Kermode & Mayo’s Take - The one with Tom Hiddleston, Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Cabaret

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

In this first episode of Kermode and Mayo's Take, Mark and Simon are joined by Tom Hiddleston who talks about his role in The Essex Serpent. Mark reviews new Marvel film ‘Dr Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness’, ‘This Much I Know To Be True’ which captures Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' creative relationship as they bring to life the songs from their last two studio albums, ‘Cabaret’ 50th Anniversary, new Netflix series ‘Clark’ - the story of Clark Olofsson, the man behind Stockholm syndrome, Danish film ‘Wild Men’/ ‘Vildmænd’ and also ‘Wake Up Punk’ starring Vivienne Westwood. Plus Mark and Simon recommend the essential week's viewing in a brand new feature: +/- (otherwise known as add / remove). You can contact the show by emailing [e-mail] or find us on our social channels. Add The Essex Serpent to your Up Next in Apple TV+: https://tv.apple.com/gb/show/the-essex-serpent/umc.cmc.1vyhx06lta7a21tshl8qitota Exclusive! Grab the NordVPN deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-daycare  money-back guarantee! A Somethin’ Else & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Something else. Anyway, as I was saying, what were you saying? I haven't seen you for months. You know, it's gone completely out of my headache. It'll come back. So I always have that thing. If it's important, it'll come back. If you love something, let them go.

Let them send them away. Free, free, set them free. They're staying. That's right. Why did he call himself sting? He sent me a shirt because he used to have a jumper that made him look like a bumblebee. Yeah. Well, why do you ask the question if you did? Because I'd forgotten that I knew that he said

you're about Mr. Sting. He sent me a shirt once. Did he? What did it say? No, it was it was a Versace shirt. I said, we did an interview with him. Versace shirt on the phone and I said, I really like the shirt that you're wearing on the cover. And he sent it to me.

There's one of the best lines in show girls is, you know, I love your dress. Thank you, it's Vassace. And that's the thing that's meant to demonstrate that she's from the different side of the tracks. So, have you noticed that we're not in our old place? I have noticed that we're in a new place. There is a huge neon sign which says,

Kermode and Mayo's take, which looks like it should have away underneath it. But as far as I'm concerned, Simon, we're back in the same room together and that means more to me than anything else. So we have a new studio, we have new microphones, the set, well, you notice we have the same microphone.

Do you remember when before? You noticed we have the same microphone. I have noticed that. Does it any, no, no, I sound great now. Okay, I mean, I sound great now. Okay. I mean, interesting. I do sound like fully rounded. Have you seen We're On A Bus? No.

We're on it. And I haven't seen The Bus. I've seen the photograph of The Bus, but I haven't actually seen The Bus. And we always did make a thing about romcoms that have advertised on buses. It wasn't just romcoms. It was anything. The rule was. If it's advertised on the side of a bus, it's rubbish. And the other thing was that if it had Matthew Mahogany

leaning against somebody, it was rubbish. And you and I did a piece in the observer in which we were damn near leaning against each other. Yes. So it's almost like we're daring this to go badly. But no, what it is is we have so much confidence in what we're doing that we don't care. So much confidence, that's what it is.

That's right. Anyway, so what are we doing? We're talking about films. Oh, and some TV and stuff. It's a film review show with some TV. There is some unfinished business. There is. Anyway, as I was saying, yes.

So uncharted. I know, have you seen it? Yes. I promised you that for years, when it was, it wasn't years. Number one thing, it was a number of weeks. You never, you never saw it. No, I didn't never see it.

We were off when it came out. The nation flocked to see it. The picture houses were full. There was one seat empty and that was you. That was me, and every week you tell me where it was on. Anyway, so now it is available from a range of platforms, but Simon Paul introduced me to this function. Have you seen?

Simon Paul has changed his title. As you see, what is he now? On the front page of this thing, showrunner. You're calling yourself showrunner. Showrunner. Wow, I know. That's didn't take long, did it? No. Yeah, so now, is Hannah another producer? Our question correspondent is now producer and the producer is now showrunner. So this is like everyone has just bumped up. I just think I know showrunner is an Americanism. I mean showrunner. So this is like everyone has just bumped up. I just think I know showrunner is an Americanism. And showrunner for only one of the thing who doesn't know what

it means, you're packing a crisps when you're hungry. That's not what showrunner means. It is as far as I can tell you. Can you give me a pack of crisps please showrunner? David Simon just cares about the crisps. Oh, you missed Walla Bridge. If you're not busy. Coffee's already. Anyway, you haven't reviewed uncharted yet. It's virtually you've seen it. Crucially, I've now seen it. Yes, as have you. Yeah, I haven't seen the last half hour,

but I kind of feel as though I've been using it. It's kind of the same thing. So, shall I review it? Yes. Okay, so, adapted from the PlayStation video, and did you ever play or even know about the PlayStation idea? No, I did not.

Okay, I neither did I, although I have now read about it and apparently very much liked and very much loved, and actually courtesy of Empire Magazine, I discovered that at some point, there had been an advert for the computer game in which Harrison Ford was playing the computer game and said, wow, I love this game, it's very cinematic because the whole thing clearly sort of wants to be Indiana Jones,

although actually it's much more kind of, you know, rather than being Indiana Jones, it's that, you know, like there's the Indiana Jones thing which goes forward and gives you all the Indiana Jones movies. And then there's the other one which is sort of remancing the stone via the goonies that ends up giving you the, you know, national treasure and all that stuff. So anyway, this has been in development,

had been in development for ages, loads and loads of different directors attached to somewhere shortly, we said, Gordon, David O'Rossal. Now, brought to the screen, or not now, I mean, a few months ago. I mean, it's actually been ages ago. Years ago, to the matter of history, really.

Brought to screen by Ruben Fleischer, who made zombie land, which I had liked, the first venin, which I hadn't liked very much, and 30 minutes, all less, which you and I had a rower back, whether or not it should be 30 minutes or fewer, but it was to do with the fact that less is an amount of time. It's like, it's not half a pint of water or fewer. Tom Holland is working in a bar,

kind of scamming all the rich people that come into the bar. He's a bit dodgy, but he's very charming, and he's fascinated by the uncharted regions of the world, and then incomes, Marke Mark Sully, who convinces him that what they should do is they should go off in search of this pirate treasure from the 16th century, because also that may lead him to his long lost brother.

Is that the guy from Ontarage? Marke Mark, yeah, Marke Mark Walberg. And then they go off in search of the treasure and his brother, and they have action adventures on land, sea, and air. And if you've seen the trailer, the trailer basically gives you a very large section of the air bit, although it is true, as you pointed out, that when you watch the air bit in the actual film,

it's a lot more like, I know hang on better, that's really that's just, that's, that's, this is Tosh. So okay, here's my feeling about it. Having now finally seen it, in one word, my review would be, I mean, it is the kind of the very definition of, it's all right. I mean, it's fine. There's no chemistry between him and Mark Wahlberg at all. Antonio Banderis literally looks like somebody who's turned up and asked what he's meant to be doing and they've shown him the paycheck and he said, all right, well, all right.

Do you think the director, then, is that- They said to Antonio Banderis, can you just sound, all. Do you think the director, then, did that fix? Did he say to Antony about theirs, can you just sound more Spanish? Because I think he's up the Spanish. In this. He wasn't quite Spanish enough. Okay, so you're the unscrupulous billionaire, and I think the best way you could do that is by...

Yeah, but don't give me just what you did when you were in a V-Ted. That one, you need to up the Spanish, and that's what he does very well. And the other thing I was thinking was, now, because people have always, it's talked about adaptations of video games, which, because I don't play video games,

I've watched video games being played, and I've played a tiny amount of Zelda and, you know, Ocarina of Time, and that sort of thing, like some nice things in which you wander around woods and all that sort of stuff. But I have read now, a lot of people who said that the video game series was actually really, really interesting and really, and had some really zinging dialogue,

which is kind of interesting because this, which has got five or six credited writers and story writers and writer, can you remember a single line for you when you only watched it, just from uncharted. Yes, when when he when Tom Holland former bartender says to the former Tom Cruisey bartender because he does a does a does a bit of juggling juggling There's a big there's a Scottish bruiser who's out to get him and he's trying to this is in the trailer Yeah, and he offers him a beach and he obviously offers him a drink. He says sex on the beach. And which, in context, is funny. That's the only line I can remember.

But that's it. Okay, fine. So, that's the name of a drink. So, I think having not seen the video game, but having read about the video game, it is one of the very few cases in which the dialogue is actually better in the video game, which leads me onto the thing

which I'm sure that I can't be the first person, which is ironic that a film which is called Uncharted is solidly charted from, because like every single thing, oh yeah, okay, that's a bit, the goonies and that's a bit. That's a very successful. And we'll do some box office later on. It is currently the third highest-grossing film of 2022. And as far as I can tell, that says more about 2022

than it does about the film. Because the one thing that it would have offered, particularly in the cinema, is I'm really tired. It's been heck of a week. Just show me some plainly jumpy splashy, runny, crashy, a little bit of joky thing. Just an, and I'll zone in and out as I do. I mean, there's no point in it, which you think, hold on, this plot's becoming a

bit confusing, I miss something. You could, you could just, you could, you could go off to the bathroom or, of course, now watching at home, you could pause brilliantly. Yes. Nothing, nothing will have happened that would have surprised you. No, that's true. I like Tom Holland. Yeah. He's buffed up well, isn't he?

Yeah, he has. He's clearly done some work. He was quite feeble in Spider-Man. He's very, he's very, he's very, he's very, he's, yeah. More so than Marky Mark, who is gone to seed, I think. What's the film in which the rock bounces peanuts off his, of his chest muscles? Journey to the mysterious island.

There you go. Anyway, Tom Hiddleston's on later. Is he? He'll be good. Okay, great. What will he be talking about Simon? He's talking about his new TV show. Yes, because we will be doing TV. Yeah.

And all the TV that we do will be cinematic TV. Film a Jason TV. That's what it's called. I just said it just now, because it sounded good. So he will be talking about the Essex Serpent. Yes. Can I be the first to say it's not about the Serpent. The point which we will be discussing at length with Tom Hiddleston. And he will also be reflecting on other parts of his career as well I imagine because it's done a load of stuff. Yes, we've liked it. I've played double bass for a month.

Conversations through the glass are happening, and I can guarantee it's going something like this. They've gone off script, haven't they? To which the answer is yes. There is a script. I've got the top of page one. Hang on. Guess it. We're recording today's show.

So there's take one and take two. More details to come, by the way. And we're normally going to be recording on a Wednesday. But we're not doing, we can't do it on a Wednesday this week. And Simon, why can't we do it? So we are recording and let me make this absolutely clear. Yes. We're going to go. Firstly, I don't live in London, right?

We're in London. No problem. No, fine. We're in London on bank holiday Monday. Yes. Because it's so easy to travel on bank holiday. Also, bank holiday Tuesday. What? We're also going to be recording tomorrow. Tomorrow isn't a bank holiday. No, but I'm just calling it bank holiday Tuesday. No, but it's not. I'm just making the point that I have had to come into London

on a bank holiday because you can't do the show on Wednesday because you're meeting the queen. Well, I very much doubt that it'll be the queen, but I'm getting a... M-m-m-a. Have you got an MBE? I will be getting one. You haven't brought it up before.

How about not? No, anyway, I will be. And it'll be pinned on me by a junior royal, I suspect. Do you know which royal you're getting? Well, on the list, I've ticked a couple. Are you put them in order a preference? Are you serious? Are you putting them in order a preference?

This is a joke, right? You put them in order a preference. And I've got order of preference. Yeah, I go, this is a joke, right? You put them in order of preference. And I've got Prince Charles I, because he's at air to the throne, and I've met him a few times, and I've interviewed him. You go, all right. William II. And...

