastasized to her brain. There is no saving.
So of all the stories for me to feel, I
must see on the big screen this was it.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I know. I can't believe that you get.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Seeing it alone, and I'm like, I'm like starting to sob.
It turns out that the beautiful places beautiful in this
twenty eight Days you know, the later universe, the beautiful
places the story goes following this revelation actually proved truly
(27:42):
cathartic for me.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Oh there you go.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Danny Boyle has made a grisly, disturbing, artistic, lovely little
movie and one that is full of grace. Whoa, and
when I say little, make no mistake this is an
independent film. There is an epilogue also, I should add
(28:08):
that left me fully exhilarated. The boy another twenty eight
days later, okay, taking off on his own to explore
the infected countryside. Sure we've already seen his development in
a month's time. But he soon gets in over his
head and is on the run. And this is just
(28:31):
the epilogue, just a really brief thing that has nothing
to do with the plot of the rest of the movie. Okay,
He's rescued in this epilogue from seemingly a certain fate
at the hands of this infected group by a group
of ridiculously skilled fighters who are all dressed right down
(28:57):
to blonde mullet wigs and tracks suits like Jimmy Seville.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Oh no, the talk show of a host from England
who went to jail.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
No, he never went to jail. Oh see, that's the thing.
It's so dark because after his death in twenty fourteen, Seville,
who was the most beloved of all UK TV personalities
and history. Remember, he had hosted Top of.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
The Pops, Yeah for the longest time.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
And also a show called Jimmy O'll Fix It or
Jimmy'll Make It Happen or something where he made the
wish of sick kids come true. Right, And it was
revealed after his death that he was perhaps the most
monstrous pedophile and sexual predator in history, including of those
sick and dying kids whose dreams he made true. Yeah,
(29:53):
there were whispers around it when he was alive, but
it wasn't until after his death that this all came out.
So that's twenty fourteen. This fact would not be known
in the world of the twenty eight Days later films,
as the Outbreak led to the out and out fall
of society in the UK some ten years or more
(30:17):
prior to the real life Seville Dying. Okay, there's no news,
there's no information, there's no radio, there's no internet. They
would never learn about it. And so it's the final
expression in a film that has filtered this message in
(30:41):
throughout it about the selective nature of human memory.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
And I'm seeing this the same week where we literally
have a war criminal net Yahoo, who's a felon nominating
a fellow felon for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah, there
be monsters all around, it seems, it seems the rage
(31:14):
monsters and the heroes we choose to keep us safe
from rage monsters. Wow. And I'm not talking about the
movie anymore, or just.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Or just the monsters and the rage monsters. So there, boy,
I would like to actually see that movie. The team
of Jimmy Seville looking you will.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
You will in the next one. It's they've they've formulated
this as a new trilogy. They've filmed the second one.
Killian Murphy returns. He's he was Jim in the very
first one and twenty eight days later and we meet
up with his character in the next one. Oh. He
(32:03):
executive produced this one, and they want to do a
third one, but again it's an indie film. They haven't
raised the financing for the third one yet, so but
it's done very well internationally, so I would hope if
the second one does as well or seems to be
as promising, And why wouldn't it. You'll have Ray Fine
(32:24):
back also, and you know it is such a touching physical, witty, soulful,
touched by madness, downright Shakespearean performance by Fine, and it
inspired me to finally just list my favorite of his
(32:45):
all time performances. So again, we've talked about this. We
talk about this every time he does a movie or
when you saw him do Macbeth. Let's do a Ray
Fine show one of.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
These days, as yeah, yeah, that'd be something because I mean,
you think about that range too, right from the Harry
Potter to Schindler's List two the menu good.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Low, monstrous villains, uh, sympathetic, weak villains, the weak, masculinity
of villainy in some cases, the the action star, the academic. Uh.
It is quite quite a range that he has so believably,
(33:33):
and he embodies all of them. Uh so well so
uh yeah, so that was that was one of the
two theatricals. Okay, yeah, and I was really glad that
I that.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I saw that experience all to yourself.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
So Lilly and I then went to see the Life
of Chuck.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
What's this I've not heard of this one.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I would have thought you would have read it. It's
a Stephen King novella. Oh is it originally optioned to
be adapted by Darren Aronofsky, who did not end up
doing it. Instead it was Mike Flanagan, who most recently
had adapted Stephen King's shining sequel Doctor Sleep. We were
(34:21):
both taken by the trailer, not by the Stephen King connection.
We like the Tom Hittleston who is pushed as the
star of the movie and I say pushed as the
star of the movie to let on the fact that
he's not in it very much. And indeed the trailer
though a delightful trailer that makes you feel like, I
(34:44):
have no idea what this movie is, but it will
be the most uplifting experience of my life, and that
we needed that. Actually, that trailer gave us no idea
of what the film was about, or really what it's
tone was.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Oh no, it again.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
It's a trailer that does a wonderful job of conveying
tone what you and I have said is probably the
most important thing a trailer should do. Only it wasn't
the actual tone of the film. H The three acts story,
like in the novella, is told in reverse. The third
(35:24):
act is first, then the second, then the first. Okay,
so I don't know how you could possibly advertise what
the movie is, or how you would in that case
right like it's it's one of the only movies dean where,
(35:44):
at least up to this point, some several days on
from seeing it, I am totally unable to come up
with an advertising idea for you.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Hence the trailer that you saw.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
The film is dark and more sad than the uplifting
trailer led us to believe. Okay, it is uplifting, but
it's more life affirming, and it is a story about
death and about how the type of death we have matters.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I'm very much as Stephen King's subject.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Matter and exactly what twenty eight years Later is about.
Oh no, well, you know this film also like that
Danny Boyle film, now that I'm thinking about it, this
film also contains an end of the world apocalypse scenarios,
(36:47):
full full of strange humor, magic, pathos, rights, and inspiration.
The middle piece of the film so Act two, which
comes in act to YEA and involves most of star
Tom Hiddleston's screen time, and most of that screen time
(37:10):
involves an impromptu street dance inspired by the drumming of
real life street busker The Pocket Queen. Okay, it's a
great scene. Look, I don't really know how to describe
this story of a dying man. It's genre bending. It
(37:31):
features appearances by many actors it's pleasing to see again
and who do really nifty work like chuatel Edgio four
who I've always loved, Karen Gillen who played Nebula in
the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Sure, Mark Hamill Wow, a
(37:52):
luminous Mia Sarah, who many people will not have seen
since playing Ferris Buehler's girlfriend in Veris Bueller's Day Off.
It's so beautiful to see her again. Carl Lumley, who
is having a moment. He was the one time Buckaroo,
Bonzi Black Lectroid star who also starred in Alias, and
(38:16):
who you saw very recently in Captain America Brave New
World as the original Captain America who's imprisoned. It also
features David dst Malchion from Late Night with the Devil.
Oh yeah yeah, Matthew Lillard, who's delightful in the first act,
(38:40):
which is the third act shown. The titular character of
Chuck is played by a boy actually played by several
boys at different ages. As we watch him grow and
the eldest of those boys is Jacob Trembley, the boy
born in Captivity in the Oscar Winning Room, where Brie
Larson plays his mother, who has been kidnapped and has
(39:05):
a child. And so it's nice to know that that
young actor grew up seemingly well given how traumatizing that
film might have been on his emerging psyche right and
during these childhood scenes, which honestly sort of dragged for
me a little bit. After the incredible and unique narrative
(39:26):
momentum that the first two acts build by showing the
ending and then showing the middle, things come back to
life again and again. It's through the art of dance,
and one of the young dancers is played by a
girl named Trinity Bliss. She would seem to be someone
to definitely keep an eye on. She has real potential,
(39:48):
Like I'm struggling to know what to talk about.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
If you feel s dying guy, And there's a dance
sequitous in this, yeah, pretty much and the film, but
I would stress this, the film is deeply felt by
Mike Flanagan, by the writer and director, and it makes
you realize how rare it is to see something where
(40:15):
you know it was deeply felt by the filmmaker.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Uh huh, you can tell this mattered. This was an
absolute expression from this guy's soul.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Oh oh good.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And it has a lot on its mind and its heart.
