Sardonicast - Sardonicast 168: Kinds of Kindness, Koyaanisqatsi (feat. Gaël)

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Guest: http://www.twitter.com/_vexel Support the Show for $2 a month and receive all future episodes early at https://sardonicast.com and https://www.patreon.com/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 Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 4:58 Kinds of Kindness 38:20 Koyaanisqatsi 1:30:43 Questions 1:58:13 Outro + recommendation

Three, two, one. So this is what you use to weigh the animals. I like that quote. That was from kinds of kindness. That was a funny moment. I was also debating, you know, I almost changed my mind instead of using that quote to do... Koyani Skatsi. Which I might be in the correct pitch for that, but I'll just have to trust that my lowest.

It's probably okay. I'm Adam from your movie sex. This is our Donna cast. Hello everybody. I'm Alex from I-H-E, but that is not all. Who else is there in the background waiting to jump in and sing with us? Lurking. Ooh, I'm here to join the background ready to sing.

Join the chorus as it were. It's Guy L. Hello. Also from Adam and Pals sometimes. Hey, been a while, huh? You return. Yeah, it's been a minute. I am back finally.

Gael is my roommate and friend and pal who has been on my channels a bunch, Adam and Pell's stuff. He was on the episode where we talked about En Sondi on Sardondi on a cast in the second half of the... That's right. Yeah. What do you do? I...

I don't know. I'm like the queen. I'm like the queen. You know? like I ask the queen, look, what do you do? She's like, oh, the queen. I don't. Oh, the French. Oh, the French.

I do a few, you know, I'm around. I don't want to, you know, give too much away. A drifter. A drifter. Sure. Yeah, no, I'm on the Adams channel sometimes. We went to a furry convention very recently and watched kinds of kindness, which we're going to talk about.

I like Lord of the Rings. That understatement like Lord of the Rings. Okay, a slight understatement. Have you seen the Rings of Power season two trailer yet? I made him watch it with me. It was very painful. You shivering in anticipation. I suspect it's going to be a painful watch the whole thing through.

But yeah, no, it's thanks for having me back. It's been a minute. So I'm excited to talk about these movies. Dank. Oh, yeah. Um, Alex. Um,

Adam. How many, how many prime ministers have you had in the past five years? Go. Oh my God. It's more than five, right? Or is it five? I don't know.

I think it might be five. You got a new one. Yeah. Who even cares at this point? Yeah, we finally have a new one. I don't know, there's a new feeling in the air, a little bit refreshed. A constant new feeling in the air for the UK. Yeah.

Well. Labor. It's been a long, like my entire adult political life has been just this one status quo. So this will be the first time it's shifted from, you know, anything different for me. So I'm interested to see what that is, but I don't know, you see what's going on in France. We just dodge a bullet there. But I'm hearing some bad things about what's happening in Canada might be lurking, building. Well, I don't know.

It's kind of inverse, right? I don't know. You can't really tell. You never know. We'll see. We try to balance the invisible scale between the ocean so that whenever you guys have like some conservatives and power, we just try to like, you know, go the other direction. I feel like that's kind of how it goes. When is our next election?

Yeah, when is it? Next year. Oh, okay. So just trial in America. Or, yeah, I think it's next year, if not at the end of this year. But I could be wrong. I haven't looked at the exact dates. But I think it's funny that we were talking about this, how in the UK, the conservative

Conservative parties' colors are blue and the liberal parties' colors are red, whereas in the U.S. and Canada, it's reversed. Yeah, the liberal parties are red. No? No? No in Canada. It's the same as the UK. Sorry, sorry. Not in Canada. Sorry, I'm at the U.S. Yeah, you're right. The public is the way. The U.S. is reversed. That's right. I'm going crazy. And I actually prefer the red for liberal because I feel like it's more of a kind of communist color, and the blue is kind of like cool and conservative. So I kind of like think that like, I

kind of like the way that the parliamentary system does it but we're here to talk politics welcome to sardonicast yeah yeah okay let's go well you know we can talk about whatever the fuck we want it's true because it's our fucking podcast it's a political year people's podcast and we own the means of production it's the people's podcast i don't know how communist trudeau is though so i don't know and uh every movie's political propaganda now anyway am i right guys oh yeah you know i thought But that kinds of kindness said a lot about something. Trump? Let's talk about it.

The new Yorgos-Lanthamos film, Emma Stone. So he's doing one of these per year now for like three years in a row. He's already got the next one announced. Oh, really? Yeah, I feel like we're just talking about poor things just a few months ago because we were. Yeah, crazy to get another. Yeah, because that was a really late in the year release too. Like, that wasn't available for a lot of people until like December or January.

Yeah, it's a year. Yeah. So this is literally only been like half a year for a release, which is crazy. Basically, he did a spoiler discussion, even though it's not really a movie, you can really spoil all that hard. But spoiler discussion just in case. He did a movie that's basically like three short or stories. It's almost a three hour long movie. So I guess each of these stories is technically feature length over 40 minutes each.

True. So he made three movies into one movie and used the same actors for each of the basically like sketches. It feels like kind of like a sketch dark comedy. weird movie it's like yeah an anthology yeah it's like it's like it's like your ghost's wild tales or something

yeah we've had a few of these anthologies lately you know French dispatch being another notable one uh in the horror genre they're the big ones you VHSs and that kind of thing but yeah you're you're goes we're getting a strange uncomfortable Greek version this time um well the Greeks are known for their fables right so in a sense true very true it kind of

kind of works a little bit. That's a great point. What the fuck do we think about this movie? Because I really enjoyed it. I thought Poor Things was way better. And part of the reason why I was so hyped for this is because Poor Things is like one of the best movies ever. Gael, you need to see Poor Things.

So you haven't seen Poor Things yet. Yeah, so I haven't seen poor things. So I have a slightly different perspective. Okay. Have you seen other Lanthamas movies in the post? I've seen the favorite, which I really liked. I really enjoyed the favorite. I'm trying to think of what else he...

You've seen the lobster, right? I have not seen the lobster. What the fuck? Have you seen Killing of a Sacred Deer? Yes, I've seen Killing of a Sacred Deer. I got that kind of vibe from the first story of this movie. Obviously, like, it gets more, what do you call it? It gets more supernatural as it progresses.

I don't know if there's a better word for that. But Killing of a Sacred Deer had this kind of like hanging kind of feeling in the air the whole time, this kind of uncomfortableness, which I got a lot from like the first, I don't want to call it the first story. The first. That feels right. Chunk. The first chung is. Because they're not really linked outside of anything more vague or thematic.

There might be little things that join them here and there, but they are mostly siloed off. Kind of what makes it interesting is, yeah, the same cast returning for each one. But the costume design, the hair going in and the actors having. fun, like differentiating these same actors playing different characters in each one of these stories. And that's, I know, broadly, I just don't really love anthologies as a format. There's like a lot of the time I feel like it does kind of kneecap the overall potential your, a horror movie is, because like, kind of, yeah, I gotta, I gotta go there, I gotta say

it. And this is one of the more interesting examples of an anthology to me where it's mostly that runtime that it comes down to for me. Mm-hmm. It's this is his longest film by far. Paul Things was a long movie, but there's just something about the pacing and the cadence of the kind of full stop feeling of, okay, we're going to the next story now. Now we've got to kind of do act one again.

We've got to build up the pace of the story again. We've got to do this three times. And I'm there for the first time. I'm there for the second time. I'm starting to feel fatigued by that third story. And it's not even that I have an issue with what happens in that third one or that it's necessarily lower quality than the first two in there, but two hours 44 minutes is a long, long as runtime for me to sit there and I have to admit, I was starting to feel it towards the end and I couldn't help it feel like, man, would I have enjoyed this more if this was like three hour long episodes or something? I could, I could watch in my own time. Oh yeah, like a Netflix special or something. Yeah, because like, you know, we're just talking about Nathan Fielders, let us show The Curse.

and that has all these strains and links between episodes, but I could approach it at my own time, and maybe I would have been fatigued if I was forced to watch that in big three-hour chunks. So that was kind of my overall thoughts from that first watch. What about you, Kyle? Actually, it's funny because I didn't feel the runtime as much. And it almost felt like when I was watching it, like he started with the longest story.

It almost felt like it was getting shorter. Like it almost felt like every subsequent story was shorter than the one before. it. But that could completely be just my weird impression of it. They could be all the same length. It could be, they could be getting subsequently longer. I don't know. There's something, I was very engaged the entire

time. And I was like very desperately trying to find like a through line between the three just because like there's this kind of weird RMF thing that's trying to, some sort of link that I obviously don't, I don't know what that is. But I think the fact that I was really trying to look for something made the runtime

feel a lot. a lot shorter for me. So there wasn't too big a deal. Normally I don't like super long movies except for the Lord of the Rings. But yes. Of course. I don't know.

What do you think, Adam? Well, so I felt like the first segment could have been shorter. Really? And still, yeah, yeah. The first segment I felt could have been shorter.

The second segment, I feel could have been like an entire feature length film on its own for me personally. I was like, damn. That's I feel about the first. Oh, okay, interesting.

Yeah, the second segment, I was like, okay, I would be, I would be down to see like an hour and a half long version of this just fine. Because I just love the dynamic of the, like everything at play with him being like, oh, it's not, she's not real. Like, I feel like there could have been so much more that could have been explored out of that that I didn't feel like any time was wasted on that one. And it might have even ended too early for me. And then the last one, the last segment, I just like, I'm still trying to process exactly how I even feel about it. I like that. But I like that's the final segment is one

where I'm like, okay, I got to watch this a second time to really know exactly how I feel about it. Each of them have like a, it's kind of funny. They're all really uncomfortable. they're all funny and I wish I could have seen this like with a TIF audience because there were like a you know there were like a couple people in the theater it wasn't exactly like a huge release that like a lot of people were just getting out of their homes to go see and I feel like the experience of the film and the type of comedy that it was would have benefited a lot more from having just like a big audience and like more laughs because there's there's some things that are really there's there's almost like weird, subtle jokes that I feel would have been more appreciated in a bigger audience,

like just moments where Jesse Plymonds has that, like, comically oversized jug of water that he's just, like, refilling a water bottle. Like, I found, I found that amusing. I would have loved for there to be a bit more,

like, of a crowd reaction in my theater to, to something like that. Also, we saw it in Pittsburgh, and people there are fucking weird. Okay. Let's talk about that for the next 20 minutes.

Yeah, people in Pittsburgh are really weird. I feel like I need to you to qualify that slightly. Like what? We were at a furry convention. We were at the largest furry convention. But what was weird about the screening compared to a different screening in a different state part? Just the people. Just the general, just the crowd.

A bit vacant, were they? They were laughing at the like weird. parts that I like I don't know I don't know how to describe it some of them were like a little like talky as well like it points the one the one I often get is where um like there's a like a really corny bad comedy trailer that plays before the movie and that's when everyone's like in a riot of laughter but then during the weird film like it's just complete silence that well you're speaking from a UK perspective and I know that you experience that a lot Oh, constantly, yeah.

Goggle box syndrome, yeah. There was one woman that, I don't know if maybe only I could hear, but she just like, she kept, it wasn't like she was loudly yawning. It's not like she was going like, oh, but she was, she was loud enough, like, that I kept hearing her. I was like, damn, stop it. Because yawning's like a little contagious. That's annoying.

