Sardonicast - Sardonicast 208: Oscar Noms, 28 Years The Bone Temple, Breaking the Waves ft. Louise Weard

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

Guest socials: https://louiseweard.gumroad.com/l/castration-movie https://www.instagram.com/weardjupiter https://x.com/weardjupiter?lang=en Listen early and ad-free at https://sardonicast.com or https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast. Merch: https://ymsmerch.com/products/normie-masterpiece-sticker-sheet Website: https://sardonicast.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/sardonicast Twitter: https://twitter.com/sardonicast Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sardonicast.bsky.social Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sardonicast Sardonicast Highlights: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8AhJ0bzQgs5fb9m_ZCRqkw/featured Adam's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@YMS Alex's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/IHEOfficial Jake's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ManCarryingThing Jake's movie channel: https://www.youtube.com/@womancarryingman Alex's Twitter: https://twitter.com/IHE_OFFICIAL Adam's Twitter: https://twitter.com/2gay2lift Adam's bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/yms.bsky.social Jake's twitter: https://x.com/ManCarrying Jake's bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mancarryingthing.bsky.social Adam's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/YMS Jake's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mancarryingthing Intro music by: https://www.youtube.com/user/anUnkindnessvideo Timestamps: 0:00 Intro + Louise 27:12 Oscar Nominations 1:28:49 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple 1:55:15 Breaking the Waves 2:37:14 Questions 2:54:32 Recommendation + outro

All right. Three, two, one. Who's a tart? I'm Adam from your movie sex. That was a quote. You're asking us? From me asking Jake who a tart is. This is Sardonicast.

Hi. Yay. Hey, I'm Alex from IT. I'm going to say, how's that? How's what? What was that? I didn't even. How's that?

I understand. I understand. Yeah, thanks. I'm Jake. for Man Caring Thing. And I'm going to say humans and AI, sometimes we just make mistakes, you know, which is a quote from my new favorite film, Mercy, starring Chris Pratt in theaters right now. Oh, nice. Why are you dead naming Chris Pratt? He prefers to be called CP. My bet. Sorry. CP. Okay. And we got a special guest, whoever that may be. Introduce yourself.

Hello, I'm Louise Ward, the person responsible for the Caspiration movie you listeners have been hearing all about. And so we're all the special guests you've brought in the background. Oh, well, I'm currently at the Newark Airport in New Jersey because I was on tour screening my movie in New York City, baby. So I've actually brought the entire airport with me onto the show. Okay, perfect. It's a first.

It's like an Altman film. It's definitely a first. And I did not know that would happen until the call started. Well, I was kind of like not saying it would happen so that I could still guess on the podcast. Okay. Well, why didn't we just, we plan this for like a month, though? Why didn't we just pick a different date? Because we wanted to wait for the Oscar nominations.

Otherwise, we would have recorded last week. We could have, I mean, yeah, we could have just moved it forward like a day. I mean it's fun it don't get me wrong it's funny I'm just gonna have to tell the editor like don't even try to remove the noise from it's like it's just gonna be a noisy episode yeah which is fine it's a one-off we're here now we're in it I feel like it fits the the theme the mood the tone of Oscars nominations you know what I mean yeah oh yeah well and I think saying that people have come to expect from me and my work is really bad audio so I think that uh It's really, really right on point.

Yeah, the fuck it, we're doing it live approach. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, the audio wasn't bad in castration movie. I don't think, no. I didn't think it was bad. Yeah, yeah. For like what it is, there was, there was, I, I appreciated on repeated viewings.

The, how shots were cut into the next scene, basically like at the end of a distinct noise, whether or not the noise was added in in post, but like having kind of like a beat just to transition into the next scene, it's like, I don't know, I consider it to be smart editing. Thank you. Not too many people do that. And, Louise, I just want to say thank you. And I guess blame you also for causing Adam's hyperfixation on castration movies for the past

like five months or something. It's like, it's... I'm a gelding now. Yeah. And now we're like, we're invested in the castration lore. So, uh, and I, I had no idea what I would expect walking in, not walking in. When I said like I walked in, watching it at home. Being thrust into it.

Yeah, yeah. Watching this film. And it was so much more interesting than I could have ever expected. It was so, so good. It was, it was genuinely like a wonderful, um, experience. So, uh, thanks for bringing us that. film. Thank you. You know, I love whenever my work's called Interesting, because I always, I always, I always go back to when I was in film school, one of my professors said to the class, like,

hey, if you ever are like doing a screening with your friends and you really hate their movie, just call it interesting. I say it was interesting. And of course, that resulted in me who had been using that as my secret ploy for years was now found out and everyone realized that I hated all of their work among my fellow students. No, no, no, I didn't hate it. I loved it. But it was a baffling in sections. And I think that's a good thing for me. Yeah, no, I understand. I think I did make a work that it does apply. The term interesting definitely applies. Yeah. Well, interesting is a nice blanket term that you can use for anything. Because even if it's not interesting, it would be interesting that it's not interesting.

Yeah, exactly. You can find interest in anything you want, really. I find life in general interesting. Yeah. Like, Star Wars is interesting, even though it's not. It's interesting that people like it. Is it? Is it interesting?

I mean, I feel like it's interesting to you because it's like, you don't understand it. You can't comprehend it. It's alien to you, yeah. Oh, yeah, I just don't get it. Well, maybe I should put lightsaber's in my movie. I think that would be pretty cool. Oh, yeah, that would make it way.

better. Yeah. That'd be very Doug Walker coded. That's what it was missing. Yeah. That's why it's not at the Oscars. Oh. Not enough Disney in that. It's true. Yeah. No, I got robbed by the Academy this year. That's for sure. No trans filmmakers at the Oscars. Yeah. There's not really any good trans filmmakers, unfortunately, so. Wow. It'll be a little while until one of us is at the Academy Awards. Yeah. Well, not for Best Director anyway. Oh, is there is this the backlash to Amelia Perez last year? I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's, uh, that was the most inclusive trans movie of all time. I really, it should have won. It should have won. Yeah, they still have a chance. They should re-nominate Amelia Perez this year. They should. Give it a second shot. Oh, yeah.

You know what? I've got to get Amelia Perez in my movie, I think. That would be the real movie. No, yeah, Sophia Gascon. Yeah. Carlos Sophia Gascon. No, just like, yeah, but she's going to reprise her role as Amelia Perez's in the movie. Oh my God. That sounds so good. Just walking into frame, just pulling out a gun and smiling, just occasionally. Oh, yeah. Spoiler, didn't she die? Like, at the end of the way.

Oh, come on. No, she lives forever in our hearts. Oh, no one's ever really gone. Yeah, we never saw a body. So you could, if she could have got out of that car. Ooh, and if you had lightsabers in the movie, you could start the trailer, like, somehow Amelia returned. And, like, nice. This is not my perfect movie right here.

Oh, my God. Yeah, she's like in the Darth Vader get up. That'd be fun. Like she's all burned on her body. And then just, yeah, just say the whole thing's parody and you're good. Oh, that be sick. No licensing. Yeah, do Alex and Jake, do you have any questions for Louise as a guest, a filmmaker?

Yeah, I really want to like delve into, because what washed over me with your movies, especially, was your attitude or process towards dialogue in particular, how kind of naturalistic it was. And how you managed to pull that off because it feels so organic. and kind of, I don't know, that process of how much of it was improv or how much was written word and planned out. I'd love to know where you talk about that process in some way. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, like, what I think is so cool about it was I really wanted to get kind of the bare basics of like what it's like to work with performers and try to get like a neutral performance out of them. So for me, it really came down to this sort of like idea of how do I make it so that these actors are like embodying the moment and like kind of snapping into a more

reactive acting style as opposed to like what I would call like an anticipatory style like I think when you're working with non-actors especially you run into this issue where like they might look at a script and be thinking of okay where do I say my next lines they're kind of almost waiting for cues in a way like they're waiting to say their piece and that robs the moment of its authenticity, whereas what we were trying, like what I was trying to do as a director was really pull it back to a solely reactive style where they had to actually think about how they were responding in the moment in the way that like real conversations go. So like a lot of that came from, you know, we would block a scene and like we wouldn't rehearse exact dialogue, like in a way

where it's like, here's what you have to say verbatim. It was more so, like, a matter of, here's the impression of what you need to get across. And I would, like, throw some lines in there as, like, examples. But for the most part, it was really, like, I need you to hit this beat, and then you hit this beat, and then you hit this beat. And so we would more so, like, like, handled almost,

like, blocking cues in the same way you would tell an actor, like, oh, here's when you walk over here, and then you say something like this, And then that way, the actors were always kind of like embodying the moment. And like when you rehearse enough and get them deep enough into character, you end up with this just very natural way where they just fully are embodying the person they need to be. And the actual acting follows away. Like it's almost like a possession or something.

And like, especially with like the second film with like the cults, I was in New York, I was meeting up with a bunch of the actors. actors and like a lot of them were telling me like yeah no it did feel like I was like in a cult that weekend that we shot it like it was like like it was so real to all of them doing it and it was like like you know almost traumatizing where it's like like like not in like bad way but like in a way where it's like you know they had to bring it up in therapy or whatever because it was like they had to kind of unpack like yeah no I kind of went in was in a cult for a little bit and And I think that that's what's, like, fun about taking an approach like this is, you know, we have such trust for each other, like, as a director with my actors and it really, like, makes those movies work.

That's awesome. Yeah, I agree that, you know, one of my pet peeves is when you can tell that the actor is waiting for the other actor to, to, like, finish their line, especially when the written dialogue is an interruption. So it'll be like, what do you mean? And then they'll say half a fucking sentence or half a word. Pause. And then the next actor, like, no, you're supposed to start your line early. You need to like overlap if you're going to do that. But yeah, that's super cool.

That's a really, really well said, awesome approach to dialogue and filmmaking. Well, and it's part of the looseness of the style helps with that. We're like, obviously I'm filming these movies like really off the cuff with like a camcorder that's like right in the action with these actors. And like by coming to one take and stuff, it's like we don't need to, like trying to do these oneers and whatnot, allows us to like live in those moments in a way

where it's like no one has to remember that they have to now overlap their dialogue at the same time again. If we do like a different coverage or something, like it allows it to be like one and done in this way where the actors don't have to focus on like having to redo the same thing. It's more so like if a shot doesn't work, like we're not getting the emotional intensity.

I need or whatever, if we reset, they're not also having to, like, try to match a beat of something they did before, you know? And I think that that's, like, a great deal of freedom where, like, every single time we roll the camera, it gets to exist as its own unique thing. And it allows me to, like, play a little bit more with those actors when I need to as well. That's really fucking cool. Yeah, I love that. I had a question about, like, how you work with people who have experience acting alongside people who don't have any experience acting. Like, do the same rules apply to those people as they would to the non-actors? Yeah, I mean, like, the thing is, is it's all about, like, just getting people into character.

And I think that the thing is, is, like, whether they're a non-actor or someone who has, like, a lot more acting experience, it's, you know, it's less the experience that changes the approach and more that every, like, person has a different approach that you need to take with them. And I think that that's, like, what's so integral from that, like, director-actor-actor relationship is, like, you just have to bring in, like, to the work, whatever that unique person's needs are. And, like, I think that, you know, with some actors who have more experience, they require a lot, like, they're going to ask a lot more questions in order to get into that character, whereas some of them, it's like, you know, we'll share like two sentences of like, you're like this, here's your

backstory, go. And then they don't need anything else. So it is like, I would say there's like much less of a distinction between like non-actors and like more established actors and just like different personality types. Okay, cool. I have one more question real quick. Sorry. Because this is.

No, that's fine. Interesting to me. So the cinematography, like what motivated that style like to have, because I feel like the low res feel makes it almost timeless. Like it doesn't feel like it came out recently. And it almost makes it more cinematic compared to if you were trying to shoot it in like a, you know, high, high res, you know, modern. Something like that. Yeah. Like, like I hate how digital 4K looks. It doesn't like look like cinema to me in a way where like, you know, someone who shoots video quite well can still get something that looks like cinematic. Like there's so many cool like video art.

movie projects like from the 80s and 90s that I really aspire to like reaching the the heights of like finding like the sublime beauty within like such an ugly gross format and and I just don't see that as much with like the clarity and sharpness of like like 4K video like it feels like sorry 4K like digital cameras like I feel like whenever I used to shoot digital it was always like throwing broken lenses in front of it or doing some post-processing, like, to make the footage look a little, like, more organic and closer to something that has, like, flaws and imperfections. Because I find, like, imperfections to be, like, a much more human element of art. And there's something that, like, clarity robs from, like, I don't know, like, for the magic

trick of cinema to work, there needs to be something that's kind of distancing you from the image of what you're watching, right? So I think that from that perspective, video just made sense to me. And what I really found with that specific, like, high eight camera was it was like a camera that I had as a kid. It was like the family home video camera. And the second I got it back in my hands, when I was playing with the Zoom function and all this stuff, I kind of liked the fact that it was like almost like an anti-cinematic form that was like almost closer to home video. And I felt like that would like the first thing I shot. was like my friends doing one of their band performances and just the way I moved across

their bodies and all this stuff I realized like this is going to be the language of the movie I'm making nice that's dope it's so I might have remembered this wrong so I swear when you first told me about the camera you said like digital high eight is it a digital hiate does that make sense is that a thing or did I remember it wrong yeah yeah so it is a thing so there's like like there's like analog hiate and then like digital hiate is just slightly different because it records the video stream in a way that I can like use like a DV cable to get the footage off of the camera. If I was using like a camera that was like 10 years older, that was like the more old fashioned

like analog hiate tape, it would just be like more, it would be like trying to like shoot like SVHS or something like there'd be a lot more processing to try to get off the camera. Okay. So shooting the digital hiate is just like a little better because you have less. degradation on the tapes. And since it's hard to get tapes, I tape over everything quite often. Like, we're using the same tapes over and over.

And then, so, so, like, digital hiate is just, like, basically just, like, it would be, like, analogous to, like, DV tape. Like, they're very similar, just, like, slightly different in terms of, like, the, the methodology through which, like, they store information.

Awesome. Yeah, I find, I find those type of cameras very, very nostalgic. I still have my old one that I was using when I was a kid. I love the Zoom function on it as well. Yeah. There's something special about it. Well, and what I think is really fascinating is like I'm now starting to see the people who have been inspired by castration movie, so to speak, where like I'm seeing more people in their like early 20s who are shooting on like high eight or DV tape or whatever where they're like recording parties or even like shooting short films and stuff on these mediums and what I find

interesting is like at the age I am I have like a certain degree of awareness of like I was I have memories of holding that camera as like a kid and as like even when I was in junior high DV was still kind of like the format I would have to shoot at if I wanted to make like a video at home. So it is interesting because I feel like these younger kids don't have that same connection to it. So I'd almost expect them to be picking up like, you know, like a rebel like T3I or like a flip video camera or something would be like maybe saying more like if they wanted to match something similar to what I'm doing. But like, yeah, it is interesting that we're starting to see this like kind video renaissance again.

Yeah. And I hate, if it all looks like crap, I'll hate being responsible for it. I mean, it's way better than I've seen so many movies try to like emulate that style, but they just put like a shitty filter over it. And it's like, okay, no, you didn't even bother to do anything authentic with it. Yeah. You're just doing this. Well, and it's so funny because like it's like a knowledge set, right?

Like I remember in film school, I wanted one of my movies to look like. It was like recorded on VHS off of TV because it was like trying to like pretend to be like an episode of like a lost TV show from like YTV or something. And it was so funny because like to do that myself, what I did was I dubbed it onto a tape and that like dubbed the movie onto a tape and then re-recorded it and recaptured it back in. So I got an authentic look of what it looks like. But like nowadays I think people would just like use like a filter in like premiere or resolve or whatever and just like. like at like VHS filter and it's like no like you can you can just go buy a VCR and do it yourself like it's not hard yeah yeah one of my favorite things is uh in check it out with Steve Bruill Tim and Eric uh in order to get those weird like warping VHS like glitch type things they literally

just fed it through a VCR and smashed it they like just fucking wailed on it and it looks cool it looked great right so I yeah it There's a lot of fun stuff you can do with it and getting that authentic feel is really important. Any more questions for Louise? Anybody? No? I do kind of want to know we're talking just before we started about the UK and you described it as hell on earth. Yeah, no, I mean, do you not agree?

Was that London specifically? I was in, you know, like, in North America, we have this thing called freedom. that the Americans started. And when I was in the UK, I kept on being harassed by like community enforcement officers who would run up to me anytime I lit a cigarette and like try to find me for littering. Like they'd walk and be like,

I'm going to stand with you until you throw out this cigarette butter. I'm going to give you a $300 ticket. And one of them actually ticketed me. And so I was like, this has never happened anywhere else. I've traveled in the entire world. So I turned on the UK. I was like, this is a police stay. Was this, was this in London?

