Sardonicast - Sardonicast #65: Artemis Fowl, Incendies

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

Support the Show for $2 a month and receive all future episodes early at https://sardonicast.com and https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast. Buy Sardonicast T-Shirts, and other merchandise at https://teespring.com/stores/sardonicast. Gaël's Twitter: https://twitter.com/_vexel Gaël's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/vexel_tv Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/sardonicast Website: https://sardonicast.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Sardonicast Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/sardonicast Twitter: https://twitter.com/sardonicast Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sardonicast Ralph's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ralphthemoviemaker Alex's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/IHEOfficial Adam's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/YourMovieSucksDOTorg Alex's Twitter: https://twitter.com/IHE_OFFICIAL Ralph's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ralphsepe Adam's Twitter: https://twitter.com/2gay2lift Adam's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/YMS Intro music by: https://www.youtube.com/user/anUnkindnessvideo

Three, two, one. Have you ever had a dream that you had, you, you, you, you would, you could, you do, you would, you want, you, you, you could do so. You, you do, you could, you, you want, you want him to do you so much, you could do anything. Hi. I love that clip. That was really good. It's a really, I'm surprised you remember all. Yeah, did you have that written down?

It's pretty, pretty, how did you do that? No, I just, like, there's a musical version of it from a YouTube channel called Charles Cornell, and I've jammed to it so many times. Just like, hell yeah, this is sick. But now it's just, like, memorize like any other song that I would have listened to on repeat. So it's just... Anyway, this is our dada cast. I'm Adam for your movie sex.

I'm Ralphie from Ralphie the Movie Maker. Ralphie. And I'm Alex from my H.E. And that was a flashback to the past. I heard that audio for a long time. Oh, yeah? I hear it like every week. Clearly my practicing.

Yeah, I guess there's some as of like the past hour there's some movie news I guess. Yeah. I hope you weren't looking forward to a new Chris Nolan movie anytime soon. Yep. They finally said

indefinitely this time they delayed it, which is probably what they should have said the first time. Yeah. Was anyone really expecting it to drop? I don't know. It wasn't supposed to be out by now. Yeah. I was like, there were so many people that were so confident about it.

They're like, but they gave an actual date. It's like, yeah, but they don't know what the world's going to be like on that day. I'm glad that it's like delayed though. I don't know. I think it would be a bad idea. Yeah. Apparently they might start releasing it around the world before the US. No.

It should be quite weird. I mean, Christopher Nolan has specifically stated that he won't do that. so unless he's changed his mind. Like he's very adamant about the release of this movie, which is why it's just been such a cluster fight. It's astonishing that he has the control he has. It's so rare for, you know, directed to have that kind of power over his project.

Yeah, whenever I think of, like, directors that do have influence over studios, Christopher Nolan's, like, the first one to come to mind. Yeah, because he makes money. Yeah, much. Yeah, James Cameron's one. Oh, yeah? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly. When you have the highest-grishing movie ever, twice. Yeah. They're kind of like, well, yeah, you know that he's going.

Yeah, you get it, you can just do what you want. Yeah. Surely it's going to wind up this year being quite light by the end of it. We're just going to have like a year or two

where everything's just kind of empty for a bit before things start trickling in again. Maybe. Such a weird time. I'm kind of disappointed that the Oscars has decided to not only postpone their ceremony, but extend the eligibility by two months. And they'll probably extend it even more

if there's not enough like blockbuster movies out that they want to include. A, because I would love to see a really awkward Oscars ceremony with no audience. B, because like the fact that they're extending it more, if they didn't do that, then there would be a higher chance of eligibility for like smaller independent films or even foreign films. So like I can think of two things that I'm excited to see in September. the new Charlie Kaufman and the new Antonio Campos. So if the Oscars was like, okay, we're still going to have the eligibility the same.

We're not going to extend it. Then there would be more eyes on these smaller art films, you know, but they don't want to do that. They want to make sure it's out for the 2020 Oscars. Yeah, they struggle to get people to watch it when they're like really popular pop movies on it, let alone if it was just indie movies. They could also just nominate Sonic for best picture. At least best visual effects. Yeah.

Yeah, or best achievement in visual effects. The achievement that they just changed the whole movie, I guess. So we all saw a movie called Artemis Fowl, and I don't think we're going to talk about it for super long. Yeah, speaking of great movies from this year. Yeah. Yeah, not like a caliber movies. Straight to Disney Plus. It was supposed to come out last year.

It was supposed to come out last year. Right? Or the year before? I thought it was just supposed to come out in August. It's been a project that's been worked on since around 2001. It's one of those projects. Oh, really? It's just been like, yeah, like no one could get it done.