William II. Yeah. It's going to be hard to get him. He'll be the first. William III. I guess he'll always... How many parts... That's not me, right?

Anyway, you don't want that. Anyway, so... I put them in order of preference. I put them in order of preference. How many questions? That's the Cockney Rhymes, anyway. You don't want that. Anyway, so you've got all the Cockney Rhymes I can reach at the start. I put them in order of preference. My guess is, if I had to guess now, I would say it'll be Princess Anne. Oh, yes.

Yeah, all right. That's right, might be quite fun. I remember seeing Princess Anne goes fishing. No. She went underwater. Blue Peter, she went with Valerie Singleton to abroad. Do you remember? There was a whole thing, the Norfolk Brought.

She went with Valerie Singleton to the Norfolk Brought. The Eucolic Valerie Singleton to abroad. That's very, very insulting to her broadcasting institution. All right, just to be clear, in the 1970s, when I was watching Blue Peter, there was an entire thing. I'm not making this up when Valerie Singleton and Princess Anne went to abroad. They went to, you know, foreign climes and the cameras went with them. And then for a long time it was, look, there they are looking at incredible animals

and incredible thing. And there was a whole thing, that very first thing in the morning, Valerie Singleton had to refer to, the first time she referred to her, it was your majesty, your highness, your highness. Your highness, I think. She's not majesty, I think the clue is that. It's highness, is it fine? So she had to say your highness,

and then after that, she was allowed to say mom, but the very first time in the morning, you have to say, first time in the morning, if you see it before 8 o'clock, I'll try it, yes. Okay, well, if it's Princess Anne, I'm gonna ask her. Yes, but do you remember her? Go visiting a broad with Valerie and her single tin.

And the first thing in the morning, she had to say, All right, Mum. All right, no, not all right, Mum. She'd say, all right, you're Highness. Would you like some Benson and Hedges? We're going to be covering, as I think you've probably realised by now, film releases and TV releases. Plus, you've got a whole bunch of recommendations

for you in the form of our new feature. And I'm not sure this has been thought through particularly well as it just seems to be symbols. Because it's a feature formally known as print. It's called plus slash minus, which works on the page. I don't think that's what they mean. Is it add to playlist removed from playlist? Let's go to recommend a physical product of the week.

So if you have a hot take on any and all the subjects, drop us a line in our written or audio form. If you have a special screening or a film festival that you're organizing, send us a voice note. Now here comes the new email address. Okay. Now, before it just mentioned my name and that was fine. But now it seems to be incredibly long. Does it have my name in it as well? Correspondence at kermedandmayo.com or you can click on the link. Click on the link in the app. Go to the app. Click on the link. You can also head to our website and sign up for the mailing list for lots of super fun stuff and we'll have a big and slash or important interview every single is just nonsense. Why am I even

saying this? Tom Hiddleston along later. We're also going to do our very own short film competition, which we'll be announcing in a few weeks, so just to repeat. So we've done these in the past. Yes. And then we stopped. Yes. But that is going to be back. Yes. This is going to be involving everybody. Yes. Will there be a great prize? Yes. It's very likely. Yeah. Okay. I do, but there is. There's a likelihood of a prize. A short film competition, which is going to be sensation.

Sensation. It's going to be fantastic. It's going to be back. And it's going to be with you very shortly. Okay. Fine. But we didn't want to clutter up the show too soon. No, but just do keep listening because it will be, we'll get to it. Exactly. So if you want all the film and TV reviews, you could possibly need plus a top guest interview, plus a ton of recommendations for things to watch all over the internet and stuff with that VPN thing. And the usual film chat about films, out and about in your cinemas, that's what you get in take one.

That's what take one is. Take one. Yeah. This is this. That's what this is. That's what's going to happen. And were you to never already found this? And if you, it's like literally they are listening to it now.

People might be thinking as they're listening now, that's fine, but I want even more. That's some honest thinking that. I could do it a little less, which case will be back on Test Match Special already. Anyway, we have our Extra Takes Mark. It could be like this week. So take two. Yes, take one. Take two. Exclusive interview. Further content with Tom Edelston. Tom almost certainly doesn't know anything about this. But when we get to him, we'll, so Tom, we'd like you to do two interviews. Yes.

We'd like you to do one, which is just you. But then we'd like to delve deeper. He does know. Well, we're being told that he does. But what that means is, one of Tom's people has said, we know that. Some of us even now, he may or not, just so he knows. Now there is a feature which has a good name, which is called Mark and Simon spoil everything,

which is good in which we do a bit of a spoiler special. And our new feature is another new feature. I hope you're making this. There's a lot of features. A lot of features. One year till Friday. One frame back where we take one of the week's releases and look at related working greater depth anyway,

all that kind of stuff. And it also means you get this one ad-free. Subscribe to ExtraTakes on Apple Podcasts to get episodes of Take 2 and more fantastic subscriber-only content. But if you're not a fruit-based person or if you prefer a different platform, there's a link in the show notes, click on that to get access to our extra takes wherever you get your podcasts. So you've already heard our top reviewer, Mark's reviewer, and I was just chipping in Vanchartis. It was a review, it was a really, it was just a tease, it was an out-and-loose bush.

Was your bush amused? It was a running joke back from them days, up to these days. And we've got some other reviews, obviously. I'll be reviewing the Nick Cave and Warren Ellis film this much I know to these days. And we've got some other reviews, obviously. I'll be reviewing the Nick Cave and Warren Ellis film this much I know to be true. Then Wild Men, the documentary Wake Up Punk, which is about Vivian Westwood and Malcolm McLaren.

The 50th anniversary of Cabaret, which makes me feel incredibly older, the new Netflix series Clark with Bill Skarsgard, and the week's big release, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch, although this script says amusingly, Hesselthric Cumberbatch as the titular Doctor Strange.

That just confused me. It sometimes feels like we're in a multiverse. It does. Of our own creating. Doctors, Cermeter, Mayo in the multiverse of Witter-Takement. Oh, that works. Witter-Takement. Actually, that's not bad. That's... That you could... You could make that works. We're to take mint. Actually, that's not bad.

That's that. You could make that work. Our correspondence email, don't forget, is Correspondence at comedameo.com. We'll just click on the link if you can't spell Correspondence. Towards the end of the book. Nobody can spell Correspondence. Top of the pop star, we're going to have the box office chart. So the box office chart is going to be there.

And it will feature uncharted, because as you know, our definition of what's in the chart is incredibly loose. Yes, because it turns out that uncharted is no longer in the chart, which is why it is now called uncharted. All that fun is still to come, but there's a lot of other things to review. Proper new stuff. I think you should probably get on with it. Okay, this much I know to be true, which is going to be released in cinemas next Wednesday. And then you will be able to get it

on other platforms after that. But it's a premiered at Venice. It's screening in 850 cinemas across 30 countries next Wednesday. And then, you know, other stuff later on. So are you in Nick Cave, Warren Eisefan? Well, you know, other stuff later on. So are you a Nick Cave Warren Ise fan? Well, I would, yeah. Okay, occasionally.

That sounded very, very sort of, yes, sometimes, but not always. I'm a huge fan, absolutely huge. I love, well, I love the stuff that they've done in film music. I'm a really, really big fan of Warren Ise. I play his film music all the time. Anyway, so. Is that on your top show?

On my top show, Scarlett. Which you're allowed to say out loud. A lunch time. I've got followed by Simon Mayows' essential albums at three. That's nice. Throw it ahead to you wherever I do. Anyway, so this is a documentary by Andrew Dominic, who made the assassination of Jesse James by the camera,

before which I, as you know, absolutely loved as my favorite film of that year. It shot in London and Brighton in these kind of slightly church-like settings, and it features them working on songs from Ghostine and Carnage, ahead of the 2021 tour, which I went to see.

And I think it must have been one of the first gigs I'd been to, well, in ages, because lockdown had lasted such a long time. And I remember coming out of it and going, that it was just brilliant. It was something akin to a sort of spiritual experience. And it was moving and funny and dark and brilliant anyway. So they're in these locations in which the camera is a circling round them on tracks, and the cinematography is by Robbie Ryan, obviously, is a genius cinematographer.

There are these banks of white light, it's kind of like, you know, let there be light, which is all sort of, you know, timed in with the music, and it's picking out the musicians and with this kind of darkness visible. There's a whole sort of religious kind of incantatory quality to the whole thing. But it opens rather brilliantly with Nick Cave, he's a very recognizable Nick Cave telling us that, and you'll love this. To the dismay of his manager during lockdown, he decided that he needed to retrain. So he retrained as a ceramicist.

No. Really? Yeah. So the documentary begins with him saying, you know, I've as a ceramicist. No. Really? Yeah. So the documentary begins with him saying, you know, I've become a ceramicist. And then he then shows us a series of figurines. Can I just say you can't become a ceramicist just during that amount of time? Well, he appears, I mean, I imagine he is. It doesn't appear a pottery.

It doesn't mean it's a hobby. Come on, man. So anyway, so he then shows us this series of figurines That tell the story of Satan, okay? Yeah, so it tells the sort of Satan Satan being born and then Not so to be thinks of devil Birth and then going to war and then forgiveness and is this series of you know figurines of the devil like Capodimante that kind of thing I don't know what that means. Okay. It is this series of figurines of the devil? It's like capadimante, that kind of thing. I don't know what that means. Okay, it's a type of figurine.

Again, I don't know what that means, but what kind of figurine is it? Cheap and nasty. So it was a ceramicist joke. Oh, was it okay for a cool wow? Yeah. You went straight niche, didn't you? Absolutely. You went in corner pocket, super niche was kind of tacky.

So at home, the good lady ceramicist ceramic is her indoors is laughing like a drain Yeah, the rest of us are going I don't know what that means Anyway, so he starts off by showing us these that these things that he's been working on and Interspersed with the songs in spurs with the musical performances We hear from Warren Ellis and we hear from Nick Cave We hear from Warren Ellis and we hear from Nick Cave about their process, about the way that they work together, and about how they now see their roles. So here is a clip of Nick Cave talking about whether or not he sees himself as a musician or a writer. And I'm trying to wean myself off those definitions of myself that are about my occupation and see myself as a person.

As a husband, as a father, as a husband and father and friend and citizen that makes music and write stuff rather than the other way around. We could see that. I could watch it in the studio here. It's unusual, isn't it? That was fantastic. It's really great and it's really moving. The songs, the songs are a kind of mix of religion and fable, parables, lost children and painful love and grief and sacrifice and love and death. one of the interesting things about Warren Ellis and Nick K. is the way they look. So Nick K. has that thing, you know, he's that very recognizable here. And the way that he wears his suits, the open neck. And it's kind of somewhere between Elvis and the Pope, the way he does that with his, you know, he holds his fingers like that,

almost like a kind of like a saintly benediction. And he's, He is a really mesmerising presence. And then you have Warren Ellis, who's either this kind of brooding wizard figure on the keyboard, and when he plays the fiddle, it's kind of like part hillbilly, part mirlin, part like a Kafka-esque insect, the way in which he plays this... Was that him conducting the...

Yeah, exactly. So he conducts, and he's the musical director, and he plays the keyboard, and he plays the... Was that in the... ...conducting the... Yeah, exactly. So he's... So he conducts, and he's the musical director, and he plays the keyboard, and he plays the fiddle, and at one point we see him playing a flute in a cardigan. And they are really striking figures, and it's one of the cases in which watching people playing music is really part of the thing. As I said, I had seen the live show in 2021,

but it's kind of like even their physical presence, it's part of the storytelling. And there are moments of humor in it, Mary, and Faithful at one point is brought to do something. And somebody refers to Warren Ellis's as was, she says, did he just call you was? It's what they do, it's just everybody, you know. And they said, well, what do Nick have? What did they call you?