This must have been in London, right? No, this was in Birmingham. Oh, really? That's funny. And Bristol. Well, maybe you shouldn't litter. They're pretty serious about littering. Yeah, I wasn't littering.

They were just mad at me for smoking cigarettes in public. It was crazy. That's weird. That's hilarious. Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Alex? Sure, whatever. Fuck UK. Yeah, I don't know a single person that lives in the UK that doesn't like dislike it.

I do like the idea of me as like a trans woman visiting the UK is like, yeah, no, I didn't like that. I was being persecuted as a smoker. Yeah, no, I was going to say that's brave. I'm glad it was the cigarettes they went after. Fucking hell. Yeah, yeah. I hear it's pretty bad in the UK, the transphobia. Turf Island, they call it.

Yeah, no, it's terrible. But it's bad everywhere. But whatever. Someone should make a movie about this. It's cool that you have those screenings there too. Because I mean, in that environment where people are, you know, probably subject to a lot more harassment, I'm sure those types of screenings mean a lot more to them too.

Well, it's kind of funny because, like, what I will say about the movie that's so awesome is it just like, I think the one thing I learned more than anything is that there's such an amazing community among, like, queer and trans people. everywhere that kind of has like almost like I don't use a term monoculture because there's nothing monolithic about it but at least like the people who come out to castration movie screenings are always so excited it's always very similar types of people and whether I go uh you know to like Scotland or Ireland or Australia or in this case uh or like most recently like like Texas as well It's like I'll see this amazing group of people in the community who are happy to come out and see a big movie or like my little movie in a big room with a bunch of people.

And there's something that's like a very beautiful like community unifying thing about it. And it makes the world feel feel pretty nice when I get to travel around and like kind of have these similar experiences and all these different places and especially places where people like almost like abandoned like queer populations and way of thinking like, oh my God. Like, who would go to Texas or whatever? And it's like, no, showing up there and seeing how great all those girls are or whatever was, like, awesome. Like, I had a wonderful time. So I think that they're saying really nice making a movie that kind of has, like, for what it's worth, like, some degree of radical politics and getting to, like, go and experience that in, like, a room of like minded people. Yeah. Well, it is a big movie because it's twice the length of other long movies.

Yeah, like, it's, like physically big. It's huge. No one torrents it because it's too big of a file. Like that's how I beat piracy. And also because it's fucking $3. Yeah, that's true. Nobody torrents it because it's the cheapest, it's the best deal for movies that exists right now. Yeah.

No, and I think that that's the important thing is like making a movie accessible. Like that was like saying I always wanted to test out was like the second someone hears about this movie, they can put it into Google and buy it that moment. And I think that, like, that's the biggest thing that's, like, ruined a lot of the, like, distribution of indie films over the last little while is that, like, you know, if a big movie premieres at Sundance, it might, like, never even come out in a way that, like, you can actually watch it. Whereas, like, for me, it's like, if I were to, like, debut a movie at Sundance, I would want you to be able to, like, go online and VOD at that night. Because, like, the attention economy only lasts so long. It's, like, you got to take advantage of it. Yeah, I mean, there's, that's the beauty of self-distribution and also like owning what you create as well. That so many, so many people are going to film festivals and then, you know, it's like you kind of need to sell it. You know, the bidding war. So it's like a different economy kind of. Well, and I think that like festivals are becoming increasingly irrelevant when like there's no film monoculture anymore.

Like, people kind of find, like, the niche stuff they, they like and kind of stick to it. So, I think modeling film distribution closer to, like, the way that, like, digital commerce works among, like, content creators and stuff is really going to be the future of making, making this stuff work. I mean, yeah, you're definitely legitimizing it in a good way. Yeah. No. Do you submit to festivals? No, I wanted to. I hate submitting to festivals.

Now the festivals reach out to me, which is really nice. Which I do love getting to do festival screenings. It's just like I don't, it's like they're not my priority for the distribution of this because like even like, even like, even though it's like so fun to attend a festival

and like to meet people and like it's so nice from like community aspects. Like I get that out of just attending. Like screening a movie at a festival can be kind of exhausting and get in the way of like the fun like making friends aspect of it. And so like to me, uh,

uh, the, the whole nature of festivals is so secondary to like my distribution plan like strategy for this film. And, uh, so, you know, really if we do festivals,

it's just because it, it's with friends who really want to show it at like their festivals and stuff like that. Um, so, so that's really been, been the festival strategy. is more from like a social perspective than it is like a marketing or publicity perspective.

Yeah, that weird analogy, but I talked to a friend recently that was vending at a furry convention. And it's like, wow, you go to a con to work. Okay. Right. I go to fucking have fun. Well, thank you for all the informative information. Yeah, that's awesome. And I guess, yeah, we'll talk about, we're going to try and plow through these Oscar noms.

Alex, can you do your best impression of someone who's auctioning, who's hosting an auction? Yeah, I can try my best. I can try my best. We can go for actor and meeting role first if you want to do. Yeah, I can just like rock it through these, right? Okay. Let's just do this. I think that's the fastest I've ever heard you talk. Yeah, I try to keep it slow normally.

We're skipping the shorts. Do whatever you want. I don't give a shit When's your flight, Louise? I've got hours, don't worry Yeah, well, when are you bored? We got three hours Okay, well, does anybody else have hard out? So I don't know

But like, I think it's good to skip The shorts because like shorts aren't real movies Like, yeah, honestly Yeah, we hate shorts. Just make a feature. Also, yeah, like the best shorts of the year Are never like nominated anyway Because they premiered on YouTube or whatever

And or, yeah, exactly That fucking French ad for the show Supermarket, that should have been in the animated category. It's not. Didn't even submit. For any budding filmmakers out there, just make a feature. It takes the same amount of effort as a good short. Yeah.

And then it's a real movie. Like a short's just the best part of a movie, so a feature is just adding in all the not as good parts. Yeah. So it's like... Right. It's not as hard as it seems. Just go do it.

And then if you turn it into a feature, you're ineligible for best screenplay, and it has to be adapted. Yeah, you're actually so right. Which is like is an adapted screenplay even real? You adapted it from your own screenplay. Like fuck off. All right. What's nominated for Best Picture?

Right. You want to do it that way? Whatever you want it. I don't know. Who has hard? I just want to say, can I say first? Let's lead with the biggest omission of this entire thing is no other choice. Locked out completely.

What the fuck? Yeah. There are a few snubs. I'm so happy I showed it to both of you before. before the noms came out because that's a genuine like travesty

because the last time I was like really upset it's a movie not getting any noms was like I'm thinking of ending things but at that point it's like okay Netflix didn't campaign for it it's not the type of movie that the Oscars would acknowledge anyway

even though it deserved to be in many categories everybody forgot about it it was released at the beginning of the year no other choice was just at the fucking globes okay he was not nominated for director, fucking Li Bionghen actor, like they didn't, they're not unaware of this movie. This is like a spiteful snob. Like, what the fuck?

Yeah, it's making money too. Like, it's doing well in theaters, apparently. Every single nom that exists that you're about to read is now I'm heavily scrutinizing because no other choice isn't there. There's so many, there's so many that you can easily get rid of. Maybe he should have made a bet. Maybe he should have made a better movie. No! It needs to be more like F1 or something like that, you know?

They did make a better movie. It's called Wicked for Good, and it also got snubbed. That's a happy snub play, that one. It's called Parasite. It's not. No, a very different movie. I looked this up. I fact-checked this.

Parasite is the only Korean film nominated for anything ever at the Oscars. That's crazy. Great. But you can look at the entire here. history since the 1960s. Korea has been submitting films almost every year, like every year since like the 70s for sure. And, you know,

they've submitted fucking Li Changdong films and Bong Joon-Ho films. And like, they just get ignored every single year except Parasite. And now I guess it's like, I don't know, the Academy thinks, well, you've had too many.

You won best picture. We don't need to acknowledge your country anymore. You get one win every hundred years and then just shut up. Also, shout out to the fucking rules for international feature where one country, The country decides what they nominate. So there's been many times where like a French filmmaker has made obviously the movie that would be submitted. But then the director said something negative about the French government and the French government went, oh, we're not submitting your film to the Oscars and submitted some bullshit instead.

And then also you're only allowed to submit one per country. So there's a notion, there's an expectation from the academy that there's no there's no movie worth mentioning in a country that already submitted a different movie. You can't have a country that's not America that's making more than one good movie per year Fuck off I'm already mad we gotta get through this preach But it is an American award show yeah exactly like it's an American show like like that's an American show like like that's what it what it's for It's like the Hollywood Hollywood award show yeah, but they don't call it the American show they pretend they pretend like they're acknowledging the best movies like like I'm not gonna like be mad at the bafters or whatever for not no like a Korean movie or whatever but they're honest about it it's in the it's in the title it's British is the first word so now and everyone cares about the bifters yeah yeah everyone cares about the Oscars yeah but but I I will say like I'm not too worried about like no other choice not getting nominated what I am curious about if it means that like neon's losing some level of like no credibility or something all of their other movies are nominated they've got like six other

That's true. Because, yeah, I mean, obviously the Panahi films. So, yeah, I guess that's true. And, yeah, we'll go through the list. Like, a lot of them are neon. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So, actor in a leading role. We got Tim Cham for Mutti Supreme, DeCaprio for one battle after another. Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon, Michael B. Jordan for sinners. And Wagner, Mora for the Secret Agent. I haven't seen Blue Moon or Secret Agent yet, but what are you feeling for this? I think Tim Chams got it. Tim Chame? I mean, I wouldn't be mad at Leo for sure.

Yeah, I think it was a career best performance for Ethan Hawk in Blue Moon, actually. Like, that would be, that's who I would award for it for sure. I think it's like, he does incredible stuff in that film. And it is just like a showcase of him as an actor. It's just him monologuing the entire movie. And it's very powerful, yeah. All right. Jake. I mean, Michael B. Jordan is just nobody's, it could happen.

I don't know. I mean, Sinners has got 16. What is it, 16 noms? Yeah, I think it's 16. Reaffirming that it's a normie masterpiece. The most noms ever. Yeah, it beat Titanic, didn't it? I just think the saddest and most predictable outcome would be it gets the most nominations ever, and it wins zero.

I feel like that's something the Oscars would do. Oh, it's not going to win zero. It's winning casting for sure. I think it's a couple. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah, the song stuff, yeah. It's winning score even though.

Anyway, yeah, let's keep going. Yeah, we'll get that. Actor and a supporting role. Benicio del Toro for one battle Jacob Alourdi for Frankenstein Delroy Lindo for sinners Sean Penn for one battle after another and Stellan Scarsgard for sentimental

value some good picks in there It's got to go to Sean Penn there right That would be my personal pick I want it to be Sean Penn Delroy Lindo I mean that's that was the surprise That's what everyone was talking about How great it was he got nominated

I hope he wins But is that a reason to win Is that your surprise they were nominated? Yeah fucking I don't I want him win. Yeah. All right, cool. The other guy, I mean, they've all been recognized. Jacob Allorty is like 12, you know, and so he's got a future. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it really depends on how much, like, one battle after another will, like, resonate with, like, academy voters because it's one of those, like,

prestige, like, movies where it has, like, such a legacy cast to, like, you know, I could see that in one world like kind of sweeping like this like is also such a crowd pleaser entertaining like artsy movie? Yeah, I feel exactly the same. Yeah, I could also see voters kind of splitting their vote being like, well, one battle after another is going to win best picture and director. So let's see, let's do something different for acting and all these other roles.

Which is a sad thing to realize. And also Sean Penn and Beninio del Toro, they might split the vote, you know. Yeah, maybe. So we'll see. Well, let's do actress in a leading role then. We got Jesse Buckley for Hamnet, Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You, Kate Hudson for Song, Blue. Renate Reins for you. Sorry about the Norwegian pronunciations and whatever, for sentimental value.

And Emma Stone for Bargonia. I was happy to see Bogonia in here. Yeah, it was crazy how controversial that Kate Hudson was here. Because a lot of people were expecting to see, like, chase infinity for one battle. Yes. Yeah, but I think I'd go with Roseburn for this. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, Roseburn was great, actually.

I would like to see the sentimental value. Yeah, I think that would be my personal pick, but I've still got to see if I had legs I'd kick you. I've heard Roseburn is amazing there. Yeah, she carries the movie for sure. From what I hear, it seems like Jesse Buckley has it locked down, but I think it'd be very funny if Emma Stone won for Bagonia. Yeah.

And then people would just be like, okay, all right, this is getting ridiculous. Enough, enough, yeah. I love Emma Stone. I feel bad, but Jesse Buckley's performance in Hamnet is bad because Chloe Zhao's a bad director. Hey, base, base, based, base, base, base, base. Like, like, all she does is make Jesse Buckley, like, just be so over the top. It's like, like, the whole movie is, like, just the most, like, ugly crying, sort of, like, performing. Like, it's just directed so poorly.

Like, Jesse Buckley is doing the best she can with the material, but I just think there's no subtlety to the performance at all. Yes. I haven't even seen it yet. I'm kind of dreading it. Yeah, sometimes the biggest performance wins. So I could see her getting it for that. Yeah. The loudest movie wins sound.

Mm-hmm. That's the rule. I don't like you taking shots at the director of my favorite Marvel movie, Eternals. I don't think that's fair. But whatever. Oh, man. Yeah. Okay.

Actress in a supporting role then. We got Elle Fanning for sentimental value. Inga Ibstotter Lilius for sentimental value. Amy Madigan for weapons. Woon me Mosaku for sinners and Tiana Taylor for one battle after another. I was happy to see Amy Madigan in there for weapons. I didn't think weapons would get any love. So that would be my kind of personal pick there.

Yeah, that would be the best outcome for this one. think in my opinion yeah I think Tiana Taylor is so fun in one battle after another I wish like I mean it's the classic supporting role where it's like I wish she was in more of that movie because she's so good in it so I don't know I could see I could see it going in that direction as well yeah it's Tiana Taylor for me too I think she'll win also animated feature film is next we got Arco Elio cable demon hunters little Amelie or the character of rain and Zutopia 2. Exceptionally weak year, I feel.

I swear to God, I thought you said Argo, and I was like, hold on. Did they do it in the new version of Ben, Ben, Applex? Okay, no, it's that, Natalie Portman, I haven't seen it yet. I don't know, I've heard mixed things. Yeah. I don't know, this is kind of a weak category for me. I'm not really passionate about any of these, maybe Zutopia 2, unless Arco or Little Amelie really blow me away. Yeah, I've heard good things about Little Amelie.

I haven't seen it yet. I don't expect to enjoy Arco that much. It seems like a lower age demographic. Elio doesn't belong there. Yeah, the fact Elio's in there kind of says it all about weak. The year is for that. There's no demon slayer or chainsaw man or anything like this. Guys, if K-pop Demon Hunters doesn't win, I'm going to do something bad.

Do you like that maybe? Yeah, it's fine. Okay, it's fine. But I mean, just reward it. Give it, give it the award, come on. I mean, it'll get song. Give it to Zootopia, too. No.

It's the better of the, well, yeah. That's who I'd give it to the moment. It probably will go to Zooto. It probably will be Zootopia too. I don't know. K-pop won the globe. You never know. That's true.

Yeah. Do you think it's controversial that they don't do, have any, like, anime? It's, it's bad that they don't. Because there were, there's some huge, huge movies, like, anime from TV show type movies this year. Two of the biggest films of last. year was yeah, demon slayer and chancel.

Like they made a ton of money. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, it is surprising. They're not, not here. Give it time. It's not surprising because they consistently ignore anime that isn't fucking Ghibli. And the reason why they do that is because Ghibli gets distributed by Disney over, you know, in the States. And so it has a direct connection with Disney. Otherwise, they fucking ignore it. Yeah.

They ignored fucking Mars Express. They ignored Look Back. Like, every fucking year, it's just, it's disgusting. Oh, yeah, they didn't know. Mars Express is not anime. but it looks close enough like it that they decided to ignore it yeah yeah I'm going to unfortunately skip over animated short film nice go to casting Hamnet Marty Supreme one battle the secret agent and sinners any strong opinions on this one I don't really have any strong from the selection yeah I would I would go with Marty's Supreme because they do

so much like that mix of non-actor and and like established actor casting that I think is so interesting like yeah um the like the safeties have always been the type of like doing some some level of like street casting and i think there's some inspired choices like like kevinlewery is the uh-huh vampire villain in that movie is like such an insane thing to do um so it's like i think i think that for choices like that uh i would i would i would lead in towards the casting in that film yeah yeah same here yeah i agree i think marty supreme should get it. I think Sinners is going to get it because I think the Academy voters will say, Michael B. Jordan played two characters. That's interesting. He did. He played two characters.

