Sardonicast - Sardonicast 154: When Evil Lurks, Crash (2004)

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

Support the Show for $2 a month and receive all future episodes early at https://sardonicast.com and https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast. Buy Sardonicast T-Shirts, and other merchandise at https://teespring.com/stores/sardonicast. Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/sardonicast Website: https://sardonicast.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/sardonicast Twitter: https://twitter.com/sardonicast Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sardonicast Sardonicast Highlights: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8AhJ0bzQgs5fb9m_ZCRqkw/featured Alex's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/IHEOfficial Adam's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/YourMovieSucksDOTorg Alex's Twitter: https://twitter.com/IHE_OFFICIAL Adam's Twitter: https://twitter.com/2gay2lift Adam's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/YMS Intro music by: https://www.youtube.com/user/anUnkindnessvideo Fan art: https://old.reddit.com/r/Sardonicast/comments/18ab2ug/brace_yourselves_are_you_sitting_down/ Timestamps: 0:00 When Evil Lurks 31:22 Crash (2004) 1:27:36 Questions 2:03:43 Recommendation + Outro

Three, two, one. In any real city, you walk, you brush past people, and people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something. That was a quote from The Boss Baby 2. This time, it's personal. I'm Adam from your movie sex

This is Sardana cast hello I'm Alex from I hate everything And thanks reminding me of that quote Thanks reminding me of that movie It opened I guess it's my fault that we have to talk about it Thanks for reminding you of the movie You recommended for this episode

Yeah I just I just Here's my favorite quote from the movie Oh racism is bad that's my quote it's a good quote remember that yeah

I remember when they looked at the camera and said that every character at the same time that was one of the millions of millions of characters damn that would have saved it that would have saved it

just a dozen people looking into the camera at the same time saying racism is bad like all in unison I think that would have saved them basically what it was. Yeah.

Yeah, good movie. So before we get too distracted on that, yeah, sorry, stay focused. We watched another film also. Oh, also fucking happy 25th of December, everybody, which is when this episode's public, I guess. And happy before that for our patrons

and members, happy holidays of whatever the fuck you probably think about them. Happy 25th. Yeah. We kind of goofed it up because I was anticipating like, oh yeah, I'll recommend a Christmas movie for the Christmas episode.

And then I was like, oh shit, I guess, I guess my recommendation is on Christmas. And then the episode's coming out two weeks after that. Yeah. It's vaguely festive. We can leave it at that. Yes. And yeah, I actually have the Christmas wreck. And it kind of worked out a little bit.

sort of unintentionally, but we can get into that crash later. Yeah. Yeah. When Evil Lurks is a film that apparently we could have saw it Tiff, but we missed because I guess we didn't know about it. I think when I was looking through the list of films, I think the fact that it was a premiere and it didn't like have any, you know, it didn't have any like, reception or award wins or anything from anything.

It doesn't have any big names attached either. I'm not familiar with this director or writer or any of the actors in it. His previous film, terrified, is in my watch list, but it doesn't have, like, great ratings.

And there's like, from what I've heard about it, it's really mixed. Like, some people hate it. And I was like, okay, it's still in my watch list.

So there was some sort of like, oh, this is a movie that might be notable, but, you know, to make room for other things I didn't. I think I was going to actually look at when exactly it was playing and see what fucking movies we would have had to have missed

because we saw a lot of great movies at the festival so I don't know what we would have cut out to see this true certainly certainly wouldn't have wanted to miss agro drift no no not again please why not when's the 4k Blu-ray wins no more drift all right uh that would be on dhs only it's the only way to watch it yeah but I mean that would that would sell they do a lot of there's a lot of like special VHS releases now

Skinnamarink got one um 824 released a VHS for climax and they only released like fucking 100 copies so they were all gone before I knew about it and I'm pissed but whatever oh wow yeah it was like in the music space

just like tapes are kind of trendy that's a weird one in certain spaces now I'm coming back I don't know how I feel about that. I get records, but I don't know about tapes. I got bad memories associated with tapes. Vinals have always made sense because it's the best and most physical,

like, highest quality-sounding way you can listen to your music, really. Yeah. Like, there's a practical purpose to it. You get nice little, like, album covers that are, like, big pictures you can hang up even if you want you know like we just had to make dootapes we didn't know better yeah at that point where we know better now so going back just seems antithical to me so i guess that's the point um this is a film from argentina i think yeah there we go argentina and that's it everybody have a good night

That's our review I thought you're enjoying the movie Well now that I don't know how to make reviews now That people are calling out plagiarism I just read other people's reviews before I don't know what to say Wait maybe I can just read the Wikipedia Okay

Isn't it fucking crazy how many people are just outed for just like What are the fun? What's the point of making videos? You're just reading like even if you Even if what you're reading is just the plot synopsis It's like, okay, well, you're kind of just exposing how much of your video is just reciting the plot and then saying, I liked it. Fuck off. Everybody's pissing me up.

This has always been, like, overt with channels like, you know, those top 10 channels and whatnot, watch Mojo and stuff like that. They feel like, you know, just a list website being read off. But there's more of like an abstraction when it's these personality-led channels and reviewers who are claiming to be giving their own opinions. and then it turns out to be like not even a very well hidden. Always word for word. In some cases, straight up word for word, retelling of other people's work. And it's like,

you could, you could just reference it. You could just straight up say in the video, hey, I like this interpretation from this source or whatever. Yeah, why not? Part of the,

it's like, but then it's not, it's not, then, I mean, the people doing it, it's like, it's not just a small portion. It's like they're just lifting the entire,

thing. And so they want to hide the fact that they're doing that because otherwise it just makes it seem like they didn't do anything, which is why they're able to pump out content so frequently. Well, yeah, hopefully it just gets more people talking about the almost like sweatshop nature of a lot of channels that a lot of people don't even think about. The content grind, yeah. They're like the teams of people just like these like writers being underpaid to put these videos together and just make them as quickly as possible where there's someone at the top kind of sucking up all the all the real learnings from it. I couldn't imagine not writing my own shit.

Like, what's the fucking point of the channel? What's the point? Like, I thought what I'm selling is my perspective. Like, outsourcing the editing, sure. Like, if you can do it in a way where, like, where I like it, then great. You know, let's outsource some of the editing, so I'm not hurting myself as much. Yeah, that's really shifted now, though. Like, I don't know about how when you get emails from various companies and whatnot,

but I'm usually addressed by, like, the IHE team. whatever, it's never normally assumed. It's an individual. It's normally assumed at this point that there's a team. And it's kind of, there's something kind of saddening about that because it is like, yeah, everyone's kind of realized they can

darn man their way to the top, you know? True. Make a content machine, a farm out of all this. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I'm actually kind of pissed about it because part of the reason why I overwork myself is like comparison to other channels

and being like, wow, they just pump out a lot of shit. Like, what am I doing? I'm like trying to compete. Yeah. And not compete as in like dominate them or anything, but, you know, like have, have, you know, make a decent amount of money or something or make, stay in the algorithm and not like just get drowned out by other people. Well, yeah. Well, comparison is a killer of joy. Yeah.

And it's like, it's really unsustainable if you want to, you could do that if you wanted to have like a full team of people. grinding out content for you. It's all about weighing that up, but I don't know. I don't like it. I'm an old man yells at cloud about this, I guess. Yeah, at the Google Cloud. Oh, God. We can't escape it.

Old man yells at storage, cloud storage. When Evil lurks, I was very pleasantly surprised by this movie. I don't know how you felt about it. I was surprised too. I was in the right mood, and I was experiencing the right emotions. This is a very, like, kind of, nightmare logic movie in a way. I think that it hits what it is perfect for what it is going for

in the sense that there's a lot of movies where I get confused and I get pissed off because of me being confused. This is one where I'm like, okay, I'm confused, but it works. And the characters are confused too. And, you know, I was feeling vibes of like, it comes at night. And the Last of us TV show, a lot of the music was similar enough. Without it feeling like a rip-off or anything. But like some of the energy. Hereditary, I felt.

I was getting some silent hill vibes as well. Resident Evil a little bit. Honestly, I would love to see this director, you know, tackle an IP or something, but... Yeah, well, it's probably the most the best way for them to get another job in the space. Yeah. Like Disney, you'll probably just swoop them up and

get them to do some comatose project. But yeah, I was right. with you. I like the, I don't want to call it a bottle movie, but it's more like the whole town is like a bottle. Yeah. It felt very kind of contained and claustrophobic and I like the kind of well-building horror elements like that's always such a game with these, these horror properties in particular. It's like, how much are you going to explain? How much are you going to revel in like the lore of this and are you going to go full like the ring and trying to explain this to like to the very end where you're going to keep elements of this more of a mystery, like something like the mist.

and yeah leave that kind of existential horror alive and having that the crux being this idea of the a rotten they call it or whatever it's like an unborn demon possessing someone in there presented as this like swollen it looks like a body that's been in water for like weeks and it looks like a boomer like it does like a boomer from left and dead yeah yeah it looks like someone born in the 60s yeah looks like our parents Brexit geese yeah yeah I thought it was like just restrained enough though you get it plays with the concepts of because again like possession movies are not exactly a new thing in the horror space and they can some of the best horror and worse horror both like possession slash ghost slash demon i don't even know how to categorize this

like i don't know if i i don't even when i think possession movie i don't even like this doesn't even even though it's like yeah i guess there's possession in it it's it's a very um it feels both simultaneously contained in small scale, but also large scale, like and ambitious at the same time. It's so weird how it manages to feel like these, I guess, almost contradictory ways simultaneously. Yeah.

And it's doing a bunch of different genres at once, too, like kind of zombie, kind of ghosts, kind of, you know, like apocalyptic, like end of the worldish kind of you know like I was getting vibes of like southbound at one point in time which is just literally an anthology horror film that um producers of the the VHS franchise did that I enjoyed it's not incredible but yeah yeah I was thinking of VHS a little bit I like this probably more than any of those VHS shorts though it's way more cohesive as a single story and despite everything being so I guess kind of it's seemingly random or

made up or like, you know, just the film decides whatever rules apply at any given moment in time, I guess. It's interesting because there's certain characters in the film that seem to have like a clear idea of what these rules are and that, you know, there's other characters that just need those things explained to them. Like, no, don't shoot. You have to kill it with an axe. Otherwise, we'll be like possessed or something. Like, I don't, it's confusing as fuck. But I, I think that that adds to the horror nature of it. It feels way less manipulative than something like, what's that fucking movie called?

A Quiet Place where that movie, that movie has more consistent rules, but in any given scene, the goal of the scene is just like, oh, how do we make these characters in a situation where it's going to be tough for them to be quiet? And they got to be quiet. Otherwise, you're going to get killed. You know, and it's just like the most repetitive, manipulative, like, no characters or characters, they're all just props, right?