He said, I'm like, just call me Nick. He doesn't get his name cut down. And it does that thing about, I mean, a lot of it is very profound. A lot of it is about love and death and life and loss. And if you're a fan of Nick Cave's lyrics anyway, there's a lot of stuff, it's a long way to find peace of mind. I'm just waiting there for peace to come.

There's a brilliant discussion of the differing ways in which their writing process works. Because Nick Cave talks about the fact that, if he says, there's no point in me bringing a song to Warren because Warren is always on transmit, rather than receive mode. And so you get kind of, you know, Nick Cave doing the thing that he does.

And then Warren Ellis, who's this kind of agent of creative chaos. And um, Nick gave us a whole lot of terrible stuff happens when me and Warren get into the room, but there are these moments when it just gels and Warren Ellis calls it a meditative state. Cave calls it transcendent. And you think, okay, well, that could sound pretentious, except they then play the song. And you go, okay, you can call that whatever you think, okay, well, that could sound pretentious, except they then play the song. And you go, okay, you can call that wherever you want, because it's absolutely sublime. There's a very funny thing, which is talking about the bad seeds. And Nick Caves says, yeah, you know, one by one Warren Ellis was taking out the other members.

And he said, instead, he's been singing a lot more recently than the next thing is going to happen, is it's just going to be him. And then there's also this really interesting thing with him online on the, this thing, the red hand files in which people can just ask questions. And he goes on it online to answer the questions. Some of the questions, obviously, because there's thousands of them. And someone asks, behind it all, the music, the words, the suits, the grief, the tenderness and shame and guilt and joy.

Who are you? And in a way, the film kind of sort of wrestles with that. But again, it doesn't do it in a ponderous way. It does it in a way which is, you know, light and contemplative and very, very often funny. I mean, it is amazing how funny, if you see the live show, how funny, here, more analysed, are on stage in between. I remember reading a review, I remember reading a review that the NME had written of seeing Joy Division playing live in that, in that sort of, you know, breathe hay day and saying the extraordinary thing was that they would be playing these songs that were like people looking into the void. And then afterwards, they'd be just like knocking around at the bar, laughing and joking. And you

couldn't quite get the, but when it, in the live performance, that thing about the humor and the seriousness do sit right next door to each other. They're kind of tragedy comedy, or the divine comedy element of it. There is some astonishing performances. Hand of God is just unbelievable. And Warren Ellis looks like kind of like, you know, like Paganini meets Alvin Stardust and it's really fantastic to watch. Lavender Fields is wonderfully allergic, balcony man that you know, what doesn't kill you just

makes you crazier. And the film's been described as a companion piece to 2016's One More Time with Feeling, which documented the recording of Skeleton Tree. And there's also that fictionalised doc 20,000 days on Earth, which which I had said, you know, less of a biography than a wide screen installation with script and music. I can't recommend this highly enough. If you already love Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, you'll just find yourself transported for the duration of it. If you don't watch it because it will give you some sense of why it is that the people who love what they do love it so much. It's really, really something. So it is, there's the one screening, 850 cinemas across 30 countries, that's next Wednesday, and then I'm sure it'll be available in other places after that, but it's

kind of going to be like a, you know, it's like a global thing and it's really worth seeing. Your emails, once you've seen it, did I say the title inside? It was just called this much I know to be true. Yes, you did it. I'll say it again. It's called this much I know to be true. MUSIC Hi, esteemed podcast listeners. Simon Mayo. And Mark Kermot here. I'm excited to let you know that the new season of the Crown

and the Crown, the official podcast, returns on 16th of November to accompany the sixth and final season of the Netflix epic Royal Drama series. Very exciting, especially because SuperSub and Friend of the Show Edith Bowman hosts this one. Indeed, Edith will take you behind the scenes, dive into conversation with the talented cast and crew from writer and creator Peter Morgan to the crowns Queen Elizabeth in Melda Staunton. Other guests on the new series include the Crowns research team, the directors, executive

producers Suzanne Mackie and specialists such as voice coach William Connaker and props master Owen Harrison. Cast members including Jonathan Price, Selim Dor, Khalid Abdullah, Dominic West and Elizabeth the Bikki. You can also catch up with the story so far by searching the Crown, the official podcast, wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe now and get the new series of the Crown, the official podcast first on November the 16th.

Available wherever you get your podcasts. Happy Nord Christmas. Protect yourself whilst Christmas shopping online and access all the Christmas films from around the globe. Plus, when you shop online, you'll have to give websites your card details and other sensitive data like your personal addresses. Those websites should already have their own encryption built into their payment systems, but to be on the safe side, you can use a VPN to ensure that all data coming to and from your device

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There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money bank guarantee. The link is in the podcast episodeyear plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. The emails to Correspondence at Kermurdermayer.com, for example, who's this Tom Goodfellow in Sydney? Can I also say before you do that, when I say next Wednesday, I mean, this Wednesday coming may the 11th. I just want to be clear about that. I know that I'm overreaking this, but May the 11th is next Wednesday. Did you hear that? I did, but I'm just thinking because we're to Monday now, and there's a Wednesday between us and the Monday. There's a Wednesday

when we should be doing the show, but you're going to the palace. So, next Wednesday, but when you're listening to this, May the 11th. This much I know to be true. I think I've made that clear. Yes. Back to your email. Do you remember who it's from? No. Tom Goodfellow in Sydney. That's who I was saying. Dear rebooted and reloaded,

well, I'm sure you're all very excited about your new bird song free incarnation. I just say this is not the case. No. It's not bird song free. For example, Mark, say something. There you go. And there's proof, the fact that it is not bird song free. For example, Mark say something. There you go. And there's proof the fact that it is not bird song free, it will stay the most bird song showed to make you the appropriate for family listening. But may I raise a point of order, Shtl. Are we STLs now? Are we all STLs now? Are we all

short term listeners? Or do we hold hands retain our cruise privileges from your previous lives? Maybe we need a test establishing our knowledge of how to spell dilemma and mark strong's butt. So I think it's very, I mean, so there's an extent to which everybody is an STL. Yes. But I think maybe there is room for a new category. Okay, which is? Heritage listener. Oh, Heritage listener is good. Mark Goodia had this thing.

He said that he and I are heritage broadcasters. Which basically means we're old. But Heritage, I thought, has a ring to it. So, if you're a short term listener, you're very welcome. If you're a medium term listener, you're very welcome. If you're a medium term listener, you're also welcome. But if you're a long term listener, consider yourselves now a heritage listener. Heritage is good, it's like an artichoke, that's nice.

Like an artichoke? Yeah, isn't there a thing called a heritage artichoke? I don't like artichokes, but I'm sure there's a thing. Do you want to look that up? I do want a heritage. Oh, it's a. Oh Tomato heritage tomato. Yeah, no, it's not heritage artichoke Okay, I still think the word heritage works anyway, so Tom. Thank you for your also called an heirloom tomato Very very useful. We're gonna have a new

Vegetable section on the program. We will actually be delivering vegetables, as Kermit and Mayas take away delivery over each service. Sam on this email, so what do we do now? Is it like stepping out of the MCU? No cannon, no DMs to see Tiger and Mr. H. Dragon, no tinkety-tank, do we have to start all over again, throwing away a hundred years of private jokes and self-referencing, I need structure. I crave predictability, the start of a new era. It'll be good to hear from you again. Sam, all of that still, it all still works.

Yeah, it's all still there. What else is out? What else is new? Okay, so Wildman, directed by Thomas Dennis Koff, who made the elites from a screenplay co-written with modern paper So Rasmus Björg is martin Amman is in the throes of a midlife crisis Trying to rediscover the purpose of his life by heading off into Norwegian woods

And living off the land. We meet him. I think it's about 10 days into this part of his mission stalking his food not very successfully. After bludgeoning and attempting to eat a very small frog, which makes him very, very sick. He's a heritage frog. He's a heritage frog. He goes down into town to a service station where he attempts to get a whole bunch of service station food.

He doesn't have any money, he doesn't have any credit cards, and they won't take fur. Okay. Damn. So he has no choice other than to simply just to take off with the food. Therefore, making him, you know, officially on the run from the law,

goes back into the wild where his path crosses with a drug trafficker who was made off with a bag of money after the car carrying him and his accomplices crashed due to an encounter with a moose, obviously. And meanwhile, his wife played by a Soviet rebel who is from the killing, you saw that you watched killing, right?

Yes. She has had to drive from her home to Norway with her kids and their pet rabbit in tow after being told by the police, the husband has either a, lost it completely or is be in league with international drug traffickers. Right. So do you remember some time ago I was talking about a movie, which I said was a Belgian nudist tragedy comedy called Patrick. Yes. And I said, the thing about it was, it was a film about a guy living in a nudist camp who loses his hammer and his father round about the same time. And he then inherits the camp.

And the whole point of it is that it is set in a nudist camp, but it's really to do with the way in which all the kind of interrelationships between the people in this camp are on the one hand very mundane and urban, and on the other hand very strange because they're all in the woods with no pants on. And this has a similar kind of tone, which is that it's absurdist, but there is also a tinge of melancholia. Although it is clearly, this primary register is comedic. There is a fantastic sequence

in which our two anti-heroes are trying to get across a river with all the food that he has got. And it's like, it's set up like a slapstick joke and it kind of, you know, works exactly like that. There is also another sequence in which the two guys, because they're on the run from the police and they're being followed and they're all trying to make the life work which they can't do.

And they suddenly ship up at this camp, which looks like a Viking encampment. And they suddenly ship up at this camp, which looks like a Viking encampment. And they're met by this ponytail guy who's at the head of the camp, because that stands out. So this is a camp that offers an authentic Viking experience. I think this is it.

We've arrived at Shangri-La. And everyone here is living the authentic Viking life. And if you see anyone doing anything, they're doing it because that's what they need to do because of their way of life. And he then walks up to a stall, which is making some making some food and he's, I can pay for it with my fur. No, no, they just take Mastercard, Visa card, exactly. Meanwhile, the guy with the ponytail not only has a posh car, but also has an iPhone 6. And so they suddenly find themselves

sort of completely disillusioned. Anyway, essentially what it's about is crisis of masculinity, middle age, that moment in which somebody thinks the world isn't making any sense to me. I have a romanticized idea of another world. And somehow if I embrace that other world, I will become more of who I'm meant to be. And he talks at one point about the fact that he just simply couldn't deal with the life that he had. It kind of comes apart in the third act when it becomes rather more formulaic and rather more so obviously knock about and over the top.

But the reason it works is because that central performance is played straight. So it's not played, I mean, it is funny, but he doesn't play it in a kind of goofy comedic way. He sort of played, it's got pathos, but without being pathetic. You sort of, you sympathise with him, but at the same time, you understand that what he's doing is utterly ridiculous. It also reminded me of that film, a woman at war, that Icelandic film in which there's, you know, the woman out tilting at windmills in the shape of power pylons. And there's that idea

about somebody being out of sync with their time and their place. It's like, you know, to the man out of time. Is it the Icelandic film? The Icelandic film. Yes. Did I not say Icelandic? I don't think he did.

Okay, no, the Icelandic film. Yeah, but do you remember me talking about that? Yeah, I went to see it. Oh, did you really like it? I did really like it, yes. There we go. And do you remember the musicians? Yeah.

And because all the incidental music is played by musicians. In shot. Yes, you'll be out there on the mountain and suddenly there's a guy with a euphonia. Yeah, very good. Anyway, so it's called Wild Men, the central joke being that they're not actually that wild, they're actually fairly milder, one of them is indeed a drug smuggler. And I thought it was charming up to a point, it does fall apart in its third act,

but it is nicely skewers that idea of masculinity in crisis in middle age and the idea that somehow we will solve all our problems by going back into the woods and eating frogs because you know what, we won't. And where's it set again? It's set, well, it's in Norwegian woods, where it's a Danish film.

So he goes into the Norwegian woods. Do they speak in Norwegian on Danish, would you say? They speak in not English, Simon. Okay, that's it. It's subtitles. It's subtitles. It's subtitles. Excellent.

