Kermode & Mayo’s Take - Is THE UPRISING revolutionary or revolting? + PAUL GREENGRASS

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

The Take is now on Patreon: www.patreon.com/kermodeandmayo Become a Vanguardista or an Ultra Vanguardista to get video episodes of Take Two every week, plus member-only chat rooms, polls and submissions to influence the show, behind-the-scenes photos and videos, the monthly Redactor’s Roundup newsletter, and access to a new fortnightly LIVE show - a raucous, unfiltered lunchtime special with the Good Doctors, new features, and live chat so you can heckle, vote, and have your questions read out in real time. Paul Greengrass is our special guest this week, and he’s talking to Simon about The Uprising—his new medieval thriller set at the time of the peasants revolt. It stars Andrew Garfield as ‘Ploughman’, who’s violent rebuttal to one tax collection too many provides the spark for the historic revolution, alongside Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis) and John Ball (Jamie Bell). Paul chats to Simon about the film’s political echoes today and more. Mark reviews it too, plus two more enticing titles coming up on the big and small screen. First up it’s The Social Reckoning, a companion piece to The Social Network from last week’s guest Aaron Sorkin, tackling the Facebook Files scandal. Then there’s Mike Flanagan’s series adaptation of Carrie, which translates Stephen King’s classic into the modern day. Plus we’ll get the Good Doctors’ usual rundown through the Box Office Top 10, hear a delightful smattering of your correspondence, and all groan through the laughter lift together. Thanks for listening to another top Take. You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo. 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] EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Our Christmas Movie Spectacular is back! It’s in Bristol this year on Sunday 6th December. Don’t miss it! Here’s the link for tickets: https://www.fane.co.uk/kermode-and-mayo Timecodes: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:09:05 The Social Reckoning 00:24:37 Box Office Top Ten 00:38:09 Paul Greengrass interview 00:51:10 The Uprising review 01:03:01 Laughter Lift 01:06:43 Carrie review Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now, Mark, I don't know why all these trendy podcasters need to sell such tat in their online shops these days. You'd have thought the show would have been enough for them. I mean, look at this teetow. Simon, I think that's our shop you're browsing, isn't it? Oh, so it is. Actually, those Kermen and Mayor Director's chairs are very nice, and it's all incredibly slick and easy. That's probably what confused me. That's because it's powered by Shopify. Shopify is where you go to start your business. Everything you need to start selling is included and ready from day one, which means our our top production team can concentrate on, well, whatever it is that they do,

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I don't know about you, but I get pretty excited when football season rolls around. That's why I always make a stop at Total Wine and More before kickoff. Whether it's Kraft Bourbon, cold beer, or ready to drink cocktails, it's easy to build a lineup that keeps everyone happy. And when I'm getting everything ready for game day, it's nice knowing I'm getting the lowest prices. Make Total Wine and More part of your game day tradition. Spirits are not sold in Virginia, North Carolina.

Drink responsibly. Be 21. Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can become a Vanguard Easter and get an extra episode every Thursday. Including bonus reviews. Extra viewing suggestions. Viewing recommendations at home and in cinemas. Plus your film and non-film questions answered as best we can in questions, Schmestan. You can get all that extra stuff via Apple Podcasts or head to extra takes.com for non-fruit-related devices.

There's never been a better time to become a Vanguard Easter. Free offer, now available wherever you get your podcasts. and if you're already a Vanguard Easter, we salute you. 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, here we go then. I was just giving some level. Mark, do you want to give some level for the show?

1, 2, 3. Are we recording or are we actually doing a level check? I'm sure this can get included. Yes. So people can adjust the volume on their iPods. We need to start by saying two things. We come to you on this podcast, having just debased ourselves,

at the insistence of the redactor, who decided to turn up this week. Thank you. That for social media purposes, no, for YouTube purposes, they needed a bunch of shots of us reacting to things so that they can be used as thumbnails. So we just sat here and debased ourselves by Mark,

do ranty. Simon, do fed up with Mark. Mark do shocked. Simon do laugh. and we were very bad at it. Well, I thought I thought I was quite impressive, actually. You know, I think it was completely auditions. You said I looked camp.

Yeah, a lot of your reaction. A lot of it was very kind of camp, I thought. But anyway, who knows? Will they get used? I don't know. I won't see them probably. So I'm prepared to debase myself for the purposes of this podcast, Mark. Thank you.

Actually, speaking of horrified, I was thinking of you last Thursday, Thursday Friday. So I'm watching the traitors, celebrity traitors, which I imagine you wouldn't bother yourself with. But one of the games that all the celebrities had to play was they get buried alive. Oh, heaven's sake. They get put in a coffin. So they pair up and they get put in like double coffins. No, no, no, no. And they have to lie in the ground and then Earth put on top of them. And then a various game proceeds. And I was thinking, well, I know someone who would probably not like you and it was um oh uh who's that who's mcgger's wife um jerry hall jerry hall she she bailed because she couldn't cope with it but i thought yeah i thought you would definitely have bailed

no no i just yeah absolutely absolutely not absolutely not a colleague of mine a very good colleague a very good friend and colleague of mine used to be an actor and at one point they almost got a role in a film which involves a character being buried alive. And the director said that in order to demonstrate how much they trusted the director, that they would have to allow the director to nail them into a coffin. At which point, my friend said, I don't want to do acting anymore. Yes, which seems like a very sensible reaction to that. But I guess if you're going to appear in celebrity traitors, then the chances are...

I mean, they probably said, by the way, you're going to get buried in the coffin before they started. I would have thought, just... Anyway, Bella Ramsey's in it. She's my tip. But I was going to ask you who you think might win, but you probably wouldn't know who's in. Bella Ramsey is fat, but I don't know the program. However, I did... I want to show you this.

So my friend Nigel Smith, who wrote a book called an opinionated guide to film London, went, I think he went to Japan, and he brought me back this, look. Exorcist playing cards. Oh, okay. I thought it was a cassette. No, no, exorcist playing cards. It says on the back, perform your very own exorcism and relive the horror film from the cult classic film, The Exorcist. Each card features a moment inspired by the film.

It's not a moment inspired by the film. It's like, look, there, scary Reagan face. Oh, look, there. Scary Reagan face. And there, there's another one. Scary Reagan face. That says all the same. No, they're all different scary Reagan faces.

They all look the same to me. This is a pack of playing cards with all exactly the same. Max von Seddow staring up at a statue. Max von Sedal looking at a clock that's just stopped. I mean, you know, my life feels complete now. I have Exorc's playing cards. Okay. I mean, this kind of thing I'd have bought for you,

to be honest, if I'd been in Japan. If I see anything exorcist themes in my next holiday, I will definitely buy them for you. What a time to be alive. Yeah. In fact, someone, that's a great phrase, isn't it? What a time to be alive? And there was a headline in one of the newspapers this morning. We're talking on the Wednesday, which was Trump says he'll talk to Putin about the new plague,

under which someone had said, what a time to be alive. There's three things to be inordinately depressed about. Who are the people who you don't want to be discussing the new house? break up the plague. Wow. Those two guys. Is R.F.K. Junior going to get involved in those discussions as well. I'm sure he'll give some expert advice.

Enough delightful, jaunty interplay. What's coming up on the show? We've got a packed show. We have reviews of the Social Reckoning. Obviously last week you did your brilliant interview with Aaron Sorkin. We have a review of Carrie, the new TV mini-series, directed by Mike Flanagan, and The Uprising with our very special guest. Yes, it's top filmmaker Paul Greengrass, who,

whose filmography takes in the huge born franchise, among many other things. New film The Uprising will be reviewed in the show, and you'll hear some Paul in Take 1 and also in Take 2, because we had like 25 minutes with him. So we split it into two. And when we get to Take 2, apart from more greengrass, what do we get? A Knife, which is a brilliant documentary, very disturbing, but very also weirdly uplifting documentary about Salman Rushdie.

and the man who fell to earth is back in cinemas in a 4K restoration celebrating its get this 50th birthday you can get take two ad free by heading to our patron page you just search kermitomeo patron and you'll find us there an email from martin in york and he's talking here about an interview on this show done a few years back which i have zero recollection of maybe you will do better okay Dear Peter Parker and Peter from Germany So that just shows how long Martin in York has been listening I was just catching up on some of the back catalogue of wittering this week And I found you interviewing the actor Jason Biggs

That name ring a bell to you? No He was in all the American Pie films So he's Oh, the main guy from the American Pie films Anyway apparently he was in a film called Guy X Okay No recollection. During the top 10, Jason expressed the apparently sincere question,

can there be any more superhero movies coming out of Hollywood? He was commenting on the Fantastic Four film. No, not that one, the 2005 one. So in 2005, can there be any more superhero movies coming out of Hollywood? I think enough time has passed that it's probably possible to answer his question fairly safely by now. Hello to Jason, Tigger the song, down with leaders who don't think through the consequences of firing their own film crews from Martin in York. P.S., in the same show, which is the 19th of August 2005, Mark said how much he loved Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Johnny Depp's performance in it. What does he think of it?