And I guess all I can really say is I
love it, despite perhaps knowing that it never fully hits
its mark. There isn't another film like it, which is
why I can't describe it, and why I have no
idea how to sell it. And so I guess the
(40:50):
best phrase I would use is it's cinematic, Wabbi sabby. Oh,
and it will most likely appear on my year end
list of the best movies I've seen.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
You're kidding. Even though you disparaged it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
I didn't disparage it. I just have no idea how
to talk about it or to sell it. And like
I said, how many movies do we watch? Look, we
watch a lot of movies that have a great first
act and then the second act is a mess and
at that point, what the heck are you going to do?
And less so, but there is a sizable amount of
(41:27):
very good movies whose only flaw is that the third
act leading up to a resolution lacks the propulsive momentum
that the first two acts. Have earned, because you do
tend to get in your head sometimes of okay, how
do we wrap this up? And the nature of reversing
(41:50):
the order on things is that you really are watching
the first act, you really are telling it the way
you would in a first act, but by a third act,
where you're starting to get more economy of scale in
how you tell things, right, you might cut some of
(42:11):
these pieces out because showing these pieces at the end
of a film, it doesn't play in as interesting a
way as it does at the beginning, when you're settling
into the world.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
So do you think then, well, having not read the novella,
I assume it's in a straightforward linear format. Is it that,
as you said, they realized their third act is weaker,
so by putting it first, I can reverse the structure
and therefore pave over some of the known weaknesses if
(42:49):
it was in a linear order first, second, third act
as opposed to three to two one.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
I think the flaw again, it's Wabi Sabbi, because I
think the flaws the point. I think it's that when
we see the acorn, we're seeing the tree, but we're
not going to be around to see the tree, so
all we can do is spend as much time getting
to know the acorn as possible. And it's letting us
know that by showing the tree chopped down at the end, okay,
(43:21):
at the beginning, it's letting us see the Yeah, so
there you go. What did what did you think of Sinners?
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Okay, you know exactly where this film lost me.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
At the end of act one.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, it was like you just flipped
the switch and you went, what what is it?
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Like it was when when that guy fleeing the Native
tribes goes into the house, cajoles his way into the house,
cannives to get into the house, and then turns the couple.
And that's the reduction of vampirism. Like I said, that's
(44:03):
the end of a great pilot episode for the Sinners
TV series. Yeah, because it's just about an hour. It's
almost an hour right there, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
And so.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
After that, then the multi time genre dance and sequence
in the juke joint, it was like, oh, then there's
rappers and there's a guy and that you know, and
that this idea of the music connecting you through history
was a bit ham fisted.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I thought, that's the trailer for the series. If you're
taking us through a history of Clarksdale, and that's kind
of what I wanted was I wanted more about what
this town was, because when they build this town, like, yes,
we've not seen this, let us have this. We've seen
(44:59):
people locked up in a tight space besieged by vampires.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, it's called dust Till, done by Quentin Tarantino.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
It's an incredible piece of filmmaking, that music sequence that
you're describing, and you know, to see it in seventy
millimeter and to see it go full imax, to see
as the eras changed the format and what they filmed
it on and everything changes within one musical number. All
(45:27):
very impressive. And yet is it anywhere near as affecting
or riveting or unnerving or even humorous? Then the musical
dance performed by the vampires outside outside, Yeah, that's that's
(45:51):
a scene for the ages.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I thought there was a
couple missed opportunities. As you said, there's a Navajo Indian
hunting group that only gets one scene. Wouldn't it have
been great at the end with the Klan and the
Navajos and the sun about to rise and the survivors
(46:14):
and the juke joint, all of that come together in
a you know, multi racial tension. However you want to
lay it out, that to me would have been, oh, okay,
this is where it's gonna go. This is how they're
gonna get the apex. As opposed to just you know,
Tommy guns in the in the cornfield and blasting away
it just it just deflated it. The line of deflating,
(46:41):
you can see the air pressure just leave the film
in a sequential. It was almost a perfect line of
how each scene was less than the other scene. Even
though you think, oh, lots of action, ooh steaks, blood
bursting into flames in the sunshine, you know, all of
that just was like less and less the more you
(47:01):
tried to do.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Yes, yeah, well you know what we were saying. Great
first act and then it loses its propulsion. And so often,
in the hands of really gifted filmmakers, the impulse towards
(47:26):
violence as a resolution is going to be more interesting,
right because they're going to be really good at the
setting and the characters and exploring all the impulses that
are leading towards this resolution through violence. But if you
have made all that very interesting. How is the act
(47:49):
of violence itself going to be nearly as interesting?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Exactly? It's like you're sort of said, similar to like
a rom com that ends in a car chase, It's like, oh,
to do that there is?
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I would go one step further. I would say, like,
you know, the reason that a lot of romcoms work
is that fundamentally the characters aren't that interesting. Because if
they are super interesting and you get to know them
as three dimensional beings, the satisfying conclusion might be not
(48:24):
having them together. Right, But now you're in a different
genre altogether. Now you're in Casablanca, right, Yeah, where the
right thing is for them to grow and to regain
or further embody their idealism and to know that ending
(48:47):
up together isn't the happy ending, right I guess spoiler alert.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yeah, I also want it. Perhaps then in that first act,
similar to early scenes of Shanna the Dead, where it's
it's like, wait, what's that guy doing over there? Like
just little things in the background that would indicate that
there's some supernatural night hunting vampire or a team of
(49:12):
vampires out there in that cute little town, as opposed
to oh, here's a cute little town and we're building
juke joint.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
I also said that there's like lip service paid to
so many different threats. You've got the Klan and then
the Clan shows up again at the end. You also
have the Chicago Mob. Yeah, they're on the run from
the Chicago Mob. There was such the opportunity to at
least play with all these threats in a more meaningful way.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Yeah, and I suspect there's a script out there that
has that. But somebody said, this cannot be a three
hundred page script. This is this, let's condense it to
one hundred and ten whatever it ran.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And I hate again criticizing something for what it's not.
It's just that they bring these elements to the to
the dance, as it were, but they never let them
come forward.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yes, and even in that, I mean the way it's edited,
it's just like brick walls. It's just like, okay, here's
this sequence, bam black, Okay, now everybody leave, leave the
juke joint and just leave the five of us. There's
a problem with the something going on, Lynn like, well, no,
(50:30):
if it's all about family and community, one never to
go Hey, if there's a problem we're here to help.