Actually, I can probably tell you, I would tell you what language it's in because I've got the IMDB page open here. So, since you asked, since you don't have anywhere else to go. Here we go. Country of origin, Denmark, language, Danish, official site, nor discofilm spring, Denmark, production company, nor discofilm slash spring. Here's Dr Andy Holroyd. Mark and Simon, a few years ago, Mark did a review of your name. Mark and Simon, a few years ago, Mark did a review of your name. The two?

Yeah, which I really loved. The 2016 Japanese animated romantic fantasy film by Makoto Shinkai. I had never been into anime or manga, and the famous studio's jibbley film such a spirited away completely passed me by. Mark's hugely positive review stuck with me, and since the film ended up on a well-known streaming service, and so was free, I remember deciding to watch it on my tablet device, not ideal, whilst getting my then infant son to sleep in his pram

by rocking it with my foot, a skill mastered over many nights. I expected only a few minutes of distraction, but was absolutely blown away by the film. It transported me back to the feeling of some of the favourite films of my youth. I was expected only a few minutes of distraction, but was absolutely blown away by the film. It transported me back to the feeling of some of the favourite films of my youth. I was completely spellbound. I've watched it since many times

and encouraged family and friends to do so. As well as providing me with what has become one of my favourite films of all time, your name has opened up an entire genre of movies and television in the form of Japanese animation, which I had never known, much of which I've enjoyed immensely. So firstly, I wanted to thank Mark and highlight another example of the benefit of reviewers for the movie industry. That's the review reviews. Yes.

Yes. Thank you. But I was also curious if either Marcos I'm a were aware of a particular film which essentially opened them up to a genre which they had previously either dismissed or been unaware of. Best wishes, Dr Andy Holroyd. So have you, have you listened, well, I mean, you've listened to enough of my reviews. There must have been something that I've said that's opened you up to a new genre? I mean, I've watched lots of films because you've told me to. I've refused to watch some films that you do. Because I've told you to. But I'm not sure there is a particular genre that I've thought, oh, maybe I can enjoy in pre-industrial, chaotic Vietnamese movies before the 1930s.

Did you watch Uncle Boon Me who could recall his past lives after I asked you to? I forget. There was one, there was an Apple Chop on the Raster called movie that I did tell you when you did watch it and you said afterwards that you were surprised by how much you had liked it. I mean I've watched lots of films that you've suggested that I watch and been surprised by. Is John Wick a genre movie? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you really love John Wick.

Yes, and because you're not really a kind of action fighting, fighting movie fan, but you thought John Wick was a different type of action fighting. Wasn't it realistic action fighting? It was kill someone with a book in the first 30 seconds. No, I think that would work. But anyway, let's go. Let's go with it, Kiyano. So that kind of works. Anyway, if you feel you want to respond to what Dr Andy has said,

correspondents at kermitandmayo.com. I keep on saying that until everybody knows what to do, how to spell it, or just click on the link on our website or on the app. Tom Hiddleston, by the way. Tom Hiddleston. Tom Hiddleston, plus, I'm gonna do Wake Up Punk next. There we are, okay. Anyway, let's do that then, because I think that's the best time for it. Okay, I've got that down as well.

Wake Up Punk, which is documentary by Nigel Askew, covering the rise of punk under Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood. And the film looks back on that kind of, seminal period, 1976. Contributions from Vivian and Ben Westwood and Joe Kari, who's the son of Westwood and McLaren, who, and then you'll remember this, on the 40th anniversary of Anakin the UK, and there were all these kind of things going on. They couldn't think called it punk London, and

the Mayors office was involved, and the BFI was involved and the British Library were involved. And what he did, what Joe did, was to say that he was going to burn what was reported to be five million pounds worth of punk memorabilia because I'm quoting here, he said, punk was never, never meant to be nostalgic. You can't learn how to be one at the Museum of London workshop. Punk has become another marketing tool to sell you something you don't need. The illusion of an alternative choice conformity in another uniform. And this was because at that point there was, you know, punk master cards and there was this posh hotel that was doing an arc tea.

Very good. Exactly. Go ahead and have an-T. Exactly. Go and have anok-T. So, it's looking back at that, at the, the heyday, the original, you know, setting up the beginning of punk through those anniversaries and through the particularly deceptic eyes of somebody who thinks that the whole anniversary thing is a load of bogus nonsense, here's a clip. When I was a young kid, my parents were considered as anti-establishment, as scum. It wasn't like it is now, my mother was a national treasure. We have t-shirts telling you how to make bombings.

They didn't take them, they only took a sex one. And they said, if you do this anymore, you'll have to button jail. Malcolm and Claire wanted to cause maximum chaos. He was a soccer kid who wanted to take the bottom tin of beans from a supermarket display to see them tumble. Horolce was his mother's victim. So the documentary goes back and forth between past and present, with Vivian Westwood recalling her often quite challenging life with McLaren,

whilst browsing through artifacts, which range from original jackets, you know, bond these jackets to Sid Vicious Action Men dolls. And then their interview is, if you look at the Temple Tudor, Edward Tudor Poll. Excellent. Usually when I say Edward Tudor Poll, you say, Who killed Bamboo? And he actually does that. He does it, he does it actually does that. He does it.

He describes it after Johnny, John Liddon, Johnny Ronald, and he left the sex crystals that Malcolm McClaren came round to him and said, I need you to write who killed Bamboo. And he goes, whoo, whoo. And he goes, I thought that sounded alright. And he sounded weirdly like you doing it. Excellent. Marka Peroni from Adam and the Ants,

that bloke out every boy and our own, our very own Alan Jones. You know, we always said the thing about, when every, if there's any documentary about punk, there's always that thing about no matter what the shot is, if you move the shot slightly to the left, Alan Jones would be in it. Well, in this, you don't even have to move the shot slightly

to the left, Alan Jones is actually in it. Looking back on the time and Alan remembering that the windows of the shop kept getting brick, you know, bricks thrown at it by Teddy Boys because it was all that, you know, it was all that. So, like, mods and rockers thing then became punks and and teds. So, it's an odd film. The things that work about it are sort of, you know, discussions about what punk was and whether or not corporate punk is a terrible idea because, because there's a point when Vivian Westwood says,

before the punk haircut was kind of created and everyone's ended up looking the same, there was this sort of, you know, all-comers-welcome thing, which is people doing whatever they wanted to do and then very quickly it turned into a uniform. So there's this idea that there's this brief heyday in which it is kind of genuinely exciting and creative, but it very, very quickly then becomes uniform. And then the sort of absurdity of the fact that several decades on, this stuff is being lauded and talked about as a great part of the heritage. I mean, this isn't a new thought.

I mean, people have said for ages that it is hilarious that you can come to London and get punk wigs. And it always reminds me of that thing in Wethnall and I, you know, they're selling hippie wigs in Woolworth's Man, that the moment anything gets to be just, you know, they're selling hippie wigs in Woolworth's man, that the moment anything gets to be just, you know, labeling commodified, then it's past. Although that does sit rather oddly with the fact that the whole Malcolm McLaren cash from chaos stuff

was always... We all make cash from chaos. Exactly, but it was always kind of written into the DNA of it. And also now, whilst the stuff is happening with the burning, there is a lot of stuff about, okay, but the reason the burning is happening is because it's saying, we all need to wake up to climate change and we all need to wake up to Extinction Rebellion

and there's Vivian Westwood on a bus saying, when it was punk, we didn't know what the answer was but we now do know what the answer is. It's green energy. And it's actually creative in which the most radical thing you can do is to start using green energy because otherwise the planet is going to be on fire, which actually is factually quite true.

There's also this weird device, which is these dramatized scenes of dekenzian children, sort of like, you know, Fagin's children, explaining how capitalism is rotten and how money is causing the planet to die, which feels like an outtake from the great rock and roll swindle, which of course, famous is the... It's a swindle.

It's a swindle. Well, I was gonna say, does it explain in it or help you to understand anything about how they ended up making records with Ronnie Biggs? It's a problem with cash. Weirdly enough, it does, but not quite in the way you'd expect it to. So yes, oddly enough, that subject does come up in a bizarrely roundabout way.

I suppose the point for me is this. I mean, I was a rocker, really, so that was the thing. And I've always been very suspicious of the whole, yeah, it was like to do with overturning all this stuff because it very, very rapidly wasn't. However, there is first hand reminiscence of people like Alan Jones, who were genuinely, though, Alan still talks about that period with nothing but affection and about how open and creative and how friendly it was and how much everybody really got on well.

The thing about the burning of the clothes puts me in mind of the Bill Drum and KLF thing about burning a million pounds. And you remember that I talked about that documentary best before death, which is about I've always been, I confess, more fascinated by what Bill Drummond and K Foundation, whatever they were called at that point, K-Left did, when they did the thing about going off to Germany, to burn a million pounds, did they actually do it? And they did it very shambollically, and then they did the talk about why did they do it, and they ended up not sure whether they'd done it or whether, and that always seemed to

me to be actually a kind of really intriguing art problem. What did they do? Why did they do it? Did they actually do it? Which was much more kind of about properly problematizing the music industry and what it all meant. In the case of this, this is much more constructed. I do think that the, I do think there's something fascinating about the discussion, about whether something which states that it's primary purpose is anarchic can then be kind of fossilized and looked at and you know, and looked at and you know, academicized. But I also think, like anything else, I'm not sure,

I mean, I still think that probably the most radical thing that happened around that time was a release of play that funky music, white boy or whatever it was. It was a good cherry. It was. So as somebody who is not naturally greatly drawn to documentaries about how fabulous punk was

and how its legacy has been let down. I did find it entertaining. I thought the Dickensian children's stuff, I just didn't care for that at all. I just felt like a completely unnecessary construction. But it was interesting hearing the arguments aired. Where do you stand on punk? Well, I was just gonna say, first year at university, I had a work who was an anarchist, who was on our corridor, Tossel Flats, as they were known, still are.

And properties theft, you know, that's the big anarchist thing. If you tried to borrow any of his records, you know, that's genuinely true, it's a, you know, that's genuinely true. It's a gag, but it's also genuinely true. And at that time, in that year, went to see the clash at Tiffany's in Coventry. Yeah, I love it. And that was the only kind of proper punk gig that I went to. And they were supported by a reggae artist, I think it was called Mikey Dred, who left the stage covered in God, because they were just spitting at him

for about half an hour. And I'm sure I've told you this before, but Joe, so the clash come on. This is like Bank Robber period. Yeah. And everyone starts God, well, so everybody, you know, a load of people, a load of the punks are God being at him.

And he's just, the chronology of this, the time I might be wrong, I think it's after he's recovered from hepatitis, which he got when someone gobbling is going out. That's right, he did, that's absolutely right. And he nearly died. So clearly, he's not enamored with this ludicrous fashion. Anyway, so he said, if anyone else gobs, and as he says that, someone gobs on him, and he takes off his guitar and launches himself into the crowd, and he starts attacking this guy. So the security guys then weighed in from the back.

So there's a huge punch up, and then one of them wholes Joe's drama back onto the stage, and they're carrying on doing the set as though it happens every night. So I'm glad that I went to the gig because it was the clash. The clash were a great band. They were absolutely great. They could really, you know, fantastic. They were, they could really write songs. But I was a little,

I was a little bit too scary middle class art student. I think to be a punk. Yeah. Okay. I think you're, I think you would probably find your tolerance for wake up punk wasn't as great as mine was.

Okay. Where can I see it? It's playing at a number of venues like it's playing at home in Manchester and notting in Broadway, and then it's on demand from the ninth. Well, Mark, it's the ad soon, which I know you're looking forward to. I am, but I just wanted to tell you about how my week has gone. Oh, good, OK. I was driving around Shelby's North London last week, Mark, in my Ford S-Cort Mark III XR III, with a big rubber spoiler and the clover leaf allies.

