Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Ava DuVernay, Origin, The Inventor & High and Low – John Galliano

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

This week, acclaimed director Ava DuVernay chats to Simon and Mark about ‘Origin’, her new biographical drama based on the life of the author Isabel Wilkerson who wrote the seminal book ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’, while coping with personal tragedy. Mark also offers his thoughts on the film, as well as reviewing ‘The Inventor’, a Stephen Fry-starring animation, which imagines Leonardo da Vinci, as he leaves Italy to join the French court, where he can experiment, study and invent freely; and ‘High and Low – John Galliano’, a documentary charting the triumphs and controversies of the legendary and controversial fashion designer. Plus, Mark and Simon keep us abreast of the cinematic events happening around the country. Timecodes (relevant only for the Vanguard - who are also ad-free!): 08:16 High & Low: John Galliano review 20:52 Box Office Top 10 32:52 Ava DuVernay interview 47:29 Origin review 54:55 Laughter Lift 01:03:42 The Inventor review 01:09:09 What’s On You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts To advertise on this show contact: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, hello there. Simon and Mark here to tell you about Indeed. Yes, Indeed is driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search. Match with Indeed. If you need to hire, then you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors according to Indeed data. And if you're busy watching all of this week's film recommendations and you have no time, then you can use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. But Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster. 75% of employers claim Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other online job sites. Leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day,

Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences. So the more you use Indeed, the better it gets, like us. Why not join the more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast? Listeners of this show will get a 100-pound sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Kermode Mayo.

That's Indeed.com slash Kermode Mayo terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Indeed. By the way, do you know we are... Have we started? Yeah. Okay.

We are stupid. Okay. You're stupid? I'm stupid. Okay. This is not news to me, but go on. I cannot believe how stupid we are. What did we do?

We interviewed Kate Blanchett. Yes. Which is going out next week. Next week because the new boys out next week. What did we not mention with Kate Blanchett? Lord of the Rings. We didn't mention that, that's true. What else did we not mention?

Australia, what all of it? We're two Sparks fans. Oh! Can you remember? We didn't ask her about the dancing. We didn't ask her about the Sparks video that she did. Oh! I'm, yeah, you heard absolutely right. She was at Glastonbury.

She was at Glastonbury. The whole thing. Throwing some shapes. We had a very nice conversation with Kate Blanchett. She's always a very good guest. She was good for Tars. She's good for her new movie. You'll find it a very interesting conversation, but you will not hear it.

You didn't mention Sparks. I've been hitting myself about the head with a pencil. That's really annoying. If one of us had messed up, that's fine, but both of us. And was that which, it wasn't for Edith Piaf said it better, which song was it for? It was the... It was the... Oh, it was fantastic.

Crying in a Latte. Crying in a Latte, crying in a Latte. That's right, the movie is Crying in a Latte, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Crying in a Latte, yeah. Crying in a Latte, wow. Just, anyway. So with apologies for listeners next week,

you will hear a very interesting and entertaining and informative conversation with Kate Banchett which touches on a number of issues but does not mention Sparks. Say what we could do. I could pretend to be her. We could drop a question in. Okay. That you do it now right Kate? I'll be Kate Blanchett. We're both Sparks fans here and really thought it was fantastic. Not only the last Sparks album, fantastic. I went to see Sparks at the Rawlabba Hall with Child 3. We had a great time.

How did you get involved with them because your dancing in the video for The Girl Is Crying in a Latte was amazing? Well, I just loved them. I just love Sparks. I thought they were fabulous. So they asked me and I said, yeah, I'll throw some shapes and that's how it happened. Because, you know, everyone is. Might be the worst.

That'll cut him. It was the worst idea you've ever had. Anyway, so that's an apology for next week's program, which we will. And an apology to Australia. And we'll apologize. All of it. Again, next week on the program. I'm still annoyed

Anyway, so what are we doing this week? A ton of stuff we're going to be reviewing the inventor which is a stop-motion animation We're going to be reviewing a high and low John Galliano, which is a documentary about the fashion designer and We're reviewing origin without very special guest. Just calling, is it, or does it have a longer title? Is it just Origin? I will check whether it's, I think the title of the film is just Origin, but obviously it's based on a book with a longer title.

Yes, okay. Anyway, so to fill in the gap, well, Mark. Yeah, it's just called Origin. No, no, I was right. It's writer and director is Ava DuVernay, who's been on the show before. She was on last time, I think, for Wrinkle in Time. Yes.

But anyway, Ava will be with us a little bit later on. Extra Takes is having its very own and very first Oscars-Schmoskers session on Monday. Yes, that's right. With all the hysterical reaction to whatever happens on Sunday night. Which is Christopher Nolan will win Best Director, Oppenheimer will win Best Film,

Kili and Murphy will win Best Actor, and Best Score will also go to Oppenheimer. So it'll be the same. Best Actress? Yeah, that I don't know. I think that is a harder one to... Oh, no, I don't know. Of course I don't know.

It's going to be... Emily Plant? No, it's going to be Lily Gladstone. Okay. So I'm gonna put an accum put an accumulator bet, an accumulator on that, and I'm going to go into the William Hill and I'm going to say, can I have an accumulator on these things and I'll see what happens. And then if I win an absolute fortune. Do you want me to just do you a key prediction thing, right?

Here we go for the nominees, okay? So actor in a leading role is going to be Kylian Murphy. Actor in a supporting role is going to be, yeah, it's probably, well, Robert Downey Jr. Actress in a leading role is going to be Lily Gladstone. Actress in a supporting role, I think probably Dave I enjoy Randolph animated feature film or in the Heron. Maybe not.

That's harder to call. I'm not sure about that. Cinematography, probably Oppenheimer, Hoity Van Hoity Hoity Hoity directing absolutely Christopher Nolan and yeah. And best film. Oh, yeah. Best film, definitely Oppenheimer. There you go. And best film. Oh yeah, and best film definitely Oppenheimer. There you go. If you put...

So you don't need to stay up now? No, don't stay up. But check in with Oscars. Schmoskers. Which will be with you on Monday. If you're a Vanguardist. And if you are already a Vanguardist, then as ever. We salute you.

Correspondents at ConanMario.com, Dear Hands and Zimmer Fr frames says Florian. Thank you Florian for this. On a very specific humor, as a German who had always been drawn to English humor, having amongst other things seen the German language specials the Pythons did on Telly in the Mutterland a decade ago. Really? They did specials in German language. According to Florian? I was surprised and even shocked to hear after a few years of living in London, some fellow foreigners lament that the problem with Brits was that they had no sense of humour.

These were Brazilians, Italians, Turks or Indians who, I came to realise, were often raised on US sitcoms in Saturday Night Live. Also friends or Big Bang Theory, they would topper their laughter lift LOLs. While they remain stone faced when I tried to convince them that Greenwing or indeed Father Ted were excellent. Americans have shaped universal humour for most casual consumers of comedy and their sometimes funny, sometimes meh. Input can be read everywhere. Obviously, Father Ted Irish. Unlike Mark however, I did find Stonk funny

when I saw it a long time ago. And the letter writer is German, right? Well, it's Florian. So one imagines yes, because he says as a German. As a German, yes, fine. So, and that was the point that apparently was very funny if you were German. I did find Stonk funny when I saw it a long time ago, but it can't have been just us since it was

up for an Oscar and a Golden Globe that year. It was, yes. Oscar nom's schnom's, I know, but if it had only appealed to the native market, the academy wouldn't have put it up with only four other international films. I should now test if I've become too anglified international films, I should now test if I've become too anglified and would not find Stonk, titled so after Charlie Chaplin's faux German noises in The Great Dictator, less hilarious. Anyway, Stinkety Stonk says Florian and really, for good, down with the Nazis. Correspondents at KevinAmero.com. I do think the Stonk thing is interesting. I haven't seen it since it came out. I remember watching it in an absolutely silent cinema

with just nobody in the audience finding anything about it funny at all. Was it funnier than the Stonk by Halon Pace when they did that for the... Oh, come on, do the Stonk. Yeah, the comic relief song. I've forgotten that. I did lots of press photos with them

because I was doing breakfast at Radio One at the time. With Hail and Pace. Yeah. What were they like? They were really nice guys. No, I really like them. So it was... They had a kind of end of the pier thing, didn't they?