Whereas this, it's like, okay, this makes a lot less sense, but I believe the characters more. I feel respected more by the script and the sequence of events and how things happen. I don't feel babied, you know, watching the movie, which is unfortunately something I feel a lot of the time watching horror movies. Like it feels like there's actual consequences and stakes and yeah, it's a confusing mess, but I like the mess. The fact that it is a mess is part of the charm. Yeah, it stays chaotic. And I guess that's the idea with these lead to characters where, yeah, it's presented in the chaotic way it would be to someone who's just kind of stumbled into this mess and they're trying to get out of it. And yeah, I do agree with the way.

these rules, while I guess, I guess not founded in any logic, the way it is kind of woven into that chaos does kind of, it definitely helps with like the tension and the certain building fears of you as an audience member remembering details like someone says that, yeah, one of the signs of knowing the, the possessed rotten thing is taken over your town is that animals are going to start to go mad or act strange. And there are a few scenes that kind of of escalate with that with the goat and the whole shotgun thing. Spoiler discussion, everybody, by the way.

We are spoiling the movie. If you want to watch it, I know it's not like a super popular movie. So if this sounds good, I think it's on Shudder. Shudder produced it, which is a horror streaming service. So yeah, watch it, come back to the podcast or whatever. Watch a horror movie on Christmas. Why not? Yeah, I was.

But yeah, I, I, I, it commits to the bit fully. Like, it doesn't hold back. And I was thinking of you as soon as it gets to the dog scene. It's normally like a... We joke, but it is kind of an indicator for a lot of these horror movies. Like, are you going to have the balls to have child characters actually implicate them in some way? Is this a real movie or is this a baby movie?

Is it really that just that's the question? And I wasn't even upset at the whole like weird, like, oh, she seems to be like a, okay and she doesn't even have any like bite marks but she's like possessed I guess and like all of that after the facts I wasn't even bothered by you know not seeing like her fucking head being ripped off or something because what they were showing in that moment of violence which lasted quite a lot longer than a moment it was like a minute of her just being fucking dragged around by her neck I was like this is fucking awesome like this And I know that these things upset some people, but why would you want to watch a horror movie and not be upset by what you're saying? Like, why do you want to see like a tamed down version? Like, what's the point?

Why are you watching it? Right? Like, show me brutal shit. Yeah, it's supposed to be exploring like fear and terror and yeah, just powering the way. Go watch the boss baby. Like, what are you talking about? Oh, I don't want to see a child die in a horror movie. It's a fictional child

Adults' lives are worth more to you Like what are you talking about? Get out of your caveman brain Like what the fuck? Yeah, sorry. All right. I'll stop raining. So there were multiple scenes like that

Where I was kind of like, Oh, you haven't cut yet. You're like, you're lingering on this. You're letting us revel in this misery. I'm liking this. This is brutal. This is intense. And yeah,

the way they build it up especially like with that tension. And real focus on this soundscape of like really uncomfortable sound editing. It definitely like helps build to those mic drop moments like the dog attack or whatever. There's normally some kind of stressful circle of sounds being edited around with that kind of chaos that's happening with people screaming each other and yeah, just these sounds being repeated and it's yeah, this quite an impressive movie like audio and visually. to us.

I, yeah. I, quite a lonely. The, the entire filmmaking aspect of this, like all of the, the elements coming together to give us the audio and the visuals, even the performances, it's a really well-made movie in all of those senses, right? It's a, it's a, there's a lot of talent going into creating this film. There's some really great shots, really great choices for shots and,

how shots are presented the framing or there's some oneers or you know some overhead drone angles that worked really well in certain contexts yeah lighting is great um the practical effects like the gore um which there's obviously some cg here and there in in you know placed in some of these effects but for the most part it worked really really well i think there's like two shots i can think of where I'm like, I don't know if that one worked out the way you wanted it to. I didn't look up the budget, but I heard it's like really low. So I'm going to look that up right now. That's where I was, yeah, putting a pin in on that, those visual effects.

Because I agree with all the, all the practical stuff I love, like the old lady being dragged around by the kids and the hammer, a brutal moment or, yeah, some of the other, like the boomer, the rotten thing, all the ooze and the pus and. that when that's eventually beaten to death how how that was achieved. But yeah, the self-mutilation with the axe and just some shots like when they're riding around in the car and whatnot did look a little bit budget to me, which did pull me out a couple of those moments,

especially the self-mutilation thing with the axe. Because that's a fun moment with the goat. Yeah. And it's like building up to something. It's like clearly, yeah, here's the crescendo at the... And it's like a little bit goofy with how some of the visuals get together. Yeah, I was, I was still successfully enjoying that because I was shocked and caught off guard in terms of like what was happening. And I do like that it didn't hold back in terms of showing it in its brutality.

But this is one of those things where it's like, what is this, this like, this director's like second film or something? Let's see. It's not his second film. He's made like a handful. He's made like five or something. Okay. But from what I can tell, and I can't really find this information, I wish I could. From what I can tell, he's not working with like a super high budget.

That's my understanding. Maybe I could be wrong, but I'll have to find this information somewhere. Somebody leave a comment if you know where this source would be for that or why I would hear that it's super low budget. Anyway, I think for the most part it works together. And just seeing these tiny little imperfections, I'm still not. bothered by it because this isn't a movie that takes itself so super seriously, and it's not a movie that I'm watching in the most literal of senses in terms of like a character's story from

point A to point B, right? I believe the performances, and I believe what these characters are experiencing in the context of any given scene, but when weird things happen that kind of take me out of the movie. I'm still like, oh, that's kind of silly or dumb, but I'm not like, being taken out of the movie doesn't feel like such a betrayal of my experience, because a lot of my experience watching this is just me thinking about it as a movie. I'm not, it's, it's in this weird zone of being able to enjoy it completely unironically, but also with elements of this kind of ironic enjoyment in it as well. Like, if something's goofy, I'm just like still there along with it for the ride being like,

hell yeah, this is a goofy fucking movie. Like, I'm still just kind of loving what I'm seeing. So it does have kind of an armor in that sense from me. Certain things might have bothered. Yeah, I can get that because,

yeah, it wasn't really like the character's plight or any of like arcs that they were going through. Anything like this is really not that kind of movie. It's much more about that oppressive atmosphere and kind of self-inserting yourself into the idea of stumbling into a situation, this dire and the mistakes they make and just how quickly it crumbles. And it's just something I like about the horror genre is it's like one of the only places

where audiences generally are quite okay with miserable endings. And the whole purpose of the story just being, yeah, there's not going to be anything really good. comes from this is just going to end in a place a lot worse than where it begins and I think that's like a fun thing to explore and I do like yeah the way it wraps up and just the idea of this this this like parasitic entity this this demonic force overtaking a town and how that looks locked to the two characters perspectives I thought that's that's cool and cleverly explored with especially considering that kind of smaller budget and the scrappiness that has to come from that But yeah, I think I was just pulled out of the experience a little bit more by some of that. Those lower visual effect kind of shots, like when the axe like goes into the guy's head and he becomes a CG monster for a few frames. Like, I don't know if that bothers me more than most, but yeah, especially when I'm thinking about, oh, this is clearly inspired by the witch here or a little bit of hereditary there. And there's never really one in those films where I. Yeah, where there's just not, it's not something that comes into my mind in my absolute favorite horror movies or even like a dead alive type thing.

Yeah. The tone is just more consistent and something like that, a bit more self-aware. Well, here's the thing. So this director, sure, he's made a few movies beforehand. Now we can safely say, hopefully, ideally, that he is at least on the radar of, you know, people that would be able to, give him more of like a budget or more of infrastructure to make his next project. Like maybe his next movie will be like an American production. You never know.

Maybe his next movie will just be something that, you know, is like produced by neon or A24. You never know. I would like to see the same director tackle something bigger. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, I'm kind of forgiving little bits and pieces of this movie just under the impression that it's, you know, he's still kind of like up and coming. And there's so much there that I'm like, there's definitely, there's definitely something here. There's there's so much talent going into this film that I have cautious optimism that he could do something really great. And I mean, this movie is great.

I think it's great. So yeah, I think given those caveats, it is a very impressive outing in this space. And yeah, there are just so many pitfalls that it manages to avoid and it keeps that intensity for most of the time. Maybe maybe I would have liked to see five to ten minutes shaved off a little bit. Sure. But it is for the most part pretty, pretty concise and just explores its conceit about as far as you'd want to see. yeah i i mean pacing wise for me i was not having an issue at all um i did pee at one point like an hour through i felt like oh you know i could probably pee now there was like a scene

where i felt like i could get away with it so um but uh otherwise pace you know it's it felt so exciting and the settings were not stagnant it was constantly moving from one place to another. And I love that type of energy that's in a lot of, you know, apocalyptic zombie movies or anything. It's like, oh, no, we've got to go here, go here. Like, the first 30 minutes of, like,

any zombie movie is always so much fun. Or, like, Snyder's Dawn of the Dead or something. Like, I love that type of energy, and it felt like this film had that type of energy for a huge chunk of it. And even when it, when it departed from that type of, energy, you know, Snyder's Donna the Dead winds up getting a little like, oh, okay, now you're just in a mall and blah, blah, blah, but, like, the, the energy doesn't stay consistent throughout the

entire film, same with 28 days later. This, I like what it turned into. It wound up turning into more like Silent Hill, Jacob's Ladder, like, Session 9 sort of thing, where, sure, it's not the same energy as the beginning of the film, but like the, the, the, what it wound up being replaced with was so suitable for just the second half, I guess. Yeah, loved it. I would gladly watch this film again.

I want to buy a Blu-ray. I hope they'd watch again. Yeah, I'd watch again. I did like that whole buildup to the choking on the hair ending and pulling all the stuff out of his mouth. And yeah, that was a good way to wrap up the story. a nice and miserable.

Yeah. Just him screaming at the sky on his knees. Yeah. A nice Christmas jolt. Yay. Very, very festive. Yeah. It's like if session nine was good.

It's this delivered on pretty much just a lot. This delivered on so many things that I like about horror movies and that I never see delivered ever. and so I'm just in a happy, ecstatic place about it, knowing that, oh, you can actually have movies that deliver like this. So we'll see what I think on a second watch. Maybe I'll lower my rating. Maybe I'll keep it the same. Maybe I'll raise it.

I don't know if I'll raise it. I think I'm being pretty generous with this already, but I love it. So for now, eight out of ten, given an eight. I like it a lot. Yeah, I'm a little bit lower than you. I did enjoy it for what it's worth. I do appreciate it. that kind of smaller production quality,

a lot of it just shot on location in these little towns and there's like an earnest nature to that scrappiness. But I do think there have been some recent horror films that have actually delivered in ways I wouldn't normally expect like a talk to me or Boers Afraid or something like this. I don't think it's quite on that level. But a lot of cool ideas, I definitely want to see more from this filmmaker.

And I'd probably give this a low sense. seven three and a half star. I'm like, yeah, I'd happily check this out again. But I'm more interested in see what's, what's coming, uh, the potential of what is being played with here. Sweet. I'm looking online for like a Blu-ray.

I'm like, there's a bunch on eBay from China, but I'm like, is that real? Oh, really? It's one of those like, does it actually exist? Yeah. Oh, no. So it might just disappear.

And it might, by the time this goes up, it might have just like disappeared off. the internet. That's another annoying thing, though, about the budget's never being available. That's happening more and more. Yeah. Streaming funded stuff is going on. I never really used to be that much of a secret.