And Harvey Weinstein was funding the original version. So that was delayed and it's eventually just been squirted out into Disney Plus. Yeah, based on a young adult. It kind of has like a Harry Potter feel, but it's so dated at this point. So the fact that this came out now, it's like people are so over this kind of shit. Yeah. And they just do it badly. They don't even adapt the story very well. It doesn't do it justice at all. Apparently, it's really not faithful at all. I didn't read those books, so I don't know, but. I did when I was younger.

It's more villain in that. Yeah. Yeah. It's completely left my mind since then. Yeah. It's described as like, die hard with fairies. That's how the author, described it. So that's not what I got from the movie at all. But from like the books, it's supposed to be like a little bit more. It's a YA. So it's like a little adult. It's a little violent. But I guess you can't show that in a Disney movie. So they, they toned all that shit down. It's kind of dull this movie. Oh, super dull. They just rush over everything. There's a point towards the end where they just don't stop introducing new characters. And it's like, wait, you weren't like set up or anything. So they're doing like set up. ups for characters at the end of the movie. For the sequels. It's just such a... Yeah, for sequels that everyone knows, it's just never going to happen.

So the film's pointless. Yeah, we've seen so many of those in the past, like, decade. There's like, Fanforstick, there's the Mummy with Tom Cruise. They just love doing that. They're like, we got to set up for this whole franchise. And in the midst of doing that, in the pursuit of doing that, they wind up making a terrible movie

and eliminating the possibility of a franchise. So it's like, okay, well... Yeah. What were you doing? You have to make a good movie in there for it to be a franchise. You forgot that step. Sleepless had a little stinger at the end that set up a sequel. So even that wanted to have like a franchise.

I had no idea. Anything. Anything. They don't care. Yeah, my biggest takeaway from Artemis Fell was just like there's so much exposition. And during this exposition, like when they're in the study hall or whatever, like, oh, this thing is my dad left for me, and they're like discovering these pieces of paper with blah, blah, blah, and these clues or whatever. On its own, that scene would be identical

to any other, you know, bland, but moderately well-received, blockbuster kind of like fantasy kind of young adult thing. But the crucial mistake was that at this point in Artemis Fowl, they didn't really develop anything properly. There were no likable characters. and it was impossible to care what was going on. So you could like take that exact same scene, put in a different movie where the characters were developed or likable and it would have, it would feel completely different. But unfortunately, it's just like, man, this is boring because you can't care about what's going on. Yeah, the world is very like uninspired to me.

And it wasn't even well established. Yeah, really. It's really quick. Like you were saying, it's all like so rushed over. You just don't even have time to appreciate what's even fucking happening. I had a hard time following the story. Yeah, yeah. Everyone was pointing out Josh Gadd like he was the worst part of the movie, but Judy Dench in this was like Kind of distracting

What the hell did she say? It was top of the morning to you Oh yeah, it was awful. I couldn't believe like what I was talking about She had no idea what type of movie she was in It was hilarious every time I think anybody did it was so out of place Between that and cats. I'm like oh my god. Oh yeah, the double seven franchise to do this I mean she could do anything at this point she could retire yeah She's great

Yeah Lots of Really awkward Clunky exposition Terrible dialogue Terrible acting Kids sucked Artemis Fowl as a character

Was really really annoying and unlikable And he's never acted in anything before Also they kind of just plucked him out of nowhere And was like, you'll do This is your break kid Yeah He's unrelatable He's like super intelligent

He's a jerk He has like all this money and like everything He basically has everything So it's like okay what do I what more does this kid need Like why should I relate to him? Yeah And I felt that way about a lot of the characters in this too Even when it comes to like his goals of like

Finding his dad or whatever It's like they're just parts of the movie where you just forget that that's what's even going on It's like it feels just so poorly developed Where it's like oh yeah You don't see them for an hour it feels like Yeah Colin Farrell is so unimportant to the movie that he's shot his entire it's even listed as a cameo on a really three days oh my god his entire inclusion on the project it's feeding time that was like the only good scene we

mentioned that in the previous episode in case anybody's getting deja vu about ornumus fell we didn't really review it we just briefly mentioned it the reason it does stand out there is because there's just nothing else like that yeah i was hoping the whole movie would be like that it's so weird i saw that clip on Twitter. I was like, hell yeah. This looks hilarious, but then... It reminded me of R-I-P-D with Deadpool in it. You've seen that one? Yeah.