They were like working comedians who you had the sense had been refining that act over decades. They did that whole thing about we are management. And they were like... That's right. Threatening, quite threatening guys. Yeah. Anyway, they were good fun. The Stunk. And that was for that was Comic Relief. All money for Comic Relief. Okay, let's do a movie. What is out and interesting?

High and Low, John Galliano, which is a documentary by Kevin MacDonald, who won the Best Doc Oscar for one day in September back in 1999. Other credits include Last King of Scotland, Marley, which I talked about in relation to one love, the dramatization of the Bob Marley story recently, and the 2018 Whitney Doc. So this is the true story of, it's a documentary, of course it's true story, of the rise and fall, and I suppose rise again,

of the British fashion designer, takes its title from John Galliano's ability that we hear about an interview to meld high and low culture. As one interview says you think you could do is he could take stuff from anywhere like a kind of magpie thing put them together but it's also clearly a reference to his personality and his career the highs and lows of both. We start at arguably the lowest point, which people may have seen. It is a news, it was a video that went viral of Galliano in a bar in France, winter 2010-2011, apparently drunk, telling somebody off camera that he likes Hitler and that under Hitler they wouldn't be there because they and their parents and their ancestors would have been effing, you know, it's, I mean, it's appalling.

It's absolutely appalling. End of career time. End of career time. It did indeed turn out that it was not unique. There had been other such racist outbursts in the same period. And in fact, there's one point when they addressed the incident. And he remembers there being only one incident, but there are at least two.

So he was arrested, he was charged, and he was fired as creative director at Dior because everyone just went, no, absolutely not. So at the beginning of the documentary, we hear So at the beginning of the documentary, we hear Kevin Macdonald asking a now sober and clearly sort of clean galeano how he could have said such a thing. And he says, well, I'll tell you the whole story. I'll tell you everything. And then the documentary then proceeds to tell his entire story. Here is a clip. This is from later in the documentary when he goes

back to revisit his past after having become rehabilitated in the wake of having torched his entire career. Have a look at this. We'd like to see the gametes and just in. This is the one that pushed me over the edge. Let's see how. Well, that's the last one. That's the last one. My heart's been really fast. Look at her. Look at the shading through the pockets of fire, isn't it?

When they're hung like that, it's done it. So that's him sort of going back and looking at some of the creations he made before his career went spectacularly off the rails. So the story is sold through a mix of interview and archive. It covers his childhood, which is threatened by Gibraltar. So actually when he says, you know, British, well, actually his heritage is elsewhere. His relationship with a clearly abusive father, his early realization that he was gay, his acceptance at St Martin's, the buzz created by his graduation show. There's lots of grainy

footage of the early shows, which is all kind of theatrical madness and vim and Vigor and I don't know anything about fashions or but even I'm looking at these shows thinking okay there's something going on there because it's like it's almost kind of like a like a punky new romantic aesthetic to it. We hear from a financier earlier on saying he wasn't interested in money at all he was only interested in clothes in fact he was impossible to work with because we say these clothes are unwearable and nobody can make them. And he'd say, I don't care. I don't care. Okay. This is what I'm doing. The next thing is he gets picked up by the

Grand Fashion Houses, moves into Ocature, then he's doing umpteen shows a year, as well as overseeing a range of perfumes of handbags of sunglasses of shoes and kids ranges, it's all clearly fueled by alcohol and, you know, and uppers. And there's a kind of thing about the pacing of the film. You know that's seen in good fellas when the cooking and everything's going completely mad. It's almost like watching cocaine on film. Like you imagine this is what it would feel like. And the pace of the documentary has this kind of cumulative something's going to come.

You know, the wheels are definitely going to come off. We hear from Anna Wintour, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell. They talk about his brilliance. We hear from the Dior boss, Sidney Toledano, about that at one point they went to him and said, look, we will give you six months off because you're going off the rails. He doesn't remember that happening at all. We see him doing fashion shows a day after his father's funeral, and then we see the meltdown.

And it's not just that video, but there is an account given by one of his victims who they interview of his racist outburst. And this person has clearly lived in the shadow of this outburst because they were just somebody who a celebrity decided to attack in public because of the way that the media thing works. They never really apparently got over it. They complained, well, I think rightly so, I say that they were never apologized to. Gagliano himself says he thinks that he apologized in court. He said, oh yeah, we made eye contact and I said I was sorry but it's not really. And then the latter half of the film is about the nature of apology and about how Galliano ended up being taken under the wing of a Holocaust educator. Somebody who said,

look, he says he did something wrong. He didn't know why he did it. I will educate him about the Holocaust. And there's a lot of stuff about whether the Anti-Defamation League thought that he was somebody who could be rehabilitated and whether he should be. And then it becomes about the nature of apology and the nature of putting right something that you've done wrong. There are those who think he learned his lesson, those who think he didn't quite shortly after his rehabilitation had happened. He was seen in New York wearing a costume that appeared to be either inspired by or mocking Hasidic dress. And somebody in the thing says, yeah, well, he clearly didn't learn as much as he should have learned. So he comes out of it as an incredibly frustrating and divisive character. And there's a lot in the documentary about the fashion world's very ambiguous attitude

to at what point do we sense you people? How much do we give them reign to be sort of crazy free thinking spirits and at what point do we finally go, no, sorry, you can't do this anymore. But the thing is that Kevin MacDonald is a smart enough filmmaker to put all this stuff out there in a way which is very excessive. I didn't know this story at all because I don't know anything about fashion. But without telling us how to feel about how to judge this character, go, there we are, here's the stuff, you decide how you judge. I think that there are parallels made with Alexander McQueen about whom there was a very good documentary a while ago. But the main story

is one of addiction, it's one of burnout, it's one of what happens when the high life will inevitably lead to a very low point. And it's a cautionary tale. And I think it allows you to be the judge of its subject and for you to decide whether or not you buy the changed character, whether or not you think the rehabilitation is fine, whether you think it isn't. I think the great strength think the rehabilitation is fine, whether you think it's, it isn't. I think the great strength of the documentary is that Kevin, but here's what I think. I think if John Galliano watched the documentary, and I don't know whether he has, I'm sure he has, but I think he would feel that he was adequately represented, that he wasn't treated unfairly by the film.

Does he accept that he was a racist? What he accepts is that what he said was absolutely terrible and unforgivable. But you don't say that if you're not at heart a racist. Okay, so there is a very interesting discussion about Inveno Veritas, right? Somebody says, Inveno Veritas, when you're drunk, you say the true thing. And then somebody else says, no, Inveno Disgust. He says, what actually happens is when people are drunk, they don't say the truth. What they say is the most poisonous things possible.

And there is a lot of discussion about why it should be that the anti-Semitism was part of this, where that came from, why was it that this was part of the vocabulary? And there is a, again, I think the film doesn't give you an answer. What it does is it talks about exactly the question that you wanted to hear answered.

And that's, you know, hats off to Kevin MacDonald for knowing if somebody saw this story, they would want to know exactly that. And it does not solve or answer that question. What it does is it puts all the evidence on the thing that says, you decide. And I, you know, I felt all the way through, I'm very conflicted.

I don't know what I think about this. I really genuinely don't because, well, for one thing, I've never been that drunk. So I- Yeah, but even if you were that drunk and you'd been taking up as- You don't say- No.

You don't suddenly become an anti-seemite just because you've been taking drugs. I tend to agree with you. I tend to agree with you. But the question is why he said what he, and there is the, does absolutely head on answer. Why would you say that? Why that of all things? Maybe it's because in the culture, the default insult, I mean, we live in a culture in which anti-Semitism is rife. Maybe it's just, you know, and actually one of the interviewers said, it's just stuff that he'd heard.

If he wanted to be offensive, he just, that's what he said, you know? I mean, yeah, so what I'm saying is- So cinematic release though. Yes, and I think a very, very good piece of work about a subject that I knew nothing about at all. Still to come, Mark reviews. Still to come, we're going to have a review of The Inventor, which is a stop-motion animation

featuring the voice of Stephen Fry about Leonardo da Vinci and Origin, the new film by Abadou Vonaise. Yes, who is our guest and will speak to her. Also, wise, wise words in which Mark and I, in alternating weeks, have to guess the artist and terrible song during the break. Now, this was broken last week, because Mark just came up with some words that he liked and wanted to repeat.