No. But it is now. I don't know why they want to just keep these secrets now. They're like, we won't tell you how much it costs or how much we made off of it or how many people watched it. Just all these metrics for success that I feel are kind of important to have in a conversation where we talk about movies, right? It's part of the conversation.

The fact it never used to be an issue will seem like something that they felt like they need to hide. Yeah. Is it just because of the business model being unsustainable and they feel like it's embarrassing? I don't know. I'm just so, I'm so confused about it. All right. Next time you people strike to ask for that. Yeah.

Maybe that's what they're trying to hide is like some of these films come out and they literally get like $5,000. views or something, like 5,000 engagements and they don't want to have to reveal all that data for fear of their stock prices going down? I don't know. I have no idea. No idea. Very weird, but very annoying because it does really, it's quite an important point to anchor certain conversations around. Like, I hope when we're talking about crash, for example, you know? Yeah.

Whatever. Speaking of crash. yes I guess this is my Christmassy recommendations specifically chosen for his Christmas merits I guess Crash is the

2004 Paul Haggis and Paul Haggis written and directed Oscar award winning how many else we're six time nominated

three time winner the most controversial Oscar winner of all time crash the story is racism is bad is that about wrap it up for you I mean

yeah what like how would you actually like if you go to like the Wikipedia for this movie and go to the plot section it's like just paragraph and paragraph on paragraph and paragraph not because it's particularly complicated but more so that there's like 20 characters

and all these different threads and they're all like interlinking with each other and it's clearly like a concept there was a concept for this movie and everything with the writing style is like trying to justify this concept more so than actually

like explore characters or juggle complicated ideas it just seems in service for this spider web like concept of a film yeah it's uh it uh it it's

it's like a much worse version of like of one of in Yadaytu's films. I was just kind of watching this being like, damn, I wish I was watching Babble. You know, they talk about racism in that movie. It's not necessarily even like the main theme, but they handled it better. And a lot of these other multiple storyline films that I love, there's usually like three storylines.

And you're able to spend long enough with the characters for it to actually mean something and for you to learn about them and for them to feel like real. characters and so that when they make decisions you can be like oh that's consistent with their character oh that's interesting that they did that and that's you know you can see like an arc happening or you can see them grow and you can learn more about them there's none of that in this movie it just feels like the characters that that get repeated in terms of like oh we see them again it might as well just be fucking like friedberg seltser like oh i remember paris hilton who paris hilton is it might just well be this fucking memberberry shit that we see in

media all the time now of just like, oh, a reference to a thing that I saw. I remember seeing that. Like, that's what the characters are in this movie essentially is like, oh, you see them once, then you see them again. It's like, I remember that guy. They don't feel like the same fucking person, really. Matt Dillon's character, like, what are they, what are they even trying to say by him like, oh, and then he redeems himself by saving her in the car? It's like, did you know, did you know that racist sexual assaulting cops can be good sometimes too? They put their lives on the line for the same people even. Also, his dad's got a pee problem, and that's

probably why he's mad. They're like flat caricatures. It's... Like, what I don't know what it's trying to fucking say. It's so boring. It's not just that one character where that issue was coming up for me, where it was like, every single branch and that whole piece

as a whole. It's like, well, what you're trying to say? It's kind of this weird, like, centrist, like, is taking both sides. Each one of these characters is like exploring both sides. both sides of an argument and then being like well just putting his hands up it's like it's like it's like well here it is but and this this sucks right we all know it sucks but life goes on it's like this really annoying like if you watch this movie then you're not as guilty as you were

before you watch the movie yeah well and the difference is with something like a magnolia which is like a big epic i know right paul thomas anderson like big to watch that again big branching movie it has poor domis thomas thomas and Especially dialogue. That then really help because, yeah, there's a lot of strands going on in crash and millions of characters. And perhaps if the dialogue was quippy or good enough or cleverly written enough, maybe you could get by on how little time each one of these characters is given or anything interesting to flesh them out. Yeah. It just doesn't.

It just stays a mile wide and inch deep like the whole time. Let's follow the complete storyline. of just one character. Let's go Sandra Bullock. Oh, okay. Yeah. Right? She...

So it starts on her. It starts on her... Complaining about the Asian drivers. Yeah. She was that racist rant. She does a racism. She goes into her SUV. Gets carjacked by ludicrous.

This film is a lot funnier than I was expecting. Goes home... To be honest. And is like, okay, we need the... locks changed, but we have no idea how to do this. So they get their workers, the maid and like, I guess her relative helping out. And she's like, I don't trust them because they're Mexican. And says it really loudly complaining to Brendan Fraser just in the house where they can hear her.

And she's like, they're going to sell the keys to their gangbanger buddies. And it's like in my head, I'm just thinking like, how's that supposed to work? Like, you keep the keys. Like, are you expecting him to take the key? Like, you can, you can just not give him the key. What are you talking? He changes the lock. You keep the keys. When would he do, when would he copy or sell the keys? He's leaving without the keys. Anyway, then he's like, I'm sad. I'll just give you the keys. I wasn't going to do that. I'm a good person. And then she's like, well, whatever, I'm still racist. Then later we see her complaining to the maid. Like, these dishes should be put away. Just for just once. Just put away the dishes.

And I'm like, Jesus, what do you even? Do you have a job? You missed that awesome line from Sandra Bullock where she says, he's going to sell our key to one of his homies. Yeah. Oh, that was awesome. I love that.

Like, I don't know what to fuck she does. Brendan Fraser explicitly said out loud, I'm the goddamn district attorney of Los Angeles, so we know exactly what he does. And we don't know what she, like, I don't know if she has a job. She seems really lazy.

Like, okay, I don't know why you have a maid. But anyway, so her story then concludes by just ignoring her for the last hour and a half of the movie. and then come back to her and she falls down the stairs.

She falls down the stairs and then says like, you know, you're actually my best friend to the maid. And I'm like, what? None of this matters because we've seen her. Like she has five minutes of screen time the entire movie. And it pretends that this is significant. And this, like the entire last like 30 or 40 minutes of the movie is all of these, what,

what are appearing to be as payoffs, but without any real buildup associated with any of them. We got Terrence Howard being like, I've had it with this and like having his like freak out with the police officers. It's like, okay, I understand that one, you know, because his wife got sexually assaulted. I don't know why he's doing that still. It just seems like crazy and irrational.

And I don't know why it needs to be from ludicrous or like, the ingredients are almost there, but it just doesn't make sense how they presented it. Then we got fucking, oh, I'm actually a family man, a Mexican guy, Michael Pena or whatever. And he's like,

actually, I have a daughter. And then the, the Persian guy wants to kill him for changing his locks because he got broken into, even though everyone around him has told him, actually it was your door.

And he told you to change the door. I was trying to get Pena, I was trying to get Penae to change the door, because he couldn't fix the lock. because the door needed replacing first and then yeah he got angry at Pena for that yeah he was refusing to get broken into he was like no no you don't need to change the door he's like yeah you do I can change the locks but it's not gonna fix your issue no whatever and then he's not insured properly because the insurance company is like

this is negligence and then he tries to shoot him but the daughter who he had in the only other scene we saw with Michael Pena and his daughter he tells her like hmm Actually, magic is real and there's an invisible cloak. So then she runs up to him and goes, Daddy. And it's like, I'm having an invincible cloak right now. See? And everybody cries and the music swells and everybody's like, do this fucking crazy crying coom face compilation.

And then they just don't report the crime. And the Persian guy goes back to life as usual. And then it turns out his daughter. blanks and it's like I hate this movie this is so stupid yeah the the whole Christmas miracle angle of it yeah just by complete accident I guess I wound recommending this movie for our Christmas Day discussion and yeah that's that's part of it I guess like it's trying to say something about faith and being being fruitful and friendly to each other it's like it's like a really corny

presentation that that whole anger that whole she was my angel she came to protect me to protect us like thing look at that little girl that was like that was hilarious I thought it building up to this tragedy the little girl being killed was like supposed to be the point of the movie I guess it would probably be saying more with that than however that plays out it's like what so yeah that is when do they explain that it was blanks I don't remember that I think that was the implication. It wasn't explicitly explained, but like the daughter was the one like kind of looking at the ammo or whatever. So it's like, okay, because she didn't want him to have a gun or something, she just went up giving him blanks and didn't tell him or something.

I think that was the implication. Okay. Like the Persian guy's daughter. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow. And this almost like 28 weeks later where there's this like crazy disconnect with how people talk about this. remember this with how

watching the film feels. There's a bit of that going on, but mostly like on a critical perspective, I'd say. So I'm like pretty respected voices, like came out to bat for this film around the time came out. Marker Mode is a big fan of it.

Roger Ebert, gave it four out of four stars. Yeah, I read that review. Describing it was a movie of intense fascination. Yeah, it's a very weird review because it's one of those reviews I read. I'm like, yeah, invert everything you're saying, and then I agree, you know?

And also, just 90% of it was him describing the plot. 90% of his review was just him just saying what happened in the plot. Yeah. It's such a weird, pervasive problem. I'm like, fuck, this is just what reviews have been forever, and I didn't even notice. Yeah. This quote from it,

what is wonderful about crash is that it tells not simple-minded parables, but textured human. stories based on paradoxes no it's just like I just really don't agree with that because I found each one of these threads to be completely bare yeah and extremely simple like yeah you can take any one of these threads and be like okay what what actually were they trying to say with that angel Christmas miracle little girl thing the the racism is bad and that because he had tattoos and was

being judged as if he was a criminal then that's bad so well okay well done that's like it's not like a new observation it's not a new way to put it on a character or explore this it's just like you shouldn't judge people if they look like they're criminals

right you can't just be like okay this guy has tattoos because it's actually people are family people except ludicrous who actually has a gun and will rob you and steal your car even though he was complaining about being stereotyped really that was a

weird fucking reveal. I'm like, wow, what? Like, is this supposed to be cool? Like, what are you saying? The ludicrous thing was very weird. Because he kind of has like a redemption arc as well, because he's, he steals the van or whatever. He runs over the Asian guy. But then he winds up, he steals like a van that's like full of child slaves. Yeah. And he's like, I could profit 500 bucks off each you guys, but you know what?

Because I'm such a good guy. I'm going to go let you free in Chinatown. with a smile on his face. Also never acknowledges where his friend went. Like, he's just, he is completely unaware that his friend is,

like, murdered right now. Dead. Yeah. Yeah. But it tries to have a happy ending and he's like, just does that little smirk at the camera.

Like, yeah. And meanwhile, like, like, fucking this movie about racism, like, the Asians in this movie

are kind of unredeemed. It's like, actually, you were the villains the whole time. It was basically what it was saying like, oh, yeah, they didn't get redemption. You thought that they didn't deserve the racism at the beginning?

You thought that they were innocent? No. They're human traffickers. I'm like, what the fuck? Jesus Christ. Such a weird reveal. It's like, can't just sprinkle that in at the end. Everything in this movie is just so confusing in terms of like why you would want that in your movie.