Not Okay, thanks for the fun time we had dancing
all night to great blues music. Now good luck on
whatever your problem is. That seemed weird to me as well,
but I get it. You have to just trim out
your extras and just have your leads to five Vampires.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Huge, huge hit. I'm glad it's a huge hit. It
got lots of people to the theaters, which means that
probably they have come to other movies as well as
a result of it, and box office is up. So
we're happy for that. The introduction of all these interesting
potential storylines and seeing a place and an era that
(51:18):
doesn't get depicted on the big screen, maybe we'll open
the door for other stories and inspire other filmmakers, if
not Ryan Kogler. So it's a happy success. It is
far from a masterpiece, despite the fact that I'm sure
it's the only shoe in for a Best Picture nomination
(51:38):
that we've seen at this point this year. Last week
we talked about the fourth Mission Impossible movie, Ghost Protocol, which,
if my math is correct, after all those years spent
studying the triangle, brings us to the fifth Mission Impossible movie,
which is a Mission Impossible.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Nation right, this one.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
This was McCrory's third total film as a director, Chris McCrory,
his first in the Mission Impossible series, and darn if
it might not be the best in the entire Mission
(52:24):
Impossible for.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
A I agree. What surprised me is the amount of
laughs that it got for me, particularly the first set piece,
the the double assassin in backstage turned opera and the
computer board rising and lowering rafters and raising the lights
(52:46):
and stuff like that, as as Simon Pay's character keeps
hitting the thing, well, he's trying to find it, face recognition,
who the who the bad guy is? All of that,
I mean, you never love your orientation of where you
were backstage and you had so many complex things. You
(53:08):
had the Chancellor of Austria sitting in an opera box,
people training their guns on him to assassinate him, another
one assassinating the assassin, and Tom Cruise in the middle
of it with an Alto flute weapons system. You know
that you have all of it was so great. I
(53:28):
just love that sequence. Unto itself, I think two things.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
One, it's important to point out when you're talking about
how we never lose our positioning on things. We're never
left behind in this Chris McCrory is the guy that
won an Oscar for writing Usual Suspects, and there's a
script that pulled off the very difficult challenge of not
(53:54):
leaving us behind in that movie. Yeah yeah, And now
he's a director who is also writing and this movie.
Let's also give credit to the previous films director again,
Brad Bird, because it was the first film to me
that showed this is how a Mission impossible movie looks,
(54:15):
as opposed to each director bringing a look to it.
Here's how a Mission impossible movie looks. And Chris McCrory
jumps on that and develops it further and utilizes that
approach to bring out his writing and to make sure
that we're never left behind. Right. So it's really brilliant
(54:36):
work that he is doing. I still for me again,
I find the prior installment, Ghost Protocol to be the
most fun movie in the series. But Rogue Nation, as
I'm watching it, I realize, Yeah, it's more accomplished, it's
more elegant, it's more cohesive, and it builds an ongoing
(55:00):
global threat with real world resonance. The syndicate. It's got
a personal relationship that is interesting, appealing, emotional without relying
on backstory or mythology, and that is Ethan's friendship with
Rebecca Ferguson's six agent ilse of Faust.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
And how they seemingly betray the Devil crosses, then the explanations,
then back and then.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
But we don't have to explain why their friends are
how their friends, or give them any mythology or backstory
of oh, she reminds them of this or that or whatever.
It's just we understand that they get each other from
the very beginning, right, and so they care about each other,
and so they're going to do their jobs, but they're
also going to kind of look out for each other.
And it's really quite refreshing. And when this movie finally
(55:54):
introduces a ticking clock element, which is kind of obviously
lacking for much of the movie only because of how
the prior installments kept giving us these overwhelming ticking clock
movies to varying degrees of success. But when this film
(56:15):
finally does, in the third act, give us a ticking clock,
it also gives us the most satisfying way of stopping
that clock of the series up to that point, followed
by the most satisfying. I think Denu Moire between Ethan
(56:36):
and the pieces of villain Solomon Lane played by Sean Harris.
Their final showdown is so rewarding, and so much of
it is used is about intellect. It's about thinking.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
Right right, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
Not we think of the big action pieces and we're
gonna get big action piece, but ultimately it's really brilliance
and intellectual fortitude that ends up at least opening up
the opportunity for victory, if not actually delivering it.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
Right right, yeah. Because the second set piece in the
underwater switching of the memory boards or whatever, I didn't
realize that that was actually underwater, that Tom Cruise trained
with a free swimmer and was holding his breath for
three minute takes. Because you look at it, you go, oh,
(57:37):
this is digitally done. But then how I can't imagine
the cameraman. How is he capturing all this because it's
a circular swirling room, underwater room with all these doors
that you had to get to, and how's he getting
out of there? And he nearly dies? It's like it's
(57:57):
to me it was a greater everybody was doing great work,
but the orientation that it happened also fast. It was
like so thrilling, and you're like, good god, how did
they do this? Because otherwise the easy way we just
make it digital and hang some wires.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
But it at its best. The set pieces in these
movies become actually more thrilling the more often you watch them.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
Right, the more you try to figure out how they
did it.
Speaker 2 (58:31):
Because you are left yeah, more more just aghast at
all the challenges that went into creating it, as opposed
to the first time, which is the challenge of getting
out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and being introduced to it. Yeah,
it's mind boggling. And I think that that's the most
(58:52):
incredible kind of magic trick. And again, who better to
be giving us these than than the guy that right
gave us the great line from the usual suspects of
the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was making people
believe he didn't exist. I again, Ghost Protocol might be
my favorite, but Rogue Nation has I think the most
(59:15):
pleasing teaser, It has the most pleasing climax. It's the
most deliriously globe trotting of adventures. There are crosses, there
are double crosses, there are triple crosses. And yet at
the end, the people who are working together are the
(59:36):
people you want to have working together, right. Alec Baldwin's
head of the CIA makes for both a very believable
thorn in the side and possible villain alles, as well
as a truly satisfying good guy when all is said
(59:56):
and done right. The expansion of ben Le allows Simon
Pegg to provide some of the most potentially devastating emotional
stakes of the entire series. Jeremy Renner's role as William
Brandt both builds on his from Ghost Protocol and actually
(01:00:20):
places him in a position at the end where it
almost makes sense to us that we never see him
again in the franchise, because he's been bumped.
Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
Upstairs right right, promoted.
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Finally, and like I've hinted at when we've talked about
the earlier movies, maybe most important, as we look at
this franchise as a whole, Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa allows us
to forgive that the previous films very appealing Maggie Q
(01:00:53):
and Paula Patten never returned right because Rebecca Ferguson he
is quite simply playing the best female character in the
entire series and remains that way until she gets replaced
by even better characters in the final two films. It's
really one of the most impressive tricks pulled off by
(01:01:14):
the entire franchise. The female leads get better and better,
and the characters they play get richer and richer. So
since I gave Ghost Protocol three and a half stars, yeah,
out of four, I am forced to give Mission Impossible
Rogue Nation a perfect four stars.
Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Only go holy smokes, it's the perfect vision. But really, okay,
that's it took five to get you there, but there
it is.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
And what other franchise is getting better at that point?
Five movies and they're getting.
Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Better, yes, till we get to six.
Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
No, the biggest hit of them all, the biggest, the
only one to approach a billion dollars. I just watch
this again and it's spoiler alert. My second four stars
for Mission Impossible.
Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
Really yeah, I mean, I love the action, the pacing
was great, but when you got to those two handers, uh,
and the and the cinematographer decides to compose it by
jamming an over the shoulder shot and putting your character
far left in the frame uh and leaving a big
blanks based on the right of the frame.
Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
So we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna leave it in
a Mission Impossible cliffhanger right there.
Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
We're gonna argue this point. Now you're gonna make me
watch it again.
Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
It's so why wouldn't you want to? Oh, my god,
the one with Henry Cavill, the one with Superman, that
Manngela Bassett, Alec Baldwin as a as a member of
the team. Now, oh, there's so much, all right, So
we'll be talking about the biggest hit of them all,
the most beloved Mission Impossible movie, Mission Impossible fallout our
(01:03:01):
next week's show.
Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
Belated spoiler alert
And now Your Chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Haglind
and Phil Lareness's.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Welcome to year nineteen, Episode ten of Your Chill Pack
Hollywood Hour, coming at you from a cozy cottage in
Monta Cito, California, where it's actually a rainy morning. I
am Phil Lareness and joining us via the magic of
podcasting and zoom all the way from Birmingham, Michigan. It's
(01:06):
the Motor City adjacent Madman. It's TV's Dan Hagland.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Well, you make these intros sound like such a burden.
Now he's way over there. It's a what this cozy
cottage A bought a sito. Good Lord.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The boulder, the boulder, it's bigger and bigger that we
push up the.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Hill every day. It's a bigger boulder.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Now that you're back in the main house, are you
back to creating art in your studio?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Not quite yet, This says to be defiled the hard way.