So that's not really... Anyway, so in the spirit of what Mark started... Okay. Here are my lyrics for this one. Okay. I won't deliver them properly. Okay. FMAM hits a click-in while the clock is tock a-ticking.

Friends and Romans, salutation, Brenda and the tabulations. Carly Simon, Noddy Holder, Rolling Stones, Centerfolder. Johnny Cash and Johnny Rivers can't stop now. I got the shivers. Mungo Jerry, Peter Peter, Paul and Paula, Mary Mary, Dr. John and Nightly Tripper, Doris Day and Jack the Ripper, Gotta Go, Gotta Sweller.

Leon Russell, Gimmi Shelter, Miracles in Smoky Places, Sly Guitars and Fender Basses, Mushroom Omelette, Bonnie Bramlett, Wilson Pick it, stomp and kick it. Okay. Can I tell you what it is or do we wait until after the break? After the break. Okay. This episode is brought to you by Mubi, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating

great cinema from around the globe. From iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover such as high and low John Galliano, which is the thought provoking new documentary from Oscar winner Kevin McDonald, charting the rise and fall of the fashion designer John Galliano. It traces Galliano's working and private life through the decades, candidly investigating his struggles with addiction and the industry pressure he faced along the way. Features conversations with Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Pelby Cruz, Charley's Thrawn, Anna Wintour and many, many more.

And it is showing in UK cinemas from March the 8th. Or you could explore the women's cinematographers film group streaming on movie in the UK from March the 8th. As women have found more equal footing in the film industries, directors, producers and screenwriters, cinematography remains a stubborn final frontier. Around International Women's Day, movie are spotlighting the artistic and technical work of women working behind the camera, including… …including films such as Annette from 2021, Benadetta from the same year and more recently, Passages, all streaming in the UK from March 8th. You can try MUBI FREE for 30 days at MUBI.com slash Kermit and Mayo. That's MUBI.com slash

Kermit and Mayo for a whole month of great cinema for free. Well, hello there. Simon and Mark here to tell you about Indeed. Yes, Indeed is driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search, match with Indeed. If you need to hire, then you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform, with over 350 million global monthly visitors according to Indeed data. And if you're busy watching all of this week's film recommendations and you have no time,

then you can use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. But Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster. 75% of employers claim Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other online job sites. Leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day, Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences. So, the more you use Indeed, the better it gets. Like us. Why not join the more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast? Listeners of this show will get a £100 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Kermode Mayo. That's indeed.com slash Kermode Mayo terms and conditions apply.

Need to hire? You need indeed. Indeed. So I bought this record. Because I thought because it was great because I like list songs. So I just thought as you started a list song, I've got another one, which I was thinking of doing, but I went with that one. OK, OK, so now I'm thinking that it probably isn't. I was thinking it's either Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire or it's R.E.M.'s End of the Worlds.

We Know It. No, no, no. It's neither of those. It's a band called Reunion who were put together. Oh, I don't know. They were just put together. They were like session musicians. And it's a song called Life is a Rock but the radio rolled me. Oh yes I have heard that. Norman Dolph wrote it, Paul de Franco did his music and it's Joey Levine who's the lead singer. Anyway it's worth it's worth looking up just because it's a it's an amazing pattern performance. He stands up and he delivers that. I mean I was doing it really slowly. He delivers it at breakneck speed. So it's worth checking out. But it's not, we've moved further and further away from the original intention.

But it's fine, you know. Because things are correct through usage. The two great, well they're not really lists, but it's a similar thing is there's Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, which of course is... Yeah. That can be any. Yeah, but that particularly. And then Pump It Up by Elvis Costello, which is clearly subterranean homesick blues rewritten

by Elvis Costello, isn't it? It's exactly the same. I've been a dinny-dim, dinny-dim, dinny-dim, you know. In two weeks, I'll do another Pata song. But anyway, I think they're fun just because they're enjoyable to hear them performed. Box Office Top 10, thanks so much to our friends at CommScore Movies. Which is where we get the chart from. Thank you, CommScore Movies. Why have we started thanking them just recently?

It says here, you've got to thank them. Number 33, Red Island. Which new entry? Yes, is interesting and it's kind of autobiographically inspired and there are some and it's kind of autobiographically inspired. And there are some lovely details in it. I don't know that it actually completely pulls together. It's trying to do that thing about comparing, you know, a wider political situation with a very personal coming of age story.

And there are good things in it. Lille Rouge is the original title. I think it's great. I don't know that it's brilliant. I think it's good. 31 is for daughters. Which I thought was's great. I don't know that it's brilliant. I think it's good. 31 is for daughters. Which I thought was really impressive. This is a kind of, I mean, it's a documentary,

but it's a documentary drama in which it's a drama about a family in which two of the daughters go missing. We discovered this is to do with radicalization and the filmmaker comes in with two actors who will then stand in for those daughters. And it's in the same way as Active Killing is about addressing an almost unspeakable subject through the act of reproducing it.

It does that. Number 11 is Lisa Frankenstein, email from Tom. Okay, cool. Dear Mary and Shelley, caught Lisa Frankenstein at a local name redacted because they don't need the advertising. Chained Cinema. As for some reason, the nearby art house.

Cinema didn't fancy it. Anyway, held off listening to the words from yourselves and I'm glad I did. What a fun evening. I'm good. What the holdovers did so successfully, the film made me feel as though I'd known it for years. Maybe due to its very deliberate visual references to genre classics throughout, destined to entertain crowds of teenagers at six-form sleepovers

and what and great to hear Galaxy 500, American alternative rock band 87 to 91. I had a ball, says Tom. Great. I'm really glad you enjoyed it. I mean, it's a Diablo Cody script and I think it's very rough around the edges and it begins in a sort of lurchy uneven fashion very much like the creation, the monster at the centre of it. But then it really finds its feet and its voice and I enjoyed it a lot. Number 10 is...

You go ahead. Sammy Sway Positek. Okay, so this is a Polish comedy, wasn't press screen. However, we do have news of a Polish film festival coming up later on in the show. So hang around for that. Perfect Days at number nine. Which, you know, I understand why people love it as much as they do. I don't think it's, I don't think it's a masterpiece, but it has a very good central performance and, you know, it's, it's vendors doing the stuff that he loves. The Zone of Interest is number eight in the UK, 16 in the States.

I think both you and I think that it's a remarkable piece of work and it's very impressive that it's done as well as it has because it is now in its fifth week in the charts and it's still in the top 10 and that is very impressive for a film which is about such a tough subject. Number seven is Manjimal Boys. So this is an Indian survival thriller film. Again, this wasn't press screen. So if anyone's seen it, write in and let us know. Wonka is still there. It's number six, number eight in the states. And so this is what we predicted last week.

We were going to have a situation in which it's a double Timothee Chalamet week. So Wonka in its 13th week at number six, and Timothee will be making another appearance higher up the charts. Madam Webb is at five. There was an interview with Dakota Johnson recently in which she said, look, it wasn't fun to be part of something like this and I won't do it again. But the thing is, when

I started doing the movie, it was one thing. And by the time it was finished, it was another thing. So I think everyone knows that that film, which is a mess, was beaten out of all shape, I assume, by the studio, which is kind of, it's just a shame, because it's not a good film. Migration is number four, number six in the US. Still, going to bring in the audience. I still like the short film very much at the beginning of it,

but it's, yeah, fifth week in the charts doing very well. It's kind of good fun. Wicked little letters is at number three. The delight of seeing Olivia Coleman and Jesse Buckley et al. Reading out the swariest letters based on a real story, which I didn't know about until I saw the film, I thought it was really crowd-pleasing.