Because the premise is just racism is bad. Like it's on paper or supposedly an anti- racist movie. It feels more racist than anti-racist. The film as it is feels way more racist than anti-racist. Yeah. Yeah, because it's boiling everyone down into these like really trite observations. No one sounds like a real person. No one feels like a real person. Yeah. And then half of the results is like actually these stereotypes are true. These ones are true actually. Like that's half of the movie. That's what's so

frustrating about like the way the it concludes. It does just feel like it's putting his hands up. Like, yeah, racism's here to stay, I guess. Yeah, what are you going to do about it? But Christmas. What if... But we're talking about a film there where the director himself has been quoted as saying, was Crash the best film of the year is the question.

I don't think so. There were great films that year. It's what he said about his own film. That's fucking hilarious. And the way he justifies it, though, is he's... So I guess that's what they voted for, something that really touched them. And I'm very proud of the fact that Crash does touch you. People still come up to me more than any of my other films and say,

that film just changed my life. I've heard that dozens and dozens and dozens of times. So it did its job there, I guess. I mean, I knew it was the social experiment that I wanted. So I think it's a really good social experiment. Is it a great film? I don't know. Not even not the best

He doesn't even know if it's a great movie He's like actually It's a cool little social experiment Funny That's so funny It's like a darn man It really It really is just a dar man video

A really long darman video With like The moral conclusions Are just as fucking weird And confusing Heavy-handed They might as well have have fucking gigantic subtitles at the bottom.

Just incorrect subtitles. Yeah, this, so fucking confusing. And just all-star cast, everybody's agent wanted them to be in it. This is just... Yeah, everyone believed in this. So I wonder when this started production, because he might have had a nomination for a million-dollar baby right before this.

But I don't know how quick the production was on this. Yeah, they were made very close. to each other. Yeah. I don't remember a million dollar baby being this level. I remember liking that movie a lot. Yeah, yeah. I think perhaps what it's dealing with is a bit more focused. It's not like millions of characters jumping around. It's just focused on a few. So maybe it's that, but I think just from a, from a base level is just a horrible idea. And like even going to, if you go to like the development section on this movie, there's a quote from. from him talking about, he later stated that he wrote Crash not simply to criticize racist,

but to bust liberals for the idea that the United States have become a post-racial society. This guy's Canadian also, which is fun. So it's a, wow, a Canadian dude talking about, this is set in Los Angeles, criticizing American racial, structures in Los Angeles. Yeah. While making like the most fucking racist stereotypes imaginable in your film.

Like he really does seem like kind of like outsider trying to give his two cents here. And I guess everybody just kind of fucking ate it up. It really does feel like, you know, this winning best picture was just everybody simultaneously saying like, yeah, we're sorry. We deserve that.

this like we're acknowledging our transgressions uh well there are theories that of course this was broke back mountain year um and actually kapote year as well yes both both losing out to this with the the more broke back mountain being the controversial best picture loser to this um that's kind of the big drama here and so yeah everyone including the director of the film agrees basically. Just, just shocking. And I guess what is the theory that Kuzgapote and Brokeback both have like gay characters and a gay emphasis that crash is just safer, less controversial, less, just an easy Oscar win,

Oscar pick, isn't it? It's 2004. You want to end racism, but keep homophobia going a little. Right? Yeah. You're fine with that for a bit longer. Yeah. You want to just make sure

You want to make sure we hang on to homophobia for a bit longer Imagine crash, but it's about homophobia Everyone's gay or not It's like It's trying to do everything It's trying to do what five seasons of the wire do Under two hours Yeah, that is funny

It's trying to like break down every sociopolitical concept, race relations, affirmative action, sexual violence, police brutality, gang violence, reform. It's like, oh my God, what do you, what are you trying to say with this? It doesn't spend enough time on anything to, in order for anything to mean anything or be significant. Like, what the fuck was Brendan Fraser's story? What did he do? Like, what was, did he have an art? He didn't have one. He was, he was, he was, Pretty much only there because I think he was one of the main reasons the film got made, him agreeing to be in it. Because that's how much of a pull Brandon had around this time.

Because, yeah, what, $6 million dollar budget, pretty low. I'm pretty sure the director had to remortgage his house like three times in order to get this made. And it was a huge, huge success as far as what it brought into the box office, nearly 100 million off that, that 6 million budget, which is absolutely nuts. I guess audiences love this. Yeah. Premiered at Tiff. Yeah, I wonder, like, if I would have been swept into it being a, if I was there at that premiere with everyone losing it, a bit of a more simplistic understanding of some of these things.

Yeah, well, so, did you watch it when you were younger or no? I had a hilarious memory, actually, to do with this where I was only, like, 10 when this came out, but I'm pretty sure I went into, like, the living room. My mom was watching it, and it was the, like, little girl angel scene. remember thinking it was dumb. That's a 10 year old. And I just never thought about it again. That's great.

This weird deja vu when watching it. But outside of that, no, I've not seen it. Yeah. So whenever I rated it on my IMDB account for the first time, so who knows, I could have been like 15 or some shit. Like, this is an ancient Imbb account. I gave it like a 5 out of 10.

And I remember, I do vividly remember feeling what the intent. emotions at certain snippets of the movie. Like, I do feel like, and even on this rewatch, maybe it might just be like memory emotion or, or like, me remembering how I was feeling at the time. But there's certain, there's certain things that do click with me in this film, not in the greater context of the movie, but completely removed from the rest of it. So like the scene where she's like in the car and like, it's fucking lighting on fire.

and like just that moment of like the, you can see the flames behind her, you can see her start like freaking out and him being pulled back. Like there's something that feels kind of like desperate in that moment. And I think that the performance and the visuals and to some extent the music,

although now retrospectively I really don't like the music at all, but it is the least bad in that scene. And there's things about it where it's just like the pieces of the, production fit together in a way that in that moment, I was like, okay, this works for me. But, you know, now watching it, I'm like, fuck, like, why, what are you trying to say here? And the whole, you know, not just what are you trying to say, but like, none of this makes any sense in terms of like, you would just cut the fucking seatbelt immediately. No, no officer or, you know,

firefighter, anybody arriving onto a scene like this is going to have a little pep talk with her for like five minutes while she's like trying to get out just fucking do it get out of there and nobody would do that that is entirely unrealistic and stupid yeah and just

most of the drama in this movie yeah and like you could have made like individual short films almost out of a lot of these like there's no glue holding these stories together other than just like oh they walked past each other here

like at the end like the the woman that we saw earlier she gets involved in a car crash is like oh dude it's her it's literally just it feels like reference reward like there's no there's no significant purpose towards them being connected it's just they are connected incidentally and they're everybody's racist and crashing

everybody's racist and crashing everyone is racist and crashing everyone is racist that that's that's the strongest through line honestly that's like the strongest thing that it's saying the biggest message that it has to say everyone's a little bit racist everyone and so okay not nice and half of the time your assumptions about people are right and they're doing secret human trafficking and they will fucking mug you and shit but it's going back to the academy awards it won i was nominated for it right yes some of some of the things that was nominated for all one are just like shocking yes the biggest

confusing one to me is it won for best writing best original screenplay actually won that that's crazy for and um and please remind me if there are any no moments of editing that stood out to you yes that it won best achievement in film editing it's crazy actually um i can explain that one cynically. Why? It's because it's multiple stories. And they're like, oh, they did such a good job making them all go together. That's probably why it went writing, too.

I don't know if people just forgot about the concept of like multiple stories taking place that went. Like, this isn't, it didn't invent this at all. But it just seemed like, oh, wow, you can have a movie that's popular about racism that does this? I don't know what the fuck. It blew people's minds, apparently. But that's my explanation for the film editing is just like, no, they edited all of them

together as if it's not just like, oh, this is already in the script that it's, I don't know, because there's some atrocious editing in this movie. The scene where they're comparing rap lyrics to like country, like lynching songs or whatever. And it keeps cutting back and the cuts are so fucking quick that it's incomprehensible. But it's just two people in a car talking to each other. And they keep cutting back to this one shot. of him like ludicrous's friend like I guess like

being all up in his face with like a smile and it's this weird like he's looking directly at the camera and it cuts so quick yeah that scene is awful it's like a genuinely terribly edited scene

and so yeah what was it up against like what the what was going on let's see editing it was up against yeah just other normal movies Cinderella Man Constant Gardner Munich

walk the line. No idea. No idea. Absolutely confusing. And another thing that I... Well, I guess before I move on to that, I'll mention there's some terrible audio editing. And I guess that's technically a different category for the Oscars. But there are two points in the film where I very explicitly heard them reusing the same take multiple times.

One time it was just three times in a row When the Persian guy I noticed that at least once Oh yeah it's crazy It's crazy it's so blatant The Persian guy and the Mexican guy And the lock being changed or whatever The Persian guy's daughter comes

She says the word dad Three times in a row and it's the exact same take They just kept repeating the same take Dad dad dad I was like what the fuck You're really doing that And they did that multiple times in the movie Like with different takes

they just did that and it's so noticeable and they're right next to each other yeah not great not great putting the film together not great editing not great the things that I love about movies are not in this movie all of the performances that were

that are present in this film all 800 different performances Matt Dillon was picked out and got nominated for best performance by an actor in a supporting role. I guess I guess he kind of has the most screen time probably.

Who, do anybody get nominated for like the lead? Are they all considered supporting? That's a good question. They didn't want to like go through the effort of figuring out who the main character was. is a good observation i can't even no yeah there's no nominations for lead

isn't it which makes sense because they who the fuck even knows who the fuck even knows who the lead is in this movie yeah yeah definitely doesn't have one but i guess if you had to pick one it would be him just find out who has the most screen time i think that's literally how they calculated is screen time

for lead performance and supporting oh my god but that would be a tough one Tough one to try and find out. Yeah, I mean, he did a good job. My criticisms aren't really with Matt Dillon, I guess. His character was annoying, but... The standout worst straight of acting was probably Sandra Bullock for me, as far as like... She sucks.

There's no scene where I'm like buying that this is, this character, all I see is just Sandra Bullock. There's a lot of bad performances. Ludacriss sucks. Brendan kind of fucking sucked. Everything Brendan Frazier was saying sounded so fucking fake, like he was doing a fake voice the whole time. Like he's a little kid trying to sound

like an adult. It seemed like they had him for a few hours and they were rushing through his stuff. That's the vibe I was getting. They filmed his scenes in like an hour. Maybe. And the same of like Keith David. That was something I did like.

Oh, this character's kind of cool. He's got a grab a tuss. I like, I like Keith David a lot. But it's like one scene with the whole joke again being, yep, look, black people can kind of be racist too and endorse these systems as long as they're okay. It's like, God, God damn it, man. This is so lame, this repetitive point. They just keep hammering again. I'm going to take that cop character too. Yeah. Ugh. Fucking Don Chito, his character and his resolution at the I felt like they, like, there was no, nothing that made sense leading up to that being what his character was.