Similar. Kind of shite. Very similar. It did remind me that. Yeah. Perfect comparison. Ryan Reynolds and... Yeah, I heard about it, but I never saw. What is the budget on this movie? It's like $125 million. Yeah.

No, surely. Are you jokes? Something like that. It's that. It's that. It doesn't look like it. It looks like a Disney channel. Honestly. A hundred twenty five million.

Oh my God. I guess the stars, you know, Judy Dench and Josh Gadd. Yeah. Yeah. You certainly didn't go into those flying sequences with the fairies. Oh my God. Well, like conceptually, what would they be going for? The half horse.

Like that looks like. Yeah. That's embarrassing to watch. It's like they just handed off these shots. to just animators and were like given no direction just make the fairies fly yeah or whatever they just did whatever the fuck they wanted and there's no cohesion to yeah it's just a mess it really did not feel like there was like any kind of a structure to what was happening like directing or otherwise one understanding

of the universe in a way that's kind of like reverent to it like we talked about the rings recently obviously but yeah you can tell the amount of like care and attention that was put into you know accurately representing what that story was about and clearly that ain't what's happening here. Yeah. There was like the tech that like erased everyone's minds. That was just like men in black.

It was basically a copy of that. And then there was the whole time freezing sequence when they like save everyone. And that was just a cheap rip off of the quicksilver scenes from X-Men. It was just a bunch of other movies that I had seen just so poorly done. Yeah. And like you don't care about anything that's going on. It's weird because it's like a, it's a fantasy universe where the hook is that, they have like science fiction technology like the fact their fairies isn't that important really

to what's going on it's more about the crazy tech they have and it's not like magic so you kind of i could see that being an actual like good hook in like a book that fully fleshes out that idea but it's super jarring in a movie that's this short and has just no development yeah it felt like a really long first act it was like right right when things felt like they should have been moving along was the ending. And partially, I mean, what really doesn't help this is the fact that there were only like three or four different locations. It was like this, this implication of grandiose, epic scale. And yet it all just takes place in a house and then like a jail cell and one other place that I forget. And that's it. And it's just like there was never any like adventure.

There was never any like growth for characters. There was never like I didn't feel like anybody got an Ark or anything. It just felt like it was starting. No, that's way too much for this movie. Thanks, Kenneth Branagh, or however you pronounce his name. I don't think I'll ever be able to. Brannock.

That's right. He does a lot of Shakespeare stuff. Yeah, and he's good at that. Like, I like Hamlet. Thor's okay, even. That's kind of like Shakespeare. Yeah, yeah. I guess that's why they picked him, yeah.

They added this, like, McGuffin into this movie, the aculus which that's not in the books apparently oh really it really it felt kind of shoehorned into the movie that whole thing yeah i i was having a hard time keeping track of like if we were going to find colin ferrol or if we were chasing after be aculos or like like i didn't know what was going on the whole movie i remember a couple points where i was like why is this thing important again like you're saying the name of it but like what what's this for

it really did feel Josh Gads' character, they kind of portray him as if, yeah, we know how cool he is. We know this is going to be the character of one walks away, like, loving. It's filmed that way. He's the haggard of, like, in the book. Yeah, like a fan favorite kind of character. He's got his silly little gimmick of him being like a, he's like a dwarf that's really tall. That's his, his schick, which I guess could be funny.

But again, they just don't really do anything with it. And he, what is his purpose again? He can, like, break into the house or something. Yeah. He digs under that house. That's right, yeah. I don't know why they just don't go in through the, like, a window. Yeah, there's just, nothing felt important or deserved or earned or justified.

Nothing felt like it was like a logical conclusion of anything that happened before it. Just kind of things happened. They fought some things at one point. When it started getting into the, when the fairies showed up at the house and there was like that big dome and then there was a couple like fighting kind of actiony shots it reminded me a bit of like Aquaman and I was hoping that more of the movie would be like that it felt like a more poorly executed version of fight scenes from Aquaman but then we just barely got anything from it it was just like one scene yeah they really just they it was mostly just exposition and

boring bullshit they could have fit more into it I'm sure they could have Yeah, that's the thing that's so weird about it. It's like it rushes over anything and doesn't even seem like it's interested in developing anything that would be required for you to get even remotely invested. They describe him as like a criminal prodigy, but you really don't get that at all. Yeah. I guess it is just the Disney kind of like they probably didn't want a kind of bad e-main character, so they toned it down. They should have taken more risks with this, especially if they're just going to put it on Disney Plus, and it's not going to be a major, like, theater. release. They should have made Artemis Fall more of a...

