Sardonicast - Sardonicast 177: Anora, Look Back, Treasure Planet

Episode Date: November 25, 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 Anora 25:24 Gonster discussion 29:26 Look Back 53:22 The Wild Robot 56:39 Treasure Planet 1:26:43 Questions 1:59:36 Recommendation + outro

Three, two, one. Go Dilbert. Go Dilbert. That was a line from Anora. I'm Adam from your movie sucks. This is Sardana cast. Hello. And I'm Alex from I.E.

And I'm still here. Oh. Yeah. You want to give God? I can do one thing if you want. Yeah, well, yeah, just that you can just do that for the rest of the episode. actually. Okay.

Voice for me. Mm-hmm. We'll get to that later, though. You know all the lyrics? Um, I'm neither going to confirm nor deny that one. Okay. I didn't even know that it was the Goo Goo Goo Dole's until literally today. Yeah, I definitely had a moment where I was like, why is this voice sound so familiar?

Mm-hmm. And then it was the Goo-goo. Lady Goo-goo. Uh, we watched a few movies. Anora is out. So Alex was able to see it. I saw it at Tiff. I saw it before you did.

Yeah, I was supposed to see it in London, but I said on that previous episode that a roundabout betrayed me. So I missed my screening on the big nice London screen. But I saw it yesterday next to a coughing granny, who I think has given me a illness. But the movie was good, though. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Having a roundabout betray you in London is like if a moose betrayed me. You're supposed to be friends.

I think moose are a bit more scary than a roundabout. Moose are terrifying. There was a map of like animal deaths per province in Canada. And just like the highest one was in Alberta. And it just like a picture of a moose. I was like, oh. Is that from car crashes specifically? Well, just that they're aggressive as well?

No, I think it's like attacks. Oh, really? Yeah, people play. They're like a big bowl of meat, like on these spindy little legs, and they're giant. Mm-hmm. It's like, horrifying. Yeah, they're huge. They'll kill you.

Uh, what do you think of a nora? It was, uh, really interesting and unexpected for me. I realized I hadn't really, I haven't really seen many of the Baker films. Um, which ones? have you? I saw the Flowrider project. But Red Rocket and the other ones have just been on my backlog.

So I don't know. So you've only ever seen the other one? Just that one? Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah, there's a bunch of Sean Baker that I haven't seen, but I've seen all of his ones since like 2010, I think.

More recent ones. Yeah. Tangerine, Red Rocket, Florida Project. I guess that was 2015, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know, and I find it interesting, always contrasting my experience as a cold Brit and the weird, like, audiences I have. Because I, it was like making me laugh way more than I was expecting, like, full on, like, comedy flipping a bunch of these, like, tropes of this kind of movie. But, like, I was the only one laughing, so I was a bit like, what's going on here?

Um, but yeah, I loved certain characters introduced. I loved the kind of tenderness and the, the way it used sexuality and kind of flipped on his head without going into spoilers. It was a just ever so slightly along in the tooth for me with that first act, but it, it basically compounded on itself and got better and better and more and more sort of sensitive and interesting as it went along. Yeah. Especially by like the midpoint when a new kind of group of characters

introduced it's probably a bit sooner than the midpoint but um that dynamic was so wild um and the yeah the comedy especially was what was standing out was like it was earnestly funny it felt like there were stakes i thought it was like a cool kind of spin on the pretty woman kind of a hollywood traditional you know falling in love with a hooker and getting married kind of you know story you've seen a million times but the the direction it goes and especially where it ends feels like quite a fleshed out analysis of this person and the way she's treated by the world. Yeah, it, uh, it kind, it kind of interjects a bit of reality into it. And the reality becomes like chaotic and then yeah, I, I do enjoy that it is very much like a character study.

Sean Baker is really, really good with like fleshing out characters and making them feel real and making their conversations feel real, even if things are still elevated, even if it's still showing some extremes of these real people? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it does feel real, though. Like the, and just spending trips on its head with the whole, we haven't mentioned the kind of Russian oligarch side of the story,

where that's obviously kind of what kickstarts it is this young son of an oligarch from Russia basically. winds up with this escort that he likes a lot and gets married to her, which obviously doesn't go down well with his Insanely powerful parents and then the mess of like the the people underneath his parents coming to try and get the the marriage annulled I won't go any deeper than that unless we go to spoilers Yeah, I kind of lost my what was putting down just there, but you're you're gonna say that the son reminded you of X QC Yeah, That's it. Yeah. Oh my god. I, this isn't really, this isn't, I'm not saying this about ASQC, but like that, uh, lead Russian oligarch son guy, he was so dislikable to me. He needed like a good strangling, you know? Oh my God. He's so unlikable, but like perfect for, uh, yeah, that type of character and where it goes. And just kind of emphasizing this idea of, uh, I don't know, that level of obscene wealth that like no one can understand and how people are just used and abused. And I guess they're kind of on the nose.

nature of taking an escort and making it literal. And just where they take those characters and that dynamic, it's kind of brilliant, actually. Without going in spoilers. Yeah, the inevitable chaos that this film kind of erupts into, like, very outrageous and fun chaos. I feel like in concept, if you had a different writer or a different director even, you could easily just have this being more of like a serious kind of like dramatic almost like a thriller type story. Yeah, I thought it might even go like funny games like yeah. There's like an underlying

kind of like creepy and tense nature to it but it still manages to retain its comedic approach which I really like because it's just so outrageous like things the things that are happening are just so silly and also it really helps to have like even these side. characters just feeling so appropriately cast like the bald guy the way that he looks the way that he kind of reacts to each scene like he's my favorite character you can tell there's something happening underneath the surface even if he doesn't like completely emote to like an exaggerated degree you can you can kind of tell that there's things that he's thinking and just kind of observing in a scene. The way it's set up with this, like, you're hearing about the Russian oligarchs and the

Armenians coming in and the, like, threats they're posing, you're like, oh my God, is this going to get, like, violent? Like, where are we going with this? I remember seeing the trailer for this, like, a six months ago or something and thinking, oh, that's clearly the obvious way this is going. There's, like, some intense happening here. The way they spin it and bring it into more of like a going against that violent mob like archetype and kind of making them feel weirdly way more realistic as characters and the way they're arguing and just whipping out these little jokes in relation to the kind of absurdity of the wealth dynamics and like their position and what they're trying to do and just check going on this wild goose chase basically for this like 20 year old Russian dude in New York. It's like inherently funny. Yeah, it is very much taking characters that in any other piece of media would be like relatively flat and they are kind of used for the trope. But they're very much just being humanized and just exploring like what they would do,

what they would say, what they would think. Yeah, because like how many movies are you going to find where you have this sort of scenario where it's like, okay, these Russian guys with, I forget if they're, brought guns that I saw it like a couple years ago but you know these like henchmen basically right show up yeah they're threatening they've got like an imposing aura yeah every other piece of media that you'd see that type of character and it's just like okay they're there to fulfill this exact plot device and that's all there is to them but no they get fleshed out and there's more to them and they still fulfill the plot devices that they need to but but they actually interact with the story

and are very much a part of the character writing. I liked the commitment to the Russian language as well. It's one of Onora's character traits. It's why she kind of is chosen to be with him to begin with is that she understands Russian, doesn't really like speaking it and it's kind of rusty, verbalizing it, but can understand it. So it avoids that, you know, goofy Russian stereotype voice, you can imagine. Oh, yeah. Yeah, true.

Yeah. Mikey Madison was fucking awesome. She was great. She was very good. She might get an Oscar nom. I'm hoping she'd. It would be crazy if she didn't. Like this seems to be like a front runner awards sort of thing.

Yeah. She was a standout performance, a great lead character at Hammond home, the kind of ideas they were going for. But man, I love that equal character, especially where it winds up, where it takes that lead.

on war character. I think the best scene in the movie is the final scene. I won't say what it is in detail, but... Yeah, I was really impressed with that. We'll get into that in a second, I guess. We'll talk spoilers in a bit. I just wanted to mention, I absolutely

love the cinematography, the way the camera kind of like flows and moves around. The color, the color correction, the color grading is really vibrant and and just everything looks really beautiful in this film.

Yeah, the natural lighting is they are like running around that pier. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it's really memorable as far as that stuff's concerned. Yeah, the editing also really helps with the look of the film because... Yeah, you're right. There's a great variety of like short scenes and long scenes. So much of the film is kind of like almost like a montage, like really kind of quick, just tiny. shots showing that these things happened over some period of time, but it doesn't feel like

ADHD, because there are plenty of really long takes, a lot of Wunners. It's just whatever's appropriate for the scene, and it shows a great variety, and at no point does it feel like any one of these styles is being used as a crutch. It's very much just for the narrative purpose in the story, and there's a lot of effort going into everything. I noticed in the opening credits he's Baker was credited as the editor I don't know if he edits all his films but um I like seeing that yeah was something like one-to-one implied from seeing that level of a commitment to the editing of it but yeah I I felt for that first act there was I don't know I feel like it might flow better on a second for me but I was kind of feeling a bit of repetition

with this character dynamic with an aura and this Russian asshole and it felt like it was just taken a while to establish what was really the hook of the movie for me which was basically when it becomes like a group dynamic and it leans like more into the humor instead of like the kind of montage as you say of like sex scene then they're like playing a video game

pretending really badly to play Gaze of War and then another sex scene and then so on I think it is kind of important to keep the slow half, sorry, the first half as a slow burn type of thing, because I think that it adds to this layer of helping us understand this kind of world that she was fantasizing and envisioning, and we kind of get an understanding of what was at stake for her, like this idea of something being stripped away from her, taken away from her, something that she's actually fighting for. And so I do think that it is important to showcase that in more than just like a

quick sort of, you know, hint at it. Yeah, to say you on the fantasy. I guess it was more just like random details. I don't know. I just maybe like 10 minutes is all I'm asking for. Sure. I don't know if I needed like the rivalry with the other escort. And that didn't feel like a big payoff to me compared to everything going on with the Russian. And I'm, I mean, you know, that didn't feel like a big payoff to me compared to medium side of things. That felt like that was just growing and growing and getting better. Whereas the other side of it was less interesting to me. Well, I know, because I also feel like that does kind of say a bit more about the main character as well. Like she feels like she has something to prove to others and, you know, she feels like some sense

of insecurity and needs to be able to show others that she's doing well sort of thing. Like she's, she very much kind of strives to have this lifestyle, not just for herself, but almost like out of spite towards others. Like she, you can tell that that's something that she very much, that's like a part of her fantasy is being able to go like, no, fuck you. Yeah, yeah. Look, you're still, you're stuck here and I'm not, even though they were like both in the same position, like, not too long ago. I guess I just got more of a rewarding like as far as that angle's concerned more of a rewarding with her discussions with the Russian characters

when that comes in more towards the end Okay yeah we can talk Spoilers Yeah okay spoilers everybody definitely go see anora Everybody watch the movie yeah yeah really great stuff but um This eagle character who's kind of set up as Yeah, as we're saying, the stereotype, he's kind of the way he's holding her on the sofa after that grappling match and smashing up the whole, like comedy of errors, breaking nose nonsense and these, yeah, tying her up and kind of, I don't know, it looks, it looks really bad for him. Yeah.