I am still surprised that some of the reviews for this film were quite as sniffy as they were. And I think that they must have been written by people who saw the film in either an empty screening room or a screening room in which nobody was going with it. Because if you see it in a cinema with everybody laughing, it's a hoot. I think you'd really enjoy it. Bob Marley One Love is at number two and in America two. I mean, just interesting,

because we were just talking about Kevin MacDarmore and the documentary, which you made about Bob Marley. One Love is fine. As pop movies go, it's not the best, but it's certainly not the worst. It does take all the rough edges off the story, which is a bit of a shame. And number one and very number, is Dune Part Two.

Very number one. It's number one here, number one in the States. So let's have a look at this. Elizabeth Handley. Dune Part Two broke my heart, which by the way was pounding throughout. Okay, good. The film has an earthquake-king soundscape accelerating in a steady march towards the film's crescendo. The audience

in the theatre literally feels the action in the body. Veal, Nerve and Herbert are in perfect concert, prescient and timeless, depicting the warring factions of Arrakis, fighting for all of a desiccated planet. An earth- Desiccated? That's what it says. Yup. What does desiccated mean? Uh, chopped up.

Oh, right, okay. I think. Is that right? Chopped up. Oh, right. Okay. I think. Is that right? Chewed up or something, is it? Yeah. An earth plundered and inhospitable.

This is a planet governed by religious extremism and greed. Villeneuve perfectly paces a slow love story between Paul and Chani, as well as between Paul and her people, the Fremen. Both devotions take root in his very soul. Paul sacrifices love for honor, albeit dubious honor, of plunging the planet into a holy war with no end in sight. The film captures the sadness of a single heartbreak and pain of a whole world, which is very nicely written. Thank you, Elizabeth Handley. Paul Sharp in Sydney, Australia. As a self-confessed nerd

who's read the Frank Herbert saga four times, it's fair to say I'm invested in this story and thank Shia Halloud, that is clearly also the case with Denis Villeneuve. I've seen part two twice now at our very new local IMAX in Darling Harbour and both times I emerged from the cinema feeling elated and genuinely moved, even more so after the second screening. And that's because Denis has made a film that clearly cares about the emotional heart of his subject matter, a young man who has found love and a new home and family after horrifically losing everything, but who is thrust forward and away from those fundamental

ideals by destiny and prophecy and onto a path of even greater potential jeopardy and tragedy. To successfully tell a story of this nature, from a drama and a performance perspective alone, takes prodigious directorial chops, but to tell it in a believable distant future universe with all the jaw-dropping state-of-the-art spectacle that that entails is nothing short of mastery. My only one problem with the film is that I am now desperate to see the conclusion of what is angling to be the perfect sci-fi trilogy, but now I'll probably have to wait till around the end of the decade for that to happen. I would cry, but that would be a terrible waste of precious water.

And in your interview with them, they pretty much said it's happening, didn't they? Yes. Inasmuch as Hans Zimmer has already started writing the music, and didn't need it, made absolutely no attempt to shut that down. Anyway, pull signs off, take it down with the quasi-Nazi Harkinans, which is not really quasi. Chris Thorpe Tracy from the People's Republic of Brighton and Hove. I greatly enjoyed Dune Park to a mostly agreed with Mark on Villeneuve's sublime, intelligent work, pairing epic, bangy, smashy fantasy with such complex ideas around manufactured prophecy and messianic rule. But I have one,

I have another minor criticism, besides Christopher Walken glitching into proceedings from a nearby gangster flick. Unlike the first film, we never get a hint of populated public space with regular people. There's nobody there. The closest we get is inside the Fremen Siege, I think that's what that is right, is what we call it the Siege, and in the deep and in the deep south. There still the vibe is more of a rebel stronghold with everyone engaged in the struggle, rather than any sense of a place that people actually live. Unlike part one, part two has no civilians. Focusing so closely on this handful of very powerful, very high status individuals and their warriors, risks sterilizing the whole thing somewhat. It's like it's all just palace intrigue. Arrakis has great desert cities, presumably these were dreadfully

damaged with countless lives lost when the Harkinins invaded to unseat Duke Leto the night before Part 2 begins. So I do wish we'd seen just a couple of scenes or a handful of shots even where we got that sense of the major player's impact on a real population. Right. Some sense of cost to innocent people. It's a small grumble, I accept. I don't know if you still do your small hill to die on feature. Yeah. And I was nevertheless transported and very exhilarated. Villeneuve's vision has breathtaking,

gorgeous sweep, also possibly watching both films at once in a box set binge might balance things since there is slightly more of a presence of regular people in June part one. James in Exeter, unpopular view, this film is beautifully shot, spectacle, all surface. And dear bag and pipe. Okay, that's harsh. Mark's comment in his review of Dunk Part Two, where he mentions that the bagpipes weren't actually by pipes is incorrect. I know this.

Is incorrect. Yes, I know this as I teach music at a boarding school in Scotland, where our director of piping, imagine that, was directly involved in the recording of the pipes in Glasgow for Part One. He did, however, alter the sound of them using effects and processes to make them sound like space pipes,

whatever space pipe sound like. Please see the attached image of the recording session and album sleeve notes. All the best and end up with real instruments being used to record film songs. OK, well, so this is fascinating because I had assumed that it was bagpipes. And then I was told by Jack Howard, no, it's not.

And then somebody else wrote in to say, there's the credit on the suit. Somebody else wrote in to say, and here is the guitarist that played it. So what am I looking at? Is it, does it say bagpipes? Yeah, the bit in capital letters there. Oh, I beg your pardon, sorry.

So the, it credits. Yeah. But yeah, you can, yes, read it, but read it. So from the from the CD with the incredible photograph of Rebecca Ferguson on bagpipes, Pipers of the Scottish Session Orchestra, and then it's a list of them. So okay, well that is where you tell your mate that he's wrong. No, it's not just my mate, because somebody else wrote in an email last week to say, yes, and the person that played the guitar is a very famous guitarist. So I mean, I'm delighted to know that it is bagpipes,

because certainly what baffled me was, when I saw it on the thing, it sounded like bagpipes and obviously there is somebody on the thing playing, well, space pipes. Space pipes. Space pipes. Fancy that. Fancy that. There's a photograph of the session where they're actually doing the pipes.

Excellent. So thank you for that. Neil, thank you for that. I feel reassured by that because there was, it had really baffled me because when the first film came out and I said, and I love the fact that it's got bagpipes, I'd even done a thing on The Scarlet Show about saying, you know, here bagpipes, when was the last time you heard that? And then it was like, oh yeah, no, it's not, it's a guitar. Space pipes. Space pipes. Space pipes.

Correspondents at codemeo.com, back in just a second with our top guest. And then it was like, oh yeah, no, it's not, it's a guitar. Space pipes. Space pipes. Space pipes. Correspondents at codomeo.com, back in just a second with our top guest. This episode is brought to you by the good folks at NordVPN. Mark, would you say that AI has been one of the hot topics of the last 12 months or so? I would indeed say that, Simon. We've had writers and actors striking over the potential misuses of AI.

We've had many films exploring the topic, including Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 and The Creator, among others. We have. And although technological advancements bring with them exciting things, they also open the door to cybercrime. Yes. And with all these technological improvements, cybercrime will become more accessible to the average criminal and will become more frequent.

And I've said it once and I'll say it again. This is why NordVPN is so important. With one click on the NordVPN app, you are protected, meaning that you don't have to be tech savvy. Their threat protection feature shields your devices from viruses, malicious malware and phishing sites. Also, one NordVPN account can be used on up to six devices. Plus, you can get access to streaming services in other regions,

all for the price of a cup of coffee per month. To get the best available discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee, and you'll help support our podcast. The link is in the podcast episode description box. Mark, I was rewatching The Wolf of Wall Street just the other day. I thought to myself, yes.

Wouldn't it be good to make all that money without doing, you know, all that bad stuff? It certainly would Simon, without the bad stuff. Yes. Well, Mark, after the film finished, I hopped onto the internet as you do. And I found this site called Shopify. Have you heard of Shopify? I think I might have done, but tell me. Well Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run or grow your own business. Yes, I have heard of Shopify.

