August 22, 2025 • 60 mins
In this episode, Professor Mouse and the Cosmologist discuss Wes Anderson, Disney adults, and a Benicio del Toro conspiracy theory.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
It's like a clown.
Speaker 3 (00:01):
No do this little page's bagging boarding batman and the
gut or like a major story tellers me some fellas
we some felons.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Isn't amazing. It's like a Pella bearver sella because this
ship is so contagious.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Mouths on the Summerson pile like you the shells while
the cycle spinning knowledge on the getty like appro beat
the babo, be the rabbit. Don't step to the squad,
we get activic and hate. It's like a stepla parts
you don't like fish talk?
Speaker 4 (00:20):
Did you hate?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's a batl with.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
The cuttle fish killers tended pools on the taping the
Greatest Spider Stars. If you cherish your life, Bucky barn
hit squad spraying leg and your pipe.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey, everybody wanting to another. This is just bad. It's
it's just bad. The best party has you never heard
of him? Your host, professor Mouse Judges always by the
sea because bologist, we're back.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Baby.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
You had your mouth open like you're gonna say something,
and you didn't do it. You let me, You left
me hanging.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Oh man, we were a well oiled machine, like we
haven't been doing this for a decad.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, usually Teddy will Usually Teddy will jump in with.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
A yeah right, waiting for the soundboard. Uh man, uh
that's true. We uh in next year, it'll be ten years. Wow,
that's more episodes than most. Star Trek.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Shout out to last week's episode. I do I have
a question for you because I'm trying to figure this out.
I'm trying to understand something. Do you like and if
you don't, do you understand Wes Anderson?
Speaker 5 (01:41):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I one of our friends would be one of the
former interrupters would be I think a better better uh
pro Anderson perspective to bring on the show Wes Anderson.
I was just thinking it Wes Anderson recently, partially because
his style is so unique. There have been like some
(02:07):
terrible ai like what if Wes Anderson directed Star Wars
and then like weird kind of pastel art. His style
is very easy to imitate. It is very distinctive. It
is very quirky to me, it is often to twee
is the best word I would have for it, which
is to say quirky and cutesy. And he's not British,
(02:36):
but he feels British to me. That kind of humor
that is based around awkwardness, long pauses, interesting colors, and
cinematography to an extent. I come down on the side
of I will take Wes Anderson in very small doses
(03:00):
like The Fantastic Mister Fox quite a lot or I've
only seen it the once though, so I don't know
if it holds up. This is the puppet stop movie
based on a role in Doll and I think Doll
is actually a really good comp for Wes Anderson because
it is also weird. I think what works is doll
stuff is a lot darker than people give it credit for.
(03:21):
You know, Tarlie and Top of Factory is, you know,
a dark story. A lot of those stories are border
on kind of macabre. So when you give Wes Anderson
a little bit of meat to work with, I think
he can pull off some really interesting stuff. When you
leave him to his own devices and he just spins
things out of his own quirky world, I find them
(03:48):
trivial and obnoxious interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Okay, so I'm on the same I think I'm on
the same length is you. But there's there was another
There was a confusion for me. So I watched The
Phoenician scheme.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Oh, I was wondering if this is what brought it up. Yeah,
saw a bunch of posters love Benicio.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I love them too. I try to watch all his
movies to support my countrymen that we have like this
bizarre conspiracy theory going on in our household. My wife.
My wife started it and then I was like, this
doesn't make any sense, and then she told it to
my dad and my dad was like, that is weird.
But basically Benicio el Toro was and this is the conspiracy,
(04:40):
was born in San Hitdemont, which is where my family's from.
Born in the same hospital as my younger sister. My
sister who was shout out two episodes ago. Uh still
not bought the switch to.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
That's good for her for boycotting. I'm impressed.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Shout out last week's episode. She's forming a union, their union,
the girls switch union. It's so uh born in the
same hospital and everything. And then that was and we
all maybe have been Mendela effect into remembering that that
was on his Wikipedia. And my dad knows him because
(05:21):
everybody in Puerto Rico knows everybody because it's so small
and insulated that if you were born in San hedman.
You know, you at least know somebody who knows somebody,
and my dad knows this dude, which is not like
crazy to think about because they're the same exact age
and they were going to the same basketball games and
shit like that, they would have bumped into each other.
(05:46):
On his Wikipedia Annow says that he was born in Sanduce,
which is across the island, which is where he's definitely
was raised. He was he is from San Juan. Like,
if somewhere someone were an ask me where Benicio del
Toro it was from, I would say he's from Santurse.
(06:06):
He's born in San Hieman and people know him there
and know his family there. But so that's been scrubbed
off the internet. So if you google where was he born,
the AI chat bot, the Google AI chatbot will say
san Hieman. It won't source it. And then if you
go and you search anywhere, it's will only say Santurse.
(06:29):
It says it on the English Wikipedia, says on the
Spanish Wikipedia. But then I was like, okay, this is
like flat Earth to me, because there's there are some
ways in which you have made a convincing like a
set of details. However, why and who gives a fuck? Right?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Why bother? Like what does benisoltoo have against Saint Harman
where he wants to be for it to be forgot
and that he's from there or that he was born there?
I guess he ashamed of does he not want people
to look up the basketball games he went to? Like
what is it?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
I don't know, idea? So that's that's been. So we
told that my dad.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I guess your dad has to go call him and ask.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Well, he's gonna he's gonna call people who know him
to try to figure out whether or not he was
born there. And I'm like, this is a waste of time.
My dad has a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Though, yeah, you've got the time, why not? And this
is this is the sort of thing like if I
were from a very very small town where everybody knew me,
I also might try to extinguish that fact on the
internet if I got really famous to avoid exactly that.
I thing your dad's about to.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Do the only thing that I can well, but that's
like a It wouldn't work in Puerto Rico because everybody
knows when you're there where you are, Like everybody knows
where bad Bunny is. This way as a security detail.
Everybody knows where he is and when he's in Puerto
Rico and when he gets there and shit like that.
(08:03):
Like it's just like just like a bunch of Grandma.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Texts y like small town Italy. Also, yeah, just that
same kind of culture for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So he couldn't scrub it. And there's nothing really to
be ashamed of.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
No, the only thing to be ashamed of is working
with Wes anders in this often.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Which gets me back to my point. So the what
is so curious about it is I'll give you, I'll
give you like the polar opposite filmmaker. I really like
Danny Boyle. Danny Boyle is an emotional filmmaker. There there's
a lot of emotion that's in the foreground of all
(08:48):
of his movies. And for me, there's like an emotional
immaturity in the amount of quirkiness in a Wes Anderson.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yes, still there is this like arrested development, not the show,
but the concept childishness to his films. They which is
part of the reason I think like the dark underbelly
of roll doll stuff forces Wes Anderson to like nut
up a little bit. His stuff can feel kind of
(09:20):
empty without some additional influx of emotion.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, it was like and that's that was kind of
the game. It's a fast talking, monotone delivery. You're you're
really removing. It's almost like it's a weird comparison, but
it's almost like George Lucasy. It's like almost like everybody's
kind of like like has a Jedi sort of emotional
(09:48):
vacuity where you have all these great actors and every
Wes Anderson movie like the people are dying to work
with this guy. So like, I mean, the twelfth builled
actor in the Venetians scheme is Benedict Cumberbatch.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Like it's got an all star cast absolutely, but for
what So they can play around and like they can
get photographed in very vibrant yellow I guess you know,
I feel like when you get some cool shots and
they get to check that off their bucket list. Of
(10:25):
like being in a Wes Anderson movie, I suppose you
get to work with a very specific kind of style.
Some of the some of the dialogue, like you know,
Howard Hawks is dead, So if you want to some
kind of like snappy dialogue, that's a place to go to.
If I were an actor who had my pick of projects,
like and I was interested in working different styles. You know,
(10:49):
it might be an interesting career bucket list to do
a project like that, just to say that I've done
it and to like experience that kind of work, except
that kind of work is boring.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, I don't know if I would enjoy doing that.
They're just it was and the premise is kind of interesting.
Like Benisio Lotro plays a guy who is he's this
kind of like mysterious, wealthy billionaire dude who's he's traveling
(11:27):
around the world. He's fucking shit up. He's his scheme
is to build like a damn that has that creates energy.
That's like also a railroad or some shit like that.
And that's like the setup of the movie. And then
the gag in the movie is that somebody's always trying
(11:49):
to assassinate him. So like Michael Sarah will come out
of the cockpit of an airplane with a bunch of
dynamite and go, is this supposed to be in here?
And it's all very point, but there's no there's no
joy in the delivery of it. And so you're I'm
watching it, I'm like, man, I can't. I guess this
(12:11):
isn't for me because I can't.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Get part of what part of what makes Wes Anderson
a little bit difficult to approach is the absolute dead
pen nature of it, and like that is that's what
makes it feel like British comedy to me is the
studied intentional lack of feeling, and that is intended to
be funny, I think, but can often be alienating.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
It's it's one of those annoying things that British people
say all the time about Americans, is like Americans don't
understand British sarcasm. And there's there's probably truth to that,
but then there's also simultaneously truth to the idea that
Americans don't think British sarcasm is funny.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, And it's often like you're not being sarcastic, you're
just being kind of a.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Jerk, right, or or like it's just not funny to me.
It doesn't provoke that reaction where there's that dead pant
sarcasm and the and the and it's a wash in
irony in Wes Anderson movies that is just doesn't resonate
(13:18):
at all with me, where I'm like, yeah, I mean
maybe I'm a dumb American and I I think that like,
like emotions are interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Well yeah, I mean it's that's sort of the the
meme of like, okay, but now try to say something
brave and true, Like that's harder, and it can be
staying to put yourself out there. And anderson Is creates
very like hermetically sealed worlds that do not allow for
honest emotion in some ways, and so they can be
(13:53):
cutesy but and they're non threatening, but they're also not
going to give you any kind of like heartrending Catharsis either.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird because what we watch
movies now, Like god, I mean we cry at everything
now when you have a kid, kid, Yeah, and she
goes to and then like she just started going to daycare,
and we just we got her report from her first
(14:26):
day of daycare, where she was having fun and playing
with the kids and stuff like that, to her second
day in daycare where Monchie on their first day of daycare,
she went to daycare, we left. She didn't she didn't
cry because she didn't realize we had gone. When she
finally realized we weren't around, she cried and then eventually
(14:50):
got over it. Second day of second day of daycare,
she cries when we let her go and we leave
for a couple of minutes. By the end of the day,
she's refusing to nap because she's playing with all the kids.