What does he think of it now? Well, let's assume that you did because Martin and York's just listened to it. Wow. Okay, I mean, I have no memory of that show. I have absolutely no memory of that interview or indeed the film, Guy, I'm not crazy about Tim Burton's Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. I'm not crazy about Johnny Depp's performance, but it's probably because I must have seen it a lot of times

because, you know, kids and realized that it didn't age as well as, well, of course, as the Gene Wilder. But I don't recall that at all, but it does demonstrate the kind of, you know, opinions change over time and there is no such thing as consistency. The entire episode has been wiped. from my memory banks. No recollection of Jason Biggs or Guy X. I feel like, you know, I feel like Sean Young in Blade Runner. It's like an implanted memory that I have no actual memory of. Correspondents at coenomeau.com and obviously there's

clearly no guarantee that we're going to know what you're talking about. So, you mentioned Aaron Salkin been on the show last week, very and always enjoyable to talk to him. He did look as they just come off a beach. and had a fantastic holiday. An astonishing mahogany tan. Mahogany is about right, actually. That's what he was. Anyway, his movie is the Social Reckoning.

So it's out this week. Here we go. Okay, so sequel to 2010 Social Network, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, of course, wrote the original movie. This time he's directing as well. He told you in the interview that he was his second choice after David Fincher.

After David Fincher. So Jesse Eisenberg obviously played Mark Zuckerberg in the original film. Aaron Sorkin said he didn't want to play the role again. And the reason that he gave was that he didn't want to be associated with playing somebody who he didn't particularly like anymore. So this time instead, we have Jeremy Strong, who of course was last seen playing Donald Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn. The story this time centers on the true life tale of data analyst Francis Hogan, who,

in 2021, and people will know some of this, became the whistleblower behind the Wall Street Journal's explosive Facebook files series. So Jeremy Allen White is Jeff Horowitz, who is the very non-tech savvy political journalist who is writing the Facebook story. And we meet him arriving at the newspaper offices late, and he's late because he doesn't know how to use a sat nav.

And everyone's saying he doesn't know how to use a sat nav, how is he going to write a story about tech? and the whole thing is you don't need to understand the tech. What you need to understand is the story. The film itself actually starts with a young woman screaming at cops after her car is broken down and then posting this deranged online rant that she's got. She films it on the phone and films herself shouting at these cops. And this woman is familiar to Francis, who is played by Mikey Madison,

and she is working in Facebook's Civic Integrity team. which sounds like something out of Brazil, like the Office of Information Retrieval. And their job, allegedly, is to ensure that Facebook is doing no harm, is doing good things. And then things heat up because Francis discovers that this woman that she used to know that she's now seeing this, posting this crazed rant online, has become radicalized through Facebook. And she starts to try to figure out how that happened. How did Facebook radicalize this person that she knew and turn her into this crazy person? And what she discovers is that Facebook's algorithms are basically skewed to promote anger.

And worse, that Zuckerberg and co know this, but don't care about it. So we've got this dual pronged attack. On the one hand, you've got Noritz who's been brought in to write this story. On the other hand, you've got somebody in Facebook who really believes in Facebook really thinks Facebook is a good thing, discovering something terrible about Facebook and them doing a dance around each other. She doesn't want to be a whistleblower. She doesn't want to be at the center of this story. She just wants him to investigate and find out. And the narrative jumps backwards and forwards in time, landing regularly on a scene of Zuckerberg being

prepped for a hearing at which he has to appear both human and sympathetic, neither of which he appears to be any good at. Here's a clip. The reason why you hear it from the left and the right on content moderation, they're working the refs. Facebook isn't the ref. That's the point. That's the point, Charlie. We're not the ref. We're the public square. I'm a free speech absolutist. So accept where there's

imminent harm. You can't say absolutists and accept in the same. With the new optimizations with the MSI, the fire hose of bad information you are injecting into the air supply is becoming jet powered. It's hydraulic. Harm, I promise you, is the, a minute. And as we've all seen, it is and was. So as far as the film is concerned,

the story itself, I think, is terrifying. I mean, you called me afterwards, and you said that you would come out and sent somebody a message saying, we're all left, right? Because that was the feeling that you got for it. Absolutely. There's a nice kind of like an uplift at the end,

but it's very much a kind of, okay, fine, in the context of that, it's a little uplift, but in general, my version of that in the interview was, Aaron, we're in a lot of trouble. Yes, in a lot of trouble because it's a story about a company who describes itself as being twice the size of a country who have infiltrated every aspect of modern life, have not just abnegated any form of social responsibility, but have actively embraced

a kind of burn it down mentality that's accelerating teenage depression, health misinformation, extremist conspiracy theories, public anger, mistrust in government institutions. And during the course of the drama, we see not just stuff about the pandemic, but also January 6th. It's strange, incidentally, that Trump is never mentioned by name. His name is absent. They're talking about his social media feed, but his name is sort of weirdly absent. So on the plus side, Sorkin does know how to tell us. a complex story in a dramatically engaging way. I mean, that, that device of having Zuckerberg being prepared for the hearing is very much

like, do you remember Steve Jobs? And in the film of Steve Jobs, it was the whole story played out with the preparations for the launch of each new Apple product, which was a really, really good dramatic device. And Sokkin knows how to do this stuff. He's always known how to take a political story and find a way of, you know, giving it a dramatic framework. The performances are really good. Mikey Madsen, I thought, was convincingly rattled as this person who believes in Facebook and then sees its dark heart. Jeremy Allen White is very good as the journalist who's obviously is much more all the president's men than Tech Weekly.

I think all the jokes about him not understanding tech are funny. And Jeremy Strong, you said last week that the change between the way Zuckerberg was portrayed in the social network and here is that in the social network, he's at best an anti-hero and here he is a villain. I mean, he is. Yeah, I think so. He is. He's like,

the way he's portrayed in the film, he's a Bond villain. I mean, he appears to have less and less humanity about him. I think Sorkin would say he's still an anti-hero because he thinks he's doing the right thing.

Yeah. Sorkin may say that. I disagree. I think the way he's portrayed in the film he comes across as a Bond villain with a pudding bowl haircut. And the whole film

sort of does this thing about a huge company, the corporate malice of this huge company that has worked itself into every aspect of life. But it tells it in a way that a mainstream audience, I'm saying, because what I know about tech is nothing. And then when they're talking about these algorithms and all the rest of it, it's quite nice to have a character in there who, in the case of the journalist, is going, sorry, what? You're going to have to explain what that is to me. And there's a running joke about the fact that Mikey Madsen's a character keeps having to explain everything, but it is a device, which is a way of telling the audience, i.e. me, what you mean about that. On the downside, I think it would have been a better film had it been

directed by David Fincher. It does have the same cinematographer as the social network, Jeff Cronomworth. So there are things about the way that it looks that are, you know, you can, you can, it feels of a piece with, with the original. But Sorkin, is not a great director, and he is certainly not the great director that Fincher is. And when Fincher was directing Social Network, not only did you have a really terrific script telling a terrific story, it was a really terrifically directed film that was visually arresting and actually felt like a great piece of cinema, I think this doesn't. I mean, I would say, you know, he said he's a second choice.

I think he's at best third or fourth choice as a director. I also have a bit of a problem with every now and then. I do understand that when you're telling a complicated story, you have to take dramatic licenses. There are some of those here that really feel like dramatic licenses. I mean, there's stuff about he doesn't understand how to work the sat and have. Okay, fine, I'll buy that. The device of having the character of the whistleblower arriving anonymously at the journalist's hotel room and thinking that the best way to do that is to dress as if like, in quote, a date.

It is honestly just a way of making the screen look more glamorous than it should do. And I did a little bit of research about the, I mean, I've researched. I Google that I asked Google whether or not there was any truth in that. So as far as I can tell, there isn't. As far as I can tell, that that didn't happen at all. But it does mean that when you've got scenes of two people standing in rooms talking, one of them is dressed very glamorously. And that felt a hell of a lot like a device to me.