So essentially he, he turns out to be the brother of Ludacris's friend who gets shot by the fucking partner of Matt Dillon cop. And so at the hospital or whatever, John Cheeto's mother is like, you can't pretend to be a part of this family. You were always so busy and you're just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I guess, like, maybe the point of that was trying to just show like, oh, you know, like, some black people, they have really respectable jobs and some of them turn to a life of crime. They can be from the same family and it really just depends on what you're, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I'm like, it felt weird because it felt like earlier they were setting up Terrence Howard's character

to be what would more appropriately be that? Because they had an entire argument over like, oh, you know, like, you're not even that black to each other, the couple. Like, you haven't experienced real racism because your skin is actually lighter than most black people. And he was talking about how, you know,

the association with him being like a famous movie producer and, like, they had the conversation about him and the director were saying, like, oh, no, like, he needs to talk more. black and it's like, okay, that would make, if Terrence Howard's character wound up being the brother of that guy, that would make way more sense than Don Chito because there's not fucking nothing happened with Don Chito the entire movie other than him like he had sex with a woman and said that she was white even though she wasn't over the phone for some reason. Like why I don't know why you

did that. Yeah, what else happened with his character? Why does it need some money? What else happened with his character. Nothing. Nothing. You could have removed it. You could have removed his character and just had Terrence Howard experience that instead, maybe. Right?

Then you can kind of, you can do that with pretty much any of these short stories. Like, the thing that always intrigued me about this movie, you'll see in that poster with Michael Pena, like, screaming. And the little girl. But when I actually got to that scene, I was like cackling with laughter. That was the way it's presented. It's like, it's like, it's, like, it's, like, it's, so corny and goofy the way it comes together and yeah non-sensical the whole like yeah the whole

miracle angle and all of that she's just like I can't we're really going there this is like unurned hallmark corny it's like yeah it's so goofy and corny it's like yeah I cannot I cannot I cannot break down any any of what it's trying to say it's so it's so surface level it's so we often talk about these as normally as to praise a film this type of writing where there are lots of different characters and they will feel like different characters where this is an example of the inverse but every character just feels like the same writer yeah same the same perspective mr haggis Yeah, they would just feel like Paul Haggis's like observations poorly packaged with like, we got to go back to ludicrous for a minute. Yeah. Why? Was he like trying to get into Hollywood at this time?

Whatever? Like, he's in all those fast and furious movies, but there's not like an angle in his movies of like, yeah, this is Oscar winning or Oscar. No. Oscar piece, uh, trying to big up ludicrous project. I don't know if that's what he was going for in 2004, but it's a really, like, funny, weird character. Like, to have him freeing the child slaves and stuff and, yeah, doing their little smirk.

It's, like, tonally very weird. I'm clearly not thought through this, like... It's, uh, yeah. It's, like, this movie feels like a parody of what you... Like, it feels like bait to the point of... Did I ever tell you about... There's, there's, this is more prominent in the Oscar shorts category, because I'm not sure they even watch them. But there's, there's a movie, like, every, like, few years there'll be, like, just some obvious bait that get, like, just cynically wins the Oscar anyway.

There was one, a short called Skin, where it was just like, it's the funniest thing. If you've never seen Skin the Short, please watch. It's the funniest fucking thing. It's, like, probably funnier than Crash. But, you know, every once in a while, you see, oh, yeah, you got to see it. I'll see if I can find it on YouTube or something. Every once in a while, there's something like that where, you know, I'm just watching the Oscars. I'm like, they're going to pick that one.

They didn't watch it probably and they're just going to pick it because it's like, oh, racism bad or whatever. And it's just the most obvious insincere bait ever. This is a film where if this didn't exist and someone made this as a parody, I would say that's unrealistic. That's too far. This is a film that like, if this didn't. exist. I would be like, no, that's pushing it.

Like, I don't, I don't, this seems like even too much of bait for the Oscars. This seems like, this seems so insincere and bad that there's no way this would be a best picture winner. And yet here we are. It really just feels like an unbelievable parody. Like, you could make, I would love to see an actual parody of this movie. I was cringing at the, um, in the, um, in the, But there's like a Mark Komode, like, audio review of him talking about this film. And he ends it by saying, yep, I just saw it again.

And I just really feel like time is going to be very good to this. And there's smash cuts. 20 years later. Me watching this. I don't, no, no. And I'm just like, oh, I was more entertained than I thought I was going to be. I thought this was just going to be kind of boring bad. But I thought this was so inept in what it was trying to do that it was actually quite funny.

very funny just how insane how melodramatic how corny how like over the top stupid and like there's this there's this like kind of earnest nugget at the very beginning of it that's like it's it's trying to do something but just failing so spectacularly with such finesse or lack thereof that's like yeah there is something spectacular about and then of course ironically funny with how how much has been like jerked off and supported. It's very weird. It's like the... I don't know, is it the film that kind of revealed that Oscar veneer a little bit?

Like, what if... Well, this... Okay, I mean, yeah, there's this... 2004, I'm assuming every single academy voter was like a 90-year-old white guy anyway. And it was just like, you know, we've got to tell everybody how bad we feel. This is our public... to the world for being racist and also being pedophiles in Harvey Weinstein and shit. So we're just going to, we're just going to, we have an out and we're going to make people think

that we're good people or something. I don't know. I mean, like, I'm saying that and sure, like, there's people that obviously connected with it. But like, even when you read the Roger Ebert review, he's like, I think people will be better people from seeing this. It's so embarrassing this movie and what it brings out of people. Yeah. This is a hilarious retrospective as in just being able to look at this 20 years later, it'd be like, damn.

Yeah. This honestly, I can't believe I'm saying this, but it makes me want to apologize to Green Book in comparison. It's worse. That's like well written compared to this, you know? Yeah, Green Book is like a disappointing win. Like, oh, come on, whatever. This is like a formulated. But this is like an actual fucking train wreck. it like it is a crash in of itself.

Yeah. You can't look away. Yeah, it's the obvious joke, but it's true. It's very true. Like, there's not a single element that holds it up. Like, it's not like, we haven't really taught much about like the framing or the way it was shot, but it's terribly shot. It's so, it's so frantic and up close, especially.

Look, so many close ups on faces and you never really get a good feeling of the space you're in. And it's supposed to be, it's supposed to be. It's supposed to, I guess, have like a attention to it. That frantic nature is supposed to make it intense and be like a character drama. Like, this is England or something. This is breaking down the walls of society and getting in up close. But so, no, I just can't tell what's going on. And I'm just, I don't need to be seeing everyone's paws all the time.

This is just claustrophobic and distracting and lame. And the songs. We got to talk about that music. The music is terrible. Like it was so funny the little girl fake out death soon. Like that song that played everyone everyone like loves this song apparently like obsessed with the crash soundtrack. The Wonder Woman soundtrack. Yeah, it does kind of sound like that.

It just was not appropriate. But all of the all of the serious subject matter like now I now when I look at the poster I like I smile and start giggling, which is not... It looks like he's singing the theme of the movie. Oh, true, yeah. I can't take this project seriously anymore. No.

Not knowing what it was and just like, it's such a memey quality to this. It was vague enough, like, before I rewatched it. Like, looking at that poster, I was like, oh, that's a good poster. And now I'm like, oh, oh, go. Yeah, I feel like that's such a failure. If I, you know, anything that reminds you of it, like makes you smile and laugh at it.

It's not like a reminder of like, oh, remember that great scene? Oh, that color palette's all coming back to me now looking at that poster. It's like, nope.

Every bad thing is going to rushing back. Even ignoring the Wonder Woman-esque qualities to many of the songs in the soundtrack, even the parts without like the weird vocals, it was just so fucking droney and sleepy. And it has this weird. like almost there's a certain quality

to the way that this soundtrack sounds that is just so fucking stuck in the mid-2000s I have only ever heard things that sound like that within like a five-year period in the mid-2000s and then never again because I guess everybody decided it sucked

like this movie the soundtrack especially makes it feel so fucking dated whereas you know broke back mountain same year incredible soundtrack doesn't feel dated in the slightest in fact broke back mountain feels ahead of its time

Brokeback Mountain feels like like a more modern movie even though it's a period piece whereas Crash feels just like so perpetually eternally eternally stuck in this stupid 2004 time period of just some shitty like made for TV quality

fucking Canadian film basically it sucks yeah and it's like man it's not like this was an attempt in the 60s or something no it's 2004 we had

laane American beauty do the right thing we've had like loads of films that like talk about these kind of things already everybody forgot it it's just that response like it I cannot

exaggerate enough to the audience It's like how funny it is to sit down and watch this film in 2023. It's crazy. Like you could say it's like painting my expectations too harshly or wrong, but it's like actually mad. Like it's got like a 7.7 pretty high rating on IMDB. Like four, nearly half a million people,

half million ratings and a pretty solid metastore. Then you sit down and watch this like actual parody. You could watch it like an American psycho like and just pretend. Mm-hmm. Like it's written to a, intentionally be a parody and it it kind of works on that level like a really a really good comedy an awesome unintentional comedy but just mad that like so many big names are attached and yeah just the groundswell support it got i really yeah critically money like it's just mad

i really do believe that like this would be a perfect film to parody like why not just but just make a movie like this and then just the the the implied significance over random dumb shit that's weighed over dramatic and insincere. Like that, that's comedy enough. It seems like you'd be able to mimic that to like a pretty good degree. Like, I, I would love to see a parody of Crash. It seems fucking awesome, right? I don't even know how you do it because it's already sort of a parody of itself.

I know, right? Like, do you remember that final shot, that final shot where it's like wrapping up the final one of these spider web stories. And then it just like shows the LA skyline for just a little bit like well the adventure's done here guys

isn't it? Let's just cornerly wrap this up. Oh LA you're just so nutty crazy and a little bit racist. Whatever. Yeah, we're all racist but we're here. Yeah like what? It's so empty. It's like saying nothing

for two hours. It really says nothing for two hours. The second half of this movie was very funny. The first half of this was like the most boring fucking shit in the world. I was like having watched this and when evil lurks like in quick succession, I watched this one beforehand. But that was my frame of reference. I was like, damn, like 40 minutes has passed in when evil lurks. And that felt like at about the same amount of time had passed watching Crash for five minutes. Literally watching Crash, I think I just said. out loud, I was like, the last five minutes

it felt like a fucking hour. I'm constantly looking back at the clock. It's because that structure never pays off in any way. No. You don't know what you're following. Nothing built. Yeah. You're just, it's like fucking changing the channel

every fucking five minutes. It's like TikTok movie. It's like move on to the next. Are you going to come back to that and build on it in any meaningful way? No. The expectation, there is they're almost doing that they're doing something like a memento

or whatever. The way it's talked about makes it sound like that it's doing something with structure. Rashaman. Like that. That important or whatever. Pulp fiction. No. Well, yeah. Yeah, because this, I guess this is from, yeah, just a few years removed from these kind of

revolutionary non-linear narratives. And maybe they, yeah, maybe it was all just whipped up in the hype of that groundswell of those types of films. This one does not age like those, that's for sure. No. Nothing really to learn from this movie except, I don't know, easiest Oscar win ever, right? Yeah, it pisses me.

It would be less of a piss off for the best picture win if we looked at the other nominations and we were like, yeah, you know, it wasn't a very strong year. Brokeback is the only one you need to look at. That movie has aged fucking incredibly and is a really great film. And we talked about it on the first. podcast. Yeah.