Yeah, so I was just like, I was like swallowing my yons. It was like doing the, oh, God. Just to like not. I mean, even you're doing that fake yawn right? It's make me feel like I have a yon. I know, right? It's contagious. It's powerful.

It's contagious. I didn't hear her in the theater, but I was just more, the only thing I was there was this kind of buzzing sound in the theater the entire time. So, like, when the movie was supposed to be silent. Like, especially when, like, which are usually some of the most, like, you know, powerful moments is when, like, there's complete silence. I always hears this, like, this buzzing in the back. Kind of like, oh, damn.

It's interesting because, like, it's, you. it makes sense to talk about the film viewing experience as in like actually sitting down and like the room that you're in the crowd, the time, like all that stuff. Like I feel like that doesn't get talked about a lot. Usually talk about like how do you think of the film. But obviously like the experience changes your perception of the film and how much you enjoyed you enjoyed it. I find it weird that people don't talk about it more.

Yeah, which is again why I feel like I would have loved to see this at TIF. Because I feel like TIF is oftentimes my, ideal viewing experience for something not at home. Like a great audience, everybody's engaged and like is there to see the movie. And each theater, like the system and the sound and like especially the larger like premiere events, like it's the ideal movie going experience for me is like a good TIF audience. But yeah, the audience wasn't terrible or anything. It was just like I wish I wish there was a bit more liveliness for this type of film, the dark comedy. I was, yeah, I was more surprised they were even showing it as widely as they did anyway.

Like, loads of my local cinemas were playing in. It's like, why, you normally don't play the three-hour-long weird Lathomas movies? This is interesting. But I don't think it's like huge or anything, but. It's literally just because they, like, the same crew and like got all those. dividing off the poor things kind of wins. Yeah. It's like, okay, there's a little bit of buzz after that.

So you get to do whatever the fuck you want. It's like the Cohen brothers making a serious man right after no country. And they're like, yeah, you know, we can just, we have the flexibility now. And it's definitely not connecting like a poor thing or something like this. It's just way more obtuse and more kind of like his older stuff like. Oh, yeah. You know, where it's less colorful. It's more kind of blatantly weird and freaky and uncomfortable.

which obviously is you're asking a lot when it's like three hours and I don't know if the average person is going to be into that kind of experience whereas you know I obviously do value that more yeah I I love Lantamose and I gravitate a lot towards his work and his style in general even though this one wasn't as heavy on a lot of these stylistic choices that I really like about him but his whole like I don't know like kind of shit posty nature of of this film I found very amusing. I would call this his probably most inaccessible film. Oh, yeah.

Really? Yeah, I would say so. Like, in terms of like general audiences, like, this one, like, and people, there's a lot of people that just like absolutely hate killing of a sacred deer for some reason. But this one, I just don't see a lot of people being as, yeah, I don't know why. Hmm. Yeah, I don't, I don't, there's not.

a lot of people that are going to be like enthusiastic about this film. Yeah. You know, it's, it's weird because I didn't really love killing of a sacred deer. I didn't either. The short, the shorter. I did. Well, yes. It's funny because if killing of a sacred deer was a short story, like one of these,

like a 40-minute thing, I think I would have really liked it. I think for me, it just kind of dragged, which is weird to say because it was much shorter film. For me, I'm like, man, like, what's, it's just so abstract. draggy and supernatural and what's going on and okay. Like it just, I don't know, there's something, there was, to be fair, it was my first year ago, so I wasn't kind of ready for the experience. Maybe on a second watch, I don't have a different experience of it. But I think going into this, I already kind of understood what Eurgos, some of the stuff

that he was doing. And so I feel like I was, and it was nice and short, like, they were short stories. So it was actually kind of, it helped with my engagement a lot because I was like, just ready to put something behind me and move on to the next thing. Yeah, it's not a huge commitment per story. Yeah. which is nice. That's almost what bugs me about it is that it's like, I can see the full potential

for each one of these, to be honest, to be fleshed out into a full 19 minute, 2 hour long feature. It almost seems wasteful to kind of condense them and chuck them into one movie that I'm less likely to revisit now, whereas if that first segment was a 90 minute movie, I'd much more likely revisit that, you know, or even though they do have these links and there are these kind of plot elements that do overlap and there is a lot of thought. put into that packaging. Man, it's just, that runtime, once we get into that three-hour mark, I need to really be in

love with it for it to, for me to not get frustrated. I hear you. I hear you, but I feel like this is a film that I'll enjoy more on my second watch. Not to say I didn't enjoy it on my first, but I feel like I'm going to get more out of this on my second watch, especially with the context of like where each story goes and like the pacing of each story and what old. ultimately happens within each story. That does change it to be fair because...

Having like the correct expectations set. Yeah. And those first two stories especially compared to that third one, it really simple, easy to understand strong hooks really quickly in the story. Like this weird warped power dynamic in that first one that's kind of immediately intriguing. You got those performances there and then the missing wife returning and something being off is another like really strong hook whereas I felt like they just needed so much more explaining and that third story to make this like...

I was so confused in the third story for a long time. Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, did I miss something? And I didn't have subtitles either. So I had to... That always adds another element of like trying to decipher it. But that did hurt, like, the flow of it. Even though I did like...

I think the third one actually had the strongest ending in the way it came together. But man, yeah. Get moving again when you... It must be like two hours, ten minutes when that third one begins. And I'm like... Like, everything in my body kind of just wants to leave now. I feel like...

I've got my... I've got my taste of like these two are awesome stories, these great memorable characters and warped performances and that uncomfortable feeling that I like getting from the best length of most movies. But man, yeah, it just feels like putting the brakes on and having to start again. It's like going up a hill three times and having to go through that experience. And that's definitely on me that anthology problem is just a recurring thing. There's, there are very few that don't bug me in this way because all it takes is for one,

you know? Even if like you love every segment in a VHS. there's just one. It's like someone about this. The best example for me is recently the French dispatch where there's one of those segments is so like beautiful. It's so amazing. The, you know, the artist in jail sequence, but I feel like it's stuck in this movie that I just don't really care about otherwise. Yeah. Just this one standout segment. Take it out. Just take it out and watch that one segment. Exactly. Yeah. Which I suppose you can do, but it just feels disappointing when it's like it is packaged and as a,

and presented as a film. So for that film, are the segments, like, connected in any way? Or does it be very much extremely separate? Yeah, it's very loose. It's just like, oh, it's different newspaper stories, and that's the thing that is linking it, yeah. So what do you guys think of, like, the kind of the linking, the main linking thing here, which is just this RMF character? The one thing I wanted to, I was trying to think about is, like, what's actually the

chronology of these stories, right? It doesn't make sense for him because it doesn't make sense for him to die in the first one and then be flying in the second one and then be dead in the third one It almost feels like the second one should be chronologically first and then he dies and then he comes back and comes back to life I don't even know you know what I'm saying I'm trying to figure out like the chronology of it if it's even as literal as that it's hard to unpick some of these things with the Yeah, yeah, that's that's part of the me wanting to watch it for a second time is is to maybe understand it a bit better. But we'll see.

Because, I mean, like, it's a film that is not, it's not not meaningful, but it's not explicitly meaningful. You're, in order to get more of like a solid meaning out of it, I think I'm just going to have to watch it a second time. And what I did get out of it in terms of, you know, the filmmaking and the acting and the comedy and the music.

I really loved. There's some great editing choices and just like I had fun with it and I love how shit posty it is. So I don't necessarily need too much of a deeper meaning, although I'm sure there's something there. This is the type of film where there's something lingering for me. It's not forgettable and there's something about it that makes me want to explore it further, which is a good sign. When you say shitposty, do you mean like that that warped sense of humor that I don't know there is like a dark comedy underlying a lot of this films and it's no different here. Is that kind of what you're getting at? I mean, shit posty is in like is sometimes deliberately like unsatisfying in ways, you know, like with the abrupt nature of how some of these sequences end and like

the tie-ins of RMF are like the fact that these entire sequences are titled RMF blank or whatever or it's a sandwich or and then it doesn't really have to do with them and then like an entire story happens and then it's just like oh okay well here's RMF yeah it's quite like a pedantic framing yeah there's a couple of these like kind of shit-posting moments right like in the end of the first one when Margaret Qualey's playing the piano and this singing that like terrible song. And then the third one obviously

very similar where when she finds the woman she's looking for just cuts to her like just dancing with this kind of inappropriate music. Yeah. Those are like shitposting moments but honestly for me it's just like okay it's just his style. I'm like you know

he's just doing his thing. Like I don't I don't want to take it personally you know? I don't want to be like he's literally trolling me. I'm like, no, it's fine. I'll interpret it. It's your art. It's fine. He's less trolly than Vantrier, but he's like in the same direction kind of. Similar bullpuck, yeah. Yeah. Where he's like, it's almost just like the playing on audiences' expectations and getting a laugh out of like what you're showing people to, to a degree. And even though the actors in here, they are, these characters tend to

a lot of sort of warped, often kind of sexually perverse or something disturbing going on with them. They always give off the vibe in these Lanthimos movies. They're having a lot of fun with the performance, with what they're allowed to do. It is a freeing bunch of characters that this group of actors gets to play. Yeah. And that does keep it, yeah. That's one of the more interesting things to me about this as an anthology. where it's like, okay, that does set it apart compared to other anthologies I have seen where it is the same group of actors and that extra effort you have to put into these three distinct characters with the same actor and Jesse Plemans, he's and Emma Stone to be, all of them, to be honest, they're on fire at the moment.

Yeah. They're just on like a string of these amazing performances every year. And this is no different. I'm liking Jesse Plemans more and more each time I see him. Yeah. He can just come in and steal a movie. you know he did that with Civil War like he's oh yeah there's something special about him for sure yeah it's a it's a really great cast and i also really appreciate about lanthamos just how each of his

films although there are similarities and and you know things that he does somewhat consistently like this is a very different approach than the favorite this is still a different approach oh yeah from killing of a sacred deer a very different approach different approach from poor things. You mean like directorially? Who, what? Do you mean like directorially? Like as in like just the way it's like just the general.

I mean like even the way that characters talk like the approach for like how you're setting the tone and the consistency of how things are communicated. So in this film he kind of brings back his older Lantemos way of characters talking where people are almost kind of saying like NPC dialogue but not as heavy as agro drift or something where it's like, okay, you can tell that it's an intentional choice

and it's not bad writing especially given his entire filmography when he's able to do something like the favorite it's like, okay, yeah, this is a choice and it brings this sort of almost like otherworldly or like... Fantasticical. Not quite real, just like a...

I don't know, know what the word is, uncanny valley or like dreamlike kind of presentation in terms of just character dialogue. It just makes you uncomfortable. Yeah. There's something really off putting about the way that characters interact with each other, but it's consistent. Yeah. And I like that consistency and that's something that's really interesting and difficult to pull off in terms of like writing and overall presentation. Would you say the start of speaking is as extreme. It's been a while since I've seen the lobster or sacred deer because I remember that being like one of the elements that I understand a little bit more if someone says like, why

is why are they speaking like that? Why do they, why do they sound like that? It didn't strike me in kinds of kindness that it was like on the level as the lobster as far as that like a obtuse, weird presentational style. It is there. I mean, it's it's definitely present in this film for sure. Yeah. I guess I guess it just feels so kind of stripped back compared to that almost whiplash of poor things, which is so... Oh, yeah. So, like, exaggerated and over the top. Yeah, there is, like...