My robot vacuum has decided to go on strike as
part of the uprising, and so he's a he's sitting
this one out somehow.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Forty years ago today as we record here on a Sunday,
We yeah, we celebrate the anniversey of Live Aid. No
do we?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Jeez, I didn't know. We did celebrate that.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Hey, there are many many people alive today on this
planet because of the simple fact that many of us
watched a concert. That's incredible. When you think about it,
it's incredible, and the cynic in me wonders if those
people who are alive today, who would not have been
(02:29):
because of famine, if they look around at the world
as it is and think to themselves, you needn't have bothered.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
That's a terrible thing.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, it's a terrible thing that might get cut out.
Did you watch the Live Aid?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I never did. No. I saw clips here and there.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
But it was a pretty incredible show. Pretty incredible show,
especially the UK component of it.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I thought it was all in the UK, wasn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
No, it was. It was in the US and the UK,
London and I think Philadelphia if I'm not mistaken. And
the big, the big finale was in Philly. Yes see,
you should watch it. That's what you should do. You
should watch it.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Okay, watching a live concert series from forty years ago
sounds like way down my list of things to look at.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Wait, would you watch the would you watch Woodstock.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Not all of it. I'd skip Shannanah and maybe Clean's Crew.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Why why would you not avail yourself of the entire
cultural experience of it. Yes, I'm not asking you to
watch farm Aid. Celebrity deaths. Some people who aren't alive
today despite the best efforts of Bob Geldoff and the
(03:53):
entire live team. Mick Ralph's, guitarist and co founder of
classic rock bands Mott the Hoople and Bad Company Oh,
He died in June at the age of eighty one,
following a stroke that he suffered years before.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
If Ralph's had only ever helped form Mop the Hoople,
with it which still does not just trip off the tongue,
and with whom he played on the classic David Bowie
penned anthem All the Young Dudes, he would have earned
his place in music history for that alone, even if
(04:38):
he'd done nothing else. But the year after leaving the group,
Ralph's connected with free singer Paul Rodgers and formed the
supergroup Bad Company.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
They became an even bigger act, and they're still heard
on the radio today. Classics like feel Like Making Love
and Can't Get Another are both stalwart fixtures in heavy
rotation as I understand it, and he co wrote both
of those, and his work creating those enduring hits earned
(05:13):
his entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
where where he will be inducted posthumously in November of
this year.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Ah. Oh, that's nice. I guess posthumous inductee.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Calvin Lee Yarbrough is a very fun name to say.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
It is Yarborough.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Calvin Lee Yarborough was one half of Yarbrough and People's,
an American urban contemporary duo from Dallas, Texas whose biggest
selling release was Don't Stop the Music, which topped the
charts in the US Billboard R and B listings in
nineteen eighty one. Oh, kind of a cool story. Calvin Yarborough,
(05:59):
who died June twenty ninth at the age of seventy one.
He and Alisa de Lois I'm gonna say de Lois Peoples,
but Elisa Peoples both grew up in Dallas, Texas. They
knew each other since they were very young children when
they had met taking piano lessons. Ah, and they remained
(06:22):
friends all through their childhoods. It was Charlie Wilson of
the Gap band who discovered Yardbrough and People's. He brought
them to the attention of Lonnie Simmons, who signed them
to an LA based label, Total Experience Records. And they
started just by gigging clubs in Los Angeles. And so
(06:42):
these two people who just were tiny little kids who
became friends in piano lessons, they like, spend their lives
making music together. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It's not dissimilar from how we met.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
All right. I was taking drum lessons and you were
on the Triangle and who knew that I went off
to form a punk band and you're headed debating team.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, because I was studying the triangle because it was
extra credit. I was having a lot of trouble in geometry.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
So why not played the geometry?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The Geometry is not a bad band.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Name, Oh, now that I say it out loud.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Jack Betts a journeyman actor who was in countless films
and shows, including soap opera's Western superhero movies, including two
thousand and two Spider Man. He died June nineteenth, at
the age of ninety six at his home in Los Osos, California.
We talk about character actors. This is one of those guys.
(07:45):
You may never have known his name, but the moment
you saw his face, you go, oh, that guy, And
my goodness, did he keep his face till all his life.
He was a dashing, handsome man and green figure. His
career spanned seven different decades, and you would see him,
(08:06):
like I said, and you would know immediately, oh, I've
seen that guy before, without necessarily even realizing where. His
screen debut was nineteen fifty nine, he was in a
run of westerns and police dramas, and in the sixties
on every TV show, including Gun Smoke and Perry Mason,
before he acted in a string of spaghetti westerns in
(08:28):
the nineteen seventies, and then as the eighties dawned, he
became a fixture on the new popular genre, which were
the TV soap operas at night, the nighttime soap operas
right Alice, So he did like Falcon Crest while still
appearing in the daytime on All My Children and One
(08:49):
Life to Live and countless more. In the nineties, he
starts showing up in all these superhero movies Batman Forever,
Batman and Robin and it really was highlighted by his
work or capped off by his work in Spider Man,
in which his character is the one that ousts Norman
(09:10):
Osborne from the board at Ozcorp.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Oh that guy.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, and he also did many sitcom appearances too, So
you're talking about a guy that did every Western, every
superhero movie, every soap opera, and he was in sitcoms
including Seinfeld and Frasier. So a guy who knew what
the hell he was doing, and casting directors no matter
(09:37):
what type of work they were casting, gravitated towards this guy.
He's the sort of, like again, work about Journeyman actor
that I'm fascinated by, right, because he never becomes a star,
but he never stops working, which means he knows what
he's doing. And I feel like that's such an intro
(10:00):
sting like needle the thread that I bet, I bet
he has or had the coolest stories about about making
movies and making TV around the world.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yeah for sure. Well, yeah, because that's a working actor
that used to be Charlton Hester. Right. He didn't want
to be a star. He wanted to be a working actor,
just work all the time, and something propelled him and
to start him one.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
The fact that to be a working actor, you have
to be able to act, and so he'd better be
a star. That I mean, it seems like a mean joke,
but it was Orson Wells saying this about his good
buddy Joseph Cotton, his best friend, Joseph Cotton. You know,
I mean, he basically told Joe at one point, you know,
as an actor, you're no great shakes, but as a star,
(10:51):
you might well hit the jackpot.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Thanks for that compliment, yeah, Joseph.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And I'm sure I've mentioned this before. My favorite title
of any memoir ever, its vanity will get You Somewhere.
That's Rick Hurst, the actor who played Boss Hogg's cousin,
Deputy Cletus Hog, on the nineteen eighties hit The Dukes
of Hazzard. Died June twenty sixth at the age of
(11:22):
seventy nine. His rubber faced antics on the show made
him a fan favorite over the course of five seasons,
plus of course, multiple reunion movies, including nineteen ninety seven's
The Dukes of Hazzard Reunion exclamation Mark. He also appeared
in shows like Murder, She Wrote, melrose Place, The Wonder Years,
(11:45):
and older generations might remember him as cleaver from the
nineteen seventies prison comedy on the Rocks. Now this I
do not know what?
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Prison comedy on the Rocks?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Are you fun?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Composer Mark Snow I Know, died on the fourth of
July at his home in Connecticut at the age of
seventy eight. He composed the iconic theme song to The
X Files, as well as working on the show's score
for its entire original run as well as its revival.
He composed music for many hit series, including Heart to Heart, Smallville,
(12:39):
One Tree Hill, Blue Bloods, I could go on. He
also did the music for at least four features. I
haven't looked further, but for feature films by the legendary
French director Alam Rene, who began his career making all
(13:01):
time masterpieces like Hirotia, Mommona More and Last Year at
Marion Bad. This guy, who's still alive in his nineties,
was making movies from two thousand and six to twenty fourteen,
and Mark Snow was his go to composer.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Isn't that something? Yeah? You know? It was Chris Carter
who made Mark. Mark first proposed a theme song. Chris
apparently hated it. I never heard these original versions, but
the more and more that Chris had him redo the song.