It's the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. That's right. Whether you're selling Danish pastries or cherry wine. Lovely. Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can successfully grow your business. Full of the industry leading tools ready to ignite your growth, Shopify gives you complete control over your business and your brand without learning new skills in design or coding. What's lovely about Shopify is that no matter how big you want to grow, Shopify will be

there to empower you with the confidence and control To take your business to the next level sign up for a one pound per month trial period at Shopify Dot Co dot UK slash Ker mode hello not may oh all lowercase go to Shopify dot Co dot UK slash Ker mode take your business to the next level today that That's Shopify.co.uk slash Kerr mode. Something wrong here. Without mayor. Our guest this week is the writer and director Ava DuVernay.

She is the woman behind the film Selma, for which she became the first black woman to be nominated in the Best Picture category at the Oscars. She's also responsible for the Oscar-nominated 13th, This Is The Life and Disney's A Wrinkle in Time. Her new film is Origin. You'll hear our conversation with Ava after this clip from the movie. There's a lot there, but longer-form stuff, questions that I don't have the answer to. Don't ask them in a piece.

I don't write questions. I write answers. Questions like what? Like why does a Latino man deputize himself to stalk a black boy to protect an all-white community? What is that? The racist bias I want you to explore. Exhibit for the readers. We call everything racism. What does it even mean anymore? It's the default. What did that mean? Brett, don't make me. Everything racism. What does it even mean anymore? It's the default Wouldn't that I saw which are you saying that that he isn't a racist? No, I'm not saying that he's not a racist

I'm questioning why is everything racist and that is a clip from origin I'm delighted to say it's writer and director Ava DuVernay is with us Ava hello, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's very nice to see you again. You spoke to us last for a wrinkle in time. The new movie is Origin Introduce us. I realize this could take up the whole of the 15 minutes, but introduce us to this extraordinary film that you've made. Oh, well, thank you. It's really the biography of a book. film that you've made. Oh, well, thank you. It's really the biography of a book.

It chronicles the life and work of the author, Isabel Wilkerson, as she writes this extraordinary book called Cast. And so you actually watch a person have an idea and pursue it with passion. And while she was pursuing this idea, she experienced great love and great loss. The writer was very kind and generous in giving me about two years of her time to share with me her process. And I poured her process as well as the book that she wrote and all the big aha ideas book into the screenplay, and that's origin. Okay, so the book, the full title is cast to the origins of our discontents.

What is it about this book that made you think you wanted to make it as a movie? Because as someone who's been received greater claim for your documentaries, that would be one way of making this film, but you obviously wanted to do something different. Tell us what stage in the reading of this book did this film appear in your mind? Yes, I read it. This book came out in the summer of 2020.

This is the first summer of the pandemic and the summer that saw the murder of George Floyd. I read the book three times, in the middle of the second time, I really felt like the information in it needed to be conveyed, but even more than that, I wanted the emotion in it to be conveyed.

And so in order to convey emotion, I don't go to documentary as the tools that I use, I go to narrative film. And so it was very clear to me that the storytelling techniques that I wanted to primarily work with were the countenance, the faces, the emotions of actors. And so we built the film that way. OK, and just to explain the central idea behind origin

and the idea that caste is the origin of our discontents. Yeah, basically, Isabel Wilkerson synthesizes decades worth of research on caste. And caste is really the foundation of all of our isms, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-stigmatism, all the is isms sit on top of this idea called caste. Caste basically says that I am better than you based on a set of random traits, traits that I cannot control. My gender, my height, where I was born, who I love, these categorizations have been used to accrue power and status to some and

to diminish the humanity of others. So that's what Cast is. And in the book, it's about Wilkerson explores this idea as an anthropological thesis. It's a pretty dense book. It's about 500 pages. And what we do in the film is actually watch her write the book. And so as she's uncovering the mysteries of history and really helping us understand caste, she's also as a writer and as a woman experiencing some very tough scenes in her own life. And so those two are braided together to make origin.

One of the things we see dramatized in the film is her explaining to others how her thesis is expanding and meeting some quite strong resistance. There's very specifically a pushback against the idea that there is a comparison between racism in America and what happened in Nazi Germany. And there are scenes in which we see her really having to struggle to explain her point of view. How raw was the nerve that she touched when addressing those subjects? Well, I think the film actually shows someone trying to convey a big idea in the midst of

opposition. I mean, in that way, we see many films, you know, where folks are trying to get to something, prove something. I mean, I think so often, you know, those kinds of films are really embodied with men as a lead character. In this film, you see this black woman pursuing an idea and at almost every turn she is told, it doesn't make sense, people disagree, it's not enough for a book, it's too convoluted, you'll never be able to do it. And yet, Isabel Wilkerson in her truth in real life and in our film powers through and gets to something quite beautiful, quite extraordinary in her book.

And Simon mentioned that obviously you've worked in both drama and documentary. There is a really moving sequence, a story of a young boy on a little league baseball team who is not allowed to go into the swimming pool with his teammates. And there is then an encounter with a grown-up teammate of somebody who witnessed this. And this is in one of the moments when the film absolutely sits on that cusp between drama and documentary. I was watching that thinking that surely that really is somebody who actually saw this in real life. No, that's an actor.

Wow. Well, that is a very good performance. Well, thank you. I think so as well. So everything in this film is scripted. Everyone's in a costume. Everyone has rehearsed. It is playing with the idea of docudrama

because I have made documentary in trying to illustrate what it is like to write. It is a process that does not look very active. And so I use all kinds of tools to kind of bring that writing process to life, one of them being the interview process. And through that interview process, I think that's where many people think those interviews are really happening. But those are in fact scripted. I think one of the most thrilling things, in fact, no, it's the most thrilling thing about your film, Ava, from my point of view,

is that it is a film about ideas. And there are other films which have ideas in them, but the idea is the central thing in your film, isn't it? Yeah, I think so, and that's exciting to me. You know, you're right. I mean, the film is not plot-driven. And in some ways, maybe not even character-driven. It's idea-driven, you write. I mean, the film is not plot-driven. And in some ways, maybe not even character-driven. It's idea-driven.

You know, it's the notion that a notion can carry us through. A wondering, a mystery that must be unfolded and pursued is enough to get you from point A to point B to actually watch the creative endeavor, the process of research and writing. As a writer, I know that that process is not as action-oriented as a John Wick or a Jason Bourne, but there is something happening.

And the life of the mind is also quite fascinating, as we all know. And so to try to convey that in film was a challenge. But yes, it's a film about a big idea. And you link, as I think we've been suggesting, events in Nazi Germany, the Indian caste system, particularly the plight of the Dalits used to be referred to as the untouchables, and the black experience in America, some of which we're familiar with. But there were some, and I've studied Nazi Germany for many years,

but I did not know until I saw your film, Ava, that the Nazis studied American race laws about superiority and inferiority. I haven't seen that in a film. I haven't read that in a book before. You and me both. I am an African American Studies major at UCLA. I have a degree in it. I'd never heard that. And when I read that in Isabel Wilkerson's book, I almost didn't believe it. I had to go back and actually find the actual file and transcripts and read it for myself. And so much of what you'll see in the film is the actual transcripts that the stenographer kept during that meeting. In this meeting, Nazi lawyers actually traveled to the United States to study American race laws to understand how far they could push protocols and practices as they were preparing

for what would become the Holocaust. It's startling and stunning information that's been right there the whole time, but not taught in the United States. And apparently not where you're from either. And, but it's about time that that be known. It speaks to the interconnectedness. It speaks to the ways in which we affect each other

and the ways in which we behave, how they echo throughout history. The film looks great as a drama. Am I right in thinking you shot it on 16 mil? I did. And what was the thinking behind that? Did you read it or did you just get that from looking at? I thought from watching the grain of the film

that it looked like 16 mil. He said from watching the grain, yes, that is an expert. I like it. Yes, I shot it on 16. It was my first time shooting on film. I picked up a camera for the first time when I was 32 years old. I was a film publicist. So when I became a filmmaker, I taught myself on digital. And so this is the first time I shot on film. It was an extraordinary, addictive experience that I must do again.