I think the first story had very, very stilted dialogue. And I think, like, the combination of the stilted dialogue with the soundtrack, like, the kind of very start and stop, you know, weird pianos, I thought the choir sequences were just, like, just so beautiful. But, like, it's so, like, off-putting with the stilted dialogue. I feel like it just set... It really set the tone of the film. And so it was going into the second and third stories, it was still unusual.

But instead of it being the dialogue as much, it was just kind of the sequence of events that started getting kind of really unusual with the traffic stop. And just like the inviting them over for dinner and then they want to watch, you know, porn to get like their own porn. It's just like the sequence gets really kind of unusual. And, you know, the dialogue starts normalizing a bit. But it definitely like just, it's hard to get over that initial hump from the first story where it just everyone's talking. It feels like very weird the entire time. And I think part of that is also helped by the conversations that they're having. Like they're literally being NPCs.

Like his life is being controlled by someone else. Like he has like a list of things he's doing. And then the demands from Willem to. But like just seeing them talk to each other in this like absolutely bizarre, weird dynamic. Yeah, it doesn't even feel real. Yeah. So, yeah, so psycho. Yeah, there's something about it that's really fun.

Oh, man. But that's, that presentation really accentuates that, that paranoia that main characters feeling. And you, yeah, it puts you right there with him, like this off-kilt of music that's making you shift on your seat, these weird characters and this level of control that Willem defoe is like enacting. So how far does this go? It will make me feel like conspiratorial with like how you're presenting this. Yeah, you feel like you're in on. Yeah, I absolutely loved that first one. Exactly, yeah. And you're just like as lost as that lead character because he's trying to figure out what is going on. Yeah. Each of these segments also has like a very satisfying,

like kind of gory payoff too, which is fun. Like there's always something that builds up in a ridiculous kind of morbid, difficult to watch but fun way. And I really enjoy that about the film. And I think, unless you two have anything else to say about it, I think we can move on to the next film. But I really enjoyed this. It was super weird. Would love to see it again.

Yeah, loved the general vibes of it. And although, sure, I feel some segments could have been trimmed down and there's at least one that I feel could have been longer. I still, there's something I want to get more out of from this film and I feel like there's something there. And I would gladly watch this again. And I'm giving it an 8 out of 10. Yeah, I'm slightly below you. I mostly agree with what you're saying. Each one of these segments is high quality.

I could see each one as its own feature. It's just a level of writing that I think Lanthamos, that warp perspective has taken these familiar concepts, but exaggerating them to such an unhinged degree that you can't help but just watch the insanity. It's just for me, yeah, I love each section independently. It's just as a whole, doesn't fully work for me, especially when you look at his catalog and that does make me lean towards more like,

oh, I put it on dog tooth instead then. I just don't want to have just one section of the sense. I'll actually stand out so much to me, but enjoyed it otherwise. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's begging to be interpreted, which is kind of fun. Like, I just love movies like this where you can just, it feels like you can just keep chewing on it. they're, I guess, kept looking for meaning everywhere. And it was just a fun experience to do that.

And it felt like, I feel like there is a lot of intentionality in the choices that were made. I don't think, like, the shitpost the nature of it doesn't make it so, like, random. You see what I'm saying? Like, I think it's, I don't think it's like a coincidence that all three stories feature, like, an important mention of or a dream sequence of some sort where, like, the first one he dreams, of having that conversation with him outside the car, and then that conversation plays out pretty much the way that he dreams it. And then the second one, she talks about her dream with Willem Defoe

about how she dreamt that she was on an island where dogs ruled the world and humans were like pets. And then the third one, the dream was important because it was the pool dream that made her find the woman that she's looking for. She was dreaming she was stuck at the bottom of a pool. I don't think that's like an accident that he kind of tried to, incorporate something like that, just like you have the gore elements in all three. I don't know.

I think I, at the first one, the first story I liked the most in terms of the vibe. I thought the vibe was just perfect. I love Willem Defoe so much and his performance is so good as this character. The second one, I really liked trying to understand what was going on because I feel like I really liked Liz's character, like the fake Liz, I guess. guess if you want to call her that. I just, I thought that she was very redeeming. And in a way, I want to think, like, I drew an interpretation of that where I feel like, I don't know if this is like, I don't know if there is an like a correct or incorrect interpretation of this, but

the idea that, yeah, she's from this dog planet island and she's just like, she's just like a stray. Okay. She's like a stray dog that found, so like, you know how like if you had two golden retrievers, they look like very similar from a distance. Like, okay, yeah, that's the same dog. But if you own a golden retriever, if it's your dog, you know that it's not your dog, right? If someone, if another, if you lose your dog and another dog comes and you're like, that's not my dog, even though they look very similar to my dog. And it feels like she's supposed to be like a dog, which is one of the reasons I like it. Like she also is like extremely loyal, right? Like whatever he tells her to do, she's like, yeah, I'll cut off my finger. I'll cut off my liver, right? It's just like, there's something

doggy about her. And I just, I really like it. And the third one was just absurd. Like this whole, like the Chekhov's animal scale. Like, you know, I just thought that was ridiculous. And just, again, Willem Defoe had, you know, again, I just like Willem Defoe.

And so he got a lot more screen time in the first and third stories. The third one he had this like weird eyeliner on and it was just like so. Yeah, it's just fantastic. Really like that third story as well. Yeah. For me, it was the whole experience was great. probably an eight out of ten awesome awesome and i i i just want to you reminded me about the dream sequences i fucking love in the first segment he's like eating a sandwich his dream like goes

right up to willem defoe just this gigantic sandwich in his mouth even though the scene plays out the exact same the second time he doesn't have the sandwich but i love that little detail of like that tiny bit of dream logic or that like insecurity in the in a dream like i'm constantly having like vivid dreams and there's always you know like if there's something I feel like I have to do the next day oftentimes it'll wind up in a dream so I found that relatable in a way but also just like the why am I eating a sandwich like sort of thing that was fun that's fun do you think it was like random or do you think like because like in a way like RMF eats a sandwich of the third barn is also talking about how he's trying to he's trying to gain weight because the moment if he wants him to gain

yeah yeah it was like part of his insecurity So it feels like there's even more intentionality to it. Yeah. The randomness of a dream sequence. Exactly. Like there's, there's, it's shit posty and like not, again, it's, it's kind of making fun of the audience in a way, but it's not devoid of any meaning to take out of it. And I feel like this is definitely something that I got to watch a second time. So looking forward to it, unfortunately, Fox Searchlight, so probably not going to get a 4K Blu-ray.

Oops, but... Wamp-wha-want. Might not even get a physical release at all, honestly. Fox Searchlight. It might just disappear, yeah. They might just delete it from history. Yeah, they might not even release it on Diny Plus. All right, there's a film that last episode I said might be Guy L' favorite movie,

and then since then I remembered, oh yeah, Lord of the Rings Fellowship, duh. So... It's my second favorite movie. Second favorite movie. Okay. Coyan. Let's see, with two A's. And I have been wanting to talk about this for a while.

And I figured it made the most sense to have Gael here, since you've always had some great insight towards this film. It's one of your faves. Would you care to do like a little summary? Like, I don't know. Just introduce the film. Introduce it for us. Yeah, what's going on here?

Oh, man. How do you introduce this movie? So this is, I guess, a visual documentary that was directed by, what was his name? Godfrey Reggio. Yes. That's it? From 1982, so quite a while ago, well, at this day, yeah. Almost 10 years ago. Almost 10 whole years.

And it's very difficult to describe this movie. There's no dialogue, but I wouldn't say that there's no narrative. There's kind of a narrative, and it's very kind of implied and suggested, but it's also left pretty open to interpretation. I watched it yesterday. I've seen it like many, many times, and I highly recommend if you, after watching it the first time, that you watch it a second time while on substances. Honestly, it's like I've now, yesterday I watched it with my roommate Shea and Alexia, and we, you know, we had some cannabis and it was high. and it's always such a wonderful experience when it's, I don't know, it's kind of like Pink Floyd's the Wall. It's one of those movies where, yes, you can watch it sober and enjoy it, but also when you watch it not sober, you can have such a fantastic time.

It's almost like a stoner concept but made by filmmakers, you know? It's like something that you'd come up with while smoking dope or whatever. It's like, hey, what if we actually took that to its logical conclusion and made a feature out of this kind of insane idea that, is extremely experimental. In 168 episodes of this podcast, we've spoken about a film that literally has no dialogue. It's like a 90-minute film, there is no dialogue. Yeah, I guess this may be the first.

Maybe. Yeah. But it works. The effect is so unlike any other film. It's such a unique kind of emotional experience, just celebrating visuals and music. and the combination and effect that the order just displaying these images can bring out of you and make you think about it gets like existential, it gets sad, it's happy, it takes you on this entire journey, and yeah, it just makes you, it does make you think. It's kind of like a corny tagline on letterbox when you go on this film that says, until now you've never really seen the world you live in.

And it's like, that's definitely what I was thinking about. It's true. It is true. It's true. And so I watched a bunch of the special features on the criterion after I watched it this most recent time. And hearing the director, one of the things that really stuck out to me in terms of how you described the film is the approach of taking things that are normally in the background and presenting them as the foreground. And so not just not like literally like folkally background, but conceptually background. So things like an entire city as the set is things that would be the setting of a film

where traditionally you would have like a narrative and a story and like a main character to focus on. But no, it's just the background. It's just the setting. And then also especially the music, which traditionally and in so many movies and I realize that this is one of my biggest criticisms with a lot of movies in terms of how music is used is that a lot of the time it's used as a crutch, it's used to manipulate in ways where it's like, okay, you know, characters dying, we're going to do those like three piano notes in this really cliched way to try and emphasize something else that's already taking place

and either, you know, add to the emotion of a scene or sometimes even insist an emotion of a scene. Whereas in this case, the music is the star. It's like the only audio you're really getting. It is the voice. It's, it's, the music is the narrative. And having a composer like Philip Glass that before this point didn't really do movies before, much before, before this point, I thought that it was a perfect choice to have his composition and the way that he orchestrated it with such intensity and such range and such power. And, and something that really stuck out to me on this watch in particular was the way that. that each visual matched the music in very subtle kind of ways, where you look at like the power lines. Oh, man, that was all. Yeah, I was going to bring that up.

And somehow, Philip Glass created a sound that kind of sounds like electricity buzzing, but not so explicitly where it's like, okay, that's a sound effect. but in a way where it's like, okay, you're translating this to an actual musical composition into a score where it still sounds like a score and if you removed the visual, maybe that connection wouldn't be there. But seeing the visual and hearing the audio, it's like, oh yeah, this is the sound of the electrical towers. Yeah, they're screaming. It's the sound of them screaming, right? It's just like, that's what it sounds. That's the organ I think that was playing

on top of that sequence. It's funny that you mentioned the music as well because I was obviously talking with Shay about it yesterday and he talked to me about how he conceived of this movie not as a film but as a piece of classical music because like a piece of classical music, you kind of follow it emotionally. You follow the beats and that's kind of how you experience the movie. You experience it as a piece of classical music specifically. And then obviously the visuals kind of accompany the piece. That's how he enjoys like watching or experiencing the movie, which I think is fascinating.