And then my wife walks in and and she doesn't
(15:11):
even recognize her, and then just playing. She's just playing,
and then she's talking with the woman that runs the daycare,
and so her voice is in the space and still
an she doesn't give a fuck.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
It's gotten over that separation anxiety.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It happened too fast, and that and those kinds of
like milestones do uh choking up because you're like, oh
my god, this is like because then that's the parental
separation anxiety that you don't often hear about. Is that
now you're kind of like And it was so crazy too,
because we got so much work done in those two
(15:54):
days that she was gone. Today she's with us. Today's
she's with us. We didn't get anything done. Tomorrow she'll
be back at daycare and Friday, and it's just this, like,
you know, you can't watch anything anymore without crying. We
were watching American Ninja Warrior and they were like one
of the contestants' daughter found out she had cerebral palsy
(16:19):
and we were watching her crying, just like.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Oh Man d S nine would destroy you. Just like
having the dad Captain Cisco have any kind of interaction
with this kid that's funny, that makes a lot of sense.
And I imagine you are not crying during Wes Anderson
movies where you're going getting.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
To Well, it's an entire story about a dad who
is who is trying to rekindle a relationship with his
strange daughter, and there are all of the sorts of
hallmarks of things that would be incredibly emotional, and because
(16:58):
it's delivered in this way that's so painfully ironic, there's
nothing there. And it's like, if there was there's a
trace of any kind of emotion in this based on
what I know just intellectually and objectively happened in this story,
(17:19):
I would absolutely love this film. But he has managed
to suck away all of the potential like uncomfortability from
that story where it's like, oh, this is fucking lame,
this sucks.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I'm gonna say something that is gonna perhaps good that
Teddy's not on the show. This week there was a
concept of the Disney adult, which is to say, folks
who are have I mean, I grew up with the
Disney Renaissance films. I love Little Mermaid and Mulan and
like those that sort of golden aim. There are adults,
(18:01):
I think who have grown up with those also, for
whom that kind of sort of bottled emotion and that
level of complexity is what they're comfortable with, and they
are not comfortable with anything more complex or more difficult
(18:22):
than that. And I think that is what Wes Anderson
movies are made for. I think it is made for
a Disney adult. They have in some ways graduated past
those specific Disney movies, but they are not interested in
plumbing the depths of their own souls and like dealing
with difficult feelings beyond that. And so the kind of
(18:45):
clinical way with which Wes Anderson presents very carefully manicured
worlds appeals to that kind of person. It's the same
way I feel about about Disney Channel spooky stuff. It
isn't very spooky, and Tim Burton it is the aesthetic
(19:09):
of horror without being any having any of the substance
of horror, and doesn't ask you to actually reckon with
any of the real questions that good horror does. And
so I think Wes Anderson is too the keeper movie
genre as Tim Burton is to horror. He has the uh,
(19:34):
all of the pieces, but none of the feeling.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
That's insane. Yeah, wow, that I've never heard of that
concept of the Disney adult. That's insane. Yeah, And I
guess that's partially because I haven't seen those movies, and
my exposure to Disney is is just Disney World. I've
(20:00):
gone to Disney World more than I've gone to Disney
World more times than Disney Renaissance movies I've seen, and
that is only because my dad lives in Florida and
he has the military discount, which is clutch because that
ship is expensive. Also, if you go with the disabled
(20:21):
better and you do not have to wait in line.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Oh you really, that's the only way to travel. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, My experience of Disney World is totally different from
anybody else's because truly it is a two hour affair.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Well, I think with Disney there's a certain class of
Disney adult who will get the private citizen version, expensive
version of those same privileges. I'm sure you can pay
up to a certain level to get a similar experience,
but that yeah, it's it's a very carefully manicured experience
to give you spoonfuls of emotion and mild catharsis, but
(21:00):
you can't get I don't know, if you never break
yourself down, you can't build yourself back up, I guess
and Wes Anderson, yeah, it doesn't allow for that.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It is the weird thing of like I'm thinking about
like Prince B. And I'm not being critical in this,
but like the way that Prince B talks about like
Toy Story three for instance, of like of like sobbing
because man, I can't I can't remember exactly, but is
that the one where Andy like grows up beyond his
(21:29):
toys or something like that, and that kind of it
is it is like a a It's definitely a turning
point in someone's life for sure, to outgrow something, but
it is in this very kind of juvenile way communicated.
(21:53):
And I wonder what it is that people are experiencing
when that, when that takes them over and they're like
crying watching Toy Story three in a way that I
can't really connect with. But I'm watching twenty eight weeks
later and the kid's mom dies. Yeah, and I can't
(22:14):
fucking deal with it.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
That.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, that's crazy, yike.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, it's just a different level. And you know, some
people are able to experience both and sort of progress
from one of the other. And some people, you know,
they're sort of always left on the edge of the
diving board without diving into full difficult, unpleasant, uncomfortable emotions.
(22:42):
And Wes Hamerson allows you to never have to do
that if you don't want to.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
So, and I can also see people who are like
aspiring cinematographers loving Western.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Sure, absolutely, there's a yeah. I mean, because he's so distinctive.
He's very easy to imitate in the same way that
you know, the kind of Tarantino love letter to other
filmmakers of like you can do a shot for shot,
you can get the right color palette and the right
lens type, and you can do a love letter to
(23:16):
Wes Anderson and everybody like, oh, that's so clever. It's
a very like film student, like, hey, you did the thing.
I get that reference, Like, okay, but is it brave
and true? I don't know, it's a different question. Yeah, yeah,
so I want to go ahead, No, you go for it,
thinking about sort of iconic visuals. And as a follow
(23:39):
up to now that I've been to this anime convention
and I'm trying to kind of lean into that a
little bit, I finally went and watched Akira, which I
had never seen.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Oh yeah, that is fucked up.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah it's it's interesting, and that is we have talked
a lot about, like I on a kind of cornerstones
and films that uh inspire other films and other pieces
of media, and going back can be kind of a
letdown because you're you're you're able to see all of
(24:15):
the other things that it is inspired and for me,
the experience, I'm curious about your experience of watching Akira
and when So, how many times have you seen it?
When did you first see it?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So twice so one time I got into the Netflix sleeve.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
So that must have been okay cool when I was
in high school and I watched it again with friends
in graduate school.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I haven't seen it recently. Yeah, it's been like ten
years since I've seen it. I to rewatch.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah that's fascinating because I feel like this is a
movie that would I would have been obsessed with in
high school, and I imagine most of my friends in
high school. War uh I watched so many things that
owe such a debt to Akira, all of Batman beyond
Blade Runner.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Uh oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Everything.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
This was also like where with me and the Fiend
we would we would like trade movies back and forth
because I had my dad's Netflix thing and then he
was constantly going to Hollywood Video and so like I
think I traded him Aqira and he traded me like
(25:36):
Blade Runners. So we were in like this and then
when like Dark City was in the mix at that point,
we were in this like weird like like future cyberpunk
cyberpunk city moment.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Definitely, I love Dark City and we share a lot
of that film, and I prefer Dark City to Akira.
So Okura's fascinating watching it now, fascinating thinking about both
like the resurgence of a very specific kind of like
nostalgia for cyberpunk and like the cyberpunk twenty seventy seven
(26:10):
game coming out and Blade Runner sequels, and you know,
there's a little bit of a US living in a
dystopia now looking at Akira also as it's so in
conversation with other eighties comics. You know it, Judge dread,
the pervasive sort of feeling of urban sprawl, scary biker gangs.
(26:35):
You know, every comic book my dad owned had this,
you know, trash in the streets, scary leather jackets, the
kind of thing that fascists would ask you to believe
is occurring on every American city street right now, and
the kind of thing that you know, this sort of
like Reagan scared people with. It's beautifully animated. It's a
(26:59):
technical marvel. It's so smooth, the details are incredible, and
I think the story sucks. I think that it is
a bad movie. It is a beautiful, incredibly iconic, well
put together technically piece of world building and visually incredible.
(27:23):
And I learned that the manga was currently in on
happening being written. The film was Game of Throne style written,
while the manga went on for two more years. After
the film was out. The Mangaka was very involved in
the creation of the movie and had to like backwards
(27:46):
engineer an ending for the film. And it ends up
like very two thousand and one in Space Odyssey, kind
of like a big bunch of nothing. Ooh, it's trippy
and birth in creation Uni verse and big Baby, like,
I don't give a shit about this. This is stupid.
What does this doesn't say anything?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
And it does say something, say it says.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Something, and but I don't care. I don't like that.
The kids look like fucked up Guardians of the Universe
from Green Lantern. Like the Stranger Things nature of those
creepy little psychic kids I like very much, the like
in the same way that Godzilla and Godzilla Minus one
play with, you know, man's hubris and the attempt to
(28:36):
harness destructive technology and natural forces and being totally unable
to comprehend and deal with that and getting in your
own way and blowing things up as a result. The
part of the very eighties nature of it is it
centralizes these toxic machismo emotionally unavailable teenage boys and so like.