The farther and farther he got away from his original
(13:39):
idea till he got that haunting synthesizer thing, which was
kind of just him riffing. He said on the keyboard.
He was like, I don't know what to do. I
don't know what he wants, and so he handed this
thing in and that became so iconic. You heard it
every How many times have I been introduced on stage
with that music playing in the background. You know.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
The thing about that that's interesting is him wanting to
go in one direction and then being urged in a
totally different one and directed in a totally different way,
is that The X Files was so unique at its time,
especially for you know, making basically these mini movies so
often that would have such wildly different tones and settings
(14:24):
even and sometimes eras because we would span eras in
this that he was able to delve into a lot
of different musical palettes, oftentimes just making an entire sound
for an episode that would be unique to that episode alone.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Right, Yeah, and yeah, So they really worked them over time,
because I know, he really you know, some of these
episodes really cut together pretty quick and got to air,
so so he was Yeah, he was on call all
the time for every episode to fix it or change it.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Sticking with the world of the X Files, we have
a question from listener Eli Koenig. Oh, Dean Hagland.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
That's me.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
What was your favorite episode of the Lone Gunman series.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Oh, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Yeah, I don't know if we've gotten that one.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
No, I don't think so. You know, there's a well,
there's two. One that was fun to shoot and one
it was fun to watch. So the car that ran
on water was fun to watch and the monkey one
the super intelligent chimps, those were fun to work with.
(15:51):
Though the handler he had to be this alpha aggressive
and it really upset a lot of the women on
set because it seemed he was being over aggressive to
make sure the monkeys are in their place. But it
kind of terrified it when you see it up close
to a guy really and also yelling at his wife
(16:12):
in order to get, as he said, a pack mentality.
And he's the head of the pack so that everybody's
safe in case an older monkey decides to hell with this,
and you know they're strong, right, One monkey pulled a
one hundred and ten pounds person straight out of hole
(16:32):
with one arm. In another shoot, not our.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Our friend French Stewart tells a story about working with
a monkey and the monkey was older than they're supposed
to be to be working. Yeah, and yeah, he almost
lost an arm as a result because he had to
spend He spent the whole movie basically holding hands with
a monkey, right and pretty soon on the monkey considered
(17:02):
him like a toy, like a pet. Oh, so he
was yanking him around. Yeah, exactly what the monkey really
wants to do is direct.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
Well, that's the thing the older monkeys to keep the
family together. There was like three or four monkeys on
set that were just sitting in lawn chairs and they
had since retired, but it was their children who were
on camera because there are you kind of once they're three,
they retire because then to become a bit unruly.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I think it's weird that you wouldn't watch Seanana, but
you'll spend this much time talking about the monkeys.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I know, but Bowser somehow, So so let.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Me make this clear. So the Running on Water and
the episode with the monkeys were episodes that were the
most fun to watch.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
For the running on water is fun to watch, and
the one with the monkeys was fun to do, was.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Fun to make. Okay, even though even despite that.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Despite the terror that monkeys could kill you.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
To the fund, Yeah, in retrospect.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yes, totally nobody got murdered. Oh, thank goodness, there wasn't
a monkey murder.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Okay, Eli Koning, you have your answer, and I'm gonna hazard.
I guess you're sorry you.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Asked, stand and deliver. There you go.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Okay for the first time, Dean. In a couple of weeks,
I caught a new release in theaters.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
What that's not?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Like you? I actually ended up catching two of them.
I was determined to see twenty eight years later in theaters.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Why because I knew I would enjoy the world building aspects, okay,
you know, and probably the tone. I certainly would enjoy
the tone more on the big screen where I could
immerse myself and I usually really like how Danny Boyle
(19:17):
handles tone. Like I said, I knew I would appreciate
the world building of where did you go? With those
earlier stories?
Speaker 3 (19:28):
And imagine somebody waking up twenty eight years later in
his zombie apocalypse would.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Be no zombies. Remember, Remember that's let's disavalue of that.
Even though the twenty eight days later movies revived the
zombie genre, they were never zombies. They were infected with
the rage virus, the instant the rage virus. And being
(19:56):
reminded of that that here we were, month after nine
to eleven watching a movie where the UK was being
infected with rage virus. Yeah, maybe we should have been
asking I wonder, yeah, is there a metaphor at play here?
And what crops might have sprung up some twenty years
(20:19):
after from such a rage virus Anyway, Danny Boyle again
who directed the first one, not the second one. He
is a big screen director and along with the film
screenwriter Alex Garland, who of course has gone on to
make his own films like ex. Machin on Civil War,
(20:40):
they both have returned to the franchise that they launched
in two thousand and two. However, thirty minutes or so
into the film, which I knew I needed to see
on the big screen, Yes, when I was not enjoying it,
I wondered what on earth made me think I would?
(21:03):
This was the question, because given all that is going
on in the world and Andy in my life, specifically
and within me. Indeed, on the almost daily Dean I
am overcome at some point during the day of a
feeling I can only describe as complete fragility, vulnerable to
(21:26):
everything that sweeps over me and sometimes emanates from within me.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
In the form of a rage virus no more.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Just like really like a strong wind could just wipe
me out of existence, is how I feel. It struck
me thirty minutes into the movie that given those feelings,
I hardly need to see the inhumanity of man displayed
so profoundly and artistically, I compliment. I mean, yeah, yeah, No,
(22:03):
I just mean I didn't I didn't mean no one
would enjoy it. I just wondered what the hell was
I doing to myself? I mean, it is cool to
see how First of all, they discard the global threat
that's suggested by the end of the second film, which
again Boyle did not make, and they explain that this
(22:26):
film would be a back to UK only threat. Twenty
years twenty eight years on from the spread of the
original rage virusk, the UK is a quarantined land ah
with the seas patrolled by international authorities, preventing escape from
(22:47):
any who might have survived the plague and its aftermath
and therefore might be carriers in some way. Right. It's
interesting to see the evolution of the virus and how
they're different strands of infected and offspring of those who
are infected, and what they all have to do to survive.
(23:11):
Less interesting is the village of those uninfected existing isolated
on a small island off the coast, connected by a
tiny strip of land for a few hours every low tide, right,
and that low tide allows the villagers to go ashore
(23:32):
for foraging, hunting, gathering of fuel, et cetera. They will
also bring their young ashore when the young are ready
to become of age by making their first kills of
the various infected. Yeah, they go hunting the infected to
prove their adulthood status. It's dark wow, And again, as
(23:57):
the kids might say, I wasn't there for any of it,
so I really did have thoughts of leaving, Okay, but
knowing that Ray Fine would make an eventual appearance in
the film kept me in my seat. So I tried
to enjoy the work being done by Aaron Taylor Johnson,
(24:21):
who is an actor I really like, and you really
like him. You liked him in Bullet Train a lot.
You remember he was the lead in the kick Ass
movies when he was very young. Oh yeah, I think
he's the movie star that Ryan Gosling is supposed to
(24:42):
be the stuntman for in The Fall Guy. Yeah right, okay,
And he would be my choice to be James Bond
if we are going young because at thirty five, I
think he's a believable age and he has the action
bona fides that we just talked about, he has the charisma,
(25:03):
he has acting chops. So I enjoyed watching the work
that he was doing and really like taking him in
in this. But before long he's removed from the scene
as the focus of the movie shifts. I'm not like
spoiling anything going Oh he dies an act in No,
(25:24):
they just shift the focus of the movie. So after
an act I don't get him anymore. And he was
really what was kind of keeping me entertained. But the
young lead is a twelve year old boy, and the
movie shifts to follow him in a way that actually
(25:47):
ends up almost leaving me bereft. Wow, he's gone ashore
in the first act with his father, Taylor Johnson, who
thinks of his son as a hero after they got ashore,
whereas the boy himself feels he just failed in the
coming of age trial. Oh and the boy sneaks out
(26:08):
of the village with his ill mother and braves the
treacherous trip ashore and through for us and past all
manner of infected to try to reach a doctor who
apparently long ago went fully insane but has somehow survived
the play. Okay. The doctor is played by Ray Fine
(26:34):
love it. He is utterly fantastic. It is absolutely another
in the pantheon of not only great refine performances, but
great rafine characters. Right. And the mother's illness when she
gets to him, is revealed to be rest cancer. Oh no,
(26:59):
and it has metastasized to her brain. There is no saving.