Yeah, that's totally valid. It's like a big music video. Yeah. I'm curious, I assume the music must have been composed first and then sort of edited to it. Because it just flows too well. They talked about that. Oh yeah, what did they say about that? So, uh, there was, depending on the scene, there were visuals that existed and then, uh,

Philip Glass composed for a lot of those visuals, and then the director basically re-edited the film, sometimes not, you know, sometimes completely changing what Philip Glass had composed over, and other times just like making the timing more succinct. But basically, yeah, so it was both, basically. So visuals, then music, and then visuals again. was the order. So just a re-edit, yeah. That makes sense, actually.

That does make sense, yeah. The synchronicity is so staggering in some of these sequences. And I was thinking about logistically. And one of the ways that I think he does it logistically, and I, you know, obviously I could be wrong, but there's a lot of use of slow-mo and a lot of use of time-lapse footage, right? and they try to splice them together in really often very beautiful sequences where you're seeing something in slow motion and something really quickly

and they look like they're moving at the same speed with the music because the music's not kind of really changing. You're just feeling different subdivisions of the music. But the editing choice that had to be made for every single time lapse and every single slowmo, especially the time lapse where you speed them up, was just how much you're speeding it up. So they had to really fine tune. the speed on some of those fast sequences.

And I feel like they definitely did that to achieve the synchronicity. One of the shots that I'm thinking of is the factory line where they're making, I guess, those twinkies where like you get that little red like paste and then it kind of closes the pastry on top of it. You know what I'm talking about? That one is so, it's so, that was one of my favorite synchronized pieces. And I feel like it must be cheated. Like he must have like changed the speed of it just.

just so slightly fine-tuned it so that it would perfectly line up. Perhaps. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I feel like logistically, I can't think of any other way he could have gotten such a consistent synchronicity out of the visuals and the music throughout the entire movie from start to finish. It is a film where you want to have like the final say being within the editing particularly in order to achieve that synchronicity. And yeah, watching it this time, I was reminded.

minded of, you know, I had like this huge section of my Lion King part one where I talked about the stampede scene where it's like, okay, there's musical cues for each visual and this is how you have like an actual cinematic experience using music and editing and filmmaking in general and they're all being used together to create one single or. experience. And this is like an example of that where so many moments in this film, there will be like a higher intensity part of the music or the music will change into a different section of the overall score and you'll get like a really hard cut into like a different setting or like a completely different visual just to match the music or the music to

match the visual, they're both existing with each other and they're both helping each other to exist and get that experience. And it somehow avoids being tiring or irritating after a while? Even though there is a lot of repetition. There's a lot of repetition and there's at its peak, it's actually, I wrote down, distressingly or inspiring. Yes. But like it's kind of designed to be overwhelming and that's part of the power of it is

like just showing you these visuals of our world. They're stripped back. It's just these empty open landscapes, especially in that kind of first act. It's like, wow, you're kind of just forcing me to confront this in a really like minimalistic strip back way.

And it's very raw, yeah, very raw and punchy as a result. But I guess, yeah, another thing I find interesting about this, the structure of this is like, yeah,

what separates it from people joke about it saying it's like a, a string of establishing shots like put together or like it's a it's like a my Apple TV background slideshow. But there's so much more intent. Exactly. That's exactly what it's going to say. It's the intentionality. Exactly.

And there's like these quite, I don't know, I think it's actually saying a hell of a lot despite this, this lack of language, like a, you know, it's a visual language that we're totally indulging in here. Like, yeah, there is like a loose three. kind of structure going on with the first act kind of being more the stripped back just beauty and scale of the untouched world without the impact of humanity and it kind of shifts more into these big like cityscapes and you know industry and the feeding into the accelerationism kind of idea with these time lapses with industry taking over and you know pointing at the the the title

koyana scudzi being life out of balance um and the idea being yeah that that's kind of what it's illustrating is this as you shift into the third act and it's more about like the future and technology and the the crossover of oh a city a cityscape from above kind of you know kind of looks like a circuit or a microchip and there is all this like crossover with these visuals and going from the big and the small and the the fear of the future and the hope of the future and all this like complicated existentialism that comes from all of these ideas and like packaging it this way man, that is a powerful, unique experience.

Yeah. I feel like the most important ideas in films or the ones that have felt the most important to me are ones that are presented in ways where it's not explicitly telling me something, but it's presenting itself in a way where I'm forced to or that I'm able to engage with it and think of these ideas for myself in a way where it's like, you're showing me a different perspective and we're taking a step back and looking at something

in a way that we wouldn't normally look at it, but it's something that's around us, that we're aware is around us, like we're aware of, you know, how many people there are on the planet and just how ingrained technology is within our lives. But showing it in this way where it's like, oh yeah, like we are literally just, we are a part of a machine. We are the meat on the conveyor belt going up the escalator and, you know, like, taking a step back and not focusing on any, on any individual characters, but showing us as like humanity as a whole. And especially the choice of showing it with such intensity and speed and repetition, just making us look like, like fucking ants or the impersonal nature of it just really helps drive home the point

of exactly what the hell society is and what we're doing and our, you know, effect on the planet and et cetera, et cetera. Like, I, yeah. It makes you feel small. Yeah. It feels like it's holding up in mirror.

Yeah. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. Look what we've done is basically saying. Like, look at this. Look at what you've done.

This is you. Yeah. That's you. You're meat. It's interesting because in a way it's, they open it up to interpretation. Like, it's almost the most, it's almost the most interpretable movie.

But obviously, it's not, because you can't, like, draw interpretation of, like, the Wizard of Oz or something out of this film. But it's some, so it's the kind of, this, you're able to interpret it very, kind of infinitely, but in a aimed scope. It's only aimed in kind of one direction. And obviously, so I was pretty high yesterday,

and I had, like, I really enjoyed this movie. And I have, like, kind of my, kind of itching weird latest interpretation. So if you'll indulge me. Please, let's go. Let's do it. So obviously the movie opens with, first of all, these kind of cave paintings of human beings,

which kind of look like little rectangles. Like, we're just like little rectangles with a little like head on it. And then you get the, you know, the Saturn 5 rocket launch and the beginning sequence kind of in a very ominous way. Like we don't really know where it's going. at that point we haven't experienced the rest of the movie so we don't really understand what it's going to is it going to be a space movie like i don't know and then you cut straight to those to the canyons like this kind of weird canyon sequence where we just get a look at the earth just the earth like how it exists

you know terraformed weird structures uh you know with mountains and mountain rages and things like that and then you get images of like the ocean and like the seas bodies of water and then you get this beautiful cloud sequence right so all these all these sequences are so first of all just gorgeous like comes to mind like the glittering of the the ocean like that particular shot was so trippy and then you see how they all interact with the earth you see like this this island in the middle of the ocean right like kind of untouched and then you see like the clouds pushing into the mountains also interacting with the earth it's like okay that's kind of interesting and then you start getting uh you like the introduction of life how i love how it starts super barren in these kind

of badlands in America where there's no greenery and nothing. And then eventually you start getting a little bit of greenery. Like it's the same bad lands, but you get these kind of like, you know, trees. And then eventually you get a little bit of life. You get these caves with insects in them. It's the only other wildlife that we get is like these kind of insects and birds that we see in the caves in the movie. And then it introduces humanity.

And the way it introduces us, I thought, is so good. Because it starts with like basically like an energy worker, like a power plant worker, a miner of some sort and what are we doing we're exploding the earth we're just like blowing it up and then it shows so like the earth itself and then it shows dams like we're building dams and like evaporating stations like ponds and things like that we're controlling the earth we're controlling the water and then obviously the nuclear bombs and like the factories pushing smog in the air we're also controlling the air so it feels like it's there's kind of like a poachy to it it's showing us and then with the way it like pans over these these cars like the car lot the very beginning

The cars are also just little rectangles, just like those cave panes. You're just like little rectangles arranged in rows. And then it cuts to the tanks, and the tanks are all just little rectangles. The shot of the plane, one of honestly the most insane shots, just the plane on the runway taxiing. And then gets the way it gets reincorporated with the military aircrafts that are also taxiing after that tank sequence. It looks like, because they're not showing us that we're fighting each other,

it looks like we're just fighting the earth. Like we're just doing bomb tests and stuff. we're dropping bombs and shit to test them. But it looks like we're just attacking the earth. So it was just, so it kind of like the antagonist of the movie gets introduced early in the form of, you know, human beings. And then you get this sequence where we should start seeing our cities after, obviously, the electric panel sequence is so, so cool.

And the cities are just like this brutalist architecture that's all abandoned. So you get, again, just massive rectangles, just massive rectangular buildings with little rectangular windows in them. getting demolished. And then you get the kind of the new rectangles, the glass, the, you know, the microdata building, the big glass ones, the business. And it's weird to me. And I don't know why this is the first time that I saw this, like, that I saw this movie where I feel, I don't know.

And this is definitely a high thought. But I was like, man, there's a lot of emphasis on rectangles. Like, even the title sequence, like, the very first thing you see in the movie is just a string of rectangles that end up bleeding into the title, the Koyani Skutsi, just starts as just a string of little rectings. right and even going into like the building sequences the microchips the streets are laid in kind of this grid 90 degrees formats the even the conveyor belts with the hot dogs the twinkies they're all just little squares we're just little rectangles controlling smaller rectangles living in big rectangles

and it's just like we just love these patterns and it's just like it's so different and starkly different from like the landscape and the oceans and the clouds that are so amorphous yeah in the beginning of the movie. We're imposing the patterns. We've like organized our society. The, and almost feels like the buildings are my favorite part of the movie. It's just all of the building sequences, the microchips, the way it compares them, because it feels like if I was an alien watching this movie and watching it as a documentary, it feels like the buildings themselves are the organism. They are the creature. They're the biggest thing. They take up the most. The humans are just like blood vessels. We're just little, you know, mitochondria that are flowing.

around and making the buildings work but the buildings are the real creatures right it's just it's it's weird for me to obviously this is like a very it's a part of us yeah then I see think of like insects or like yeah yeah evoking something that would you normally be tiny you know like a beehive or something but it's enormous and like making these connections at different scales and it's like oh yeah we are we are so small and everything is like linked in these ways and it yeah you just start sounding very kind of stonery but like it that's the power of it you know and it's funny reading about like the way people talk about this movie and some of the reviews from the 80s and whatnot like I don't know what I

saw one that was like a meditation aid I think Roger Ebert described as and there's there's definitely some truth to that and when you hear things like it's a tone poem and these sorts of things I don't know so I just got like this sinking feeling of this is gonna it's gonna like annoy me it's like sometimes you know when people talk about these like big and a heady concepts. This is like changing narratives, like that kind of thing. But it does deliver. But I found, I guess Adam got me a version of this movie.

This is a part of a trilogy, from what I understand, but it was Keoneisgatsi and Poakazzi, which was the 88 film by Reggio that came out. I did check that out today, actually. Oh, nice. and had pretty much like the inverse experience. Oh no. Yeah, I've heard they're not as good. It was, yeah, I appreciated watching it just for how much it made me appreciate Kiyoniky more

for like how that comes together. But yeah, this one I saw the one from 88. It really did not come together for me and I was getting kind of, I was like drifting out of like interest and I saw what it was going to be. for I really did. It's kind of like the it's supposed to go hand in hand with Keone Scotzi as far as like this is like life out of balance and this is America and this is real focus on America and industry. Let's kind of flip that on his head. Let's have a look what's going on in Africa, South America, India and focus on that kind of thing. But it just lacks

that kind of structure that Keoney Scottsy has and that that even though we're talking about how there is no dialogue, there is this kind of feel to it. You feel like even though there aren't people talking, there aren't characters even. Fifty minutes will pass and then you'll have this feeling like, oh, that was like a great scene. That was a great sequence. I feel like the energy shifting into like the next section of this movie. I just wasn't really getting that from this one in 88. But I'm more curious about Ron Frick, right?

He kind of splintered off and made his... own, this is a cinematographer for Coyoni Scottsi and the others. I haven't seen Samsara or Baraka. Have you guys seen that? It seems like... Samsara is good. But again, like, it's the intentionality is not as there. Really?

Okay. In terms of like messaging and, and, you know... The cohesiveness of it. Yeah. In terms of like an overall point of like the film existing. It's not, it's not there. Samsara is really good, though. It's just not...

It's not Koyana Scotsi. Yeah. I enjoyed Samcera. I feel like it's trying to be... Koyanis Katsi in, like, 2011 or whenever it came out. And so... But it's trying to be more like... I don't say relevant.

Just more accessible. Is that even, like, fair to say about it? Like it, yeah. It's trying to be beautiful. It's trying to be... Trying to be like a ballet, like the same way that Koyana Scotsi is just kind of unbelievable. believably well choreographed thing, but it lacks that same like narrative direction, I feel like the way that Kainishti just has this

unbelievable focus. Yeah. Despite its wide scope. So yeah. I really enjoyed Samira. I definitely recommend it. So it does seem like a concept that's been played with a few times, but it's specifically worked out in 1982 for Kionis Scotzi. 82. 82. Sorry. Yeah. Because the 88 one, Pua Katsi It was just doing stuff that was like man, if you did this in Kowonis Katsi

you would have kind of ruined it you know, there's like a whole sequence where after showing all of this footage from Nepal, Egypt to whatnot it then kind of goes into this corny like montage of like ads from America and it's like morphing into like military footage and it just seems like way too

on the nose and obvious compared to yeah what they're doing in Coyoni Scotsi. And yeah, it was just kind of reminding me of growing up, like going into London and going to these like weird experimental art installations in the tape modern or whatever. And the one from 88 is the kind of thing where, yeah, I'd watch for like 10 minutes and be like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And then like, read the blurb on the wall and be like, cool.

Yeah. And then forget about it. But Keone Scotsi is one where we'd be like, oh, I need a copy of this. And I'm going to be thinking about this. I'm going to be revisiting this. I'm going to be watching this. This is going to stay with me. feels like a strong artistic statement.

Yeah, much more like engaging and artful and intentional. Yeah. Especially, yeah, listening to the director talk about it on the special features. It's pretty clear that he had very strong feelings about how things needed to be. And then Ron Fricky, I believe, you know, did most of like the visuals. But Godfrey Reggio was essentially saying like, okay, here's what. I want to show and here's what I want to be felt by showing this and then Ron Fricky would, you know, do the logistical like filmmaking aspect of it.

Yeah, no, because I find that interesting how they like specify in the credits and whatnot, like writers written even though there's no dialogue. I would love to see like what was written down as far as like organizing the ideas of what wanted this to be what it was becoming. I'm sure there's lots of like interesting notebooks from how this was put together out there somewhere. Was this your first watch of this? Yeah, Alex? I had never seen this before. I kind of absorbed parts of it through osmosis and that I just

knew a bunch of this Philip Glass music already, I guess because it's just so famous and like did like the Truman show. There's randomly in the, I think Watchman uses a song for from Coyoni Scotsi. Weird. It was like the Philip Glass song in one of the sequences. So that was like, oh, I already know this. This is weird. But yeah, it did hit, I feel like, in the way I think is intended.

And yeah, I just love being shown something new. It's like a concept that's like, yeah, we're proving that this was a good, a good high concept thing. And we're bringing it to you, proving it. Did you have any, like, kind of favorite? shots from the film because I feel like from a cinematography perspective it's unbelievable like I feel like the film's just gorgeous it's like completely

overwhelming visually as well as well as that music that that short you mentioned to the plane with the like heat warping it incredible yeah yeah the way they play with perspective there's just it's so trippy honestly yeah

there's not there's not like a single bad shot really in the entire movie in fact and just thinking about like I think Adam mentioned the sausage cutting to the elevator famous shot there, that choice to make that cut. There must be so many examples of this kind of visual storytelling going on that I didn't even notice on the first place. There must be so much intent to that kind of thing. It's like, oh man, you are so overwhelmed. You kind of need a bit of time to process and revisit it another day.

It may be a different substance. I'm sure that you could have a different experience just depending on the side. substance and have a different take away. Oh, please. Listen, listen, definitely get, I don't know if you indulge in substances, but do something and watch it, you're gonna have, get some friends together and talk about it. It's, it's fantastic. It's such a good experience.

You could start like a podcast called like Koyani Skatsi on any drug. Just like do every drug. Like today we're doing mescaline. All right. Now we're doing Kemp. Right? Just see how your interpretation changes. Like what your experience like?

Dude, honestly, worth, honestly, a good, like a good concept for a short podcast with a few episodes. It really does have such a wide, like, scope for interpretation. You really can draw, like, a lot from it, I feel like. I've had so many different experiences with this movie where I've felt different things. And, like, sometimes I feel, sometimes I like and I have sympathy for the way humans are portrayed, because in a way, it's very sincere. Yeah. Like, there is, yes, it's impersonal in the sense that we're seeing us from a very, like, wide perspective.

there are these kind of personal moments where it's just like, well, who are these little rectangles that are walking around? And what happens when you, like, it feels like the camera is a character. Like, you can't escape the camera. You can't pretend. Like, it's not pretending that it's not there, right?

There's something objected about it. Yeah. The characters notice the camera and, like, they react to it. And that's, you know, that part of the choice that's kept. And obviously, one of the most profound moments was at the end as you get to this. Because when you're looking at human being, like yes you consumer culture and capitalism and the work grind and then entertainment

there's a lot of focus on games there's the bowling the arcade watching movies right there's a lot of focus on what we do with our spare time and then the depression you see like the squalor and you see your death depicted in a lot of different ways um well obviously one of them in the more kind of redeeming ways the hand that's just kind of floating in the air that's shaking and it's there for what feels like forever until another hand comes and kind of grabs it and it's like extremely touching with the way the music plays into that. And it's like, oh, okay, so we kind of like care for each other a little bit. And it's similar to the other sequence where they're picking the guy off the street and putting

him in the gurney. But except for that one isn't, there's no like, there's no emotion. There's no emotion to we're helping you feel better. It's just like, oh, this is one of the ants has lost their way. One of the ants has given up or isn't like working as part of it. We just have to clean it up. We just put it up and we clean. We move them out of the way, right?

We clean up our dead. It's because, you know, the building has to live. live. It has to, you know, it's weird thinking of it that way, but I do feel like it tries to be somewhat redeeming in some cases when you look at it very, very closely. The director talked about this because he, you know, he's aware that there are like different interpretations. He said that he wanted to make sure that it wasn't explicitly like, oh yeah, we're saying that this is bad or anything like that. Because some people would go up to him and come away with the interpretation that, you know, it's a celebration of, you know, it's a celebration

of technology and industrialism and all that. And, you know, a lot of the music and a lot of the sequences, there is some sort of beauty to how things are being shown and there is some sort of sense of, like, human achievement, and it's not all completely bleak and, like, look what you've done, you know, newspaper on the head or whatever. And the way he described it was he was trying to show, you know, the beast and the beauty, he called it the beauty, the beauty of,

of the beast, which is a really interesting way of putting it. And I definitely see what he was going for there. Yeah. There's an observation I can't take credit for that I did read when I was reading about this movie. Someone was making comparisons to Blade Runner, which also came out in the 80s and has similar themes, these like industrial themes in this dystopian kind of aesthetic. But there's also this weird, like, yearning for that, almost unintentionally.

like nailed this dystopian aesthetic to such a degree that it's almost like more beautiful than anything that is real you know like we're we've being shown this dystopia we could interpret it that way in this movie like the level of industry the level of as Gaila put it like to exploding the earth and like this trepidacious relationship with it but I don't know that the fact it doesn't feel so like emotionally charged and you can make your mind up is is the strength that has like to me it just feels kind of more like it's saying, look at this, look at the awe of this, there's nothing

you can do to stop this. That's kind of like what I take away from it and some kind of acceptance from that. Because like, what are you going to do by the end? Like, you're so overwhelmed by the, it does make you feel so small. I'm like, it makes you appreciate your, the part you play in all of this. Yeah. Like technology is completely in our lives to the point where we don't even notice it. And yeah, it is scary and it is big and frightening and we don't know where it's going but there is also something kind of like exciting and inspiring about that. It's like, yeah, this is kind of crazy.

We made, we did do this. Like look at this. Oopsie. This is completely mad that we, this acceleration is this. You don't need words to explain what we're looking at right here. Yeah. So before he created this film. He was a part of a campaign where they had a bunch of TV spots, radio ads.

They published a book, got a lot of newspaper ads, and it was funded by, I forget which organization. But he was actually, this is crazy. It was like 1974 or something. And the explicit purpose of this campaign was to raise awareness of the technology basically coming into a our lives and explicitly about privacy rights and like in the 70s. He's talking about this and evoking, I guess, you know, like the concepts in 1984 and kind of just seeing the direction where things were headed and things like, you know, credit reports and social security numbers and just all these ways that people are now being tracked and monitored and, you know, categorized.

And I found that really interesting that, you know, conceptually, that they were aware of these sorts of things, like, well before they were... Pre-internet, yeah. Yeah, but pre- widespread computer usage. Mass surveillance. Yeah, yeah. But now it's like a part of the conversation. where like everybody everybody's heard the conversation.

Everybody knows about, you know, just how their privacy doesn't even exist anymore. I mean, I would love like a documentary that explore, like I would love like a concept for documentary where all the footage is through like a surveillance technology. Like it's not everything is captured through something that's naturally just exists. You can make this movie today with like CCTV cameras. You can just not like exactly the same obviously. but like, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's so much monitoring.

And that's just another interpretation. Yeah, like, there's, again, I don't think there's, like, a correct interpretation of this movie. Like, I'm not trying to impose my own, right? When I was, like, talking about, you know, human beings being the antagonist, I just, that was just a fun way of looking at it. But the thing about surveillance and privacy is super interesting. I didn't know that he was even trying angling for that. I wasn't even thinking about it, right?

But, like, you could, that totally makes sense. You could draw that perfect interpretation out of the movie. And it's interesting thing about what a movie would look like today if you tried to make a movie using surveillance technology. Like yeah, I found a fan edit where someone had taken the trailer for Keone Scotsie, but recut it with like shutter stock like equivalent kind of images to make this weird kind of statement piece on there. Um, yeah. That sounds fun.

It's playing with a lot, um, as far as like this, just really pushing it, like what you can do with a narrow and I don't know just calling it a documentary even it's an experimental yeah is what I would yeah I don't know what you would call it exactly yeah what do you call it it's almost like a like a work of art mm-hmm like it's almost it it's almost is like the cave painting right it's like the cave painting that starts it it's the same thing it's just our version of that cave painting right now it's just the movie because yeah it feels when you think of a documentary a lot of the time you feel you associate with what like facts and like research yeah that kind of

kind of thing, but this is more of like an emotional experience. Yeah, and yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah, this is much more like emotive and abstract in a way you really would not describe most documentaries, at least, that I've seen. Some of my favorite shots. I really love the shot. So the first image we see of people that are not like workers taking part in like the, I guess, perceived destruction.

and the shot we see of just like the woman and her child like chilling on a beach and then it kind of like zooms out and you're like oh there's like an industrial factory in the background producing a lot of smog just showing like you know even the people that are relaxed and not explicitly participating in it are still participating in it which is further driven home like the point uh when we see like the conveyor belts and like the food and you know like we're all we're all consumers in this society i kind of almost got like zone of interest vibes with you know just like her on the beach and then the factory in the background yeah oh okay yeah like you're a part of this and you know even if you're ignoring it

and then my just that entire high energy sequence that last for like fucking 30 minutes or whatever of like super fast music like all that shit all of the high speed people moving through the like the train doors and escalators and all that I love how you know if you were to just do like a regular time lapse photography or just speed up regular footage of a film

it would have a very different look than how it's shown in this film. And so what they must have done is just do like a really long exposure time lapse because you can see the like sort of natural motion blur. The streaking and like the the, yeah, the streaking of lights of the cars and anything that has motion, it's not, it has like a natural motion blurred effect to it, which I really love and makes it way more trippy and it makes it just such an interesting visual. That shot with the camera in the back seat and they're just like the two guys in the front seat of the car and they're driving at night and just like this insane almost like 2001

of Space Odyssey of just like these streaking lights all just appearing out out every visible window of the vehicle like they're moving through fucking space and like warp speed. Yeah. It's crazy. I love those shots so much. The nighttime and the streaking lights, it's just such a crazy visual and especially with the music like that it's insane.

It kind of puts you in a trance. Yeah? It puts a spell on you. Yeah, it's exhilarating. Mm-hmm. And yeah. I like that we get those POV shots. Yeah.

Like, I like that like we get the wide shots of like, here's what the traffic looks like from far away. But then you, you, here's what it looks like If you're in the traffic, right, you're behind the car and then there's other POV shots of you moving through the traffic. So you get like, you get every perspective, it feels like. Yeah, it goes down to like intimate portrait shots too. Like I think of the lineup of the ladies of Vegas. That's a really great shot.

Yeah, these golden girl looking humans. It's so, it's so cool. And they look like the cape, like their shape, not like the Cape paintings, but like they're kind of standing in a similar orientation. We're just like, yes, look at us. Here we are. Right? Like, this is me. I'm the little

rectangle Sorry I'm going to stay on this thing Um The There was so much Playing with this idea Of the foreground

of the background That you were talking about Adam where like there's Um Because those are some of my favorite shots Are the stuff where Like the factory with the sunbaters You obviously we got the

The focus on the taxiing airplanes And then you get Later You get pictures of traffic And you see the airplane Moving behind the traffic in the background, right, from the right to the left, and then later from left to right. Oh, yeah, that's a great shot.

Other background pictures, you get the one, one of my favorites is the traffic on the left side of the street in the building sequences, and one of the buildings is in focus, and there's one guy, like, in a library, like, walking back and forth, while in the background there's just the traffic on the left. That's one of my favorite shots, and obviously, you've got the massive moon shot where, like, the moon's kind of moving in an unnatural way behind the building, probably optically, like, digitally zoomed or something, I'm not sure. but like it's cool that there is this kind of I want to say focus but it's

it tries to to put the background in the foreground without ignoring the background completely it's like this is just it's just all part of the same picture it's all one composition I just think it's like that moonshell's incredible yeah awesome movie 10 out of 10 seen it a few times loved it yeah we try out the rest of the trilogy? Because I don't know now if I want to see the third one after... I don't even want to watch it. You haven't...

You've sold me on not watching it. Yeah, I mean, like, I've... Exactly. Like, I've been... I've had them... Because it's part of the criterion Blu-ray. And I've just had these sitting around for so long.

And I feel like any time that I would feel like I would want to put one of them on, I'd just put on Koyana Scotsi again instead. That was the, yeah, I just had that thought on loop was like, should I just put that one on again? Like, I had that thought like three or four times. Like I'll check them at some point. I don't think I'll hate them maybe, I don't know, but we'll see. I think, like, because I'm looking at the IMDB ratings for, like, the third one has like a 6.4. I'm like, what the fuck did they do with that one to get a 6.4?

Like, a huge, huge problem it had is it didn't have the fill of glass music. That changed the experience to such a degree. I didn't even know. Yeah, it really like takes a lot away. I think he's in one of the other ones, but the one I watched from 88, it was definitely not. Dang. It's music. Yeah.

Yeah, that would do a lot. Did we do ratings for? Yeah, honestly, definitely. For me, it's a perfect movie. And I think everyone should watch it. I think if it's weird, I was having this thought, I was like, man, if only like world leaders could watch this movie. Like if Putin could watch this movie and Trump could watch this movie I don't know like we'd have something I feel like I feel like it would do something

It has the ability to it's so open to interpretation though like imagine what like conclusion you might reach All the world leaders give them a joint each and just relax and watch watch this And see what happens maybe try to direct their experience a little bit pointed in a constructive direction Yeah What do you think Alex? Oh yeah I forgot about race ratings, amazing, unique experience. It's kind of like the ultimate show don't tell movie, like taking that concept, like, let's just show and not tell you a damn word and you can

just take away what you want from that. Yeah, I thought the runtime was perfect. What it explored is just so unique. I'll definitely be revisiting this regularly. I give this like a high four and a half star and nine out of ten, possibly go up. Whereas the Powakkatsia, probably give like a five maybe. Damn. I was, I was with it for like half an hour, but after that it was like just more and more tuned out. Yeah, and just wanted to watch Keoney Scott's see you can. Yeah, we'll see.

Yeah, definitely get some friends together and get it done. And then watch them Sarah if you want. I think that's honestly, it's not a bad. Yeah, I'll definitely check that one out. That seems more on my alley. Baraka is supposed to be good too I'd love to watch it Baraka

Awesome Obamana Fun fact The director originally didn't even want a title for the movie Because he didn't want the baggage of language A bit too experimental And so that's where Quayani Scottsi came out

Is it like there's a word that You know the people watching the film won't have Access to you yeah A sort of idea of what the word means Oh right so you're former right That's a cool idea. Which is a good choice. I like that they don't tell us until after the movie,

like what the words and the lyrics mean. It's not trying to influence your experience before the movie starts. Only after do you get some of that translation, which I think is a good choice. Yeah. Although on some of the marketing, you can see that they included the translation. Which is probably out of his control.

He's like life out of balance you can see as the subtitle in some of these. The first time you showed me this movie, you didn't tell me anything about it. You just threw it on. And I feel like that's the perfect way to experience the series. Yeah. Don't tell anyone what it is. Sit them down, put it on and just have an experience.

True. It's kind of like the, you know, what Darren Aeronovsky tried to make with postcards from Earth at the Vegas sphere. Yeah. So I hadn't seen that obviously when I saw that and I was thinking about... That's part of why I was pissed at it. That after. I was like, wow, okay, it really was that, Cairney Scottsy.

Yeah. Straight up one to one. You tried to do that. You fucked up. couldn't do it if they could if there was a way to show Koyana Skatsi at the Vegas sphere that would be the ideal

that'll be cool I did see to anyone in London they are playing at BFI in August I think on the big screen so Koyana Skatsi? I think it'd be really yeah I think it'd be really cool to see on a huge screen yeah this is this is one of few movies that I will go out of my way to say like big screen best visuals and sound you can possibly watch it you want it loud and you just want to

like yeah yeah I'm tempted to see that yeah do it yeah yeah that would be really cool please please watch this movie if you'll sing if you haven't seen this movie and you'll sing to this podcast please watch it it's I don't know if this is bad form but yeah it's about rectangles and roblox it's about rectangles yeah I'm sure I sound like an insane person honestly this is the first time I've watched the movie and thought, had that thought, but I still, I still included thought, just for myself. It's not really about rectangles. It's about whatever you wanted to do. I definitely keep that in mind next time I watch it.

Yeah, yeah, they'll let me know. I thought the, logistically, like, the high-speed shots were super cool, because high-speed technology wasn't like, you know, obviously it just gets better as a function of time. And so to get the amount of detail that they got with some of the high-speed footage,

especially I'm thinking of like the waves, like the very early on, you got, just like, do you remember what I'm talking about? Like, with the waves crashing really slowly, just the amount of detail on the film that they got, unreal. Like, they must have needed so much light for that. And obviously, like, the part, it's well, like, I don't say camouflaged, but, like, it's slightly under-exposed, right? Because you need a lot of light to get high-speed to work.

Yeah, yeah. But it works because it's part of a sequence that's entirely also, like, in caves and at night and under-exposed. So just, like, all of the choices that they made, it feels like, Anything that would look like an obstacle, it's like, oh, this might get in the way. They found an opportunity to, like, perfectly place it and make it work. I think that's so impressive. It's remarkably well shot, and especially because if you were to make a movie like this today,

it doesn't cost, like, a fucking fortune to leave your camera rolling. You know, when I did my music video, there's a lot of shit I didn't use, and I just kind of, you know, whatever shot. Right, pre-digitia. Yeah, I had the freedom and flexibility of just like, okay, this is just going to take up a little bit of space on the hard drive and I don't necessarily need this shot. But like every shot that they film in this movie, they were like on 35 millimeter. Shit's expensive. Like you have to have like an intentionality and a plan going into it in order to do this at all.

And it took them seven years to make. Oh, seven years. Yeah. So I was about to make that comment with the just a variation of like land. like I mentioned what this one's mostly in America but America is an enormous amount of variety of like geography and you get all of it pretty much in the movies so and they must have been darting all around the world for these and it's like yeah how do you how do you capture that but have a plan and give it structure without just being like aimless like I'm

on holiday just getting cool shots I guess let's string this together later like yeah just avoids feeling like that Yeah, like those initial canyon shots, like if we were to do that today, we would just use drones. It would just be drone footage. Yeah. And you would be able to tell that it was drone footage. Whereas like here, like they're just, he's clearly just on a plane holding a camera. And it's like slightly shaky too, which again, like they're not trying to hide like the camera.

It's just everything. It's just showing you like, here's what I'm showing you. Here's the thing. And it's just like, it's just so cool. It's very much a show, not even show don't tell. Just show. Movies just show. Yeah.

And then you can do whatever you want with it. Yeah. kind of decide what it's telling. Koi. I think, I don't think I can get the pitch. It's so deep. Did you, did you play it? No, but I think I've remembered the key.

It's like, hmm. Let's see if I got it. I've got the file here. That's the extra octave. It's what I believe it is. So let me just fact check here. That is it. Hooray.

I'm so I'm like I'm just I'm almost like What's what's the pitch on top of it B'ong koiani Skatsi That's that's the That's actually really hard It's really how I think I got it Hold on hold on

Hold on Goi Adiskozzi There you got that sounds right It's tiny bit sharp But I finally got it He has to go lower to right Doesn't he go like It's so the

Or does he just stay on the one? Is that like that throat singing thing? Kind of. You had that before? It's like the Mongolian throat singing thing. I've heard that before it's different. Cool as hell. Goia.

Fuck. Oh, whatever. Question time. Let's do it. Get out of here. Let's get out of here. This podcast just turns into all this trying to do like, give me out of here.

We're just going to do this like forever otherwise. It's very tempting. Well, it's so difficult. It's typical, but alluring. Just like these questions we have from the Saddam O'Hast community, which you can leave your own questions for future episodes over on that suggestion thread on the subreddit. Just like Dr. Spunk 2019. I didn't read that name before screenshot on it.

How do you guys feel about the upcoming Shrek 5? It's back. Hyped. But, I mean, as long, you know, my expectations are, As long as it's better than the third one, which it kind of has to be because the third movie is like the worst animated movie ever made, maybe of all time, then it's probably fine. It's not good. And, you know, if it's better than the fourth one, even better. But we'll see.

Yeah, I don't know. What they did to my boy Poe recently. I'm still upset about that. Oh, God. That was a scam. That was an actual scam. If they're willing to do that to my panda, I don't know what they're going to do to my Shrek. So, I don't know if I've got, who's directing this?

Is this a Madagascar reference? What am I missing here? Oh, Po is a Kung Fu Panda. Oh, okay. Oh yeah, sorry, yeah. The newest Kung Fu Panda film was literally a scam. Oh. There's like no other way to describe it.

A scam, how? They marketed it as in like, oh, we're bringing back the original villains and then they just weren't even really in it. Oh. And so the marketing. They spent way less money on it and it shows. Like, you can, it's something where you watch and it's like, wow, this animation is like, fucking Netflix spin-off TV series or whatever. Like, it was an actual scam movie.

Wow. Like, they'd intentionally spent less money on it and made the cheapest fucking thing possible. And it made a bunch of money. It's the universal effect. You know, that was bad. news when they got bought up by them, how illumination and them are under the same banner. I'm looking at who's direct in Shrek 5 and I'm looking at someone credited for minions, the riser grew.

Oh, God. No. That's a good, uh, that's good on the resume. So that's a good sign. No! There's that and the writer of donkeys caroling Christmas tacular from 2010. That's one of the directors as well. So we'll see.

They got their best talent on there over there at Dreamworks, I guess. The top brass working on it. Do we remember what, do we remember the, uh, the new skedush? What was it? Scablam? Is that what they said? Kaplow? Uh, you're some, some shit like that, yeah.

So, what's that Puss and Boots movie? Just like a complete random fluke? Did that, they like ignored that one so it was able to just be this like amazing, like, unexpected surprise with like this weird visual style and actually funny jokes. Yeah, the last wish was actually great. Yeah, where's that energy? Put that into Shrek 5. because I don't know.

I don't know what we're gonna see otherwise. Is it too late for Shrek? Is it come and gone? I guess we'll have to wait and see. I think it's been dead for a while. No, because Shrek has remained in the public consciousness since... Like, it's been an internet meme. That's why they're not rebooting it.

Yeah. That's why they're keeping Mike Myers and everybody. True. But like, I guess it's how can they capitalize on that without it being like the most embarrassing like just pathetic attempt to like capitalizing on a meme at this point yeah yeah you know go play all-star member is it going to be like oh yeah member barry shrek i feel like once you're past three movies like once you have to make the fourth and the fifth of something you have to start reflecting on whether or not it actually needs to exist yeah or almost any i can't think of a lot of

movies where like the four and the five and the six needed to exist. Saw. I was going to say saw might be the only one, but even that one is more, it came together afterwards. They looked at it and they were like, you know, they were trying their best in the moment and afterwards it just came together in this beautiful, a beautiful mastery of kind of writing in cinema. But not a lot, not a lot else.

Not even Lord of the Rings. You got three movies. Then they tried to do another three and they were shipped. and I don't know Star Wars I don't know like it just feels like again you're starting it seems like the safe number yeah unless you have some kind of insane

like backbone of a novel series or you're like dune or something and you just at which point just make a TV like mini series or something right like turn it into like that's the thing feels five feels gratuitous it does it feels like yeah it's like that video game problem when you start

getting to these high numbers they start kind of abandoning the numbers and start just putting like subtitles. So, Shrek revelations. Yeah, yeah, revelation. Somehow that's the one. That's the one, yeah, the lingering word. But, uh, yeah, so I'm looking forward to Shrek revelations in 2026.

We'll see how that comes together. I should make a parody movie of just like the, a parody of bad movie tropes. Just call it something revelations and it's like the first one. Yeah. Well, that's kind of what is sad. about them going back to the the Shrek pot is that it used to be this kind of it was like a tongue-in-cheek like sharp satire of like Disney and yeah yeah it was a rebellious because he because just Jeff Kastenberg just got fired and yeah how

can Shrek be counterculture now like what could it actually do to be you know like it just seems like the I'm getting pissed off even just like talking about like the concept like trying to like what the fuck angle do you do yeah I don't know no um Well, speaking of things that are probably going to be awesome. Yeah. Own Space 2026 says, what's the worst song you've ever listened to? I have a definitive answer if you guys want to think for a second. I'd be curious if you know it, actually.

This is a band where you could probably, honestly, answer this question with a myriad number of their songs. But specifically, I'm choosing Cutthroat by Imagine Dragons. Do you guys know this one? You know, I, I'll put it on right now and just see. Go to the chorus. I want your reaction because of something. I probably heard it just because it's Imagine Dragons and I'm non-consensually listened to a lot of them just. It seems like a shitposts, you know, like a kinds of kindness kind of like, are you, are you like fucking with me right now?

Yeah, this is sad. That's the feeling I get. Am I even at the course? Yeah, this is exactly like kinds of kindness. I can't even tell what... I'm just skipping around. I don't even know which part of the chorus... You gotta get to the chorus though. Is it where he's like yelling? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty bad. That's like yucal-ah-oh-oh-oh. Imagine Dragons is like way worse than Nickelback. So much worse. Yeah. That, that nickel-back thing was like gasoline, like in retrospect. But compared to this?

Yeah. This is... I can't be doing with this. But I'm addicted to it. I can't stop. Once I found cut through it by Machine Dragons, everything changed. It's kind of like infected me. You know, I keep revisiting it.

I keep going back to that chorus. Yeah, it's weird because the question is a difficult question to answer. Because if the worst song, almost certainly it is the case that the worst song I've ever listened to, I have not listened to all the way through. Right? It is almost certainly the case that I listened to the first five seconds of it or something and went, nope, I'm not listening to this. It has to be unfinished away. So I actually gracefully can say that I haven't listened to the worst song I've ever. I can't think of a song that's good enough that I would listen to it all the way through, but bad enough that I would categorize it as the worst song I've ever listened to if you see what I'm saying.

So I'm kind of trapped with this question. I hear. Is it a laughing known by David Bowie? that's a good one. So what are you smoking? There's a twink named Kevin Leonardo infamous on YouTube for showing his hole.

Just getting around, yeah, like literally just showing his butthole and penis on YouTube. Shout out to Kevin. And the videos are still up because they're educational, I guess. He's like, Here's how to remove your butt hole hair. Plucking nipple hairs with fingers, a visual guide.

Listen, do not click on those videos. Unless you want to see someone's butto-wall. I'm just saying, like, it comes on, unless you want to see someone goat-seeing the camera. Oh, it's on YouTube. Here, I'll send you a link. You're serious. It comes off very quickly. You just click on any video, and within three seconds, someone's goat-seeing the camera.

So if you don't want to see, that don't look up Kevin Leonardo on YouTube you're like exaggerating no we're not exaggerating I swear to God but how to do you know is it gone oh my god I sorted by most viewed and it's not there the douche and your butt one looks the douche your butt it's a safely finger your butt he definitely shows his butt on the douche your butt one I think his most viewed video is gone the near butt cream one maybe it got enough reports detail guide okay damn that one had like 50 million views or something This was recently. This was like last week. I got, I got, what's the word? Ambushed. Adam ambushed us by

Oh, sorry. Throwing this guy's video on and within three seconds there was just a but hold on my screen. Dude. Yeah, to me, the most watched one there is how to doosh your butt. Yeah. So apparently the near. I'm not finding any asshole right now. The near one got removed. Well, yeah. So on the doish your butt video, he definitely also shows his butt. Unless he removed that part. Oh my God. I think it might be... Is he not doing the thing anymore? There's a chance he got reported. Is he just not doing it? It took a while for, like...

Is he just not showing whole on YouTube anymore? This whole niche. I assume so. I'm actually, honestly, I'm relieved slightly. I wonder if he took it down. Not because... No, no, like, disrespect or anything. I love the guy.

He had a great business model. But, again, I feel like it's a risk because you never know when the... algorithm is going to recommend that. Can you imagine? Just like you click on, oh, like you're watching a near video. You want to like figure out how it works. And then suddenly you're looking at this guy's butthole.

It's just, it feels like it shouldn't be on YouTube. Anyway. What's I got to do with a song, though, I guess is my question. Yeah. So he makes music too. And I linked his song called Addicted. And then in parentheses, uh-oh. And the chorus is so funny.

Oh, yes, I see it. And basically he just, he's, his music is very insincere. The lyrics, garbage. Oh. Just someone who's, who listened to some pop music and is just trying to emulate, like either Taylor Swift or. Yeah, yeah. And so, oh, God, the chorus is so funny.

I'm trying to find the chorus. It's at 30 seconds. 30 seconds. Oh, wow, really. Oh, oh. I just thought of a song that might qualify as the worst song I've ever heard. Sure. And because I've listened to it from start to finish because Adam has shown it to me and it's spicy Pepsi.

Oh, Pepsi spicy spicy? Like a lot hot lady? That's not the worst. What are you talking about? That guy is a genius. I think it might be. It might be. So I don't know.

That's the only one I can think of. Alex, do you know Pepsi spicy? It's ringing some kind of bell. but I don't know. Hold on. What? I'll send this to you. Yeah.

Is this one from 12 years ago? Spicy Pepsi. It's, yeah. Let me see. By my studio demo. Let me see. It's a freestyle. Yeah.

Tell me if you think this is brilliant, Alex. You're saying this is the worst. This is fucking fire. Yeah, what the fact? I love seeing videos that are like more than 10 years old. Like, just how different it was by then. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Spicy Pepsi is fire. I agree. I quite like that, yeah. Yeah. I would say it's probably my least favorite that I can think of. If that's a fair way of putting it. Okay.

Okay. We've been quite a good little album here. Yeah. Some songs from the shags. There's some things that are so bad that I love them. And they're like Neil Breen, you know? But that's the thing, right? Like, does that count?

I love, there's very few Neil Breen things for music. They're very special. You don't get a lot of, like, things that are so bad musically that they're good again. The Shags is that category. Do you think the Shags is trying too hard to be bad? No. Or do you think it works? That was sincere.

Yeah. That's why it worked. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. That's the thing. Yeah. If you're trying hard to be bad, it's already over, you know? It's a birdemic two problem.

Yeah. Yeah, things that I hate the most would just be like, fucking me going outside, like, into a grocery store and then whatever they're playing. Right. Yeah. Like what the, the music that I'm forced to listen to. Yeah. Like non-consensually.

Yeah. No, I get that sometimes if I'm like getting a coffee or food somewhere. Yeah. Like, what the fuck is this? You hear something on the radio and it's like, Oh my god, is this like a real song? Like people like listen to this? Okay.

But like I think most people that listen to it also listen non-consensually. Because music is the type of thing where you can force something into existence and just the nature of it being like infectious or catchy to some degree. Like there's a formula of how to make things accessible to like a mainstream audience for music very easily. And so you like there's fucking millions of talented people creating identical songs to the shit that you hear when you walk outside and like go to the bar like grocery store or wherever. And they're not being listened to. And the only difference is the studio's pumping one of them out, right? Like one of them's being it's uh what's what what did what did noam Shamsky say like? manufactured consent.

Like, does that apply here? Like, right? Yeah. There's definitely an assembly line. That's what I'm sure if you'll say, yeah. Just this one's being plugged into this formula, this week or whatever. I really don't like top 40 music in general or pop music. But I have to admit that a lot of it is at least well produced.

Exactly. And when I'm thinking of like the worst song I've ever heard, One of my internal criteria is how good the production is on the mix, which is why I don't like something like. It's not I don't like. It's just like the candidates that I would automatically pick for the worst songs are going to be stuff like spicy Pepsi or the shags or things of that nature, things that are poorly produced because they weren't trying to produce something good.

But yeah, compositionally, yeah, I think from a composition perspective, you could easily make the case that a lot of top 40 music is derivative and terrible and very difficult to listen to in that sentence, yeah. Easy to replace. Yeah. Yeah. Easy to replace, like, vacuous lyrics. Yeah.

That's the one that honestly gets me the most is the lyrics when you hear days of the week, like in their lyrics. You're just like, really? It reminds me of a John Malaney a bit where he talks about how every song is about how tonight is the night. You only have tonight. It's just like, yep, that's about right. Well, it's because it's a filler when you're writing a chorus

and you've got two more syllables left and you've already said everything you have to say. You just say tonight. Tonight, yeah. At the end. Tonight's going to be a good night. Yeah, blacko peas. Tonight.

Tonight. Tonight. And then if you're doing hip hop, you say the N word. True. Right, yeah. Same syllables. There's filler words. go. Every culture has a different one.

All right, couple more questions. Oh, yeah. Let's do the song from Dog with a Shotgun, 89. What are your favorite anthology film? Seeing as Kinds of Kindness is out, which anthologies most resonate with you? So, how about ones that...

Honestly, the one that pops into my head is Ballad of Buster Scruggs. That was the last time I remember, like, fully loving. one of these anthologies and it felt complete as a whole and there wasn't a particular section that was dragging it down for me or that's like a particular standout to me. Fucking Hanky Chan has done some anthologies. You could consider 71 fragments of a chronology of chance to be an anthology film. Code Unknown is an anthology film.

Some great stuff in both of those. Yeah. Does something like happiness count as an anthology film? I guess like, yeah, do they have to be distinct? Is Magnolia anthology, kind of? Yeah, I don't know if, no, I wouldn't categorize those in that way if they're like, just multiple stories happening, like, intertwined. I would say when I'm thinking anthology, I think distinct start and end to each segment.

So a French dispatcher. Without like going back and forth in like... The Animatrix or something. Yeah. Animatrix is a great example. Thank you for that one. Okay. I love the animatrix. Yeah, that's a cool one. What's that film we did?

Amores Peros. Oh, hell yeah. I like that movie. That was Anthology, right? I guess. Right? That isn't that that? That's three, right? Because that's more, that's more intertwining. Because, yeah, it's weird to categorize things in this way because... Yeah, what's the definition?

Amoris Peros has this, you know, it's all happening in the same timeline pretty distinctly. Yeah. But then you could make it. that argument because like the most recent VHS movie there are things that connected within some of the segments that were like okay this is a part of the same timeline but then yeah I don't know yeah and the Sin City kind of works that way where it's like it feels like it's disconnected but it comes together the end in some way I think that counts I think it should right like I don't think then I

actually don't know I don't know like what the word anthology we technically means yeah we've just come to a definitional kind of Yeah, kind of defined an anthology, I guess. It just, so the wiki is saying an anthology film is a single film consisting of several shorter films, each complete in itself and distinguished from the other, though frequently tied together by a single theme premise or author. Okay. Sometimes each one is directed by a different director or written by a different author,

or may even have been made at different times or in different countries. Yeah, so like a compilation film, kind of. So, oh, here we go. Anthology films are often mistaken with hyperlink cinema. Hyperlink cinema shows parts of many stories throughout a film, whereas anthology films show story segments of one at a time. Some mistaken examples include Pulp Fiction and Amorris Peros, distributing their storylines non-chronologically separated by segments.

So... What was that called Hyperlink? I've not heard that before. Hyperlink cinema. Hyperlink cinema. Yeah. Interesting. The day I learned.

Yeah, so, like, yeah, the VHS films are fun. And I find myself not regretting each one that I watch. Yeah, it was kind of those films that made me cement my, like, I just don't like this packaging that much, the anthology packaging. Yeah, sorry, what were you going to say? No, I was just saying that, yeah, VHS, like, I haven't watched a lot of anthologies. I think VHS I've seen, which I liked, I thought it was solid. I'm a terrorist perils I really liked, but apparently it's not an anthology.

Yeah. Yes, sir. Sin City might be an anthology. That's okay, I guess. No, that would fall under the Amaris Peros thing. I guess. The hyperlink thing? That would be a hyperlink cinema.

Hyperlink, yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure. There's a great movie called Tokyo with three segments, and one of them sucks, but two of them are great. Okay. Fucking three extremes. There's some great segments in that. Some good stuff.

Shout out to anthology I wonder if I have a favorite Yeah I would uh So now now I'm feeling like 71 fragments of a chronology of chance might be a hyperlinked cinema So it's not actually anthology And that might even also be the case with Fucking code unknown So I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about anymore

But you know Yeah I'm scared I mean it's all definitions you can set any definition you want Be like I think this is an antology and so This is my favorite anthology I don't think that's like not allowed. It's like there's no, there's no government that's going to shut you down. People still understand what you're getting at.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I'm not a prescriptivist. All right, one more question? Sure. Right, let's end on this one then from Butter 467. Relatively recently it was announced that a film based on the October 7th attacks is currently in development with producers seemingly being biased given their connections. Similarly, a film about January 6th is also in development with.

Adam McKay said to write the film. My question is, is it too soon to make films based on recent tragic events and also should these tellings of the events come from an unbiased place or should it come from a certain perspective? That's a complicated one. This is a form of a... That's it is a complicated one. Very complicated.

I feel like the more films I see of this kind of ilk that we talk about like greengrass is the director we often point out for this kind of thing. Yeah. I don't know. The more recent is the more distasteful it feels to me. Maybe, especially with this kind of like exaggerated dramatic framing, maybe if you want to do some kind of documentary or something, you could understand that somewhat more, but something puts me off about this idea. There's something tacky about it. There's something distasteful. Can you repeat the question, actually? Is it too soon to make films based on recent tragic events and also?

should these tellings of the events come from an unbiased place? There's no such thing as an unbiased place, but... Yeah, you're going to struggle with that. That's, yeah, that's for sure a given. But I think the question is also, it's not, it's too open because the question is, can you make, is it too, what was it? Like, is it too late to make, like, films based on recent events? But a film could be like a work of art.

It could be, like, an emotional experience. It doesn't have, you know what I'm saying? Like, it doesn't, and it could be based, very loosely on a recent event. I think that's different from should you be making like a documentary that covers like an event. I think those are different creatures, especially if you're looking at a documentary, there's no such thing as an unbiased source even for a documentary. And I think it actually, actually think it behooves, behooves people to get as much information as they can about a recent event if they're making a documentary about it and continually refresh their

understanding of something based on more and more documentaries as they come out more and more recently. Like October 7th, there was an Al Jazeera documentary, like an Al Jazeera investigation segment that's like an hour long. It's basically feature length where they, you know, they go through, they do their research investigations, they show footage, they explain what happened. And because it's Al Jazeera, of course, there's going to be a bias. But you still get information from the documentary that you don't otherwise get from other sources. So I'm a big proponent of if you're looking at a documentary or if you're trying to get information about an event, that it's not, it's kind of like news. You don't just like make a film and consume it and enjoy it. It's more like it's kind of an

ongoing process of updating the information as it becomes available and watching documentaries and things like that. Whereas the film question, I think of course you can make a film about anything. Honestly, I don't think it even necessarily has to be distasteful that can be judged on a case-by-case basis. But in terms of making a film, that could be an emotional experience or a narrative or a fiction. Yeah, sure. Why not? I don't think there's a, there should be a statute of limitations or a minimum time you have to wait before making, you know, making something about that subject. It's all, it's all entirely just dependent on the individual film and what they're going for and, you know, like, are they just trying to purely capitalize on something and strike

the iron while it's hot and just think about, right, thinking about it as a business decision, like, oh, this is topical, right? Paul Greengrass, and like his movies seem really, uh, yes, that's sincerity. Opportunistic. Man, to be a little of and insincere and opportunistic, yeah. But yeah, there's, there's no rule that anyone should have to follow in terms of,

like, how soon is too soon. Like, yeah. Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone are making a film about the, uh, chess butt plug? incident I didn't know they're doing that that's hilarious yeah yeah hype for that

is it too soon I don't know might be depends on what you're going for it might still be a pending court case yeah I know right yeah I think you're right it does have to be a case by case thing

because it's like what are we just going to collectively agree that five years is the time period and then we just chill with it is arbitrary right doesn't work like that yeah it is arbitrary

awesome Thanks for the questions. Yeah, some fun ones in there. That was dink. I believe, Alex, it's your turn to recommend something. Yes, so I did have something in mind, but you pointed out that it's going to be episode 169. So I feel like I have to at least somewhat capitalize on that. And I've chosen a film.

I don't think either of us have seen, Belle de Jure. Okay. 167. I haven't seen it, so I can't say too much, but it looks. Spell that. Oh, here we go. B-E-L-L-E-D-J-O-U-R. It's on my watch list.

Nice. Yeah. All right. Just going to leave her that, to be honest. Directed by Louis Buneal, if I pronounced that correctly. Frid Young Housewife decides to spend her midweek afternoons as a prostitute. So there we go. Nice.

Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff on my watch list from this director. so I guess this will be the first one I see from them Cool Yeah Bell de jour Fuck I chat I fucked that up so bad

Guy I'll cover me There's an R in there Jure Belle de Jules I just don't even try Belle de jour Thank you Oh

Catherine de Nive Oh Oh wow 1967 She's great She's been young Okay cool If you don't want to be spoiled

for bell de jour. Watch it before the next episode is out. These episodes come out every two weeks. You can listen to them early. Go into sardonicast.com. Sign up for premium. It's only $2 a month. Or patreon.com slash sardonicast.

Or just to hit the join button on the fucking YouTube thing. Join. And it's a membership thing and you can listen to them early. Support the show. We got a Sardonicast highlights channel. Subscribe to that on YouTube. I don't know. There's other stuff.

Just give us money maybe. Fund it. Just fucking give us your money. I think that's it. Thank you for joining. Yeah, thanks. Gail, where can people find you and follow you if you want to plug socials or whatever?

Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. I'm on Twitter or X, I guess, at underscore Vexel. I'm on X right now. I'm on X guys. I don't really, I don't use it very much. So I don't even really know, honestly, it's fine. Just watch, you know, I'm on Adam and Pals. Adam's channel.

You can, you know, say hi. Like, sometimes I do Twitch streams. Everything, you know, there's the links. But, yeah, I'm mostly just on Twitter at underscore Vexel for my main Twitter. What's your Twitch? Awesome. My Twitch, which I haven't streamed in probably years, is Vexel underscore TV, Vexel underscore TV. Dang.

So, yeah. Thanks a lot, guys. Nice. Of course, thanks for joining. Yeah, enjoyed it. Always a pleasure to talk about movies. Awesome, Convo. And have a happy Shrek 5.

Finally. Oh, God.