(29:02):
I absolutely would have been obsessed with it in high school,
because that's what I was. But they're.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Except for whose brain explodes.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Well, Tetsuo is I mean, he he very much Like
do you remember Charlie X from the original series of
Star Trek, A kid gets you know, massive powers and
goes nuts. You know the fact that Tetsuo starts as
kind of a jerk. He's massively insecure, he's got all
kinds of reasons for his insecurity and his you know,
(29:34):
outsized toxic masculinity, and then he gets powers and he
makes all of the wrong choices, like that is, he
can't deal and he like fashions himself a super villain
basically a cape and all. And it's just like you know,
you'd think about Chronicle or any of that kind of
story Homelander even like that is a that is a relevant,
(29:59):
important story to tell as a cautionary tale. It's not
engaging to me as because it's so flat and you know,
for the time whatever it doesn't it should exist certainly,
but I didn't care for it. His you know, his
(30:19):
relationship with Canada and their friendship and then their rivalry
is very sort of par for the course of that
kind of manga. You know, it's got that kind of
shown in boys being boys beating each other up thing
to the exclusion of much else. You know, the two
(30:41):
female characters are one of them is literally a puppet
for much of the film, being could remote controlled by
the creepy psychic kids. The other one is there just
like follow Tetsuo around and get beat up and killed.
So it's very eighties.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
It is.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
It's very myopic in its perspective, which is it is
what it is. But I don't think that has aged
in any way. It really sort of progressed past that
kind of storytelling. But the visuals are incredible, and you
(31:19):
know it's worth watching in a sort of for that
kind of historical significance, And it's worth watching for, you know,
every time you see something really cool in a sci
fi film or a cyberpunk dystopia and like, what are
the chances that that is a reference to Okura? And
(31:40):
the answer is pretty damn high.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yeah, it's cool, isn't it. That's like kind of like
when whenever a movie is a keystone in a genre,
it's never quite as good because there is like a
way that everything sort of builds upon, and better's like
the foundation, like as far as like anime movies, like
(32:06):
you wouldn't have like Paprika without Akera, and Paprika is
a better movie, although I have my problems with that movie,
but Paprika is a much better movie side by side.
But there's something about like, yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
The the the the style of it from an animation perspective,
and also the conventions of like the steampunk Polke's apocalyptic
film that.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I think in general there is a reticence from people
from like artists and creators to engage with that stuff
because it might not be as interesting as we think
it is. Do you think that these movies and books
(33:08):
would be better if they spent time in the worlds
that they created or would they be worse? What I'm
asking is and Akira there is I remember the first
time I watched it, seeing kind of on the bike
and neo Tokyo and all this stuff, and then realizing
that like most of this movie takes place in a
(33:30):
fucking hospital, like and that that they're interested in telling
an entirely different story, like we're not actually exploring this
isn't like an urban like movie. Like a lot of
this shit is. Is this like character based relationship movie.
They go into a singularity, they go into another dimension
(33:51):
type shit. The same thing with Blade Runner, where you're like, oh,
these fucking like the cities games are interesting. Really, Scott
has created this like in credible set Deck and the
whole movie's gonna be Harrison Ford like hitting the streets
and like finding like replicants and stuff like that. That's
not what the movie is at all. And the same
thing with like Neuromancer. The movie opens with the chapter
(34:13):
called Chiba City Blues, and they're in Chiba City for
like forty pages, and that book is three hundred and
forty pages long, and so you're like, is it that
like as opposed to Dark City where the city is
like a The whole thing about that movie is the
setting of that deck is like the darkness of the
(34:35):
city is part of the uncovering of the murder. It's
always kind of baffled me how they create these like
incredible settings, but like that's not really what these things
are about.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Yeah, I think that's a great point. And that's part
of what bothers me about Akira is the world is
more interesting than the story they are telling in the world.
But that world maybe wouldn't hold up to exploration because
it's it is a set of stereotypes and interesting images,
(35:10):
and because I've spent a lot of time reading comic
set in worlds like that, and they're stupid because it's
all you know, groving gangs and you know, the big
sort of broad strokes ideas about economic inequality and the
haves and the have nots, and there's something there, But also,
(35:31):
Judge Dread is a parody, Like Judge Dread spends a
lot of time in a world like that, with the
megacity and the incredible inequality and the crazy martial law,
and it's goofy, and like it's it's a parody. It's
goofy on purpose. But I don't think that that kind
of dystopia actually holds up because we live in one
(35:54):
now and it's kind of boring.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, it's kind of like the classic thing of those
movies is like why are the trash cans on fire?
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Right?
Speaker 2 (36:04):
And that's kind of like mem but the reason they're
on fire is because everyone's homeless. But the movies don't
travel among the homeless, and so you have this like.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
And they don't get into the labor disputes that like
why has trash collection stopped?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Right? Yeah? Yeah, so people have to burn their trash
and they also have to burn their trash to stay
warm because they can't afford homes because of like the
gross inequality that has overtaken these places. But that is
not Harrison Ford isn't engaging in that in any way,
(36:48):
like he has to do other stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
And Matt Damon engaged? Is it Elysium? Yeah, that's a
great one, and that's a good movie. So like you
can tell those kinds of stories in similar worlds, and
I like those kinds of stories, think they're worth telling.
But this movie is more about setting up some really
iconic images that get aped and reproduced and improved upon
(37:10):
and gives us the opportunity to dig in. But that
opportunity is rarely taken advantage of.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, the post apocalypse movies are like it started to
get bad when like Johnny Numonic came out and like
Repoman came out, like like the Bad Ones where they
were doing like now b movie post apocalypse where all
the trash cans are on fire and Emuli Westavez is
trying to like repossess your car or something.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, there's something like now very memy about that where
I don't think that genre. I'm trying to think of
like the last time that happened. They had one in
like total recall, like that remake that we watched or
that you watched and I was there, Ah, that movie
was so bad there there. Edgar Wright is remaking The
(38:09):
Running Man, Yeah, and evidently UH basing it on the
Stephen King novel as opposed to UH remaking the Arnold
Schwarzenegger movie.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Interesting. I have ever seen the Schwarzenegger movie, but I
love Jesse Ventura, so I will probably want to give
that a shot before watching that remake.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
That would be a great what is this just good?
We could resusitate that segment to do it, because I
do remember The Running Man being a very underwhelming version
of this and that also and simultaneously, Edgar Wright is
(38:57):
kind of like a genre g and has managed to
like make like Sean of the Dead for instance, that's
his most iconic movie. Kind of make a zombie movie
in a comedy, and how it work.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
I wonder about the Running like the is the Running
Man redundant or irrelevant in a world where post squid
game hunger game?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Good question?
Speaker 1 (39:28):
You know Divergent any of the Mister Beast already have
Mister be.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
But is it? But isn't? Well? I know the Divergence
series is really bad. I we tried to watch it.
We watched Divergence and then I believe we watched Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
The first one was okay, and it had like an
interesting premise that was like if we kind of spin
the Coming of Age so it's Greek instead of Roman inspired.
There was something there, but it was just a lesser
Hunger Games.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I remember. I believe Insurgent was the second one. An
Allegiant was a third one. We watched Insurgents and it
had all the markings of like this is going to
get better because Kate Winstead is in it, like they
added juice to it, the budget's bigger, the movie's terrible.
We got through it somehow and then tried to do Allegiant,
(40:30):
but towards the end of Insurgent, we were like, this
is fucking horrible. We should stop watching this. And unlike Twilight,
which we made all the way through, which is a
testament to those movies maybe being actually secretly good and
we're whole lying to each.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Other, no testament to your masochistic completionism.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Sure they were entertaining all the way through, and there's
there's no way on earth that we could have finished
the Allegiance and phil that movie was so bad. Okay,
similar thing happened with Hunger Games trailed off of that. One.
Similar thing happened with the reboots to the Hunger Games
that it came out like last year.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Oh yeah, that Snake and whatever, the terrible film.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
A Ballad of song and so yeah, Songbirds and Snakes.
Uh yeah, maybe post Apocalypse is like, yeah, you can't
make it in the Apocalypse.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
You just shouldn't make it in the Apocalypse, just too
close to it.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah. Well, when there's literally like yeah, when there's literally
military occupying cities in your country, it's like, yeah, we
live in the world that these movies are predicting. It's
not it's not like it's not an incisive critique. I mean,
that's to take it back to last week. The the
Star Trek thing is like by the twenty fourth century,
(41:53):
we'll figure it all out, poverty will have been eliminated,
like we will be like science explorers, and we are
not on horse for that.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Well, specifically DS nine posits and all of Star Trek
posits that we get there after going through World War
three and basically making ourselves halfway to oblivion. And there
is a very very sad, kind of brutally melancholy two
(42:31):
parter where again this was from nineteen ninety something. They
get transported back quote unquote to around twenty nineteen, and
it is an Acura style dystopia of economic inequality and
with what they call sanctuary cities, which basically they round
(42:54):
up unhoused people, people who don't have jobs and shove
them to concentration areas and leave them to rot. And
the Cisco has a line about there was a there's
a lot of like hand ringing like how could they
have let it get this bad from Basher who's the
idealist intellectual, and Cisco being like, I don't really have
(43:16):
a good answer for you for that, but there was
a one like this in every city major city in
the US by twenty nineteen or something, and so that
the Bell Riots became a meme that happened to da
Stein's prediction of the Bell Riots lined up basically with
George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
That's nuts. Yeah, maybe we are kind of on track.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
The on track. Yeah, we just and you know from
the original series with like the eugenics worst being in
the nineties, like they keep tweaking the timeline a little bit,
but we're still basically on track for nuking ourselves and
then on the other side of that, figuring out a
post scarcity utopia. I'd like to I'd like to skip
(44:05):
that piece if we can, and not have to do
the World War three but that was part of Roddenberry's
vision of it gets worse before it gets better.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
That's nuts. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean history, history
will will teach us that we should actually capitalize on
these like massive post war moments, because like the like
after the Civil War there was this like massive uh
just accumulation, and they fucked it all up because they
(44:37):
let like three guys.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Get it all yep, doing it again and then.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Doing it again. The same should happened after World War One.