Yeah, I don't think so either. They just dumped it. You know. So they get to pretend like it wasn't a flop. They weren't as like passionate about the Lion King as like the other movies they were going to release around that time, the animated films. Like they didn't have as much faith in it, I mean. And that turned out to be a majorly successful movie. Yeah, the original Lion King.

Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that maybe because it's, you know, they don't care about it. you know, they don't care about it. Why not fuck around with it? Make it something really special. Take some risks.

Make Artemis foul the villain. I don't know. It was so bland. It was an interesting screenwriter. It was like they made it to be forgotten. Yeah. And that's the worst kind of movie to me, whether it just has no purpose to anyone.

There's just no expression to it. All it's doing is just pissing off fans of the book series. That's all it's doing. Yeah. Or being memed. there's so many of those oh so many it's like we just get them all the time

it's a shame it's oh well it's funny that like so many people saw it because it was on Disney Plus and because it was so bad pretty much yeah it was getting a lot of attention on Twitter when it came out

yeah this could have gone under the radar if not for the horrific situation we find ourselves in and this didn't help There's nothing else to watch Yeah Artemis Spall This is what

Yes Exactly People are saying that this is like The worst Disney movie ever I still think a wrinkle in time is worse Not by a like A significant margin But I'll take it

Because I just refuse to watch that one Yeah Okay It's too long This one was like 20 minutes shorter Very very annoying Disney Just

Trying to milk dry Every single IP they can get their hands on It's like, this exists already. Let's do this. Are you glad they have a place to dump their kind of outcasts now, as opposed to putting it in theaters and expecting more money for it? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I wish other studios would just dump things on digital, too, but Disney has so much money.

It doesn't even matter. I would rather they just make good movies and put it on Disney Plus. So, you know, people could be entertained. like if people start thinking as Disney Plus as a dumping ground for like Disney movies that suck then no one's gonna get it like they gotta stop they gotta stop yeah but they have all the old titles they have good movies on there they have Mandalorian they have the old titles yeah yeah and that's what people have it for but you know I'm thinking like some good movies

if you have this movie and it's already been made and you've pumped a hundred million dollars into it is it actually an option to just hide it and just take the loss and just just not have the bad optics from releasing it. We'll find out with chaos walking, I guess. See if they just pretend that never happened and not release it. They're probably happy that it was being mean, to be honest. It's probably more than what they're anticipating. Yeah.

See, I don't understand. Like, that's, when I look at other studios, like, chaos walking, just dump it right now. People will watch it. They have nothing else to watch. Yeah. Just dump it. Yeah. You don't know what you're going to do with it.

You're trying to release it in January and then postponing it another year into another January. Like, you clearly don't really want to release it. Just dump it on digital. Come on. What are you doing? Let me see that mess. We'll get it one day. Someday, someday. Do you want to rate this thing? Yeah. Do you have a rating? Let's rate it. I know what I'm giving it. Yeah. One out of ten. Mm-hmm. I'm in the same boat. One out of ten. I ain't much more to say about it. I mean, I am honestly with you. One out of ten. It's the worst movie I've seen this year. Like, just so lazy.

And it's like a total waste of time, actually. I got nothing out of it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was a couple weeks ago that I watched it now, so it's struggling to even, like, remember anything about it is proving difficult. Yeah. All right. So, there was a film recommendation from Alex,

but for this film recommendation, I decided it would be a good idea. to have a surprise guest join us for this discussion. He's my roommate, so I'm going to grab him from downstairs and through the power of editing. It'll seem like he got here in like two seconds. And we're back with Guyel. Hello. He made it. Anybody listening, you might recognize his voice from the Adam and Pals commentaries.

He's also sometimes been on the gaming channel, the YMS commentaries stuff. It is I. Yes. and I figured it would be good to have him in the discussion because there's a lot of interesting context to the film that he's able to bring but we'll get into that in a bit Alex why don't you introduce the movie spoiler discussion

okay so this was my pick incandes is that right almost is that a better pronounce it said what ensigni did you say that's a silence Saint Saint D Yeah

There you Okay And now I've got to Try and say the director's name too Oh yeah Yeah I feel like I have a panic attack Every time I'd say his name

But either which way The movie came out 2010 Directed by Denny Villeneuve Oh That's pretty good That's good

So it is Denis It's not like the British Dennis Dennis But yeah But yeah This is his second feature A drama mystery

About twins Jean and Simon. Is it Jean or Jean? Because again it's Jean, sorry. Like Jean Dealman. Like Jean Diehlman. Oh, like Jean Diem. Okay, Jean and Simon, who traveled to the Middle East

in an attempt to find out the truth about their kind of family history and fulfill their mother's last wishes and discover some kind of shocking reveals along the way. They keep it somewhat vague, but the war elements of the movie are set, during the Lebanese Civil War, and particularly on this story of, I'm going to say another butchered name now, Suwabakara.