So of all the stories for me to feel, I
must see on the big screen this was it.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I know. I can't believe that you get.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Seeing it alone, and I'm like, I'm like starting to sob.
It turns out that the beautiful places beautiful in this
twenty eight Days you know, the later universe, the beautiful
places the story goes following this revelation actually proved truly
(27:42):
cathartic for me.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Oh there you go.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Danny Boyle has made a grisly, disturbing, artistic, lovely little
movie and one that is full of grace. Whoa, and
when I say little, make no mistake this is an
independent film. There is an epilogue also, I should add
(28:08):
that left me fully exhilarated. The boy another twenty eight
days later, okay, taking off on his own to explore
the infected countryside. Sure we've already seen his development in
a month's time. But he soon gets in over his
head and is on the run. And this is just
(28:31):
the epilogue, just a really brief thing that has nothing
to do with the plot of the rest of the movie. Okay,
He's rescued in this epilogue from seemingly a certain fate
at the hands of this infected group by a group
of ridiculously skilled fighters who are all dressed right down
(28:57):
to blonde mullet wigs and tracks suits like Jimmy Seville.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Oh no, the talk show of a host from England
who went to jail.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
No, he never went to jail. Oh see, that's the thing.
It's so dark because after his death in twenty fourteen, Seville,
who was the most beloved of all UK TV personalities
and history. Remember, he had hosted Top of.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
The Pops, Yeah for the longest time.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
And also a show called Jimmy O'll Fix It or
Jimmy'll Make It Happen or something where he made the
wish of sick kids come true. Right, And it was
revealed after his death that he was perhaps the most
monstrous pedophile and sexual predator in history, including of those
sick and dying kids whose dreams he made true. Yeah,
(29:53):
there were whispers around it when he was alive, but
it wasn't until after his death that this all came out.
So that's twenty fourteen. This fact would not be known
in the world of the twenty eight Days later films,
as the Outbreak led to the out and out fall
of society in the UK some ten years or more
(30:17):
prior to the real life Seville Dying. Okay, there's no news,
there's no information, there's no radio, there's no internet. They
would never learn about it. And so it's the final
expression in a film that has filtered this message in
(30:41):
throughout it about the selective nature of human memory.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
And I'm seeing this the same week where we literally
have a war criminal net Yahoo, who's a felon nominating
a fellow felon for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah, there
be monsters all around, it seems, it seems the rage
(31:14):
monsters and the heroes we choose to keep us safe
from rage monsters. Wow. And I'm not talking about the
movie anymore, or just.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Or just the monsters and the rage monsters. So there, boy,
I would like to actually see that movie. The team
of Jimmy Seville looking you will.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
You will in the next one. It's they've they've formulated
this as a new trilogy. They've filmed the second one.
Killian Murphy returns. He's he was Jim in the very
first one and twenty eight days later and we meet
up with his character in the next one. Oh. He
(32:03):
executive produced this one, and they want to do a
third one, but again it's an indie film. They haven't
raised the financing for the third one yet, so but
it's done very well internationally, so I would hope if
the second one does as well or seems to be
as promising, And why wouldn't it. You'll have Ray Fine
(32:24):
back also, and you know it is such a touching physical, witty, soulful,
touched by madness, downright Shakespearean performance by Fine, and it
inspired me to finally just list my favorite of his
(32:45):
all time performances. So again, we've talked about this. We
talk about this every time he does a movie or
when you saw him do Macbeth. Let's do a Ray
Fine show one of.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
These days, as yeah, yeah, that'd be something because I mean,
you think about that range too, right from the Harry
Potter to Schindler's List two the menu good.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Low, monstrous villains, uh, sympathetic, weak villains, the weak, masculinity
of villainy in some cases, the the action star, the academic. Uh.
It is quite quite a range that he has so believably,
(33:33):
and he embodies all of them. Uh so well so
uh yeah, so that was that was one of the
two theatricals. Okay, yeah, and I was really glad that
I that.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I saw that experience all to yourself.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
So Lilly and I then went to see the Life
of Chuck.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
What's this I've not heard of this one.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I would have thought you would have read it. It's
a Stephen King novella. Oh is it originally optioned to
be adapted by Darren Aronofsky, who did not end up
doing it. Instead it was Mike Flanagan, who most recently
had adapted Stephen King's shining sequel Doctor Sleep. We were
(34:21):
both taken by the trailer, not by the Stephen King connection.
We like the Tom Hittleston who is pushed as the
star of the movie and I say pushed as the
star of the movie to let on the fact that
he's not in it very much. And indeed the trailer
though a delightful trailer that makes you feel like, I
(34:44):
have no idea what this movie is, but it will
be the most uplifting experience of my life, and that
we needed that. Actually, that trailer gave us no idea
of what the film was about, or really what it's
tone was.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Oh no, it again.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
It's a trailer that does a wonderful job of conveying
tone what you and I have said is probably the
most important thing a trailer should do. Only it wasn't
the actual tone of the film. H The three acts story,
like in the novella, is told in reverse. The third
(35:24):
act is first, then the second, then the first. Okay,
so I don't know how you could possibly advertise what
the movie is, or how you would in that case
right like it's it's one of the only movies dean where,
(35:44):
at least up to this point, some several days on
from seeing it, I am totally unable to come up
with an advertising idea for you.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Hence the trailer that you saw.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
The film is dark and more sad than the uplifting
trailer led us to believe. Okay, it is uplifting, but
it's more life affirming, and it is a story about
death and about how the type of death we have matters.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I'm very much as Stephen King's subject.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Matter and exactly what twenty eight years Later is about.
Oh no, well, you know this film also like that
Danny Boyle film, now that I'm thinking about it, this
film also contains an end of the world apocalypse scenarios,
(36:47):
full full of strange humor, magic, pathos, rights, and inspiration.
The middle piece of the film so Act two, which
comes in act to YEA and involves most of star
Tom Hiddleston's screen time, and most of that screen time
(37:10):
involves an impromptu street dance inspired by the drumming of
real life street busker The Pocket Queen. Okay, it's a
great scene. Look, I don't really know how to describe
this story of a dying man. It's genre bending. It
(37:31):
features appearances by many actors it's pleasing to see again
and who do really nifty work like chuatel Edgio four
who I've always loved, Karen Gillen who played Nebula in
the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Sure, Mark Hamill Wow, a
(37:52):
luminous Mia Sarah, who many people will not have seen
since playing Ferris Buehler's girlfriend in Veris Bueller's Day Off.
It's so beautiful to see her again. Carl Lumley, who
is having a moment. He was the one time Buckaroo,
Bonzi Black Lectroid star who also starred in Alias, and
(38:16):
who you saw very recently in Captain America Brave New
World as the original Captain America who's imprisoned. It also
features David dst Malchion from Late Night with the Devil.