The score by Alexander Desper, I think he's very on the nose. it sort of opens with this sort of noble horn sound. And then there's a sort of surging swells when people are doing things and testifying heroically. And I did feel like the score was telling me, and now you feel this, and now you feel that. And in fact, if you look at the original social network, I think that one of the things that really defines the difference between this and social network is that social network had a score by, Trent Reznor and Attica's Ross, and this has got a score by Alexander Dex Splat. And that is the sort of tonal difference. So I think the story is really good, and I think it's a solid piece of work.

I think the story is riveting. As a piece of filmmaking, I think it's much shakier, but the performances hold it together. Now, I know that you think more highly of it than I do, although I do think that it's a good story, and I would advise people to see it. Tell me what you think. I thought the strength of the story powered its way through any of the doubts. Yes. That this, I think we mentioned last week, the insiders for the anti-tobacco film with Russell Crowe,

1999, which is essentially the same kind of thing. Tobacco companies knew exactly what their product was doing, and they carried on regardless. that that awareness at Facebook that what they had was dangerous and making things worse, that they knew that anyway and decided to make it worse. Yes. That that, I was kind of so overwhelmed by, I mean, I kind of knew that anyway, but seeing that dramatized. Yeah. And then one of the things I really like about is one of the things that,

Sorkin does a lot, and maybe lots of writers do it. But there's a scene when Francis Hogan and Jeff Horwitz, the whistleblower and the journalist, are discussing the in, you know, the ins and outs of a very complicated case. And then suddenly Francis Hogan is distracted by the television and says, why is that guy punching the air? Yeah. Why is that guy punching the air? It's because he's just scored a touchdown. And the, the, the Erin's Hawking watches, uh, amongst, will go, hmm, I think we're coming back. We all knew that that was going to come back to that. So anyway,

so I think it was just the appallingness, if that's a word, of the story, just blew, I understand the reservations that you're making and I'm sure you're right. I was just thinking, oh my goodness me, you know, it's very much a film of 2026, which in combination with the other movies

that we're going to be talking, because they all have this kind of crossover, I think, made me think we are in a lot of trouble, you know, and the social reckoning is one of the pieces of evidence for the prosecution. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're both on the same page. The story itself is so strong that any reservations one may have about the filmmaking

sort of become secondary. I think the difference is, in the case of the social network, the story was very strong and the filmmaking was very strong. In the case of this, the story is very strong and the filmmaking feels a little bit clunky to me. I didn't think the opening sequence, and we talked about this on the last week in the interview, was very, was very well, I thought, okay. I'm thinking, why are we in a layby? Why are there cops approaching this woman who's on her phone? And then it all, you know, and then it all does become clear. And Aaron Sorkin explained why it was there. But I thought that was a nice way to start. Anyway, but, but yes, maybe it's not going to win best picture.

But it, for leaving an impression on you as you walk out of the theatre to discuss, I think, It is 10 out of 10. I definitely think you come out of it, thinking, I don't do Facebook anyway. I've never really understood it. I think you definitely come out of it and think I should be deleting apps rather than adding them. Yes. Well, at the risk of kind of, we're going to leak from one TV show, one movie to another. Andrew Garfield, who is the star of the uprising, which we'll get to, came on my greatest hit show.

and the interview's gone out now. And he has said it, as he has said elsewhere, that after being the guy who co-founded Facebook in the social network, because he's in that one, and now playing Sam Altman in a new film about artificial intelligence called artificial, he deleted Facebook when he'd done the first film,

and he's not using chat, GBT, as he's done the second one. And I think the closer you get to these things, the more you kind of are repelled by them. Yeah, yeah. And yet we keep on using them because this is the thing that we've created. You know, this is the drug, the crack cocaine, which is acceptable.

Is that enough? Okay. Yes, like you said, we are effed. So still to come, though, before the end of the world, before we get to, I think my P-Doom number has increased in the last week. Just explain for anyone what that means.

This is another ridiculous Californian, tech brogue shorthand for how likely is it that we're all doomed and it's called the P-Doom, the percentage of doom or some permanent, anyway, something like that. And if you're like 10%,

then that's quite low, but there are some people have a P-Doom number of 50%, you know, and after seeing all these moves, the accumulation, makes your P-Doom number surge. Anyway, box office top 10 is on the way. The Laughter Lift, wow, that's going to be useful, I think,

today. A little bit of Greengrass, of course, the uprising, Carrie and Paul Greengrass is explaining more about the uprising. A reminder that there are like one or two tickets left for our Christmas special at the Bristol Beacon December 6th. So if you like a chance to experience our 90s Christmas death match, then head to the address on the show notes. And we'll be at the Bristol Beacon, which is just off the ring road. It's going to be Gertlush, which I imagine is Bristoleon. It makes perfect sense, but not sent. Said by someone in London. Anyway, more in a sec.

Hello, Mark Kermode. Hello, Simon Mayo. Quick question, what's your autumn signature dish? Why are you asking? Because I suspect the answer is a takeaway. That is deeply unfair. But is it? Sometimes it's delivery.

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They're dishwasher safe and easy to clean. Plus, every hex-clad product comes with a lifetime warranty, so they could genuinely be the last pans you'll ever buy. Upgrade to Hexclad and make everyday cooking easier. For a limited time, listeners get 15% off with our exclusive link at Hexclad.com. That's H-E-X-C-L-A-D-Hexclad.com.com.uk-F-W-S-T-L-A-F-T-E-E-EX-C-L-A-F-E-O-T-E. Offer excludes Bundles and other items already on sale. Support the show and let them know we sent you.

Hey, Mark Kermode. Fancy a fun, quick-fire quiz. I thought you'd never ask. Great. How do you protect yourself from spoilers? Well, you never watch the end of the film. Well, a bit impractical, but fine. How do you protect yourself from getting wound up by noisy cinema goers? There's no need. I'm a very tolerant man, as you know. How do you protect yourself from getting bored of the exorcist?

It's impossible. Anyway, shall we start this fun quiz? What's more fun than being well protected? Okay, is that part of the quiz? I'm doing the questions, thank you. How do you protect yourself from online scams? Ah, finally, a sensible question. NordVPN's next-gen antivirus. Block, scams and fishing before they reach you.

Fake text, dodgy links. your account is locked emails, same app as the VPN, one tap, the biggest protection in the game. Correct, upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app. Head to nordvpn.com slash take to get an exclusive NordVPN deal, plus four months extra risk-free. Okay, box office top 10 is like this at number 10 pressure. It's exciting weather. And as you pointed out many times, the untold story, which has. as many times been told.

But it's told well again this time, with some liberties, but I enjoyed it very much. Yeah. And if Andrew Scott's in it, then it's going to be well worth the entrance fee. Number nine, practical magic two. Well, as we know, I didn't like it, but many of our listeners did.

This is its fourth week in the top ten. It's probably going to be gone next week. But that's, you know, it's done solidly. I didn't like the film, but many of our listeners had a good time, apparently fuelled by Lady Petrol, according to. And there was pointed out that that was a term from Bridget Jones. You and I didn't recognise it when it was first brought up.

That's number eight in America. Number eight here is Drisham the conclusion. So not press screened. This is an Indian Hindi language crime thriller. It is the sequel to Drisham 2. And unlike its predecessors, features an original story, which is not narratively connected to the other ones. Anyway, if anyone's seen it, let us know.

Please send it to review. Honestly, I would love. to be reviewing these films, but they are not press screened. And that is why we don't It is astonishing. I know we've mentioned this a number of times over the decades, but it hasn't got any better, it seems to be. It's got worse. You've often said, you know, these Hindi language films and it wasn't press screen. Well, show them. Show them. They're doing well. They're all, they're in the 10. We'd like to know about them. The main issue is that they don't need to be pressed screened. Quite often, they don't actually arrive until too late for

press screenings and the distributors aren't signed up to the FDA. This, weirdly enough, I wrote an article about this for the new statesman about 25 years ago when one of the big distributors did join the FDA. But it's, it is a shame. It is a shame because I would like to be seeing them. But at the moment, they're not press screened. Number seven is Sean the Sheep, the Beast of Mossy Bottom. Which I loved.

I like all the Sean the Sheep stuff. I've never really met an Ardman stop motion that I didn't like. but I thought this was terrific. And I love the fact that it's just, it's completely language-free. It's just, you know, it's just noises and movement. And that's it. It's like early cinema. It's miraculous.

Six here, seven there. Avengers Endgame Encore. Or as it's been called Avengers Endgame On Snore, because we have another one coming. And this relates back to an email earlier on, which is, can there really be any more superhero movies? Yes. Yes, I'm afraid there'll be a whole lot more.