That's like half the amount of casting as usual. Yeah, I was going to say, is that like winning or losing casting? If you're just like, well, why don't we just have the same guy play two characters? See, I, this is the first year that the category exists, and I still don't understand what they're evaluating in the category, because if it's, if it's based out of like a main ensemble cast and just like, oh, you did such a great job giving the roles to the right people and they performed it so well, then it's kind of weird that sentimental value is not there because like four of the act, like the whole cast

is nominated for acting awards, right? So it's like, okay, well, that's not there. So it can't possibly be for that. And then some other people were saying, like in my Twitch chat, maybe they were speculating, like, that it might only be applying to smaller, like background, small characters. Like, it's not about the main cast,

But then it's like, okay, if that's the case, then I'm curious what justifies the sinners nomination. I'm curious what that's about. If it's supposed to not include films where, like, the actors are decided by the director before the casting process even begins. Like, if it's written for the character, it's like, okay, well, then that also applies to sinners because Michael B. Jordan has worked with Coogler for every movie. And Tim Chamm produced Marty Supreme. Like, I don't know. I don't know what they're evaluating. I want to hear like an actual thing from the Oscars talking about what their process is.

What qualifies it, yeah. I'm sure the Academy doesn't know. I assume that like the casting association has some involvement in it. And people who are in the Academy who are part of that association would be working towards what gets nominated. Because usually it's like based on the guilds and stuff, how the nominees get put together. So my best guest is that just because of thinking how the casting process goes on like a Hollywood movie, like, you know, casting directors are usually brought in on like a studio picture, like the sort of stuff that'd be nominated for Academy Awards, where it's like the lead role is usually already attached. And then you're trying to figure out who's going to fill out the rest of the ensemble.

And in the case of a lot of these like movies that are nominated, I think that they are leaning towards more ensemble piece movies for them. most part, like, uh, that have strong, uh, sort of like a strong presence of cast in like every role. And it, it is weird that sentimental values not, uh, here, but like, it might just be from the limit of, of nominees, you know, like, uh, if you only have five being nominated or whatever. They choose how many, okay? They could add more. There used to be only five best picture nominees. Now there's 10. They can do whatever the fuck they want. Right. Were you a big fan of sentimental value, Louise? I never saw it.

That's one of my blind spots on here. I know, it's awesome. Okay. Cool. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they only have so many seats at the Dolby Theater and they're trying to not have too many people show at. Well, and the thing is, I do want to say I'm really happy this category exists.

Because, like, having worked with, like, casting directors, they are, like, one of your strongest collaborators when you're putting a movie together. Like I have They their presence definitely does deserve Award and I am happy this category was was made You know what I thought had cool casting? Castration movie two Had interesting casting choices

So what the fuck Academy? Yeah, no I can't believe we have no nominations That's crazy I think Surratt would have been a good pick for this also Surrott had some good casting choices Yeah, still good to see that one Oh shit, you haven't seen it. I think you'd like it.

I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I will too. Cinematography is next. You've got Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, one battle, sinners and train dreams. I love train dreams. I'd probably give it to that, if not probably one battle for me. Yeah, I mean, the fucking, there's so much going into the cinematography in one battle after another that I just like I would love it to win cinematography.

I think that resurrection by gunn remember that movie we watched yeah that probably that that should have gotten a numb but I don't know if the academy

acknowledges that it exists that's one of the best filmmaking I saw of the entire year in that film yeah it's just nobody's seen it I think Sinners is is gonna win based solely on the video of Ryan Coogler talking about the

different aspect ratios to see the movie in that was posted when they were talking like see it in iMacs or whatever um i think there's something about sinners and and and the way it was uh like the cinematography was approached that like got people excited about going to the cinema to see a movie and i think that uh like like normal people going to the cinema to see a movie like call them nois yeah uh so i i i do think that it has a really strong shot at it yeah was a good point Yeah, I could see sinners winning.

I could also see Frankenstein winning, and that would piss me off because it's probably my least favorite. Because they love Del Toro, and it's like a visually breathtaking film, supposedly. But I think it's actually some of the, like, I don't say lazy, because Del Toro, like, creates images that, like, I can't even comprehend how a filmmaker is able to put some of those sequences together. But, like, for Del Toro, it feels like a very wacky, like, it's a very dark, muddy Netflix-looking. movie, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have the spectacle. Yeah. Some other snubs for this category, I think warfare could have fit in here. I think the cinematography was great in warfare.

Presence, Steven Soderberg, that would have been a great nom for cinematography. And last but not least, no other choice, you fucking assholes. What the hell? Yeah, that's an obvious one. This was like the most obvious. What are you talking about? That had incredible cinematography. There's also, there's another one, too.

Yeah, 28 years later. Oh, sure. Yeah, actually, honestly. Yeah, I think 20 years later would have been my number one for cinematography. It's the only thing that felt like was pushing the medium of what you can do with digital photography forward. And I think it's actually pretty interesting that I think all of these movies were shot on film that are nominated this year. Oh, interesting, actually. Oh.

Train Dreams was digital, I believe. Okay, train dream is digital. Okay, that's the only one I haven't seen, so. I didn't not like it. I loved it. Frankenstein was shot on film? No, man. No, there's no way.

At least three of them then. Yeah. The good ones. All right. Okay. Costume design is next. We got Avatar, Fire and Ash, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Martin, Martin, Supreme, and Sinners.

Can someone explain that? Yeah, why are you laughing at them? What's so funny about Avatar Fireman? Costume design and Fire. it the whole is it not just like were they not designed I mean but for that to be like I don't know I don't know

I think I think digital like if you're designing a character digitally I think it's good to kind of open it up to the realm of animation and in a in a bit of you know if it's good good costuming it doesn't really matter what the medium is someone had to design that

loin cloth for the 12 year old you know true on principle yes I agree it interesting to open it up to animation however if we're going to do that there's a billion other movies that should have should have been recognized either before this or this year above Avatar 3 for costume design mm-hmm yeah yeah that like that's crazy it's what it's probably gonna be what Frankenstein or a sinners I'm gonna be sinners I'm it yeah I mean I always think Hamnet because it's

always like the period drama like it's always a period movie depending on how many costumes were in it I don't know how many characters are in Hamnet. I guess all of these are period movies with the exception of Avatar. So. True. Yeah, I think sinners will probably go. I don't know. Who cares? It's just costumes. Well, actually, I will, I will say, like, the costume designers, like, I've worked with, like, they add so much to, like, the way that you work on characters with your actors. Like, sometimes just putting the clothes on an actor will change them entirely. So I think it's like, it is an important category. It's just like nothing here feels like so definitive where I associate like

that look with the character. Yeah. Yeah. I think Marty Supreme, the costumes I'm in Marty Supreme were incredible. I don't know. That might be a long shot. We'll see. We'll see. Also, sorry, one battle. Come on. His cause. The main look of Leo. Yeah. That people were doing Halloween costumes of that. Yeah. Well, that's the thing is like, like there was. more iconic costuming that like like you know all of the cautioning in one battle is so definitive for those characters so it is weird to see that not getting a nomination yeah it is weird yeah true true okay let's do directing then we got hamnet marty supreme one battle sentimental value and sinners um i don't know who this is going to go to i think no other choice is getting this one

Is it going to be sinners again? Because it's just kind of radicalizing me to everything's going to be sinners. I think sinners is going to get some like some of the techie or like lower, like it's getting casting and maybe, I don't know, maybe not techie, but it's like some of the smaller categories I mean. I think one battle is getting the major ones. I'm hoping PTA gets it. It's it's PTA.

It's PTA. I think, yeah, PTA. It's his time. It's got to be PTA's here, right? I'm hoping. I'm hoping. It's his, the departed year,

you know, it's his time. Like, yeah, I think so, which, like, I really don't like

his movies, but I, uh, really, I think, yeah, no, I'm just not,

I think, I, I don't like dumb guy film directors. Who? Like, like, PTA?

Yeah, I don't like PTA. Is he a dumb guy? Yeah, I think, I think he's a dumb guy film director. It's just like a certain type

where it's like accidental or, um, like, I think his storytelling is pretty weak. disagreed. Oh my goodness. I think it's the hottest take that's ever been aired on this podcast. That's a good whole take.

No, that's fine. But he's just full of hot takes. No, yeah, I want to hear him. Yeah. No, I just like hate movies. I mean, you can see it in the work I make. It's a protest against the concept of movies. It really is.

It's like challenging what a movie is. Yeah. But I think it's going to be PTA. Yeah. I don't know if any of these would be much. best director on the year. What's your best director? I don't know. I'd probably go with like Danny Boyle for 28 years later. Um, sure. There we go. Yeah. Because that movie's doing interesting things. All the performances are super strong. Um, yeah. No, none of these directors

feet like, uh, I, it's hard to praise, uh, Josh Safdi today, but I think he also did a great Because of the recent things that may or may not be true. Yeah, I was going to say the controversy. But like I will say with with with the safety movie like that performance by able Ferrar is so incredible. That like that alone deserves directing nomination. True, true. That's funny.

Did Jake say who you think also palatamist? Oh yeah, PTA. Okay, all right. That's good way. Yeah, yeah. Double lock on BTA. Documentary feature film then is next. The Alabama Solution.

I haven't seen any of them. Has anybody seen any of them? I've only seen one. I've seen one of them. Yeah. Come see me in a good light. I'm really rooting for Alabama Solution. It's Charlotte Kaufman is Lloyd Kaufman of Trauma Entertainment's daughter. Oh, shit.

Oh, wow, okay. I thought it was just trans Charlie Kaufman. Yeah, no. It's like really, yeah, really rooting for. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't let you read all of them. I just. No, there was only what, cutting through.

Mr. Novi against Putin and the one I have seen, the perfect neighbor, which I thought was interesting and sad and fucked up. But yeah, I want to see the Alabama solution in particular. Can I skip over documentary short film, unfortunately? Not real movies. But film editing, we've got F1, Marty Supreme, one battle after another, sentimental value, and sinners. The first appearance of F1, which I don't know, kind of stands out for me as a weak link in this list because overall this is like an okay

list of films I feel um yeah one to me where I feel like come on yeah best editing too yeah yeah there there's a lot of easy places for no other choice to be a lot of really really easy places for no other choice to be the editing in that film is fucking incredible sublime it's a little obvious no yeah

it's obvious but it's also incredible right so whether whether or not we're gonna judge the editing based on like I I think for me it's got to be Marty supreme because not since 2001 space odyssey have I loved a match cut as much as the egg being inseminated to the ping pong ball so I got I got to go with that although I'd be curious I think I think this could be like f1 definitely as like the most flashy editing out of any of these movies so I hope they don't do it I was gonna say I was gonna say don't hate me but I I kind of think F1 should get this. Yeah, well, I think I can see that happen. It also feels like a movie that was very

much shaped in the edit in terms of like, we need to get the story together. Yeah, exactly. It feels like it was a lot of work. I feel that though when I watch it. And they have they have rewarded that before Bohemian Rhapsody, the whole fucking campaign was. That was exactly that I was thinking, I was thinking about. We had to change directors because he was a pedophile. And there was no movie until the editor came along. And so they gave him the award. It's the most editing award Yeah Yeah the most

Yeah that's what kind of bug me about F1 Was the yeah during the racing scenes It is like slick and perfect But then they gotta have like dialogue And characters talking to each other in between that And the way that is like blocked and shot to me Was so badly put together Particularly without editing for me

So my choice would be like sentimental value probably I feel like F1 is definitionally A normie masterpiece In the way that Adam describes in her I feel like F1 is the normie masterpiece of the year. And that's complimentary, you know. Okay, cool. Yeah, I haven't seen F1 yet.

I'm dreading it. It's going to be a funny reaction at least. Yeah. No, I'm watching it because I'm going to be preparing for the Oscars. You don't have to do it on the podcast. Okay. But yeah, sentimental value is not a bad pick. One battle also.

Yeah, I'd pick them. Like, yeah, there's a lot of great editing in this category. I just, yeah. Really wish no other choices there. Love Park Chanwick's transitions. Very well thought out. Very clever too. I should marry him.

Jesus. I think one battle also just because there's so many different timelines kind of going on in that movie and so many different like side stories and whatever and it stays clear the whole time. So that's pretty impressive. Yeah. True. Yeah. That sequence at the beginning was like a lot of editing for the passage of time and what they were communicating and the voiceover happening all at the same time. Yeah, communicates a lot.

That was a very well-structured sequence. Too bad. Too bad, the director's a dumb guy. Yeah, no. It's too bad. He's just good at, he's good at, like, making cinematic images and ideas. It's just like, I just don't think there's anything really, like, you know, like, it's hard to determine, like, what the politics of a movie like that are, like, what the themes are.

Like, I just don't think there's anything underneath the hood. It's just, like, a nice car with no engine in it. Well, we could debate about that another time because I do have so many things I could say But we got to get through this okay next up is international feature film Not real movies the secret agent from Brazil it was just an accident from France Sentimental value from Norway Surat from Spain and the voice of hind Rajab from Tunisia I'm very fond of it was just an accident I mean no other choice

Yeah, which choice would be, but with the ones here? I see Saratda. I mean, when was the last time a movie was nominated for Best Picture, but lost international feature? Never. Exactly. So it's got to be the secret agent, right? Yeah, but sentimental value is also nominated, so. Oh, wait.

Yeah. I think that's the only reason why they nominate two foreign language films now is so that you don't know who's going to win. I think that's the entire reason. Two and only two for like every year. for a bit. Is that correct? Did I just... Well, what does Polly Market say? Yeah.

That's why I make decisions now. I'm going to, like, I'm going to assume sentimental value, but you never know. You never know. It could be secret agent. I don't think Surat has a chance of winning best picture that's never happening. It would be funny if Voice of Hindraja won best picture because it has no other nominations. It's a good movie. I like the director a lot.

It just wouldn't happen. Not in this industry. Yeah, well, you never know, because, I mean, Amelia Perez would have won last year if it wasn't for the massive social media backlash between the nominations and the awards show. Right? Like that, it was for sure going to win. And then the voters were like, I don't know.

Right. So if we see a massive campaign against all the other nominees other than voice of Hindrajab, if there's like a bunch of shit that comes out about all these other movies, you never know. There's already a bit of a campaign against Surat. People are digging up, uh, I guess not. even digging up. It's like a recent interview where he's like, the Brazilian nationalists in the academy will vote for a shoe as long as it's Brazilian, which is just such a funny thing to say. It's not even an old clip. He was saying this like a couple of weeks ago. I'm like, oh, damn,

I like, I like, I fact check this too. I'm like, Brazil hasn't even won many times at all. Like, I don't know what he's talking about. He's talking about this year. Okay. I want to know what he was trying to say. I think it, I think it was just an accident. the direction is going to go. But it's not nominated for Best Picture. I don't think it matters in this case because I think that there's just been such a good push for Panahi on the like awards circuit. Yeah.

Like I just, I just think that. I would love that. I think that the idea of like, oh, he's going to get the Academy Award and then go to jail is a very strong narrative. Yeah, true. I think he's already in jail. I think he's in jail right now. Is he not?

No, he's, I don't think he's returned yet. No, I thought he was in jail. as of like a month ago. We'll fact check this later. He's Frodinger's jailed director. Yeah, I can't remember if he got out or not. Well, I was going to say, I believe he said he wasn't going to return to Iran until the award show, like award circuit was done.

But I could be mistaken. Oh. So he returns to Iran just to accept his jail time? Why doesn't he not go back? Yeah, because he, because he loves his country. Oh, true. And, yeah. mad respect

wish that movie was a little bit better but mad respect for for him as a director I mean it was a great movie I really loved it you know yeah all right sorry I'm just such a hater no it's great

no please just unleash everybody can tell why we're friends honestly I feel like it's good you know it's like it's been it's been uneven I feel like I'm I've been too normie here you know, and I'm like, hey, let's watch F1.

And I feel like this helps balance things. I'm going to skip over live action short film, Sos, to makeup and hairstyling, where we've got Frankenstein, Kokuho, Sinners, the Smashing Machine, and the ugly step sister. Frankenstein's probably going to get this, right? Probably. I like that there's some weird picks in this. Yeah.

I've heard good things about Kokuho. I'm excited to see it. and the ugly step sister being in there. Like, that's a nice thing to see. Well, it's interesting how much of this is, like, movies with, like, intense prosthetic work done on actors. Yeah, that's usually what gets numb to. Like, it's not just, like, you know,

like, doing, like, makeup looks for, like, a period setting. It's, like, that plus some blood and gore and whatever, which I think is really cool. Personally, I think that the team for Frankenstein deserves it Because they had like a huge thing where they had designed that Frankenstein costume for another actor who dropped out right before production. And then you have Jacob Allorty come in who's like a giant. And they had to like so quickly do new builds and like retrofit it to work on him. And it was like such an insane feat of like makeup hair sign as an art form that I think that like they just from like that production story really really earned it.