Oh yeah yeah, Matthew Lillard, who's delightful in the first act,
(38:40):
which is the third act shown. The titular character of
Chuck is played by a boy actually played by several
boys at different ages. As we watch him grow and
the eldest of those boys is Jacob Trembley, the boy
born in Captivity in the Oscar Winning Room, where Brie
Larson plays his mother, who has been kidnapped and has
(39:05):
a child. And so it's nice to know that that
young actor grew up seemingly well given how traumatizing that
film might have been on his emerging psyche right and
during these childhood scenes, which honestly sort of dragged for
me a little bit. After the incredible and unique narrative
(39:26):
momentum that the first two acts build by showing the
ending and then showing the middle, things come back to
life again and again. It's through the art of dance,
and one of the young dancers is played by a
girl named Trinity Bliss. She would seem to be someone
to definitely keep an eye on. She has real potential,
(39:48):
Like I'm struggling to know what to talk about.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
If you feel s dying guy, And there's a dance
sequitous in this, yeah, pretty much and the film, but
I would stress this, the film is deeply felt by
Mike Flanagan, by the writer and director, and it makes
you realize how rare it is to see something where
(40:15):
you know it was deeply felt by the filmmaker.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Uh huh, you can tell this mattered. This was an
absolute expression from this guy's soul.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Oh oh good.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And it has a lot on its mind and its heart.
And I guess all I can really say is I
love it, despite perhaps knowing that it never fully hits
its mark. There isn't another film like it, which is
why I can't describe it, and why I have no
idea how to sell it. And so I guess the
(40:50):
best phrase I would use is it's cinematic, Wabbi sabby. Oh,
and it will most likely appear on my year end
list of the best movies I've seen.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
You're kidding. Even though you disparaged it.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
I didn't disparage it. I just have no idea how
to talk about it or to sell it. And like
I said, how many movies do we watch? Look, we
watch a lot of movies that have a great first
act and then the second act is a mess and
at that point, what the heck are you going to do?
And less so, but there is a sizable amount of
(41:27):
very good movies whose only flaw is that the third
act leading up to a resolution lacks the propulsive momentum
that the first two acts. Have earned, because you do
tend to get in your head sometimes of okay, how
do we wrap this up? And the nature of reversing
(41:50):
the order on things is that you really are watching
the first act, you really are telling it the way
you would in a first act, but by a third act,
where you're starting to get more economy of scale in
how you tell things, right, you might cut some of
(42:11):
these pieces out because showing these pieces at the end
of a film, it doesn't play in as interesting a
way as it does at the beginning, when you're settling
into the world.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
So do you think then, well, having not read the novella,
I assume it's in a straightforward linear format. Is it that,
as you said, they realized their third act is weaker,
so by putting it first, I can reverse the structure
and therefore pave over some of the known weaknesses if
(42:49):
it was in a linear order first, second, third act
as opposed to three to two one.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
I think the flaw again, it's Wabi Sabbi, because I
think the flaws the point. I think it's that when
we see the acorn, we're seeing the tree, but we're
not going to be around to see the tree, so
all we can do is spend as much time getting
to know the acorn as possible. And it's letting us
know that by showing the tree chopped down at the end, okay,
(43:21):
at the beginning, it's letting us see the Yeah, so
there you go. What did what did you think of Sinners?
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Okay, you know exactly where this film lost me.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
At the end of act one.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, it was like you just flipped
the switch and you went, what what is it?
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Like it was when when that guy fleeing the Native
tribes goes into the house, cajoles his way into the house,
cannives to get into the house, and then turns the couple.
And that's the reduction of vampirism. Like I said, that's
(44:03):
the end of a great pilot episode for the Sinners
TV series. Yeah, because it's just about an hour. It's
almost an hour right there, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
And so.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
After that, then the multi time genre dance and sequence
in the juke joint, it was like, oh, then there's
rappers and there's a guy and that you know, and
that this idea of the music connecting you through history
was a bit ham fisted.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I thought, that's the trailer for the series. If you're
taking us through a history of Clarksdale, and that's kind
of what I wanted was I wanted more about what
this town was, because when they build this town, like, yes,
we've not seen this, let us have this. We've seen
(44:59):
people locked up in a tight space besieged by vampires.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, it's called dust Till, done by Quentin Tarantino.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
It's an incredible piece of filmmaking, that music sequence that
you're describing, and you know, to see it in seventy
millimeter and to see it go full imax, to see
as the eras changed the format and what they filmed
it on and everything changes within one musical number. All
(45:27):
very impressive. And yet is it anywhere near as affecting
or riveting or unnerving or even humorous? Then the musical
dance performed by the vampires outside outside, Yeah, that's that's
(45:51):
a scene for the ages.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I thought there was a
couple missed opportunities. As you said, there's a Navajo Indian
hunting group that only gets one scene. Wouldn't it have
been great at the end with the Klan and the
Navajos and the sun about to rise and the survivors
(46:14):
and the juke joint, all of that come together in
a you know, multi racial tension. However you want to
lay it out, that to me would have been, oh, okay,
this is where it's gonna go. This is how they're
gonna get the apex. As opposed to just you know,
Tommy guns in the in the cornfield and blasting away
it just it just deflated it. The line of deflating,
(46:41):
you can see the air pressure just leave the film
in a sequential. It was almost a perfect line of
how each scene was less than the other scene. Even
though you think, oh, lots of action, ooh steaks, blood
bursting into flames in the sunshine, you know, all of
that just was like less and less the more you
(47:01):
tried to do.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Yes, yeah, well you know what we were saying. Great
first act and then it loses its propulsion. And so often,
in the hands of really gifted filmmakers, the impulse towards
(47:26):
violence as a resolution is going to be more interesting,
right because they're going to be really good at the
setting and the characters and exploring all the impulses that
are leading towards this resolution through violence. But if you
have made all that very interesting. How is the act
(47:49):
of violence itself going to be nearly as interesting?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Exactly? It's like you're sort of said, similar to like
a rom com that ends in a car chase, It's like, oh,
to do that there is?
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I would go one step further. I would say, like,
you know, the reason that a lot of romcoms work
is that fundamentally the characters aren't that interesting. Because if
they are super interesting and you get to know them
as three dimensional beings, the satisfying conclusion might be not
(48:24):
having them together. Right, But now you're in a different
genre altogether. Now you're in Casablanca, right, Yeah, where the
right thing is for them to grow and to regain
or further embody their idealism and to know that ending
(48:47):
up together isn't the happy ending, right I guess spoiler alert.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yeah, I also want it. Perhaps then in that first act,
similar to early scenes of Shanna the Dead, where it's
it's like, wait, what's that guy doing over there? Like
just little things in the background that would indicate that
there's some supernatural night hunting vampire or a team of
(49:12):
vampires out there in that cute little town, as opposed
to oh, here's a cute little town and we're building
juke joint.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
I also said that there's like lip service paid to
so many different threats. You've got the Klan and then
the Clan shows up again at the end. You also
have the Chicago Mob. Yeah, they're on the run from
the Chicago Mob. There was such the opportunity to at
least play with all these threats in a more meaningful way.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Yeah, and I suspect there's a script out there that
has that. But somebody said, this cannot be a three
hundred page script. This is this, let's condense it to
one hundred and ten whatever it ran.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And I hate again criticizing something for what it's not.
It's just that they bring these elements to the to
the dance, as it were, but they never let them
come forward.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yes, and even in that, I mean the way it's edited,
it's just like brick walls. It's just like, okay, here's
this sequence, bam black, Okay, now everybody leave, leave the
juke joint and just leave the five of us. There's
a problem with the something going on, Lynn like, well, no,
(50:30):
if it's all about family and community, one never to
go Hey, if there's a problem we're here to help.