But the way that comes back on itself later in the movie where he's tasked with taking her back home after the marriage is an old, they're just like sitting on the couch, sharing cigarettes and they have that, I love that dialogue about he's obviously Russian and not the best with English. says tush instead of touche and that whole thing. And there is like a chemistry there. Yeah, Carte Blanche. Seeing as you brought that, I was going to bring this up later. You brought it up. I have to mention this because there are too many like comments and reference in regards to Cartier Blanche to not address this.

I don't know. People think when I have been saying that in recent episodes that it's like it's in earnest that I'm saying it this way. Oh, yeah. I don't know how to say it properly. Yeah That's great There's like a comment

A screenshot Alex For the love of God Go to Miriam Webster And listen how to pronounce Carty Blanchet I'm like man That's so good Yeah

So for those who don't know That's a The Idol reference Yeah Watch the Idol Everybody Geez Where have you been

I guess there's on me For not I guess there's on me assuming Everyone is seen The Idol Well we meme on it That old chestnut

But So you guys Learn the memes Okay We can spot The real fans And the fake fans So, get on our level.

But people get so angry about that kind of thing. But yeah, tush and that eagle character. Man, where it ends up, I feel like is such a... I was getting frustrated at a certain point of like, yeah, the Sonora character, she's headstrong, she's... But there's something almost like one note about this way she's being presented. I need some...

Where's the vulnerability to this character? What is... Where's a bit more depth to her? And just in that one scene at the very end where she kind of initiates sex with Eagle in the car right after he mentions that it's his grandma's car, which is like the moment she flips. And he is like a the complete inverse of the oligarch son, basically, who's like handed everything. And I don't know, it's just a symbol of ultimate wealth, basically. And this is a fairly normal guy in comparison. and who listens to her and actually has conversations and connects with her.

And then, yeah, that it's like the only moment of real intimacy in the movie is that sex scene, despite all of the other, like, gratuitous sex scenes that throughout the film is the only one that feels like a real moment for her. And it's the same one, coincidentally, where she breaks down in tears. And it is like a heartbreaking, like, she needs to let out this, because it takes place over the course of a week. And in montage form, it's like, boom, boom, boom. She's experienced so much in this time. So for, to just watch her, especially her performance in that moment, her kind of just like snap and let it out is so like therapeutic and honest and real.

That's an amazing scene and a brilliant bullet point to end on. Yeah, I think it also kind of just highlights, my interpretation of her breaking down is that she's kind of like faced with the reality. or like realization, almost kind of having like an ego death of like her viewing sexual or sorry, sex as something transactional. Yeah. That, you know, like he does her this favor. And then she's like, okay, well, you know, she's paying him back the only way that she knows how to. And it's almost as if she, you know, is hating herself because she doesn't get to experience.

like that sort of real intimacy with anyone. And also, like, he's the first character in the movie that's literally just, like, treated her like a human being. Exactly. Yeah. And not just, like, some sort of thing to use or a thing to try to, you know, criticize and other, you know. Yeah. Yeah, everyone else is way more combative with her. But that leads to some of the best comedy.

the like Armenian dude who's like has to leave the, is it the baptism? Yeah. And I thought he was maybe one of the funniest characters because he's just like so over it. He's so frustrated by the situation he's in like, stop between a rock and a hard place. He's clearly been dealing with this kid for like years and years. And this is just so far for him. And he's like scared obviously because of who he works for. And there's that amazing scene where he's in the diner like just showing pictures.

of the oligarch son. It's like, he goes on like a rant about phones, and you're just on your TikTok and fucking Instagram. And it's so funny and just clever the way it comes out. And his underling as well, he gets his nose broken. He has some amazing humor that comes out. And the clever little scene where they're in the plane talking to the oligarch and his wife himself,

and he's trying to, he shoes, shoes away the Armenian dude with his broken nose and who's kind of high on the pills. that Eagle was giving him because he's kind of overly thanking them for giving him the opportunity in his job. And it's like not coming across well and he pushes him away. And then he just immediately starts doing the same thing. Just to highlight this like grotesque power dynamic these Russian mega people have. And they were also like they were in it briefly, but they were great characters.

The way the dad was just kind of laughing at like Anora's pinpoint comments on what she's saying. about their horrible family and like what they represent and everything while he just laughs in the background and yeah it never feels like too much as far as that like commentary of like yeah poor good rich bad like it doesn't feel that simplistic it feels more like this is a fun dynamic to watch and you're like characterizing all these people just enough this is yeah just entertaining from beginning to end with that kind of thing yeah i'm looking through his filmography uh sean baker and it just It just occurred to me that the Florida project is the only one that, like, really blew up.

Like, to the degree where it hit, like, mainstream kind of pop culture. Yeah, there wasn't much of a Red Rocket, right? No, I liked that one way more. Maybe you mentioning it. Yeah. Nobody saw that one. That was kind of weird. It's got a fun little premise.

Yeah. Yeah. And that one was at Con 2, I think, but didn't win the Palm Door. Anora is sure to get some mainstream attention at the Oscars, I should hope. It would be crazy if it didn't. And then Tangerine was big for an indie film, but not like a big film. Like, it was huge for a film that was shot on an iPhone 4. Like literally.

Yeah, that's all I know about it. Yeah, I would recommend both of those for sure. Yeah, Tangerine is hilarious. Has it has a lot of the same very similar chaotic energy in terms of like the chaotic humor and things like kind of building in this like tense kind of argumentative way. It reminded me, Anora reminded me a lot of tangerine in that sense. Yeah, watch both of those. I think you'd enjoy them, so.

Yeah, I definitely will. After this one, I'm glad he seems to have, I don't know, it's really taking off this one, it seems. Yeah. With the palm d'law and audience reaction. He's a really, he's a really interesting director, and I like his approaches. to like finding types of characters to explore and humanize. Because a lot of people just aren't.

You know, a lot of his movies involve like trashy characters. And sure, he does still kind of exploit that comedically, like many other films would. But he goes a little bit deeper than that, like enough so that it doesn't feel so exploitative. Or cynical or... So almost goes against itself. immediately with that opening shot of like, is going past all the escorts and like a really immediately overtly sexual. There ain't much being hidden in that opening shot.

No. It's like a really great way to introduce that character to. Like it kind of just says everything you need to know as far as like, oh, this is where we're starting with her. I guess like we're getting straight into this like literally. I want to see more Baker because Baker, be cooking. God damn it. God damn it.

So I'm giving a Nora a nine out of ten. Yeah, I'm slightly blow you. I did enjoy a hell of a lot, as I say, I think it got better as it went along. Maybe just like, maybe it flows better on a rewatch, but I could have done with maybe 10 minutes shorter here. But yeah, this is like a solid eight out of ten for me, four star.

Fantastic. Great performances. Love that eagle. character and his dynamic with the main character. Yeah, it feels really honest and well-ranked. Toss them some Oscars. Just fucking throw it at them. Yeah. I saw, I might actually watch this year because I saw Conan's going to host it. Yeah, news as of like, what, today?

I think literally today is recording. Yeah. So, cool. I might actually watch it for the first time. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It starts at like 2 a.m. for me, no matter what. Well, you should drink a monster.

Do you know what I've been doing? Drink a monster. Ruin my sleep schedule for the whole week? I don't know, man. Yeah. What have you been doing? For the Oscars. There's a novelty drink that I tried once, and it was actually not as bad as I thought it would be.

So I'm going to send you the subreddit. It's a very small community. A gonster. A gonster. So it's like a layered. I thought it's a goonster at first. It's like a black and tan, but it's Guinness and Monster Energy. Wait, and you buy that like pre-packaged?

No, you just mix them together. The day they come pre-packaged is the day that we're vindicated. Is the day that we're recognized as a society. The gonster drinkers will rise up. Well, this is niche. Is it? 885 readers? Oh, look, I mean, I'm...

There's some things that I just attach myself on too that I get... How the fuck did you find this? I don't know. I don't know how I found it. I mean, I like Guinness. I haven't had a monster in a while. It's actually not bad. They got some okay flavors.

You know, I think they got the Lewis Hamilton flavor. That's pretty good. Yeah, but the problem is, so I got the regular monster. And then I was like, why does mine don't look as good as the subreddit pictures? I apparently needed to get Monster Nitro, which is like the more green, like glowy green one. But I just, I can't find that anywhere in Canada. So maybe I'll add that on my list of things to get while I'm in the States actually. I'm going to get a monster nitrows so I can have a true gonster. That's exactly what I need. There is something very kind of Halloween. I'm

looking at pictures of it. It looks like a Halloween kind of drink as far as how it looks. But I don't know if I like that name, Gunster. What do you mean? What's wrong with the name Gunster? Gunster. It's too close to Goonster. No one was thinking Goonster except you. And goonstr is not a word. Fine, but it is no. So, so do you hate the word goner because it's too close to gooner? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. You don't like the word gone?

That's another pet peeve of mine. So you look at a, you look at a fucking David Fincher movie. Goon girl. Yeah, goon girl. Um, yeah. That's what you think when you look at that poster? Yeah, making me realize maybe this is a me problem.

Yeah. But it's not just a me problem. This is, this is, this is, this is, this is, This is crazy. This is crazy that you've even found. It is just a you problem. And your criticism of gooning has turned you into a gooner. Because now you're doing the exact same thing that that community is doing. You are mind-infected, always thinking about goon. I'm goon-on-the-word goon-a.

Yeah, no, because you're always thinking about it. And you're hopeless. And you're just, you have to give in to the fact that you're a gooner forever. Well, at least I'm not drinking gonsters. I'll just leave it there. That has nothing to do with Guit. What does it do to you? What does it do to you?

A little bit of alcohol, a little bit of caffeine. I mean, a lot of caffeine and some taurine and... You can't like drink normal coffee, can you? How can you drink a monster but not like a regular coffee? I don't know. Coffee makes me more, like, uh, fucked up than an energy drink for some reason. But I have to... I still have it like earlier in the day.