Easy answer. A fucking layup. You don't even have to think about it. No. Done. Right? So that makes it annoying. Who was going to be going to bat for this film over that?

It's actually crazy. Mark Cremode. Let's ask him about it. Yeah. Clearly. But like when you look at him justifying what like inspired him to tell the story and whatnot, right? Writer and director Paul Huggis was inspired to make the film.

after being carjacked by two African-American men at a blockbuster video on Wiltshire Boulevard whilst driving home from the premiere of the Silence of the Lambs in February 1991. Afterwards, he began thinking more about the impact of race, ethnicity, and class in American society. Oh. Cool. He got woke. He didn't really do the best job of, like, exploring that. No, not at all.

I wonder if he just, like, fantasized in his head, like, man. And these people that robbed me, they were probably having some very meaningful discussions right beforehand. They were probably going on a fucking monologue. Oh, yeah, the monologues. That's most of what it is. It's these ludicrous monologing. Self-important characters, like, yeah, just monologing. And speaking in ways that no human would ever speak to another human.

Never, no. They all feel fake as much. and awkward. Yeah. Ludacris is terrible at it. And that's his entire character. Every time he's on screen, it's like, let me just monologue for another five minutes here,

ultimately leading to nothing, but just being like, I'm going to stereotype other people, but I think it's unfair when it happens to me. Okay, cool. Next scene. I'm going to stereotype other people, but I think it's unfair when it happens to me.

Okay, next scene. Exact same shit. You don't say anything new. Why are you including more screen time of him saying the same fucking thing over and over? build on it build on it show me something new you have like you have time to explore things why are you just repeating yourself it's so fucking oh it's it's an exhausting experience it's a truly exhausting movie no but everyone's a hypocrite man no let me just tell you that again

everyone's a hypocrite man yeah it's just that like on repeat and if you watch this movie and then you're a better person If you acknowledge it. In the 2008 Empire poll, it was 460 in the 500 greatest films of all time. Wow. In 2010, the independent film and television alliance selected Crash as one of the 30 most significant independent films that the last 30 years. So it's like, it's just cemented.

Does everybody feel that way still? Can we, can we get like a Mark Kermode rewatch? Does he have a Patreon where we can suggest like a movement? So it seems like there's no disagreement even with anyone. So everyone kind of knows what crash is now, but it's like, it doesn't deserve it's, it's,

so you know, the history is written by the victors thing. It just feels like, this is so wrong. There's something so deeply wrong about this movie, getting the accolades it does. Because I could live with it otherwise. It'd be just a funny drama,

but it is just where it sits because of that. And yeah, I guess it'll always live in infamy. It's, uh, yeah, it, uh, it's terrible. It's terrible. It aged like shit. Broke back, broke back shit of one. Stop the count, stop the vote. Yeah, fuck it.

What else do we say? And somebody mentioned on the subreddit, um, that he, like, got me too kind of, or let's just say he is, uh, civilly liable racist. but not criminally liable. So he paid money to someone. Who do you mean, Paul Huggers? Yeah, Paul Huggis, the director. But, but he,

there are prominent anti-Scientologists, as in people who left Scientology, like Leah Remy, who have speculated that this is just part of him leaving Scientology and that it might not be a real thing, even though he was found civilly liable but not criminally liable. So just wanted to mention that, yeah, I'm aware that that exists, but I have no fucking idea where the truth is on that or what to even say about it.

Just I'm aware that it's a thing that happens. So Paul Huggis is a Scientologist as well. He used to be. And he was when the release of this movie happened and then left the church. and as has been documented, the Church of Scientology goes after people that leave the church. That might be irrelevant. It might be like that has nothing to do with the rape allegations.

It might have something to do with it. We don't know. I don't know. I wasn't there. I absolutely no clue. But that's the consensus is that it could be or it could not be. I don't know. Oh, yeah.

There are a few articles from November 22 about this. I suggest reading those for more and for that sucks Yeah I really want to watch Magnolia again But I'm holding out for a 4K release or something that hopefully will happen right Get on it Warner Brothers who owns this shit Yeah imagine did you get the crash 4K Oh no I didn't No I downloaded it

I'm sure there's a crash 4K right I don't know. Well, two out of ten for that one, it's terrible. It's terrible. Yeah, yeah. I was pleasantly surprised by how it kind of lived up to its expectation of how sappy and badly written and saccharine and just kind of, I don't know, it's condescending. It seems like it's something you'd put.

on when you're teaching like 12 year olds about racism you know I don't know if I would I don't know even then they would come away with the wrong conclusions yeah I think they would start being more racist if they watched that movie yeah yeah I think you're right there's there's really no good reason to ever screen this movie no come to think of it it doesn't even serve any better examples yeah there's not a single great shot I remember or line of dialogue or A scene of drama. Life lesson. Yeah, especially with what you're saying, it is all about that right.

Well, I suppose there were a couple scenes I remember thinking, yeah, the blocking of that was fine. There's some kind of interesting camera work, but it's in service of this like just atrocious monolog-y dialogue that does feel preachy, that does feel like, you're acting like you're saying something. But when you sit down to actually think about these conclusions, like, wait, oh, you're really just saying a whole lot of nothing with this. Yeah. Big fat of one out of ten. Yeah, damn. One out of five. Yeah.

Yeah, I thought this was hilariously bad. Yeah. Nothing mattered. And it reeked of pretentious self-importance and insistence. Yeah. It just did not live up to in any meaningful way. Terrible writing, terrible music, terrible directing. Fucking a lot of bad acting.

Yeah, pretty much on every level. It's absolute disaster. It's Jesus Christ. Best picture? Best picture. Best picture winner. Four stars, Roger Ebert. Four stars.

The writing one specifically almost annoys me more just on like principle. It's like, come on why? I suppose you could do that with all editing. It's like all of these wins are just so confusing. So like how could you watch these movies and come away with that? What's really funny, I just noticed another. terrible editing thing they did a bunch of times in the movie that also makes it feel incredibly dated to 2004. They did that thing where they're like, we're going to slow down the footage

even though we didn't film it in a high frame rate. So what you're left with is just this like one frame per second like, oh, dramatic music over top. Like I don't know what the fuck was going on where apparently some people thought that that worked for like 10 years or some shit. Like from the 90s to 2000s or something. Damn. But like even at the time like even at the time you kind of looked bad right it's kind of cheesy that always looks garbage yeah always looks cheesy that's terrible editing in at one that's bad you could make a compilation of like the bad editing in this movie it's a bohemian rhapsody well bad lines bad performance yeah i was thinking about bohemian rhapsody but this is this is worse than

bohemian rhapsody i'd say probably significantly worse as a movie yeah you don't have like one Central character or like a Brammy Malick equivalent performance. It's got, yeah, it's not focused enough for that to even contain something of that quality. And I don't even like that movie. Yeah. That would have been a bad best picture win if that won. That would have been a bad one. Ready for some questions?

Yes. Yes, I am. Nice. Let's do some questions then from the Sardonika's community. Head over to the suggestion thread on the subreddit to leave questions for future episodes, just like Mushroom Party 50, do. who did who said if your movie sucks does that mean you hate yourself yes right yep but the real one is this one from Matt Smith Ray Adam you recently mentioned how

your own boredom affected your rating for Oppahima I myself have found myself getting bored in some of what are considered the greatest films of all time and you admit that something like Jean Diehlmann can be a boring experience despite appreciating it how do you think people's own personal boredom should affect their appreciation and rating of a film. I would never make a prescription of should for someone else. It's really up for you to decide. But Jean Dillemont, like, the, you know, the boredom is kind of the point of the film.

And it's like, okay, what is the intent of the film, right? Whereas like the boredom in Oppenheimer, I don't believe. I don't know if we can say that that was the point. And again, that's entirely subjective. my second watch of Jean Dielmaugh, I was not bored throughout the entire thing, knowing what I was getting into the second time, and kind of observing it in, I guess, what I would consider to be, like, the more intended way to watch the film.

Being able to experience it for the second time and knowing what it is, I was not bored. So I wound up loving that movie a lot more. despite being bored on the first watch. Yeah, I would say it's up to you to decide how much that weighs into your review. But, I mean, at the end of the day, like, boredom is just essentially another way of saying that you're not connecting with what's happening on screen. You don't get bored by movies that you're connecting with, maybe parts of movies that, you know, you're just not connecting with that one part. But, yeah, I mean, that does influence. my rating and I can still rate something positively even if I didn't fully connect with it or I

could still, you know, rate something lower even if I do connect with it. There's a lot of different factors going in and it's, you know, part personal thing and part technical, part director's intent, part, you know, lots of stuff. Yeah, I feel like specifically the intent is a big deal there with the boredom factor where that's definitely not in my, opinion what Oppenheimer was going for at all. I think it's for you failed on that mark. And that's why it was a criticism for you. Yeah, I might be less bored on a second watch with that one too, right? I feel like even ignoring the specific nature of Jean Dillemont, there's plenty of movies where on a second viewing, I'll be like, okay, now that I kind of

know how this is structured, I'm less bored because I don't have like false expectations. about where it's supposed to go narratively or pacing-wise or something. Yeah, there might be some slow cinema thing. Yeah. Yeah, we always say the second watch is often the first watch, really. That's why for certain slow cinema, like Nuri Bilge Jalan films, that's why for things like those, if I'm introducing people to his work, I'm going to give him a big warning like, hey, this is going to be beautiful, but it's like really

slow. So you have to prepare yourself mentally for a slow movie. I feel like that helps. I feel like knowing the length of something if it's a long movie. Like the worst experience you could have would be thinking you're going into a movie that's 90 minutes and it turns out to be four hours because then you're just thinking like, wait, are they not wrapping it up? Like, what's going on the whole time? So I do feel like that information does help depending on the type of film. Definitely. Knowing what you're getting into. I'm curious what you think on this one from Dovasar.

Folks on Twitter recently lamented the lack of buzz around animated series scavengers rain. Some went as far as to say that adult animation will never break free of the stereotypical, unfunny, cheaply animated sitcoms, big mouth, Chicago party, aunt, etc. Because adult audiences will never shake the assumption that animation is for kids unless it is over, overtly vulgar and looks like family guy. What do you think it would take for mainstream audiences to accept animation as an equal art form to prestige TV? Also thoughts on Scavenger's Rain. Have you even heard of this?

It's only something I've recently discovered. It's a, you can't say HBO Max anymore. What is it? It's just Max now. Myo. It's on Max. Yeah. It's like a Max original, I guess.

So it'll probably disappear in a few months as well. Yeah. right off. It's called tax right off. It's the new name of the scavengers tax. Yeah. Just tax. I have not heard of it.

It's got like 7,000 ratings on IDB. And despite me not having heard of it, it is on my watch list. So at some point, somebody sent me a link and I clicked the watch list. I've seen, yeah, I've seen a lot of clips to me on some of these shots from it being shared. And I think that it looks really cool visually. I can't speak on the writing, but as far as art direction and it being, it's like a more adult setting,

there's blood, there's violence. Yeah. It's kind of what we're always talking about as far as adult animation. Here's an example of it, and there it is, no one wants to see it. Well, here's the thing. It looks cool.