I got flashed by the dreaded camera, horrible feeling. Anyway, I awaited the dreaded letter in the post, and sure enough, Mark, it came. But it wasn't as bad as you might think. I opened it and it said, speeding fine. I thought, that's good, I thought speeding bad. So that was okay. Anyway, so that cheered me up.

I don't know if I told you about, but the good lady's ceramicister indoors, a ceramicister who's been trained properly and has done it for years, not just, I took it up during lockdown. I do think Nick can't go and say that in an ironic way. But there's a piece in the boat today about how many people have taken up ceramics. Really? Yeah. Free Johnny come lately.

Anyway, but I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, don't, I don't, I don't, I don I thought it was quite funny. This episode is brought to you by Mooby, a curated streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema from around the globe. From myConnect directors to emerging otters, there's always something new to discover, for example. Well, for example, the new AkiKarri's Mackey film Fallen Leaves, which won the jury prize at Cannes, that's in cinemas at the moment.

If you see that and think I want to know more about Aki Karazaki, you can go to Mooby the streaming service and there is a retrospective of his films called How to Be a Human. They are also going to be theatrically releasing In January Priscilla, which is a new Sofia couple of film, which I am really looking forward to since I have an Elvis obsession. You could try Mooby free for 30 days at Mooby.com slash Kermit and Mayo. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash Kermit and Mayo for a whole month of great cinema for free.

A-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N-E-N We're going to talk about local film-related events that are being put on around the country. Because we always, in the old days, used to get emails from people saying, can you talk about our film festival? And we couldn't because there were rules and regulations. Yeah. There are no rules here. Well, there are a few. They're just different rules. Greg Walker and Mark Fanshore have both sent their voice notes in to talk about the Mosh Film Fest and the One Word Film Festival, respectively. Here they are.

Hello, Simon and Mark. I'm Greg Walker. I'm one of the co-founders of Mosh Film Fest in Manchester. We'll be running the 20th or 21st of May in Manchester at Chapel Town Picture House. And Mosh Film Fest is two days dedicated to heavy metal films, be it documentaries, comedies, dramas, concert films, and other heavy goodies. Hello, Simon and Mark and Mark and Simon. The One Word Film Festival is a community curated event running May 20th to 22nd. Only One Word Film Titles allowed, but you choose your own line up. The only film we choose is the closing gala on Sunday 22nd at 8pm, which this year is

Tim Burton's Batman. Follow hashtag owff on Twitter to join in. Thanks to Greg and thanks to Mark. If you've got an event coming up that you'd like us to mention, send us a voice note, please, starting Hi Mark, Simon or Hi Simon, Hi Mark, which I think feels as more balanced as it is. Don't you think? I think Alpha, we're at ABCD, I mean, I come first first, high mark high sign. Here comes a brand new fabulous feature. As people will realize by now, we are covering all the bases here,

whether it's movies, high end TV, but are we neglecting physical media, Mark? We sound like we're neglecting low end TV. Yes, that's what we are. Even mid-range TV, we're not interested in. We're saying no. We're saying no. We're saying no. Take your EastEnders Christmas special.

But we are not neglecting physical media. No. People have been crossing the road to have conversations with me concerned that their physical media is going to be neglected. So these are reassuring words. We're going to champion it. Because who doesn't love stuff? On then to this week's physical product of the week. Is that really what we're going to call this feature anyway? Mark, run through the stuff we can get our hands on.

Well, I've been assured by Simon Paul this is available in any form, whether it's, you know, some of them are steel books, some of them are just DVDs, some of the things you can own, Lancaster, Iron Sky and Iron Sky dictators cut. Weird enough, I was talking to somebody about Iron Sky literally yesterday, although now that you're listening to this, it would have been four days ago. Round midnight on the Criterion Collection. Lucy was the investigates. Witness number three, the turncoat,

sweet inspirations, Jurassic World camp crotaceous, the swimmer, wait, Queen Elizabeth II, the greatest drain, and... Uncharted. Oh, I like a bit of Tom Holland falling out of a plane. So what's the thing of all of those? Should we go for Uncharted just simply because it's lasted the course? Because it's like, you know, hey, we've already covered it already.

Is that disrespectful to the Queen? Oh, well, I haven't seen Queen Elizabeth the second the greatest reign. So I can't... Is it a follow-up to Queen Elizabeth the first? Greatest reign. Well, Queen Elizabeth the second was in many ways to follow up to Queen Elizabeth the first. That's just how it works.

Okay. If you'd like to get in touch, correspondents at kermedermayer.com. We're email from Zray Sahooka. Because you know earlier, we were talking about Zoroastrianism. Yes. Well, Zray chips in, long time listener, heritage listener, first time caller, and personally agnostic, but was raised with Zoroastrianism as I'm a passer. The concept of good thoughts,

good words and good deeds is simple, but always pushes me to be better. Not being a religion, one, usually can convert into, is something that always challenges and interests people. PS, I would love to see you take the show down under to New Zealand. Well, there's the thought. Thank you, Zare, very much for getting in touch. Shall we do that? Go to New Zealand. Because they've said we can now. They've said, you know, they're about to be their borders. In New Zealand, do they refer to us as down under? No. Because they could be them upstairs.

No, because obviously there is no down or up. That's true. It's like that thing in them, in Doctor, when Christopher Eccleston was Doctor Who, and whoever it is says to him, if you're from out of space, if you're from another planet, how come you sound like you're from the North? And Chris Reckleton says, lots of places have gotten north. Yes, that is very true. I seem to remember Nikki Campbell objecting to Mark and Lard saying that they were from the north, because Nikki would say, if you come from Scotland, you're Southernist. But that's like at the Shetland Film Festival, you go down South to Glasgow.

So, yeah. Anyways, Z Zare, thank you very much. MUSIC Well, our very special guest, our first guest on the take, is the one and only Tom Hiddleston. One of the stars of the Essex Serpent will have a chat with Tom after you've heard a clip from the TV show. Welcome back, some tools.

What are you hoping to find? A tangible link to our past. To the creatures that came before us. To what you think is out there. Maybe. But how can a dead fossil prove the existence of a living one? I can't, but it might give us hints, balloons. You really believe that? I think I believe.

I have a story of the difference between thinking and believing. Perhaps one day you can teach me. Anyway, so that's a clip from the Essex Submit, new TV show, Apple TV Plus. Tom Hiddleston joins us from a palatial bedroom or office or hotel suite. Yes. Hello. Hello, both.

Thank you so much for having me. What an honor to be the first guest on the take. I'm so I feel very humble and privileged. Thank you. Well, thanks, ma'am. Fantastic opening to the interview. I have to say the last time you were on the show, well, I was looking at photographs of this just this morning. You were playing your guitar. That was I saw the light. We played music together. I played a pre-pandemic world. We all played music together. That's right.

We stood in the same room. We played instruments in the same room, which was a kind of joy. You played it extremely well. I know you play it all the time. And I was thinking about accents because to my English ears, your American accent is Hank Williams' fantastic. An India-Six serpent, Claire Daines, I haven't heard of doing English accent before, but it's

no perfect, isn't it? Absolutely perfect. I mean, it's, she's really astonishing. She had this ability to jump, also, enviable, to jump in and out of the accent. So there's no sort of staying in the accent all day. You know, she's Claire Daines, you know, New York born and raised when she's talking about lunch and how windy it is on the Essex coast and then she's chorusy born and she's magically a late-19th century

widow from London. So take us so the year is 1893, I think take us into the world of the Essex serpent and introduces to your priest Will Ransom, who you play in the show. Yes, the year is 1893 and we are on a stretch of the easternmost east coast of England in Essex. A teenage girl has gone missing, something is bumping into the fishing boats. Recently there has been an earthquake which has dislodged all kinds of fossils in the soil. Charles Darwin has recently published the Origin of the Species, the natural order and our means of explaining the experience of being alive is changing.

The power of reason is growing, the power of organized religion is possibly dwindling. And perhaps this earthquake has also, alongside these fossils, has dislodged a winged beast beneath the surface of the black water estuary, a figure from folklore. The Essex serpent come to steal your children and haunt your dreams. Korra Seaborne, played by Claude Ains, is a wealthy widow from London who has an interest in the natural sciences. And in her newfound release from her marriage finds herself on the Essex coast in search of answers and chasing her curiosity and she encounters the local Vicar, a very rational man who's also probably Red Darwin and Lyle, but is

trying to contain the anxieties of his parishioners who are a very gold-fearing community and believe or are starting to worry that the serpent has returned. So he will ransom, I play this Vicar, and he's trying to quell the fear of the community and Kora has come with all her curiosity to provoke more questions and answers, should we say. There, thereby. So what is, just tell us more about Will Ransom, your priest. You must have been intrigued by the characters from Sarah Perry's novel, a very successful novel at the end of the year.

What's he doing in this village called Old Winter? What is, because he is a very learned man. Maybe we feel he's a bit out of place there. Anyway, tell us about Will. Well, there's a lovely passage in Sarah Perry's novel, which I think is really the novel itself is very evocative and I found very moving. And there's a great insight into him where Will and Cora seem to disagree about lots of things. They disagree about the sort of the fundamentals of life,

but they are a spark is ignited between them, which is one of intellectual curiosity and companionship. And there's a bit where they're walking along. Will is showing Cora the sights where she can dig. And she's saying, what are you doing out here on the Essex coast? You know, what's a man like you're doing all the way out here? And he says, well, what are you doing out here on the Essex coast? What's a man like you doing all the way out here? And he says, well, I, you know, they're friends of mine or people in my parents

and my family thought I should be, you know, go into politics or go into the law and perhaps I should be negotiating some minor point from the back benches, but I didn't want that. What I wanted was purpose, not achievement. I'd rather be guiding an atheist back to the God who never left him and I have an equal in my wife's stellar. And I love that the idea of this quite educated man, seeming to prefer or be called to what seems on the surface to be a simpler life, but is perhaps a deeper life,

a life that's more engaged with the soul, more engaged with nature, and Clio Barnard, who might know you both know well and know her work, she directed me towards the poetry of William Blake, that wills conception of God sort of resides in the majesty of the natural world and he loves being in it. I confess we shot a lot of it on the Essex coast. Amazing locations I'm almost embarrassed to say I had never visited before. A very ancient wild place and it is a kind of wilderness, the old marshlands. It's so tidal and so wet that it looks very much the same as it ever did. Can you tell us something about working with Clio?

Because obviously Clio Barnard is directed, the Arba, the selfish giant, which was a huge hit, Dark River, and Allian Avery is just out in cinemas at the moment and he's doing wonderfully in such a terrific film. And it must have been a very different experience for her to go from Allian Aver, which is a very low-budget movie, which she was making, you know, a very familiar territory, to doing something like Essex Serpent. What was it like to work with her on this?

I loved working with Clio, and I met her for the first time many years ago. I think actually a decade ago we both had, I was in a film of Joanna Hoggs that was screening at the London Film Festival and she also had a film there. But I remember that we both remember that meeting very fondly and she sent me an extraordinary letter about the project when the script arrived. I'd always been curious about her process, her reputation speaks for itself as a director of actors too. She's incredibly open and kind and careful.

I can't imagine that her process with us was any different to her process on any of her own features, which was to really dig deep into investigating the human dynamics and the complexity of these relationships. There are very, very complex feelings, deep soulful human feelings contained in the story, and she wanted to allow all those complexities to emerge in a most organic way, and I found collaborating with her was really enjoyable. And also very tall, yes, very tall. Indeed, I could always spot her in, she was always silhouetted against the grey sky. On the issue of the serpent, as I understand it,

this is not a myth which was created by Sarah Perry for the book. This is a story that was around and she's just used this story to make the tale. Is that right? Yes, I believe actually she and her husband were driving back from somewhere one day. She's from Essex and her husband said, oh, this is where they saw the serpent. She said, excuse me what? And she said, yeah, the Essex serpent, it's like the Loch Ness monster.