And it look fantastic too. I hope they don't give it to smashing machine. Even though the makeup was doing most of the performing for Dwayne. Yes, it's the only nod, isn't it, for a smashing machine on here? Yeah, I don't think it deserves this one. Sorry, Benny. Yeah, I think Frankenstein has this looked. Well, it's just because it, well, I will say, like, the fact that you were able to do a movie like that, that has that level of, like, makeup work.

Like, like, the rock famously never shows up to set. Yeah. So it's, like, it is, like, crazy to have a movie that has that, like, they got. you know, get him to sit in a chair for that long and do stuff is impressive. That in of itself isn't an achievement. It deserves an award. Okay. Music, original score next.

Bagonia, Frankenstein, Hamnet, one battle, and sinners. My pick would be Johnny Greenwood's one battle score for this. I don't know what's going to win there, probably sinners. I am preparing myself to be disappointed because sinners is, gonna win. I think it's a crime that Max Richter was nominated because like the Hamnet is just like his greatest hits. It's just playing like all of his best music like it I don't think it should count. Yeah. Yeah I think Greenwood should get it but sinners is gonna get it and it's sad. I think it's criminal criminal that

Marty Supreme was was not in this. True. I will say I love the begone a score. I think it's loud and sets the tone of like a movie that's totally so hard to control. So I, for me, that one stood out the most. I actually kind of remember some of the good stings in that in the way that the other ones don't really stand out to me. Yeah. I don't remember the Frankenstein score at all. I don't know. It's Alexandra Desplat. And he gets nominated every time he has his name in a year. I do think it's criminal. that they didn't nominate Marty Supreme. They just created one million. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. No, that was like the craziest one because I thought that score was phenomenal. Yeah. All right. Okay.

What's next? Music original song, D.M.E. from Diane Warren. Golden from K-pop demon hunters. I lied to you from sinners, sweet dreams of joy from Viva Verdi. Train dreams from train dreams. I lied to you. This would be my synopic, actually. I actually really like that song in that sequence. Would be my choice. But K-pop Demon Hunters was in like the top 40 for a while, so it's winning. Yeah.

Yeah, I was going to say it has to go to golden. Like, that's the only one of these I heard on the radio. Like that, that song broke out in a big way that I think makes a lot of sense. So Diane Warren wrote a song for a Diane Warren documentary, and I guess the documentary is just about how she wants to win an Oscar, but never will. Like, is that what it's about? Like, she always writes the worst song of the year, but they nominate anyway.

She was nominated for the fucking Cheetos movie. Like, what the fuck was that? She's a good artist. Can you say? It's my first time realizing that train dreams had a song called Train Dreams. I didn't even know that was a thing. That's cool. Yeah, Nick Cave in the credits.

Okay. Now I know. All right. What would be your pick, though, Jake? Um, probably I lied to you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Right. We're on to the big one. Best Picture. Bargonia. F1. Frankenstein. Hamnet. Marty Supreme.

One battle. The secret agent, sentimental value, sinners and train dreams. Hmm. Pretty stacked. What's going to get it there? I mean, I think it's... One battle? Yeah, it's between one battle and sinners and...

Other possibilities maybe include Marty, Secret Agent, sentimental value, and, like, Hamnet? I think it's got to be F1. I think it's got to be F1 this year. It's Jerry Brockheimer's year. Thank you. You got it. That would be disgusting. I haven't even seen it.

Maybe I'll love it. The thing is, like, the way the Oscar, like, ballot voting where it's, like, the ranked choice can always introduce such interesting. results. So it's like what's the movie that would show up on everyone's like third choice ballot? And I could see it being like a case of like Hamnet winning for that, which would be really horribly frustrating because I really did not like that movie. But I feel like it's going to be like kind of split votes for number one between like sinners, Marty in one battle. And then Hamnet will get all the like number two or three picks. You never know. You're painting a picture that is scaring me.

Yeah. It's making a lot of sense. Well, can I open the question up to the panel and ask, what is the objectively worst movie of nominated for Best Picture this year? I mean. Oh, Hamnet for sure. F1. I haven't seen Hamnet yet, but. The two that I haven't watched, I'm expecting to enjoy the least.

So that's being, those are F1 and Hamnet. I haven't seen them yet. out of the ones I have watched than Frankenstein I guess but F1's like a forgettable movie there's some stuff in it that's kind of indebted to speed racer in terms of how like the racing is shot

that's like quite enjoyable it's it's so by the numbers that you know it's like this year's top gun Maverick you know like just trying to like put in this like legacy sort of like team movie together it works fine

Hamnet is the only one of these like that actually like pissed me off. Based. I'm excited to see it now. Yeah. I'd go with probably Frankenstein or, yeah, because I haven't seen Hamlet. I mean, I didn't really, I didn't like train dreams very much. So I have not seen train dreams, but my mom texts me to say that it bored the shit out

of her. So that's the normie view. Yeah, it's kind of Malick light, you know. Yeah, no, it's nice. It's, it's, it's, there's some good stuff going on in it. I did enjoy it overall, but it is like a not as good Malik film. It's still nice though. I'm rooting for, I'm rooting for sinners.

I want, I want to see sinners when. It'd be fun to have like a big boisterous studio musical. Also, like, the story around that of like, uh, Coogler, like, like, kind of taking all this control around like owning the copyright and like the way the deal was sorted out and everything. Like, there's just so many fun. Like, it would feel like the industry is kind of renewing in some way if sinners takes it. Like, it's kind of setting a way forward for how, how, like, bigger studio movies can look.

So I'm going to root for sinners. I think you nailed it just with the story. I feel like that's going to be the direction people are going, honestly. I think also because one battle has been kind of like the reigning champion so far and the expected champion. And now people are like, actually, maybe sinners deserves it. Yeah, one battle should have released like fucking November or something

Just so it's fresher in the academy's minds When did sinners release March April? When was that? That was a while ago I don't know We'll see Adam's scared. I am scared I'm terrified

It would be funny if Hamnet won we saw Like Spielberg accepting an Oscar for it That would be awesome That would be funny Oh yeah Yeah I don't know So out of the best picture nominees there's some good stuff in there

I kind of preferred last years because there were some interesting weird picks like nickel boys you know and like the fact that this substance was nominated for Best Picture was a big surprise that was nice

I know Louise you don't like the substance that's another one of your hot takes sorry yeah no I'm not a fan of that I mean like I think that like Bagonia is like kind of the weirdo pick in the mix here and I quite like Bagonia I saw it twice in the theater Yeah

Also Frankenstein That's another horror movie I mean it's you know Deltoro So the Academy loves him obviously But Like yeah I just think this is like a pretty

Like I think this is a rather Inoffensive slate Of Best Picture movies Like Nothing here upsets me It's missing one I know you want You want your Park Chan

Looks He's never been nominated for an Oscar Ever for any one of his movies. He's never been nominated ever. He's made some of the best movies. He's in my like top five directors maybe. Yeah, I mean, I think he fell off after uh, JSA. I think I think he made one good film. Wow. Wait, was that his first movie or something? Yeah, it was. Damn. That's funny. Which I love that movie. That's a great movie. Um, harsh. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of think John Ford fell off after three bad Ben.

You know what? The most accurate is Kevin Smith fell off after clerks No, because mall rats and chasing Amy are amazing Oh fine All right Yeah we talked about that And I think, you know, we could do like a Jake, do you have like a hard out

Or like could we do a 20 minute discussion about the new 28 years Sort of thing? Yeah, let's do it Okay, cool Yeah, we didn't actually do like a bunch of the I like that we skipped all of the writing and Yeah, we skipped all the writing we didn't even finish there's a bunch we yeah writing is not a real skill Let's do production design sound visual effects writing Well let's keep those in mind for next episode maybe we can like go a little

Unless we're fine to do a little blurb about that right now I'm just trying to be mindful of time Yeah let's do it let's do it real quick yeah no we didn't rush through them I thought you'd save the best picture for last and that's why no no I'm just going on the order of the official Oscars website that's having this for some reason that's what I'm looking at too I don't know why they did it that way yeah so it's production design next to Frankenstein hamlet Marty Supreme one battle and sinners mm-hmm I feel like my pick's Frankenstein um Jack Fisk uh Marty Supreme I mean it's fucking Jack Fisk yeah no he's yeah Jack Fisk 100% he he he serves another Academy Award yeah uh no

strong opinion I guess Mm-hmm Okay Well that sound then We got F1 Frankenstein One battle sinners and Sirat No warfare here F-1 was loudest

F-1 will win Yeah Yeah I think you're right on that Yeah But Sinners might win Yeah because all the music will mix It music mixing and stuff like that

I think that the one scene that's going to stick out In everyone's memory as they're voting is the music scene, and that's going to influence a lot of the awards that they're giving centers. I do have to say, I really hate that they combine sound mixing and sound editing, because they are such, like, profoundly different things. Not to the voters, though. Yeah.

That was the problem. Just piss me off. But whatever. Best sounding. Yeah, how is it sounds? They wouldn't need sound editing if they just turned the sound on the camera and just recorded. the audio that way on the camera. Oh, true. Or if they recorded the movie

in an airport. Yeah. But I wouldn't be bothered by any of these winning. They're all great sounding movies. Serrat would have been a cool one but it deserves score even more. That's a big snub. Right. Is the score for

Surrott. It was actually fucking dope. I need to see it still. That would have been nice. Jake, I'm actually yeah, no, never mind, no comment. Never mind. I can't say, I can't I cannot say anything about that. I'm so sorry. All right, we're moving on.

Okay. Visual effects is next. We got Avatar Fire and Ash, F1, Jurassic World, Rebirth, The Lost Bus, and Sinners. What is the Lost Bus? I've never heard of this movie. It's a Apple TV movie.

It's another Paul Greengrass opportunistic fucking tragedy porn. Matthew McConaughey. It's like a Wildfire movie. Why is the Lost Bus nominated for Visual Effects? Because the fire look probably better than Avatar Fire and Ash. Oh, man. Jurassic World Rebirth. I could see going to Sinners.

I think Sinners does cool, impressive stuff with the two actors. I mean, unless they just give it to Avatar. It is kind of the Avatar award. They're just giving it to Avatar. It doesn't even matter. The visual effects people voting on this, their brains think different, you know? They're going Jurassic World Rebirth. I'm telling you.

That would be funny Because the dinosaur big The dinosaurs looked good Yeah, they're big dinosaurs Come on They're not historically accurate Yeah, they don't care about that Thank you for saying that, thank you

It's true Show me feathers Yes, thank you For an ultimate award then Writing adapted screenplay Bologonia, Frankenstein, Hamnet One Battle and Train Dreams I mean

One battle And also Bagonia is like a great adaptation of a screenplay. Yeah. No, I was going to say, Bagoni is the only one of these I like. Like, I think that PTA does a terrible job adapting PTA does a terrible job adapting pension in this movie.

I'm not a fan. I've already said I don't like Hamnet. I think that some of the biggest problems with Frankenstein stem from the ways in which Deltoro handles the adaptation. Like, it works okay, but like... Yeah, true. That shouldn't be there. Yeah. And then I, I, I,

I'm not familiar with like what train dreams is based on. A novella. Okay. Yeah, I think I'd like Borgonia, but I have a feeling Frankenstein might win this. I don't know. No way. It might. Why?

The way they feel about Giyomai? I don't know. I just have a weird feeling. It's going to go to Hamnet. It's going to go to Hamnet. This Hamlet just kind of like sweep. Well, because it's a famous writer that made it. Oh.

And the thing, there's literally a scene. So the thing that bothers me most, or one of the things that just with me from Hamnet that like really pissed me off is the movie never says that like the lead girls with William Shakespeare the whole time like that's obviously like the cell of the movie but the movie somehow decides that they're going to treat this like a twist where the third act is you finally get a playbill that says Hamlet by William Shakespeare and it's framed in a way where this is supposed to be like the reveal that the love interest has been Shakespeare the whole time and it is so, like, stupid.

Oh, my God. And then you have, like, all of this performing of Hamlet that's, like, really misinterpreted Hamlet. It's just, I hate it. I just don't like it. I'm hyped. In a bad way, in a negative way. Yeah, invite me over, and I can yell at it.

Oh, hell yeah. We can do it much online. Yeah. It'll have to be on digital, though. I'm waiting for the digital release. I'm not doing a camera. Yeah. The one thing I'll say is PTA does capture some spirit of like pension-esque humor in one battle

Like with the Christmas Adventures club and stuff it feels like so great kind of the like it feels like a dumb guy version of like doing like a weird Pynchianism so I'll I'll give it to PTA on this one nice All right and finally last but well I guess least according to this list the way it's Structured writing original screenplay Blue Moon it was just an accident Marti Supreme sentimental value and sinners I mean Yeah Sentimental or accident for me I think sentimental would be my pick blue moon by a country mile that is the best screenplay for any movie I saw this year

It's actually shocking to me. It doesn't have a best picture on because it's like it's it's it's like a perfect intellectual like screenplay where like you know you have actors delivering these great monologues that are so deeply layered with like literary

and our art allusions and stuff like that like it's just such like a smart well done like like almost like a one man show for Ethan Hawk in a way where he's just like basically just riffing off of a different actor every like in one

location in this bar the entire higher like two hours and you're glued to the screen the whole time and it is just a showcase for the writing and performing. Like that is to me the best script. Like so so much so, like nothing else rises from the other works by which it's derivative from. So to me it's just like, like that to me is like the original screenplay. And it's been waiting to be adapted for so long like Linklater and Hawk have been like waiting to do this project until they were kind of like at the right age and perspective to do it for like 20 years so it's like it's really impressive oh wow I enjoyed it I don't love it as much as you but I did enjoy it okay so we made it through any

any major snubs because for me jesse plemmons for jesse plummins for borgonia was kind of annoying one to me I thought he was great in that film right yeah that was pretty good I think the guy who plays brother in Bagonia was just about to say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was phenomenal in that movie. That's, like, a more, like, demanding role than, like, people would even anticipate. Like, there's a lot going into that in terms of portraying that character that I don't think many people appreciate it. Well, and the thing is, like, you think about how often people have been rewarded for, like, playing people who have, like, some degree of, like, mental block or whatever.

And then you have this character who's written to be autistic, play. by an autistic actor. And it like puts into perspective like why you can do that sort of casting and like trust someone to like deliver a performance like that. Who's like coming at it with like some degree of perspective as opposed to like, you know, like having like, you know, some actor like kind of doing it in this like more mocking portrayal or something. Like I just thought that was such an impressive performance.

I would have loved to have seen some love for it. Dope. Yeah. You know, I actually didn't know that after I saw it because I was. looking that up and I couldn't find info on whether or not the actor was actually autistic, but now I see that someone's updated their IMDB. So that is cool. Very cool. Yeah. I would have loved to have seen weapons for original script. Sure. I'm surprised it didn't get a best picture nom. I feel like that would have been like a safer like crowd pleaser fare than like F1, for example.

Yeah. I'm not surprised. I think it deserves it. I didn't get it. I would have liked an Eddington nomination for screenplay or something. Yeah, yeah, true. True. That's not as surprising, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the Academy is not showing Ari any love yet, but hopefully someday. Here's one that I'm surprised by. There's no visual effects non for Superman. I thought the visual effects were.

Oh, yeah. Like, better than what I've seen in the trailers for Jurassic World. It also had been fun to see that get like a best adapted screenplay nomination after like how skeptical everyone was of like James Gunn taken on DC. Yeah. It would have been interesting. Because I thought it was actually like a pretty good studio flick. I quite enjoyed Superman.

Mm-hmm. Nice. I'm right there with you. And the only other major snub I can think of right now is the score for the original score for 28 years. The young father's score, I thought was incredible. Oh my God, that young father's score is unbelievable. So fucking good. Yeah.

But yeah, it's going under the radar. Yeah, I mean, it is too bad like 20 years was fully locked out because I could have, I think that just for technical awards there's so much amazing stuff that movie's doing and it's editing, cinematography, scoring um, like I just yeah, it's just too bad. It, you know, the academy

has like a stigma against horror movies in general, but... And weird movies. Yeah, and even that for like best adapted screenplay as like a sequel, it would have been very fascinating. It would have been. Yeah, I mean, like, they're starting to like pretend to get over the horror stigma, but we'll see. We'll see. They got some

work to do. Yeah, are we now calling are we going to call all the horror films on here psychological thrillers? I don't know like sinners a horror movie like yeah yeah

sinners is a psychological thriller train dreams psychological thriller I mean yeah what about Ella McKay snub I don't know Luis are you pro or anti

Ella McKay I have not seen it I've not seen it I mean I also put on my shoes like she does, so, like, standing up. Who is this? We're talking about? This is the...

You don't know who Ella McKay is, Adam? Apparently not. Maybe I don't know. What is this? She ran for Congress, anti-weed, 2012. Oh. Beloved, yeah, ousted from her office, whatever. I didn't.