So Gonstr is like a morning drink. I've only had it once though I go yeah maybe I'll be worried if you're starting every single day this way um so maybe that's uh maybe I will just just for Oscars night just to watch Conan

a gangster fuck solar field all right we watched an anime called People getting scared. Called Rukubaku, which is the real title, but it's actually look back.

And it's based off of a manga, and the manga was made by the same guy that did Chainsaw Man, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I was looking at letterbox to some of the other stuff this director had done. I wasn't familiar personally, but yeah, sorry, finish your intro. I mean, that's, I don't know, I was going to ask what you thought about it. It's only 50 minute, 50 something minutes long. It's less than an hour. Yeah. Which is part of the reason I watched it.

That was, yeah, one of my final notes was like, give us more of these. This is a nice runtime. Yeah. For sometimes you only have enough sort of for like an hour or only need an hour to tell your story. And I still feel like I got a narrative here that said a lot that got me thinking. I only watched this a couple hours ago as of us recording this. Nice. So it's still fresh.

But I thought it was beautiful and did a lot and went unexpected ways. But the first thing I actually wrote down was, this is going to break my heart, isn't it? It just has that feeling about it. That music, you know, it's using the like kind of reverse sounds where it's like something that's been made and flipped on itself. And then these strings in the piano, it's like, oh man, this is going to break my heart, huh? But obviously it gets you in with that just incredible animation.

It's frame heavy. It's varied all over the place at first. I thought it was going to be like, oh, is this a Like a little collection of different styles of animation anthology type thing that we're going for here It's way more about like the yeah, exactly But it's much deeper than that it's more about sort of the the artistic process and What I was kind of really delving into was this idea of these two artist characters one that's a background artist and one that's more of the does the kind of story side

and has a competitive streak in her and they develop their relationship as artists together and one's a recluse and they form this earnest little relationship together and kind of delving into this idea of one wanting more of a

commercial slant to their art which is fine and the other side of the artist who's more about taking a time, there's all this dialogue about her being slower in that she can't keep up, even though she's getting better, and kind of wants to improve on her own terms and how that affects the relationship and where they, the two different ways they interpret their art

and how it can like clash. And I don't know, that's a really nice, kind of quiet style of a conflict to build this around. Yeah, like a good contrast, a good mix. there's a better word for it meant I just woke up I need a gonce I need a gon se

No No I need a gon se Actually yeah Nah not today I might be seeing my aunt My aunt My aunt later

She's from out of town Your aunt Your aunt Your auntie Yeah Yeah Yeah this was I thought this was

Really really good And I'm just I I completely agree. Like, I want more hour-long things. And it's not like I want everything to be an hour-long thing. I just want there to be less of a stigma around hour-long things. Because it's like, it's barely a feature.

A feature is like officially around 49 minutes or something is the minimum. It's somewhere in the 40-minute range. Yeah, I thought it was like 45 around or something. It might actually vary officially by country. I'm not sure. But it's around, it's somewhere in the 40 minutes. And there are films that I've seen at film festivals that are about an hour long and then just can't find any real distribution because people are scared of it or studios think people are scared of it. So they're scared of it or distributors, you know.

So I wish there was less of a stigma around this because sometimes like, you know, the story should be exactly as long as what works for the story. There's so many different films that kill themselves pacing-wise and make themselves unwatchable. by trying to stretch itself into more of a traditional runtime like 90 minutes. You know, where they're like, well, I want to make a feature, especially documentaries. It's like, okay, this real thing happened. You can't write anymore. What do you do? You just like pad it with all the interview footage and just like stretch out the editing

and make things slower pace. Like, go fuck yourselves. Too many documentaries fall into that exact same trap. With animation, there's, you know, a relatively good experience. excuse to keep it short too is because it's stupid expensive. And time consuming, yeah. Yeah, like a lot of like older Disney films, like even in the Renaissance era, you can see some of those run times.

It's like, oh, wow, this is like, this is really short compared to what they're releasing today. So yeah, I completely agree. And, you know, if the movie's bad, it's still a bad hour long movie. This just happened to be a really, really well-made one. Do you think it's like a perceived lack of like value? Yeah. like, oh, it's not, it's not legitimate because it's, it's not three hours long and doesn't take my whole day up watching.

Yeah. I mean, like, I think to some extent there might be a mindset of people thinking, like, oh, who's going to leave their house and go to the theater just for like an hour? Apparently, this did get a theatrical release and there was like a filmed version of, like, an interview with the, director like 10 minutes after the movie or something. So that added on some value, I guess. Was it on Amazon Prime for you? Because it was. It was on Amazon Prime.

But yeah, especially with like streaming existing now. Like we're not confined to length. There have been more weirdly weird runtimes released on streaming services. now that that's an option. I say experiment with it. Yeah. Let's figure out what works. And this is, yeah, what, 58 minutes?

That's perfect for this story. I wouldn't want any more or less. Mm-hmm. But yeah, it's also just unpredictable, like, where it goes. Like, it's, it is about the artistic process, but it goes, it covers many years of their lives and their kind of relationship, their working relationship together. And starting with they're in like, I don't know what grades are. I guess it's like primary school or is that early secondary school that they're talking about?

I don't know. Yeah, it doesn't really matter. The point is they form their relationship based off this kind of competitive streak of trying to be in the school newspaper, the manga artist in the featured newspaper each week or month or whatever it is. And the main character has kind of a big head from being that the class is like, whoa, these are amazing. Your art is so good you could be a professional artist. And then the comparison being the thief of joy moment when the other character has some sort of like anxiety that means she can't leave the house and she's kind of trapped indoors. But that leads her to be this incredible background artist.

That's like her passion. And she manages to get featured in the same column in the school newspaper. So, of course, this lead character sees that and is destroyed by it at first. But then it leads to, I don't know, it covers like a lot of different creative attitudes where, yeah, sometimes that competition can be the spark that's like, okay, I got to improve then. And, you know, she gets all the anatomy books and she does the research and she puts the time in again and again, like over years and years trying to improve. and then winds up quitting. And yeah, just exploring this idea of like, there's always going to be someone better than you.

And so you've got to find your own sort of chart your own course as far as like what you want from this thing. Why are you doing this thing to begin with? Yeah. Maybe and where it winds up with them being more like collaborators where I did like the touch of the background artist kind of taking more of a literal background role. And I don't know how there's all this.

This art being done in the show, in the film and the look of it with these kind of loose sketchy style, but it's still really frame heavy. And there's all these kind of loose smear frames when they're running around. And it's just, I don't know, it all complements itself really well with the look of it, with the way it moves. Yeah. What really helped the look of this film for me was just how clearly it was like envisioned and realized. The wide variety of different ways to show a scene. Like, it wasn't stale. It wasn't just, like, paint by numbers.

You know, all of these really, really interesting and cool perspective shots. Like, you know, you're through the POV of someone, like, running through a hallway. Or, you know, like, that shot of someone running in a field, it's almost like a drone shot. The camera swoops from the sky. and then like tilts to be level with the horizon and follows them like really, really interesting. It's very well stylized and just I want to see more things like that. And it's insane to think that there's so many films that are within the medium of animation that don't take the opportunity to experience to accept. to express themselves in creative ways.

Like, the sky is your limit. You can do anything. You can show the scene in whatever fucking way you want. You just got to be creative and you just got to want to put some effort into it. Right? Like, don't. Yeah, it's why I've always loved it. Yeah, it seems like the potential is literally endless.

Yeah. You know, there are no limitations outside of, obviously, money and time being the biggest ones. But yeah, as you said, some of the angles they're pulling out, Some of the camera movements are, they're incredible. Yeah. And like the detail to it, just like a, the complexity of like a door frame moving within a 2D animated drawn image is something surprisingly complex, but they'll do it. And it didn't have the kind of treasure planet CG look to some of the environments. It seemed like, I don't know what kind of trickery they were doing there.

But that scene where she skips home after being gassed up by the background artist. Again, that's just an incredible, like, free, loose way of interpreting it. Not really relying on dialogue to hammer on the feelings or emotions of a character. And you're like, you're seeing the perspective of like the raindrops coming down. Yeah. Although it's perfectly achieved with that kind of stuff. And in that sense, I feel like the runtime really. helps this story because the creative choices like that and almost kind of this montage

nature of pretty much the entire film it allows for so much variety in terms of how to show something just different ways that a scene can be expressed whereas if you padded it and like there was 30 more minutes and it was just like mostly dialogue scenes then you know there might not be as much opportunity or it might not feel as genuine, you know, it might not feel as inspired. The fact that they were able to have this almost kind of like, you know, dreamlike pacing even to it, I think really added for them having these opportunities to showcase everything in a really interesting way. Like it's as if we took a 90-minute film, like one of those where we were just saying like, just trim out the fat.

It's like, it's like we got the final version of that fantasy that we've had of other movies. It's like they actually did that, but we just, there was never any version where we had to say that. Yeah. That's a good way of putting it. And yeah, just the amount of kind of ideas that it covers the, a lot of films or books or whatever, you know, like art that's about the process of making art or whatever.

Like, megalopolis, you know? But this actually explores it in ways that are thought-provoking, that are relatable. I don't know, just, even if it's for a five-minute sequence or less, just the idea of, like, the ostracization that the main character has from, once she puts her head down, and is dedicated to that kind of isolation of getting good at something. And then people, like, talking down to her, aren't you getting too old to keep drawing? What are you a baby?

Just these kind of things put in there. Yeah. And yeah, I don't know, do you want to go into spoilers? Yeah, I think it's time. Everybody watch this. We both enjoyed it very much. Look back Amazon Prime. It's short.

It requires no time commitment, really. Low investment on Amazon Prime. You probably already got it. Give it a shot. Yeah. Spoiler time. And we're both pretty critical of a lot of like anime tropes as well. And it didn't seem to be held back by that.

either. I rarely like animaes. Yeah. So. It has to be special for me to like it this much. Give it a shot. But I was, man, does it like take a turn with the fucking axe attack? Something that could have really ruined this film, I think, because they didn't handle that would care and the execution of that. It was actually the execution that made it kind of hit home for me. Yeah. Being in the perspective of that main character just kind of here.

hearing it in this nonchalant way on the news and just trying to call her phone and not getting a response. And the whole sort of, you mentioned the dreamlike nature of it and the, the, the, what it sparks in the lead character once that the background artist is murdered. Mm-hmm. And it's not gratuitous. It gets to the line almost with the, there is like a dream sequence that it delves into that's all instigated from her, visiting her, childhood home and there's this ongoing theme of the the four panels, the four manga panels and what that represents to her at different times. At one time it's her giving up. Another time it's her being inspired on the spot and it's the thing that got her back into art and reunited her love for it.

And of course is the amazing kind of where it ends with her pinning up that empty canvas, as it were, the four panels on the glass above where she works and continues on. But then like, delving into the whole, like, blaming herself or what happened and all these kind of natural emotions one must go through with the experiencing this kind of horror or loss. And yeah, it doesn't get too lost in itself for me, despite how like kind of at left field and the extreme that is for the like axe wielding murderer to come in and kill like 10 students or whatever it is. Yeah. And of course that being like central to the conflict of she wanted to go to art school just kind of for herself to improve her art even despite having this opportunity in her face with like this manga taking off led by this main character and the kind of argument over that. And her, I know there's a really mean line about her where you're just a background artist anyway, which she really doesn't mean. But it's like her frustrated and upset in the moment and how it's coming out.

Yeah, there's just something real and sad about that. And there is like a gatekeepery thing a lot of the time of like creative people and artists. And, uh, you know, it's very like judgmental a lot of the time. And it can be like petty like that, which is where like how it loops back on itself. And it's like she turns, she looks back and sees the alternate world where yeah, she could the, the power fantasy of her like and the wish fulfillment of her saving the life or whatever. And if I just stuck to karate and never did this. art stuff and maybe it would all worked out and she wouldn't have been lost, but ultimately

coming back to like looking back and using it as more of an inspiration to move forward instead of it being something to end her creativity. So, and this is crazy, all of these concepts for like an under an hour long film. I love it. Yeah, it's tight. It's just to grapple with all this stuff. Did you catch the butterfly effect poster in the background of one of the shots? No, I didn't actually.

Yeah. It was there. And then that it kind of, as she was going through the, oh, this only happened because I wrote this panel and it went under the door and inspired and she would still be alive sort of thing. That kind of tied into the butterfly effect nature of it where I almost thought in that scene because of them showing that poster once we got to the alternate vision of a different reality or, you know, the ripped piece of paper going under.

the door and her potentially saving her from the ex-murder. I almost thought that it was like going into like a literal butterfly effect type film, but then it just turned it to be like an exploration of her grief, which works great, honestly. But yeah, I love that I love that there was that little nod there that kind of hinted at what types of ideas they were exploring. Yeah, I was scared of it randomly going to like veer into the, supernatural and somehow undo that would make it feel like corny and cheesy if they did undo the that horror happening the attack of the school.

And yeah, it was kind of what you're saying about animation in general just using that five, 10 minute stretch to explore dream sequence and avoid that, you know, that horror movie trope where there's a fake scare or whatever in there having. Oh, it was just a dream the whole time. Isn't that scary? It was like, no, this is like a character moment. We're exploring where the character is at that time. What she maybe wishes could have happened, her emotional state. And yeah, it feels like a good use of time and a good way of exploring those complex emotions that come from something so horrendous. So did you ever hear of the Kyoto animation arson attack?

No. No, you never heard of that? Okay, so there was a... That sounds horrifying. Yeah, there was a real... tragedy that happened in 2019 in Japan where like an established animation studio, a crazy guy who thought that he was being plagiarized and just had a lot of mental illness. Oh, so is that kind of based on...

Yeah, so that's the speculation. I don't know if it's ever been confirmed by the manga artist, but the original manga was published apparently, like literally on the two-year anniversary of that attack. Right. Yeah, I'm just reading the Wikipedia now. This is horrible. Yeah, I was definitely reminded of that with the whole, you plagiarized for me and just like going in and attacking people. So yeah, it is horrifying. And so it seems as if there was some inspiration from that. Yeah, because I wasn't sure if that was delving more into another unfortunate reality of kind of the art world and corporate.

art and how so much is stolen, not to like justify what he does or whatever, but just to have those ideas in there and have the motivation be linked to it, at least in some way. Mm-hmm. Instead of it just being completely random. It's still like based in the art world. Yeah. Yeah, I just, uh, this is a very dark film, but still not so. It doesn't feel like an exercise in.

like nihilism it doesn't feel like completely yeah yeah there is there there's some like meaning to it yeah it seemed like it was contrasting like looking back and seeing what was lost instead of what was gained but ending on the beat of looking back and sitting with what was gained instead of what was lost going on from there and in not being the end, at least for this main character. Yeah, even before it got into the, you know, axe murdering part, I was appreciating just how like delightfully morbid some of the parts even early on were like that... The reincarnation.

Yeah. That was funny, yeah. Yeah, the reincarnation and the car crash and the... Just the way in which it was handled, the style that it changed. to present itself as I found that to be great. With the over the top kids' drawings and the blood like squirting out of their mouths and the chucks a position of that is funny, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'll definitely watch this again. This is for sure on my 2024 list type movie. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'll happily watch this again. I was quite surprised the directions it took, the unpredictable nature of it, the, I don't know,

Just what it was exploring with the whole art angle and what it was saying with that. A random short, I want to shout out was a lot of close-ups on the main character's face with the, once she receives the traumatic news. And it's often like the anime trope or whatever when something crazy happens and they zoom in on the face and the irises are empty and whatnot. But the choice of having these, it's already a sort of loose art style, but for when she's like despondent close up on her face and her eyes are like empty and like the color is drained from her and the iris of her eyes are these like even looser scribbles than normal and it's like yes you're communicating everything you need to without a single word that I love that um this is exactly what we're saying about animation

really beautiful stuff yeah awesome movie for now I'm giving it an eight out of ten um I'm slightly higher than you on this one this was a four and a half star nine um I was I don't know I I find it emotional. I love those main characters and just what it was saying about creativity and art and the drawing world and the competition and the dedication and isolation that comes from that. It's everything I want to see in a movie and it's animated. So it's literally what I'm always going on about and asking for. Yeah.

You know, I was thinking of having just like an entirely animated podcast day. I was like, oh, watch the Wild Robot. But then it was so boring. I just, I shut it off. I wasn't sure if you wanted to mention the Wild Robot, because I did watch that, um, a few weeks ago. I had to shut it off. It was so boring.

When did you, what point did you shut it off? Well, like 30 minutes through. I wanted to shut it off at like 15. And I was like, well, I'll give it,

I'll give it a bit more. Uh-huh. Was it the, the whole, uh, main character, duck or whatever, or goose that was,

because I didn't, I didn't love that either. Just the, it was riding off of like very mild stylization and this like feel good very safe like cute vibe that just like sure i'm sure works great for some people but like you can't sell me on that alone like yeah the animation's good it's it's very very well animated and there's some stylization that i like but like i don't know what i'm supposed to get out of of like we have Wally at home sort of thing. Like, I just,

and also, yeah, it was hyper saccharine. Yeah, even though it's based off of a book where I'm sure there was dialogue in it, I just, I found myself just wishing there wasn't any. I just found myself imagining a better movie or where they didn't spell things out as

much. Yeah, I love the look of the movie, but it was, yeah, I just didn't care about the story and this, this is pop song that did you get to the pop song no that was I was really like trying to get into it and the story does get like a lot better after the half an hour point believe

it or not where it seems like at first it's just going to be about this like robot raising a goose and it feels almost like a nursery type story like it was like so simplistic just not really for me whereas like I don't know how I think I like how to train your dragon stuff, like a lot more than you, but I was kind of expecting something more like that, a bit more earnest, but a bit more, a better lead character and something to them in a more interesting dynamic. And it does get better as it goes along, but it's also, I don't know,

it wasn't really my thing. It only kind of settled with it by the end of it. It's like a three star, I mean, like a six out of ten. I did like the look of it. It just, I just didn't like that narrative very much. As I was watching, I was like, this is it this is a best case scenario six out of ten right I had to leave yeah it was just such a waste of time and because of leaving I was able to watch look back I definitely

got a hell of a lot more out of look back it's a good thing to abandon movies that are not gonna do it for you it's not my thing doesn't have to be my yeah I I tend to find the half an hour rule is pretty good for like if there's something's just really not connecting with you so yeah I've given you half an hour that's often like the first act kind of set up time. If there's nothing about it you like, I mean, why? Why? Why even continue?

Why? Yeah. You recommended a movie. Oh, yeah, I recommended the movie. I recommended 2002's Treasure Planet. You're just killing it with your recommendations, nonstop. Well, yeah, I actually am. I actually am, especially with this one.

So, yeah, 2002's Treasure Planet. Let me just get up the director's names. They are big in the Disney animation space known for. This is Ron Clements and John Musker, who directed The Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Princess and the Frog, and Moena, and of course, Treasure Planet. Treasure Planet being maybe the most controversial out of all of those as far as it almost single-handedly destroying 2D animation.

for Disney and we can get into the howls and wise of that but it's I don't know it's an easy jumping on point it's a treasure island in space with an amazing sprinkling of 2002 bionicle core is what I'm calling it you got the surfing you got the skateboarding thing the alt rock that HAL-2 shredding electric guitar I mean this film's a warm blanket for me even though the blanket It does smell a little bit like we. I need to give it a wash. Yeah, it's a piss blanket for babies.

But I find this film very likable, actually. I think it has its issues, and I'm sure we'll get into those. In fact, can I predict what your issues are? Yeah, please, please do it. Let me see. Oh, man, you were done with it before Ben shows up, right? Yes. Was there a moment where you're like, nah, I'm not about this.

I would, if it weren't for us, for me feeling obligated to finish it for the sake of the podcast, I would have shut it out. I would have just shut off the movie as soon as fart character showed up. Like I was, I immediately had an urge to stop watching the film at that moment. And then the second time was when the robot showed up. That is one of the, it's sort of. weird because this is these directors their passion project movie they wanted to make it I think in the 90s but the producers I know you got to do the little

mermaid no you got to do Aladdin and by the time they got to Hercules it was like look we'll do Hercules if we can do our baby our little boy treasure planet and I guess they got their wish and they got handed let me get the exact number here it's a monkey's pie type wish okay a 140 million US dollars, which is... That's a lot. That is a hell of a lot of money. Yeah.

2002. In 2002. Lion King was like $45 million a decade before. Just throwing that out there. And even like Princess and the Frog, which came out after this and was the true, you know, nail in the coffin for these 2D animated Disney movies. That was still less than that. I think that was more around $100 million for that one.

But yeah. I do actually see the like passion project in there because there's just some disproportionately amazing stuff, I feel. I really like the main character in his dynamic with the villain. I think the villain rocks in this movie. I love this villain. I love him. I love the design of him. I love the way he moves.

I think there's some really great animation. And there is some like age stuff with the, the CG, like especially when they introduce the moon base. thing and there's like these flying seagull manta ray things and they look like they're out of like a PS2 game literally yeah it's not blended very well especially because i hadn't seen this i like watch this on my projector and like a i haven't seen this in a while either so it's like oh god some of that looks really rough but this was banging in 2002 uh this film blew my mind it for the record i was eight years old when i saw this and it was like it's so perfect for that i was like the perfect target demographic that the angst of it and like just that feeling of that main

character he's skateboarding around like a bionicle boarding around on his solar sale I love the when he's introduced after he's reading the the kids book and he's flying around the the abandoned metal works and the cops get him I dig it I don't I'm not bored by any of this I think it flows really well I think the Treasure Island story is just a kind of a great story and it's what Disney have done time and time again I just I'm kind of crest for them but just by yeah why they had to put in so many comedic relief characters you know they they had the fart guy they got the the the blob thing they got the robot guy they got the dog guy they got the cat lady it's

like man we were so close to this being on the level of perhaps like an Aladdin or something and I don't know if that's what they were thinking with the whole Ben character once he shows up because I actually kind of like the idea of that character he's based on one of the characters from the original treasure island book he's supposed to have lost his mind or whatever making him a robot and this kind of steampunky thing and he's I like the look of him I kind of I think the animation is good on him it's just more like why did they let Martin Short do that it he screams every line oh my god it's like I

was I was pretty tuned out after he showed up. I was, I'm just like, I, the second half of this movie is just, I didn't absorb it. Uh-huh. At all. And I was reading the, uh, the, the voice actor for Ham from Toy Story was considered for that Ben character. And I was like, man, why couldn't we have done that? Yeah. You know, just subdue him a little bit.

There's enough going on by that point. You don't really need comedy. The stakes are raised. There's like this, the key conflict of him. silver, it feels like really strong and they have a good handful of these weirdly great scenes of dialogue with them that feel, I don't know, honest and true and sad. Like this sad 15 year old boy who's abandoned by his dad and then he gets his surrogate dad who is also kind of an asshole and betrays him and the classic kind of Indiana Jones the ending of him having to choose between

the money or the boy. It's, you know, we've seen it before, but I think it's good for the framing of this movie and comes together well as an arc for that that villain character and again i love man i love his design i love that scene of him cutting stuff up in the in the chef hall as the cameras panning around i think it looks really great a lot of the animation here expressive and weighty and a lot of the character design i think is really solid too takes a lot of the cg stuff out and the the farting guy or whatever all the other stuff i like i even like i like morph the little little shape-shifting guy. I don't mind that that level of humor in this movie. That's like about as much as it needed, I think, with how serious other stuff is. Because there is like a, I don't know, it feels like there's stakes to this. Mr. Arrow, like, and sucked into the black hole. And that leads to the making of greatness scene, which I have always loved and still love and will occasionally watch because I just love that scene. Great animation work in there. Super expressive. The score compliments it really Well, I think the score is really good all round.

I like that main theme a lot. James Newton-Howard. Yeah, I love the, going back to the character design, the, the turtle guy at the beginning. There's like, there's so many great ones throughout the film and the, in the way you'd expect from like a Disney, 2D animated film back when they kind of cared about that. Yeah, well, that's the problem is that it is the way you would expect. It's a fucking paint by numbers movie. It does everything to basically the bar of expectations slightly below for me in most cases

Like I don't know you say you love the score I just I find it the exact type of score that you could Absolutely just replace with another movie exactly like this and no one would be able to tell the difference Like it's generic as fuck It's absolutely generic It is it is it is it's going for a particular thing that we've heard a billion times. No, I love that theme. I think it complements it. It's swashbuckling. It's a very, it's a very nothing movie. No, swashbuckling, it compliments it beautifully. We get to argue. Um, finally. Yeah, finally. No, I actually love that theme. I think it compliments it perfectly. I mentioned

that transition after the storybook. It captures just that, that wonder, that adventure really well, I think. And I get like the not maybe liking the angst of it and that shredding guitar and the the Gugu dolls sequence. But I love that scene. I love it. It's all of these Disney movies from this era kind of have a similar kind of montage moment. And this one's like a really strong character moment. It's using the visuals instead of overly explaining what's going on. It's the when he's abandoned by his dad. And I don't know. It hits for me. It's, it's, it's definitely, it's definitely a time capsule as far as early 2000s and that kind of stuff, but I honestly adore it for that.

What did you think of that, that musical moment? Which particular musical moment? The Goo Goo Dolls, um, I'm still here, like, song in that whole sequence. It just, it felt long. It would, they played the entire song. Yeah. I think it accomplishes a fair amount as far as like, implying their relationship. building, the chemistry building there, showing him as a kid and being abandoned.

I had zero investment in any of the characters at any point in this fucking movie. I really did not give a shit. Not even Dr. Delbert. I got nothing out of it. Oh, there's so much I like about it. I got nothing. The things you're describing that I'm glad that you got something out of the movie, but I was just, I was, I was just waiting for it to end from very early on.

So what was like the moment you were done with it? The fart guy. But even before then, like, I wasn't really attached to anything happening. I wasn't attached to the characters or the character's goals. I wasn't attached to the universe. It felt very Star Warsy, you know? Mm-hmm. We're doing a Star Wars.

That's definitely probably one of the things I like about it. Yeah. It does feel like it's the directors wanting to do their version of that. Yeah. Did that bother you then? Like the on the nose nature of, uh, there's no kind of, astronaut 60s imagery it's it's firmly rooted in like the 1600s kind of pirate aesthetic and there's like literally pirate ships like in space flying around and they've got like gravity

drives on them and it's like it's kind of I don't normally care that much about like a steampunky aesthetic but it's definitely kind of going for that yeah but it works for me I I like the like adventure vibe and it puts a spin enough on it to make it feel like unique to me I just wish there was more of a hook. I just wish I was wish there was more of a hook and less bullshit. The most memorable parts of the movie are the parts that I hate the most.

Fart guy and robot. I feel like the cyborg is the hook for me and his relationship with Jim. I genuinely like that stuff. I think it's really good. And they're like detail they managed to get into the movement of a lot of these characters and the variety of these weird little like, oh these scenes

are so dense with all these weird little creatures and I love that kind of stuff. I think my biggest problem with the animation in this movie is that unlike look back, which we praised, it feels so uninspired in terms of how to showcase a scene. In terms of like angles and framing. Like it feels absolutely fucking bland and paint by numbers and just like, oh, you're doing a job and technically you did the job

in the script it said show this and technically you showed this. But you didn't put any thought or creativity. into how to show something, right? So even that example of the scene with the, like, the blob, and he's almost doing like a whack-a-mole thing, it's just all from this very, like, ugly, static side angle where, like, constantly throughout the film, I'm thinking, like, okay, if I was in charge of this,

I would have, like, maybe a perspective shot there. Show what it looks like to that character. Show a different angle. Show something interesting, right? Like, the way that they handled this movie is just so, like, like creatively bankrupt in terms of presentation. I just,

I found it to be like embarrassing and ugly. Really? I just don't feel that way with a lot. Watch it again. I think a lot of the shots are actually beautiful. I've seen this enough, man. You don't know, I don't need to see it again. I've got like every line of dialogue in there.

Yeah, there's loads, as we were saying earlier with the look back. Some of these like sweeping camera movements I do love. And I think they're like swashbuckling and adventure filled and, just what I'd want to see from a movie like this. I really don't think that's where the issues where the movie lie. I think it's more just like, I think they, I get the vibe that they actually wanted it to be more serious, but it's kind of trapped being a Disney movie.

So they do have to have the fart guy. They've got to have the go delbert, go delbert. It's like, this could be just slightly more serious. Then, I don't know, because there is a bit of a clash there with the, the cat lady character, voice by Emma Thompson. Her kind of only character trait is that she's whipping out these really complicated words

that like no eight-year-old would understand. She's saying like monosyllabic and like that's kind of like it's so strange. And that does kind of emphasize that clash I'm talking about with like this, yeah, the baby fart, poopy robot screaming and then the complicated dialogue. And like Dr. Delbert has all these like wordplay comments that you make. makes, you know, like calling, accidentally calls Jim a felon and changes it to a fellow, fellow, Jim, felon, fellow. Just kind of stuff like that I've always kind of connected with and like the wordplay,

and I do like that performance for the Delbert character by David High Pierce. I just feel like it gets lost in the Disneyisms, you know, like Morph has to be, I like Morph, I've got to say, I do like him, but he's got to still be like a dog, you know? It's such an ongoing Disney trope, the dog side thing. And it's like, okay, I can deal with that. I'll put my cap on for that. But then, yeah, the fart dude. It's like, maybe they could have made that work if they'd almost leaned into it more.

Whereas like, it's just a fart joke. And then they learn the flatulent. Hey, I can speak flatula. Yeah. It's like, man, I want the, I want the edge. I want the solar sailing. That stuff is sick to me. I love that. I love the way it's reincorporated at the end for that, that sequence, that action

sequence, which I think looks great, actually. A lot of that held up for me and was like, that did have like perspective shots and was interesting with the way it's put together. I just, yeah, I don't agree that it was lazy as far as that. I think it's actually quite meticulous, especially for 2002. It was uninspired. It was absolutely uninspired. And every time that they did do some sort of like, oh, we're going to do like a sweeping camera movement here, not only was it few and far between, but the execution of it just felt like it was trying to imitate some other thing that already did it. Throughout the entire film, all I'm thinking is like, oh, I've seen this a billion times and I've seen it done better. That's that was that was the overwhelming feeling I had.

What about the combination, the specific combination of, I keep going back to the cyborg design where he's like kind of half CG, half 2D. That combination like really works for me. I think it sells him in the Ciburg design. I think you can do, it's like a common trope in sort of kids media where if you have like robot or mechanical characters, you can be violent to them. Like Jim stabs him in the leg and like steam comes pouring out and it's like, yeah, this is really cool and dynamic for animation. I love the way this moves.

No, I just, I love that cyborg. I think it works really well actually, the way it's, it's so much like movement to it and so much unpredictability with like the different things he can whip out with his arm and It's kinetic. It's cool. I love that cyborg. I think that if you're going to make a movie with three times the budget of the Lion King, about a decade after,

then the CG and 2D animation should mesh together and flow together in a way that is either equal to or better. The Lion King, you can't, you don't even know that there's 3D animation unless somebody explains it to you. This movie, it's apparent throughout the entire thing. They're like separate entities, right? three times the budget, a decade later. Like, I love 2D animation, but, like, there's a reason why

there's a reason why they fucking flopped and they're not doing it anymore. Like, I just, I don't know how they fucked up this bad. Like, the standard should be higher. When it's done perfectly a decade earlier with a third of the budget, the standard should be higher. It's unacceptable. I think, like, Tarzan, which I happen to

watch recently. I think I was slightly before this. How was it? That has some, I mean, I like that one too, but I'm clearly, I got my biases here. I like the Phil Collins soundtrack. I love, again, that combination of these really complex CG tree structures with Tarzan kind of like sliding down them. I don't even like care about Tarzan, but just specifically that one, I just think, I just think it works. I don't, I like that formula of them just taking these classic stories, some of which hundreds of years old, you know, deal with Lion King and Shakespeare or whatever. and just mapping like, I don't know, using their creativity to reinvent it or put a spin on it. Just simple things like the X marking the spot.

It's like a planet with the asteroid belt mimicking an X. That kind of stuff's cool to me. That's novel to me. Are you Elon Musk? He's ruined it. He's fucking ruined it. God, hey. Man.

No, not even Elon Musk can ruin treasure planet for me. No, I'm not going to let him. No, that's still cool. Nothing. No. You were impervious. No, that's what's so weird, but there is like, there is peril to the movie, this weird spider villain who's like killing Mr. Arrow, he's sneaking about. Yeah, that spider guy looked cool.

Yeah, he's got a good voice. In fact, the voice acting is really good all round, I thought. I liked the cast of JGL. Roscoe Lee Brown. Yeah, he was great. He's Mr. Arrow. He's got the presence. He's the opening narrator as well, I think.

Yeah, he's a cool character. He's like randomly a rock dude. Yeah. This is so early 2000s, man. She's make rock Raiders. It's like a rock golem dude. Oh, it rocks. No, I get it.

Yeah. Joseph Gordon Levitt. I really dig his performance too. I think he put it all into that voice acting. It's angsty. I'm right there with the character. I like Jim. I think he's a good, especially for eight-year-old me.

It's just like, This is my, this is my Lion King right here. You know what I'm saying? Well, awesome. I'm glad. Moves fast. Yeah, I don't know. I like it.

I just love that swashbuckling adventure. That's what I'm looking for. You're a steampunk. It's just so unabashedly earnest all round. You know why this movie didn't make any money? It was released the same weekend as Harry Potter and the... Because none of the characters were fuckable is that way. No, Jim's mom's pretty far?

No, you don't like spider guy? You don't like rock dude? It's like, it's almost like the Mars needs mom sort of situation, you know? No, don't know. Like, the characters are so ugly. Like, if a furry's not gonna fuck it, no one's gonna want to see it. That's the rule. You're telling me that, you're telling me there's no results for like the dog and the lady.

The cat, the cat lady's ugly as fuck. The dog guy is ugly as fuck. The guy, the dog guy reminded me more of like fucking goofy. Right? He's a goof. Yeah, but he's more of like he's not supposed to be the hot guy, right? He's like the the scientist goofball archetypal. Yeah, well, you need some fuckable characters. Yeah, Jim's mom. No, but they did they did release this film for some reason the same weekend as Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets, Die Another Day and the Santa Claus too. So that obviously didn't help. The adverts were garbage and did a terrible job advertising. the film. So I definitely did play a part in it. I'm sure that played a part in it, but at the same time, like, also, just just keep in mind, like, within the era that this was released, and, like, they're just kind of going through the same motions, right? They're just, they're releasing it as

this is the Disney movie that you're supposed to see, but it wasn't really offering anything unique particularly or new. Like, it's just doing the same. What? It's steampunk. That's the difference. Like, I, before I even watched this movie, I just, I didn't know if I had watched it or not, and I was also kind of confusing it with Atlantis the Last Empire, which came out the year before, right? Like, just, yeah, I got a soft spot for that one, too. Yeah, exactly. And like, the main character looks very similar, right? There's a lot, there's, I don't know. It just, it just seemed like they were doing, like, a whole paint by numbers, movie by committee, this is the thing we're supposed to make.

I don't feel, it doesn't feel like that to me. It feels more like it's, I don't know, it's taking itself, it wants to be taken more seriously and be more almost like gritty, but it's stuck within the trappings. And you just mentioned Atlantis. I don't remember that one having the comic relief problem in the same way, but that one also didn't connect with wider audiences. Yeah, I don't remember much about that movie either. I remember it well.

Again, it captured that sense of adventure well. I like that main character, Milo, a lot. I had all these cool, like, I don't know, part of it is just, like, the mechanical, like, ships and, like, these kind of, I don't know, items in the world. And, like, the map being this little, like, Tetris Cube thing and morph, like, tricking them at a certain point by morphing into it. And it's like, oh, you're not just, like, a far throwaway thing. It's like, you're using that in the plot somehow. I don't know, there's more thought put into it to me.

It's just, I don't know, it didn't land with broader audiences outside of eight-year-old me. Hmm. Well, if the world was made up of eight-year-old ewes, then it would have been a more successful film. Then it would be nothing but bangers. Yeah. Bangers and men. We'd have Treasure Planet 2 with Willem Dufo, which was supposed to happen, but it bombed so bad. Sorry, what?

Is that a real thing? Yeah, they had plans. Yeah, he was going to supposedly play Metal beard or something It was going to be like Jim's dad coming back And he's got to team up and do all this Yeah, that would have been sick Whatever

Go back to the other timeline, fix it Was I ever dancing with an android named Lupe? Why'd they do that? You're going to rattle the stars you are That's what I'm after Not screaming robot why'd they do that? That could have been such a cool character to introduce like towards the end of the movie and getting his memory back and it's just like, oh for the trap. And then they reference jaws

gonna need a big boat. No, just be your own thing, okay? What'd you think of the last shot in the movie? It's corny. It's hilarious. It's literally, it's parody worthy. It is, it is, that's real cool. I've got no way to defend that one. That's corny as fuck. That's the encapsulation of the movie for me. I get, I've got no argument against that one. That's funny. Yeah. Anybody who's listening to this that didn't see the movie, the movie ends with like a shitty

face in the cloud. It's just like. No, an awesome face. Okay. The most awesome face in the clouds. And like a star where one of their eyes should be is if it's like winking and this like kind of hopeful somber music at the end like, aw, it's all wrapped up.

And he's in the clouds his face. Thing. Yeah. Then the Goo Goo Dolls kicks back in. Yeah. We get more Goo Goo Goo. The lead singer. Yeah.

A Goo Goo Gaga type movie. Oh, dear. No. I won't get upset. Now, this film rocks. It's Bionicle Core. Yeah. I love that shredding guitar.

How much in the they barely have that bionical shit in the movie anyway It's like just to it's just to set up at the beginning just so that you're not shocked when he does it later And then it does the yeah that those two instances No, he does it in the opening for the whole middle sequence with the Google do goo dole dole Um that old sequence where he learns to We practices on the smaller solar sale thing that comes up Solar surfer. Solar surfer.

Some fan you are. Yeah, I feel like that's one of the consistent things, actually, throughout the movie. Compared to the random humor that doesn't always land. Fart monsters and other things. That stuff just really does not work against the, like, real peril that's there for me anyway. Did you care about the treasure? No, but it's more just like, it's more to aid that the, the, that are, of the cyborg you know okay he's committed his whole life to it that's why he's a

cyborg enhances him as a character for me and then he's got to make that choice at the end between him and Jim and him making that choice despite dedicating his whole life to it that as meaning to me I like that I'm never gonna watch this again it was the most boring I hated it four out of ten for me I like I wasn't even love with the animation really I just the standard should be higher for that fucking budget a decade after the Lion King it should look as good and it doesn't the character's faces looked like fucking rubber movements were weird

really yeah I thought the 2D animation was really good it's just mostly that 3D stuff that holds it back outside of cyborg it's not 140 million dollars good it is hard to justify that budget I know it was in, it took four and a half years to put together and was like paused and had all of these issues getting made. So I'm sure that didn't help with that budgetary stuff going on. But I don't know. I find this likable or revisit this time and time again. You could say it's, I'm blinded by nostalgia.

I'm sure many will. But I don't know. There's something in this. This film's got its cult audience. The treasure heads stay strong. This is a seven out of ten for me. Three and a half star. Wow

I'm still here So the same rating you gave the Lion King I raised my rating of the Lion King Oh okay To be fair I was I was I admitted later It was too mean

Oh that that's funny Because I actually bet on stream that you would Really? No I did that before didn't I I swear in a previous episode Post that one I was like No I was too mean to the Lion King Okay

That's a lot Well I didn't know you officially raised your rating now yeah no I officially did but it wasn't in response to watching this I want to make that be clear I mean

yeah yeah that was awesome I'll watch it again tonight do it I hope you enjoy yourself I hope you have fun I will I'll be shredding along to it

you could actually just change your channel into a treasure planet podcast where you watch it every day So, the new detail in the background characters that I can make 10 minutes Until you understand the fart language Until you're fluent

I bet there is like a wiki page on the lake Because this, I'm not alone with like the Strange passion that is a Associated with the angst of this movie Yeah, there's other weirdos I'm sure someone has done that Yeah, there's plenty of freaks that love the treasure planet All right

Uh, question time. Right, let's do some questions from the Saddamas community head over to the suggestion thread over on the subreddit. For, to leave questions for future episodes, sorry, I got... Stunlocked by this one because I think it's so good from Tass the Trilby. Both of you do an impression of the other. He wants to go first. Fuck. I should have been given time to practice.

Your voice is really hard to do an impression of... Okay, I'll go first then, I'll try. This is going to be bad Not even AI can do my voice yet There you go They got Joe Roggan down though Okay So I just

Oh my God Okay no I just got to commit So I just saw Treasure Planet And it was shit Oh my God It's so hard It would be good if

Michelle Hara could directed it Six hours time No it's impossible You just took clips for my videos. Um, give me a line that I'll try to repeat.

You say something and I'll try to match. It's not going to go well though, but... The shredding, bionical, electric guitar. Um, the shredding, bionical electric guitar. Keep going. Fucking rocks. Keep going. Fucking rocks.

Really? Do I really sound like that? Do I really sound like... Oh, fuck. I can. Fing rocks. Blood-A. And now I'm doing an impression of you, doing an impression of me and doing an impression of you.

Holy shit, it's getting meta. I like it. Yeah, I don't know about that one, Chief. Yeah. We're too distinct. We're too special. I don't, yeah, I don't have the, uh... It's in the water!

Accent. And I don't really have the, like, Cockney one. I feel like Americans and Canadians really struggle because there's so many different UK accents. And I don't even know what mine is. Like, I confuse people who live here. There's a town near me called Malbara, right? And I went to a wedding, like, last year. And I was having a conversation with someone saying, like, yeah, I went to this town,

Marlborough. And they were like, what? What are you talking about? And they, like, couldn't understand me. And they live in the UK. And it's like, fuck. Every hour there's a new accent. So I guess I can't really blame you guys for not keeping up.

I can't either. Hmm. God. And well, let's flip the script a little bit and do this one from Daniel the film guy. How are you guys feeling about the election? The legy movie fan, 1968, replied to that saying, yeah, I hope they talk about this, considering the impact the election could have outside of the US, I want to hear what they have to say about it.

Yeah, well, it's a real question mark as to like whether or not Trump does all the things that he says he wants to do. So if he's like, okay, we'll put tariffs on everything. Seems like probably a bad idea. That seems to be the only policy that's actually talked about, even if that is, I don't know, the concepts of a plan. If that's what sells it, I guess. Yeah, it was just tariffs and concepts of a plan, I guess, that he won on. Yeah.

Fibes. Canada and the US are like the world's largest trading partners. Yeah. that makes sense. So whatever happens is going to influence my country. I can only hope that if the US economy nosedives, that Canada does also, because I get paid in US dollars, so I actually do better if my country is doing worse in comparison, just from the conversion rate.

So I have a vested interest in the US doing good and Canada doing bad. That's funny. Yeah. Well, even though I'm much further away. in the US and Canada, is that the US is a very important trading partner with the UK. And Trump is partial because of his mother being Scottish or something. So he does like the UK apparently. So maybe that can help with trade deals or whatever.

But we obviously have ostracized ourselves as a country post-Brexit. So trading in the EU is a more complicated thing. And now we got this stuff with the US going on. So it's like a lose-lose fast, basically, if this tariff thing does happen. And yeah, it's also, I guess my biggest thing with how it might affect the UK is I'm looking, I'm looking to the future to our next election. And we got our boy, Nigel Farage. You know this guy? You know this piece of work.

Yeah, was he, did he do that thing with Sargon? Yeah, yeah, they were in the UKIP party or whatever, which is now reform, kind of a populist, mostly anti-immigration type thing, is the whole beat. I thought it was pronounced Ucky P. It was, yeah, and that's why it was dissolved and had to rebrand. But yeah, it's more so, I'm thinking about five years time when there's another UK election and just the die being cast by this kind of populist, like, you know, just the talking points are very similar in UK and US. Look, trans people are a huge issue right now.

The issue, you know? They're the most important. Yeah, I'm just scared about that rhetoric like sticking and spreading to us with like people get disenfranchised. You know, they see their money being worth less, the inflation going up. They, I guess, have goldfish memories or at least like the economy is extremely complicated and most people don't have the time to, you know, analyze what's going on. And I'm not saying that I have any expert level opinion at all. But just some of the conclusions that are reached by average people seem to just be like emotions led when I thought the whole sort of conservative thing was facts over feelings. So can we not talk about policy and facts and what that actually means instead of like guttural trans stuff makes me upset?

But that wins elections. And that's like actually what you're voting over? Yeah. Yeah, I heard about that. There was that they, them ad that was like. devastating for parts of America as far as like spinning public opinion or whatever and it's like do I can't believe that's like the level of discourse right so non-productive and just like man not a good feeling and I'm not this is a Brit and a Canadian talking about this like neither of us

are directly impacted outside of the stuff we just talked about like economic I mean I don't know I've been living half living in the US for like three years or whatever and I go there frequently, you know, like half of the people that I talk to are in the U.S., right? Yeah, I mean, it's concerning, and you can only hope for the best, but I don't know what's going to happen. If I were to try and I don't know try my best to like explain I guess the

situation that we find ourselves in like relatively globally at this point is you know shit's impacting people in negative ways with the housing market with rising prices like corporate greed etc etc etc And unfortunately, you know, when you have even left-leaning parties in power, shit just doesn't get done about it.

Like Trudeau, it has no interest in, you know, breaking up the big three in Canada. He has, he doesn't express any interest in, you know, trying to meaningfully alleviate or help to fix this gigantic issue that people have been having with affordability and wealth inequality. Because unfortunately, just through nature of being a politician, most of these people just have their in groups, which is rich people. And even if they're like socially left leaning, they're still looking out for rich people. And that's the bubble they live in. And they don't have any real understanding of any kind of actual struggle that the voters, that an average person, is going through.

And so, you know, then voters being so comically fucking uninformed, especially in the United States and get mad, I guess. People always get pissed when I say that, but it's true, being so incredibly uninformed that, like, all you see is something associated with what's currently in power and your current living situation and your current struggles. Yeah, so I'm saying about goldfish memories. And then, you know, when there's a two-party system especially, you just go like, you're not helping me.

I want to do the other one. Or maybe there's like some mentality of like wanting to punish those in charge, even if it means hurting yourself, which I don't know if people are fully aware of. But right now it's like, I don't know, we got Trump presidency and then Republican House and Senate, I believe. And now he's got all these fucking wacky-ass cabinet picks. One guy. So let's see how the next four years go. And, well, yeah, I mean, it's not looking good. It's not looking good.

Hopefully you just coasts. That's like best case scenario, I guess. It's like, I'd really, I guess, underestimated the media misinformation, like issue we are in as far as the internet being used and certain avenues of misinformation. whether it be the aforementioned Elon or Russian interference or just algorithmic waiting one way or another. I feel like we've mentioned this before. But just like it's like impossible to even have conversations, basically. Everyone is so rooted in their in group. Yeah.

Everyone believes what they want to believe. It seems emotionally led and how do you argue with that? Like, what are you actually supposed to do about that? Yeah. And the, not only like the types, but like the amount of information or misinformation that a person is exposed to, to even begin to have like any kind of meaningful conversation or even like a disagreement, there's so much to unpack and untangle about every person's belief where it's like, oh, you've been, you've been fed so much shit. And each one of these points that you believe would take like a Kimba video. to explain to you why it's wrong. Yeah.

And so then it's like, what do you do about that? And by then, by the time it takes you to make one of those, there's like 68 new narratives that have been formed. It's like, yeah, I, I don't know, we've done some Pandora's box opening with a social media in the way, like, I don't know if we're responsible enough to, or like, there's so many bad actors. Like, the media landscape was a problem when it was like your Murdox, you know, you know, know, which is still an issue with like Fox News and whatnot, and like billionaires owning these big media platforms like the Wall Street Journal and whatever. It's become more brazen. It's become so much more out in the open now.

And it seems like we're just hyper normalized to it to the point where, you know, if this was suggested decades ago, people would be up in arms. But now it's just kind of like the, you know, frog in boiling water or whatever. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It just seems, I'm not American, but it seems quite anti-American to have, to be okay with, like, what Musk has done buying Twitter, for example. And how is that not a conflict of interest using oligarch money to buy it to begin with?

Like, how, like, what is, what the fuck is happening? If it was Bill Gates, there would be. Yeah. It's, uh, it's crazy. Yeah, it's so comically insane. And it's like, I guess my only hope is like just AI, really. ruins it. It just makes it all of them so unusable with just like the Facebook like AI slop and

it's like, oh, no one can believe anything, I guess. We've got to go back to a different source or whatever, but even then. Even then people just like, I, there's so many people that when confronted with the possibility that something might be inaccurate, they still don't care. Like we're past the point of like principle in politics. Like people, people just don't even give a shit anymore. There's just so much distrust. No one believes anything, yeah.

Yeah, it's just, it's vibes and it's teams, right? It's tribalism. It's not based out of any, like, real policy. And it sucks. And I, like, you know, there's, it's, it's true that, like, you know, the people in power, Democrats, you know, liberal party in Canada, they're not really, properly addressing the gigantic issues that that people are facing. Sure, they put some band-aids on them, but not enough for people to substantially, like, feel. And so now it's like,

okay, well, I guess we're going to experiment again and see how fast we can nosedive. And, uh, yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be a weird four years. Yeah, well, it's the exact same story. I'm, uh, I'm hoping that it doesn't, uh, get to fucking authoritarian. Because like, you know, whatever you think about Trump, it's, it's, it's, it's, I don't know if it's as big of a problem that he's president compared to the Republican House and Senate and his cabinet picks. Like, those are more concerning to me. Because like, you can, depending on your system of government or depending on how, you know, things are organized, you know, there could be checks and balances that prevent a lot of worst case scenarios, but it seems as though based on how

this election went, that those checks and balances are just completely out the door. So, uh, yeah. And like the polling and everything being so, uh, whack and inaccurate and, yeah. I'm just selfishly scared for the UK for, yeah, the more disenfranchised, I guess the middle class get. They just tend to swing a certain way and it's like just populist right. Yeah. I feel like even if we get like a, you know, uh, poitieuvre in Canada, which is the new conservative party leader, I feel like even then, like I'm not as concerned, I guess, as. what's currently happening in the US. Because I feel like there are more checks and balances in our system of government.

Like you don't have as much power. Like things have to be done in a cooperative way. Like we you know minority government is a theoretical outcome, right? Instead of majority government with more control. Yeah, yeah. So you never know. And I, I have no idea what's happening. I have no idea what's going to happen.

I just like I'm. I wish that even if people had all of these like really stupid and shitty economic ideas that are probably not going to work and even though those do have like real world impacts on people

and contribute to people struggling financially that sort of thing seems like kind of an inevitable thing to have happen my concern, my wish for something that didn't happen would be like these weird scapegoats, like people using trans people or anyone from smaller groups and using them as excuses and using them as things to attack and things to demonize. That's an unhealthy thing to include in your society.

and is very concerning. And I don't know what's going to happen. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Good luck Americans, I guess. We'll check back in with you later. It's so weird. It's so weird, especially as an outsider.

There's so many people out there. There's so many intelligent people that, like, philosophers and scientists that have had no issue comprehending very complicated subjects, even theoretical subjects, or like, free will, right? Or like the existence of God or any number of, like, complex things to work out in your brain. But a lot of these people, just like,

trans people has just broken their brains. Like, where just like this new, concept is just so incomprehensible. It's not just that there is stuff like vaccines are like controversial now and are like voting issues. I don't know. It's hard to blame the average person when it's like the media going back to that, that media landscape that has been fostered and it just seems like innately linked to,

well, if you're building media empires that are trying to, I don't know, impress the, or lean into the fiduciary obligation of making number go up. Definitely. You're going to sell the most papers by getting people mad. You're going to get the most viewers on your show by making people angry about a thing. So it's like these complex narratives are formed. It makes people mad. It gets people angry. So they continue going on Twitter and quote tweeting people and arguing. And it makes numbers go up. But it is like makes us insane. And the last 10 years I feel like have been just, it's going up. It seems to me. And I feel like we crossed a line at some point. point where it's like this ain't just online anymore like this is affecting a reality in a way that's like scary um and just unsustainable yeah yeah and uh it seems like nobody has any idea how to even come close to addressing combating this issue yeah because like you need uh you need a like free press and one that people trust i guess for like like a democracy to work. It's one of the key tenets of it. But no one believes it. Like before I saw

Nora, there was an ad for the BBC, which is a publicly funded television station with no ads, which has been controversial for the past few years for corruption and whatnot. And the whole ab was about like, we're trustworthy, by the way. And it's like, oh my God, we're fuck, man. Yeah, playing on the defense. Yeah. It's like, man, if that's where we're starting, I don't know. I don't know how to change that narrative. And it's all about these grand narratives that are just so deeply rooted at this point. Here's my prediction for the foreseeable future.

Is that we're going to see a lot of intentional sabotage of government programs. And then those government programs not functioning because of those sabotages is going to be used as justification to privatize said programs. That's going to be the main theme. Welcome to the UK. Because that's the goal, really. That's the goal in general is, you know, corporations just kind of creeping into political power in order to make citizens dependent on their services and, you know, earn more money through them and sabotage existing government functionality. That is the state of the UK now. Like, and it started in the 80s.

So it's like, I was born into this mess. Oh, yeah, it's been happening for a while. That's why it's such an easy prediction. We're just going to see more of that. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's like that, I saw like a YouTube short of like joking about the dystopian future where sleepwalking into.

And it's kind of that joke and dream scenario with like the ads in your dreams. And like, you've got to buy your like premium sleep app so you can, can get your good sleep. And it's like, my own your joke, but like, none of the water in our country is owned by the Brits. Like our energy, it's why our energy, we have some of the most expensive energy in the whole world in the UK because we've just sold it all off. And like, we were, we were relying on Russia for a big amount of it. Good idea. What a great plan.

Yeah. So yeah. And we just like don't own anything and have an invest. in any infrastructure for decades. And yeah, let's go. It's hard not to get dumery with this kind of stuff. Yeah. So you can only hope that like there's, I guess, like, two potential silver lining outcomes.

One would be Trump is magically the best president and everything gets fixed and things are fine. The other outcome is things get so bad that even. You know, the people that support him can't pretend that he's not responsible or that the Republican Party isn't responsible. And there can be some, I don't know, reinvigorated enthusiasm in voting. The problem is like, and you know, as someone who's spent a lot of time in the U.S. And talk to a lot of people in the U.S., the problem is that the average person is just so politically apathetic. Like, I know.

Yeah, that's how they win, yeah. I know, like, actual, like, people from marginalized communities that have told me, like, oh, I'm not political. I'm just, it doesn't matter who wins. It's not going to affect me sort of thing. And I have to resist the urge to, like, you know, say a billion paragraphs to them. Yeah. It's the only way it's able to get as bad as it is from that apathy. It's, like, part of how it's so effective.

Better fucking hope it never affects your life. Right? Like, you know, you might, you might not care at all about, you know, how things are governed. And, you know, a lot of good people don't want to control other people's lives, right? But unfortunately, there's a lot of terrifying people that want nothing other than to control your lives. And if you're asleep at the wheel, you know, you don't want to. it to be too late until it's already negatively impacting you for you to realize that you could have done something about it.

So. Yeah. And some places are better than others that like getting mad over, uh, this sort of thing. Like the, when the French, they like raised the retirement age and they were like in the streets, like rioting like, some of this stuff is like genuinely that level to me. It's like, why are we not in the streets over some of this stuff? It's so maddening. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But how about a counteract that was some good news from noise beginning? Bionicle 2? We already had that, actually. Any thoughts on the recent announcement of the upcoming season 2 of the rehearsal? I don't remember if we spoke about the rehearsal on this show, but we've definitely both seen it. Yeah, I think we were planning on doing that for a while and someone didn't watch it and so we never did.

Let's see. Yeah, I don't think we talked about it on the show. But that's something that like I could rewatch it any time. And I love. I actually love. Yeah, I'm glad it's getting a second season because they pushed the concept pretty far in that first one. I can't wait to see what crazy ideas he comes up with. The rehearsal is like one of these fantasy scenarios that we've envisioned of like,

give this guy a budget, right? Like, we never could have anticipated Nathan Fielder with a budget. And what he winds up doing with it, it's like, wow, you actually, this is, this is like one of the highest concept things that anyone has ever done. This is the Synecdochie, New York of Nathan for you, like, literally. Yeah. Yeah, it does feel like, take. what people loved about the humor of Nathan for you, but getting, yeah, just taking the premise

to this insane extreme, like doubling down and doubling down and just exploring what comes out of it. And yeah, especially, the most memorable stuff to me was about the, I won't spoil anything, for those haven't seen it, but there's a whole sort of child actor angle to it, which I thought was really fascinating and illuminating. And yeah, it's not that like Nathan for you is one note, but it's more like a formulaic comedic thing compared to this where yeah it's experimental it's bizarre it's weird um it's so interesting yeah and also like it's it seemed like part of what made it special was kind of just it going where it needed to in the sense that like he had so much money and could do whatever he wanted but then I think because of COVID they wound up actually having to

focus in on that particular story rather than doing it more episodically I think that might have been what happened right yeah I suppose it's 2020 but then through that like something more meaningful grew that like wouldn't have

happened otherwise yeah it's only those eight episodes um yeah I don't even want to go into details because I feel like it should just be watched with an open mind. Yeah, we can talk about that later, yeah. But I'm very happy it's gotten a season two. Because everyone who's seen it seems to love it, but it's not like, it doesn't seem as big as Nathan Few, for example,

even though it does only have one season. But yeah, I'm so happy it's getting picked up. Let's see. Nathan for you, 41,000 IMDB ratings. The rehearsal has 20,000. 27,000. So it is less popular, I guess. But still, like for one season. One season. And it is on HBO, too. It's pretty big. It's like a premium packaging. So. Another question. Should we wrap up on this one? A little question for me from Die with You. The question is for Alex specifically. Many years ago at the start of the podcast run, the question was posed about physical versus digital media. Alex stated that he preferred digital and that he liked.

the convenience of not having physical media clutter his space. With the conversation only increasing in volume when it comes to physical versus digital media, does Alex still feel the same way? We're seeing more and more stores discard their physical media sections due to its perception of being outdated, but there's the other perspective on the idea of never actually owning the media you've purchased online. You still feel the same way, Alex, or as your opinion changed over time. I'm kind of almost the complete inverse point now.

Now we're kind of settling on this streaming wars business and all of this content that's just been eradicated and lost and written off and all of this kind of stuff. I feel much more of an urge to own. Not everything, but just like the cream of the crop stuff. Like after we watched Mars Express, I bought that on 4K Blu-ray. And just more obscure stuff that I feel like this is going to be really hard to Find probably in a few decades kind of things you know where it's like I don't think you got to worry about like

Deadpool versus Wolverine like finding that shit in 30 years time, you know But it's more the the lower budget stuff the indie stuff I picked up that weird Show first man which was I don't know after Mars Express I got I went on a little kick and found that show he'd made as well Jeremy I can't remember his last name. I got the physical version of that with a nice poster. I'm like, you know what? I think this is the future for my absolute favorite stuff to build that up. And just not have to worry about it, not have to think about it.

Because I don't know what's going to still be there in 15 years on my iTunes or Amazon Prime or whatever. Like something crazy happens and it gets absorbed. Then what happens to my rights? Oh, I guess I don't have. It's just a technical license, I suppose. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You just can't trust them.

These big corporations and megacorps. I've kind of been spun to your side here. Yeah, the physical copies also, like, look and sound better. Yeah. Like, they do. Like, if you have the right setup, like, it's, it's the, it's not as compressed. Yeah, that's true as well. And yeah, I just like, I, I like having these things to, you know,

to not have to worry about which service. service it's on and if it's being removed from said service. Yeah. I like the dependability of it. I like having a physical thing to have as like a collector, I guess. Sometimes it pisses me off. I was literally, I think yesterday, maybe the day before, I was reminded of a movie from 2014 that I really love called Magical Girl, a Spanish

movie. And there's a Blu-ray. But there's no English subtitles. So what do I do? Oh. What do you actually do? And it's like it's not that popular of a movie. So it's like, okay, I might have to cave and get that Blu-ray just so I can have a really good quality version and then rip it to my computer and add a subtitle track.

So that I can watch my digital physical copy. Yeah, I before it bought the disc version of First Man because it's like a weird, obscure French thing. I was watching it on the internet archive because it was available on some French website for free on there. Then of course that like hack happened and I was having trouble accessing it. So I was running into a similar thing. I'm like, well, shit. Like I don't want this stuff to be like lost media. I guess so frustrating.

So yeah, I think I've been radicalized the other way. You're so radical, dude. Oh yeah, I'm a bionicle from 2002. You know me. I do. I, yeah. I'm still here. A classic.

It's a classic. It's 20 years old, so it's like technically history now, right? It's a retro. Yeah. So retro steampunk. All right. Thanks for the questions. Hell yeah.

I am struggling for my recommendation. You're struggling? Yeah, well, because I'm trying to find something that I feel like watching. Yeah. And I want something that's like not too long. Yeah. Because we're recording that. I'm fairly busy between now and the next recording, so I don't want to do too much time.

What do you got? Well, yeah, let's do it. All right, we were talking about short movies being good. This one's an hour and seven minutes long. and it's called Tetsuo the Iron Man. Have you seen it? No, but the name rings a bell. Cool, I've also not seen it.

Why do I know this? I don't know. Cyberpunk, body horror. Okay, I'll soaks up my alley. Cool. 1989, directed by Shinya Sukamoto. If you wish not to be spoiled, watch it before the next episode.

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that was not like a joke because of a Freddy you go bitch or something Oh I don't Oh yeah there was Yeah when it was good Well

Thanks for listening Everybody Have a happy Bye everybody Next four years Have a happy Solar sale Keep those thoughts positive

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