It's supposed to hang around in the estuary. And she said, the whole story came to her in a flash of inspiration. And she sort of worked out the plot by the time they got home 40 minutes later in a sort of skeleton way. And I think this idea of, we're always compelled by what we can't see or what we don't fully understand,

especially if we sense that something is out there. And there's something about water. You know, great stories are always, we don't fully understand water, the ocean, the sea. I personally find it very compelling and very unwell-wis drawn to it because it's not our territory as human beings. And yet we're aware of powerful forces

beneath the surface which may have answers for us. With that sense of not understanding water also taps into the religion element because one of the things that happens in one of the first couple of episodes is somebody immediately imagines that if the serpent has come back and taken a child, that it's because of their sin, that somehow this is sinful

distribution. And there is a sense that they're living in a kind of never world between this world and the next. Quite right. And I think a serpent has always been a symbol of, you know, that we talked a lot or Sarah talked a lot about the story as an excavation of faith as much as anything, that actually both reason and any religious or spiritual vocation require a leap of the imagination or a similar leap of faith, but that if you start to investigate any conception of morality, be it a theistic or atheistic, serpents are these morally

unbivalent creatures, and it's not an accident that in Eden, and Sarah is very aware of this in the biblical tale. It is a serpent that tempts Eve, a serpent as an incarnation somehow of the devil. It's interesting that you should major on that, obviously, because it's about the serpent and you are a priest, but there are so many big ideas in this series. You know, the faith in science,

which we heard a kind of refer reference to in the clip at the beginning, socialism, inequality, feminism, is all part of the swamp lands that you're living in, isn't it Tom? I mean, obviously none of them, three of us weren't there, but my understanding is that the late night essentially was a very turbulent time of very, very fast and upheaval and change. The world was changing very quickly. Methods of communication were changing quickly and also our means of understanding our lives. We're changing very fast and I think that's why it resonates with our age now,

is our world seems to be changing extremely fast and sometimes faster than our minds can keep up with, the way we communicate, the way we root ourselves or find a root that can supply or yield meaning for us. I think all of that is really present and vital in our story. All these characters who are maybe arrive at the beginning of the story and they think they know who they are. They think they have certainties they can cling on to. But there's a turbulence in the story and everybody's certainties are challenged and questioned. And the world is changing and things are going to be very different.

And particularly it is worth saying in these extraordinary women that Sarah Perry has created. The great thing about our new format is that, obviously, everyone just wants to spend as much time with Tom Hiddleston as they possibly can. I certainly do. Yes. So that's the end of part one of our conversation.

But the great thing is, in take two for super subscribers, top-notch subscribers, they get more with Tom. More Tom. Even more Tom. And more Tom is what the country needs. I think the gift that keeps giving. Okay. But for now, Tom Hiddleston, one of the stars of the Essex Serpent, Apple TV Plus news

series, we appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you both. So I know we've mentioned this before, but just to be clear, the Essex Serpent is out next week on Apple TV Plus and mark will be reviewing it next week. Next week. Thanks to Tom, more with Tom on our other take, by the way. Take two if you want more with Tom Hiddleston. And who wouldn't? Well, I would want as many takes as I could get with Tom.

That's the worst. What else is out? Cabaret is 50 years old, which exactly, which I find alarming. February is 50 years old, which exactly which I find alarming. To celebrate its 50th anniversary it's back in selected cinemas. This is Bob Fossies 1972 adaptation of well originally the 1960s Candre and Ebb stage musical with the book by Jamaster off which was based on the play I'm a camera which was in self-inspired by the writings of Christopher Ishward, good boy to Berlin from the Berlin stories, and actually other other elements from that as well. Set in decadent Berlin in the years between the wars against the backdrop of the rise of Nazism. Now I am assuming that most people will have seen Cabaret, but in case you haven't, lies him in early one Oscar for her portrayal of Sally Bowles, who is the nightclub entertainer at the Kit Kat nightclub, for whom Michael York's innocent abroad falls.

And what happens is that the story of their relationship, which then becomes a sort of a three-way relationship, max, plays out against the changing backdrop of the country. Here is a clip from Cabaret. I am a most strange, extraordinary person. Now, tell me all about you. I want to hear everything. Everything. Absolutely everything. Well, there's nothing very dramatic to tell. Well, since I came down from Cambridge... Lea DePuddy, absolutely my favorite screen-siring.

Well, when I left Cambridge... I'm going to be a great film star. That is a booze and sex. Don't get me first. Do I shock you, darling? Not a bit. sex don't get me first. Do I shock you, darling? Not a bit. I don't. And down with the Nazis. And of course, if, you know, during that clip,

if you could see it, there's a swastika kind of goes past them during the course of the narrative, you see the rise of Nazism happening, and it kind of happens from beginning of the movie in the background and sort of as something which is peripheral to something which then rises during the course of the narrative. Lysman Ali won an Oscar and deservedly so for her performance, which is extraordinary. The film also won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor for Joel Gray, who is the MC, who is,

you know, that is one of the kind of the great defining roles of musical theater and his performance in it is extraordinary. And also one best director, best cinematography, best art direction, best sound, best original song and score adaptation and best editing. In fact, Cabaret holds the record for the most Oscars for a film that didn't win best picture. Yes, do you know what beat Cabaret in 72?

And here's the clue, it's something else that just had its anniversary. So therefore you and I were talking about it quite a lot. Oh, I don't know. The Godfather. Again, okay, well, no exactly. At least it's not a happy. No, at least it's not Green Book.

Or you know, or Triving Miss Daisy, at least it lost to something that you can probably say, well actually, you know, fair argue, there you go. If you find yourself in a year up against the Gold Father, it's going to be, it's going to be tough. I think Cabaret is an extraordinary piece of work. The last time I saw it projected was three or four years ago, Child One wanted to go and see it at the Prince Charles, because it was on her birthday, and she's a big fan of it. And I had seen it first, I think at Manchester University film society, because they used to do, you know, screenings of classic movies, and we talked about deer hunter being shown. But they showed it, and I remember exactly as I did with sound of music, going in thinking, well, I'm not really interested in this very much because it's just gonna be a music,

cause I've been there actually, oh no, it's substance, it's about something. It is often cited as the musical that you can love if you don't like musicals, because all the music is diagetic, all the music happens in the nightclub. So you have the action playing out, and you have the songs which are commenting

in a kind of Greek choric way on the action, but the songs are happening in the nightclub where life is beautiful, the girls are beautiful, even the orchestra is beautiful. And so it's a way of integrating song and dance with drama without you ever having to buy into the convention of people bursting into song during musicals, which I know is something that you have a big problem with. Yeah, well, I've always thought I don't really like musicals, apart from all the musicals I really like. They really like, exactly.

And of which this is one and of it as another and so on. Yes, it is rather strange in some musicals, but clearly not in this one. The songs are astonishingly here, were me, you know, kind of the cabaret money, money, mine hair. Maybe this time it wasn't written for it, but you know, it then becomes that kind of great siren song, two ladies. And as the film goes on and events, world events, take a turn for the sinister, the kind of enjoyable decadence of what's happening in the club becomes more and more pointed. We get to the rendition of, you know, if you could see her through my eyes, the only musical sequence that happens outside of the kickcat other than

her playing the records is the sequence when they sing tomorrow belongs to me, which is absolutely terrifying. And of course, that does happen again. It is digested because it's meant to happen suddenly. This kind of young, you know, area and youth stands up and start singing tomorrow belongs to me. And everyone starts standing up and joining. And it's horrifying. And it's actually brilliant, the way in which that, because that song was written for Cabaret, I mean, it sounds like it's going to be existed for just a bit of written for Cabaret. And the way in which everyone gets up and sings this stirring anthem is absolutely terrifying.

I think it is one of the kind of the great moments of horror cinema. And perhaps the genius of the film is the way that it goes from being a musical that's so widely parodied, because everybody knows that kind of the iconic image of you know, Liza Monelle on stage, the Kit Gat and Joel Gray. And it goes from being that it moves almost imperceptibly into this nightmarish scenario. I'm a fan of Fossies other film, All That Jazz, which I thought was really, really good, with Roy Shider, you know, Shodown. And if you like Cabray, he's really, really worth checking out All That Jazz,

which I think is a brilliant film. But Cabray is one of those things that even 50 years later, it still seems very relevant and very cutting edge. When I was a kid, the posters for it, because it was an ex-rated film back when we were young. And it was Cabaret, which is, I didn't even understand what the word was, didn't know what Cabaret meant. I thought it was called Carbitt. You know, it's about often happens,

you see it, it's like, you don't know what the word, Cabaret, and then it was lies in Menel it, it's like, you know, you don't know what the word, the cabaret, and then it was lies in Manelli, but it was like, on the image was on the side, and her, you know, on the chair on the KitKat Club, and then the X rating, and so it always seemed to be kind of strangely forbidden. And that's just why I remember seeing it for the first time at the film site in Manchester.

And I must have seen it 10, 15 times since then, but anyway, Cabaret, 50th anniversary, back in cinemas, and well worth seeing project, because as I said, I saw it at the Prince Charles in London about three or four years ago, and it just looked dynamite. New feature time, yes, another one. We're not really sure what this one's called. Do you I think to the ineptitude of the production team? Yes, it's just a bunch of symbols. Okay. Standards have slipped. It appears. It's a plus symbol, a slash, and then a takeaway

symbol. Okay. As in a minus. Anyway, it's not a takeaway as in, you know, you get your food here. It's a recommendation feature, basically, plus slash minus. For anything that's worth watching on all streaming and catch-up services. So basically, this is, if you've seen something that you think is great, you drop us a line.

Do you remember the email address? Correspondence at comodanmayo.com. Yes, that is correct. Yes, I do remember it. They were very good. Curtis Threadgold coming home in the dark on Netflix is powerful and terrifying. And as far as I can tell, has been largely ignored.

Well worth a look. Tom Butler Gaslit on Starplays UK's The Best Show on TV right now, in my opinion. Simon Hepworth, grace of my heart, rent on Apple TV, never fails to deliver. Okay, so stop, stop, stop. If you can rent Grace of My Heart on Apple TV, stop whatever you're doing, stop listening to this podcast, just stop. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Brill building, which is inspired by the life of Carol King, and it is just fantastic. And it has original songs written by the likes of Elvis Costello and Bert Bakerak, and it's just,

and it got so overlooked, because it came out back to back with that thing you do. Simon Hepworth, you see where you've started. Mark Stewart says, Mark has often spoken about his love for the Shirley Jackson book, The Hauntedville House. So I'd love to get his thoughts on the Netflix series adaptation by Mike Flanagan. I thought it was an incredibly clever and moving interpretation. Have you seen any? I haven't, but actually Mike Flanagan's an interesting filmmaker, so I will have a look at it.

AKG says going to go for St. Francis, which is on Netflix currently, deserves to be seen by more people. which is on Netflix currently, deserves to be seen by more people. Crystal says, slow horses on Apple TV Plus has us hooked, brilliant cast, which is of course, Gary Oldman, Chris Scott Thomas, Jonathan Price, and so on. Brilliant cast, looking forward to the final episode, as I have no idea where it's going to go, that final episode has now is now there and available. David Hopkins says, a beautiful day in the neighborhood is on Netflix. While it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood received very warmly. Would you be my...

I mean, increasingly convinced, somewhere has hurt my friend, that it was sorely underrated. Have you hurt my friend? Being an absolute masterpiece. Thank you, David. Mike Rudd says, I know this will be unpopular.

I'm going to find that hard without a helmet, aren't you? Dave, you're going to find this next comment difficult for Mike Rudd. I know this will be unpopular, but bait is too interested in the mechanism of making and the result makes it looks like someone's GCSE drama project. Steve Marsh, there's one called exorcist, the beginning. No! Totally opens up the franchise and improves on all previous entries. No. Anyway, if you've seen something and recommendation of Word of mouth is fantastic and is never more useful than now when there are so many different places to watch stuff, if you've

seen something that we might have missed, send us an email, correspondents at www.curmideomeo.com Dr. Strange of Weo. Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which is the latest in the ever-expanding Marvel universe written by Michael Waldron, whose credits include the Disney Plus series Loki, starring Arton, starring Twiddleston, yes, and directed by Sam Raimi, best known to many as the Helmer of the Spider-Man trilogy starring Toby McGuire, but to me as the director of the evil dead more on that incidentally in later. Take two. Take two. Take two. So, Remy took over after Scott Derrickson

had done the previous Doctor Strange movie, stepped away. I think it was amicable as far as I can tell. Anyway, so, film opens, and bearing in mind, I'm going to avoid spoilers. I'm very kind of aware of kind of Marvel spoilers and all the rest of it. I often find it quite hard to spoil Marvel movies anyway, because I'm going, I'm sorry,

which bit of my mental, which bit of my knockback. Okay, that's fair enough. It opens with what looks like a very shonky CG chase that turns out to be a dream. Dr. Strange wakes up. He's still basically in mourning for the fact that he didn't wind up with Christine, but he's dreaming of another girl.

A girl he's never met, but whom he then meets. America Shavvets, played by Soshii Gomez. She is a multiverse traveler, although she appears to have no power over her traveling. And indeed, the fact that she has the power, but she doesn't have power over it, has caused her both great sadness and place to in great danger. She is being chased by a huge one-eyed octopus-y creature that looks oddly like the giant starfish out of the suicide thing.

Suicide squad. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Olson's Wanda Maximum of A.K.A. Scarlet Witch has also been dreaming. She's been having wander visions. Oh, thank you. So it was just like that. 10 out of 10. Thank you.

Of two adorable children, with whom she longs to be united, but in another universe. Every night, she says, I have the same dream. And every morning, the same nightmare. We have a clip of the big tentically attacky thing. The thing is he's not very dialogue heavy. But if we play it because we've got pictures here, I can audio describe it.

Don't be used for the trick here. I'll close my eyes. OK, so here we go. Here's the clip. So, straight, OK, so he fly flying in with the straight case. Oh, is she running around? Car flies in. He's looking to see what happened. Now a bus is lifting up into the...

What is possibly lifting this bus? He does a thing with his hands and now he can see the big tentacles thing. There it is. With the one eye, everyone else running away, but he's going towards it. Now he's doing the thing with his hands. Now he's splitting the bus apart and the tentacles thing is moving backwards. No, no, it's going back into it. Now he's cut one of the tentacles off. The tentacle has come off. The eye is enraged and the gum is falling. He saves her. Oh, thank goodness. With the living cloak which now comes back, he's got the hair thing.

The tentacle monster is still smashing, crashing the bite. She saved. She saved the capes back on him. But now she's pointing to it because he's gonna throw the bus at him Is it gonna get him? No, no, he's sawed it in half with a giant shiny saw Wow, I mean that was to be honest. I didn't need the pictures You didn't I was I was painting pictures with words all I needed was you talk. I could listen to a whole Marvel film Described like that. So here's the thing with Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Firstly, it's directed by Sam Raimi and this is important because it's always the question

whenever these movies come up, how much a director actually has control in wrestling the behemoth of a huge superhero movie? So you know, you'll have the franchise, and then you have the director, and it's how much is the stamp? And it's like when, you know, Chloe Jowel was doing it, how much is that a franchise movie? And how much is it a Chloe Jowel movie? In the case of this, it is a blockbuster. It is, you know, it is a film that is absolutely

wedded into all the different adjacent sections of the ever-expanding universe. But it is also a Sam Raimi film. There is a theme of possession. There is a damnable book that seems to feed on our desires and must be dealt with. There are witchy spells, there are haunted eyes. There are scary apparitions.

There's even a nod, there's a nod to a scene from Carrie, which I know is a film that Remy is a fan of. And there's a bit, when I, without wishing to spoil anything, when a hand comes up from sort of the grab, which relates back to the original poster for the evil dead, when the evil dead first came out to the early audience. Now these are just flashes, but they are there. And what they tell you is that Ramy does at least in the same ways he did with Spider-Man 2, particularly. He is still putting his stamp on it. There's also a delightful cameo by Bruce Campbell,

who of course is kind of Sam Ramy's lucky charm. He was the star of Evil Dead, star of Evil Dead 2. He's the author of the brilliant autobiography, If Chin's Good Kill, which is such a fantastic memoir of being a B-movie actor. He gets a cameo that specifically refers to Evil Dead 2. As for the rest of it, hardly groundbreaking does what it says on the tin. The multiverse idea is clearly the future of the franchise things. Obviously, into the spiderverse, no, we are going to have a lot of multiverses coming up. And I mean also this film's coming like everything

everywhere all at once, so I think is next week. The multiverse is the current playing field for how we're going to, so we're going to get a lot of this. It's a very big playing field. It's a very big playing field and what it allows you to do is to connect, particularly if you've got sort of expanded franchises, it allows you to connect things that are in different areas, including from film and television and comic strip, you know, from loads of different sources, because you say, well, it's all the multiverse, all these. And of course, this does, they relate back to Doctor Who and the three doctors and the five doctors and the fact that, you know, that kind of meta-textual stuff has existed, you know,

for a very long time. The interesting thing is that Benedict Cumberbatch, whose hair is always a source of amazement to me in the Doctor Strange role, because when you first meet him, he's got the kind of the full helmet hair, you know, with the black, you know, like, black with the bits at the side. And then in the other incarnations, there were different hairstyles. And he's very good. He's very good at delivering the, you know, the stuff that Doctor Strange has meant to deliver while talking very seriously and not taking the mic out of the wall and waving his hands. Waving his hands.

There's a lot of handy wavy. There's a lot of somethings approaching, so I'll do the thing. You could do that. I could do, except I don't have the superpowers, but I could do the thing, and also I'm not meant to come and watch. Who did want to punch me, if you remember?

I do. Weedy little punch. What's it? I could take it. It could take it a bit. What's really fascinating is that the core of the story is actually Elizabeth Olson's character. And it's really her movie rather than his movie, and she's really very good in it.

Because her character is driven by a mixture of grief and that grief then turns into something else, which becomes kind of threatening. And she manages to inject real emotion into scenes which are far from real, in scenes in which we are kind of in the most absurd CG-inhanced, you know, super hero multiverse. And yet, in the middle of it, is Elizabeth Olson doing the thing that makes you think I believe that that character is experiencing that emotion at exactly this moment. And I thought what was really fascinating was while Remy is doing all his stuff, you

know, the nods to the movies that he made and the nods to the movies that he loves. And while the franchise is doing its stuff, which is here is big spectacle, here is all these bits being interconnected and locked together and then we have the stuff that during the end credits sequences, I do stay for the end credits sequences instantly. You've got, at the heart of it, Elizabeth Olson's Wander, being really engaging in a way that I hadn't expected. I mean, it is all a bit messy. There's a very funny, unexpected musical battle, which reminds you that Raimi always loved sort of, you know,

end of the piece slapstick. And he was, and Raimi was always a three-stages fan, that was his whole big thing. And there's a dizzying array of, you know, characters from other movies, which I won't go into at all because I think one of the joys of the films is discovering that for yourself. I've hit the microphone again. I'm doing the Doctor Strange and maybe thinking of me striking the microphone as I do it. But actually, it was much more fun than I expected.

It did feel like Remy was making a movie which had loads of himself in it. And although it's called Dr. Strange, it really should have been called Wander, and Elizabeth Olson is actually the star of it, and she is great. BELL RINGS So let's do the box office top 10.

So the American number 13 is uncharted. Really? Yes. And it's out now to buy on 4K Ultra HD, a blue ray and DVD from the ninth of May in any way. So, but it's still hanging around in America. The top 10 here at number 10 KGF chapter two. Which I haven't seen.

I have been off, but I haven't read a review of it either. So if anyone's going to review it, please let us know. Yeah, we would love that. Please correspond to ccumamero.com. Number nine is would love that. Please correspond to co-in-a-mail.com. And number nine is Morbius, which is the same in the UK and the US. Load of old pants. Well, let's see what John from Manchester thinks. Okay.

Possibly one of the greatest films ever made. The decision to make Morbius a completely bland and boring character was inspired and the deliberately terrible performance by Leto was a fascinating choice. Honestly, the main criticism I can level at this film was the inclusion of Jared Harrison Matt Smith, veteran performers who were frankly trying too hard. Can I just wait one minute, Ken?

He's not even the best Jared in the film. That's the thing! They were frankly trying too hard, but not too hard trying hard the way Simon has it, oh no. And his performances looked amateurish next to Leto's brilliance. Thank you, that's that kind of thing. Number eight in the UK number 11 in the States is the Batman.

Which I liked. I've now seen it a couple of times, and you saw it twice as well, yeah? Well, that's slightly spooky, because I only saw it twice last night. yeah? Well, that's slightly spooky, because only so it twice last night. Oh, but I watched it again. I thought you'd seen it twice. No, okay, well fun, but I was right.

So we're, we're, genetically linked. That the advantage of seeing it the second time was that there was nobody snotting out. That's right. Okay, we'll go through. Shall we be talking about it in more detail later on in another part of this podcast? In take two.

In take two. In Simon and Mark and Simon's spoil. In Simon and Mark and Simon's spoil everything. We've got a Batman spoiler session coming up. So that's the Batman's number eight. Number seven is the unbearable weight of massive talent. Which is five in America. Which should be more fun than it is.

I mean, it's kind of... The trailer makes you think, oh great. I mean, it's kind of... The trailer makes you think, oh, great, you know, it's kind of... It's, you know, it's Nick Cage and it's going to be, you know, not Nick Cave. Nick Cage and it's going to be, you know, adaptation, clever and all of that. And then it sort of isn't. It becomes... It becomes very ordinary much too early. And I... It's a better pitch and a better trailer than it is. It's not terrible, but it's just nothing like, it's nothing like as mad as it should be. Number four in the states, number six here is the Northman. Adamoke, I'll go first.

Adamoke, the Northman was one of the most intense, visceral experiences I've ever had at the cinema. Brutal, transcendental, ludicrous, a breathtaking achievement I half-expected the room to burst into applause at the end. I have to assume that like me they were simply too exhausted. James Parkhouse, well I did go and see the Northman last night whilst it looked and sounded amazing. I did find it pretty dull and there were regular checks of the watch to see how long it had been. The level of accuracy which is very good is clearly there but came at the expense of telling a good story ended long it had been. The level of accuracy, which is very good, is clearly there, but came at the expense of telling a good story, ended up a bit

of Hamlet, Braveheart, and Gladiator without ever finding its own story. Nine out of 10, for the way that the period was reimagined, five out of 10, for the story. I mean, it is Hamlet because it shares the, just Shakespeare used the Viking with the Hamlet story. So the Hamlet narrative is in there. There's also, in terms of it, as a film, there's kind of some revenge of the Sith and a bit of Zardos and a bit of Excalibur.

So here's the thing with this. So it's directed by Robert Eggers, who made the lighthouse and before that made the witch. And who is a really brilliantly, just moving on from that slightly sniffy email before about Mark Jenkins' bait. Robert Eggers is clearly a kind of kindred spirit with Mark Jenkins in terms of somebody who's interested in the tactility of film, the medium of film, and the way in which film is a storytelling tool.

And his first two features, both of which, and I think they're like four and nine million dollars each, are really extraordinary pieces of work. Whether or not, I mean, I know that because you interviewed Robert Pattinson for the liars, or did you interview Willem DeFoe? Willem DeFoe. Okay.

And it's the liars is incredibly intense film. It certainly is. Certainly, it's like it's low on laughs. Very, very low on laughs. But you know, but a really intense thing. And the worst film to watch in lockdown, that was definitely. Yeah, you've got to come up with it absolutely. In the case of the Northman,

the budget for the Northman has been reported at somewhere between 70 and $90 million. And when I saw it, what was interesting was, I thought, I'm a Robert Eggers fan, and I think that there is something really exciting about the idea that Robert Eggers has been allowed to make this movie at this scale. However,

I would be really surprised if the movie, for whatever it's, you know, it's strengths or failures. And I think it has strengths and failings. There's no way it's going to make its money back because it's a Robert Eggers Viking movie. You know, the script is covered with Sean, so it's, you know, probably every diet and it knows its subject matter. It has a terrific central performance. Here's Robert Eggers himself set, you know, set at the beginning and we're going to make the Viking movie. I think it's entirely possible that there is a claim for that being the case.

But it was never going to be the kind of blockbuster hit that a film would need to be to make a 70 slash $90 million budget work. And the problem is that because it has underperformed the box office, it kind of gives studios a shot across the bowels in terms of do not stray off the straight narrow when it comes to franchise fairs. So there are things about it that look great. The soundtrack is really evocative. There are elements of all these kind of classic myth stories,

whether it's Viking stories or Shakespearean translation of Viking stories or Arthurian legend where all this stuff is in there. And it's brutal, it's kind of acts in the face brutal. The problem is it also has the whole car speaking English in Nordic sounding accents, which partly you could say, okay That's because you know, it's a it's a range of different Different voices, but if you want to see it in the cinema go and see it in the cinema sooner rather later because it isn't going to be in Cinemas for much longer. Now the bad guys is the American number one is the UK number five. Sally Lake says, the bad guys was enormous fun,

like a cross between Zootropolis and Ocean's 11 and the voice talent is fabulous too. Yeah, that's kind of fair. It's flimsy but fun. Number four is Operation Mincemeat. Sarah Hay says, we all including 220 year olds with strong opinions enjoyed Operation Mincemeat, although I may have been biased by the fact

that three of the actors have played my favorite Jane Austen characters. And Steven Taylor says, Mark and Simon, having watched Operation Mincemeat a few weeks ago, while I enjoyed the film's depiction of London during wartime, I couldn't help but be distracted by Kelly McDonnell's accent

as it danced all over the place from the West Country to Scotland. Oh, I think that's unfair. Steve Taylor winner of the 100 meters at William Brook School in Shropshire Sports Day 1975. Anyway, Operation Min Speed No. 4. It's an old fashioned drama. I mean, it's a wartime story that's been told before

on film. And John Jason Isaacs himself said that his role is basically since we all know how the war turned out, and since we therefore, most of us probably know that the operation of dropping a corpse into the sea so it washed up and with its fake papers will then be taken to Nazi high command to distract their attention from where the allies are actually aiming to invade. We all know that it worked out all right. Spoiler.

And no, I know. But then, as I said, Jason Spence, he spends the whole movie going, it's never going to work. It's never going to work. It's never going to work. Well, the audience goes, but it did. I know it did.

It's like, well, I thought it was kind of fun. It is a solidly old-fashioned telling of a stranger than fiction story that does manage to once again remind you of how completely astonishing it is that the operation did do what it was meant to do. Number three in the UK is the Lost City. Which I haven't seen, but you have. Yes, hence Sandra Bullock.

Yeah. Being on the show, the Lost City says Mr. Speedy, right? If you've seen the trailer, you've pretty much seen the first act of the film. It felt like it went a bit flat for a while in the middle, then picked up for the big, but predictable ending, fairly entertaining. Aiden Martin, I was disappointed by the Lost City. The cast were great and it started out well, but over time it became exactly what it was satirizing,

complete with a damp squib of an ending. And Paul Bees says, I was pleasantly surprised by the lost city. It's not pushing any boundaries, but as an amusing bit of escapism, it's pretty good. Surprisingly, great comedic chemistry. Danny Radcliffe is still not a good enough actor, though. So it's Sandra and Channing Tatum who carry most of the film. A little bit of Brad Pitt in there. It's a little bit of a row right. It's kind of okay.

The US number three, the UK number two is fantastic beasts. The secrets of Dumbledore. I haven't rushed to the cinema to see this. And it, which is odd because I was pretty much in the habit of going to see most of the Potter related films on day of opening. So I don't know if you've seen this. I haven't, but Daniel Woodrow, Secret of Dumbledore, is an enjoyable step up from crimes of Grindelwald

and the performances are good, particularly Jude Law and Cheska Williams. But it's hard to escape the conclusion that it's ultimately all rather irrelevant in terms of the wider, fantastic piece narrative. I'm disappointed that we missed the promo for this because I could have interviewed Mads Michelson, but called him Mads Michelson as they do in Denmark. And he said, well done. Well, he was big some day and he's like, no, I just now had to say, Mads Michelson. Jack Blackburn says, fantastic beast three is once again an utter mess. The cinematic equivalent of someone opening the kitchen cupboard and throwing together

a revolting dish made of all their favorite foods. You occasionally get a familiar enjoyable sensation, but the overall result is a shambles. And Minerva says, my nearly 10-year-old potterhead daughter absolutely loved secrets of Dumbledore. Oh, there we go. Laptop all the details she's all about, the details. Good. And I think it has been much better reviewed than the last fantastic piece movie, and it's at number two. The UK number one is Sonic the Hedgehog 2, part two, where there's just two. You and Findley says, I wish they'd waited until the sequel to introduce Knuckles just

so they could call it Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Missed opportunity, otherwise pretty inoffensive film with fun moments, overstayed its welcome, had a good time. Okay, well, I mean, I didn't, I thought it was fairly tiresome, but you know, it is what it is. I mean, it is number one. I still think there's something odd about the fact that Jim Carrey's career, you know, after having gone off and done Truman show and Man in the Moon that he's ended up as the star of Sonic too.

I mean, I'm sure he's doing fine. It's like the George West where did it all go wrong? I think it's too concerned. No, I'm sure he's fine. So now we're nearly done, but we haven't done. We haven't done it. We've got a whole other review to do. This is not like some throw away post script. Yes, well, I'm just saying it's nearly done.

We're approaching the end of take one, but with the whole of take two to look forward to when that drops. Yes. But before we're done something that a lot of people have been looking forward to, and in no way just to come at the end of the show, this is a big paragraph.

Thank you. New series just arrived on Netflix, Six part series called Clock. Based on the quote, truth and lies of Clock Olivesson's autobiography, are you familiar with the story of Clock Olivesson? I am not. No, well me neither. Okay. So all new to me. Celebrity criminal. Sounds like a weird thing. Who was involved in the robbery heist in 1973, in a second which gave us Stockholm syndrome. Okay, okay. So, the series is described as being, this is how the makers of the tribe, a fictional

drama series that follows the man behind the expression the Stockholm syndrome on his life journey as he fooled all of Sweden to fall in love with him despite several counts of drug trafficking, attempted murder, assault, theft, and dozens of bank robberies. It's directed by Jonas Akland, who was a pop video director, whose feature credits include that film, Lords of Chaos, about the black metal scene

starring Rory Colken, and Polar starring, you want to say, the name of that? Mazzeglson. Mazzeglon, rather briefly. He also apparently started work on the Brian Epstein film, My Desmond, but was then replaced by Sarah Sugarman during the shoot. I don't know why that happened.

So anyway, Clark, the central character, is played by Bill Scott's Godd, who was so brilliant as Pennywise the Clown in the recent cinema version of It. Of course, you know, even I've talked before about how the television version of it with Tim Curry is Pennywise, you thought, wow, no one's going to be able to match that. And then, of course, he did. He did a, you know, and in many ways, the central character in this series is also a kind of evil clown,

a larger than life figure who's drawn more than more from fairytale than fact. Scott's God has said that playing clock for good or bad, he was one of Sweden's most colorful and fascinating individuals. I accept this challenge with, and this is a great phrase, with delight mingled with terror. And think that we can tell a groundbreaking story with a pace and madness we may not have seen on TV before. Clark's life in history is so incredible and messed up that it would make even Scorsese blush. So the way he comes across in the series is

a compulsive offender who is very, very charismatic, spent a lot of time behind bars, also spent a large amount of time breaking out of prisons, unreliable. behind bars, also spent a large amount of time breaking out of prisons. Unreliable. And the series makes clear that what we're seeing is his version of these events, only a small fragment of which may actually be true. An episode one is headlined, being the best at being the best was not my thing, so I decided to be the best at being the worst. And it opens with our anti-hero, his first breakout escaping from his mother's womb, which pretty much sets the unruly tone

for everything that's to come. And the series then keeps everything turned up to 11 in terms of the way it is stylistically. In this incarnation, he's like a wild west hero. He's a lady's man, I think, is the phrase. He's a celebrity waiting to happen. And his reputation is enhanced when a colleague for one of a better word, mounts a robbery in Stockholm and

demands money, a car, and that Clark be brought to the site of the robbery. He's in prison, he doesn't know what's going on, but then he realizes that suddenly he's got this chance to play the hero because the authorities, well, we have to get him because he's been asked for, they bring him to bank, and once inside the bank, he immediately sets about having a good time, which includes robbing the bank and seducing in inverted commas, one of the hostages. And it's only really in the finale, it's six episodes long, slightly varying lengths. It's only really at the very end, the veil of the bravado comes off. And we start to get something of self-awareness and a realization of the chaos

that has been left in the wake of this life. But it's also worth saying that that realization is pretty much the weakest part of the show because it does seem to me that what the director in the show itself is interested in is everything else. It almost feels like the kind of, you know, the moral at the end of the story of, oh, this is close to what was going on. Sort of feels oddly tacked on. So Garz got his fantastic.

I mean, he absolutely syncs his teeth into the role, and he's just terrific. He, you know, he bristles with energy and it's a really electric performance and I didn't know the story. And of course, while you're watching it, you think, how much of this is true? How much of this is just completely invention? How much of this is true?

And it will send you back to reading, you know, okay, you know, this, this isn't. It's a strange comparison, but it's a bit wolf of Wall Street. You know, that thing about that you're being told somebody, you've been told the story of somebody by somebody who is just so full of themself. And maybe you're being manipulated along with it, some of the other characters. Yeah. And where can I watch that? It's on Netflix now. All of them? Yes, apparently. Yes, all the episodes. Okay, so we would, as the end of take one, and OK, so we would, as the end of take one and I feel as though we deserve a drink. We would love to hear from you.

You send your emails please for the next show, Correspondence at Kermit and Mayor.com. On Monday, take two will be out and you can subscribe to our Extra Takes. What is our movie of the week, Mark? Our movie of the week is this much I know to be true. I thought the dip was going to be that as you explained it at the beginning of the show. And incidentally during the course of this program, I just sent a, because I was saying this thing about,

you know, the film begins with Nick Kave saying, you know, I've taken up ceramics. And I messaged Warren Ellis to say, just want to check. He did actually make those ceramics. Warren says, most certainly did. So while he's not a Johnny cum lately, he's either he's clearly been your... So you emailing people whilst I'm talking to the email I DMed him.

So whilst I'm talking to your DMing people... I just wanted to fact check. I see. Because that blank look that I was just concerned was you not listening. No, I was listening. I checked in. I checked in. I checked in with Walter. Just wanted to make sure, because I raised this, because you went into a whole tease about the good lady's ceramicist, her indoors having been doing this all her life,

and how Johnny Cum Laity pop stars come along and do ceramics of their own. I don't think you can suddenly become a ceramicist in lockdown. That was all the... It's like, I am now a heart surgeon. During lockdown, I thought I've fed up with being in a state agent and I'm gonna do something else. I think he's been doing it for a while. I think he has.

I think he's been doing it for a while. I think he's perfectly fine. I think it's it, I think. How much for his work? Two-bulb. I'll have half a dozen. you