Not Okay, thanks for the fun time we had dancing
all night to great blues music. Now good luck on
whatever your problem is. That seemed weird to me as well,
but I get it. You have to just trim out
your extras and just have your leads to five Vampires.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Huge, huge hit. I'm glad it's a huge hit. It
got lots of people to the theaters, which means that
probably they have come to other movies as well as
a result of it, and box office is up. So
we're happy for that. The introduction of all these interesting
potential storylines and seeing a place and an era that
(51:18):
doesn't get depicted on the big screen, maybe we'll open
the door for other stories and inspire other filmmakers, if
not Ryan Kogler. So it's a happy success. It is
far from a masterpiece, despite the fact that I'm sure
it's the only shoe in for a Best Picture nomination
(51:38):
that we've seen at this point this year. Last week
we talked about the fourth Mission Impossible movie, Ghost Protocol, which,
if my math is correct, after all those years spent
studying the triangle, brings us to the fifth Mission Impossible movie,
which is a Mission Impossible.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Nation right, this one.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
This was McCrory's third total film as a director, Chris McCrory,
his first in the Mission Impossible series, and darn if
it might not be the best in the entire Mission
(52:24):
Impossible for.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
A I agree. What surprised me is the amount of
laughs that it got for me, particularly the first set piece,
the the double assassin in backstage turned opera and the
computer board rising and lowering rafters and raising the lights
(52:46):
and stuff like that, as as Simon Pay's character keeps
hitting the thing, well, he's trying to find it, face recognition,
who the who the bad guy is? All of that,
I mean, you never love your orientation of where you
were backstage and you had so many complex things. You
(53:08):
had the Chancellor of Austria sitting in an opera box,
people training their guns on him to assassinate him, another
one assassinating the assassin, and Tom Cruise in the middle
of it with an Alto flute weapons system. You know
that you have all of it was so great. I
(53:28):
just love that sequence. Unto itself, I think two things.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
One, it's important to point out when you're talking about
how we never lose our positioning on things. We're never
left behind in this Chris McCrory is the guy that
won an Oscar for writing Usual Suspects, and there's a
script that pulled off the very difficult challenge of not
(53:54):
leaving us behind in that movie. Yeah yeah, And now
he's a director who is also writing and this movie.
Let's also give credit to the previous films director again,
Brad Bird, because it was the first film to me
that showed this is how a Mission impossible movie looks,
(54:15):
as opposed to each director bringing a look to it.
Here's how a Mission impossible movie looks. And Chris McCrory
jumps on that and develops it further and utilizes that
approach to bring out his writing and to make sure
that we're never left behind. Right. So it's really brilliant
(54:36):
work that he is doing. I still for me again,
I find the prior installment, Ghost Protocol to be the
most fun movie in the series. But Rogue Nation, as
I'm watching it, I realize, Yeah, it's more accomplished, it's
more elegant, it's more cohesive, and it builds an ongoing
(55:00):
global threat with real world resonance. The syndicate. It's got
a personal relationship that is interesting, appealing, emotional without relying
on backstory or mythology, and that is Ethan's friendship with
Rebecca Ferguson's six agent ilse of Faust.
Speaker 3 (55:24):
And how they seemingly betray the Devil crosses, then the explanations,
then back and then.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
But we don't have to explain why their friends are
how their friends, or give them any mythology or backstory
of oh, she reminds them of this or that or whatever.
It's just we understand that they get each other from
the very beginning, right, and so they care about each other,
and so they're going to do their jobs, but they're
also going to kind of look out for each other.
And it's really quite refreshing. And when this movie finally
(55:54):
introduces a ticking clock element, which is kind of obviously
lacking for much of the movie only because of how
the prior installments kept giving us these overwhelming ticking clock
movies to varying degrees of success. But when this film
(56:15):
finally does, in the third act, give us a ticking clock,
it also gives us the most satisfying way of stopping
that clock of the series up to that point, followed
by the most satisfying. I think Denu Moire between Ethan
(56:36):
and the pieces of villain Solomon Lane played by Sean Harris.
Their final showdown is so rewarding, and so much of
it is used is about intellect. It's about thinking.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
Right right, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
Not we think of the big action pieces and we're
gonna get big action piece, but ultimately it's really brilliance
and intellectual fortitude that ends up at least opening up
the opportunity for victory, if not actually delivering it.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
Right right, yeah. Because the second set piece in the
underwater switching of the memory boards or whatever, I didn't
realize that that was actually underwater, that Tom Cruise trained
with a free swimmer and was holding his breath for
three minute takes. Because you look at it, you go, oh,
(57:37):
this is digitally done. But then how I can't imagine
the cameraman. How is he capturing all this because it's
a circular swirling room, underwater room with all these doors
that you had to get to, and how's he getting
out of there? And he nearly dies? It's like it's
(57:57):
to me it was a greater everybody was doing great work,
but the orientation that it happened also fast. It was
like so thrilling, and you're like, good god, how did
they do this? Because otherwise the easy way we just
make it digital and hang some wires.
Speaker 2 (58:17):
But it at its best. The set pieces in these
movies become actually more thrilling the more often you watch them.
Speaker 3 (58:28):
Right, the more you try to figure out how they
did it.
Speaker 2 (58:31):
Because you are left yeah, more more just aghast at
all the challenges that went into creating it, as opposed
to the first time, which is the challenge of getting
out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and being introduced to it. Yeah,
it's mind boggling. And I think that that's the most
(58:52):
incredible kind of magic trick. And again, who better to
be giving us these than than the guy that right
gave us the great line from the usual suspects of
the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was making people
believe he didn't exist. I again, Ghost Protocol might be
my favorite, but Rogue Nation has I think the most
(59:15):
pleasing teaser, It has the most pleasing climax. It's the
most deliriously globe trotting of adventures. There are crosses, there
are double crosses, there are triple crosses. And yet at
the end, the people who are working together are the
(59:36):
people you want to have working together, right. Alec Baldwin's
head of the CIA makes for both a very believable
thorn in the side and possible villain alles, as well
as a truly satisfying good guy when all is said
(59:56):
and done right. The expansion of ben Le allows Simon
Pegg to provide some of the most potentially devastating emotional
stakes of the entire series. Jeremy Renner's role as William
Brandt both builds on his from Ghost Protocol and actually
(01:00:20):
places him in a position at the end where it
almost makes sense to us that we never see him
again in the franchise, because he's been bumped.
Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
Upstairs right right, promoted.
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Finally, and like I've hinted at when we've talked about
the earlier movies, maybe most important, as we look at
this franchise as a whole, Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa allows us
to forgive that the previous films very appealing Maggie Q
(01:00:53):
and Paula Patten never returned right because Rebecca Ferguson he
is quite simply playing the best female character in the
entire series and remains that way until she gets replaced
by even better characters in the final two films. It's
really one of the most impressive tricks pulled off by
(01:01:14):
the entire franchise. The female leads get better and better,
and the characters they play get richer and richer. So
since I gave Ghost Protocol three and a half stars, yeah,
out of four, I am forced to give Mission Impossible
Rogue Nation a perfect four stars.
Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Only go holy smokes, it's the perfect vision. But really, okay,
that's it took five to get you there, but there
it is.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
And what other franchise is getting better at that point?
Five movies and they're getting.
Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Better, yes, till we get to six.
Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
No, the biggest hit of them all, the biggest, the
only one to approach a billion dollars. I just watch
this again and it's spoiler alert. My second four stars
for Mission Impossible.
Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
Really yeah, I mean, I love the action, the pacing
was great, but when you got to those two handers, uh,
and the and the cinematographer decides to compose it by
jamming an over the shoulder shot and putting your character
far left in the frame uh and leaving a big
blanks based on the right of the frame.
Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
So we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna leave it in
a Mission Impossible cliffhanger right there.
Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
We're gonna argue this point. Now you're gonna make me
watch it again.
Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
It's so why wouldn't you want to? Oh, my god,
the one with Henry Cavill, the one with Superman, that
Manngela Bassett, Alec Baldwin as a as a member of
the team. Now, oh, there's so much, all right, So
we'll be talking about the biggest hit of them all,
the most beloved Mission Impossible movie, Mission Impossible fallout our
(01:03:01):
next week's show.
Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
Belated spoiler alert
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