Okay, there's a film. Oh, the dude James L. Brooks. It's the new James L. Brooks. movie. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't paying attention to that at all. And I think you said it was bad also. It was bad. Yeah, but affectionately bad. It was bad in like an 85 year old grandpa being like, aren't these youngsters? Aren't these young zoomers funny? You know, honestly, I saw the new Jim Jarmish and Tom Waits and Kate Blanchett easily could have gotten noms for that if the Academy watched the movie. but yeah I don't think I don't think like they like him very much I think when a director turns like 60 years old you should be shot in the head like like a cattle or something

I just I just in Minecraft in a video game sorry Scorsese get in line oh yeah no I completely unsurious yeah well yeah for every for every good Scorsese movie you get like a mega long Or something that should have, you know, he should have stayed invested in wine. We didn't need a megalopolis. Here's a few other snubs that I actually, I was writing in a list because I'm going to be making a video about it. William H. Macy and Train Dreams? Yep. I think he was pretty great. He was pretty standout in there.

That could have gotten supporting. Regina Hall in one battle after another, not because she was so incredible, but just because I love her and I would like to see her. good. Like, she was great. She was great. And like, there's no reason why she wouldn't be appropriate in that category. Yeah, no, I agree with you 100% on that. I adore her. Like, there's nothing about her performance that would be like, oh, you shouldn't be there sort of thing. And then Sally Hawkins and Bring Her Back, I thought she was pretty great. Yes. Yeah, she was amazing. Also, I wound up watching Splitsville, that movie that I was trying to get you guys to watch for a bit. I think that could have gotten a screenplay numb. It was very funny. I think.

you would both like it. Oh, cool. Yeah, it's on the list. Black Bag had a good screenplay. Yeah, there's not really much for comedy in the nominations this year, huh? No. Ooh, here's a big one. Here's a big one for me.

The Love That Remains the new Cleaner Palmerston international feature. Easily could have gotten that. But maybe it'll count for next year because I think it's releasing in the States. It's like a weird, like barely releasing in the next. like a couple weeks or so. Right. I tried to look up wide show times in case I want to see it soon, but I have to wait. It's like in New York on Jan 6 or whatever.

I don't know. Jan 6? Why? Yeah, you know, I abbreviated it and it's fine. Oh, okay. Just want to know what you're up to, Adam. Yeah. I think castration movie part two was snubbed personally.

For casting, especially. In every category. Visual effects. Best catering. Yeah. We did make a, and yeah, we did make a character with visual effects in that movie. Mm-hmm. Just like Avatar.

Production design. All the hot dogs. Yeah. Does that count? I guess. All right. We're moving on. 28 years later, the Boner Temple.

Oh. We all watched it. Yeah. Nia de Costa. Mm-hmm. She de Costa about two hours of our time. How did we feel about that? Take it away.

Happy, pleased, enthralled. I've seen this twice. Honestly, I think that I was really hesitant going in. Like, knowing Niede Dacoste, mainly from the Candyman remake that was like very much so a studio interference movie. It was hard to get like a sense of what we were going to get into with this. And I was actually pleasantly surprised. It works amazing as a standalone film.

But I think that it speaks to every single problem I have with Alex Garland as a screenwriter. And it like utterly fails as a follow up to like 20 years later is probably my favorite movie of last year. and this does not in any way scratch like what that movie was speaking to for me. Really? In some ways, I would say. Because, yeah, I agree in some stylistic, creative choice ways, but for me, the plot and the characters,

I think are a lot more consistent and fleshed out in Bone Temple in comparison. Because while I agree I love 28 years later, it was asking more, I guess, from the audience as far as where it was pulling you the directions. taking that structure of like okay it's about the dad now it's about the mom now it's about the kid type thing with this i just love the laser focus kind of almost smaller scale which seems to be connecting people more and that's part of what's unfortunate about this film's like bombing like no one is seeing it i don't know if it's that kind of clunky name or when they've released it in the year or how divisive 28 years was but um yeah i hope we still get that third

because i thought this was like the the middle part of a trilogy where it's like yeah you're really flashing out the parts i want to see i love like that you're like the greater implications of like addressing the the virus nature of it. And I don't know. I really love this as a sequel. And I felt like it was Alex Galen kind of flexing how far he's come with where it goes with that kind of stuff. My impression is that it's mostly a marketing issue in terms of why it's not doing that well.

Because it's well received by both audiences and critics. It's just there's a lot of people that don't seem to know that it's out. I don't know, maybe, maybe. Or think it's something to do, like, a re-release of 28 years or something. I do think that name is an issue for, like, a normal person. Yeah. Maybe it's the fact that it came out so close after the first one that they just assume it's the same movie in theaters again. And to, like, drop it in the middle of January where, like, everyone's broke after Christmas and stuff.

I don't know. It just seems like a weird choice. I just think audiences are dumb pieces of shit, and they should fucking get in line and step up and go watch Nia di Costa's the bonus. townbook because this movie's really good. Like, yeah, I fully blame audiences. Same. What's wrong with you? Yeah.

I used to be different, but then Adam changed me, and I'm just like, no, fuck you guys. Hell yeah. You guys should be seeing this film. And, you know, I agree. It's weird because I like both of these movies in different ways. I really love 28 years later because of the energy, the style, the things that it's trying to do that are sometimes like hit and miss for me. And it doesn't feel like it coheres for me, at least perfectly like as a soul standalone film because it feels like there's so

many threads and it's like teasing things to come. Whereas in this one, it feels like you could just step into this movie and it's its own thing. Yeah. So it feels like this mythic, like almost like Mad Max style apocalyptic story. That's like a Western like showdown between the this crazy evil cult and like the symbol of law and order and uh or maybe not law and order but science and reason and um i just love seeing that and it took so many you know risks like narratively and um even though stylistically it's not quite as eccentric it's just a really great time it's just a really good movie i will say that it is a pleasant experience for me to be watching a horror movie where I actually feel disturbed, you know, where I'm like, even from the

opening scene, I'm like, damn, this is like really uncomfortable, like this situation and how they're portraying it. Like, I'm glad to be able to watch a horror movie where I can actually feel some intended emotions associated with horror movies. It seems like a rare occurrence, unfortunately. And I agree, yeah, there's, there's a lot of narrative risks that it takes. And I love how kind of like free it feels. I like how kind of like unashamed it feels to be like silly in ways that you know, if it wasn't handled properly and, you know, maybe even just from chance if the audience wasn't into it, it could just be seen as plain bad like a lot of the narrative decisions made in this. But somehow it works. Somehow it works. And I think that it was aided by there being enough

kind of like hints of that in the other 28 years. You know, like it kind of gave you the impression that like, oh yeah, we can do some silly things also. Right. Silly and tender. Like that's one of the things I kind of love about both these 28 years movies

is at the heart of it, this tenderness, like contrasting against these evil Jimmy Savile inspired cults or whatever, or whatever evil from that first movie too. It can find like an angle that, I don't know, they completely sideswiped me in 28 years,

like the, emotional range that film has, which I don't think this one has quite on the same level, but that Kelson character is wonderful, like that, that contrast between him and Jack O'Connell's creepy cult leader. I thought it was like really interesting just on a two characters, the opposite side of the spectrum, just having a conversation in this fucked up apocalypse and like, what do they talk about? How do they reach these conclusions? The whole St. Nick stuff is so fascinating to me.

I love that whole dynamic between them. Yeah. I just hated the Satanism angle. It just feels so like stock horror. Yeah. No, because I mean, especially with like, you know, like the English folk horror tradition and stuff. Like there's just so many more interesting angles you can take than just being like, oh, yeah, nah, Satanism. Like I would have appreciated more creativity around it, especially at being this like weird cult inspired by like the pop culture these kids would have been experiencing at the.

like early 2000s and yeah like it just it just felt like there was something very fun that was set up with them at the end of the last movie and I felt like it just didn't carry forward in a way that I wanted to see see that was the the one of the things I loved about it was this strange cultish interpretation of these British things from late 90s early 2000s warping them the whole I love the way they use charity in the dialogue and the way it's like weaponized by these these cult leaders in the same way Jimmy Savile like used charity and yeah using his catchphrases and but they're like warped a version of it without the context I thought it was like a really clever well and that's the

thing I love it's just like like like equating it to like the devil um just feels like I don't know it doesn't it felt lacking to me don't you like how that ties into 28 years then like the opening of that movie is now enriched by like how it's like the backstory of Jimmy and the whole telly tubbies thing yeah and how like disturbing that is you know like I remember at the dinner table doing the dances and stuff yeah I thought they found a good balance with that especially with the kind of commentary about this like post empire UK and how like we've got no identity and we're like isolated by virus and we're like radicalized cults and there's like dialogue towards the end that feeds into it as well there's like a a lot to pick at with these movies yeah one really

crazy coincidence I'll just share was we were uh Shooting castration movie part two, which has a cult in it that we dressed them all in tracksuits as like owed to Jimmy Saville. And then we went like on our last day of production to all go see 28 years later. And then that ending sideswiped me so crazy. I was like, whoa, why are we both thinking? Why are me and Alex Yerlund sharing the same thoughts right now? This is terrible.

because I'm like the original Garland hater and I really did love 28 years and I thought that he had kind of matured as a screenwriter with that and then this one was back to all of his old tricks that I hate so so much well that's what I want to ask you Louise like what I mean I haven't seen enough Alex Garland movies I think to like have a full opinion on this but like what do you see as his pitfalls as a screenwriter I think that he has no way of getting between the second and third act. So he always relies on one character betraying all the other characters

in order to find a way to like wind it down. And it's not always like written in a way that feels full and enriching enough. Like in the case of this movie, for example, spoiler alert everybody. Just letting you know. Spoilers. All right. No, you can talk about it. It's just for the audience. Now they can skip to the next part of it all. Spoilers, spoilers. But one of the girl Jimmy's turns on the rest of them in order to like help parse it down in order to hit the climax. And I just find like that side of it is just like such a lazier screenwriting to like like get the numbers of people down so we can write an easier conclusion. Versus like, you know, I think like one of the most compelling scenes is the scene where Jimmy sits down with Kelson and they have like this conversation where we finally get like some ideas around his character. And what defines him as like a human rather than just this like stock villain

But then it's like, okay, but now we're gonna go back to all like the stock Tropes that Garland relies on in order to like get between acts and his scripts And I hate that yeah, I'm I'm less bothered by like those kind of tropey things as long as it feels like it makes sense in and it's justified in the context of the film and in this case I do feel like like it wasn't like Like, just out of nowhere where you're confused why the character would feel a certain way, I feel like it was properly justified. If it wasn't, then I would probably share the same sentiment. And also, I don't know. Yeah, but why does the one girl turn on all of her friends she's been with?

Like, there's not even a moment where, like, there's something that's pushed too far for her or anything. like her justification, I guess, is that she sees Kelson and then, like, gets, like, it doesn't even establish her having doubt. She's still a true believer. Like, it just doesn't make any sense. It's implied that she's itching to, like, usurp him. There are a few lines about that, I remember. Yeah.

And the implication I got from the way the cult is, like, structured where it is so vicious and, like, you just basically have to prove your way in by, like, killing someone who's already existing in there. I feel like, yeah, that's like, it's not the strongest foundation to, like, build this up on there would be, like, mutinies, basically. And that wasn't really a leap for me. Yeah, my interpretation was that she was the type of person that was, like, kind of looking for more of an excuse to start, like, openly questioning things rather than, you know, having these moments of skepticism in her own head. Yeah, I just don't like her really starting, But then it's contradictory because we have her starting from this place of like what she wants to get out of the culp at all.

She's like a true believer in like Kelson perchance being this like St. Nick figure. So she believes Jimmy, but she also doesn't like it just feels. I don't think Garland knows how to write women. She believes in the existence of Satan but not that like that was the instance of it existing. Garland just writes women, women be crazy. That's what he always writes. and I'm just sick of it. No, I think that these characters were like, if we're, where are we in the timeline in terms of like how much society these characters would have experienced?

Because like, Jimmy's the oldest of them. And he was like, how, like six or something, like younger around that age when he was. That's part of the dialogue, right? Yeah, when he was like. They talk about how they don't remember anything. At the beginning of 28 years later. So like all these other kids there, this warped version of society is all they know. And so whatever weird cult nonsense, superstitious ideas that he's kind of like injecting into these kids' heads probably makes just as much sense to them as anything else.

Because all they know is like, okay, people around us are dying and society doesn't exist. They don't have any real education, right? But then if she believes them, then why does she betray them all so easily? Well, she doesn't believe every part of it. She just believed, you know, parts of it. Yeah, well, that's bad screenwriter. She thought that Jimmy was like full of shit but not. She didn't put things together in a way where she thought that like Satan didn't exist or something.

So she's a true believer but also doesn't believe it? Women be crazy. That's how Garland writes. Women be crazy. No, she believes in the concept of Satan but not that Jimmy is talking to Satan in that scene. She was like unraveling. There's like steps to her figuring it out and like coming to terms with reality. Even by the time by the end of the movie we don't even know if she knows reality

Yeah, I just hate it I think Garland's a terrible hack screenwriter have you have you seen how do you feel about warfare Louise I watched on a plane which is maybe like not the best position to to speak on it the thing of warfare is It's um there's no women in it so you know he he he yeah, there's no women so you can't he can't fuck it up It's also like based on like a true story that thankfully he was like oh my god a true story with no women in it were set um yeah so i mean i don't really have uh i i'm not predisposed to like um a movie how to phrase this i i'm a big fan of like war movies as a genre um but Alex Garland's approach to it and doing it in that

sort of like almost like doing like the eastwood thing of like we're going to do like like like 1517 to Paris or something. Like we're going to have like the people who were there on set and help us like coach through how this all like actually happened. It was like an interesting formal experiment. But like I also wonder about like why why that movie then. Why make like a Afghanistan war picture like you know, are they are we, you know, rah, get ready for more war in the Middle East?

Like what are we? Why is this movie getting made? What's your politics, Alex Garland? It's a little ambiguous politically. Yeah, he's he's one of those like dumb guy tours I talk about. Yeah, real PTA. Yeah, fucking dumb fucks. Yeah, so I don't know.

Like I think that anything that succeeds in Bone Temple is thanks to Nita Costa, like actually being a very good genre director. And the movie's vicious has great gore effects. The performances are great. I just think Garland is such a hack. I'm so sick. of him. And I thought with the first 20 years later, I was like, oh, my God, he's finally grown up. He's figured out how to write a screenplay.

And no, very short-lived. It's all a fluke. That was all things to... And the thing is, is like, the only ones of his movies that worked are the ones with Danny Boyle. So clearly, Danny's the one who keeps the wheels on the train there. I do prefer their collaborations. I agree. What I loved about the screenplay is it felt like, and not to be a...

Alex Garland Dickwright or anything because I know how this sounds, but it's very Shakespearean in the way it's all about costumes and putting on performances and wearing masks. And it's like they're all, you know, everyone's trying to pretend. Like that whole scene with Jack O'Connell trying to pretend like, oh, I'm act this, I know this guy. He's, he's my dad and he's the devil and we're cool. And now I need you to act this part. And it just reminds me also in the final act, how everyone just get stabbed all of a sudden and dies, you know, that's another, like, uh, that kind of pulled me out of the movie for a second. I'm like, are we really just going to stab everyone all at once right here and finish this off? And I'm like, oh, it's, it's Shakespeare, right? Um,

I thought the, the way the three kind of main stories like coalesced and crescendoed into that, that sequence with Dr. Kelson playing Satan. I loved it. Excellent. It was so clever the way that, like, came together for me. And I felt like everyone was characterized extremely well. Um, And yeah, you get the range of the psycho Jimmy Crystal, the tender Dr. Kelson, and then the Samson character who I wasn't expecting to be fleshed out at all from 28 years, but giving him like some kind of backstory there and expounding on the whole idea of the virus and like that it's like something like on top of the brain and like watching a GP, like figure out how to kind of reverse engineer it or find some way to cure it.

I thought it was like a really interesting approach to it and the way that all kind of resolved in the way that crossed over with all the devil imagery and like reincorporating oh he's like he puts the iodine on his skin so he's red he's got this bone temple of course like cultus seeing it would be like that's that's the devil like i loved the way that all came together and kind of built on itself it is clever how things kind of turn out and where it where it sets things up and how things lead i think in terms of it doing a multiple film story especially because by the end of this movie you know ignoring the member berries you know kind of like, oh, it's, dude, Killian Murphy, ignoring that. Like, it's a kind of interesting place to continue from narratively, because now it's like, okay, wait, it's like Samson going to be like this, this, uh, conscious, like thinking zombie, but like, maybe a good guy, but not, like, is, I don't know. I'm kind of curious to see where things go. And I love that despite this film, not feeling the same at all stylistically, uh, as the

previous film, it still feels like more of a narrative continuation than like a spin-off. And I like that that we kept with the characters and continued off from where things were. Yeah, and there's loads of threads to pull on. There's Spike's Dad. There's the baby that was given away in the whole little island community. There's heaps of stuff to do if they get it made. Yeah, I do think that as much as I missed young father's compositions from the first movie, the needle drops in this movie are pretty simple.

sick in a way that it's, we don't get like needle drops as good as what we're getting in this film very often, uh, like when they're dropping like kid A and, uh, yeah, Iron Maiden and shit. Like that, that rocked. Those were very satisfying. I will say one thing that I kind of fucking loved about the writing in this is that the solution to the opening scene dilemma where, you know, the main kid is forced to, to kill. one of these kids. And, you know, so many other films would just be like, okay, yeah, through some miraculous, like, kind of cheesy but, like, annoying way than things would resolve or, you know, some sort

of DeSX Machina in a way. And it's like, we almost got that, but it felt unique enough. It felt kind of clever enough because I don't see any other movies acknowledging, like, major arteries, you know? It's like people just either get shot or something. stabbed or, you know, medically, people will just pull arrows out of themselves. And it's like, no, you can't, you're just going to bleed out. And I'm like yelling at myself in my head and just like, or at the movie in my head about things that writers should be more aware of. I'm glad.

I'm glad that the, the major artery was acknowledged and used in that way. And I wasn't expecting it. And it was a nice, realistic kind of way for, for that to resolve itself. And it was like, oh, Okay, yeah, yeah, that could happen. And that was a clever way of doing it. And satisfying, gore-wise and, like, emotion-wise. Like, it was disturbing. It was great. Very disturbing, yeah.

Oh, yeah, it's horrifying. It's such a disconcerting way to open and feels very in line with where we leave the last film, like in that sense of danger. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, anything else we want to mention as we try to fit in some more things in the podcast? No? I just hope we get a third. Yeah. Me too.

Concern by how it's doing. Hopefully, Killian being involved will be a big boost to it. But I don't know what they're thinking behind the scenes with how poorly it is doing. Hopefully the critical buzz will help it. I mean, it's already greenlit. Is it greenlit? Right? Yeah.

Is it not? It has been greenlit, but I just, I don't know. You know what they're like. They're so kind of skittish. I don't know. Sony doesn't have a lot of, like, franchises, though. I think they'll keep milking it as long as I can. True. To get, yeah, to get reviews this good, they probably want to continue.

They're just going to retitle it 28 years, the final temple, you know. Oh. Just get the final in there, really, like, this is the end kind of, kind of shit. Final reckoning type of thing. They'll title it six, seven years later. Nice. No. Everyone will be there.

It would be fun. If they, if they left that tied up, uh, like the ending is like, oh, they, they bump into, Killian Murphy from the first movie. That's all full circle. It'd be fun if they were like 28 decades later. We got like 280 years future. It's like sci-fi. What's the island like?

Well, St. James. Because I mean, I think that that's the thing that I loved so much also about 28 years later was seeing like the way the world has adjusted. What felt so realistic and interesting to me and the way that like, society was developing through that. And I think that that's like the one thing that kind of bothers me about some of the laziness of the new one is that like we get to see the idea of like how community can be established with under these circumstances in the first movie. And then in this one, it's just like here's like a house that has like four family members in it. Here is a another house with like

four family members in it or whatever. Like, it just feels... The degree of isolation feels like just so unrealistic and weird to me, because it doesn't really say anything. Well, I feel like the only reason the community exists on the other place is because

of that, like, the water protecting them from the tide and shit. I feel like they just got lucky in terms of what they were able to do. But, like, with the way the virus worse, it's like, they just had like one little fence. Like, it just seems like so bizarre. Like, it just, I don't know, it felt bizarre to me. It didn't feel like good world building.

They probably got lucky that not enough zombies ran into them or something. I don't know. Who knows? Yeah, it just feels very lacking on the world building of that stuff. Like, I don't know. I would have I think that that's the biggest problem to me is like it doesn't feel like this movie is expanding the world in any way.

Like it does some like nice small kind of character stuff. Like especially with Kelson who's like very much so, him and Samson are the highlights of this movie. But like I think it really does suffer from being locked in as like a back-to-back sequel shoot where They have to use all the same sets as the first movie and stuff like that like it

It I don't know it just doesn't feel expansive enough I feel like they expanded with the the virus especially yeah, like to the way it was reincorporated Yeah, the Samsung character you know, they do a lot with that And they needed to use the bone temple more. It's such a cool set I'm so glad they got a good amount of use out of it Absolutely, I just I just think that like like yeah plot-wise is it does expand like the lore of the series, but I would have just liked to see like more of this world, um,

like, like branching out of these locations that we'd already seen in the first movie. Right. But we're saving that for the third. We're going to get, go back there probably. It's to tease you. This is like a preview for the third one.

Another, there is another bone temple. They build another bone temple. I don't know. Uh, the one thing that I fucking hated about this movie was the fucking shitty, stupid, absolutely pointless jump scare near the end.

Didn't even startle me wasn't affected It didn't matter. Yeah, that was bad Like, excuse me, excuse me, it felt like It felt like no other point in the movie It was just a moment that like felt like it was from Another shittier movie Didn't need to be there. What the fuck? That was a way of amendment. It felt like a studio note

Kind of like, hey, remember guys, this is a horror movie Remember, we're making a horror movie. Yeah, at the end The first weird jump scare is like at the end of the movie I'm like, you almost made it Okay, yeah, it was a weird call I will say I do give credit to them for making such a goofy-ass movie. It is just so freakishly weird and I do appreciate that. I guess I just had higher expectations for it after the first one.

All right. Well, I'm giving this one a high 7 out of 10 for now. Nice. Close to a 8, but not quite. I'm slightly higher than you. Yeah, I give it a 4 star. This is a really solid 4 star. I've seen it twice.

It was just as good each time. Hope we get that third. Yeah, I'm with you, Alex, four-star. Louise, do you give ratings? Yeah, I would say I'm either heart or no hearts, and I think this is a no-hearted for me. Whoa. Whoa.

Damn. No heart. That's right, you've got no heart, Louise. Well, you know, as heartless as I am, I think it's perfect for us to talk about another heartless filmmaker who found his heart with his gold heart trilogy. starting with the wonderful masterpiece Breaking the Waves.

Damn. What else is in the Gold Heart trilogy? Is it Dancer in the Dark? The Idiots and Dancer in the Dark? The Idiots is a weird one to... Because the idiots doesn't feel like the other two. I don't know. Well, no, it's...

So the idea of it, the Gold Heart trilogy, comes from a children's book that Von Trier was obsessed with. Oh. That was about a girl named Goldheart who walks through the forest and as she goes through, she meets all sorts of characters and critters and kind of gives away all of her possessions

and she gives all of herself away to help all of these characters she encounters. So by the time she leaves the forest, she's naked with her hands empty, but she's still okay. And it's really about that stripping down, to when you have nothing but that beautiful soul, that full heart from all the giving. And so that's like the idiots is very much like that.

Dancer is very much like that. And especially breaking the way as being the first in the series, that is the exact story that Von Trier is telling with it. So this is your favorite movie, correct? I would say that this is like up there for favorite movie. I think it's like one of the most important movies for me. I mean, Vontrier, all of his work is so important. Yeah.

But I do think that in terms of how this movie looks, it gave me permission to look at the language of cinema with kind of new eyes when I was younger. Like, Vontre was definitely one of those filmmakers that, like, I think when you're younger and you start getting into movies, there's guys like Tarantino who are like the maximalists who make movies so freaking cool in the form of movies so cool. so cool that you want to emulate.

But then it's like, it wasn't until I started finding filmmakers like, like von Trier, where it's about that stripping back of the artifice and it's like really getting into, like this movie marks such a departure for him because it's where he, it's his first movie after writing the Dogman 95

manifesto. And what that was, and what was that was really about is it was so specific to him as a filmmaker and basically trying to maintain interest in movies by flipping every, about them that he was used to. Where basically he had like a major trauma in his life. He got an insane deathbed confession from his mother as she was passing away.

And this kind of broke his whole mind. So it really changed the way he approached cinema. Yeah, basically he was told that his dad who raised him wasn't his real father. That is his mother had had an affirmed. fair with someone with artistic genes because she wanted to have an artistic child. That's a lot. This, this, like, really, like, and then his, and then, like, both of his parents were dead at

that point, so he reached out to the biological father, and the biological father rejected him. So it was, like, this extremely intense moment for him. And, you know, he basically flipped the way he approached cinema. Like, instead of writing from this, like, males perspective, he, he, he, he, he could only really embody seeing himself as a woman in these characters, like this idea of the suffering woman, this gold heart figure. And as you can see, like, all of his films from that point on center the sort of like this idea of like female suffering, which like to him was the best way of exploring, like,

his deeply hurt emotional state, which also came from the fact that growing up, his parents really like tried to ban big emotions in his household. Like he grew up in like a very weird state where his parents were nudists and He had like a very like like and had like very weird politics like like I think his mother was a communist Dad was like a social Democrat type like very You know like very intensely uh like that what's that term for like like that really like hands off parenting like without trying to put like like soft parenting or whatever opposite of helicopter I don't know Yeah, so like, like, so there was very little boundaries style.

She wasn't allowed to express like huge emotions and stuff. So for him, this like, like to make these movies like much more feminine and, and centers like this big emotional side of himself that he had stayed kept distance for so long was it was important. And like the biggest thing in this that the manifesto, like the Dogma 95 manifest was about was he had felt very hands off from connecting with his actors in his. previous work. And then it was like through working on his TV show The Kingdom, he was starting to like reassess how to approach like making art again. And by the time you get to breaking the waves, it's like it's totally flipped around. It's not about the form and artifice of cinema. It's about stripping all of that out. So you just are focused intensely on the performers. And so much of like what works so strongly about this movie is his relationship with that

cast and like the improvisational nature and like getting into the heart of these characters and rewriting lines on the day and figuring all these things out and and to me that's what i took as inspiration was it was like once he had redefined his approach to this and stuck with it through the rest of his career that was like what really affected me when i was figuring out what i wanted to do as a filmmaker and seeing a director who just like is that close to his actors as a collaborator and the way that they build trust in those ways and everything is so amazing. And also, like, challenges that trust. I mean, I don't want to skip over that Vuntry is also a bit of a hound dog

with his leading ladies and stuff like that. He's a complicated figure, and I think that that's why I connect with his work so much. No, yeah, that's... That's so interesting. That is very interesting. What he said about the nudist stuff and the... That side of him, because from what this film is presenting and what it's especially about sort of like conservative Christian family dynamics and those kind of expectations

that's really what I would have thought he'd be coming from because it seems like there's a it's almost like a parody of like a miracle filled like Christian film but like yeah there's no there's no like miracle going on here it's like this is how it really looks yeah like I think one of the things that's so into what there is a miracle at the end but like I think that one of the things spoiler alert everybody we're talking spoilers now yeah I won't speak specifically to what it is. I mean, we can. One of the thing that's interesting about it is, like, I think that in the way, like, you know,

he talks a little about, like, Dreyer as a major influence on him in this period. And I think you can see that in, like, the way that, like, religion is interrogated. But, like, like, God is never questioned, you know? Like, I think that it's about, like, the institution of it. And, like, that the way in which, like, this world she exists. this religious sect she's in is like so like like segregated by gender and so judgmental and like all that's like the this sort of conflict versus like her faith is never really like questioned at any point which I think is so beautiful. But yeah, like I just think that it's like a very deeply felt and beautiful movie and like has some of the best performing I've ever seen. And yeah, the stripping back of the artifice.

I think that that comment about it, like, feeling like almost like a melodrama in that way is so, is, it so much is and it's so stock in so many ways in terms of how it tells this like very like kind of hysterical cliche almost story. But because of the way it's shot and presented, it's elevated to such an insane degree. Very, very cool. yeah this is so this is the second time I've seen it Jake has seen it once before I believe yeah and Alex this is your first this is your first I've never seen it no this is my first time watching this one yeah I

it was actually a while ago that I saw it for the first time I have no idea how long it's been but watching it again for like a second time it's like I knew a lot of the structure of what was happening sort of thing like there were certain things that I remembered and knew to expect. But a lot of it I kind of felt like I was watching again for the first time, which was really nice.

Emily Watson does do an incredible job with this character. I love how kind of like dopey and innocent she's able to portray herself with so many subtleties in her performance and just her mannerisms and these weird kind of like almost ticks that she has throughout the film. like she really, really sells it. And I just, I just feel bad for the character. You know, like there's... Yes, miserable. Even though it's like a very exaggerated degree of these, I guess, kind of toxic traits that human beings throughout the world might have, there is something kind of relatable about this character and just, you know, really

attaching in like an unhealthy way through I guess codependence and needing this form of love and not knowing how to handle it and you know fucking fucking just going through an anxiety attack basically every time he's away like it's an exaggerated form of things that I think a lot of humans experience not to that degree but yeah there's there's something about it where it's where it does speak to me and it just makes me feel bad well like the the wedding scene at the start, it's such a beautiful, like, just the, the way it's, like, hypercut in that way where it's like we get these oneers that are then chopped up. And, like,

it just focused on the passion and the love. And it's like, it's so really captures, like, what it feels like to fall in love. And it, it's, it sets up the whole rest of the movie with, like, the second he has to leave to go to the oil rig. And, like, it's just, it's just so remarkable. Like you feel that pain alongside her because like the movie does everything it needs to in order to like set up it itself on like an emotional level and what you need for that emotional journey to hit. Yeah, yeah. The pacing of the of the opening is really incredible too. Yeah. I think like something that like stands out to me especially watching this again is how like desolate it

feels the landscape is just feels like there is nothing out here. It's it's um it is kind of like, yeah, like Louis is saying, like this classic melodrama where I could picture my mom getting absorbed in watching this, like an old, it has that like old school weepy kind of quality to it, but like way more extreme and like punishing. But just the face of like pure innocence being thrown into this meat grinder of just cruelty and suffering. It's like it makes you, I don't know, it makes me kind of like pull back and wince and part of me is just. just like, I don't know how much if I can take this, you know what I mean? And even...

I was surprised to hear you liked it at the end of the last episode. I was like, this seems like too sad for Jake. No, I... This is something that's like, I kind of wish it was... I don't know, there's... Because for me, I always prefer dancer in the dark, because to me, that's just like... Yeah, same. Even more cruel and punishing.

Yeah, no, it's... It's a flawless masterpiece. And the music is so good, right? Yeah. You have that music against it, yeah. Yeah. However, I do really like this movie. And I think part of why I don't go full, like, we be like this pure innocence

destroyers, because we ultimately end with like Stell and Scars guard, you know, and we end with him dealing with, like, what he put his wife through, you know. and like this complicated, like, heavy emotions that it's like, even though we get the bells and there's some kind of catharsis there, I never like, I'm not pulled into the emotions because it feels hollow almost. And it's like so depressing. Yeah, I'm with you. And the bells ring as the sister kind of challenges the regime of the religious sects and everything. Like you have all these like little moments coinciding that just like speak to like the sacrifice that. our lead character makes is not in vain. Like it all works, you know? It's like, I just find it so beautiful. It really is like what it feels like to throw your self completely into love with someone and also to, you know, like have faith.

Like I love a movie that's about like faith, my next movies about that as well. So it's just like it means, yeah, I don't know. It just, it just connects so deeply with me. It's like an interesting take on the concept of like perseverance, you know, because that's what she's, that's what she's doing. She's like persevering. Yeah. With a, you know, a strange perspective, you know, a goal that, you know, is not something

that the average character portrayed on screen is going to be shown doing. but I do love that Von Traier is you know, unafraid to be kind of like twisted and fucked up in ways that like are borderline kind of like silly in a way if you like to strip down

what the premise kind of is in terms of especially in the second half of the movie like oh yeah and he just gets her to fuck a bunch of guys so he doesn't die yeah to give context for for people who maybe haven't seen this film

Like the main plot concerns this girl who has a very intimate relationship with God, who hears God in her head all the time. And she falls in love with Stell and Scarscar's character. And then basically he gets in an accident. And it's her fault. And yeah, because she prays that she'll return to him. So he ends up in an accident and it has to come back. And because of this,

He is paralyzed and he says to her, I need, I need you to go sleep with other men and tell me about it or I will die. And at first, like at first she's like, I don't know if I can do this to you. I don't know if I can do this for you. And she ends, and they're in this deeply like religious part of Northern Scotland. And because of that, in the isolation and like sort of religious. group that they're in. It's like very frowned upon upsetting behavior. And she's like basically put through like a humiliation ritual out of like faithfulness to both her her husband and to like her religious faith being tested and interesting way. We get an amazing came cameo by a rest and peace, Udo Kier,

who plays an evil boat captain in an amazing scene where we're sort of the main. He was the captain. Yeah, the main evil sort of moments of it is like she knows that if she goes off on this one sort of like meet with this one John to sleep with it, they might kill her. And that's the question of the movie is how much is she willing to give to care for this person she loves? And I think that that's what's so beautiful about the movie. It is a movie about like giving everything to somebody out of love. And the penultimate scene is so beautiful where when she finally challenges this church, she's a part of, she like basically, and this was like a line written on the day,

which I think is so amazing and speaks to that ability to be spontaneous with your actors. But she challenges the church order saying basically, like, law is not the only thing. like the only thing that matters is love of another person. It's about, like, loving each other is so much important than, like, loving the law of God or that's law of religion. And I think that that's like, there's like a beautiful sentiment in that and how it, how it ties together with all these different themes happening. And this is like the thing I speak to is like, I was talking about a lot about dumb guy

directors earlier. And I think that the thing I love. so much about this movie and why I love Von Trere is because he's deeply well read and he understands what he's playing with when it comes to like this incredible story that that you know has these you know like kind of like perverse and and fucked up moments but all it's all in service of like these very strong themes about like like faith and existence and and like the nature of love and the universe and I think that that's like very beautiful and And it's also really smart.

And also has some amazing needle drops. This movie is split into chapters. Yeah. Banger soundtrack. At each chapter we get an amazing needle drop over these beautiful panorama shots that were like digitally altered photographs. It is like so beautiful. Yeah. I was going to ask you about those shots actually because I figured you would know.

Well, and obviously I do chapters in my work because of Fontreer. That's where I take that inspiration from. So watching watching this a second time after seeing, you know, your films, it's like, okay, yeah, I can see the inspiration very clearly. Yeah, you can see where my influences are. They're like, like, I mean, like I like to be like von Trier, though, where it's like he's taking a lot from Dreyer in a, in a film like this. And obviously in my film, I like to take a lot from, from, von Trier and, and also Dreher, obviously. I mean, like, all filmmakers are in conversation with each other. But I think that what's so important and what separates like a good filmmaker from, like a dumb guy, otour,

as I call them, is like, you know, I read books. I'm not just inspired by like a movie I like or my favorite filmmaker or something.

And I think that that's what, to me, is always what elevates material into that sublime space is when you can see all these different mediums and philosophies and stuff all in conversation

with each other on screen. Like, it's a movie that I think begs to be talked about afterwards. True. And that's what I love about it. True. Yeah,

yeah. I was actually watching this time, it was very kind of not, yeah, I guess a little confused at how the title shots were shot. So you're saying that there were photographs that were digitally altered? Yes. Because some of them, like, there's like moving water in one near the end. So it's like they, different layers basically. So basically

him and Bobby Mueller and a photographer, which I just showed up Bobby Mueller, like one of my all-time favorite DPs. He shot a lot of Wimwander's stuff and Jarmush's stuff. Just an incredible DP. He went out and they shot like a couple of like small reels of film photography and also motion picture photography at these locations and then brought it to a digital artist who took them and then like manipulated them in posts as like a digital effect

to make these like moving photographs where it's like he would add mountains behind an image and make these beautiful landscapes out of like a collage almost which I think is so cool and also there's no other movie that really looks like this one because the film was shot on motion picture film but then they transferred it to video and then back to film to film.

That's what I was wondering. So they did the color. Yeah, so they did the color grading on video and then brought it back to film. So it has this very unique look to it that the few other films have tried. That's really cool. Yeah. It has such a,

such a unique look. And yeah, it feels like the only relief you ever get is those chapter cards throughout the whole thing. And it's like a breath of like, okay, hold on. Yeah. Before we dive back in. It's important to like maintain the base because it's very well-paced.

Like it's a really well-paced movie, even though it's pretty long. Yeah. You're always wondering what's going to happen next, and it's such a heraldic thing. Like when they drop life on Mars during that final title card is like one of the best moments. I've ever, like, it's just like psychotically good filmmaking to me. It's just like such a hype moment in this like very depressing, miserable movie. I just think it's amazing.

Yeah, I was fully into every single title card music break. And like it didn't even feel I mean like some people have said that it feels almost kind of like contradictory in terms of emotions. I feel like it complimented it very well because there is kind of like an emotional catharsis to to those tracks in the way that they're written and the way that they're composed, the feel of them in general. Yeah. Yeah.

It works super well in my opinion. Can I just add this also has one of my favorite movie trailers ever. I don't know if I've seen the trailer. Yeah, I don't know. I forget what track plays with it, but it is like, yeah, it's just one of my favorite trailers. But another thing that spoke to me in this movie was a particular character, which was the doctor. Like, I feel like that was such a nuanced and complex, like, portrait of this, like, kind of like chauvinistic guy who's, like, trying to help. But in a way that is like this, with all this sexual jealousy.

see and like he's such it's such a three-dimensional character for someone that could easily just be like the the stuffy boring doctor you know just every character has so many layers along with the sister and yeah i'd like the sister too uh who's that actress who plays her i forget what her name is oh oh i recognized her because of mike lee movies she's in naked um she's in lots of mike cartilage catrin cartilage yeah Carthage. But, God, yeah, she's incredible in this and in naked. Yeah.

Yeah. Hell yeah. I feel like I'm being a bit more quiet because I hear everything you're saying. I do. Uh-oh. Here we go. Rett row. It just didn't speak to me on an emotional level.

I appreciate the way it was put together. And once it ended, I was just kind of feeling like, how can I find the world? words to explain this feeling. And it's not just because it's bleak. Like, I love dancer in the dark. I love many of his grotesque films. But it was through reading the trivia and seeing a quote from Lars von Trier himself that kind of made it make sense in my head. With the quote being in a 2005 interview by Swedish journalist, Steena de Browski, von Trieus said the following about the film translated from the original Danish. I was determined to write a story that was so far-fetched and full of

flese that no one could take it seriously, but of course the audience liked it. All you have to do is come up with something really stupid and it will become a great success. He's such a troll. He's just trolling. He's a gigantic troll. And I obviously don't think it's stupid or anything like this. But the heart of the melodrama for me, what it's kind of poking fun at is kind of what didn't really work for me. I really loved the first act, but there was somewhere in the second where I was finding it kind of repetitive. aimless. I know it was escalating with that main character and that was really what was carrying it for me was Emily Watson. There's no denying. She's like a powerhouse in this movie. She's like incredible and carried the whole thing and kept it like, do you even call it like entertaining?

It's like it's weird of these like I love this movie. It's interesting. It's like dark. Yeah, it's interesting. It is though. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It didn't really connect with me. But I definitely hear what you guys are saying. Not that I'd ever say it was bad though either. What do you think connects with you more in like dancer than this one? I think the inherent tragedy of it, of the character with this affliction. I don't know. There was something about that that spoke to me more with the musical element, with the way she's expressing herself.

I don't know. It was something once it escalated to the Scarsguard, getting Emily Wopson to like fuck everyone. that like I didn't get I didn't feel like how that was affecting the characters particularly from my perspective it's in there I guess but it it just wasn't speaking to me like that aspect of it that and the way faith has explored as well wasn't speaking to me from any kind of personal angle oh so you're saying you hate the movie because you're a Reddit atheist yeah that's exactly what I think it's interesting because von Trier is an specifically religious person either.

Like he grew up in an atheist household. So to make a movie that's about religion is like kind of a rebellion for him. I mean, like, I think that's so much of like the act of making this movie stems from him trying to like rebel against like the everything as parents instilled in him. So I think it's there, yeah, I think there's a lot of layers to it. For me, I think I just connect to connect most of all just from like a filmmaker to filmmaker perspective just because it really just, his films just really redefined for me like what movies can be. And like as we've, like we're all praising Emily Watson's performance such a high regard.

And I think that that's like what I connect to most is it's like, you know, the fact that he's able to get this unbelievable performance out of collaborating with her is just. remarkable. And like I felt the same way seeing dancer. I felt the same way with the idiots and most definitely Dogville with Nicole Kidman as well. Like it's really incredible work. So yeah, I mean, I would attest that I think dancer is the more fully formed and probably better film between the two.

It's just like I think that out of all my own pet fixations breaking the way it was just just so much more. fits with me. Yeah, I'd like to talk about, I guess, like, interpretations of certain things. She was looking at the camera a lot, smiling most of the time she did it. I smiled back. Oh, nice. Yeah, so she wasn't alone.

I waved. My feeling is that, like, the film is kind of implying that there is kind of like a god, you know, and that she is communicating with him in some way, like, she feels the presence. and there is like a reaffirmation that she's experiencing and aware of through that. It's funny how different a fourth wall break can be when you look at a movie like funny games compared to a movie like this. Like, yeah, it is totally different. Yeah, different goals.

Yeah, because I think it's always like challenging the way in which the audience is being engaged to look at the subject. So it's so interesting. whether it's like an inviting look or a challenging look. And I think that that's one of the things about this movie that I love is it feels more like an invitation into her headspace. Yeah. So the first time I watched it, my interpretation of the ending was like not only is God real, but like she did everything right. Like she was perhaps literally following the orders.

and her talking to herself was like the literal word of God. Yeah. Well, I think that's what makes like a fairy tale and how it's defined within this idea of like that Goldheart's story that Funtryor connected with. It very much so is like this girl gives everything and the love she showed pays off. Like the husband is healed. the you know like the the the sister turns against in some way the the the religious community there like that she judges them and then uh god of god approves i suppose like like because it is like oh if we ever heal like the bells ringing is set up and it it does like answer a question um that the movie poses and i think it's it's beautiful like there is an ambiguity there and i think that that's like a beautiful thing for like what is like in an every way like an art film to just like come out and say like no this is the thesis of this movie yeah which i think is awesome i think that's super cool it's one of my favorite endings ever yeah it's

amazing and so yeah i guess there's like an ongoing debate in my head over like whether or not to call this film like a religious movie or a christian movie like it feels like a debate in my head in terms of like whether it's from a religious perspective because certainly large von truer is not religious but but like there's an argument to make in either direction in terms of its criticisms or it's almost kind of like embracing

of certain aspects yeah and the thing is I think I wouldn't call it a religious film I would call it a God movie I think it's actually very critical of religion itself but it it it explores faith in such an intense way that I think is is what it's really about like Like the thing that the movie at no point ever disputes like God, right? Like it is very much so, but a criticism of the way in which other people try to gate keep the relationship with God.

And I think that that's one of the things that's so powerful about that ending is it makes a very clear statement that like it's like a love conquers all sort of ending, right? It's like God approves of this love and like rewards this sacrifice. Like, in a way, there's, it's a very biblical story. It's like, like, Job or something like that. Yeah. Of, like, this, this person being, having their faith tested. Yeah. In this intense way.

I mean, she literally, as she's talking as God, like, one of the lines is, you must learn to endure, you know? Yeah. Like, it is about, like, perseverance in a weird way. So, so I, I think it's better to say that, like, rather than it being, like, a film about, like, the organization of religion, which I think it's more. critical of. I think I think there's something like biblical about the way in which it's like a character study in the way of like a classic like Old Testament type story or even like the like a like a Christ's narrative, right? Like like there is that martyrdom aspect that's so inherent. And you know, I think at this point, Von Trier was going through like a Catholicism phase.

So I think I think that that makes sense. Before the Nazi phase. Well, I mean like that's all the thing I'll say about the Nazi thing really quick is That's very much tied into his relationship with his, his, like, biological versus, like, father because he was, he had known himself to be, like, having a Jewish father his whole life and then finds out that his biological father was German, who was actually, like, a resistance fighter during the Second World War. But to him, it was just, like, he was just saying a provocative thing, try to, like, highlight the way in which. his identity was shattered by this realization. He was just,

he, I've seen, I've seen, uh, that full speech many times. And, uh, he is,

he's telling an interesting story in a jokey way. And he's just really bad at it. It's so, I love it. That's like one of my favorite things is that, well, the best thing is watching Kristen Dunce next to him. Like,

oh my gosh. She's the source of my cringe in that clip is just feeling, oh, it's so funny. Like, Like she goes through every emotion. There goes my Oscar. Watching Scar,

like, lean forward with, like, smiling, like, are you, um, you want to stop doing that? Yeah.

This is a full cast. Like, what the, and he keeps going. I love how he keeps going. So crazy. It's perfect. It's perfect.

But, you know, a lot of the best artists are just like, fucking lovable weirdos. Where you're, yeah, there's neurodivergent people.

Make some great art because that's a form of communication and you know some people find uh strengths in communicating in uh ways that are better than others for them um i'd like to pose a question um because i was thinking about would would this movie work at all if it ended with jan and uh emily watson both dying if if she does this thing she dies and he ends up dying it's like a cold realist ending would it work at all. Why would that happen? No, it'd be horrible.

Okay. Like, why make that? That's like a Chloe Zhao movie. I don't want to see that. Based, based, based, based. Because I could almost see it going, you know, in that direction, and almost like just the pure suffering tragedy of it without any, like, of that fantastical. Suffering must have meaning.

Otherwise, what's the point? And I think that that's the thing for Von Truers, these films are so personal to him that it's like he suffers. He's like bipolar. Arkansas is so messed up that for him, it's like

trying to find meaning in that suffering. It's like this has to mean something, right? And so I think like that's the thing about Von Trier's movies that I think are so beautiful is that like you could write them off as misery porn, but there's always so much meaning to what happens to these. characters like like because he's he's suffering alongside them like it's like a way of him exercising

his pain and I think that that's so beautiful and touching that is how do you feel about his his later work like his his you know house that jack built and nymphomaniac and stuff yeah I mean I mean the thing about house of jack built is it's like kind of a provocation of him trying to like interpret his career in a way I think it's really interesting as a film and I find it quite entertaining Um, nymphomaniac as well, um, is also kind of in a way like trying to put like a final, uh, statements on his like suffering women movies. And I think it is really interesting that the distinction between like how a nymphomaniac all like wraps up this big career period for him and then his like sort of final statement with how the Jack Dill built as he has this like evil male stand in for himself, um, doing all of this work. Um, I think that the, the, the thing that the, the thing. thing is he's very much so a self-aware artist, but his self-awareness comes with being such a provocateur that I think that to me, like I don't have a, I think I'll have a fuller perspective

on where that work sits either after he passes and we can kind of look at it as whether it's a final statement or if he does get his next movie off the ground he's been trying to work on just by his health conditions. I think that I'd be very interested to see how, that final wave all looks together because it would be very fascinating if he goes back to something explicitly sincere with his last movie because I think that he had such a beautifully sincere period in the 90s with the Goldheart trilogy and like to me that's like the strongest era for him I think that he he kind of fell into too much provocation within the 2000s in some ways But he's always been a very self-aware artists, and I respect him for that.

Yeah, self-referential. I, there are points where I wish you would tone it down a little. I'm like, ah, come on. But, yeah, that's just who he is. Exactly. Love a little weird. Yeah, I mean, like, the thing is, is, like, most good film directors are absolutely horrible people, because to be a good film director, you have to be a complete sociopath.

All right. That's why you're good. Yeah. Yeah, no, 100%. Yeah, I mean, it's, I do, it was fun watching it this time, knowing the ending from my first watch. Because kind of, just, you know, 100% of things that happened are in line with the other supernatural element that isn't. explicit until the ending, depending on how you interpret it. But yeah, like every single scenario is like, oh, just like a monkey's paw near the beginning

and just things that she explicitly is told through the Word of God or asks for praise for. They all happen. Like nothing contradicts that in any way, which is really cool. One of my favorite moments is when she gets the voice of God back in her head as she's riding towards the big ship. but that's like, I find that very moving moment when she finally has that, you know, connection returned to her. Yeah.

Talk to other people, you know. Yeah, it's beautiful. And I think it's really interesting, like, to consider the fact that, like, it is written, like, in this way that feels, like, very big and larger than life. And in a way, it could be considered, like, cliche or, like, melodramatic. But it is written, like, a Bible story. Yeah. Like relating it to Job or something, and it is kind of funny to think of like, okay, well, if you were to adapt a big biblical story, like what's the right approach to take? Like, are you doing something like Aronovsky's Noah? Are you doing this? Like, like, what is, like, and I think that's an interesting thing is like there is a sincerity to the approach where even as much as he like can laugh it off as being like a little bit, like saying it's tropey and stuff within the writing.

He just does so many amazing filmic things to elevate it beyond something that's almost too silly to work. And I kind of love that. Very cool. Yeah, anything else to add? The only thing that I don't like about it is the child actors. He doesn't direct very well. They're kind of like quiet and awkward and just like not given a lot to do. And I was like, ah, okay.

Didn't need to be there. I don't know. I didn't I hated them They were so mean and cruel I mean the characters were mean I know Yeah but they were acting like mean little kids I don't know I didn't expect Yeah but they weren't give it

I never had an issue with it What? And it's like that awkward timidity Where they're just like testing the water of like Hey this adult can we now I start treating her like a piece of trash Like let's see how far we can go with this It's just that inhumanity

That's just so ugly and disturbing that's like a part of humans, you know, even at that young age. Oh, we got another guest. Oh, my God. What do they think of breaking the waves? What do you think of breaking the waves, boys? No, that's God. Oh, shit.