Same should happen after World War two. World War two
arguably was like the creation of like the most uh
expansive middle class in world history. It's still like with
squander so many opportunities. There is something about like a
(45:04):
post war like new Peace era where there's so much
opportunity to like reorient and realign how we exist in
relation to each other. But often it is pushed in
like the wrong direction. So like the idea I guess
(45:27):
is by world War three we will have discovered that
we should push the wealth down and it spread it
around to everybody. Yeah, and then I guess go to
space the Earth is uninhabitable.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Yeah, well the vult could show up and you know,
and induct us into a larger community. And I think
that helps give us some perspective. Though the early novelizations
of the original series also pose it that we like
have a new respect and awareness for Earth as well,
(46:10):
to the point of like there's dolphins as part of
the crew and the Enterprise, and Uhura as a language
expert also like speaks elephant, and like we speak like
we begon. We come to an understanding of the intelligence
of other advanced mammals and yeah, and this is like
(46:31):
it's just kind of in the background of this like
other piece of this utopia that we've got like a
natural balance with what's left of Earth. In addition to
going to space, which is really nice, we don't just
abandon the planet and leave, like Earth itself is a
nice is the nicest place to live because we fixed it.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
I love that. I love that. Yeah, and so now
it's time to google get river wrecked, GoGG get wrecked.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
I will recommend a cute little French film from twenty
twenty called The Summer of eighty five. It's based on
a book from the eighties called Dance on My Grave.
It's a beautiful little romantic drama, gay coming of age.
Two French boys meet each other and have you know
(47:25):
this like coming of age drama together for six weeks
in the summer of nineteen eighty five. Really cute film, bittersweet, melancholy, sad, funny.
The kid ends up having to like write his story
to like work through his complicated emotions and drama. So
(47:50):
highly recommend it. Really cute little little film. Not much
more to say about it than that, other than it's
a it's kind of in a vein of like call
Me by Your Name and that beautiful shots of the
French seaside, and but it's it feels less obnoxious than
(48:17):
that guy's work.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
You are very recently eighties pilled. Uh.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah, for someone who really does not like the eighties,
I am, for some reason watching a lot of stuff
set in and around that time. I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, it's very unlike you, considering that you're like very
you're very like eighties hate forward.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Yes, like that is a defining aspect of the perspective
I bring to the show into my life.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
It is so true though, like if a movie is
it was made in nineteen eighty nine versus like nineteen ninety,
it is worse.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
It feels really different.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
It feels so different.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
And if it's in nineteen seventy nine versus nineteen eighty one,
it feels really different too.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, we start wars. Everything that came out in the
seventies was Yeah, even in that trilogy. The movies that
came on in the seventies are so much than the
one yep, will I will recommend in a cautious way
the movie Materialists.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Hmmm, this is great press tour with those three actors.
Lots of memeable tumbler gifts from them.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
But fantastic and Dakota is my queen and she's lovely
geez a fucking madame wabb I like someone who's in
a movie that just came out that is produced by
one of the biggest studios on earth, saying this shit
sucked and I hated doing it.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Speaking of brave and true. Good for her for just
having no filter.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
There was like an interview where she didn't know who
Peter Parker was.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Love her for that.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
So Materialist is Selene Song's second movie after Past Lives
which is a fantastic film. Okay, the issue with Materialists
is the Chris Evans heart of the film, where people
either jump on the train or jump off the train.
(50:46):
And what is so interesting what's happening right now is
something that we kind of have been talking about in
a roundabout way by praising kind of Sebastian Stan's career
choices and these these two men are oddly inverting where
Sebastian Stan is now like a key part of the
(51:06):
new mc U and Chris Evans is doing small indies
and working with UH directors other than the Russo Brothers.
He's in Ethan Cohen's next movie, Honey Don't, which is
a continuation of Driveaway Dolls UH that follows markat Margaret
Qualley's character which once if you when this podcast comes out,
(51:29):
will have just come out. And so Materialists is kind
of like Materialists Honey Don't. These are like movies where
Chris Evans is playing some somebody different than Steve Rodgers. Finally,
and I found him endearing in this movie. And it
was one of the first times like if you eliminate
(51:52):
the Steve Rogers of it all from his career.
Speaker 5 (51:55):
M H.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
There aren't a ton of standout performances that he has,
and though the ones that are kind of standouts are
like not another teen movie where you're like, oh, Chris
Evans is like a funny dude, like he could do comedy.
He's kind of goofy, but he's never had like leading
man in a non superhero context where you're like, he's
(52:19):
doing emotional work. He's doing like he's acting in a
way that is it's like very singular and very motivated
by something beyond like being heroic, Like he's super flawed
in the movie, it does suffer from the unbelievability that
(52:43):
he is a failed actor living in New York City
when he's clearly a model where he's clearly an Adonis
of a man, where you're like, he's he should have
gotten like you should have gotten off his steroid cycle
or whatever and like lost the muscle mass and like
actually kind of committed to that.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
And pulled a batista and like started acting for real.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Yeah, but I do find him endearing the whole conzin
of the movies. Dakota Johnson plays a high end matchmaker
and she puts together rich people with rich people, and
it is this like At the same time that it
is this sort of character study between her and Chris Evans,
(53:29):
it is also a character study of class and how
people relate to one another across class lines. She dates
Pedro Pascal for for the first half of the film,
and he's extremely wealthy and has all of these like
superficial insecurities that she often sees in her clients. And
(53:52):
it's sort of like, what does she want? Does she
want the security and the indulgence of being with somebody
who's prosperous, or does she want to chase or be
happy in loving somebody who is not and does not
(54:12):
aspire to be in Chris Evans. And the answer to
that is more complicated than would be presented in a
normal sort of romantic movie, where it's like, I'm I'm
gonna chase love because love is the only thing that matters.
By the end of the movie, to coda, Johnson is like,
(54:34):
love is not the only thing that matters, truly, it
is not. But it does end in a very satisfying
kind of resolution. So I would recommend that, but I
would also be like cautious to recommend it because the
Chris Evans of it all is like kind of tough.
It's kind of tough.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, that's really interesting. It's so especially Stan is busy
racking up a bunch awards and then also being in
what Marvel hopes to be like a resuscitation of whatever
their next phase is. But he might just get too
busy doing like good art house movies and also bad
art house movies, like a lot of things. And in
(55:17):
the meantime, I mean, I think Chris Evans is coming
back for Doomsday, right like they because Marvel has no
idea what they're doing, so they're just trying to bring
everybody back. I saw a fan theory that they're going
to make the ending of Endgame an in canon problem
(55:39):
that causes multiversal shenanigans, like the fact that Steve Rogers
stayed in the timeline to be with Peggy and didn't
come back is what breaks has caused incursions and multiversal
shenanigans and nonsense, which is like a very meta like, oh, actually,
the Russo's did fuck this up. We're going to canonize
that they fucked it up. It's their fault that the
(56:03):
next ten years of our movies were bad, right, sorry,
but also not sorry.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
I don't know his filmography is absolutely horrendous after.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
That, and then he went on to do more Russo
Brothers movies and they're all bad.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
It's so bad. I mean, for some reason, I'm rooting
for him, Like there are so many Chris Is. Like
if I never saw Chris Pratt in another movie, I
wouldn't I honestly wouldn't even notice kind of shit. Where
the same kind of honestly with Chris Hemsworth. I don't
give a shit about him. But there's something about Chris
(56:40):
Evans that there's a there's a kind of like leading
man role that he fulfills in American cinema that it's
very classic, and it was kind of like he was
the prince who has promised and to see him kind
(57:04):
of forward that by playing Captain America, where you look
back and think about like cinematic history, you'd be like
the guy that won the Oscar for the blah blah
blah in twenty twenty nine or whatever that was Captain
America too, Like it's just like this kind of story
that would be interesting if it happened. And this is
(57:27):
the first time in his career he shows glimpses that
he's interested in actually being an artist, and that is
exciting because he is much more intrinsically interesting than all
of his other cops, Like he has Leo DiCaprio potential,
(57:49):
but he seems to have like peace sized confidence in himself. Yeah,
which is why he's doing all this dog shit.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
Yeah, and that was part of what, you know, his
his insecurities I think made him a really compelling Captain
America and Steve Rodgers. But also it was difficult for
him to do that role. It was difficult for him
to stay in that role. He felt like he needed
to where the weight of the entire Marvel universe on
(58:20):
his shoulders. You know, was zoned out through most convention
appearances because he was too anxious. And you know that
he's very human and I feel for him. And he's
also made a bunch of bad movies that I you know,
I don't have a lot of sympathy for that.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
So yeah, I mean he's doing fine. He got paid
so much.
Speaker 1 (58:41):
Money, Like, I have no concerns about him. Yeah, he's
made so much money. He can't afford absolutely to keep
making bad movies. I just wish he would stop.
Speaker 2 (58:51):
Yeah, But yeah, Avengers doomsday if they centure him in
the timeline that he's just going to be in every
Avengers movie for the rest of time, I guess.
Speaker 1 (59:00):
And yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (59:03):
That'll be it.
Speaker 1 (59:06):
Uh, that's got nothing else going on.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
That's that's like a compelling double feature of just like romantic.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
Yeah, no, truly, it's very different takes on romance. So yes,
watch Summer of eighty five and The Materialists for two
very different perspectives on uh, love and companionship.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
And that'll do it for this episode of is just
as bad. We'll see in the next one by.
Speaker 1 (59:36):
It's just a bad bad It's like a Pirates sport.
Speaker 6 (59:43):
Your brain, Robin Nalis, don't joking open in your mind
with the probots you woken hitting hydra halen hairs and
for a time the head.
Speaker 1 (59:49):
Of Reasons for more than with the soldiers with them
for all seasons.
Speaker 6 (59:52):
Listen closely, well we care about exp for teason.
Speaker 1 (59:55):
Customic comments called ure Dean streetuition.
Speaker 6 (59:57):
To the multiversity, not the psycho teaching for balance. When
we snap it benit Jensen to your ears, does the
shoulders when we speak purple men versus of speech for
Randy Savage Randals with their mortal technique
Time.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
It's like a clown.