And number five here, sense and sensibility. I really enjoyed this. I think I enjoyed it a lot more than many other critics. I see that it's had a slightly rough ride with critics, but I was surprised. I thought it worked. I thought the performances were good. I thought that the way it told the story,

kind of had a good mixture of dirt under its fingernails, but also kind of genuine romantic charm. I enjoyed it. I think you liked it too, didn't you? Yeah, I did, absolutely. And it's not a film that I would sort of queue up to see, but, you know, so it completely won me over. And it's a, um, it's, I thought it was fantastic, actually, you know, and you could, you could go with, on a multi-generational trip to the cinema.

Absolutely. And, and everyone would be engaged. So, I agree. Well done. Well done it. Digger, on the other hand, is at number four. Okay. So the only thing I'm going to say, because I know you've got emails is, the fact that digger is number four means that as far as, box office is concerned, it has tanked. Because opening it number four is tanking. Anyway, I know you have many emails. And it's four here and it's number four in America as well. This one says, I may be in the minority here, certainly amongst older people,

but Digger really impressed and even moved me. I only went to see it so I could be part of the conversation and surprised myself as the film surprised me. It is bold and inventive and messy. But when the credits rolled, we all just sat there in a silence which may have been stunned or respectful or admittedly possibly horrified. I just couldn't move for a bit. It may even be a great film. Anyway, I'm still thinking about it. I know younger people have responded to it more enthusiastically than oldies, which gives me hope considering its themes and twists and turns.

I rarely laughed, so its promises of dark comedy didn't work for me, but that matters not. and as my friends know, I'm not usually the biggest Tom Cruise fan, but he is terrific here. Still thinking, and that may be the best a film can do. So Mark Kermode, you're wrong. And this is from the Good Lady Professor, her indoors, Linda Ruth Williams on Instagram. And that, ladies and gentlemen,

is called getting slapped in public. Yes. In your face. Yeah. Well, there are, as we know, there is no right or wrong answer. to this. The fact that, I mean, obviously, the Good Lady Professor Her indoors was the person who told me I was completely wrong about AI. And I, you know, and I didn't like AI when I first saw it. And then I watched it again. I now think it's one of my favorites, Spielberg films. I didn't get that from Digger. And I was actually kind of quite surprised that the Good Lady Professor Her Indoor's did. And of course, it makes me think, well, I need to go back and watch it again. And I said when I did my review the first time round, because of the way the narrative is, structured. It may well be that on second viewing, it is a more fulfilling experience. My wife

then said, well, I can't imagine anybody coming out and wanting to go straight back in again. But, you know, look, she's smarter than I am. So I would just say to it to anybody, you know, take my opinions with a pinch of salt because she's smarter than I am. Okay, well, Doug says, I went to Digger on Friday with low expectations. I hated Babel, but, man and The Revenant, but the prospect of a genuinely divisive film was too tempting to ignore. Yeah, yeah. I was therefore surprised to end up fascinated, amused and even a little impressed. For much of its running time, I was baffled by its sheer abrasiveness. You have to admire a hundred million-dollar-plus film that makes no attempt to placate its audience. Whether you like it or not,

it's impossible to look away. The third act elevates it further, revealing the film as a satire of satire itself. Its central thesis that parody is future. in the face of modernity's horrors, and that art is often corrupted by the elites it seeks to mock, feels sadly accurate. The end credits deliver a brilliantly executed gut punch. These are the first genuinely novel ideas I've seen from Inuratu. Inuraitu.

Iniaritu. And they amount to a sharp takedown of the wave of Eat the Rich satires that followed Parasite. Two days later, I'm still thinking about Digger. If you want your next cinema trip to chat, challenge you, give it a shot. Also, Eric Crawford in Sunderland, gentlemen, I must differ with Mark on the new in Aritou. It criticises the film for relying on postmodern excuses. These excesses are meant to be over the top, overacted and overagged, so the film isn't bad,

just clever. But there's an elephant in the room. It's extraordinary difficult to make media about the climate crisis that people will actually engage with. preaching is often counterproductive while defeatism is too easy. Digger takes an indirect route. It opens with bombast and what Mark calls an overdose of acting pills before Cruz turns the spotlight back on us.

Then the closing credits offer a sober glimpse of our future. Those tonal shifts are bracing, culminating in a final claxon that jolts our critical faculties. Climate change is already happening, but that doesn't mean our actions no longer matter. They will matter for centuries. Eric in Sunderland. Okay, so a couple of things. On the subject of the 100 million plus,

$125 million was the signed-off cost. It looks like it was closer to $160 million. So your point about a movie that costs that much paying no attention to any kind of test screening or what the audience might or might know is even more significant. It is definitely true. So Guillermo del Toro posted a whole lot of stuff, young people responding very well to Digger. And he was the one who wondered whether it was generational. And that was where that debate began. And I am certainly hearing from people that some people have had very, very good experiences

with the film. So as a broad picture box office thing, it cost an absolute fortune and it is going to lose much more money than they thought it was going to lose. In terms of the experience that people have had of it, enough people have had very, very good experiences with it to make me think that it is clearly working on someone. And I'm not just random people. There's people writing in very intelligent emails to our show. And I don't just mean the good lady professor her indoors. I mean in general. And that gives me pause for thought. One thing that I found kind of infuriating was when I was looking at the YouTube thing, and you

look at the YouTube thing below, people saying, oh, spiners, which I just want to say this once and for all. If you think that your entire purpose in responding to a review of a film that doesn't like a film that you like is to go, then as far as I'm concerned, I have no interest in anything you have to say about anything ever. I am, however, very interested in people responding differently and passionately, enough so that I'm going to go and see Digger again. However, What I would say is the only thing you can ever do as a critic is to respond honestly. And I did. I did not like it the first time round.

And I don't know that I'm ever going to like it. I think I might like it more the second time around, as I had suggested in my review. But you can only be honest about what you think. And you can also only be honest about the fact that other people will think different things. And I'm actually very encouraged that so many people I've spoken to have got so much more out of it than I did. Correspondence to codemeyer.com. Number three here, number three there is Heart of the Beast. Rubbish. Number two here, number two there, resident evil. A romp. loved it.

And we have the same top three because number one is Verity. Unexpectedly 1468. Thanks for getting in touch. Unexpected. I saw it this evening. Dafters are brush but quite entertaining. Reminded me of the housemaid, but without the laughs. Yeah. And Vyrift says, just got back from seeing Verity. I went in expecting a clunker but enjoyed the ride.

There was a point in the screening where everyone in the theatre simultaneously exclaimed, what? And then we all laughed together. That moment alone was worth the price of admission. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I mean, it's nonsense. It's ripe nonsense. but the comparison to I made is a very good one.

Yeah, I enjoyed it. It's absolute B-movie trash, wearing A-list clothing and stars, and it's a romp. And, you know, I enjoyed it. It was good fun. And that's, again, it comes down to the fact that everyone's response is kind of individual

and everyone's response is always subjective. And it just found a sort of sweet spot for me that at the same time as thinking it was, absolute tosh. I was thinking, but I am enjoying this toffee apple of a film. More on your takes on current releases in the Overflow carp, Park of Love in Take 2. Look for us on Patreon to get that and this and the other all ad-free. Big guest time in a moment. Observe the North American Dad, 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana, and offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squint. He squinted.

reads it again, smiles and says, dang, that's a good offer. The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. Hello, I am Simon Mayo, and I am Mark Kermot. Coming up on this week's episode of Kerbin and Mayo's take. We have reviews of Aaron Salkins, the Social Reckoning, Carrie the new mini-series from Mike Flanagan, and The Uprising with our special guest. Paul Greengrass, who wrote and directed that very same movie.

So do not miss a second. It's going to be fabulous. Okay, so top guest time, and this week we have Paul Greengrass, began his career in current affairs television, as you know, with World in Action, then became one of Hollywood's leading director. So if you just zoom through,

Murder of Stephen Lawrence on ITV, then Bloody Sunday, then Omer, then the Bourne Supremacy, then United 93. Born ultimatum, Green Zone, Captain Phillips, Jason Bourne, 22 July News of the World, The Lost Bus. It's an extraordinary... That's a hell of a CV, isn't it? It's pretty good. And now it's the uprising. I am no soldier. I am no priest.

I'm just a farmer. The land is broken. We are forced to work beyond what our souls can take. The king is the law. We have nothing more left. He says pay taxes, you pay taxes. She's a aged. No, she must pay.

He says work harder, you work harder. There's enough! Enough! We've given you enough! I shouldn't have done that, partner. And that is a clip from The Uprising. I'm delighted to say been joined by its director and writer Paul Greengrass. Paul, welcome to the show.

How are you, sir? I'm very well. How are you? It's very nice to speak to you. Thank you for making some time. So we are for the first time, I think, in any of our conversations on this show at all, in any of its incarnations, into the world of 1381. I know.

Which is where we start. where you tell us we start. And it made me realize I know about Victorian settings and we know about Elizabethan settings. There are certain kind of period dramas that we're used to, but we're not used to the 14th century. Tell us why we're there. It's remote.

I think it, to be honest, the roots of this film started in Brexit, actually, which felt to me at the time like a sort of profound English revolution or rebellion. In English uprising, you know, if you think of Brexit, Scotland voted yes, Wales voted yes, North Ireland voted yes.

England very significantly voted no. So that sort of gave me the idea that I'd like to make an English uprising film and I sort of looked at a few kind of ideas but I kept coming back to the Peasants' Revolt and actually I wrote the screenplay in lockdown in the pandemic in COVID. I started on day two.

I thought, okay, well, I'll write my English uprising film and it'll be the Peasants Revolt, and that's what I did. And then it took some films, as you know, kind of come to screen very easily, and some just take a long time. This was one that took a long time. And I think one of the reasons why we got it made was because as the six years have gone past since I wrote it, it's become more and more relevant in a way. What was amazing, I remember it very clearly, was how eerily familiar it was, you know, although it's sort of 600 years ago, the issues are the same today. Because what is the story of the Peasants Revolt at heart?

it's the story of a bunch of oligarchs who jealously guard their wealth and power, whilst beneath them there's a seething, enraged population you feel the system's rigged against them, and all it takes is a spark. You know, that's the story then, and of course it's the same now. And what's very interesting, of course, is that if you look on a map, the places where the Peasants Revolt started and, and Spurs, very rapidly. They're all the Brexit places too. So it's very, very, very contemporary as a story, I think. Is that entirely coincidental? I mean, that sounds astonishing that 600 years later,

there's a political echo from the events that you're describing? I think it goes to show how deeply rooted the resentments that Brexit expressed. are and were, that's the first thing, and how strong that feeling of rage is out there in our world today, you know. And that's not, I'm not making a political point left or right. You know, I think wherever your politics lean, I think we all know that there's this great, great disconnect. People feel a sense of rage at the disconnect between how their lives are and how the lives are. of, you know, whatever you call them, the elite, the better off, the winners or the losers, the north or the, you know, the south versus the north.

However you look at it, there's that sense of resentment and rage. And that was very, very common then. And so what I tried to do was to make a film about what happens when that spark takes off. You know, there's a scene in the film where Andrew Garfield's character, Plowman, goes into town, they're going to collect the taxes. And he snaps, you know, he snaps, and says, we've given you enough.

That's enough. And I think that that is how people feel. You know, I think that's the feeling out there. When you wrote this story, Paul, I think we know, so some people, some people listening to this may well remember. the peasants revolt. They may well remember the name of Watt Tyler, who is in your movie played by Cosmo Jarvis, who's great.

There's another real character, John Ball, not John Bull, which is what I thought it was to start. No, John Ball, the famous heretic preacher. Played by Jamie Bell, who is also fantastic. I suppose you could have centred the story there, but you've centered it on a gun at every guy and every farmer, Andrew Garfield. What was your thinking behind making the plowman not be the central character rather than one of the actual historical characters. Because I wanted him to be an everyman, you know, I wanted him to be representative of all the tens of thousands of people

who were just, who were farmers, artisans, people from villages and towns who felt this great sense of resentment, who joined the rebellion. Now, you know, in a sense, It's a movie. It's not a history lesson. But obviously, What Tyler was a real character. We know almost nothing about what Tyler, by the way. He steps into history. And one week later, he's dead.

He leads this enormous rebellion, the greatest rebellion in European medieval history. Quite staggering event. We know next to nothing about him. But most historians agree he must have been a veteran of, you know, a military veteran, had military training. And then there's John Ball. who was an ideologue.

And, you know, that's how revolutions and uprisings work. You always have the sort of military element and you have the ideological element. And then you have the people who follow, who are the ordinary people with ordinary dreams and aspirations and hopes and fears. And I wanted my character to be a fictional character who lived through that tumultuous week. And of course he engages with Ball and Tyler. And of course, the king, the young king Richard. And, you know, it's a movie.

It's, you know, if we're talking genres here, which we have to, you know, I wanted to, I mean, I loved Ridley's movie Gladiator. You know, it was one of my, I loved that movie. I couldn't, but I wanted to make a movie in that genre, but it was going to be my sort of movie. It's going to feel different, obviously, and have more of what interests me. What did they want? What did they want?

What did the rebels? What were them specific things that they were asked? Well, it's very interesting. You should ask that question. First of all, the only accounts of what's called the Peasants' Revolt that exist are told from the point of view of people in the court. So they're intensely hostile to the uprising. There are no accounts written by people who took part in it, obviously. But what is clear is that they marched on London.

It happened very, very quickly. There were protests against tax collections, which were considered unfair and onerous. And very suddenly it became this huge march, tens of thousands of people converging on London at a time when her armies, England's armies were on the border with Scotland and France. So the city was effectively undefended. And they had very specific demands, simple demands

for economic justice and political rights. That's essentially what it was. Now, then, without giving away the plot of the movie, of course, the revolution descends as all revolutions do into chaos and violence. But there's no doubt that it started with very simple demands for justice. And when it was all over, those demands remained alive in people's minds and echoed down the years. That's the thing about the Peasants' Revolt. You can draw, it echoes down the centuries, towards the Enlightenment, towards the American Revolution, which is a no-kings rebellion, towards self-government, towards economic freedoms. And when people talk today, I'm talking about, you know, when you look at our country,

country today or the US or Europe. You know, this, there's the sense of, you know, the desire for a new settlement, rage at a rigged system, however you want to call it. Leveling up would be one, another way of putting it, you know. Politicians are trying in our country across the West to respond to that rage. Not very well, it has to be said. And in a sense, those demands are the echoes of the peasants revolt. There was one particular echo, which occurred to me very early on in the film, which I don't think can have occurred to you

when you were writing and making this film. The farmers who rebel, we're talking about the first half hour of the film, they are serfs, they are owned. And one of the first acts of rebellion that we see after the initial spark is they break into a place that's holding all the records where you can see who is owned by who and who owes. And that is a data center.

Correct. They are, the first act of rebellion is to attack a data center. Correct. Which are words which I didn't really have. There wasn't a phrase that actually existed in my head until a few months ago. And I thought, that's what they're doing. Definitely.

And by the way, and they continued that into. London because they then sacked the Royal Courts of Justice, which had all as it were the national records, you know, they were, they were obsessed and clearly politically savvy enough to realize that hitting the data centres of the time was absolutely integral to any move towards their freedom. So you're right, you know, it's uncanny the echoes to me. We just had Aaron Salkin on the show talking about the social reckoning. And in that film, COVID happens. It's not key to the story, but it's happening while he's telling the story. January the 6th happens as a kind of a direct result of all the issues that he's tackling. And it seemed to me this is all, there's a kind of a

Venn diagram where the social reckoning and the uprising, there is an area in the middle, which is the same, which is a sense of rage and a sense of hope. And acting to counteract that. But I agree. I mean, obviously I think Aaron's an absolute genius. I can't wait to see the movie. But I would imagine there would be a tremendous overlap. You know, he's looking at it today, and I'm choosing this story from 600 years ago.

But we're talking about the same things. You know, this feeling of, as you say, powerlessness. And, you know, when you make a... make a film, I always think the film goes better if you ask yourself a question. There's me talking now. You know, if you ask, if I ask myself a question to which making the film is the answer, if that makes sense. So for me, the question in this film was, given that feeling of rage that's out there, given that sense of powerlessness, that sense of believing that the system's reaped against you, what happens?

when that spark bursts into flame. What does that look like? And that's the story of this film. You know, and it's a story then, of course, but it's also a story about today. Paul Greengrass, part one, talking about the uprising. We were fortunate to have, you know, 25 minutes with him. So we'll put some of his other comments in Take 2.

A good reason to be a part of that if you're not. already because he's just fascinating. And as you can hear, the way he talks about 1381, which I think is officially described as deep period. That's, it's not just period drama, this is deep period. The echoes come through, obviously that's the way he likes to make the film. The second part of our conversation in take two, anyway, let's talk about the uprising. I mean, I think one of the key things in that interview was you said to him,

what did they want? And then he said, well, you know, this is what they wanted. But then initially it started out that you want social justice, economic justice, and then things changed. And then he said towards the end of that interview, I know there's more of it to come, that he found that Greengrass found that the best way to make a movie was to ask a question. And the answer to the question would be making the movie.

And his question was, you know, what happens when that spark happens? Okay. So I think those two things get to the center of what is good and what doesn't work as well about the film. So the Peasants Revolt was something that obviously has been talked about a lot, particularly in sort of socialist circles, you know, cherished moment of rebellion. That, as Paul Greengrass says, you know, echoes down the century, right down to what he calls today's desire for a new settlement. And when he was talking about it, he said generically it's in the same genre as something like Gladys. but it begins with a simple demands for rights and economic justice and then descends, and I'm quoting directly from the interview, as all revolutions do into chaos and violence. And he located the

beginning of the story in Brexit, which he saw, and again, as he describes in that interview, as a profoundly English uprising. And as a result of that, he said he wanted to make an English uprising film that was specifically making those comparisons between the kind of rage and disempowerment that people felt recently and this thing that happened, as you said, in what was generically referred to as the deep, dark past. The difference, of course, is that in terms of the peasants' revolt, the demands seem to be completely legitimate. And the story is that the demands are legitimate, you know, the taxation in order because the hundred years of wars is raging, there's disease and famine, things are going very, very badly. And people are simply, as we heard in that

Andrew Garfield clip, there is no more to give. We have been taxed out of existence. And you want some kind of accountability, which is slightly different to what was happening with Brexit, which the more we learn about Brexit, the more we learn that all the reasons that we were sold, not that we were, that were sold as the Brexit reasons turn out to be completely bogus. So this is a film about what happens when that spark starts a final. and what comes from that sense of powerlessness. And you made the point very astutely that the first thing they do is destroy the records, which is absolutely like a data center.

And it is really interesting that there is a comparison between this and social reckoning that we've just been talking about and Carrie, which we are just about to talk about, which is playing out in a media age. All these things are weirdly connected this week. But that question about what did they want? What they wanted was economic and economic and. social justice straightforwardly. And there are three different elements. On the one hand, you have the kind of warrior figure, what Tyler. You have John Ball, the kind of the ideologue, which is the

sort of, you know, the ideology behind it. But the film actually centres on a character whose name is their trade, which is Plowman, who is an honest, every man, ordinary embodiment of the working people who ends up heading off into the woods wearing a hood. And we'll discuss a little bit of that in a moment. So it's basically a film that centers on a constructed everyman character who has around him historical characters representing the different parts of a struggle. Now, obviously, Paul Greengross knows how to do this kind of drama because he knows how to, I mean, if you look at that incredible filmography that you read at. out. Certainly when he's recreating things, you know, actual riots and chaos and world events

that have been cataclysmically violent, he really knows how to put you in the middle of that. And once again, he manages to do that. In a part of the interview that we have yet to hear in Take 2, you talk about the fact that we don't actually see rebellious peasants very much in cinema. Well, the place that you do see it is in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And that's the thing the one thinks of as soon as anyone thinks about rebellious peasants, you think of it in comedic terms, because it's true. You don't see that many of them.

I think that the strongest parts of this are to do with, well, firstly, I think it's very good use of music, very good use of song. There is more of that that we'd be talked about in the interview in Take 2, which I would advise people to listen to, and we'll pick this up after that, because there's a lot to be said about what the music is doing. I think that it is very good at putting you in the middle of this kind of powder keg of resentment,

which has been built up for completely legitimate reasons, and then these three separate prongs of how that then gets propelled towards London, and what then happens in its kind of descent into chaos and, of course, into double crossing. The question that I have, which I don't know the answer to, is when you said, what do they want, I still want to know what Paul Greengross wants because I don't know, I know he said I want to dramatize what happens when that spark sets that flame. But weirdly enough, watching this, I came away slightly confused as to what exactly was the point it was trying to make.

Because I found it in gross, and it's kind of very depressing in terms of it is everything goes wrong. And this isn't a plot spoiler. Everything goes very, very badly wrong. It does not have a happy ending, although there is a coda, which we will talk about, probably in take two, about putting on a hood and going off into the woods. But I came out of it unsure as to exactly what the point Paul Greengross was making was. Is it that all rebellions will inevitably descend into chaos,

or is it a more amorphous point that we are on the brink of something due to everyone now feeling powerless? And the point is that there is a comparison between what's happening now and what happened in the past. And I don't know what the answer is. Having spoken, having watched the film and having spoken to Paul, I bought a book which had been part of his research, which I happen to have here, which is called A Distant Mirror.

Right. Okay. By Barbara Tuchman, the calamitous 14th century, Crusades and chivalry, plunder and plagues. That sounds great. Yeah. But it's fantastically written, and every page is extraordinary. But I think he made the film because it is a distant mirror, which I love as a phrase. It's saying that even though this was 600 years ago, it still has ripples through not just English and British history, but into American history as well.

And I think that's what I think that's the point of it. So the point is the mirroring of the place. It's like the whole thing about the past doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. So the point is the mirroring of that kind of broiling, seething resentment, that sense of powerlessness and what has. happens when that gets to a certain point. Is that, and also, I think so. But in his mind, has that point been reached and was that point reached with Brexit? Or is it saying that we are in it now or are we in the aftermath of it?

I think it's an interesting coincidence. Right, but it's a red herring. But that the epicenters of the Peasants' Revolt were the epicenters of Brexit. Now, it may be that cleverer people can, draw the distinct lines. But clearly, they were rebelling against being overtaxed and extreme poverty, and they had just survived the plague, and they had nothing left to give, which is clearly not the case in the 21st century in the UK. So I think there are all kinds of things that are tied up in this, but I think it's the distant, it's a distant mirror, the fact that

the things that provoke people to rebellion are the same things that can provoke you to rebellion. Now, and rage and powerlessness are very, very dangerous things. Yes. They are very dangerous things. So I want to ask you, shall we talk here or shall we talk later about the hood? The hooded man? Because the hood is in Thunderbirds, of course. No, I know, I know, I know, I know, which is what, yeah.

So shall we talk about it now or shall we talk about it in take two after you actually address it in the interview? Yeah, I mean, I think because Paul is less precious than some filmmakers who don't want to you to talk about things in the film. It was the original title of the film briefly. Yeah, it was the hood. So I do think it's a very interesting coda. It is worth say, and let's keep some of that for take two. But I do think it's also worth saying that Andrew Garfield being called Plowman is also referenced to Pierce Plowman, the middle English poem, which was the first reference to. Go on, do your middle English impression. Well, it's just a bit of Chaucer, which is, I know, I'm confusing of it,

which is there was a worthy man with all, which I think is part of the Knight's Tale or something. Anyway, and it's funny that whenever... I couldn't stand Chaucer. Whenever we do impressions of Chaucer, you do, there was a worthy man, and I do a letty flea fart, which sums everything up. So anyway, so I think, I think this... I mean, I loved it because I love Paul's films. Oh, I'm a huge, I'm a huge Paul Gringott's fan.

Do not get me wrong. I am a huge Paul Greengrass fan, and I will spend time watching his films, even if they confuse and somewhat befuddle me, which I confess that this has done, because I think he's a really fine filmmaker and never less than interesting. I just don't think this is as focused as his best dramas. And who wants to work with Paul? Well, everybody does. Thomas Syracinzy, Catherine Waterston, Tom Holland. What a great cast. Johnny Lee Miller. Who I didn't recognise either. Yeah, and I went to check on some of the historical accuracy is what happens to the Archbishop of Canterbury and various other numbers, and he's absolutely right. Absolutely.

It doesn't end well. Anyway, so more of the interview with Paul Greengrass in take-to and more discussion about where it ends. But there's a lot of beheading, there's a lot of choppity chop and bouncing bounce. So let's, because it's all quite gloomy and deep period, let's enter the laughter lift and have fun together, Mark. Let's have fun together. Here we go.

Okay, well, that sounds jaunty, doesn't it? Hey, Mark. On my tip-top radio show, drive time, at greatest sits radio, four till seven, Monday to Friday. Rick Astley is a frequent guest. Excellent. And he loves his animated movies, Mark. In fact, he'll lend you pretty much.

much any Disney DVD, but he's never going to give you up. Hey! We just verbally Rick-rolled everybody. Talking of pop icons, I remember when Billy Joel stayed at my house in the 80s, due to an improbable sequence of mishaps. We won't go into now, but are essential for the contrivance of this joke. Okay. And meant that his clothes needed washing.