We shot in 37 days on three continents on 16. It was extraordinary. Yeah. Explain to Ava why you were so keen to get your movie out this year. You know, I've read that this is an election year where more than half of the world's population will be voting in an election or able to vote in an election. So that is over 60 important elections are happening around the world this year. Certainly in my country, there's a huge one. And so the idea that we could somehow get past the politics and the protocols and the political process

and get to what all of these elections are about, the way that we live and the way that we treat one another and what we believe in terms of how we organize society. I felt like that's been missing in the conversation. This book really helped me organize those thoughts. So it was important for me that the film start moving around the world this year and that's what we're doing. Can I ask you if you feel positive about the future of America and the slightly perilous position that it seems to be in at the moment?

That question sounds like a setup. No, I don't. I don't feel positive. I feel hopeful. I'm always hopeful. I think hope is a verb. It's active. It requires action. And I've been raised to take action,

to agitate, to resist, to raise my voice. Do I feel positive about it? No, do I feel that it must be done and we must engage in the process? Absolutely. It wasn't a setup and that was a perfect answer. Okay, thank you. On the subject of hope, Ava,

I mean Martin Luther King famously said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Do you still believe that to be true? I do, that's one of my favorite lines of his. And I really feel like in this film, and I had that, I don't think I've ever said this anywhere, but I had that line in my trailer taped to

the mirror. Because I believe that if we all treat each other just a little bit better, that that actually bends the arc of the universe a little bit more towards justice. If we regarded one another in the ways that we regard ourselves, that things can change. And I believe that films can have a beautiful impact on the world. I'm still one of those people that thinks that films matter. I remember watching Philadelphia as a young girl and it changing my mind about what I thought about people with HIV and AIDS. I remember a family member telling me that they'd watched Ornish the New Black and understood more about trans people. I know the power of a birth of a nation on a whole country

that it cemented very ugly ideas about African Americans to people who were not African American in our country. And so I know what films can do, both good and bad. It's a powerful medium. And so our hope is that this can have everyone bend a little bit towards each other, as opposed to away from one another. Ava DuVernay, thank you so much for your time today. Oh, thank you for having me. I look forward to coming back. Ava DuVernay talking about her new movie Origin. I do find that quote quite interesting that the Martin Luther King quote is often comes

out and you know it's kind of thing you hope is true but I'm not entirely sure that it is. I mean I thought that her answer when she said you know I don't feel positive about things at the moment but I feel hopeful and it is is a, it's an active thing as opposed to a passive thing. You have to actively be hopeful. So just to recap, essentially, as she said, it's the biography of a book, it's biographical drama, but Howe Isabel Wilkson, played by Angelina Ellis Taylor wrote, cast the origins of our discontents.

And the book argues that racism as experienced in America is not simply based on race as part of a wider global caste system, as you said in your questions, which kind of create hierarchies in which superiority, inferiority, exclusion, exploitation are a kind of cornerstone of a modern economy. And we meet Isabel Wilkerson in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, which is dramatised. And we hear the police phone call. And she's asked to do an investigation of that, and that then leads her off into this much, much wider field. Her inquiry has taken to Germany, where an investigation of the Holocaust, and as you said, this extraordinary revelation that apparently the Nazis did look to-

Is that in American race laws? Which is absolutely jaw-dropping and is clearly one of the cornerstones of this argument. And then the difference between subjugation and extermination, the arguments about whether or not these two things can be combined and then to India where, as you said, the Dalits is being formally untouchables, or sent untouchables as that's... Yeah, yeah. Basically, we see people being sent down sewers

to clean the sewers with their bare hands, wearing only a kind of a layer of grease to protect them from the foul germs and everything. And those scenes are just absolutely really, really horrifying and distressing. And during all of this, the author suffers losses of people close to her. And we see dramatizations of historical events. We see dramatizations of an allegiance between black and white civil right workers, infiltrating segregated America

that led to the writing of a book called Deep South. We see the dramatization of this story of this young kid, Little League baseball player who is not allowed to swim in the room. And then afterwards an interview with somebody which I, as we heard from that interview, I thought that must be real. That has to be the real person. But no, apparently completely dramatized.

Very good actor. Yeah, I know. And I'm delighted to be corrected on that. But I think the fact that I did think it seemed real, it was like, you know, because one of the things that the whole film is doing is it is, it appears to be sitting on that cusp between dramatization and documentary. So what we come down to in the end is why, why not documentary? Why, you know, why do it like this? And what I've done, I said there is because it's emotion, it's the key to emotion. When she thinks

about emotional response, she doesn't think about documentary. Although I have to say that I think there was an emotional response to 13. Absolutely. If you watch that, it's impossible not to have emotional response. Yeah, precisely. But what she's talking about is a very kind of specific emotional response to drama. And somehow, despite all the kind of the odds against it, there are times when that fusing of the personal and the political, the story of the author's own personal tragedies and the much wider historical context, the individual and the sociological, the individual case and the wider scope in which it's happening, the historical and the

contemporary, the dramatic and the documentary, there are times when that really, really comes together. There are also times when it feels like it doesn't quite, in which it's as if the subject is so big, because as you quite rightly said, this is a film about an idea. I mean, her description of it as the biography of a book and your description of it as a film about an idea, both of those are absolutely in a way what you need to know about the film. That is what it is. It is really neither drama nor doc nor history nor it is those things. It is a film about an idea and it is the biography of a book. I did think it looked terrific.

And I do think that the thing about the way in which she's used 16 mil. I was thinking to myself afterwards, am I lying when I said, because she said, have you read it? And I have read it, that it was a 16 mil, but I read it. I'm pretty certain I read it afterwards. I know it must have sounded massively arrogant to say, because it looks like it is of a piece. When you look at, I mean, I know nowadays, as we saw from the holdovers, it's perfectly possible to shoot something on digital and then make it look like it was shot, because we had all

that stuff. But yeah, that whole thing was completely digital. And of course, in the case of June, that it shot digitally and then transferred to film and then transferred back and then in some cases, transferred to print. So saying, well, it looked to me from the grain like a 16 mil film could be just some. But I am pretty certain that that's what I thought

when I was watching it. And what it does do is it unifies all those different things. So as she said, the past and the present, the contemporary and the historical, the distant and the near. No matter where you are, the film looks like a single whole. And that's really important because otherwise it becomes a completely unwieldy. And there are many moments in it in which characters actually say to the author, what? What do you know? No, these aren't the same things.

You're trying to expand something from a single and it won't all hold together. And I think that it is extraordinarily impressive that she has managed to make it as coherent as it is. I think it doesn't always work. But even when it doesn't work, it's impossible not to admire the ambition. And the, I mean, just what she was saying in that interview, just the sheer kind of rationality of thought in how am I going to do this? Well, I want it to be emotionally engaging. I want it to be coherent. I want it to be about an idea. And I want it to be about the life story

of her book. Having set myself all those challenges, which is almost like a kind of, you know, Lars von Trier, how many things can I make difficult before I make this film? I think the fact that it works as well as it does is pretty remarkable. So I'd say it is a tough watch. I mean, the sequence towards, you know,

like the final 20 minutes, so at the end it's hopeful maybe, but there's a really grim sequence of events as she ties in slavery and the caste system and concentration camps, you know, so it is definitely a tough watch. But to come out of a movie and to be right, so caste is bigger than race theory. So race fits under caste. Cast explains. People are going to go away and they're going to talk about this whether they agree

with it or not. But and that's the key thing is that it is it is a it is the starting point of a conversation. And precisely it is an argument and it is I think it's impossible not to be impressed by anyone who has the hutzpah and the gumption to make a film, which is an argument starting point, you know, which is a, you're going to come out of this and you're going to discuss all these things, including the form, including the, was that, was that a real person? Was that, I mean, as I said, I, I, I have never been so delighted to have got something wrong and be corrected. And because that is kind of what you think watching the film. So just to repeat,

Isabel Wilkerson is the author of Cast, The Origins of Our Discontents, and Ava Duvenay's film, which he wrote and directed, is Origin. So it's the ads in a minute, Mark. But first it's time once again to step with joy in our hearts into the laughter lift. So you're laughing already? I know, I said laughing more out of fear.

Okay. Laughing screaming, you know. The Good Ladies ceramicist, her indoors, had an enjoyably gruelling movie weekend. Okay. She's a big Potter fan and watched all Harry Potter films back to back with a friend. Bit silly, really, as neither of them could see the television properly. Very good. I thought that was going to be a joke about being a Potter fan.