Speaker 3 (00:01):
No do this little page's bagging boarding batman and the
gut or like a major story tellers me some fellas
we some felons.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Isn't amazing. It's like a Pella bearver sella because this
ship is so contagious.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Mouths on the Summerson pile like you the shells while
the cycle spinning knowledge on the getty like appro beat
the babo, be the rabbit. Don't step to the squad,
we get activic and hate. It's like a stepla parts
you don't like fish talk?
Speaker 4 (00:20):
Did you hate?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's a batl with.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
The cuttle fish killers tended pools on the taping the
Greatest Spider Stars. If you cherish your life, Bucky barn
hit squad spraying leg and your pipe.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey, everybody wanting to another. This is just bad. It's
it's just bad. The best party has you never heard
of him? Your host, professor Mouse Judges always by the
sea because bologist, we're back.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Baby.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
You had your mouth open like you're gonna say something,
and you didn't do it. You let me, You left
me hanging.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Oh man, we were a well oiled machine, like we
haven't been doing this for a decad.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, usually Teddy will Usually Teddy will jump in with.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
A yeah right, waiting for the soundboard. Uh man, uh
that's true. We uh in next year, it'll be ten years. Wow,
that's more episodes than most. Star Trek.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Shout out to last week's episode. I do I have
a question for you because I'm trying to figure this out.
I'm trying to understand something. Do you like and if
you don't, do you understand Wes Anderson?
Speaker 5 (01:41):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I one of our friends would be one of the
former interrupters would be I think a better better uh
pro Anderson perspective to bring on the show Wes Anderson.
I was just thinking it Wes Anderson recently, partially because
his style is so unique. There have been like some
(02:07):
terrible ai like what if Wes Anderson directed Star Wars
and then like weird kind of pastel art. His style
is very easy to imitate. It is very distinctive. It
is very quirky to me, it is often to twee
is the best word I would have for it, which
is to say quirky and cutesy. And he's not British,
(02:36):
but he feels British to me. That kind of humor
that is based around awkwardness, long pauses, interesting colors, and
cinematography to an extent. I come down on the side
of I will take Wes Anderson in very small doses
(03:00):
like The Fantastic Mister Fox quite a lot or I've
only seen it the once though, so I don't know
if it holds up. This is the puppet stop movie
based on a role in Doll and I think Doll
is actually a really good comp for Wes Anderson because
it is also weird. I think what works is doll
stuff is a lot darker than people give it credit for.
(03:21):
You know, Tarlie and Top of Factory is, you know,
a dark story. A lot of those stories are border
on kind of macabre. So when you give Wes Anderson
a little bit of meat to work with, I think
he can pull off some really interesting stuff. When you
leave him to his own devices and he just spins
things out of his own quirky world, I find them
(03:48):
trivial and obnoxious interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Okay, so I'm on the same I think I'm on
the same length is you. But there's there was another
There was a confusion for me. So I watched The
Phoenician scheme.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Oh, I was wondering if this is what brought it up. Yeah,
saw a bunch of posters love Benicio.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
I love them too. I try to watch all his
movies to support my countrymen that we have like this
bizarre conspiracy theory going on in our household. My wife.
My wife started it and then I was like, this
doesn't make any sense, and then she told it to
my dad and my dad was like, that is weird.
But basically Benicio el Toro was and this is the conspiracy,
(04:40):
was born in San Hitdemont, which is where my family's from.
Born in the same hospital as my younger sister. My
sister who was shout out two episodes ago. Uh still
not bought the switch to.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
That's good for her for boycotting. I'm impressed.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Shout out last week's episode. She's forming a union, their union,
the girls switch union. It's so uh born in the
same hospital and everything. And then that was and we
all maybe have been Mendela effect into remembering that that
was on his Wikipedia. And my dad knows him because
(05:21):
everybody in Puerto Rico knows everybody because it's so small
and insulated that if you were born in San hedman.
You know, you at least know somebody who knows somebody,
and my dad knows this dude, which is not like
crazy to think about because they're the same exact age
and they were going to the same basketball games and
shit like that, they would have bumped into each other.
(05:46):
On his Wikipedia Annow says that he was born in Sanduce,
which is across the island, which is where he's definitely
was raised. He was he is from San Juan. Like,
if somewhere someone were an ask me where Benicio del
Toro it was from, I would say he's from Santurse.
(06:06):
He's born in San Hieman and people know him there
and know his family there. But so that's been scrubbed
off the internet. So if you google where was he born,
the AI chat bot, the Google AI chatbot will say
san Hieman. It won't source it. And then if you
go and you search anywhere, it's will only say Santurse.
(06:29):
It says it on the English Wikipedia, says on the
Spanish Wikipedia. But then I was like, okay, this is
like flat Earth to me, because there's there are some
ways in which you have made a convincing like a
set of details. However, why and who gives a fuck? Right?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Why bother? Like what does benisoltoo have against Saint Harman
where he wants to be for it to be forgot
and that he's from there or that he was born there?
I guess he ashamed of does he not want people
to look up the basketball games he went to? Like
what is it?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
I don't know, idea? So that's that's been. So we
told that my dad.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
I guess your dad has to go call him and ask.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Well, he's gonna he's gonna call people who know him
to try to figure out whether or not he was
born there. And I'm like, this is a waste of time.
My dad has a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Though, yeah, you've got the time, why not? And this
is this is the sort of thing like if I
were from a very very small town where everybody knew me,
I also might try to extinguish that fact on the
internet if I got really famous to avoid exactly that.
I thing your dad's about to.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Do the only thing that I can well, but that's
like a It wouldn't work in Puerto Rico because everybody
knows when you're there where you are, Like everybody knows
where bad Bunny is. This way as a security detail.
Everybody knows where he is and when he's in Puerto
Rico and when he gets there and shit like that.
(08:03):
Like it's just like just like a bunch of Grandma.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Texts y like small town Italy. Also, yeah, just that
same kind of culture for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So he couldn't scrub it. And there's nothing really to
be ashamed of.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
No, the only thing to be ashamed of is working
with Wes anders in this often.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Which gets me back to my point. So the what
is so curious about it is I'll give you, I'll
give you like the polar opposite filmmaker. I really like
Danny Boyle. Danny Boyle is an emotional filmmaker. There there's
a lot of emotion that's in the foreground of all
(08:48):
of his movies. And for me, there's like an emotional
immaturity in the amount of quirkiness in a Wes Anderson.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yes, still there is this like arrested development, not the show,
but the concept childishness to his films. They which is
part of the reason I think like the dark underbelly
of roll doll stuff forces Wes Anderson to like nut
up a little bit. His stuff can feel kind of
(09:20):
empty without some additional influx of emotion.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah, it was like and that's that was kind of
the game. It's a fast talking, monotone delivery. You're you're
really removing. It's almost like it's a weird comparison, but
it's almost like George Lucasy. It's like almost like everybody's
kind of like like has a Jedi sort of emotional
(09:48):
vacuity where you have all these great actors and every
Wes Anderson movie like the people are dying to work
with this guy. So like, I mean, the twelfth builled
actor in the Venetians scheme is Benedict Cumberbatch.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Like it's got an all star cast absolutely, but for
what So they can play around and like they can
get photographed in very vibrant yellow I guess you know,
I feel like when you get some cool shots and
they get to check that off their bucket list. Of
(10:25):
like being in a Wes Anderson movie, I suppose you
get to work with a very specific kind of style.
Some of the some of the dialogue, like you know,
Howard Hawks is dead, So if you want to some
kind of like snappy dialogue, that's a place to go to.
If I were an actor who had my pick of projects,
like and I was interested in working different styles. You know,
(10:49):
it might be an interesting career bucket list to do
a project like that, just to say that I've done
it and to like experience that kind of work, except
that kind of work is boring.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, I don't know if I would enjoy doing that.
They're just it was and the premise is kind of interesting.
Like Benisio Lotro plays a guy who is he's this
kind of like mysterious, wealthy billionaire dude who's he's traveling
(11:27):
around the world. He's fucking shit up. He's his scheme
is to build like a damn that has that creates energy.
That's like also a railroad or some shit like that.
And that's like the setup of the movie. And then
the gag in the movie is that somebody's always trying
(11:49):
to assassinate him. So like Michael Sarah will come out
of the cockpit of an airplane with a bunch of
dynamite and go, is this supposed to be in here?
And it's all very point, but there's no there's no
joy in the delivery of it. And so you're I'm
watching it, I'm like, man, I can't. I guess this
(12:11):
isn't for me because I can't.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Get part of what part of what makes Wes Anderson
a little bit difficult to approach is the absolute dead
pen nature of it, and like that is that's what
makes it feel like British comedy to me is the
studied intentional lack of feeling, and that is intended to
be funny, I think, but can often be alienating.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
It's it's one of those annoying things that British people
say all the time about Americans, is like Americans don't
understand British sarcasm. And there's there's probably truth to that,
but then there's also simultaneously truth to the idea that
Americans don't think British sarcasm is funny.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, And it's often like you're not being sarcastic, you're
just being kind of a.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Jerk, right, or or like it's just not funny to me.
It doesn't provoke that reaction where there's that dead pant
sarcasm and the and the and it's a wash in
irony in Wes Anderson movies that is just doesn't resonate
(13:18):
at all with me, where I'm like, yeah, I mean
maybe I'm a dumb American and I I think that like,
like emotions are interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Well yeah, I mean it's that's sort of the the
meme of like, okay, but now try to say something
brave and true, Like that's harder, and it can be
staying to put yourself out there. And anderson Is creates
very like hermetically sealed worlds that do not allow for
honest emotion in some ways, and so they can be
(13:53):
cutesy but and they're non threatening, but they're also not
going to give you any kind of like heartrending Catharsis either.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird because what we watch
movies now, Like god, I mean we cry at everything
now when you have a kid, kid, Yeah, and she
goes to and then like she just started going to daycare,
and we just we got her report from her first
(14:26):
day of daycare, where she was having fun and playing
with the kids and stuff like that, to her second
day in daycare where Monchie on their first day of daycare,
she went to daycare, we left. She didn't she didn't
cry because she didn't realize we had gone. When she
finally realized we weren't around, she cried and then eventually
(14:50):
got over it. Second day of second day of daycare,
she cries when we let her go and we leave
for a couple of minutes. By the end of the day,
she's refusing to nap because she's playing with all the kids.
And then my wife walks in and and she doesn't
(15:11):
even recognize her, and then just playing. She's just playing,
and then she's talking with the woman that runs the daycare,
and so her voice is in the space and still
an she doesn't give a fuck.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
It's gotten over that separation anxiety.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It happened too fast, and that and those kinds of
like milestones do uh choking up because you're like, oh
my god, this is like because then that's the parental
separation anxiety that you don't often hear about. Is that
now you're kind of like And it was so crazy too,
because we got so much work done in those two
(15:54):
days that she was gone. Today she's with us. Today's
she's with us. We didn't get anything done. Tomorrow she'll
be back at daycare and Friday, and it's just this, like,
you know, you can't watch anything anymore without crying. We
were watching American Ninja Warrior and they were like one
of the contestants' daughter found out she had cerebral palsy
(16:19):
and we were watching her crying, just like.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Oh Man d S nine would destroy you. Just like
having the dad Captain Cisco have any kind of interaction
with this kid that's funny, that makes a lot of sense.
And I imagine you are not crying during Wes Anderson
movies where you're going getting.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
To Well, it's an entire story about a dad who
is who is trying to rekindle a relationship with his
strange daughter, and there are all of the sorts of
hallmarks of things that would be incredibly emotional, and because
(16:58):
it's delivered in this way that's so painfully ironic, there's
nothing there. And it's like, if there was there's a
trace of any kind of emotion in this based on
what I know just intellectually and objectively happened in this story,
(17:19):
I would absolutely love this film. But he has managed
to suck away all of the potential like uncomfortability from
that story where it's like, oh, this is fucking lame,
this sucks.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
I'm gonna say something that is gonna perhaps good that
Teddy's not on the show. This week there was a
concept of the Disney adult, which is to say, folks
who are have I mean, I grew up with the
Disney Renaissance films. I love Little Mermaid and Mulan and
like those that sort of golden aim. There are adults,
(18:01):
I think who have grown up with those also, for
whom that kind of sort of bottled emotion and that
level of complexity is what they're comfortable with, and they
are not comfortable with anything more complex or more difficult
(18:22):
than that. And I think that is what Wes Anderson
movies are made for. I think it is made for
a Disney adult. They have in some ways graduated past
those specific Disney movies, but they are not interested in
plumbing the depths of their own souls and like dealing
with difficult feelings beyond that. And so the kind of
(18:45):
clinical way with which Wes Anderson presents very carefully manicured
worlds appeals to that kind of person. It's the same
way I feel about about Disney Channel spooky stuff. It
isn't very spooky, and Tim Burton it is the aesthetic
(19:09):
of horror without being any having any of the substance
of horror, and doesn't ask you to actually reckon with
any of the real questions that good horror does. And
so I think Wes Anderson is too the keeper movie
genre as Tim Burton is to horror. He has the uh,
(19:34):
all of the pieces, but none of the feeling.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
That's insane. Yeah, wow, that I've never heard of that
concept of the Disney adult. That's insane. Yeah, And I
guess that's partially because I haven't seen those movies, and
my exposure to Disney is is just Disney World. I've
(20:00):
gone to Disney World more than I've gone to Disney
World more times than Disney Renaissance movies I've seen, and
that is only because my dad lives in Florida and
he has the military discount, which is clutch because that
ship is expensive. Also, if you go with the disabled
(20:21):
better and you do not have to wait in line.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Oh you really, that's the only way to travel. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, My experience of Disney World is totally different from
anybody else's because truly it is a two hour affair.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Well, I think with Disney there's a certain class of
Disney adult who will get the private citizen version, expensive
version of those same privileges. I'm sure you can pay
up to a certain level to get a similar experience,
but that yeah, it's it's a very carefully manicured experience
to give you spoonfuls of emotion and mild catharsis, but
(21:00):
you can't get I don't know, if you never break
yourself down, you can't build yourself back up, I guess
and Wes Anderson, yeah, it doesn't allow for that.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
It is the weird thing of like I'm thinking about
like Prince B. And I'm not being critical in this,
but like the way that Prince B talks about like
Toy Story three for instance, of like of like sobbing
because man, I can't I can't remember exactly, but is
that the one where Andy like grows up beyond his
(21:29):
toys or something like that, and that kind of it
is it is like a a It's definitely a turning
point in someone's life for sure, to outgrow something, but
it is in this very kind of juvenile way communicated.
(21:53):
And I wonder what it is that people are experiencing
when that, when that takes them over and they're like
crying watching Toy Story three in a way that I
can't really connect with. But I'm watching twenty eight weeks
later and the kid's mom dies. Yeah, and I can't
(22:14):
fucking deal with it.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
That.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, that's crazy, yike.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, it's just a different level. And you know, some
people are able to experience both and sort of progress
from one of the other. And some people, you know,
they're sort of always left on the edge of the
diving board without diving into full difficult, unpleasant, uncomfortable emotions.
(22:42):
And Wes Hamerson allows you to never have to do
that if you don't want to.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
So, and I can also see people who are like
aspiring cinematographers loving Western.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Sure, absolutely, there's a yeah. I mean, because he's so distinctive.
He's very easy to imitate in the same way that
you know, the kind of Tarantino love letter to other
filmmakers of like you can do a shot for shot,
you can get the right color palette and the right
lens type, and you can do a love letter to
(23:16):
Wes Anderson and everybody like, oh, that's so clever. It's
a very like film student, like, hey, you did the thing.
I get that reference, Like, okay, but is it brave
and true? I don't know, it's a different question. Yeah, yeah,
so I want to go ahead, No, you go for it,
thinking about sort of iconic visuals. And as a follow
(23:39):
up to now that I've been to this anime convention
and I'm trying to kind of lean into that a
little bit, I finally went and watched Akira, which I
had never seen.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Oh yeah, that is fucked up.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah it's it's interesting, and that is we have talked
a lot about, like I on a kind of cornerstones
and films that uh inspire other films and other pieces
of media, and going back can be kind of a
letdown because you're you're you're able to see all of
(24:15):
the other things that it is inspired and for me,
the experience, I'm curious about your experience of watching Akira
and when So, how many times have you seen it?
When did you first see it?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So twice so one time I got into the Netflix sleeve.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
So that must have been okay cool when I was
in high school and I watched it again with friends
in graduate school.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I haven't seen it recently. Yeah, it's been like ten
years since I've seen it. I to rewatch.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah that's fascinating because I feel like this is a
movie that would I would have been obsessed with in
high school, and I imagine most of my friends in
high school. War uh I watched so many things that
owe such a debt to Akira, all of Batman beyond
Blade Runner.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Uh oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Everything.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
This was also like where with me and the Fiend
we would we would like trade movies back and forth
because I had my dad's Netflix thing and then he
was constantly going to Hollywood Video and so like I
think I traded him Aqira and he traded me like
(25:36):
Blade Runners. So we were in like this and then
when like Dark City was in the mix at that point,
we were in this like weird like like future cyberpunk
cyberpunk city moment.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Definitely, I love Dark City and we share a lot
of that film, and I prefer Dark City to Akira.
So Okura's fascinating watching it now, fascinating thinking about both
like the resurgence of a very specific kind of like
nostalgia for cyberpunk and like the cyberpunk twenty seventy seven
(26:10):
game coming out and Blade Runner sequels, and you know,
there's a little bit of a US living in a
dystopia now looking at Akira also as it's so in
conversation with other eighties comics. You know it, Judge dread,
the pervasive sort of feeling of urban sprawl, scary biker gangs.
(26:35):
You know, every comic book my dad owned had this,
you know, trash in the streets, scary leather jackets, the
kind of thing that fascists would ask you to believe
is occurring on every American city street right now, and
the kind of thing that you know, this sort of
like Reagan scared people with. It's beautifully animated. It's a
(26:59):
technical marvel. It's so smooth, the details are incredible, and
I think the story sucks. I think that it is
a bad movie. It is a beautiful, incredibly iconic, well
put together technically piece of world building and visually incredible.
(27:23):
And I learned that the manga was currently in on
happening being written. The film was Game of Throne style written,
while the manga went on for two more years. After
the film was out. The Mangaka was very involved in
the creation of the movie and had to like backwards
(27:46):
engineer an ending for the film. And it ends up
like very two thousand and one in Space Odyssey, kind
of like a big bunch of nothing. Ooh, it's trippy
and birth in creation Uni verse and big Baby, like,
I don't give a shit about this. This is stupid.
What does this doesn't say anything?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
And it does say something, say it says.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Something, and but I don't care. I don't like that.
The kids look like fucked up Guardians of the Universe
from Green Lantern. Like the Stranger Things nature of those
creepy little psychic kids I like very much, the like
in the same way that Godzilla and Godzilla Minus one
play with, you know, man's hubris and the attempt to
(28:36):
harness destructive technology and natural forces and being totally unable
to comprehend and deal with that and getting in your
own way and blowing things up as a result. The
part of the very eighties nature of it is it
centralizes these toxic machismo emotionally unavailable teenage boys and so like.