I don't know if, I don't know if I agree with the premise that, you know, people decided not to watch it because of those stigma, against adult animation. You could be explaining why it wasn't marketed properly, because I think that's the real issue

is that nobody's heard of it and nobody's talking about it. Yeah. Right? Nobody's talking about it because it's not being properly marketed. So if you want to explain that a way as like, oh, fucking David Zaslav or whoever's making the decisions at Mayak's in order to promote it and, you know, maybe even on their own platform, it would help.

if it was just on the front page. Because we have other examples of animation for adults that exist that are pretty successful. Netflix's Love, Death, and Robots is an example. A lot of its computer animations, I think some of its 2D animation as well. It's anthology kind of, but it's adult animation.

Yeah, cyberpunk. Yeah, cyberpunk. But the difference is that Netflix promotes the shit out of those things. When they release it, it's on the front page, and you can see that it's a thing that exists. I don't think that Max is promoting it as much. If less people know about it, they need to work on their marketing. I think that's probably the biggest issue.

And the more of these things that exist, the more we can fight that stigma. That stigma doesn't really seem to exist in places like Japan. No. So, yeah. Be the change you want to see and pimpe it out. And maybe they'll, if they do a season two of something, then they'll have more faith in it and actually advertise it, but right now, yeah, I think it's just a marketing issue, first and foremost. Yeah, I'll probably check out a couple episodes of this, because I do think it does

look exactly like the kind of thing I want to see in this space, but it is, yeah, disappointing that they probably don't know how to advertise it or what space it's supposed to fill. Yeah, unfortunately. And I'm sure there is a hunger for it, but it's not an anime, it's not like based on Resident Evil or something people know. some IP that people already believe in. So it's got a couple challenges that it's trying to overcome. But yeah, it's, I think it's just an ongoing problem.

It's like these streamers, these streaming companies, they're greenlighting like hundreds, if not thousands of projects a year. And what percentage of those like rise to the top? It must be less than one percent. They forget about most of them. They're looking for those squid games. Yeah, the model is based all around. that those five successful ones, if that,

and they will hopefully bring in enough subscriptions to justify the other stuff that they can write off. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, yeah, there's something very sad about that because they're going to be a lot of victims when we look back at this whole space and this experiment with this model.

We'll see where it goes. Yeah. Speaking of seeing where it goes, affectionate duck 882 has this to say apologies in advance for leaving a huge downer of a question for which film positions slash departments do you think will be the first to be replaced at least predominantly by AI and which will be the last other than that keep up the great work gents happy to see y'all

on my Spotify rap three years in a row what are the most expensive things like visual effects and things like this they'll want to target right yeah i think they're starting with like like background animation. Yeah, like concept art, stuff like that. Yeah, true. Probably stuff like storyboarding and yeah, if you can just like type prompts into, yeah, I want this guy in the foreground, this is a bit of a sketch, flash this out into a full, like I'm sure that will be stuff that's immediate.

I mean, that's already happening now as far as like concept art being generated using AI. So that's, I feel like where it will start. And then you just got to go to like where do most of the movie budgets go into where are they going to want to cut corners the most. And it will be probably creative positions like, yeah, visual effects. What can we automate from that like particle effects and automated lighting stuff and, you know, these big projects are going to want to target? I'm curious about music and score.

Because a lot of these, a lot of films that come out. right now, feels like they might as well be auto-generated. They already sound it. Yeah. Right? When you're saying about rights as they too. The two characters are with each other. And then it's just like, oh, you do the high piano sound when the tear comes out.

Things are already so fucking formulated already that it's like, I support real artists that are actually trying to say things, not saying that people shouldn't have jobs if they're making bad art, I guess. but like I don't know what the solution is here. I don't know if there is a solution other than to try and warm people up to the idea of like universal basic income because our jobs don't actually exist for any reason other than for us to have money right now and that would be nice if we moved away from that thought process, right?

We're kind of stuck in that way of thinking. Like a week ago I watched that film, the creator, that new Gareth Edwards movie. But the whole crux of it is supposed to be this kind of AI issue and these AI people and robots and whatnot. And I was reading, the soundtrack to the film was originally supposed to be like AI music. And they got it working and they were like happy with where it is. And they were like, yeah, like thematic, right? But they scrapped it at a certain point and got Hans Zimmerin to do the score. And as you were just saying, like, it might as well have been an AI generated Zimmer score.

That's funny. Nothing about it. That's great. I made it stand out. But yeah, I think it will be, I mean, it's unpredictable the, like, sectors it's been targeting first. Like, I don't think I didn't really anticipated it to infiltrate the artistic creative stuff, like, first.

It's like where it's going first. It's the audio, the visual, the, like, you open Adobe premiere and it's like, we're working on ways we can just edit your videos for you. Isn't that cool? Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, like, here's the thing, if whatever AI editing takes place is something that you can still, like, manually change and adjust, I think it would be cool if you could train an AI on your own editing style. Because right now, I think what exists is, like, oh, if you want your video to be, like, the most formulated TikTok whatever, then you can just kind of.

farm your way into making soulless content. It would be interesting if, if, like, you could train an AI on your own editing style in the sense that, like, oh, you actually want your style to exist, but you just, you know, there is a formula to it,

and we don't need, you know, to fucking destroy your wrists doing it. That'd be interesting. Yeah. But then it kind of gets into the, the queval quack conundrum. It's like, Like, is it good to automate parts of your work so you can make more of it, or is the making it the actual expression?

I wanted to have this conversation with you for a while. I don't know what, like, your whole, what your whole perspective is on Cueblecott, but he's, like, so obviously rage baiting. He's just like, he's, you know, he's fallen off in terms of relevancy. He makes, like, fucking Minecraft content or whatever. His views going down. Yeah, I know. But, like, his views going down, and now he's just like, oh, but. But it's AI.

And here's the thing. People have such a, like an uninformed and just kind of knee-jerk reaction to what AI even is, that he's able to pretend as if his videos are AI. When, sure, there's AI-generated elements to the videos, but it's not completely AI-generated. Obviously, someone is playing the game. And then he's just using AI software to take an existing play-through. that he's either paying someone else to do or that he's doing himself

and then just overlaying just to get clicks. And then the AI is mimicking that with the face visual and then also mimicking his voice. So what I believe he's doing is just like, oh, he's gotten someone else to just, or maybe even himself, to just do the one pass-through of the game

doing a regular playthrough, you know, doing a regular edit. And then just, adding AI elements to it. It's not like the AI is playing the game and like placing blocks and reacting to the I don't know. It's kind of weird and funny. We are so far behind where AI could realistically do the things that Quebel Kopp is claiming to be doing that people are just kind of getting worked up over nothing for no reason. And he just wants attention and we're all just giving it to him is essentially what's happening.

because you had that whole it was like that Twitter publicity stunt I guess you could call it I'm done trying to trick people but now it's the model 2.0 actually you're stupid when yeah

it was pretty I don't know it was pretty obvious through the video that it was like a creepy AI version of Cueblo but yeah I don't know it's like what is you trying to fundraise or just farm engagement anger

it's literally just about getting attention it's like so pathetic yeah so needless like has he really got nothing else you could do with his time with his resources it seems like

his main goal is to get attention and it has been for a while I guess yeah I just can't understand I guess some people are just fine being branded like a bad guy as long as they're getting eyes, right? Some people, the attention is the end goal and nothing else matters. Yeah, yeah, I can see it through that lens.

It's just like, why? Like, even people who consider themselves as Cueble fans, like are turned off by it. People are, there's Cueblo fans? It's crazy. It sounds crazy, but there are. If you're like going on the AI videos and they're like, man, you change Cueblo, man. you used to play GTA real good Can't even do that anymore

Yeah probably some people that watched them When they were like six years old That haven't even touched his content For the last 10 years And now just commenting back on it being like I this is not what I remember Even though Cueble was kind of

Sniper Wolf 1.0 In some ways Oh yeah Yeah we'd do like the exact same thing She's doing now and getting all the heat for. Oh. Just like watch like, yeah, do like React videos on like,

uh, different animated stuff, like superhero fight animations and all this stupid. It seems like he's constantly changing what the fuck his channel is supposed to be and just trying to continue throwing shit at the wall and hoping something sticks. And this AI thing is just something that stuck for a bit because people rage clicked on it. And he got more attention. So he's like, I'll keep going with this. that category of YouTuber where

in the mid 2010s they got into either the GTA or the Minecraft algorithm made like millions of dollars I said yeah why can't you just be happy with that why you gotta do

all this stuff now yeah it's just cringy it's embarrassing it is it is cringy but what are you gonna do I'm just I am I'm super interested in the whole

whole AI thing and we'll see where it goes. Like just over the course of us talking about it on the podcast, it's transformed so much and this has only been like a year or two, right? Yeah, and it was like a joke at first and that's like people are actually a little bit scared. Dissotations are being written with it. They can do five fingers on each hand now.

Yeah, yeah. I'm just not sold yet if it's going to if it's going to solve or change anything to do with maybe writing of a certain level, like it might improve, like, maybe Hollywood writing on,

like, blockbusters. Like, it might genuinely make it better with some of it. Maybe. Um, but I don't know how you could have it fill these kind of more,

uh, creative roles quite yet. Everything that I enjoy about movies and every artist that I pay attention to and follow, it's not going to. to affect them first. They're going to be safe for a while. We're not making an AI Charlie Kaufman movies for a while.

We did get a Harmony Korean AI, but that's about it. If you're saying like you could plug in, if there's like an algorithm that could scan your entire YouTube channel and go through every single video and figure out a way you cut, a way you edit, a way you present your stuff and mimic it quite well. What's to stop that same algorithm doing that with like a David Lynch, just go through his entire filmography and break down his style and then generate new

Lynch. I would love to see an AI generated David Lynch movie. I think that would be interesting. Like what is, I'm super interested in what the imperfections are in this technology and what the machine learning, I don't know if the word. thinks is appropriate, but what it thinks something is supposed to look like. So I'll subscribe to some of these subreddits like mid-jurney or whatever, and I'll just see what other people are creating. I don't really create a lot myself in terms of AI prompts. I find it confusing and just

not worth my time. But a lot of other people are just creating things and they'll be like, okay, this is, I want, they'll get 12 different images for the prompt being something like make a funny meme, but the caption is sad. And so I'm kind of just, I'm fascinated watching over time these AI machine learning things eventually start to create

real words and sentences and I find it super because before it was like okay none of these are real letters and they're not in any particular order or making any sense now we're starting to see some and like one of the images

was like a newspaper clip or something and the title of the newspaper had said something about a man like swimming in beans and then the image also had beans in it. I'm like, okay, there's some consistency there. I find that interesting. And also, yeah, the fucking up nature of it, the randomness, the imperfections being visible. I find that interesting too. I find it funny. I like the idea of noticing what is wrong in like an image or a series of images. I find it super interesting.