Personally I can't stop thinking about Bruce Willis movies. Okay. I guess Old Habits. The fifth element. I don't get that. I guess Old Habits. Oh the fifth element. Old Habits. What guess Old Habits. Oh, the fifth element. Old Habits.

What? Old Habits? Die Hard? Oh, I see! Did you get that? Do you want to explain? Old Habits, Die Hard. Personally, I can't stop thinking about Bruce Willis' movies.

I guess Old Habits. Die Hard. The fifth element. Yes, okay, fine. Oscars this weekend, man. Wow! Have you heard of this movie Constipation? Go on.

Not Ele...not Ele... No, it was a draw. This year's awards, apparently, because it hasn't come out yet. Anyway, back after this, unless you're a Van Gogh Easter, in which case we have just one question. Which item of confectionery is named after the sound the chocolate makes as it falls from the machine on the conveyor belt? A is Ben Bailey Smith here, substitute taker,

and this episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Now, a lot of us spend our lives wishing we had more time. If I had an extra hour slotted into my day, I'd actually get through a question, shmashions, you know, it's, I can never quite fit the extra shows in. We all live busy lives these days, and everything seems to move at 100 miles an hour. So how do we know what to make room for?

Like, how do we know what's really important when our lives are happening so quickly? Therapy can help you find what matters to you. And if you know what matters to you, you can do more of it. Isn't that why we're really here? If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online and it's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. With over a thousand therapists in the UK already, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a wide variety of expertise and our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash Kerr mode. That's BetterHelp.com slash Kerr mode.

Let's take a journey back to 2003. Canadian teen sensation Averilavine was topping the charts and turning the music industry upside down. But what if I told you that the Averilavine we know and love might not be the same Averil? What? Did Averil die? Was she replaced by a doppelganger? I'm Joanne McNally, and I'm doing a deep dive

into a notorious internet conspiracy. Who replaced Averilavine? Listen wherever you get your podcasts. And the answer is Hershey's Kisses. What? As liquid chocolate is dropped onto conveyor belts, puckering noises that sound like kisses accompany the chocolate as it is poured into the moulds. What a terrible shame then that Hershey's chocolate is the worst chocolate in the world without any question.

Wow. It's just like tasteless. May I just point out that I have found in the break earlier on referred to that the bagpipes on the thing are on Dune are not played by a guitar they are played by a bagpipe I've just found a video of Hans Zimmer what does he know explaining to Denis Villeneuve that the guy that the sound of the bagpipe as they come out of the thing is is a guitar and Denis Villeneuve is completely, he says, what are you talking about?

And this is, you can find this, you literally just Google the thing, it's on Twitter, it's on Secrets of June, and it is Hans Zimmer on stage revealing to Denis Villeneuve for the first time that that thing that he thinks is a bagpipe is not a bagpipe, it is an electric guitar. In which case, I would suggest that there are pipes- There are pipes on it.

There are dynamic pipes, because you can see the pipe is in the photograph. But the lead line... So the pipers of the Scottish Session Orchestra are clearly there. Are clearly there and they're part of the musical landscape of DUNK Part 1. And so to be the space pipes, but also there's a guitar. There is a guitar doing the thing, which is the big country thing, but you know, making an electric guitar sound like a bagpipe. You can find this, it's a Twitter video on at secrets of June. And Denis Villeneuve is absolutely astonished when Hans Zimmer explains this to him.

Greg Shelley says, on the subject of imposter syndrome. Oh, yes. This is a great story, which I did not know, but you may well. Can I just say this came up because somebody had asked in one of the questions, Schmeschens, what is more common than you would think? And I said imposter syndrome. So on the subject of imposter syndrome,

this always puts me in mind of a Neil Gaiman anecdote. It's pretty well known, so you may well be familiar with it, but I thought it was worth sharing anyway. So I'm going to re-share it if you're familiar with it. I was not. Some years ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to a gathering of great and good people, artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realize that I didn't qualify to be there among these people who had really done things. This is Neil Gaiman talking. The great Neil Gaiman.

On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall while a musical entertainment happened and I started talking to a very nice polite elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people and said words to the effect of, I just look at all these people and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They've made amazing things. I just went where I was sent. And I said, this is Neil Gaiman, yes, but you were the first man on the moon.

I think that counts for something. And I felt a bit better, says Greg Shelley, because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, then maybe everyone did. Isn't that great? Dad, you heard that story before? No, I had heard that story before. Anyway. That's wonderful. I just went where I was sent, yes, but he was sent to the moon. Yeah. I think that's great and beautifully told and it's wonderful. Wow.

Thank you, Greg. Okay, lovely. So here's an email from, it's just signed M. Let me start by saying, I'm a big fan. I've enjoyed your witterings for decades. I've recently been exiled to the colonies, living in the Bay Area of California for a year now. It's a wonderful place to live, loads to do, lovely people, brilliant climate.

I'm the happiest I've been for years, having lived in London for 40 years before this. I have good friends here already, and I asked them recently if they knew anyone who'd been a victim of gun crime, and they all said no. I feel much safer here than I did in the last few years of living in London. So I think Mark's statement that America is a cesspit is disappointing. This is at the end of

last week's show. It's disappointing and naive. USA is a vast place with divided views in politics, particularly different states have different problems, but where I am is great. When you look at a country from the outside, you never get a true or balanced story. The UK is being portrayed right now from here as a broken country. And from the outside, you never get a true or balanced story. The UK is being portrayed right now from here as a broken country and from the outside, probably looks like a cesspit with high crime, radical violent demonstrations and a collapsing democracy. But I know it's not. It remains the best country in the world, in my humble opinion. So I'm just asking the normally measured and wise mark to just be more careful when he makes such bold statements. Thank you, says M. it's just the letter M.

Hmm, thank you for the email, and you know, which is very well expressed. Firstly, I don't think I am normally wise and measured. I am the person who started singing the international in the middle of a review of Sex and the City. I am the person who said that can, could be substantially improved by a limited nuclear strike. I am the person

who spent many weeks wondering which part of Scandinavia, Holland or whatever it is, is in. That thing at the end of that, we were talking about MAGA and we were talking about whatever particular thing it was that- It was about different ideas of truth. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And it was the Trump press secretary, whoever it was at the time, saying, we have alternative facts. Was it Kellyanne Conway? Yes, exactly.

I think it was. And I said, yeah, America really is a cesspit. It was a joke. Of course, I understand that America, which is a country that I have visited 20, 30, maybe more times than that, in which I lived for a while, four or five months. Of course, it is a country of many, I just take that as read with an offhand flippant comment, but I'm slightly wary

of starting to apologize to all the countries I've made offhand gags about. Because then you'd be apologizing every week. Yep. Anyway. Anyway. Do you know what I'm amazed at? Is that anyone stays to the very end?

Because it was literally the last thing. Even podcasts I really like, I usually bail. As they're winding up, I'm thinking, okay, that's a reason for, but clearly our crowd are of a higher calling. I will say this, however, forgive me for being exasperated and for speaking flippantly. You know, America sneezes

and the rest of the world catches a cold. If Trump does win the next presidency, I think we are in a really dangerous world state, not just in America, everywhere else. I think it will endanger the rest of the world. Correspondents at kevinandmayo.com, why don't you do a review of a movie? The Inventor, animated, playful retelling of the later life story of Leonardo da Vinci, expanding on a 2009 short by Jim Capobianco who writes and directs this. The short was called Leonardo, I think.

So the director writer was part of the screenwriting team that Oscar nominated for Rattatouille. His other credits include story artists and storyboard artists on Lion King, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Up, Inside Out. Pedigree. Pretty good. Okay. finding Nemo up inside out. Okay. Pedigree. Pretty good. Okay. So this is clearly a labour of love. It combines stop motion animation with other forms of animation starts in 1516.

Da Vinci, who's voiced by, okay, who would you get to voice Leonardo da Vinci? Leonardo da Caprio. No, not Leonardo da Caprio. Somebody who's erudite and intelligent and fascinated by ideas and finds things quite interesting. Christopher Wulkin. Stephen Fry. Oh, right.

Yes, you missed Stephen Fry. Stephen Fry, yeah. Okay. So Stephen Fry. So Leonardo is getting grief from the Pope because he cuts up catavans because he wants to know what's happening in the body and searching for his secrets, but also searching for perhaps his soul. So then when pieces reach with the French,

Leonardo was invited by King Francis to come to his royal court, where he's asked to build a castle, he doesn't wanna build a castle, what he wants to do is to build his ideal city. He also picks up his work on the body, because now he's away from the Pope, he can get back to cutting up Calvars,

and befriends Marguerite who is voiced by none other than Daisy Ridley, here's a clip. I am an anatomist to learn what makes us work. and befriend Marguerite who is voiced by none other than Daisy Ridley. I mean, it's a role written for Stephen Fry, isn't it? Except that it's just Stephen Fry. It's like, famous person does the voice. I'm back where when Ian McKellen did Eric Bjornsson. I think, but that's not a talking bear. It's Ian McKellen, you know?

So I'm thinking, don't get famous people to- And that's why you said Christopher Walken because when in June it's Ian McKellen. So I'm thinking don't get famous people to... And that's why you said Christopher Walken because when in June it's in space, it's Christopher Walken in space. Okay. Anyway, it sounds fascinating. Yeah, I thought it fitted because I mean, I thought the idea of Leonardo da Vinci being this kind of a vuncular character who shares a lot of the beliefs that I think Stephen Fry does about not just not blind belief. Anyway, so then later on he's asked to build a bunch of things that will impress King Henry VIII and Charles V, both of whom just want to wrestle. When they have wrestling matches, the wrestling turns into stop motion, just like a cotton wool ball with like an arm coming out of thing. And then he puts on a stage show about the birth of the universe and the interconnectedness of all things.

I mean, I I think it's really easy to see why Stephen Fry would want to do this because it is it is it is absolute catnip for him. Um, it's perhaps harder to know exactly who the audience is. I went to the bbfc site. Um, and they said it's a family-friendly animation engaging animated found adventure depicting Leonardo da Vinci's fight to pursue science in the face of cynicism and resistance from authority, contains scary scenes which may be too frightening for the youngest children. And then it says, threaten horror in order to study cadavers, a scientist organizes for dead bodies to be stolen from graves and blah blah blah blah. It's tempting therefore to say, well, you know, it's too grown up for kids.

But if experience has taught me anything, it's that, you know, step away from saying that things are too grown up for kids because kids have gotten, you know, an awful lot more ability to appreciate and understand things than perhaps we... You remember when Catherine called Birdie came out and that was a 12 and it was a 12 way for moderate sex references, violence, upsetting scenes. But 12 was exactly the right age, because if it had been a higher certificate, it would have knocked out its key audience. I enjoyed The Inventor. I mean, of course I did. I love stop motion. I love Stephen Frye. I find all the rationality versus religion stuff gripping. It also, it doesn't hurt that when they do the theatrical presentation,

it reminded me weirdly enough of Ken Russell's The Devils and the kind of... Of course it did. Because there's a sequence at the beginning of The Devils in which they do this great big sort of Venus on the half-shell theatrical presentation, which is quite funny. Proof again, as Guillermo del Toro said, that you know, that animation isn't a... It's a form, not a genre. I liked it and I would be very interested to hear from listeners who, who kids have seen it, if they do see it, what the youngest child who got it was.

You know, I mean, yes, it's not for very, very young children because it's this stuff in it that's, you know, probably too, too philosophical and probably a little bit too creepy because of the stuff with the catabers. But I would be interested to know what people think because I thought if I had a 10-year-old or something like that, that I thought they would really like it. I mean, I did have a 10-year-old sometimes.

And it's cinematic. Yeah, it is. Okay. All right, that's the inventor. So let's do our what's on feature. Thank you very much, Lee, for sending these in. So if there is anything that's cinema related, you know, vaguely that's happening near you, wherever it is in the world, send us a little voice note, attach it to an email,

correspondents at kermedemere.com, and we'll broadcast it like this one. Hi, I'm Inam Mark, Malena here from the Kinateka Polish Film Festival. Our fantastic lineup this year includes Agnieszka Holland's Green Border, Małgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert's Woman of, as well as documentaries and Polish classics from Krzysztof Kieślowski and Valerian Borowczyk. Kinoteca takes place across London cinemas 6 to 28th of March and tickets are on sale now. Hello Mark, hello Simon.

20 seconds, I'll give it a go. I'm a director, I'm called Sam Pope. And I want to very briefly tell you about a very special community screening of my documentary film on homelessness called Black Dog Way. It's being screened on Wednesday the 6th of March at 7 o'clock at the Trinity Rooms in Stroud Gloucestershire with a Q&A with myself and my very talented team. We'd love to see you there. It's one of many films this year being screened at the Stroud Film Festival. If you'd like to get tickets, you are more than welcome to do so and you can do that at StroudFilmFestival.org.

Have a look at all the social medias and keep in touch and maybe even come to another one of our screenings if you can't make it down, it's dead easy to do. www.blackdogwayfilm.org.uk Bonjour, ça va dans le Marc. This is Claire from Le Cine Lumière in London. Following the success of the exhibition at the Tate Britain Women in Revolt, we have the pleasure to collaborate with them in a double-bill screening of two films by Chantal Ackerman and Delphine Céric's collective Les En Soumuse. The event takes place on Sunday 10th of March at the French Institute and if you decide to stay for both films, there will be a discount applied at checkouts.

You can find out more on our website, institut-francais.org.uk. A bientôt! A bientôt! We're truly international! Melania inviting us to the Kinatech Polish Film Festival, happening across London this month. Sam struggling with the 20 seconds, I feel. He spent about 10 seconds at the beginning talking about how long he had.

Anyway, that's a community screening of his documentary about homelessness, part of the Stroud Film Festival. Sounds great. Thank you, Sam. And Claire from Cine Lumiere telling us about a special Chantal Ackerman screening on the 10th of March.

So you get a general gist of that. So whatever you're doing, anywhere around the world, let us know about it. Attach your voice note to correspondents at covidma.com. Helen, just before we go, my parents have been loyal church members for as long as I've been alive and our family humor is strongly rooted in Wittetainment references. I always tease them for watching a film and then coming home and listening to your reviews to tell them that's what this is this is what the time is listening to your reviews to tell them what they think about said film currently my mom Catherine is spending a lot of time in Chicago looking after

her brother if the cmail makes the podcast she's likely listening to it whilst in the plane flying from Heathrow to O'Hare and I was hoping you could pass along our love for her while she is far far away one of my favorite things to do with my mum is going to watch a lovely little British comedy at our local beautiful independent cinema, The Odyssey in St. Albans. They always have a member of staff introduce the film, announce any birthdays in the audience, give some fun facts about the director or promote upcoming releases. It's a lovely, lovely place to be. We always hope that the person introducing it will be the woman with the

best shoe collection ever, who's always in six inch heels when on stage. Those small moments of independent cinemas are so warm and comforting and a great way to really feel like I've arrived back home from university. Few times over the years, letters have been read out on your show that my mum either knows the writer or has even been the writer of. She always comes back from listening to the podcast to excitedly tell us about it. It's been hard not seeing her this year, especially not being here for Christmas and Christmas movie based traditions, but she's doing the absolute best for both groups of her family that she can. I hope that the in-flight movie selection on this leg

of the flight is plentiful. The holdovers was apparently a real treat at 40,000 feet. Hoping that our next lovely little British comedy, Wicked Little Letters, is on at the Odyssey on a week that she's home and the Great Shoe Collection is paraded again. Love the show, Steve, that's from Helen. Thank you very much indeed. Fantastic.

Let us know what happens. That's the end of Take One. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production. The team was Lily and Gully and Vicky and Zaki and Matty and Bethy. If the producer was Mikey, the redactor Simon Poole, Mark, what is your film of the week? I think because it's a subject I knew nothing about, but I found myself gripped. I'm going to go for high and low John Galliano. Don't forget, there are extra takes which have landed adjacent

to this very podcast where you can hear more stuff and we've got an Oscars Shraskers kind of thing for take three which will be with you on Monday morning