Right. And in the morning, the good ladies' ceramics are indoors, put Billy's clean laundry on his bed. Hey, Ashmoz, or some such New Jersey greeting, shouted Billy down the stairs. Why is my laundry still damp? Sorry, piano man said, you know who. We didn't start the dryer. There aren't many Billy Joel jokes out there.

And that is why. Hey, Mark, Child Three, Child Three's got a new partner. Okay. Actually, I just realized I haven't seen this joke. I was so overcome by the Billy Joel. Joel Joe. So let's experience it together. Okay, fine. So Child Three has got a new partner.

Just showed me a picture. She's wearing a green top, white shorts, black football boots, and a pair of Velcro fastened protective gloves. She looks like a keeper. Hey! I actually got there just before you said that, and I don't do football.

And what's still to come, Mark? What are you doing next? Still to come, the review of the new series of Carrie. And if you've enjoyed what you've heard so far. including all of those fantastic jokes. There's a lot of extra content waiting for you in Take 2, such as questions, Schmessians, in which this week we're asked

which horror franchise of a minimum of four installments would we watch if we were compelled to? Just search Coburn and Mayo, Patreon, and join us over there. You can get both takes ad-free, plus our exclusive fortnightly extra show, Extra Extra Show, Take Ultra, which features Mark and I

in during the murky world of our YouTube commenters. But it sounds as though Mark actually has a look there anyway, because he's talked about going on YouTube and looking below the line, which he knows he shouldn't do. Should not do. More in a moment. So now, we were going to have Mike Flanagan on the show to talk about Carrie and Midnight Mass and all the other things which he's been associated with. But he was snatched away by a flying vampire at the last minute. And he was sitting there in traffic. And who could have predicted that there'd be traffic in London.

It was traffic in London. Yeah, this vampire flew past and said, hang on, that's that Flanagan guy who didn't portray me in a very attractive way, I think, in Midnight Mass, made me responsible for all kinds of chaos. So I'm going to snatch him away. And so he's not on the show, which is particularly annoying, because we both have watched every single episode of Carrie, all eight of them.

Which is about to turn up on, on Prime Video to prepare for the interview. So in the words of Meatloaf, we're all revved up with no place to go. Hey! Very good. So should we wander through it anyway? Yes.

So let's play you just a little clip of the Carrie, which is about to appear on your television. I hope you all had a good holiday season. Please say hello to Carrie White. Make her feel welcome. Hi, I'm Sue, by the way. Hi. That's a really nice dress.

Thanks. I made it. Sure did, didn't you? So what do we do? Oh, so this is your first day, like, ever? I was schooled at home. Till today, I mean. Oh, I love that for you.

There's one thing no one understands about what happened here in Chamberlain. The police don't get it. The press don't get it. The scientists don't get it, and you won't get it either. What you say? Can I just highlight the appalling, that appalling, oh, it's a very good, Oh, I so love that for you.

With that kind of sneering, patronising, smug, entitled voice that just makes you think, okay, I know exactly where we are here. Yeah, precisely. And there is a lot of that. So, okay, a bit of background. This is the latest from Mike Flanagan, who's the guy behind TV series Midnight Mass, which we loved Haunting of Hill House. More importantly, however, the director of several Stephen King adaptations,

Gerald's Game, Doctor Sleep, Life of Chuck, and now. this. This is an updating of Stephen King's 1974 novel about a bullied young girl with untapped telekinetic powers, living with her religious zealot mother who believes that the world is full of sin into which her daughter is threatening to fall. The original novel was marketed with the very post-exorcist tagline, a novel of a girl with a frightening power. So this was kind of mid-70s, and it did fall into that whole kind of demonic paedophiles. you know, scary kids with powers thing. Famously filmed by Brian De Palmer, a few years after the novel came out, starring

Cissy Space Act and Piper Lorry, using very groovy split screen during the kind of apocalyptic third act. One of the most memorable Stephen King adaptations, one of the most famous end of film jump scares, really hard to see how it could be improved upon, but many have tried. In 19, end of the 1980s, I'd Carry the Musical, which was so badly received that a book about theatrical flops was called Not Since Carrey. 1999, Cates Shea did Carrey 2, Carrey 2 The Rage, which was notable mainly, as I pointed out before, for the fact that there's a brief appearance of music by the Polkats in it. Carrie was then remade as a TV film in 2002 as a potential pilot for a TV show which never happened.

It was remade again as a feature in 2013 by Kimberly Pierce with Chloe Grace Moretz in the lead role. And that was, it was okay. It didn't really move the dial hugely, but it was kind of, it was okay. But of course, it wasn't the department. Now this, which is the first real 21st century overhaul of the story we all know. So there was some social media in the 2013 version, but it's not as central as it is here. because here it is right in the middle of the story. So you have Samarach Howes Carey, Samantha Sloyan as Margaret White, her mother,

who incidentally is much more sympathetic in this version than in the novel. Can I just ask, have you read the novel, Simon? I don't think I ever did. I think all of my knowledge has come from the movie, the first time around. So did you see, you saw the movie when it was in cinema at the beginning? Yes. Yeah, okay, fine. Yeah, yeah.

We're at university, one of those film society things, you know. Okay, all right. So in this version, we meet Carrie and her mother in the shadow of the death of her father and the husband. He's a construction worker who dies in an on-site accident and his shirt is still on a chair in the house. There is an air of grief hanging over the house. And up until this point, Carrie has been hidden away at home because her mother thinks that the world is a very, very bad place and they've been keeping her secret. But now she's been discovered and she must enroll at school. Okay. So she goes to school and all the themes of bullying and violence that are

in King's source are now even more terrifying than they were back then because they've been amplified by the twin threats of school shootings and the rise of social media, both of which have made teen years in America all the more toxic and potentially lethal. So it is from this terrifying world that Carrie's mother seeks to protect her. The main difference being that in 74, she was a religious zealot lunatic. Nowadays, I have to say that the world looks a lot more like something that you can imagine somebody thinks you need protecting from. And this is a key shift, and the key shift is because the world has changed. And Flanagan has up, the material for the world which we now live in, in which Carrie's mother's obsession

about protecting her daughter from it does not seem quite as crazy as it did before. As for the character of Carrie, Mike Flanagan has said elsewhere in other interviews, that whereas De Palma's carry was a clenched fist who's absolutely shaking out there in the world, that the carry in this one is wide open, eager, curious and earnest, and somehow is walking very wide-eyed into this new environment of the school. She hasn't been to school before, but without any sense of how dangerous it is. She's trusting. She does not know how bad this place can be. And of course, the scene of the De Palma film, it opens with the shower scene and the tampons being thrown at Carrie as she has her first period. Now, that happens in this,

but it is amplified by the fact that they get out their phones and they start filming it. So it's reconfiguring that scene that's a very famous scene in the Brian DePalma film. It said, no, the horror now is not just that the bullying is happening. The bullying is being filmed. And if there is a demonic power here, it's not the telekinesis. It is the work of devils behind the social media who have now made everything fodder for that. And this actually ties back to what we were talking about. It's weird this is coming at, same week as a social reckoning.

I mean, in this world, not even the teachers are safe from online bullying. And I think all of this works really well in this updated version because it is very much, I mean, they're very good performances. It is an ensemble, but there are very good central performances. Incidentally, in that ensemble, special shout out to Matthew Lillard, who is terrific as the principal of the school, proving once again that Quentin Tarantino does not know what he is talking about. It is a terrific performance by Matthew Lillod in this.

And it's really, really well judged. What did Tarantino said? Tarantino said he was weak source and said he hated, he really didn't like his. He just suddenly just did this weird punching down thing, being rude about Matthew Lillod for no reason at all, other than he just opened his mouth and rubbish came out. Wouldn't be the first time. So all that stuff, I think, works really well. Now, I want to get onto some of the stuff that I think doesn't, but I want to first ask you, what do you think about that updating and the, stuff about the social media and the fact that it has been brought into that Instagram age.

Yeah. Well, as we've mentioned a couple of times, everything is bleeding into everything else here. All the things that we're talking about, whether it be the uprising or the social reckoning, it does all end up with us talking about aggressive algorithms. And you're absolutely right. I mean, telekinesis and pyrokinnesis and all those kind of things are fascinating subjects, and it does broaden the picture a bit. But I thought Summer H. Howell, who is the woman who plays Carrie, is fantastic.

She's great. Margaret White. And I was thinking, so played by Samantha Sloyon, who I last saw being Bev Keene in Midnight Mass, where she plays another, precisely. Impented horrible. Precisely. Can I not get out of this church thing? She's good at it, though, isn't she?