I think this is like six months old at this point. Have you ever seen the AI generated like Will Smith eating spaghetti video? Yes. Yeah, like I find that super interesting. Yeah, it's terrifying. But thinking about like how a machine interprets the concept of like us eating and doesn't get the throughline consistency of like, oh yeah, something needs to be in someone's hand and then go into their mouth and disappear. But it's still figuring things out and just like.

what its interpretation of it is is just so obviously wrong for us, but it's interesting, it's interesting in which ways it's obviously wrong for us. It's interesting thinking about what certain aspects that it needs improvement on. For a while, it was, you know, the number of fingers on each hand. And seeing it evolve over time. Like, I like it. I think it's cool. Will there be terrible things that happen because of it? Maybe, probably. I don't know, but I'm just kind of here along for the ride observing and, you know, you can't fucking do anything about it. It's like open source at this, but you can't stop it. Yeah, it can't be stocked. It's too integrated into, especially money now. Yeah. Like,

it's already like infiltrated the stock market. Like, it's made with these companies accrue all this extra wealth and there's like this race for the best AI now. I'm so, oh my God. Yeah. But that just happened just in like a weekend. Every like big major tech company has their own AI division now. Fucking Twitter just released one. Yeah. And apparently like the. Of course.

Apparently like the. A lot of the time AI right now is it's not actually solving things. It's just referencing the correct answer. And the next major step will be when it's no longer has the need to. reference things, but it actually understands the answers to things and can solve problem sort of basically. That's like the next scary jump. I don't know. It's interesting. We'll see.

This is, it's definitely very interesting. And it's especially where it intersects with art and the idea of when you have something one to one that can trick most people, the Turing test basically, but with AI art. because we're not quite there yet because there's normally like a that's that's a generated depends on the image patina there's some that look really it's getting really real and it depends on the person you are it depends on how much of this content you're familiar with i consume enough of it because it's just in my subreddit or whatever i consume enough of it where i'm like okay now i see some things where i'm like that reminds me of the what you know if you want to use the word style

that I've seen a lot of AI art generated in. But then, because obviously I'm a furry and I see a lot of art that other people actually create, you know, there will be a point in time where I'm like, that looks AI generated, but then I'm like, okay, but it's not? And this is just their style. So I am kind of being tricked by it already.

There's things that I have like incorrectly attributed in both directions, and it's not frequent, I feel like I'm pretty good at identifying these things, but it already exists in that, at that point. Yeah, the towers are becoming more hidden. Yeah, which is really cool. Yeah, that is crazy.

And I don't know, I think it just makes people feel uneasy, you know, at the true state of our place in the universe, like the fact you can design something that can, yeah, bring out this unspoken, just binding agent of like creativity that isn't supposed to be like a binary. We like to think of it as something that isn't binary and it's like something more interpretable and vague and spiritual maybe. Yeah, I think people are existentially terrified of anything that kind of reveals that we are not like magic. And that word flawed and that word, you know, depending on your perspective, like really simple.

You know, we're just fucking chemical action reaction centers just responding to stimuli and giving responses based entirely on our biological chemistry. Like our brains are physical things that exist. They're not magic, right? the chemical reaction is happening in your brain, the conversation we're having right now. It's all just action reaction. In the same, like, people make arguments about the whole concept of AI being like,

no, they're just like taking what somebody else did and then feeding it back. That's what human beings do. That's what humans beings do. It's doing it in a different way. It's doing it in like a way that is very imperfect right now and maybe, you know, we're tracing it in a... We're tracing it down to something that we can consider to be like less legitimate or like, you know, there's an entire moral conversation we should be having about it.

And I'm glad it's taking place. But at the end of the day, we're all just feeding. We're all just being fed information and regurgitating it in some way. You know, as long as you're not like actually plagiarizing, then great. make it yourself, as in make it something that is true to you. But, I mean, as we were saying, like, the fucking music and crash is not,

it's not, like, that's something made by a human being, but it's also just a regurgitation of everything else. You know, I didn't even watch the creator or whatever. Like, you're saying, Hans Zimmer's score sounds like it might as well have been AI generated. Like, I think most people creating art are just kind of making bullshit and not something interesting and just kind of doing what other people have already done anyway. I think that's most art. I obviously gravitate to things that do more than that.

Yeah, I don't know where to go with this. Anyway. Yeah, these things are never normally made in a vacuum. Like it's a human who's never been a part of any culture who's just been placed in a empty white room with no influence. Yeah, they're not even going to know where to begin. They're not going to have anything to build off. That is like a human thing. And sure, it can be like a criticism when it's too overt like.

That's something I brought up with like the Joker or whatever. where it's like it seems overtly um kind of referential or building off the bones of something that I prefer and that's a problem for me um that's distracting for you oh yeah but then at the same time i'll turn around yeah exactly whereas i might turn around and watch i don't know the original star wars and forgive it for just being the hidden fortress or whatever you know like i'm sure whether every film you can you can pinpoint like this inspiration comes from here or this book or

yeah yeah it's just does it justify it being its own thing or are you just rehashing something that already you know we any new piece of art the it should serve a purpose by existing and not just being like oh you just made this again or you just combine this and this but worse you know crash is just worse magnolia one more this one specifically for you that was curious about

from fat gods Adam has talked before about bad anthro character designs in movies Space Jam 2 comes to mind but I can't think of any anthro designs he's specifically praised from a furry perspective aside from the Lion King

what other films have well designed anthro characters and what makes them well designed? Well, I mean, a lot of basically any, any character that winds up getting popular with furries is like a well-designed anthro character. You have the characters from Zootopia. You have the characters. The redesign of Puss and Boots and, like, death, you know, like, there's something to them

where it's not just an uncanny valley of, like, disgusting, ugly nonsense. There's some things that just don't work. Like, I don't know if you've seen Don Bluth's pebble in the penguin, but those penguin, they have beaks and they have teeth underneath their beaks, and it looks terrifying. And so on certain frames, you see like the full teeth under their beaks. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, it just does not work.

So, you know, there's no hard rules. for anything. Like there's instances where you can make something work. But yeah, at the end of the day, character design, depending on what purpose you're grading it as, you can ask questions like, is it a memorable character? Is it a distinct character design? Does their facial expression or like size or body language or presence, does it communicate something about their character in the way that they're designed? You know, usually when I say like bad character design

from a furry perspective, I just mean like they're ugly as fuck. Which, you know, most movies that have furry characters in it, you can't imagine that that's the goal. You can't, you know. So does that mean, does that mean, you've mentioned to me before? that Madagascar is one of those

unfuckable. They are unfuckable characters. But if they, if it's a fair and create a movie, then how does it, does that not mean they're well designed characters if it's doing that, if it's working? If it's working in what way for who? Like if it creates fairies, right? Or it's like one of the things that can awaken that part of some people's minds.

I thought that's, I'm just kind of what you told me, man. What I told you. I thought it was one of those. Yeah, I thought it was like one of those Lion King type movies where it's like... No. I don't remember telling you that.

Oh. Maybe Cat B.F. said something like that. I remember he liked... Yeah. Okay. But I, yeah, no fucking way that... This was not one of my furry awakening movies, that's for sure. Madagascar is...

I think I was like already too far gone by that point anyway. okay yeah but i just remember you having a yeah specifically a problem with those characters yeah they're blocky they're like legos yeah they're pretty repulsive looking but yeah and the way they move and everything too like there's so much to a character in terms of like design and animation you know could could be like body language and like the movement like andreas Deja, you know, Scar is obviously

my go-to example, but like, look at the fucking body language of that character. It says so much. Like,

there's a, there's a livable, breathable character that exists there in that sense. Like, it's something that was created out of fiction, but exists in such a

consistent and believable way. Yeah. There's something to, like, attach onto in that sense. yeah it's a combination of just a lot of what human beings phrase included appreciate about like character design in terms of like connecting with characters also has to do with how well you capture the human nature of the performance and their design because otherwise you're just doing fucking john fabro's lion king where there is no human character you're just have lions that happen to be making human-type sounds with their mouths, and they're not emoting in any way at any point.

But if you capture the human, you know, the human nature of these performances, you know, eyebrows are like a big thing for anthro animal animation and, you know, what is their mouth doing? How do they react, you know, like tons, tons that goes into these intricacies and the most talented animators are hyper aware of all of the details that you could possibly include about a performance and a design. So I'm not going to pretend to be an expert because I haven't studied personally. I have not studied the 12 principles of animation.

So I guess my points here are all invalid. I can't say anything. Yeah, otherwise. Interesting. Yeah, a lot going into it. Interesting perspective. No one answer. But there's many, many working parts.

that are not necessarily a blanket solutions for every problem. All right. We did it. Nice. You did it. I'm going to recommend a Christmas movie anyway. Oh, do it. Dang it, yo.

It's a Christmas miracle. It's a Christmas miracle. I'm recommending a movie on Christmas. That is a Christmas movie. I've never seen it Black Christmas 1974 It's apparently Canadian

It's apparently Allegedly maybe I'm making shit up But I was told that it was considered to be like The first slasher movie So like I get Or maybe like popularized I don't know It seems to be It seems to have a very important

Place in the genre in terms of its history That'll be interesting Hopefully I enjoy it hopefully I find it good. I'm also going to watch the two remakes, which are supposed to be horrendous. Not so good. And, yeah, so this will be fun, I think.

So if you want to watch the two remakes, go for it, because that's what I'm going to do. But they're all... An unexpected trilogy. Yeah, they're all 90 minutes. They're not like the longest movies, and, you know, we got a couple weeks before the next recording. I'm so.

Get ready for a black Christmas. So if you haven't seen Black Christmases times three watch them before the next movie comes or so the next episode comes out these podcast episodes come out every two weeks

you can listen to them early by going to Sardonicast.com signing up for premium it's only $2 a month you can download the episodes you feel good about yourself you can also go to patreon.com slash Sardonicast that's patreon.com

slash sardonicast. I kind of flubbed the way I said it. You'll get the episodes early there too. If you like Patreon, you can do that. We also got merch link in the description. I've been talking a bunch about, you know, meming about getting Sardonicast merch for your grandma. Somebody actually fucking did it. Oh my God. It happened. I saw this post and I was blown away and I was. It's a great. They took a picture with their grandma. wearing Sardonicast merch. I've got it. Both wearing.

Both. Both. By Dab Sloth 710. And it's a perfect, perfect lovely picture. You can see that she is the happiest that she possibly could be from the wonderful energy emanating from the Sardonicast hoodie that she's wearing. Now, that's the real Christmas miracle right, though. It really is.

It is the most epic Christmas that could have happened. And if you want your Christmas to be epic, which it's, I guess, already Christmas today when you're listening, when it's public. Literally today. If you want it to be the most epic, just you can look at your grandma dead in the eyes and be like, yo, I'm going to order us matching Sardonicast hoodies. And you show her the receipt. You say, I'm sorry it's not here today.

I'm sorry it's not here today, but you see that it's, in shipping, it's going to be shipped at some point. And she'll go, thank you, grandson or granddaughter or grand, they, them. Thank you so much. That was beautiful. All right. Thanks for listening.

Everybody, have a happy, unspecified religious denomination, Christmas. Have a day. Winter time. Have a day of some sorts and a happy Shrek. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye.