Sardonicast - Sardonicast 172: Mars Express, Waking Life

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

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 1:56 Mars Express 39:13 Waking Life 1:58:58 Questions 2:09:36 Recommendation + outro

Three, two, one. Have you ever had a dream that, that you, um, you could, you, you, you would, you could, you would, you could, you would, you could, you would, you want them to do you so much you could do anything? I'm Adam from your movie sucks. This is Ardonica. I did that from memory and I haven't seen that in. Really? Because that, man, I came all washing back to me.

I'm Alex from I HG, just so you know. I haven't seen that in a few years. Wow, yeah, old school. Old school YouTube and things were a little bit simpler, a little bit, real back. Charlie bit my finger. It's like, it was kind of, that's what it was, right? It's just like, kids saying silly things and like pandas falling over and, yeah, quite innocent. So what is like now, huh?

That changed real quick. Yeah. Well, I mean, because YouTube initially, like a lot of the content was like, okay, someone clearly recorded this on VHS and it was so funny to them and now there's an accessible place where everyone can just like share the things that they love and that was just one of them just someone in 2011 decided hey this funny clip of this kid that can't they can't formulate his sentence so innocent yeah I'm glad you did whip that one out there and go down the the memberberry lane but I was going to whip out the ongoing wow was happening right now. Yeah. That's by a good one to get this going.

Thank you. You know, it works even better when we both have intro statements. Something in mind. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Because then if I flop, you can save it. That you go.

Teamwork. Yeah. So we'll be talking about waking life in a bit. We also, we saw a film called Mars Express. So there's a double animation episode, which I think is cool. Finally. Yeah. Yeah, really cool.

What do you think? Two underappreciated animation spectacles. I basically have the inverse experience of Mars Express that I have with the alien thing. The last episode we did. A nice palette cleanser. A nice little refreshing. Yeah. With it being sci-fi, with it like kind of.

being reminiscent of these sci-fi ideas and there's like shades of Chinatown, Robocop and, you know, these classic, you know, Blade Runner, these kind of ideas. And making something new out of it and it being animated. This is like a dream project for me. It almost is like it was tailor made for me. Good. Something I would want to see exactly. How this has gone under the radar the way it has.

Yeah, nobody's talking about it. What is the deal with that? I was hoping you might know something about that because, what? it came out, well, it came out a can, didn't it, but in 2023, but not this year's one. So it's been a full year of the festival. Yeah, so I think technically, if it were to be eligible for the Oscars, it would be for next year because I think the US wide slash limited release is technically

2024. Now, I heard from some people that saw it in theaters that they were like only playing the English dub. So I don't know how that was. I watched it in the original language, which is French. Yeah, same. I tend to watch things in the language that the director made it in. So just an FYI for people that want to check it out.

Yeah, you want that mouth animation to, well, that dedication they put into animating to the lip sync and then to just like dub it is, yeah, it seems like missing the point. Yeah, let's see. I have a theory on why nobody knows about it, because A, you know, no Oscar buzz. yet and hopefully, hopefully they notice it for next year's Oscars. Otherwise, go fuck yourselves for the 80th time academy.

But even like on YouTube, there's nothing. Oh, yeah. The biggest video right now is a review from Movie Man 101, shout out, with 741 views. Like, there's no coverage of this movie. Even the trailer for the film only has like 400K views, and that's on the Rotten Tomato's indie YouTube account. Okay. So here's my other theory, which makes a bit more sense. unlike something like

Scavenger's Rain, which has a good amount of buzz and people are talking about. This is not on any streaming service it doesn't look like. It looks like you're only able to buy or rent it, which I think if this were just like

dropped on Netflix at some point or HBO, I think this would probably take off because people would just be able to watch it more excessively. I think that's probably the biggest reason why nobody's talking about it because it really seems like

it's something that everyone would really enjoy, you know. Definitely. It's got a bit of ghost in the shell vibes in there too and great tone. The cyberpunk edge runners was a huge success just a few years ago. And this is definitely like a cyberpunk sci-fi thing. It's super accessible under 90 minutes. Exactly. This is like a dream animated project.

It takes itself seriously and it has like jokes without ruining the tone. It's still like a procedural Chinatown-esque like series. movie, you know, it's not, it's not aiming itself for kids. It's like, there's the stakes to what's going on, there's violence, there's, like, a level of intensity to some of this stuff that's like really unexpected. It was, there were a couple times it made me laugh out loud. Like, it's really well written. This was like a real surprise from a first time director too, who, um, I kind of been following by accident. Because I'd seen like vague stuff about this online on Twitter now and again, like clips or concept.

and whatnot from it because this director I'd known about since the die fantasy music video which we've talked about on this podcast before one of the best music videos ever made and I'm right there with you it's one of the most memorable vivid music videos like the the whole thing I can just like read in my head it's like burned into my retina it's such a memorable music video and taking that kind of art direction and style and applying it to a science fiction narrative is really worked out like that that same kind of style expanded and into a full feature with a, I don't know, I feel like it's not like a Kubo situation where it's like, oh wow, this looks like something perfect.

This is, this has the look right. It's got the vibe right. Then the story. Yeah, exactly. And I was just kind of, I was, once I was past the first couple of acts, I was getting tense, not just because the movie was like ramping up at stakes, but also just like, oh my God, they're like maintaining this quality throughout this. How are they going to drop the ball here?

Like, is this going to trip right towards the end? Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. I was like, how are they going to fuck this up? Because nobody's talking about this. Only has 76 Mascar, you know, 7.5 IMDB. You'd think it's like a little low for something that I would expect people to just like be gushing over. Like, how are they going to fuck up the ending or something, right? But it genuinely doesn't.

It just keeps that momentum. Yeah. All the way. Yeah, it's only 7,000 ratings on IMDB right now, which is nothing. Yeah. Just the tiniest sample size is nothing. I do want to throw out the music video we're talking about die fantasy. is spelled D-Y-E-Colon fantasy

directed by the same director as this film. This is his first feature, Mars Express. Jeremy Perrin. And if you want to watch it in good quality and not a re-upload on YouTube because the original got removed because it was too cool, you go to Vimeo

and there's an official release on Vimeo to watch the music video. It's one of the best music videos ever. You won't regret it. Oh, that's what it's real. You might be disturbed by it, but that's, you know, a good thing. It was like... Yeah, it really suits that song.

That's also a part of like the classic YouTube ecosystem. That's right. Because it would funnel you down to that same list of videos, wouldn't it? It was like, oh, the algorithm's taking me to this video again. Oh man, that's right. Yeah. Because I mean, like, the thumbnail was definitely like something that looked like hentai. It was literally just a shot of like, you know, a woman's crotch with a,

hand going down the panties at the pool like the close-up yeah that thumbnail is gonna get a lot of clicks but the music video was fucking incredible and also disturbing to the point where people shared it and it was one of those like oh have you seen this like not quite two girls one cup but still the same idea of like people were sharing it to like kind of get reactions yeah full-on like cosmic horror yeah yeah i'm glad that he was able to make a feature because now i'm just excited for whatever he does because, okay, I've seen two things from you. And that was a long time ago. Yeah, 2011.

Oh, yeah, 2011, yeah. It was the music video. So I'm glad that he finally got to make a feature. And I am excited for whatever he does next. So, yeah, let's talk a bit about the movie. It's, uh, oh yeah, he also worked on Last Man, which I haven't seen here. There's a show, yeah, that I heard is good. Again, I just don't know how you access it, though.

Like, we'd even watch. The seven Cs of, tortilla restaurants. It's crazy. Lots of chefs. The stuff like this is buried under when it's just waiting. It feels like a ticking time bomb.

Like if you just showed this to the right audience, then have a way bigger reach. If we had a steam for movies. Yeah. If we had one place that was just so good at what they did that competition didn't even matter because the company that owned it isn't like public

because they're just so successful and they were able to like do things not for shareholders necessarily, but still make a lot of money. We just had a steam for movie. It could have been Netflix, but it's not really. Now there's a bunch of Netflix's. Yeah, there's such a weird catch-22 this thing. Yeah.

It's like this is what we want, but it's also like they don't know how to advertise it. They don't know what to put it. They don't know how to like get it to eyes. That's where we come in. It'll be a hit as soon as we. I'm sorry. I'm so impressed.

Yeah. I'm so impressed though that like, I was thinking about the Batman, which is also like a crime procedural right? Yeah. That's a long ass movie. One of the biggest criticisms is the pacing of it. The stuff this movie achieves in 90 minutes, half the screen time is immense. Like the characters it fleshes out, the world it builds, like the layers of world building

that it just nods at and implies and the philosophical kind of concepts it like winds up delving into and these really kind of prescient and relevant ideas with social media and AI and emerging technology and the combination of it. It's like, this is everything that sci-fi is about and just combining these genres in such as satisfying, reminiscent way. Yeah, no time is wasted. And the concepts shown in this film and like parts of the narrative for sure are very familiar, but it takes its own detours that.

really make it special and make it don't and and avoid the feeling of like oh come on this and you're just going to do this and it's like yeah the analogy i thought of like yesterday about repetitive art or like uninspired art was like okay let's say you're a painter like what do you paint like i'm going to paint a bowl of fruit like okay sure you might have done a great job painting that bowl of fruit but you're just painting a bowl of fruit because you know that other people have painted a bowl of fruit that's like what you're supposed to do i want to see what you're what you're doing with the, I want to see a twist on the bowl of fruit. If you're going to draw a bowl of fruit, you've got to do something fucking cool with it.

You got to do something unique and interesting so that I can say, oh, this is from you. Right. And that's what Mars Express is. It's like, you know, there's elements of, there are things that are like the bowl of fruit, but it veers away from the unsatisfying conclusions of those tropes. You know, the tropes are in there, for sure. And it's very inspired. But it's not so derivative in a cynical way.

It's not derivative because they don't have ideas. It's derivative because they love the wealth of art that's already existed, and they want to do their own thing with it and transform it and tell their own story. So, very, very happy with how this one. It's the exact kind of the homage that you want to see, whereas, like, in the alien discussion, it's kind of the inverse, where it's like you're being smothered by these, quote-unquote, mirages or references or whatever. Yeah.

Without making something new. It's like the complete inverse approach. It's the exact opposite. Yeah, literally, completely inverse. It's funny that you're tying in alien to this because I woke up today and if you had not mentioned alien Romulus, I probably never would have thought about it again in my entire life. Like, it's just so disposable.

We saw it like a week ago. Like, it's so forgettable. And our episode hasn't even gone up yet. So we're, I'm curious to see. see what people are going to say. I think it's going to be funny. Yeah. But yeah, like the, just base level stuff like visual design or just creativity of these

sci-fi concepts. Like, when was the last time you were like wild or impressed by a robot design of something? Ooh. That's a good question. Something like really stood out to you in a sci-fi thing because this one was really tickling me that way. Rogue one. The different robot designs.

The Hopkins robot? Okay. I'll give you that one. So well designed. Yeah. Oh, dude. Clap trap? But yeah.

Yeah, well. Wally. Hopefully we'll get to that next episode. Sure. Oh, yeah. Damn. Yeah, that'll be on digital by that time. But yeah, you're saying familiar ideas, like integrating holograms and using that to like highlight the disconnect between humanity and technology and all this kind of stuff.

But having this design of a, uh, it's the body cop dynamic. but the buddy cop is a... Can we talk about a spoiler? How do you want to navigate this? Yeah, well, okay, here we go. Everybody, you've been told to see this movie. If I can check it out, we both love it. Now we're gonna talk spoilers, there we go.

Thanks for remembering. Because yeah, it's hard to talk about the concepts of the movie because it's kind of integrated into the plot, the way they reveal the way things work. You know, like this mind speaking idea or this... kind of brain cloning, they call it brain farmers. And this idea of like cloning being illegal and this is all tied into this central mystery. But the design of this buddy cop character is someone who has died five years ago, as of where the story takes place. And he's almost like reborn into a robot body with only his face being a hologram.

And how that's visually kind of communicated is really interesting and fun. And the way they use that and the way it contrasts against everything. and the way they don't kind of fall into the trap of having the robot be, for lack of a better word, robotic. He's like one of the most human kind of characters and expressive. And I love that scene where he's cracking jokes and he's like doing a big hearty shoulder laugh. And it's like there's so much personality with this movie. And the whole setting feels like a character as well as all the obvious main characters. And yeah, there's just a perfect amount going on.

Like they just man. I don't know how they did it in the 90 minutes. So I'm still kind of reeling from that because that is really impressive to me. Yeah. But I just felt like all these characters get just fleshed out enough, including that lead, too. I like where they managed to fit in there with like the addiction element. And yeah, it's really well done from that regard. Yeah.

In terms of like the hologram cop character, I love it conceptually. But I also am really impressed by how they managed to use that towards the benefit of the filmmaking in terms of like telling visual metaphors, like when he's walking away from the home, the idea of conceptually having a character where you can see through his head, they decided to show a visual of like, oh, his ex-wife and new partner behind his head, through his head literally, in a literal sense, but also in a metaphorical sense. And so the filmmaking is telling a story explicitly also, but the metaphor exists, the visual metaphor exists, and I love that they were able to use these concepts in that way and think of like, oh, how can we make a really great shot where you get one shot from a movie and there's things to chew on, there's things to think about, there's things to dissect, you know, there's layers to it. I love that. There's so many layers, just on this character alone, because it's not just that going on, because there's also the kind of humorous element that's built in.

into his design where he keeps kind of like needing to reboot but there's not enough space on him to actually apply the reboot. So there's this joker. That is fun. It's the logical extension of like your phone basically. Yeah. What if your phone had its own autonomy and was like, had a personality and the integration of like social media and the way people communicate is really interesting and plays into the

kind of sneaking around element where you don't need to speak in order to communicate in this world as long as you've got this kind of chip behind your ear. You can like have private, you basically have Discord built in. into your head is the way it's presented. And it's used really well with like building tension when they're sneaking around and having these secret conversations and like using passwords to buy drugs and whatnot. And yeah, so it just feels really organic the way it ties into itself and builds on itself. And they don't leave any huge question marks that aren't intended.

Like they flesh out what you need to for this world to make sense and to be intriguing and be like, I've really been struck by a sci-fi world quite like this, probably since like Mass Effect, if I'm being honest. I'm like, I just want to live in this world. I want to know everything about it. I want to know what's to come. True. Yeah, there's a lot it's saying and a lot it's doing with these concepts that feels so,

so fresh yet familiar. Yeah, I could have watched like three hours of this. But again, you know, it's the classic, like, a great movie is never, is never too long or too short. You want to be, yeah, it's better to be left wanting more. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. brain's a little goose right now. Yeah. Well, that was a great joke where like, it's a core sort of premise in the movie that

they refer to robots that are jailbroken, kind of like a phone as their robots. They don't have shackles on them. They have kind of ultimate freedom. Yeah. And there's this really funny gag at a certain point where the jailbreaking kind of hacker character is like a couple of robots in her room. And she makes a comment like, oh, when you jailbreak them, they just want to get stoned and fuck a day long. And I like scream after that.

I thought that was such a funny little observation. And quite a deep little comment. Autonomy. It's like the jail broken version of robots is just like, oh, they have their own agency now. They're just humans, basically. Yeah. And I was, some of the emotions they managed to pull out of you through kind of making you empathize with these machines. That section towards the end where there is a poor robot.

like just given autonomy right as he's being like recycled. Yeah. And he's like placed into this. And they still go through it. Recycling machine that like pulls him apart and he's like, scream, like, what's happening? Please don't. And it's like, oh my God, this is horrifying. This is getting me on like a concept level that is really thought provoking.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's a... Love the animation and I love like how very clearly like intently storyboarded this is. and, you know, very reminiscent. I think they might have even, like, reused some, what's the word for it? So, like, the skeleton of the animation, I think I, like, when he's swinging her head at the beginning, when he, like, grabs her head or neck twists, I think that might be, if it's not the same, it was at least very similar.

Maybe it was, like, kind of an homage to the die fantasy music video. Because I think that happens to, like, one character in that. Oh, I'd have to compare it side by side, but either way, I mean, you know, that's, that's a common thing in animation. Disney's done it forever. It's, you know, animation's very expensive. So it's not really a complaint. But one of the moments where I was like, really like, oh, this movie's awesome was like pretty close to the beginning. The visual of not only her catching herself with her hand on the broken glass on the window, which is already like, okay, this is like a little bit of like cringe in a good way.

because you can kind of like feel the pain of the character, but you understand that she's like strong enough that she's not going to let go. But then as she's chasing and makes that jump over the broken sign, that shot of just like the blood spatter from her hand, the consistency of her hand still bleeding, but using that hand to grab onto the ledge and pull herself up, just the way that the blood looks and the way that it's spattered,

I was like, okay, this guy's got a vision. Like, he's got a vision. He knows what looks cool, and he's like, I would love to show this. And he pulls it off. I'm glad you said that because I noted down the same thing. You feel all the blood splats and impact. That's how I put it. Yeah, there's this, like, amazing weight to everything.

And it does all feel like meticulously storyboarded and detail-oriented. In a perfect way. Yeah, it flows so well. Like, there's no close-up of it at that moment. It's not gratuitous. No, no. It's not obvious. It's like, it's something that you can't help but notice.

And it's there. Mm-hmm. And that applies not just to the, you know, frame-by-frame animation, but also to the way it's put together, the way is storyboarded and edited, where there is this, what's the best way to describe it? Like a cadence to the way it is 90 minutes is cutting real quick. Scenes tend to be quite small or almost like, I don't know, it's like snapshots, like getting from beat to beat, to beat.

But it will settle onto like a set piece or a tense scene. And that's normally when the musical pickup. That's when something really exciting will happen. Or like the car crash scene is kind of a good example of it. It's like building up to this conflict. And it really kind of maximizes the tension with the way it elongates these action sequences or buildups. I love the way it's tied together with that the foam coming out of the car after that chase. and then the build up to the machines, like removing the foam away.

And it's just beautifully put together. And like, yeah, meticulous is the word I would use. And also, like, building up the intensity of these set pieces and kind of action scenes where I feel like you do kind of get the best, most expressive, crazy one towards the end of the movie. It doesn't, like, blow its load too soon. It all feels like, yep, this is the perfect time to be doing this. Yeah. And, man, nine million euros.

Oh, shit. made for nine million euros that is insane that's pretty good I mean like the animation is fantastic and they use it the best with their limitations like it's clearly not like jibbley right it's it's they're they're utilizing a combination of like 3d and 2d and do there are definitely like cost cutting measures that they do to make this happen but within that framework it's nothing to complain about and it's nothing that's like, oh, this looks cheap or bad. It's like, oh, wow, you did, you did a great job with the tools that you were given.

Yeah, if you use animation to its potential, you can kind of build that look into the style. So it's like less distracting, this kind of cost-cutting measures. It can go slightly too far in something like, I don't know, invincible. I tend to next that a bit more, but I actually found this to be quite consistent. Sure, you might not get like the multiple layers of shading on characters and whatnot that you might see in a Ghibli movie but man what what do they cost they must be like a hundred million or something you know yeah yeah this this is uh definitely i i hope that this existing just as like a proof of concept can get them some more money and just continue making like high concept pieces of art

yeah this is why it needs to like we kind of have this prime example You know, there's not from Japan. Yeah. It's in a, it's a genre movie. It's not limited to being a kid's thing. Like that, and it's, uh, relevant. It wasn't made in like the 80s or something. You know, it's, it's just come out.

So yeah. Now's like, I guess, a chance to promote this or, uh, try and get more of it or spread. It's, I feel like we're just, we're just teetering on it with stuff like the cyberpunk edge runners being a Netflix show and being so huge and successful. And like, I feel like we're right teetering on it where we're, where we can go more into this space and see what we can do. Yeah. But it's not quite there. There's definitely,

there's definitely like a market for it. Yeah, definitely. There's definitely a thirst for it. Despite the animation not being like jibbley levels, what they managed to do with it, I love the like recurring facial expressions that even though like from, from a animation perspective, they can look at like a little bit simple,

but the way that they use the simplicity to still showcase, like a really great facial expression. She does that like kind of like wide-mouthed smirk a lot in the film. Yeah. And they really understand where to use those. It definitely gives it personality. Yeah. And when not to just like drill pointless dialogue all the time. True.

Like they'll often just use the visuals to communicate what a character is going through, like the main character who's, you know, doing the push-ups and. the sweat beads and the blood dripping down is like all you need to see to understand where that character's headspace is. Hot take. People are going to hate me for saying this. This is what I wish anime was. This is what I feel people pretend anime is.

Like if more anime was like this, I would watch more anime. But then when you get anime, there's the anime tropes, you know? There would be things. Do you know what I mean? Do you get what I'm trying to say? I see what you're saying. If you remove the obvious examples like Akira or Ghosts in the Shell. Oh, of course.

Not saying that there hasn't been anime this good, of course. Yeah, yeah. But it's definitely like a rarity, I think, for it to be of this quality or at least appeal to things that I want to see in this space. I don't know. I think even anime fans wouldn't, I don't know, what would they point to outside of Akira and Ghosts in the Show? Oh, yeah. Some of the obvious classics like that. like recently anyway you know in the last 20 years what would be a prime example of

something like this that isn't aimed at kids yeah and if you are an anime fan you're gonna love this movie because it is very it's it's like he's he's definitely inspired by anime like he's very anime that was very apparent in the die fantasy music video as well yeah yeah but this is just a bit more refined or tight even for what I, you know, comparing, comparing this to a lot of anime that people love, especially recently. It's not wearing the anime inspiration on its sleeve like it is the like Chinatown or Blade Runner. True. It seems more interested in doing something like that, but just, it just happens to be animated.

Yeah. Yeah, it's fucking awesome. And I can probably, like, if somebody wanted to watch it again, like today, I'd do it. Like, I just saw it, like, a couple days ago. Yeah. I was actually thinking about like, oh, I might chuck this back on once I recorded this episode. Yeah. I can't really stop thinking about it and it's such like a treat.

I got the Blu-ray. Yeah. Hell yeah. Great music. Great tone. Yeah. How did you find the implementation of that music? Because it was kind of sparse.

It felt like it wasn't overscoring constantly. It was noticeable when the music was kicking in. Yes. I guess, like an intentional kind of way. Yeah, it definitely gave it like a really good sense of energy when it needed to. Yeah. It didn't overstay it's welcome. It didn't feel like forced.

The composition wasn't like manipulative or anything. It was like, okay, I get the tone. I enjoy what you're doing with the tone and it fits and it's something, you know, that I could imagine this director, you know, having seen the die fantasy music video. It's like, okay, I get. I get why you've made these choices and I agree with them and I like them. So yeah, great, great score overall, honestly. I just remember what the thought I was trying to get back to is the comment you made about

the Ghibli stuff. I honestly don't think it's actually that far off. I hear what you're saying with the like simplified characters because that is noticeable, especially in like wide shots. But man, like it does go up to closeups of characters and the animation is like great. The design is quite simple, sure, but like the, the frames that are in there and like the expressions they're getting out is I don't know it's never like distracting on that front to me as far as like and it never felt limited yeah um by its budget it never came across like that to me um and man like some of the action scenes and payoffs you get towards the end I love that little scene where the uh the body cop character we were just talking about he kind of like takes over and just like grabs that gun off the main character and fires a couple of shots in the air and then like perfectly times this whole like action. sequence and so satisfying, so thoughtful that whole action scene he has with that.

It's kind of like an organic version of those police drone things from Robocop. It's kind of a creepy, weird design. And that whole like organic thing was really cool. An awesome world building like touch where it's part of the world, but it's never really indulged and it's not too important to the, well, actually it's kind of fundamental to the plot. But I love that idea of like, oh, yeah, if you kind of take. take the robot technology to its logical conclusion, maybe we would figure out how to warp organics. And then there's like a scene where they mentioned this organic technology is better because it can, it's recyclable and we'll decompose.

And like these weird kind of creepy concepts like that. And obviously is great for animation, like some of the weird, a visual flare they can whip out with that. Like in that big fight towards the end, where the four-legged Robocop organic monster thing, has this kind of mouth that releases these tendrils from and it looks like veins and it's like a crazy visual great like flex of animation and yeah it's so cool what they be playing with that cool is the right word and it's been a long time since I've seen a movie be so consistently cool without feeling like it's trying way too hard to be cool yeah like they they have a robot saying like fuck early on and I wasn't annoyed by it and it was cool like the way they did it was like

oh this is this is like charming and cool it's like a robot and an anti-robot protest like telling them to it's like funny it's not just like looking at the camera hey isn't it funny that it's a robot saying fuck kind of humor it's like how this is all base within a world and they actually care about keeping this consistent with itself and it's like it's only a little thing but man does it go far. I will say though my biggest issue with this is actually the name. I don't think it's a great name, especially if we're thinking about like marketability or like what the film is about. It is almost misleading. Yeah. Like it seems like I thought at first, oh, is this going to be like kind of a simple A to B just like it's about the journey. We're getting to Mars.

Yeah, it's like the polar express, Mars Express. That's like what I think of in my mind when I hear that title when it's like about so much more than that. I don't think it does a good job of like encapsulating what the film's really about or how good it is. All right. It might even, it kind of sounds, it sounds more like the kind of kiddie stuff, animation stuff needs to like avoid. But a better title man, I don't know.

AI, artificial intelligence. How about, how about robot dreams? Just genuinely yes. Yeah, can we swap those titles around? Yeah. You can have Mars Express. Yeah, might as a robot drink. I liked how they embraced that too.

They just called them robots. They didn't like call them freakers or come up with some like slang for it. It's just like, no, these are robots. And again, just another positive of animation. Like, it just sells crazier concepts. So like naturally and well, like you're not even really thinking about things clashing that might be a distraction in something this live action in the same way. True.

Yeah, this would suck live action. unless it was like Villeneuve or something. Yeah, exactly. It would have to be so high budget with like the best people doing it. Yeah. Be like 300 million dollars. And there's no way you could make it, I guess, for nine million euros, which is also again, it's like, man, this almost seems like the best avenue to explore these, these big ideas.

Like they did it. You know, I guess all like 2001 towards the end. It gets like quite trippy and existential. I love that whole sequence with the, the lights and the AI all kind of sacrificing their physical form in order to go up to space. It is, yeah, my really like powerful memorable imagery. And now, yeah, the, the, using the hologram stuff with the, when he starts kind of crying and trying to wipe away the tears, that's quite a memorable image too.

I love that visual. I thought that was really clever. It was like trying to rub the tears off of it. Yeah, a human instinct juxtaposed against like something so inhuman. Yeah. And like clashing in both like a literal and metaphorical sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Easily as like memorable or great as the, you know, the scenes in her or Blade Runner 2049 with the like of the laying hologram sex scenes. It's like that tier to me. Yeah. Like it's just so easy to remember. It's not leaving my brain anytime soon. Unlike alien. Yeah. Romulus.

I always have to search for that title in my brain for a little bit Romers, yeah Romulus In the water It shot me in the fucking water The bloody fucking water That's the most memorable part of it When it was in the trailer

Yeah so forget about Alien Let's go for Mars Express Fucking everybody watch Mars Express What's your fucking problem What's your deal? Yeah what's the industry's problem What is everyone's problem 7.1,000 ratings? What?

No. What are you doing? What are you doing? Fucking idiots. And then this podcast episode is going to get less views than the Alien Covenant one because this is in the title and not, sorry, alien Romulus. Yeah, that goes back to the catch-20s. Yeah.

People just want to have familiar things, yeah. You'd need to, like, bury it within, like, Deadpool and Wolverine. Yeah, so how do you, yeah, how do you get out of that cache 22? People don't click on it and care about it because it's not a known thing. But it's also, like, the best. example of a recent thing like this. Yeah. For what we won, is it, yeah.

Someone's got to, someone's got to fucking give this to the red letter media people. Mm-hmm. They can get movies out there. Damn straight. All right, what do you rate it? I actually, uh, I give this a perfect turn. Dang. Five out of five with a like.

This is everything I want to see. It feels like it was tailor made for me. Implenances are clear, but I love the new spin on it. Showing me sci-fi. of ideas in ways I haven't seen them before. This world is so well thought through. I love the way the plot is so organically linked together and the villains being this like mega corp entity and the it not being corny.

Like some I'm sure some of these ideas might sound kind of corny like the wiping away the tears and whatnot. But believe me like the the way it's visually presented does come across well. And it's like the board kind of winds up being the villains, which is like perfect for a cyberpunk setting. I love the way that, yeah, the mystery comes about. I just, I just love procedural. So it's one of my favorite, like, just styles of setting a story, you know.

If any of that sounds like something you'd like, please check it out. Hell yeah, they really sell it. Uh, nine out of ten for me. I bought the Blu-ray. Love it. Go watch it. Fucking idiots. Go watch.

Stupid, stupid motherfuckers. Is it because it's also in French, too? You're so dumb because you haven't seen it yet. I'm smart because I've seen it now. I was dumb three days ago, but now I'm smart. I do like that they did commit to like the whole thing's like animated in French. I guess I wasn't even a concern of like, man, we might get a broader audience if we make sure this is in English. And yeah, I like the story, but can we just tell this in English?

I mean, there is a dub. There is a dub. The dub exists. that's how I imagine a lot of people are going to watch it and I haven't seen the dub so I can't speak to the quality of it or when I could imagine like Netflix or HBO buying this and like remaking it or something maybe in English

yeah you never know I'd be yeah I like I just hope more people see it and I hope it gets more accessible and I hope that they make more things with no limitations yeah I want to see like a cosmic horror project from this team I really feel like horror is like an untapped animations but you've got your Japanese

examples here and there but man if we get something like this as well made as this but evoking horror instead of like sci-fi I think that could be big I think that could be really cool yeah it would be nice

to have something like that all right we also saw waking life directed by Richard Linklater and what is it, 2001? 2001. Waking Life.

This is a movie that I've seen quite a few times. It's a very odd, very unique movie. And it's a lot of talking. It's a lot of conversations. It's a lot of like very naturalistic conversations as if they just kind of like let the camera roll and just had people talk and, you know, discuss philosophical ideas and,

concepts, almost like a collage of like TED talks in a way, but a bit more back and forth. There's not always just one subject. And this is told in a very interesting way because it's rotoscoped. So they took the film footage and had a bunch of different animators working on different scenes that colored over, drew over, painted over, however you want to say it, each of those frames. but in a way that wasn't necessarily trying to have a hyper-consistent style throughout, where each scene gets to kind of play in their own way with how they present the footage. Nice little details and little visual flares and, yeah, it's a movie that's always stuck with me,

and I think I enjoy it more every time I watch it. I think that as I get older, I'm engaging more with the concepts. I think that the number of scenes when I was younger, where I was kind of like a little checked out, maybe not understanding the concepts, I think that there was a greater number when I was younger, and now that I'm like 33 and I'm more actively engaging with a lot of the ideas within the film,

or I guess able to understand, some of these concepts a bit better. It's it's a movie that that that is uh definitely more engaging for me now. Yeah, because I would say it's impossible to fully engage on a first watch. Yeah. With every single idea that's thrown out there, I think it's literally impossible unless you're mega big brain, mega mind or something. Yeah. Maybe you could do it. But uh, yeah, there's a lot being explored here, a lot of heady, uh, wobbly ideas. It's quite a wobbly film. Yeah. In a literal sense as well. Wobbly animation intentionally. Yeah.

But it and it it needs that wobbly look to even work as a concept. It needs to have this kind of dreamlike atmosphere. It needs that looseness of the dream framing for this concept to really work, I feel like. Because the film was shot like normally on these like cheap video cameras first, from what I understand, before they started the process. So there's like a underlying film. I feel like if I watched that without the rotation. scoping, I'd kind of hate that film.

Yeah. But through the rotoscoping, adaption of it, it gives it this almost like excuse for presenting these ideas in this way. Because like, I love the ideas of philosophy and these deep, heady, like, Greek ideas that they're throwing around. And like, one of my favorite films is Stalker, which plays with a lot of, like, philosophy, but it kind of buries it within this kind of sci-fi framing. Whereas this is, it's almost like directing the audience.

It's almost like a, almost feels like a documentary at points where it's like people being interviewed and it's like questioning. Is this like what Ardman did with one of their shows, Creature Comforts, where they kind of like interviewed real people and then layered animation on top of it. And I wasn't sure like what parts were real and Alex Jones shows up and you're like, what they're okay. Okay, let's try and figure out what's going on. It's almost like a bombardment. And I feel like within that hour and 40 minutes, an hour of it is like 10 out. attend to me. Like genuinely like 10 out of 10. So thought provoking. So like the style like compliments what they're saying and the added expressive animation like you're saying,

where they're like put in a little symbol here or make the eyes a bit bigger here or add sharp teeth in here when they're saying a certain word or whatever. That stuff's great. But the other 40 minutes was like a mix of just kind of feeling like the repetition of the structure of that kind of feeling of, oh, this is very loose and random and we're going to like another. the interview here with this kind of deep subject that we're going to explore for just a moment. Now we're going to go over here in this direction and we're going to talk about this really heady thing and it's quite like scatterbrained in that way. And I got to admit it was losing me right before that scene where the main character kind of has more of a goal or more agency

in the story where they start kind of learning to lucid dream and talking about the characters that are explaining the situation where he's in where he's like stuck in this loop of like dreams within dreams and waking up within dreams and the rules of dreams and all these people theorizing about dreams and science and the meaning of life and all this stuff and it's like so much that it's playing with and I really liked that scene of like oh this feels like more like a intentional narrative instead of just pure randomness when it gets to his like hey I'm kind of getting scared that I'm sort of trapped in this endless dream yeah all the way up to that like the curse ending and like oh like you

kind of committed to this concept and you're not there's not like a corny scene if him waking up and it's no longer rotoscoped and it's like the end And it's Yeah, it's just infinite. Kind of a dark ending. Yeah, it's infinite. Kind of scary. Yeah.

What's kind of funny is like I was almost worried like, because I haven't seen this movie in, I don't know, maybe 10 years, maybe five. I don't know, probably 10. Somewhere around there. And as I was rewatching it this time, I was like, oh, did I say too much by saying that it was like about dreams? Because I wasn't sure if it like how important it was that, you know, I didn't spoil. because they don't really even address the idea of dreams

until like halfway through the movie. But watching it again, I think it's probably a better watch if you kind of know going into it that it's dreamlike and that's what they're going for because otherwise if you don't have that context before starting the movie, the first half of it is like confusing more so.

Like it's way less confusing when you know what it's going for in that sense. So I almost feel like they should have addressed that concept earlier in the movie. I didn't really have that first like, oh, this is like a 10 out 10 experience right here moment up until it took a few different interviews up until that one with, it's like a scientist who's talking about like the new evolution. And he like describes this process, which I feel like I've thought about, but I've never

been able to find the words or like verbalize in any way. And hearing this quite succinct. like clearly put idea of this timeline of humanity and how these huge developments are happening in shorter and shorter increments to the point where I guess theoretically we could start seeing it happen in real time which kind of blew my mind because this was made in 2001 yeah I could argue we are living in that right now um it was right on the precipice I guess on 2001 of like the explosion of social media and now we're going into AI and all this kind of thing.

And that's kind of exactly what he was describing. I was getting like chills. Like, oh my God. This is, uh, this is crazy. And yeah,

it's definitely overwhelming. But I feel like every, everyone watching this will have their equivalent of that scene. Like there are so many concepts and ideas. And as long as you're engaging with some of what's being said, there will be one. They're saying, oh,

that's a, I've never thought about that concept explained that way or, man, yeah, just the, the way they're presenting. this is something I haven't thought about before or that's an interesting way of phrasing something I have thought about before.

Yeah. It's definitely thought provoking. It's just like the level at which you're willing to say, okay, I've had enough because there was definitely a point for me where I wasn't engaging at the level. I think the film wanted me to because I was just kind of like almost exhausted. Yeah. With what it was throwing at me. Yeah, there is a lot.

And, you know, every single time I've watched this film, I love it. I love it a lot, but every single time I've watched it, there is a moment, not a consistent moment, but there is a moment where I'm like, okay, it's kind of overstaying it's welcome. Like maybe you could have kind of like four of these interviews and it would have just like been more tight and flowed. Yeah, I was thinking just like 10, 50 minutes is just about it for me. Yeah. It would make this about perfect for what we're playing with here.

Yeah, exactly. And you have the freedom to like restructure them, like reorganize them too in this type of thing. film. Because like the moment for me, I noted it down, whereas I just really don't get what this section's even trying to say, where it's got like these four dudes walking down the street and the, I can, I can even type fast enough to like get down what they were saying. They were like just walking down the street, these four dudes just speaking, I don't even know what they were saying. And then they go about like all action, no theory, all theory, no action. There's that old man like climbing a pole. And it's like, that went way of mad. I just don't know what it was.

so. Yeah. Even trying to say at that point. Yeah. Well, there's like a healthy mix of like, both like intellectuals and artists, but then also just like characters. And, you know, in that sense,

it's like, I don't know if like necessarily every single scene that exists in this movie was trying to be like all that deep, I guess. Because what's funny about this, Richard Linklater was asked about Alex Jones' inclusion in this in 2018. And his quote is, I just thought he was kind of funny. And later says it's insane that the Info Wars host is taken seriously. Yeah, because his performance in that is great.

Oh, yeah. And he's almost unrecognizable. Alex Jones, like fucking 20 years ago, is so different. Yeah, his voice is. are a lot less deep, yeah. As soon as he started turning a little red, then I was like, oh, that's Alex. Yeah, I like that touch of them, like, just changing his color to like bright red when I'm when to coloring him in.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a very, it's a very great concept. I love the idea of taking something like a film that's very much about dreams and dream logic, but about so much more and then deciding like, okay, we're going to rhodoscope this, we're going to tell it

in an interesting way, using the concept to further the art and what you're showing, the approach to stylization throughout and the differentiations in each scene. I love the music a lot.

The music really grows on me. It's just looping in my head right now, honestly. It was actually thanks to that music that kind of sold me stylistically on what it was doing early on because it opens, I think, of someone like on a train. I was like, not used to the style yet.

And I was like, man, this is looking kind of funky. I feel like drunk, like watching this with the way everything's moving and shaking around. And I was like, oh, man, am I not going to, like, dig this style? But then, like, right after that is that scene with the musicians, like, playing, playing that song. And I felt like, oh, this, this style really complements, like, music in particular and, like, instruments being played and that looseness. it kind of looks, how you'd imagine, music might. Yeah, it really complements those kind of ideas. And yeah, for me, it kind of depends on the interview or the scene or what it's trying

to do how much that style works for it. Like when Link later appears in the back of that boat and he gets in, it's like, this really works for me as far as communicating this dreamlike surreal kind of tone. It's a little bit off, it's a little bit wrong, but it's also exactly how dreams feel. and like that kind of stuff I really enjoy like exploring the concept of dreams and having character like writing characters that are like hi I'm like the dream exposition guy I would like that character the who's talking about like what you can do with the that special type of dreaming the lucid dreaming yeah that was like a really memorable character and there's there's a

bunch of humor in there too that that comes from that like the Alex Jones scene is funny some of the kind of eccentric characters are just innately funny even if uh what they're saying is profound or not to you. They're definitely memorable. Yeah. It kind of, it feels almost more tied together when they show the main character

flipping through channels and going back and forth and they're like just speakers essentially on television talking about philosophical concepts because the movie in of itself very much feels like flipping through channels in a sense. Like you're on one subject and then you just move on to the next one.

And again, that ties into the dream logic of things tying together or not tying together and that stilted nature of chronology. Did you ever watch, have you seen the before trilogy or no? I haven't, actually. I saw that on the subreddit when this was revealed as the recommended movie, there was some comments saying, oh, Alex is going to miss out on something for not have seen. the before trilogy.

Kind of not really. I was just going to point this out anyway. So the Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy characters are the same characters as in Waking Life. But there's it's not I don't think it's intended to be a

literal thing that happens in their timeline because this movie is you know in a dream state through the perspective of the main character so he can just be someone who saw before sunrise and then imagine those two characters in his dream continuing a conversation that didn't happen or maybe didn't happen but it doesn't even matter if it did

sort of thing in the timeline of before. Because when Link later appears again later in the movie on that pinball machine which I think is also a reference to tasting a user one of his other movies or something. Yeah, he has that kind of whole conversation about the idea of that writer who wrote that book, it was a success, and then they met a string of people that were identical to the story he'd written and this idea of like, if you're inspired by something in your dream, is that really you? How have these ideas been communicated? Are you plucking something from a subconscious level?

Is there some level of communication that we can't comprehend or understand? And I haven't taken LSD, so I don't know how much I can break down some of this stuff. I mean, I'm not saying, I don't think you need to understand these concepts or think about them in this kind of way. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I connect LSD to it. But, you know, it is a mind-opening kind of perspective drug, I guess. But yeah, I mean, like in my opinion, I feel like everything that happens in our brain is in our brain. and dreams are something that happen in our brain.

But I just think that the question of, you know, being caught off guard by something and being like, okay, is that me? Because that's not an idea that I thought of. I think that's a part of the human illusion of free will. And they do talk about the concept of free will pretty early on in this film. I think that I think that human beings

underestimate the capabilities of the human mind and particularly of the subconscious human mind in a sense where because we don't just because we don't feel like we have agency over something doesn't mean it's magic right in the sense that like

there's like literally songs that I've written in my dreams but I say when I say I've written I don't mean I sat down and started like writing or constructed in my dream I mean

the dream the song was already playing. The song already existed in full form in my dream, but I wrote it because it's from my head, right? So like this has happened to me like twice in the past month. If that's really where it came from, right? But I mean, that is where it, in my opinion, that is where it came from. But like, do we actually know? Isn't that kind of like the question? Because as while we overestimate what the brain can do, we also under- to me? Well, I'm not like, you know, when they start talking about like telepathy, I'm not a person that goes, like, that's impossible. But I, I don't, it would have to be like studied in a way that, you know, we would have to be able to draw some conclusions from it, I guess. Because right now all we have is like, isn't that weird, which, you know, there's a lot of things that are isn't that weird, you know?

Yeah, and that's kind of what makes this movie good is it's pontificating about these things. It's asking questions without necessarily giving you hard answers about things and letting you think about it. Yeah, and it's not really the film saying it as much as these disparate characters that are appearing to add a perspective and you can kind of filter through what you like the sound of and what you don't because there's, yeah, there's all sorts of ideas from, yeah, Aristotle to. Alex Jones, so yeah, there's a lot to filter through. Yeah, I'm willing to believe that like There are things in our brain because The you that I'm talking to right now that's understanding and interpreting and creating a narrative of me Talking to you is not the whole part of your brain That's that is just part of your brain and there's there's there's there's different

You know if you go into like youngy in psychology or anything there's like different use that might exist or different parts of you that some are more suppressed and come out in different ways. But I believe, or at least from like a practical standpoint of how I think about myself and operate in my own mind, I believe that like there's a, there's different parts of my brain that I'm not conscious of that are doing things in the sense that like, Yeah. It's kind of difficult to verbalize, but like there, there are different me's in there. Like, there's another person in there that might not have the same, like, capabilities of being able to form a narrative in the sense that I'm, like, communicating to you right now.

But that are, like, what is your sexuality, right? Like that's a very instinctual part of your brain. That's not like a decision you make. That's not that you can post hoc, justify, or rationalize and work backwards. But at the end of the day, it's a feeling that you have. It's an instinct that you have. And regardless of whether or not it's nature or nurture or a combination of the two, it's a part of your brain that your conscious self doesn't really have any control over.

And so, you know, you existing, whether, you know, you're attracted to something or you're hungry or you're hurt or you're depressed or, you know, we already know that there are tricks that we can play on our brain to appease that other part, the subconscious, right? So, like seasonal depression, right? So we know that sunlight can play a role in terms of how we. perceive our outlook of like any day-to-day experience, right? Like, we know that there are chemicals that we can ingest into our body that go into our bloodstream that will affect our brain chemistry in a way, like antidepressants or like any number of illicit substances that can change our perspective or outlook when, you know, the world is the same.

The situation is the same. But you tweak a few things and you trick this other part of your brain, your subconscious, the other person living there, or maybe multiple people, if we want to call them that. But we do these things to appease that part of our brain in a way that we can narratively say that we're more happy and comfortable in ways that don't necessarily make like a narrative sense from a decision standpoint. if that makes sense. I hear what you're saying. We've basically had to create this narrative as a species where we have to kind of overstate our importance. Yes.

In order for our place to even make sense or to not be at least crushed by the endless question marks, which this film kind of tries to at least get you thinking about. Because, yeah, these concepts like consciousness we still don't really get. And the fact that Greeks thousands of years ago had already reached this conclusion, and it's like an entire civilization that is gone. That is like the, it's overwhelming, to say the least. Yeah, what chance do I have after these geniuses thousands of years ago coming to these conclusions? Yeah, I don't know how else to explain it outside of it being an overwhelming kind of phenomena. And there are points where the film can feel overwhelming as a result with like where it's taking you and like, man, how do I even build a conclusion from this?

Because it's like, yeah, for this to make sense, there's so much I got to like buy into and break down. And yeah, we we have the starting point of the big bang. And it's like, well, actually is that? Like what? Yeah, I don't. How can I conceptualize this shit? Exactly. Like what I don't even think about the big bang.

as anything other than like a theoretical concept for like our need to to think of like a start point when in my mind like I don't know how anyone could even if we were to base this off of the laws of physics I don't know how anyone could definitely imply that there was like nothing before the Big Bang like I don't and it doesn't matter if there was nothing before and in our brains like when we're when we think of anything that we've experienced, we're limited to our experiences, right? So we grow up in a world where everything you see in front of you, the computer, like, you know where that came from, you know where the start point was for anything that you've seen. And so the human brain being conditioned in this way of thinking necessarily will have that urge, that feel that need to think of where something originated from, in ways that, you know, are far more complicated and way more connected dots than like an animal, non-human animal species could or would even be tempted to think about.

And so to me, there are certain questions or explanations or theories where it doesn't even really make a difference to me and how I live my life, whether or not, like, the Big Bang was a thing or whether or not there was a thing before the Big Bang. So, you know, like, it's not, it, it, that, that doesn't keep me up at night because it's not even like a relevant question to me. That doesn't, but the question of where we like come from or like, where is this come from? But I think, I think that you should not necessarily think about or get hung up on the idea of where things come from. But, but, I think, I think that, I think that you should not necessarily think about, or get hung up on the idea of where things come from,

but start to think more about why you think that you need to know where things come from. Because I think it's more interesting in that sense. Even with that, though, it's like, okay, I'm trapped in this human condition that is a result of having consciousness, being born into this, as a creature, not like a dog that doesn't have self-awareness. like I'm forced into this like crushing self-awareness. I'd like some at least some idea of like where the consciousness came from.

Or like why it is a thing. Like it's it's why do we value that? Why do we value it? And also like isn't it the very thing that makes us what we like so the dominators of earth, the owners of every own earth. We've like defeated Mother Nature. It's so fucked up. And it's thanks to that.

I feel. like yeah basically it's like it's the last Pokemon and we've just fucking called it but but to our to our own standards yes the things that we value are things that we inherently value because we're human not that they have any kind of value outside of humanity which goes back to that idea of like perception and we as humans can only perceive what we need to perceive as humans what we've evolved to exactly we need to and the idea that like there is heaps to perceive and perhaps the thing that aided or explains consciousness is something we actually cannot perceive.

Maybe there's stuff going on that we genuinely just do not have the capability of understanding. And the film does a good job of communicating. Yeah, like quantum mechanics. Like we... Yeah, exactly. Our idea of like the concept of like randomness even is just through like a human lens. To me, I think about it the same way that I think about just like probability concepts. So a lot of people will say something like, oh, it's so improbable that there are conditions on Earth for life to even exist naturally in the first place.

And some will use that as an argument towards like a greater power or Gnosticism. The Goldilocks over and all this. Yeah. But to me, something that's improbable, if the universe is so large that we don't know where it ends, I guess. That's my understanding. Like, I'm open to the concept

of, like, an infinite amount of space, right? So anything that is improbable is inevitable. It just has to be possible, right?

If there's any, like monkeys on a typewriter, you know, eventually typing out Shakespeare, the concept, the idea that that example is talking about is, oh,

over an infinite amount of time, everything that is possible, will eventually happen. Right? Yeah. If time is infinite or space is infinite. So to me, there is no improbability. It's necessity.

It is, this is the thing that is happening. That's it, right? Like, this is the thing that is happening. So there's no, to think about it in such a human-centric, illusory way, even, of thinking. that something is improbable, that that's not even like relevant in my opinion. Yeah. Well, it doesn't it all sort of stem from this idea that we have, we tell ourselves we like

to believe that we have more control over the things than perhaps we do. It's an illusion. You know, going into the free will idea, going into these ideas that, you know, it's often brought up as like a motivational thing of like, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and like, you couldn't do it. And the only thing that's stopping you is you. and these kind of things. Yeah, what is you?

I feel like the tenants of at least Western society a lot of the time. I can't speak for anywhere else, but I feel like it's an unsettling idea. I mean, that exists. It's a very human thing. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But I feel like it's an uncomfortable idea for a lot of people. They don't want to start going down these tracks. Exactly.

And it is our discomfort that guides our perspective. It is our, it is, you know, like what, you can look at this. geographically and look at different cultures and what they deem to be uncomfortable and people will base their idea of something logical are pretty pretty closely with what they are already uncomfortable with right there's there's a direct connection there right and universally human beings are afraid of death obviously because if we weren't then we the members of our species that weren't afraid of death probably didn't last very long, right? So evolutionarily, the human beings that exist, overwhelming majority of them would have to be afraid of death. And you can

see that fear of death does play into the way that a lot of people trick themselves into thinking and these narratives that we create around the idea of like afterlife or reincarnation or cosmic justice and good and evil. And like everybody I, everybody that I think is good is going to the good place after death and surviving their own death. And everybody that I think is bad is going to a bad place surviving their own death forever. Yeah. And there's a cosmic just, right? Yeah.

Yeah, that's just how human beings operate. Yeah. It seems like a concept that almost has to manifest as a necessity with consciousness or self-awareness, self-awareness playing a part in your progression as a species or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. If you have the ability to plan for the past and the future and that is what is giving you the edge, then you need some like mechanism to address that like, oh, if I look far enough

ahead, this experience is going to end and I need something to soothe or like organize around that can stop that being as crushing as it is if you stare right in the face, you know? Yeah. I mean, this experience is in like the narrative experience, but it ends every time you go to sleep and wake up, right? How do you know that you didn't die and you're a robot now? How do you know that you didn't die and your consciousness was uploaded to an AI and you're a completely different person? All the cells in your body except for like one part of your brain and like get replaced every seven years, right? What is the concept of you? It's like the ship of thesis, right? Does

you end at like the cells in your body because those die and have been replaced, right? And they were even talking about this conceptually in the film where she was talking about like, okay, there's a part of your brain that has to tell a story for you to associate yourself with the picture of the baby that you knew was you. But in order for you to believe that that's you, even though that's not, or is it, right? Like the story we tell ourselves is a part of how we view ourselves. Like, it's, it's an illusion, basically. And it's, that doesn't mean it's not real when I say it's an illusion, but it's, it's not necessarily like, like, objective. if that makes sense, right?

Like, you can say that you existing, like, personhood, like, what do you think of of yourself? You could say that you're just the universe, right? Because, like, we're interacting with everything in the universe the entire time. Like, the cells of my body don't necessarily end at just, like, what I can control. Like, I'm breathing in air. I'm taking in nutrients from food, right? Other things that...

or living at one point, right? Like, so whatever animal or plant that I've eaten is, like, now a part of me, but it's, like, just the, like, energy of those cells, right? Like, so the way that we've obviously have had to survive evolutionarily has essentially just dictated how we perceive self and sense of self, and these ideas can be translated into ideas of community, right? Mm-hmm. Well, just this idea of like playing God, you know?

Yeah. Like, and the way that sinks into, I love when they're talking about the way that applies to film specifically and how you could see filmmakers as like. Oh, my God, yeah. They are kind of playing God and trying to construct things as a God. I thought that's a beautiful way of explaining kind of what's alluring about filmmaking and video and stuff like this. Yeah. Um, that guy who said that is a director Kaveh. Zahidi, I don't know how to pronounce his full name,

but I started getting into him going through my 2016 list because he made this fucking incredible, I guess, web series. Oh, really? The show about the show. And I didn't know what the hell he was doing before this, and maybe I should just check out some of his other stuff. Because I was kind of shocked to see him in this, because every other time I watched this movie,

I didn't recognize him. And then this time I watched it now that I've gotten familiarized with at least one of his shows. I'm like, oh my God, is that CAVE? And then it was. He's a great character. I love that guy. So that's, sorry, I'm just looking at it on IMDB.

Is this this? The guy who was like crying. You know, I remember the character in the movie. I'm talking about this show, the show about the show. The show about the show, yeah. It's only got like 160 ratings on it. I know. This looks interesting, though.

It's crazy. Yeah. Because I'm, I'm the guy. Because I go out of my way to find. these things. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, there were a few.

I was like, I wonder if this is a character I've heard of or should know type thing in these interviews. But kind of feeding into what you were saying with this idea of like seeing ourselves as separate from animals or like seeing that as an insult, I guess in some way. There's that interesting scene where the main character bumps into that woman. And then they kind of revisit their awkward meeting and try to. have this dialogue about like I want to see you I want you to see me I'm not an ant Yeah, me was kind of like an acknowledgement of like well we we we we kind of are though

Like you zoom out far enough there's not that much in it really if you're if you're looking at this on a cosmic scale You know like and is there necessarily anything wrong with that and it's kind of like this I don't know it's just peeling the curtain back in the self-awareness of like yeah a lot of these interactions are on a cycle on a cycle on a a loop and you're kind of on autopilot and yeah yeah it's kind of bringing up is this i don't know i don't necessarily load that as a positive or a negative it's just kind of reality to me um whereas that character and that scene is kind of distraught by it trying to prove that they're not an ant um and yeah these these are concepts that will upset people in other ways more than others depending on i guess what your baseline kind of like belief system or the way you interpret the world

is. Yeah, they definitely delve into a lot of different perspectives with that, including, like, going back to the main character's journey. I really love how he kind of communicates how confusing everything is. And that's like another, like, oh, this is like an interesting character to frame this around where he's kind of as confused as the audience. And he's like, yeah, these dreams are weird. It's just kind of these string of people like saying stuff to me and it sounds really important. But I don't really know how to like pass this. And it's like, oh, this is a nice level of self-awareness, like, to the audience to kind of nod, like, yeah, this is, like, quite experimental. This is a crazy idea, and this is a good way of, like, cementing it.

And, you know, not getting too lost in the abstract nature of it. Yeah. Yeah, it's, uh, what's funny is with the inclusion of, like, Alex Jones and being more aware of that now, I also kind of like honed in on, you know, there's, I think at least, like four characters that are really like Ancapi or it's like oh okay it's Link later voting for RFK I guess not anymore

but it's interesting to kind of just see the collage of different ideas very very like anti-establishment sentiment too but not necessarily directed in any like yeah also remembering this is 2001 oh of course exactly I know like it's kind of what we were saying in the American beauty

discussion where it was a weird It had a different flavor then. Yeah, exactly. Like this, I assume this came out before. Yeah, it would have been made before 9-11, obviously. So it was kind of before that big shift into the early 2000s and kind of the apathy that came with that, that kind of thoughtful hope that we mentioned in that American Beauty discussion does carry over into this as well, where it is about like, yeah, what is the place? What is our place in the universe right now? That seems like the concern of like the people in this movie.

And I don't know, I don't feel like that's a cultural sort of. thing right now in the same way beyond like AI discussions and this pontification. So I recommended this a week ago. Do you remember any of your dreams since then? I had the bird one again. I've got I've got a recurring one that I quite like actually. Nice. It's like it's an image of, and that was another thing I'd like to write this movie is it gave me

ways to describe things that happen in my dreams that I haven't really thought of before. like when they say, hey, I've got like 360 degree vision right now. That's something that I've done in a dream before. I was like, oh, yeah, I guess I'd never like thought of verbalizing that way or like, oh, just hearing that experience was like, oh, that's cool, interesting. But yeah, I guess my current recurring dream is like a, imagine like a wide shot of a planet in space, but there are two individuals on either side, just passing a javelin. to each other.

Okay. And that's kind of been like my go-to at the moment, like giant, kind of like formless, androgynous, just beings, just throwing a massive javelin around an earth-like image.

What about you? I, fucking, I have like vivid, long dreams. It all sounds like full narratives. Mine are two abstract. They're just like images. I wrote,

like, entire story. And I lost sleep because usually what would happen would be like as I end one dream I like wake up for a second and then just like go back to sleep or whatever. But knowing that we were going to be talking about dreams, I was like, okay, I'll write this one down. And just like if I can type on my phone for like 20 minutes and then maybe go back to sleep after. And so there's like literally like at least three from one night on here. Let's see Yeah

Three of them from two nights ago And then a couple from last night More from earlier in the week Do you have like a recurring atmosphere to your dreams Or is it like the mood or tone Is completely random and unpredictable As far as like oh this one's scary

This one's funny this one's I wouldn't say random Right oh yeah But I mean like there's recurring locations and feelings sometimes or like ideas. A lot of the times it'll be based off of like if I, if there's something important I have to do the next day,

then that will work its way into my dreams maybe. And yeah, just something that's like on my mind already will take place in my dreams sometime. So I guess I'll start talking, be prepared everybody. I'm going to talk for a while. I'm sorry, but I'm, yeah. So when I was young, I would have nightmares like all the fucking time like it was just debilitating. It was like terrible when I was like four years old especially and they felt really real and they would just like scare the shit out of me and I remember one of my breakthrough moments because I kept having this recurring dream. I talked about this character in part four of my childhood trauma series. The gooey gus the slime monster that fucking traumatized me when I was younger and I remember having like this recurring dream of

like being in like a warehouse with like high shelving and you know running around trying to like not get caught by it and I remember having that dream over and over again and I think I had it like two or three times where I would basically follow the same path and then like between shelves I would like turn right and then he'd be right there and he'd get me and then I'd wake up scream or whatever yeah yeah and I remember having a breakthrough moment where like because I I was familiar enough with it in my dream and I was there again. I was like, what if I turned left? And then he wasn't there.

And it was consistent and I got away. I was like, oh, cool. I've solved the puzzle in a way. And yeah, like, just so many fucking awful recurring dreams when I was younger. Like, I dreamt my family would like get taken away to jail for like no reason. And I didn't understand why I don't know why that was one. Would you say you have an active imagination? What do you mean?

As in like, I mean, I'm curious how it kind of manifests. Because, like, for me, I kind of think in images and these, how you've seen this. It's like, from your perspective, it's, oh, yeah, it's like, I'm, it's the story unfolding in front of you. 98% of the time I'm the person in the dream experiencing the things that are happening. Yeah. So I'm like controlling my own body. Right. But there's some exceptions to that.

Yeah. I'm scrolling down here. trying not to waste too much time with all these so I'm just gonna pick the good ones here that's crazy you can like whip entire songs from your dreams and whatnot yeah isn't that weird that's that's I mean it's cool yeah for you that you can do that I definitely can't yeah well so like the the chorus lyrics and the melody were just like there and I was like playing along like you like you've never thought about the ideas of you must have some

You had no form of this song in your mind or like a concept or something, nothing. Like that's the first time you'd heard that song. Well, I mean, but here's the thing. Anything that you create, anybody creates. You're pulling it from somewhere. Yeah, exactly. Whether or not you think you're being original, you're pulling from pre-existing ideas. And you might be combining them in a way that it, to our standards is original.

But it's, it's all based off of our existing understanding of art and what that is. Yeah, yeah. So, that's crazy. There was one time where I had a lucid dream. And by the way, if anybody's listening and wants to try lucid dreaming, the highest success rate that I've had is if you get about like five hours asleep and then you wake up after five hours, just like, I don't know, like go pee or something, and then go back to bed and then try to get into that mindset of like lucid dreaming.

Because then you've essentially, off in there. Yeah, you've interrupted your REM sleep and then you're from consciousness, like go directly back into it. That's my highest success rate. And also, it happens more often when there's like less like noise pollution.

So if I'm like sleeping somewhere where there's not like traffic, like close by or something or like my computer sounds in my room or like a fan, like if there's a room that's completely silent, I feel like that's an easier way to get lucid dreaming results. But one time, and this must have been like a year or two ago, I had a lucid dream where I was fully conscious of the fact that I was dreaming, but I was still in the dream.

And it was fucking mind-blowing because in my mind, there had always been some sort of layer of not having things being exactly real in a dream. or some sort of clue that there would be a dream, or something being off in a way that would be like apparent in retrospect or something. Or if I mentioned this a week ago, you know, my explanation for like, okay, outside stimuli that might be happening can influence what you're experiencing in a dream. So in this lucid dream, I was like, it was nighttime. There were like street lamps, sidewalk,

but it was raining and I could feel the breeze and I could feel the cold wet rain on my arms and I kind of just like basked in the moment and looked up and was just kind of in awe by the sensory experience of it because I'm like okay I can breathe this air it's the familiar kind of like crisp cold nighttime air and I can feel the raindrops

and the raindrops are uncanny it's real like it literally is real. There's no difference in my mind between whether or not it's real or in a dream, because it is real, because my mind is experiencing it in an identical way. And so in my mind, I was like, okay, I know I'm dreaming. Is there, is my room wet? Like, why am I feeling, like, why am I feeling cold rain right now? Because that doesn't make any sense to me. And so then I wake up and, like, I don't actually wake up, but I wake up one layer. So I think I wake up. And the narrative part of my mind is creating an explanation for the dream, thinking it's real life when I'm not actually awake. So I wake up in my room,

but I'm still in a dream. And in that dream wake up scenario, I am wet. I'm like, okay, why am I wet? So like, I've solved the riddle here. You know, like, there's like, my room is like wet and cold. I'm like, what happened? But then I, you know, after some amount of time passes, I realize I'm still dreaming because some other things happen that are just like not logical. Yeah, like living the thought process. And then I'm like, okay, well, this will be interesting eventually

to figure out, to solve this riddle. And then when I wake up normal, there's like nothing off. There's nothing wet. I'm like, oh, okay, wow. So I like was, my mind was genuinely feeling sensations. just tricking itself, right? And that's kind of... Based on memory, I guess, or like how you remember it feeling.

Yeah, and that's also what I'm getting at when I say that people don't understand the capabilities of the human mind and what it can do, right? There are people that will smoke DMT and then be convinced that they actually had a conversation with God. It's like, you don't understand what drugs can do to your brain. You don't understand what your brain can do to your brain. The clockwork elves, yeah. Anything that you experience sober can be experienced as a... a hallucination because life as a narrative as you're telling yourself as you as you're experiencing it right now is a hallucination it is a hallucination and that hallucination might be real right

but it's a loosening it's it's it's it's your brain's way of interpreting what's happening and your brain can can either misfire or be in a dream and experience something that's not literally happening but it's also real in that sense as it's another hallucination that you are experiencing in a parallel completely as legitimate way that just doesn't have any through line into the future, basically. It just ends. And then you don't really return back to it unless you're back in a dream and there's consistency there.

But yeah, it was so vivid. One recurring dream I get a lot. Well, I used to get a lot. and still get occasionally but not as often is like I'm in an elevator and sometimes the elevator will be like

weirdly big and there will be like a rope in the center of the elevator that's connected to the floor of the elevator but the floor of the elevator will be like not connected to the walls

so you have to like kind of like balance other like if you're on the edge of the elevator floor, it'll just like tip over and you'll fall out. And so I'm like hanging onto this road. It's like a merry galaxy level. Oh yeah. It was terrifying for a long time and I got those recurring dreams a lot like well into my like teens and 20s. And I got one bit of that again this week. But it my mind has gotten like so used to these things and so jaded that even if I'm experiencing something that like identically would have made me really upset or scared or freaked out or

like uncomfortable when I woke up even. Anything that would have happened like that 10 years ago? You're like numb to. I can still experience that in a dream now and a have less discomfort within my dream and be not having that carry over into my waking state, which is interesting. No, it's like you've had to come up with. a way to like just mentally deal with the affliction of having these intense dreams. You basically created your own like defense mechanism.

Yeah. It's fucking weird. That's intense. Yeah. And so I remember looking up because I kept having those types of dreams or that type of imagery reflected in my dreams so often. I remember looking up like what does it mean like when you're in like a falling elevator in your dreams?

Because some people will have explanations to these things that aren't necessarily true but are, you know, something worth. thinking about at least and you know people would create these explanations online of like okay maybe it means that you're like you feel like you're at an unstable point in your life or that things are like falling apart around you like there's obviously some sort of anxiety or i um for for falling dreams in particular i don't know how accurate it is but i'd heard or read before about that it's some evolutionary thing from way back when we lived in trees where like oh yeah getting you up to like jolt up before you like fell off the tree branch or that's fine

Have you had those dreams where it's like you feel like you're falling and you're woken up by that sensation of falling even though you're not falling, you're lying flat. That happens most often right when I'm like about to fall out asleep. I'll get like I'll jolt up a little bit. Yeah, something's just gone a bit wrong. There's a recurring dream that I had when I was younger that was like, I can't believe I remembered about it this week, but I've just kind of been searching the recesses of my brain, I guess, because we're talking. talking about dreams. But this one was like literally just like absolute hell for me when I was younger and I don't remember what ages. It maybe six or 10 or something. But it was it was one of few dreams that I can remember that was actually abstract where I wasn't a character in it and I

wasn't controlling anything. And it was like watching a film in a way, but like being there and you know, still. Yeah, that's how I described mine. Yeah. And so it was, It was almost like a collection of images similar to like the ring video, but not that. Yes. Because that I don't think I saw that yet. But there was like a... Just something that reminds you of that sort of... Yeah.

And just that eerie kind of... That's an example of like a dreamy, eerie. Like it just feels wrong. Yeah. Yeah, there's something off about it. And the way that there isn't like a connective tissue to each shot. other than just appearing one after the other. Yeah.

And like a sense of randomness. And there's just some fucking creepy-ass girl, but like on a beach. And I don't remember too much about her. But the one shot that I remember, I'm like at the bottom of like, not like a well like the ring, but like almost like an industrial like oil rig well. And there's like this huge cylindrical mechanism that is in this repeating motion. and it's probably like, I don't know, 20 feet wide or something. And the bottom of the well is like super dark and there's like dirt floor or whatever.

And I'm not there, but like the perspective of the camera lens is like hugging the dirt basically. And then this huge cylindrical tube that would basically fits like an inch off the wall in all directions in diameter would just slowly move up towards the very top. and the top of the well is like, I don't know, like fucking 50, 100 feet tall or something. And then the mechanism would just drop and you just see it slowly go down and then it would just make this fucking deafening, like ear shattering, very low, like,

and then it would just go up again and keep doing that and it traumatized the fuck out of me and I was so uncomfortable. And it just like, I kept having that dream over and over and over again and I'm surprised I remember about it now, but. Yeah. Yeah, no, that, that, um, you're making you think about like the scale of things in dreams is often interesting.

Yeah. Like you said with the elevator, how it can often just be wrong or exaggerated and it's, it is like being in a movie where you'd put someone in an environment like that to kind of accentuate the fear or the idea of being small and like helpless. And yeah, it's weird the way that stuff is communicated visually through dreams. Because now you're making all these old dreams that used to traumatize me come back, especially like, oops. After I saw Terminator and that imagery of like a newt going off in the playground with the like melting people or whatnot. Hell yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That kind of imagery and like the day after tomorrow even funnily like got into my head, these just images of like society's crumbling under just these huge, whether it be self-inflicted or a natural disaster. Like that's what would plague me. Like this is this immense scale of things. Like just something is so out of your control. Have you ever had a dream with your teeth falling out? Because that's pretty common. I've never had that one, actually. Yeah.

Unless I've forgotten, but it's not sticking in my mind. I've definitely had those a lot of times. But the way that people describe them is just like, oh, my teeth are falling out. That never really connected with me. I had to like connect the dots that that was something similar happening to me. To me, it would be like, it would be like one of my tooth would be. teeth would be like wiggly or something and then I kind of like go in the mirror and like check it and then it would just like kind of like not fall out but like hinge out as if it was still attached by like

one part of the right yeah and then just like I would like chew and then like other teeth would come out I'm like ah how do I fix this and it would just be like a stressful yeah related to that where like it's it's not the beginning or the end of something you just kind of start in the middle of something uncomfortable or like an obstacle or being chased and there's like nothing you can really do about it you're just stuck in that uncomfortable moment um i've exactly yeah i can definitely relate to that here's here's a common one uh that people talk about that i don't think i've ever had but there's the like oh i'm naked and in public or like i like i'm embarrassed i'm on stage and i'm naked does that ever happen yeah i've heard that one too but i've never had that happen myself no no no i

I often have dreams where I'm performing in a stage play, but because I'm in a dream, I don't know my lines. And I just think about like, damn, why didn't I fucking memorize my lines when I got here? And then I just go up on stage and then someone else will say their line, and I'll just kind of fucking wing it.

I'll be like, uh, this, and then there might be some like awkwardness, but I'll just try my best and hope that I don't cringe out the entire audience. had yeah, yeah, really similar kind of things like that, but like in a picture like a madman kind of boardroom. And it's like, as I was saying, you're like starting just as it's being handed to you.

What do you think, blank? And then like, yeah, because I'm just from my perspective, I'm in a dream. And I don't know what, where am I? And then like, yeah, trying to wing it and just, but just being stuck in that feeling of that awkward sitcom situation. but then being sort of like stuck in it. The movie talks about this where it's like, yeah, six minutes in the dream could be like, you know, one second in real life or whatever. Kind of like that inception idea of these warped states of time.

And like that is like a key feature of dreams to me where time does work differently. It's completely different. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. And there's a lot of like stuff feeding into that in the movie. Yeah, think about that. Like if, if, because I've, I've literally had four hours of sleep time translate into what felt like fucking 12 hours in a dream. It wasn't good.

It was like, it was a new sleep medication that I was prescribed like a week ago and I was like, okay, this isn't working. I don't like this. Oh, so you were kind of like lucid for the sleep. It wasn't even lucid. It was, well, it was like partial lucidity, I guess. There were like a lot of different narratives and a lot of different. And a lot of them were just like really uncomfortable and like bad dreams that I haven't like felt that uncomfortable in a while. I was like, okay, I don't like, I don't like this one.

But just think about the fact that like our perception of time can be altered in such a significant way through our own brain chemistry. Right? Like what is time even then? Yeah. When they mention that idea of like, yeah, your brain doesn't technically die for however many minutes. after your brain goes or after you die. Yeah. And like, yeah, what if then

there is just kind of an elongated dream that you experience as forever in that? Yeah, maybe. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's crazy to think about, like, impossible to think about it, fun to try and break down. It's definitely overwhelming.

But, yeah, I find it just endlessly fascinating. And they bring up that as like, human feature in the film of like the curiosity of humanity and how we got to stay in touch with that. So right after we recorded the last episode that night, I went to sleep, woke up super fucking early because I had to get my TIF tickets and I'm Pacific time and TIF is Eastern and they opened at 10 and I was up at like six in the morning. Went well, good success and then went back to sleep because I did. didn't get a full night's sleep.

And then as soon as I went back to sleep, I had a dream that I thought was real because in my dream I was still in bed. But I was dreaming. And in my dream, I had my phone. And my phone was plugged in and like on my chest. But there were people talking to me like two people on my YMS Discord, which I never go in because I just don't have the time to like chat.

Yeah. But I was like, oh, how did I? I was like in a voice channel. And there were two other people and they were talking about them getting their TIF tickets. And I couldn't get this one. I was like, how do I leave this voice channel? Like, that's all I, my concern was like, how did I get in here? How do I leave this?

And I was like in two different voice channels. And then I remember like looking at my phone and like clicking the buttons of like, okay, like end call, log out. I see the YMS letters on the Discord. So I know it's funny because last time we mentioned, that some people think it's impossible to read things in a dream. So immediately after that night, I was like, okay, debunked for me at least. Because I was reading things on my phone.

And that was a short dream. Yeah, I still want to try the light switch one they mentioned in the movie. That's consistent for me. Because I've never thought to do that, I guess. That's a dead giveaway. But you're making me think of another one. Like a recurring dream I used to have for years and years and years after finishing school where I was like, oh, I forgot.

to do that assignment or whatever. I didn't do that thing that's due today, the day I'm waking up, that thing, even though I remember having that way into my 20s, which just wasn't a concern anymore with that feeling of, oh, crap, I forgot to do something. I hate it. Just lingered for so long, yeah.

Yeah, think about the amount of, like, pressure that we're put under, that it's still in our dreams. For years later. Like, I'm still dreaming about junior high, which sucks, because I hate it. and I hate that place. But I guess I just,

I had so much fucking trauma in those three years that I just like continuously going back there. I literally had a dream set there last night even, like in a gymnasium. That's stupid gymnasium.

And what's funny is because we, I knew that we were going to be talking about dreams, I kind of like fact-checked myself in a way where because I've had so many recurring dreams at that school and like many set in that gymnasium, I'm like, I'm just going to look up pictures of this to see if my mind's version of that is still accurate from what this actually is. So I looked up my old junior high school this morning when I was writing notes of my dreams. Vernon Barford Jr. High School in Edmonton, Alberta, you might see me on the wall with very short hair.

And I looked it up. I'm like, wow, this is literally the exact same. Like this stage, because in my mind, I was like, okay, there's a stage on one end of the gymnasium. Like, that's weird. That almost seems like a dream thing. And then I looked it up. I'm like, no, the stage is there. We did.

There were like things that we did at that stage. The doors to the storage were on the left. That was a part of the dream I had last night too. I like had to go in the storage door to like find some like fucking dog food because there was like some random like, I don't know. It was like a weiner dog or like a bulldog or something or like a cross between. But it was like so small that it could fit in the palm of my hand. And I was like, oh shit, it's hungry.

I've got to find you some food. And I knew I wasn't supposed. to be in the school, but for some reason, like, I was trying to find my stuff there. It doesn't make any sense. I was like, why is my backpack in a school? I go in the fucking storage thing on the left, and, you know, I find, like, a bunch of receipts for my taxes for, like, this year. But it doesn't make sense why I'm, like, in Edmonton and my junior high school looking

for these things. I find, like, a bunch of printouts for, like, my taxes. Why am I dreaming about taxes? I wasn't lucid, but now I can think, why am I dreaming about taxes? Yeah. And also like what part of your brain found it important to like memorize the layout of this gym that you haven't stepped foot in for long as time? Oh yeah, it's not. Just because I had just because junior high sucked so much.

I was like, you know, that was a part of my life where I was like going through like coming to terms with myself and still in the closet. And so that probably added to a lot of shit because I hadn't even accepted like parts of my own. own psyche. Definitely. And so I think that probably did fucking D20 psych damage or whatever. Yeah, yeah. How old are you in junior high? We don't, oh yeah. They don't do that in every state or province in North America either, but it was grades seven through nine. So I was like 13 through 15, I guess. Right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that is very young. Yeah, I, uh, Let's see. I'll just try to summarize a few more of these, but I dreamt.

This is all within the past week, by the way. We're done with the early ones. Now we're into the ones I've had in the past week. Multiple per night. I dreamt I was like in the States, like somewhere like, I don't know, maybe like in Florida or something. And I could like see across the water. And I was like, I wanted to go to France for some reason. And I was thinking, oh, maybe I have like an extra week or two to do that.

One last trip with like the ex-boyfriend. And on a whim in my dream, I'm like, okay, like, I'm going to decide to go to Paris. And I have a lot of recurring dreams. This is fun. Where I'm like trying to catch a plane. Have you ever had these ones? I guess you don't do as much travel, but like. Only if it was like that being trapped in that moment of realizing that I'm late for something

or that I'm not going to make it to something. Yeah. Like actually getting to it. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it'll be this endless unattainable loop of me trying to get on a plane and never getting there and it'll be like on the fucking tarmac like where you're going and like I can't find it and just it never ends. But like in this one I got through security and I'm not even going to go into detail about how security didn't make any sense. But we get on the plane and I could like through the touch screen on in front of me on the seat, I could order my plane ticket to France. So I guess I hadn't bought it yet. but I'm on the plane. And so again, reading the words on the screen,

I can read in my dreams, for sure. But I was like, you know, inputting all this thing and it like printed out a receipt from there too. And what felt like, I don't know, 30 seconds, but for some reason in my dream, in my dream, the logic was it was three hours. We made it to France. That doesn't make sense.

Yeah, we got to Paris. Oh, yeah. Then it turned into, we get to the hotel and the concierge at the door was Andrew Callahan in disguise for some reason. And we both recognized each other and we said hi. And then, yeah, what was really interesting about being in Paris is the emotional feeling

of still feeling like you're in a new place and like on vacation or something. Of like that moment when you land and you're like in a new city and like kind of walking through and you're like, oh, there's so much to explore. Like I got that feeling. from the dream and so that was felt it that was fun yeah were you drawing from memories of Paris like you're walking through places you've been see I was only in

Paris when I was 13 I suppose so I think it's more I think it's more memories from like probably movies than yeah streets and movies yeah yeah famous places you probably know yeah oh god yeah I had some fucking weird ones there was like one where I was like trying to stop like a family member from like deciding that it was cool that they were dying. They're like, yeah, I'm going to kill myself today because like at 6 p.m. there was like a direct like countdown kind of. And the logic in the dream was they felt like they had to because like, I don't know, like a terminal illness or something. But then I found out the secret or whatever. Like no, the doctors were wrong and they don't know it. And I like had to confer like.

confront them about it, but they're like, no, I've actually, I actually really like this idea now. And they were like, cool with it. And then, yeah, so I was like trying to stop my brother from killing himself in this dream, which was weird. And then he's like, then he has a gun. And this is all like, all of these dreams are just like, 98% of them are just set in Edmonton. So this is like, and my parents has in Edmonton, like, again, just filled, filled with trauma. just so much so much bad shit in my mind that that just not was not good for my psyche just happened in those places so just all of my dreams go back there that's really interesting and also that's where I spent you know a good portion of my life yeah yeah yeah he like gets a gun and then

does target practice and it like ricochets off the wall and hits where I was standing 30 seconds ago and then I had to go into like a side quest where I was I guess like curing his illness but I had to beat like a real life video game like I was in a video game but I was also it's so difficult to describe but there was like a giant wooden contraption almost like an angled pit ball pinball machine and yeah the it's I'm going through my notes and it's so funny how little I remember of this without my notes, but how much I wrote down immediately after waking up?

Because you've got to write it down immediately, otherwise you're just going to lose it. Yeah, you have to. And you can even lose it while noting it down as well. Yeah, yeah. I'm pretty good at retaining all of it as long as I write it down immediately when I, like, right after waking up from the dream.

Yeah, I'm just going to keep scrolling through here. Not important, not important. one of my side quests I had to go to I had to find Nancy Cartwright's house voice voice of Bart Simpson and for some reason

her house was accessible through like the back alleys behind my parents' house in Edmonton again just more nonsense of that being there and then did you interact with her or you're just trying to find it

I was just trying to find her house like in her backyard or something And I don't remember, but then part of my brain, like attached, because it was Nancy Cartwright, then it attached the idea of the Simpsons. And then the dream shifted to like a gag image of like a clip from the Simpsons, just like a cutaway where it's like no longer me experiencing it as myself.

And just like, okay, now we're watching The Simpsons for like three seconds. It was just a shot of Millhouse being hurt and used for like a pain meter. He's like, ow. Oh yeah, and then there's like fucking, sometimes I'll get like haunting quotes for my dreams. Just like really weird morbid shit. Really?

Well, like people saying things. Oh, yeah. Do you not have like... Nothing that I could pull as like a quote like that, I don't think. What lingers with me is more like concepts, you know? Yeah. The killer that's chasing me in the woods or like the environment that I'm in. Yeah, I'll have conversations.

You're making me realize the importance of like the, the, the setting of it, like, why is my brain torture me with like this specific wood or this specific gymnasium or this, this environment that is putting me in? This body of water or whatever. It's like this swimming pool, these things that are specific environments that know is going to stress me out. Yeah, as I'm scrolling, don't worry, I've skipped through like 80% of this because it's just not worth droning on about. But I literally, I literally, I literally have like stories worth of this that, you know, I don't know if we can call it useful or not, but, uh, I would say that's definitely useful.

Yeah. If you want like a starting point for like a story, a narrative, something, an idea. Like, oh, that's kind of a weird clash of something or that makes me feel uncomfortable. Let's jump off from there. Yeah. Yeah. That's useful for sure. Well, like writing entire songs in your dreams.

I mean, that's useful. I'd say that's pretty fucking useful. But I immediately recognize that when I wake up. I'm like, okay, I've got to write this down. Because I have that like creative instinct where I'm like, okay, this is important. Yeah. I had a dream about Synecicu, New York like two nights ago. And I met Caden and I had a conversation with him.

Wow. Yeah. And he was like, it was like kaleidoscopic and like gray and white. And there were like chalkboards and, yeah. It's like trying to communicate. to him that I need to finish my review. Oh, fine. But in like a profound way where I was like crying in my dream,

but I didn't cry when I woke up. And I wasn't crying when I woke up, but I was crying in my dream. And I had like a profound emotional experience. That internal like emotion of like, that desire of wanting to get that done is manifesting in its dream. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. I think I gave a good son. summary, but holy fucking Christ, like, it literally takes me scrolling through these notes. It takes me like 10 seconds to get from like the top to the bottom at like scrolling fast speed. Just these notes on my phone. So sorry everybody if you found that boring. As Richard Linklater said that some people think when you talk about your dreams, I don't find it boring.

That was the most unrelated part of that movie. True. I don't find it boring either. Yeah. I love hearing people talk about their dreams. Any of these concepts that are open-ended and like we just don't really know what it means or how to pass it. It's like everyone's different level of control and experience and this collective abstract storytelling, I guess. It's like a good way of describing it.

Because before you were talking about it, I didn't really think about the idea of people mostly only having like abstract dreams or anything. Yeah, because mine aren't really narratives. I would have assumed that most people's experiences are. are like a parallel to real life in the sense that you're that you're yourself in your dream kind of thing i get loads of crazy like yeah abstract images that often i don't actually know how to break down or like yeah so how do i even turn this into a narrative it's more just like something something scary or something just like oh yeah so i would need to draw them then over like using words I guess that would make more sense to me because like it's really like

the imagerism yeah that's a that's an interesting way to look at it actually yeah because I could draw them I could like wake up and be like oh my god this weird fucking image I could communicate onto into an image but not with yeah because that's that was like the affliction I had growing up especially when I was more like plagued by nightmares in the same kind of period you were almost where it was often like horror concepts and movies that would plague my dreams. Like I saw the grudge maybe a little bit too young or something. Nice. That like that invaded my dreams where like I'd be having a normal dream,

but then the grudge face would like appear in the corner in like event and like change my dream to a grudge dream. And it was like, yeah, that's fucking horrifying. But I don't really get scared in that same way. I guess I'm also kind of jaded with the scary imagery. And it's more just like confused. Yeah. Confusing.

The brain like finds a way to deal with it eventually. Mm. Although my mom apparently never did. If she's ever like staying, but she was visiting last month. And anytime she's sleeping in the same house as someone else who hasn't with her before, she'll give them a warning.

She'll be like, okay, if it sounds like I'm screaming my lungs out in the middle of the night, it's probably a nightmare and not that I'm being murdered. That's right. It mentions it at Tiff, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, she gave you the rundown. Yeah, yeah, she gave me the rundown. Yeah, I didn't hear it either, but also I sleep through a lot of things, I guess, but... Right, yeah, yeah. Maybe she didn't do it, maybe she just thinks she does it all the time. I think she does it enough that she finds that she should warn people. I appreciate the warning. Probably it happens enough to my dad, I guess, as in him being in the same room as that happening.

Experiencing it. Yeah. Fantastic movie. Very deep. Gives a lot to think about well beyond the movie. And it makes you, it's good to have something that it's not just the movie on a surface level and that it gives you ideas to think about and relate your own life experiences and your own thought processes towards. Yeah, I would say, I would say like an eight out of ten. High eight for me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually exactly.

there too with an eight out ten or four star I agree that it's like very thought-provoking and if you have the kind of curious mind that the movie kind of hopes you have there's any number of threads you can pull out and just get lost uh endlessly it explores these ideas and heady ways that like all thematically come together with that uh rotoscoping animation and some of the writing or interviews can be like a bit much for me sometimes but as i said the majority of them are pretty much like 10 out of 10 scenes to me like these characters are very memorable lots of this dialogue is very memorable even if I didn't like it yeah very unique yeah just movies exploring dreams as well is such a cool abstract subject and I think it does

it extremely artfully even if I didn't fully love it as a whole and feel like you could trim just a little bit out of there but I'll definitely watch this again and I'll definitely be talking about the concepts that it brings up with people probably till the day I die. Yeah. If if you're not the type to find value in philosophical conversation, then this

movie is probably going to be a lot of yapping to you. Yeah. Yeah, it's not really it's not a very typical sort of narrative. I don't know how he'd apply like any sort of objective critique to this sort of

abstract filmmaking. Really cool concept. Ready for questions? All right, question time. Let's do it. From O1 Zegas, who says, What are your thoughts on the Megalopolis trailer and the alleged AI generated negative review quotes at the beginning?

It's funny. This film is just, I can't wait to see this. Everything about it is so, like, cursed. And all these, like, edits people are doing of the poster and making it like Minecraft or that weird steam game with the guy in the pot that you will, like, climb awkwardly. there's something cursed about it. And then this trailer with these,

they're clearly really struggling to think of a slant to advertise the movie under. So I know, how about we pluck what look like reviews from Coppola's classics, as if like this is going to be the same thing where critics aren't going to know what to think, but it's going to spin like with time. As if they were all negatively received upon their release. Yeah, yeah. Which just wasn't true at all, like including like the Godfather Apocalypse

now. Yeah. Like it's just not true. And then the quotes from reviewers were not actually things that they said and it was clearly just. Yeah, they weren't even real. The people, the marketing department that made the trailer just asked chat GPT to give examples of negative reviews of Coppola's early films. Yeah. And then they just put that in the trailer without fact checking. I love it. I think that's hilarious. It's so funny. I'm so excited for this movie. I think it's amazing. I wasn't, I don't know if it's too conspiratorial, but I saw some people like, hey, what if they did that on purpose to drum up? You think it's too embarrassing?

No, it's unprofessional. You wouldn't want, then other filmmakers would be like, okay, I don't want to have Lionsgate distribute my film. It seems like the struggling with distribution anyway with this. Like, I don't know how much money has been spent, but it's kind of like a nightmare movie to try and communicate what it is. That's why I'm excited to see it, but as far as like a broad audience capture, I don't know how the hell this thing is going to do.

Because I don't think just saying it's from both this for the Godfather dude. Yeah. So that was a long time ago. Even if the quotes weren't fake, it's an insane marketing strategy to front load your trailer before the movie is even out wide release and say, don't trust the critics. Yeah, you're basically saying this sucks. They don't know what they're talking about. And everybody will love this.

20 years and just kind of like being defensive from the start like that's a very strained marketing strategy yeah that is wild um but I had to mention that because it's so funny to me that's hilarious I got time for one more question if you want to do one more let's do one more then from aspiring scientist 97 with the Trump movie in the work slash coming out. What's a politician from your country you want a movie for? Maybe a political figure from any country you're interested on. Two, I'm going to stick to my country because I've honestly got plenty to pick from. I was thinking you could do a movie of the like five year period where we had like five prime ministers. That would be quite funny. Or even just like the most

infamous one of them all, the 45 day prime minister of this trust. Or you could do like a good comedy about her, call it like lettuce or 45 days or something like that. You could do some like biting in the loop style comedy or something there. We got lots of like comedy of errors in our parliament. So it's endless humor about there. Yeah, Rob Ford would be a fun one. You could call it cocaine bear. Former mayor of Toronto.

I know very little about comedian. Canadian politics, if I'm being real. It's not entertainment for the world in the same way American politics is, you know. Yeah. You can make one about Christina Schello. The City of Champions. Oh, right. But I don't know how long you could make that movie.

Just show the clip as a short film. Just show that 50 seconds. Yeah. It's so good. Yeah, I don't know. Canadian politics is certainly less like interesting from like a sensationalist perspective. perspective. It sounds like bombastic.

Yeah. Compared to the United States, we just don't get as much like coverage or there's not as many. I mean, like, we have our own issues. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, maybe that's good. We have corruption. We have all those same things. But we don't have like a Marjorie Taylor Green.

You know, we don't, we don't have like that whole squad or in like Logan, Lauren Dobert and Trump and Madison Cothorn and like that. There's some crazier things happening in the States right now. But also, now we're plagued with the issue, especially in the United States, where it's beyond parody. And it's like, how do you even make a movie about that? Because real life is just so, it's already there. Yeah. No, this has been an ongoing problem.

I feel like this has been escalating for the last eight, ten years. Because I've been watching a little bit of Veep on the side. Yeah, I haven't seen that yet. Which is like a really funny and well written. But it is also like, man, this seems like so, I haven't got to the 2016 onward episodes yet, but it seems like so quaint compared to like where we are now as far as like, just where politics is and what is like generally acceptable as far as like, I don't know, the joke is like people share the clips of Obama's debate in 2012, I think it was, and like the decorum compared to like just

what debates are like now. when you watch them and like the it's more like watching reality TV or something it's yeah how the fuck do you parody that when it is a parody of itself it's why they call that humor during the trump era was so so bad it even screwed over south park if you remember where they were like so confident that hilliore was going to win and it like screwed up these episodes and these plans oops yeah kind of threw comedy for a loop for for a while there it feels like we're kind of starting that cycle again how do you even like summarize a trump character study into like a movie.

Like there's too much to talk about it. There's too many like crazy, funny things. Yeah. I'm kind of curious about that movie. How that's going to come together. So that is happening. Oh yeah, that premiered at Cannes, didn't it? Yeah, it did.

Yeah. It's got like an interesting director, I think. That's from the director of, uh, Holy Spider and another movie I really liked that I forget the title of. but yeah there's there's definitely plenty uh

obscene British politics to parody although outside of like in the loop and uh thick of it I don't know if there are many good political comedy

the original House of Cards I know was like a that was a British thing that was based on UK parliament so yeah I mean UK politics seems funny yeah

it's definitely funny it's so like when you actually watch like the the way conversations are had in parliament and whatnot it does seem like an old ass institution the shouting and yeah all this it's like very it's quite weird and surreal yeah a lot of the Canadian politics shit like watching them in like the House of Commons or whatever it is mm-hmm just seems so weird and like everything's getting more and more performative because everybody knows that they're being broadcast now and so they're now like formulate instead of instead of saying things

for the sake of like the political floor they're doing it for the clip they're like yeah I want this to be a clip and then everybody's going to clap and everybody claps for their team performatively and then it's like okay yeah yeah what even do what is this again Do we need an update?

We need a hard reset on this shit? Kind of, yeah. The places it's like infecting. I complain about this on Jarre sometimes, but lots of stand-up comedians have gone down this route of like turning their stand-up into more like a political rant where you're getting cheers at your political opinions instead of like crafting a joke or telling like a funny story it's just kind of like

yeah in your soapbox or just say your political opinion like Joe Rogan's latest special is it particularly funny one um not for the right reasons of course but uh yeah yeah Ricky Jivace does it too and Jimmy Carr and all these people like it's weird yeah I kind of like at this point I just kind of like cringe when like half your fucking set is just like like what's happening on Twitter? Basically, yeah. And it's like, oh,

isn't it crazy how I can't say anything anymore? And then these are the same people that complain that you can't do comedy anymore. It's like, what are you offering? Yeah, when they have a monopoly on it. Yeah.

That's kind of crazy. Yeah, I don't, I don't know what's the political figures to make a movie on. I think, um, I don't know,

fucking, uh, what's his name from Ukraine? That could be a, interesting story. Oh, Zelensky. Yeah, yeah. That already did like a...

Yeah, that could be a good one. But like you... I think it would work better dramatizing it, even. Hmm. You know? Yeah, maybe we need some more time to pass to... Yeah. Adapt that, but uh...

Yeah, I agree with it. Like, you used to be a comedian or something, right? I don't know much about his history. Um, if I'm being real, but... Yeah, I'd watch that. A well-made exploration of that, man. Yeah, isn't that... Yeah, that's weird.

He was a comedian before. That's an unusual journey. Crazy. Yeah. You could tell a really interesting, dramatized story. Yeah. How do we get here? Yeah.

Okay. That was fun. Nice. Yeah, there was a good one. Me too Convo. I guess it's my recommendation, right? And seeing as we've been bulk recording a few, this, by my calculations, my next one will be, what, go up on the 30th of September, right? Something like that.

Which me, I only mention because that's one day off October. Oh. And I kind of want to do a more scarier theme. I don't know, what do you think? Bordering right then. Sure, I don't fucking do it. Do I get it. Do it.

But I've got, I also, though, I need your input on one thing because I'm, I'm, torn between two movies that if this, are we agreeing this is the, the boardlands episode? Yeah. I do want to talk about it. Well, to watch it on digital. So I want to pair boardlands with, I need your help choosing which one of these because I really can't decide. I want to either do cabin fever or hostel.

The reason I'm torn is because cabin fever is Eloh's first feature, but I feel like hostel was kind of more famous and liked and it was the follow-up. I'm kind of more curious, which you think would have a better conversation. Yeah. I mean, I know I like Cabin Fever, and I like watching that movie. Hostel I haven't seen in a while, but I think I haven't seen it in a while because it's probably kind of forgettable. I'm more curious what the more interesting conversation would be, because I've seen both.

I don't know. I think it's still up to you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for not helping. With that being said, I'm going to, I'm going to commit to cabin fever then, if you don't mind. All right. I feel like having Eli's latest with boardlands against cabin fever might be interesting. I'm sure Hostel will come up anyway.

Yeah, so an Eli episode. Nice. I got the Blu-ray somewhere. So that's 2002, Cabin fever. All right. Lots of early 2000s movies right now. Yeah. Simpler times, kind of.

Maybe. Sort of, yeah. Different, just different. Yeah. All right, if you don't want to be spoiled for Cabin Fever, directed by Eli Roth, watch it before the next episode. These episodes come out every two weeks.

You can listen to them early. Go to sardonicast.com. Sign up for premium. It's only $2 a month. Also, patreon.com slash sardonic. Also, you can just hit the join button on YouTube. Just fucking do that. We want t-shirt ideas.

Maybe we should make a post on the subreddit because this episode is not going to be out for like a month. Yeah, there's a good chunk now. Yeah, maybe we should do that. We want t-shirt ideas. There's some fun quotes, some fun ideas that I'd put on a t-shirt. Happy Shrek? I don't know.

Hell yeah. What do we put on a t-shirt? What would you like to wear merch of that we could sell you for money, is the question? Yeah, let us know Yeah Alright, thanks for listening everybody Have a happy Shrek

Five Have a happy clap trap How about that It's yeah The hap the hap The happiest Clapiest trap The crispiest

Hey at least I didn't say knock knock Yeah I mean That's like One of the fucking cringiest movies Ever made I've seen it. Yeah, it's been a while.

It's so, it's like, that's like, it's literally just like a fucking fan fiction movie. It's so bad. Yeah. Some fetish fan fiction thing. Yeah. All right. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody.

Happy Shrek 5. Bye-bye. Me.