(29:02):
I absolutely would have been obsessed with it in high school,
because that's what I was. But they're.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Except for whose brain explodes.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Well, Tetsuo is I mean, he he very much Like
do you remember Charlie X from the original series of
Star Trek, A kid gets you know, massive powers and
goes nuts. You know the fact that Tetsuo starts as
kind of a jerk. He's massively insecure, he's got all
kinds of reasons for his insecurity and his you know,
(29:34):
outsized toxic masculinity, and then he gets powers and he
makes all of the wrong choices, like that is, he
can't deal and he like fashions himself a super villain
basically a cape and all. And it's just like you know,
you'd think about Chronicle or any of that kind of
story Homelander even like that is a that is a relevant,
(29:59):
important story to tell as a cautionary tale. It's not
engaging to me as because it's so flat and you know,
for the time whatever it doesn't it should exist certainly,
but I didn't care for it. His you know, his
(30:19):
relationship with Canada and their friendship and then their rivalry
is very sort of par for the course of that
kind of manga. You know, it's got that kind of
shown in boys being boys beating each other up thing
to the exclusion of much else. You know, the two
(30:41):
female characters are one of them is literally a puppet
for much of the film, being could remote controlled by
the creepy psychic kids. The other one is there just
like follow Tetsuo around and get beat up and killed.
So it's very eighties.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
It is.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
It's very myopic in its perspective, which is it is
what it is. But I don't think that has aged
in any way. It really sort of progressed past that
kind of storytelling. But the visuals are incredible, and you
(31:19):
know it's worth watching in a sort of for that
kind of historical significance, And it's worth watching for, you know,
every time you see something really cool in a sci
fi film or a cyberpunk dystopia and like, what are
the chances that that is a reference to Okura? And
(31:40):
the answer is pretty damn high.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yeah, it's cool, isn't it. That's like kind of like
when whenever a movie is a keystone in a genre,
it's never quite as good because there is like a
way that everything sort of builds upon, and better's like
the foundation, like as far as like anime movies, like
(32:06):
you wouldn't have like Paprika without Akera, and Paprika is
a better movie, although I have my problems with that movie,
but Paprika is a much better movie side by side.
But there's something about like, yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
The the the the style of it from an animation perspective,
and also the conventions of like the steampunk Polke's apocalyptic
film that.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I think in general there is a reticence from people
from like artists and creators to engage with that stuff
because it might not be as interesting as we think
it is. Do you think that these movies and books
(33:08):
would be better if they spent time in the worlds
that they created or would they be worse? What I'm
asking is and Akira there is I remember the first
time I watched it, seeing kind of on the bike
and neo Tokyo and all this stuff, and then realizing
that like most of this movie takes place in a
(33:30):
fucking hospital, like and that that they're interested in telling
an entirely different story, like we're not actually exploring this
isn't like an urban like movie. Like a lot of
this shit is. Is this like character based relationship movie.
They go into a singularity, they go into another dimension
(33:51):
type shit. The same thing with Blade Runner, where you're like, oh,
these fucking like the cities games are interesting. Really, Scott
has created this like in credible set Deck and the
whole movie's gonna be Harrison Ford like hitting the streets
and like finding like replicants and stuff like that. That's
not what the movie is at all. And the same
thing with like Neuromancer. The movie opens with the chapter
(34:13):
called Chiba City Blues, and they're in Chiba City for
like forty pages, and that book is three hundred and
forty pages long, and so you're like, is it that
like as opposed to Dark City where the city is
like a The whole thing about that movie is the
setting of that deck is like the darkness of the
(34:35):
city is part of the uncovering of the murder. It's
always kind of baffled me how they create these like
incredible settings, but like that's not really what these things
are about.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Yeah, I think that's a great point. And that's part
of what bothers me about Akira is the world is
more interesting than the story they are telling in the world.
But that world maybe wouldn't hold up to exploration because
it's it is a set of stereotypes and interesting images,
(35:10):
and because I've spent a lot of time reading comic
set in worlds like that, and they're stupid because it's
all you know, groving gangs and you know, the big
sort of broad strokes ideas about economic inequality and the
haves and the have nots, and there's something there, But also,
(35:31):
Judge Dread is a parody, Like Judge Dread spends a
lot of time in a world like that, with the
megacity and the incredible inequality and the crazy martial law,
and it's goofy, and like it's it's a parody. It's
goofy on purpose. But I don't think that that kind
of dystopia actually holds up because we live in one
(35:54):
now and it's kind of boring.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, it's kind of like the classic thing of those
movies is like why are the trash cans on fire?
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Right?
Speaker 2 (36:04):
And that's kind of like mem but the reason they're
on fire is because everyone's homeless. But the movies don't
travel among the homeless, and so you have this like.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
And they don't get into the labor disputes that like
why has trash collection stopped?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Right? Yeah? Yeah, so people have to burn their trash
and they also have to burn their trash to stay
warm because they can't afford homes because of like the
gross inequality that has overtaken these places. But that is
not Harrison Ford isn't engaging in that in any way,
(36:48):
like he has to do other stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
And Matt Damon engaged? Is it Elysium? Yeah, that's a
great one, and that's a good movie. So like you
can tell those kinds of stories in similar worlds, and
I like those kinds of stories, think they're worth telling.
But this movie is more about setting up some really
iconic images that get aped and reproduced and improved upon
(37:10):
and gives us the opportunity to dig in. But that
opportunity is rarely taken advantage of.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, the post apocalypse movies are like it started to
get bad when like Johnny Numonic came out and like
Repoman came out, like like the Bad Ones where they
were doing like now b movie post apocalypse where all
the trash cans are on fire and Emuli Westavez is
trying to like repossess your car or something.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, there's something like now very memy about that where
I don't think that genre. I'm trying to think of
like the last time that happened. They had one in
like total recall, like that remake that we watched or
that you watched and I was there, Ah, that movie
was so bad there there. Edgar Wright is remaking The
(38:09):
Running Man, Yeah, and evidently UH basing it on the
Stephen King novel as opposed to UH remaking the Arnold
Schwarzenegger movie.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Interesting. I have ever seen the Schwarzenegger movie, but I
love Jesse Ventura, so I will probably want to give
that a shot before watching that remake.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
That would be a great what is this just good?
We could resusitate that segment to do it, because I
do remember The Running Man being a very underwhelming version
of this and that also and simultaneously, Edgar Wright is
(38:57):
kind of like a genre g and has managed to
like make like Sean of the Dead for instance, that's
his most iconic movie. Kind of make a zombie movie
in a comedy, and how it work.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
I wonder about the Running like the is the Running
Man redundant or irrelevant in a world where post squid
game hunger game?
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Good question?
Speaker 1 (39:28):
You know Divergent any of the Mister Beast already have
Mister be.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
But is it? But isn't? Well? I know the Divergence
series is really bad. I we tried to watch it.
We watched Divergence and then I believe we watched Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
The first one was okay, and it had like an
interesting premise that was like if we kind of spin
the Coming of Age so it's Greek instead of Roman inspired.
There was something there, but it was just a lesser
Hunger Games.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
I remember. I believe Insurgent was the second one. An
Allegiant was a third one. We watched Insurgents and it
had all the markings of like this is going to
get better because Kate Winstead is in it, like they
added juice to it, the budget's bigger, the movie's terrible.
We got through it somehow and then tried to do Allegiant,
(40:30):
but towards the end of Insurgent, we were like, this
is fucking horrible. We should stop watching this. And unlike Twilight,
which we made all the way through, which is a
testament to those movies maybe being actually secretly good and
we're whole lying to each.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Other, no testament to your masochistic completionism.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Sure they were entertaining all the way through, and there's
there's no way on earth that we could have finished
the Allegiance and phil that movie was so bad. Okay,
similar thing happened with Hunger Games trailed off of that. One.
Similar thing happened with the reboots to the Hunger Games
that it came out like last year.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Oh yeah, that Snake and whatever, the terrible film.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
A Ballad of song and so yeah, Songbirds and Snakes.
Uh yeah, maybe post Apocalypse is like, yeah, you can't
make it in the Apocalypse.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
You just shouldn't make it in the Apocalypse, just too
close to it.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah. Well, when there's literally like yeah, when there's literally
military occupying cities in your country, it's like, yeah, we
live in the world that these movies are predicting. It's
not it's not like it's not an incisive critique. I mean,
that's to take it back to last week. The the
Star Trek thing is like by the twenty fourth century,
(41:53):
we'll figure it all out, poverty will have been eliminated,
like we will be like science explorers, and we are
not on horse for that.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Well, specifically DS nine posits and all of Star Trek
posits that we get there after going through World War
three and basically making ourselves halfway to oblivion. And there
is a very very sad, kind of brutally melancholy two
(42:31):
parter where again this was from nineteen ninety something. They
get transported back quote unquote to around twenty nineteen, and
it is an Acura style dystopia of economic inequality and
with what they call sanctuary cities, which basically they round
(42:54):
up unhoused people, people who don't have jobs and shove
them to concentration areas and leave them to rot. And
the Cisco has a line about there was a there's
a lot of like hand ringing like how could they
have let it get this bad from Basher who's the
idealist intellectual, and Cisco being like, I don't really have
(43:16):
a good answer for you for that, but there was
a one like this in every city major city in
the US by twenty nineteen or something, and so that
the Bell Riots became a meme that happened to da
Stein's prediction of the Bell Riots lined up basically with
George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
That's nuts. Yeah, maybe we are kind of on track.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
The on track. Yeah, we just and you know from
the original series with like the eugenics worst being in
the nineties, like they keep tweaking the timeline a little bit,
but we're still basically on track for nuking ourselves and
then on the other side of that, figuring out a
post scarcity utopia. I'd like to I'd like to skip
(44:05):
that piece if we can, and not have to do
the World War three but that was part of Roddenberry's
vision of it gets worse before it gets better.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
That's nuts. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean history, history
will will teach us that we should actually capitalize on
these like massive post war moments, because like the like
after the Civil War there was this like massive uh
just accumulation, and they fucked it all up because they
(44:37):
let like three guys.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Get it all yep, doing it again and then.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Doing it again. The same should happened after World War One.
Same should happen after World War two. World War two
arguably was like the creation of like the most uh
expansive middle class in world history. It's still like with
squander so many opportunities. There is something about like a
(45:04):
post war like new Peace era where there's so much
opportunity to like reorient and realign how we exist in
relation to each other. But often it is pushed in
like the wrong direction. So like the idea I guess
(45:27):
is by world War three we will have discovered that
we should push the wealth down and it spread it
around to everybody. Yeah, and then I guess go to
space the Earth is uninhabitable.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Yeah, well the vult could show up and you know,
and induct us into a larger community. And I think
that helps give us some perspective. Though the early novelizations
of the original series also pose it that we like
have a new respect and awareness for Earth as well,
(46:10):
to the point of like there's dolphins as part of
the crew and the Enterprise, and Uhura as a language
expert also like speaks elephant, and like we speak like
we begon. We come to an understanding of the intelligence
of other advanced mammals and yeah, and this is like
(46:31):
it's just kind of in the background of this like
other piece of this utopia that we've got like a
natural balance with what's left of Earth. In addition to
going to space, which is really nice, we don't just
abandon the planet and leave, like Earth itself is a
nice is the nicest place to live because we fixed it.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
I love that. I love that. Yeah, and so now
it's time to google get river wrecked, GoGG get wrecked.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
I will recommend a cute little French film from twenty
twenty called The Summer of eighty five. It's based on
a book from the eighties called Dance on My Grave.
It's a beautiful little romantic drama, gay coming of age.
Two French boys meet each other and have you know
(47:25):
this like coming of age drama together for six weeks
in the summer of nineteen eighty five. Really cute film, bittersweet, melancholy, sad, funny.
The kid ends up having to like write his story
to like work through his complicated emotions and drama. So
(47:50):
highly recommend it. Really cute little little film. Not much
more to say about it than that, other than it's
a it's kind of in a vein of like call
Me by Your Name and that beautiful shots of the
French seaside, and but it's it feels less obnoxious than
(48:17):
that guy's work.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
You are very recently eighties pilled. Uh.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah, for someone who really does not like the eighties,
I am, for some reason watching a lot of stuff
set in and around that time. I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, it's very unlike you, considering that you're like very
you're very like eighties hate forward.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Yes, like that is a defining aspect of the perspective
I bring to the show into my life.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
It is so true though, like if a movie is
it was made in nineteen eighty nine versus like nineteen ninety,
it is worse.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
It feels really different.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
It feels so different.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
And if it's in nineteen seventy nine versus nineteen eighty one,
it feels really different too.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, we start wars. Everything that came out in the
seventies was Yeah, even in that trilogy. The movies that
came on in the seventies are so much than the
one yep, will I will recommend in a cautious way
the movie Materialists.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Hmmm, this is great press tour with those three actors.
Lots of memeable tumbler gifts from them.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
But fantastic and Dakota is my queen and she's lovely
geez a fucking madame wabb I like someone who's in
a movie that just came out that is produced by
one of the biggest studios on earth, saying this shit
sucked and I hated doing it.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Speaking of brave and true. Good for her for just
having no filter.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
There was like an interview where she didn't know who
Peter Parker was.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Love her for that.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
So Materialist is Selene Song's second movie after Past Lives
which is a fantastic film. Okay, the issue with Materialists
is the Chris Evans heart of the film, where people
either jump on the train or jump off the train.
(50:46):
And what is so interesting what's happening right now is
something that we kind of have been talking about in
a roundabout way by praising kind of Sebastian Stan's career
choices and these these two men are oddly inverting where
Sebastian Stan is now like a key part of the
(51:06):
new mc U and Chris Evans is doing small indies
and working with UH directors other than the Russo Brothers.
He's in Ethan Cohen's next movie, Honey Don't, which is
a continuation of Driveaway Dolls UH that follows markat Margaret
Qualley's character which once if you when this podcast comes out,
(51:29):
will have just come out. And so Materialists is kind
of like Materialists Honey Don't. These are like movies where
Chris Evans is playing some somebody different than Steve Rodgers. Finally,
and I found him endearing in this movie. And it
was one of the first times like if you eliminate
(51:52):
the Steve Rogers of it all from his career.
Speaker 5 (51:55):
M H.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
There aren't a ton of standout performances that he has,
and though the ones that are kind of standouts are
like not another teen movie where you're like, oh, Chris
Evans is like a funny dude, like he could do comedy.
He's kind of goofy, but he's never had like leading
man in a non superhero context where you're like, he's
(52:19):
doing emotional work. He's doing like he's acting in a
way that is it's like very singular and very motivated
by something beyond like being heroic, Like he's super flawed
in the movie, it does suffer from the unbelievability that
(52:43):
he is a failed actor living in New York City
when he's clearly a model where he's clearly an Adonis
of a man, where you're like, he's he should have
gotten like you should have gotten off his steroid cycle
or whatever and like lost the muscle mass and like
actually kind of committed to that.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
And pulled a batista and like started acting for real.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Yeah, but I do find him endearing the whole conzin
of the movies. Dakota Johnson plays a high end matchmaker
and she puts together rich people with rich people, and
it is this like At the same time that it
is this sort of character study between her and Chris Evans,
(53:29):
it is also a character study of class and how
people relate to one another across class lines. She dates
Pedro Pascal for for the first half of the film,
and he's extremely wealthy and has all of these like
superficial insecurities that she often sees in her clients. And
(53:52):
it's sort of like, what does she want? Does she
want the security and the indulgence of being with somebody
who's prosperous, or does she want to chase or be
happy in loving somebody who is not and does not
(54:12):
aspire to be in Chris Evans. And the answer to
that is more complicated than would be presented in a
normal sort of romantic movie, where it's like, I'm I'm
gonna chase love because love is the only thing that matters.
By the end of the movie, to coda, Johnson is like,
(54:34):
love is not the only thing that matters, truly, it
is not. But it does end in a very satisfying
kind of resolution. So I would recommend that, but I
would also be like cautious to recommend it because the
Chris Evans of it all is like kind of tough.
It's kind of tough.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, that's really interesting. It's so especially Stan is busy
racking up a bunch awards and then also being in
what Marvel hopes to be like a resuscitation of whatever
their next phase is. But he might just get too
busy doing like good art house movies and also bad
art house movies, like a lot of things. And in
(55:17):
the meantime, I mean, I think Chris Evans is coming
back for Doomsday, right like they because Marvel has no
idea what they're doing, so they're just trying to bring
everybody back. I saw a fan theory that they're going
to make the ending of Endgame an in canon problem
(55:39):
that causes multiversal shenanigans, like the fact that Steve Rogers
stayed in the timeline to be with Peggy and didn't
come back is what breaks has caused incursions and multiversal
shenanigans and nonsense, which is like a very meta like, oh, actually,
the Russo's did fuck this up. We're going to canonize
that they fucked it up. It's their fault that the
(56:03):
next ten years of our movies were bad, right, sorry,
but also not sorry.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
I don't know his filmography is absolutely horrendous after.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
That, and then he went on to do more Russo
Brothers movies and they're all bad.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
It's so bad. I mean, for some reason, I'm rooting
for him, Like there are so many Chris Is. Like
if I never saw Chris Pratt in another movie, I
wouldn't I honestly wouldn't even notice kind of shit. Where
the same kind of honestly with Chris Hemsworth. I don't
give a shit about him. But there's something about Chris
(56:40):
Evans that there's a there's a kind of like leading
man role that he fulfills in American cinema that it's
very classic, and it was kind of like he was
the prince who has promised and to see him kind
(57:04):
of forward that by playing Captain America, where you look
back and think about like cinematic history, you'd be like
the guy that won the Oscar for the blah blah
blah in twenty twenty nine or whatever that was Captain
America too, Like it's just like this kind of story
that would be interesting if it happened. And this is
(57:27):
the first time in his career he shows glimpses that
he's interested in actually being an artist, and that is
exciting because he is much more intrinsically interesting than all
of his other cops, Like he has Leo DiCaprio potential,
(57:49):
but he seems to have like peace sized confidence in himself. Yeah,
which is why he's doing all this dog shit.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
Yeah, and that was part of what, you know, his
his insecurities I think made him a really compelling Captain
America and Steve Rodgers. But also it was difficult for
him to do that role. It was difficult for him
to stay in that role. He felt like he needed
to where the weight of the entire Marvel universe on
(58:20):
his shoulders. You know, was zoned out through most convention
appearances because he was too anxious. And you know that
he's very human and I feel for him. And he's
also made a bunch of bad movies that I you know,
I don't have a lot of sympathy for that.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
So yeah, I mean he's doing fine. He got paid
so much.
Speaker 1 (58:41):
Money, Like, I have no concerns about him. Yeah, he's
made so much money. He can't afford absolutely to keep
making bad movies. I just wish he would stop.
Speaker 2 (58:51):
Yeah, But yeah, Avengers doomsday if they centure him in
the timeline that he's just going to be in every
Avengers movie for the rest of time, I guess.
Speaker 1 (59:00):
And yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (59:03):
That'll be it.
Speaker 1 (59:06):
Uh, that's got nothing else going on.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
That's that's like a compelling double feature of just like romantic.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
Yeah, no, truly, it's very different takes on romance. So yes,
watch Summer of eighty five and The Materialists for two
very different perspectives on uh, love and companionship.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
And that'll do it for this episode of is just
as bad. We'll see in the next one by.
Speaker 1 (59:36):
It's just a bad bad It's like a Pirates sport.
Speaker 6 (59:43):
Your brain, Robin Nalis, don't joking open in your mind
with the probots you woken hitting hydra halen hairs and
for a time the head.
Speaker 1 (59:49):
Of Reasons for more than with the soldiers with them
for all seasons.
Speaker 6 (59:52):
Listen closely, well we care about exp for teason.
Speaker 1 (59:55):
Customic comments called ure Dean streetuition.
Speaker 6 (59:57):
To the multiversity, not the psycho teaching for balance. When
we snap it benit Jensen to your ears, does the
shoulders when we speak purple men versus of speech for
Randy Savage Randals with their mortal technique
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