Yeah, yeah, it is. And my only problem with it, just as far as you've commented so far, is that, and this is definitely an age and stage thing as far as I'm concerned, I've found the relentless bullying magnified by social media really depressing. And, you know, it's very, very well done. And it is clearly Instagram that they're talking about, because you see them setting up the accounts, to be like a form of torture. So before we get to the denouement, which we know we're going to get to, also because the episode one at the first five minutes is all about how it all finishes. So you know that it's going to end in calamity. It was so well done, I found it very depressing because when you watch teenagers bullying

each other and being so cruel to each other and for it being backed up by this huge thing which we've allowed to take over our lives, I found that kind of my P-Doom number was increasing. But I'm agreeing with what you said. And it is almost as if the supernatural power is now the power of social media. It's not telekinesis. It's not pyrocheneas. The wicked supernatural power in this is the mobile phones. Okay. So as you have just said, the whole thing begins in the wake of the catastrophe. And it is people being interviewed about what happened. And we heard in that clip, a voice saying, people, you won't understand it. But the thing that people don't understand, they keep asking about Carrie, what they don't ask about is the others. And that's what no one

understands. And that, I think, is the one thing about this series that, for me, doesn't land. Because what they've done is, the whole thing has another layer, which is that there are a group of strangers who are sort of introduced very early at the beginning. who somehow sensing carries power and they somehow understand it. And then they kind of disappear. And then they reoccur at the end. And I don't know that that works. Who are these people?

What is this kind of cabal around them? And for me, that felt like, okay, I didn't need that. Now, one thing is that there is the introduction of a character who is tangential to that, which did work for me. Carrie has a friend. She meets somebody who is a kind of a kindred soul who says to her, the power that you've got is a power. It's not a curse, it's a power.

And that, if the answer is, well, you have to have the whole thing about the others in order for that to happen, maybe. I just thought the thing about who are the strangers, what are they doing, what's there on it? I found that distracting. And I wonder whether the reason it is there is because Mike Flanagan had talked at some point about there being more a continuation of the story

that might require other people. What do you think? Yes, because he's talked about it being three series is what he's talked about. And he's done that in public interviews. So it's definitely out there. I think because of the friend character which Kerry has, I'm prepared to give it,

I understand your reservations, but I'm thinking, okay, well, women have been accused of these things in the past. Maybe there is something broader to be discussed and maybe series two and series three, if indeed it gets there, will justify that. So I'm prepared to kind of hang around. I found it appalling, hugely enjoyable, wonderful performances.

Who would be a teacher in an American high school? I mean, also, what a terrible bunch of teachers. I mean, they wimp out, particularly the English teacher. Anyway, so, yeah, all of those, watched all eight episodes because I thought, I'm going to enjoy the conversation with Mike Fannie. I knew you'd watched all eight. It took me a few days to watch them. I didn't watch them in every, you know, just one.

after the other. I like the fact that he's prepared to take, you know, sacred texts and do something different with them. I imagine Stephen King is on board with all of this. So I'm, and I thought, well, I'm on board for the ride. Let's, let's see where the, where this takes us and where it goes. Yeah. There are a couple of in jokes in there, which I won't spoil, obviously, but they're, they're fun for those who know what's, you know. Can I, can I flag just one of them up? Okay. Yes. Okay.

I'm not going to flag up the, I mean, during, obviously, during the sort of the later stages during the cataclysm, when Carrie is walking through town, there are plenty of opportunities to nod to the bus. But there was one thing I'm going to say. No, I'm not going to flag that. The one thing I did want to ask Mike Flanagan, and I'm just a shame that we didn't get to, is that there is a shot in the film of mother and daughter in a bathroom. that seemed absolutely an exact replica of a shot from the Exorcist. And the reason I flag this, it's not out of nowhere. Mike Flanagan is currently making or has made Exorcist Martyrs, which is the new Exorcist film.

So it's not like he's not been immersed in that world. And I just wonder, if anybody else watches it, if anybody else gets to the scene of mother and daughter in bathroom, does anybody else see Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair, or is it just me? I did want to ask Mike Flanagan whether that was deliberate. I had that question ready to go. I know. It would have been one of the questions that I would have put had we had the opportunity. My general feeling is, so it sounds to me like you have the same reservations about the others,

the strangers as I do, which is that in what we've seen so far, they're not really doing very much. And it seemed like a distraction. It may be that there is a real. reason for them being there that would be connected to, were there ever to be any other? I mean, I don't know whether there is or not, or I don't know, or whether, I don't know where it's going for, I can only judge this as a, as a coherent whole in and of itself. I watched it in one go. I watched it basically as an eight-hour movie. I finished at 3.30 in the morning. That's how, that's how much I was engaged in it. And as an eight-hour movie, I thought it was brilliantly piercing on its bullying and social media

and the hell of the American high school system. I have to say the hell of America, to be honest with you. And I thought that the thing that didn't work was the thing that is set up in the beginning about nobody is asking about the others. And I would advise most people to don't worry about that because that's not, certainly what we have so far in this eight-hour movie, it isn't really about them.

It is about her and her experience of school life. And, you know, in the same way as, you know, Roar is not about cannibalism. This isn't about telekinesis. It is about bullying. And it is a horrifying portrait of bullying in the social media age. I think, I think, and this is right at the very beginning, as you said. So it's not a, it's not a, it's not a witness says it's, you're not asking the right question, the right questions, who were the other people? I was sufficiently intrigued to go, Oh, I don't know. Let's go.

Okay, that's new. That's different. Let's go for that ride and let's see where that takes. But it never paid off. Well, it kind of does. Oh, okay. Okay, okay. Anyway, correspondence at codemoe.com, we would love to know what everybody thinks about it.

Once you've watched, are all the episodes going to drop together? I don't know. What are they doing on prime video? I'm not quite sure. I'm not sure. All I know is, I did binge watch all eight of them. Yeah.

So as and when you see it, let us know what you think, because it'd be good to carry on this conversation, correspondence at kerbunamo.com. That's also where you send us videos and audio bits and pieces for telling us about cinematic things that are happening in your life or cinema adjacent. For example, here's one from New York State. Hello, Simon and Mark.

This is Meira Blaustein, executive director of the Woodstock Film Festival. now entering its 27th year, starting October 14 until October 18, in Woodstock, New York and surrounding towns with lots of films and musical performances and panel discussions and lots of great events come visit us. So you see, people from New York have all kinds of different accents, Mark, which means that my Billy Joel was quite believable based on the fact that people from New York talk in a whole variety of ways, as I think Mira Blaustin and I have proven. I thought Mira sounded very, very welcoming, and everyone welcome, I thought that was great.

I thought if I was near there, I would definitely go and become involved. Stock Film Festival, yeah, Mira, thank you very much indeed for that. Closer to home, here's John in Ilfrakum. We were running amongst me screen of eclectic films called Critics Choice Cinema, hosted at the Landmark Theatre in Ilfrakum. The screens will also include introductions, a chance to chat afterwards, and in some cases meet some of the crew who worked on the film. First up, we have our Halloween screening on Thursday, the 22nd of October,

John Carpenter's 1982 classic, The Thing. That will be followed in November with Chloe Giles Hamnet, of which I was part of the VFX team, so I will promptly ruin everyone's love of that movie when I tell them all the explosions and flying robots were in fact not real. And then in December, our festive offering is Rare Exports a Christmas tale, is available on the Landmark Theatre Ilfrakum website for the delightful price of only five of your Earth pounds.

Very good. John and Ilfrakum, thank you very much indeed, and to our production team who gave me Ilfrakum spelt phonetically. Obviously, I'm a complete moron. Critics' Choice Cinema at the Landmark Theatre in Elfrakum from 22nd October. There is a link also in the show notes.

Thank you very much indeed for the video. You can send yours to correspondence at cabaretomo.com. That is it for this week. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production this week's team, Dom, Eric, Josh and Heather, the redactor Simon Paul. In take two, we're directing you to the Overflow Carpark for more chat about current film releases. And don't forget, we're in Brizzled in December. Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, Paul has told us that all the episodes of Carrie are indeed available, so you can binge

watch it as one eight-hour film, so I'm going to include it as a film and say my film of the week is Carrie. Now, I won't be here next week, but I'll leave you in the... Okay, well, what it says here is, in the exceptionally capable Warb and engaging company of Simon Poole, aka the redactor, who has patiently waited 15 years for the opportunity to host the show. When the host of the show is replaced by the showrunner, director, producer, things have got to a pretty pass, haven't they? So you're going to do the show next week with Paul? Apparently so. Thank you.