I got God's perspective. It's the voice of God in my ear telling me that my flight's about to board. Is it actually about to board? How much time we get? We got like 20 minutes. All right, okay. Well, eight out of ten. High eight out of ten for me.

Same. Eight out of ten. Yeah. I appreciate it more than I like it. Maybe watch it again one day. It'd be like a low seven out of ten for me, three and a half star. And it gets the heart from Louise. Perfect.

All right, let's do some questions. Okay, let's do a couple questions here. As we wind down this episode from the Sardonicast community, head over to the suggestion thread over on the subreddit if you want to leave questions for future. episodes. I've got to do this one from Butter 467. It was a question for Louise. Since you told Adam that castration

movie part two was mainly inspired by To Boldly Flee, were you someone who actually watched Doug Walker's other content like Nostalgia Critic, Demo, Real, and all the other movies he did like Kickarsia and Suburban Knights? 100%. I mean, I got into that whole scene

back when AVGN and nostalgia critic had their feud and then I became a avid channel awesome watcher along with many of the sites other contributors but of course I was there for for Doug this is while I was a child in like junior high probably once I got to high school I fell off which I think is around the time that Kickassia was posting I would maybe occasionally watch a a channel awesome video if it was saying I was really you know like there wasn't a lot on like YouTube was so early and like the criticism stuff like it was you know fun

to hop on there and maybe watch a video um where people are talking about a movie that I had nostalgia for to I mean these people aren't that much older than me right so I was definitely very much so the target demographic for it um and what I think is really interesting was like I fully fell off of the site by the time I was in university. So it's like, like Tobololi Flea, I never saw at the time. I never saw Suburban Knights of the time. I never made it through Kickassia. I think I saw one of the parts that was posted at the time.

It was like, ah, these guys really funny at riffing on Space Jam, not so good at, you know, making an original film. But what was really interesting was like I remember a bunch of the controversy stuff came out with like the change the channel thing and like the mid-2010s. And that kind of reinvigorated my curiosity. And then one of my friends, Perry Rulins, was on a podcast called Get Cynical where he talked about suburban nights. And I tuned in to listen to my friend talk about it and was just so captivated by a, like him kind of making an appeal of like you have to watch this so it was during the pandemic and me and my girlfriend at the time who was like she was like six years older than me so she had

totally missed all this stuff entirely I was like hey I'm gonna I'm gonna introduce you to this amazing guy called the nostalgia critic and we ended up putting on and watching all three of the anniversary movies and there were some mix of like my nostalgia for that era my new found appreciation for like no budget DIY anything goes filmmaking and just like the I think like where I was at in my own career feeling very stalled out and creatively like like impotent in this way that like by the time I got to the end of like to Boli Flea I was like crying like I like emotionally invested in these characters I was so affected I had like complete like it became like a complete hyper fixation for a little bit where I go I was just I became so abyssable

obsessed with it as like a movie that I like I will put that movie on my sight and soul sight and sound back the next chance like if I ever get asked to contribute one like they did just like profoundly change my whole approach to filmmaking in a way and like I definitely was not a joking when I when I said that like it was one of the biggest inspirations on like when I did castration movie part two specifically like I even throw like a Dutch angle in there at one point like you know I'm like I'm in conversation with like all the great O tours you know like like rubber Rassan a carth or dryer Doug Walker um I think that uh you know hell yeah amazing great answer um seeing as a time crunch I'll just go into the next one from the dark UCF night

there was another question for Louise I love castration movie one and I'm looking forward to watching two was part of the reason you chose to keep the movies as long as long as they are to intentionally make them less accessible to general audiences and keep them mostly within intended communities. How does that strike you? The answer is in the question, is it not? Well, it's interesting because that was never part of the thought. Like, I made these movies for myself and I like a long movie.

I mean, I love being able to get invested with characters. And, like, you know, when I think about the, like, the films I love the most, it's, I want to exist in those spaces longer. And so when I sought out the style for this movie, I originally was expecting it to try to carve it down to be a normal length film. But then, like, my ambition just got the best of me. And I sat down with my friend William Morris,

who's one of the executive producers on it when we were hanging out in Chicago together. And he said, like, we watched, like, an hour of rough cut that I had that was, like, mostly unedited. Like, it was just, like, the scene. in their entirety without me cutting them up at all. And he just said to me, like, you know, this is like actually extremely watchable. Like, like, I think it would actually be criminal to cut any of this.

Like, I've never seen a movie that feels like this before. And that kind of gave me, he was the first guy who ever screens my work anywhere, like in a movie theater. So it was kind of this moment where I realized, like, you know, I'm going to trust this person who's been a chance. champion for my work. And I'm going to just lean into like making this the movie I want it to be, which is like indulging in this extremely long duration because I feel it needs to be that long. And you know, it's really funny. Like I get a lot of like, I think that that's the thing that

that honestly distinguishes it between like von Treers movies from the period that we're talking about with Breaking the Waves and like what I'm doing with castration movie is that like I'm not trying to cut up to get the best moments of these performances and staying to heightened emotion the whole time. It's like, no, I want the subtleties of people having to think about what they have to say. And I want to exist in the realness of the moments as opposed to like what's cinematic in those moments. So in a way, it's like trying to take that like dogma 95 approach one step further and be like, well, we have to add duration as a component of that because like to exist as a human is to exist in time and time is long. Days are long.

And I think that, you know, that ties into a lot of the themes of the movie. And it just made sense on an artistic level to me. And the thing that became so funny is it ended up driving the word and mouth where the movie got so much more popular. As opposed to it saying this niche, weird art film that filters Normies, the movie got way more popular being this four and a half hour movie called castration movie. Like that, it feels like a joke of what an art film is. is like what do you say a Canadian Vancouver shot movie that shot on high eight like shot on a toaster and like like like it's four and a half hours long like like like it becomes like the joke of like what a film bro watches and because of that it like actually caught like way more

attention than it ever would have otherwise so so I would say no like it definitely wasn't like a choice to try to like gate keep it in any way I just wanted to make the movie I wanted to make that's really cool that's a great answer and it does it does very much grab you attention. Okay, let's do this one for everyone from exploding ninja. What's a recent trend in movies that you're sick of seeing? What comes to your guys minds when that question is posted? I don't know, being released. I hate movies. Freedom, yeah. Don't release it. We need more of the Batwoman and Coyote versus Acme. Okay, make them and then don't release it. I don't know.

waste everyone's time I think that for me it's just like I feel like the digital revolution has caused people to forget about lighting as a component of cinema and to me cinema's all about lighting and like I know I speak as like

a filmmaker who tries to you know cut back the artifice of filmmaking so much in like the current project I'm doing but like you know like the next movie I do I want to shoot on film and I want to be like lit like, you know, in a beautiful way that showcases like the power of the way light moves through a camera onto film stock and then is projected back out onto a screen. Like I just, I wish more filmmakers worked with like good DPs and gaffers who had a passion

for like actually lighting a scene and not just like saving time by shooting everything super flat and underlit and handling it in post. That's a great. that's a great answer that's a fantastic answer um i've got kind of a weird one that it you can't really say it's fully a trend yet but it's looking that it might be over this decade with especially in 2025 like catching up with the covid stuff um there's a potential for a bit of a thematic saturation on like how everything sucks and we're all fucked and AI is going to ruin everything and all my favorite movies from last year like was some kind of commentary a twist on that but

I think we'll see we'll see how much oxygen there is in that yeah what you didn't like mercy you don't like mercy yeah I'm hyped for that year I'll watch it we should go see that this week I really want to see that I'm waiting for digital where and if we don't see it in theaters it'll come very quickly very quick no we got we got to see it in IMAX no no I want to go watch it in IMAX it's legitimately like war of the world if it was pure evil like cool made by a second Is it funny, though? Is it funny bad? No, it's just evil. Like, it's just like morally

objectionable. It's like pro-AI copaganda, you know. Okay, cool. The police state is amazing. Yeah, it's crazy. Sounds kind of funny. Yeah, I, uh, my pet peeve right now might just be like member berry shit. Like, a lot of the times they just, it seems like they

sacrifice what would make artistic sense just to shoehorn in some kind of like nostalgia nonsense. Yeah, I just, it would be so nice if we had a functioning film landscape where studios invested in talent and amazing stories as opposed to just IP mining, which I mean, like there's always been such a thing in the industry. It's just like we used to IP mine like books and stage plays and interesting true story.

from the real world about humans and the way people are so interesting. And now it's just like, okay, let's reboot Batman again. Like, I just, I just, I really wish it wasn't such a homogenized film landscape. It just feels like we've been stuck in the same, like, it's perpetual 2000.

Like, I just want to break free of that. And I think with studios crashing as much as they are, I'm really curious to see like how things turn around as IP delivers less and less returns on investment and maybe hopefully someone figures it out. But like, you know, the studio landscape is brutal. The indie landscape is faltering as people are way too scared to find, fund anything unique or interesting because they don't want to upset certain political things going on right now. So, I mean, it's all very, very complicated. And it's a little disheartening, but I'm hoping we get like a new Hollywood out of it. And I'm excited to see who's leading the charge there.

Yeah. Yeah, fuck the bureaucratic red tape. We'll find ways to get around it. Straight to the audience. Yeah. I'm just going to steal all your answers because those are much better. All right. How much time are you got, Louise?

I got some time. I got time. How much is... some how much time i got i i have like 15 minutes like five i should probably hop off in 15 okay i just want to make sure there's enough time to like upload the audio also oh yeah no i think 15 i'll give me enough time for that good good good all right we can do another question or so i do one more to round it down yeah yeah one or two maybe depending if they're just round it down then this one from dab sloth 710 hey so that's question for louise what's the most challenging thing you've had to overcome as a filmmaker

Congratulations on everything you've accomplished. Seeing your movies has really helped me understand myself more, and I can't thank you enough. Much love. I think that the most important thing for every filmmaker is finding your voice. I think that, like, when I first started, there was things like I knew I liked, and it was just, like, really experimenting and, like, you kind of comb through all these things that might be your influences, might be your personality that end up on screen. and I think that becoming a great filmmaker is really about finding ways of like curating that down into like a very strong authorial voice

and once you found that, I think that's the real key to succeeding with your work. And as part of that, I think that for me, like the biggest challenge is like keeping myself excited about whatever I'm working on because I'm definitely like the type of artist who is really passionate about like always challenging myself and like like um you know uh making work that that's uh isn't like i i don't want to you know like do the edgy like subverting

expectations thing but it's like you know like i want to i always want to challenge myself to like do saying i'm not expecting if that makes sense you know that does make sense yeah do we got time for one more time of question yeah i could chuck in another one here we could do um all right last one one i send on this one from hello it is joe what method do you prefer for releasing shows on streaming all at once weekly or in volumes

like stranger things five or invincible season two yeah how do we feel on this if they release it all at once then the decision is with the viewer you can choose to binge it or not okay give me the freedom or like fallout but they just change it i like week to week because i i think the thing that's great about

television is the fact that It's a communal experience to watch it week to week. Like, I think that the best TV shows I've ever watched are the ones where I got to, you know, talk with my friends about, like, what he thinks is going to happen and getting to actually entertain, like, what is the special thing about TV, which is long form storytelling told over X amount of weeks. And so for me, it's like, if it's not told in that manner, you're just releasing, like, a long movie. And I think that it's so much less interesting if you're like, you know, when Twin Peaks the Return was coming out, everyone was having such a good time talking about that week to week or even like a show like Lost, which in hindsight has a lot of issues. Like it was still very exciting at the time to be watching it.

And so. Yeah, there's a lot of moments. Yeah. So I think that that's what makes TV special. And if you're not releasing TV in a week-to-week basis, then what's the point? I'm with you. 100%. That's my answer.

Yeah, I don't like the volume thing. I found it irritating because it's just, it's so blatant just like we need to extend this over as many months as possible for subscriptions. Yeah. Well, and the volume thing's interesting because it's a way for Netflix also to get around paying out salaries properly. True, yeah. So it's it's also like nefarious bad money reasons why they do that kind of stuff, which I don't like. Gross, yeah. But I love Netflix. I would work for Netflix, obviously. And you also love the Oscars and you live Paul Thomas Anderson. Yeah, no, actually all the things I said that were bad are actually good.

So if anyone's listened to this, I really love working in the film industry. Well, you were doing a classic Lars von Trier. Oh, yeah, no, I was just saying edgy stuff for attention. I'm very nice and like everything. It's thematically purposeful. All right. Thank you so much. That does it for questions.

Whose turn is it to recommend a movie? Is it mine? That's a great question. It wasn't mine. No, you did smile tap. Yeah. I did eyes wide shut. So I think it's Adam.

Yeah. Uh-oh. Okay. Well, I'm trying to narrow it down. We've got some options here. would you like would you like a I don't know

I have terrible choice paralysis often this is what happens when I'm like ordering food from Uber eats do whatever's going to get that clickbait you know do whatever's going to Yeah I don't think any of these that I have on my court list are going to get that well

how popular fuck everything I'm so mad that I can't decide right now what would we be talking about other than the recommendation like the new Ramey and like what else because if people click on it for like

one of those or whatever sent help is there anything you're playing on watching there's Mark Plyer he has his new movie Oh is that actually coming out before you came down the next one Let's go see it on Thursday

That'd be fun. I might be, I might be, not in town, but I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I might be, I might be.

I'll, I'll keep you posted for that. Let's, fucking, uh, puh. I've never had you struggle like this for one of these.

Because I'm upset at myself. You can do this. You can do it. All right. Well, since, since fucking, uh,

Korea got snubed, I guess I'll recommend a Li Changdong film Oasis. I haven't seen it. Love this director. Cool. Fantastic. Okay, we got a Louis approval.

So I haven't seen it yet. I'm looking forward to it. I'm assuming neither of you have seen it either. Nope. No, I've seen it. Excited. Cool.

Have you seen any Li Chang? Either of you? He did Secret Sunshine and Burning. I guess Jake, you haven't seen. No, I haven't seen any of these. Yeah, Alex, I think you would love burning, actually. Oh, yeah. All right.

Yeah. So if you don't want to, if you're listening at home, you don't want to be spoiled for Oasis, 2002 film by Lee Changdong. Watch it before the next episode. These episodes come out every two weeks. You can listen to them early by going to sardonicast.com. Sign up for premium. It's only a few bucks a month or patreon.

com slash sardonicast. Or hit the join button below. We also have a Sardonicast highlights channel. Check that out. Louise, plug whatever you want. Your film is such a good value. It's so cheap. where do they find it?

Yeah. Two films in one. And you can buy it through a letterbox now, right? So the best way to support me in the movie is to buy the film through my gum road account, which you can find by typing in digital. louiseward.com. Otherwise, you can also rent the movie from the letterbox to video store as part of their best films of 2025. Hey! Series that they're hosting on there.

So it'll be up there for the next two years, I believe. It'll also be coming to streaming in April as well as Blu-ray around the same time. So there will be many opportunities to watch it basically anywhere. This might be the most successful Vancouver movie ever made. Truly like definitely like seek it out. And I think we're going to be doing another crowdfunding campaign soon too. So keep your eyes posted for that. We can get the next part done in time for some festival premieres that we have lined up.

So we're going to try to get the next six hours all ready to go for you guys. Hell yeah. It's literally only like $3.50 a US to get the first two movies and you've just been adding them and you get access to the rest of them even without having to pay. Yeah, the gum road is great because it's one-time payment. You get all the movies. But I will say if it's ever like a financial burden or like you don't have a credit card or something, you can always reach out to me on DMs for a free waiver code or you can find the movie on the Internet Archive as well. So it's accessible no matter how you want to see it.

That's fucking cool. Amazing. Way to go. Support artists. Support indie artists. Thank you so much for your contributions to film and also being a guest on this podcast, arguably more. important. Yeah. Thank you, Louise. Yeah, I loved your insight. It was really nice talking to you. Yeah. It was a great conversation. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, no, thank you guys. And am I forgetting

anything? Have a happy castration, everybody. Again. Yeah, well, that's just how we how we sign off every time. Yeah, Shrek's fucking old news now. Fuck that guy. Castration's where it's at, where it's at. So, thank you for listening, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Attention, attention. This is a secret message from Adam recorded after the podcast. I found out that it was my fault. It was entirely my fault that the dates got mixed up because I gave Louise the wrong date for some reason.

I don't know how it happened. It was literally one day off. I said like the 27th instead of the 28th or vice versa. I don't know how that happened, but just wanted to throw that out there because. otherwise people would be left with the impression that it was Louise's fault. It was my fault. I take the blame. I own up to it.

But it was really funny. So, you know, it worked out. Thank you. Bye-bye.