Suhapshara, but very close. Oh my God. We got the expert here. Yeah, this is actually perfect. So we're making it. Who, yeah, who actually did attempt to assassinate the general with the South Lebanon Army, which kind of happens in the movie too, obviously. So while the story is largely based on a stage play, I believe, obviously the setting is a lot of truth that it's based around.

And this is one of the two movies from Dini, I hadn't seen yet. And it turns out it's one of his best works, I think. I really enjoyed this one and thought it really showed the kind of early promise he had because he's fully developed at this point. But going back and seeing the early talent is like very, very important. showing and it's great to see that kind of progression from the start. Yeah, it really emotionally affected me. Especially love the visual presentation style. What do you guys say?

I love it. I had seen it before a couple times. This is on my 2010 list. I believe, I'm just going to correct you a little here, I believe this is his third feature. He has Polytechnique and Maelstrom. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. Oh, is that a feature?

both of those are diny oh my apologies yeah i missed that one yeah no worries i haven't seen maelstrom uh but i have seen polytechnique polytechnic i thought was fine so i do consider insondi to be his really first like breakout okay yeah like he knows what he's doing this is a professional sort of thing yeah yeah and it kind of showed that it was his first picture kind of thing he was establishing a style and exploring a bit more and there were a couple similarities with uh this one with the using kind of a classroom to establish some kind of theme that carries through the movie oh yeah yeah same thing happens in arrival pretty much yeah yeah true true yeah yeah i didn't even connect that what did you think ralph thought it was great yeah i don't know

i don't know what else to say it's a pretty rough movie in terms of like the subject matter and it's pretty disturbing yeah very heavy and uh Toward the end, I got old boyed. Yes. We were watching some of the behind the scenes features on the Blu-ray after we watched the movie. And the Tom York, I guess, Radiohead music that wound up making into the film was stuff that he listened to as he was adapting the original play into a screenplay. And so he just always had that on him the entire time. and then he even brought these headphones with him on set

while he was listening to the radio head music and was just talking about how awesome it was for things to come together in that way. He's like the memories of like writing it as he was listening to the songs. I found that to be pretty appropriate music. Yeah, I agree. I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, what a way to open the movie. It's almost like you wouldn't expect it to work that well for like the setting and a lot of films that I guess tackle a setting like this one might have a bit more cliched music, but I felt like the music really added a lot in terms of like,

not only the uniqueness of the experience, but I guess the maturity of it as well. Yeah, they've got the right sound for it. And I've always thought they're quite a cinematic band, you know, just the way they use music, so it just fits really well and strikes the exact way they're going for. Yeah, and then Susperia. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I guess, unless you guys had a bit more to add before, Gael jumps in with this. mountain of context that he is curated. No, I'm fascinated to hear because just from watching, I could tell there's a lot of context I'm missing out on obviously, just not being educated on any of the conflict here, really. All right, yeah, whenever you want to jump in. The context is both historical and personal for me because I am Lebanese-Canadian. I grew up in Lebanon up until the age of 14, which was in 2006.

at the outbreak of the 2006 Lebanon War, at which point my family and I fled from Lebanon to Canada, where we became immigrants and eventually citizens. Weird parallels, and I'm sure it's not just me, I think a lot of people who have lived in that region and who have experienced war will probably find a lot to chew on in this film. But with that region in particular,

because it is a very specific war that is being kind of set for the film. The film's adaptation of a play by a Lebanese Canadian playwright named Dwejde Mahwad, who was setting the play in the backdrop of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 to 1990, which was my parents' war. Incidentally, he is as old as my parents, in a sense, I guess a little bit younger. And another war, which is the Lebanon-Israel conflict between 85 and 2000. So they're kind of mushed together in a weird sense.

And I'm also a triplet. I also have a twin brother and a twin sister. So it's kind of funny to have that weird parallel there. Yeah. So as you mentioned, Alex, the play was loosely based around the life of a Lebanese communist militant named Suhap Shara, who grew up, who has a lot of parallels with our main character. For example, she grew up in a Christian household. She grew up as a Christian, as did I, incidentally.

she eventually joined the resistance force, which was, I'm not going to get into too political, but the communist faction of the resistance force, which was kind of pro-Muslim, pro-Palestinian at the time in southern Lebanon. And she, with her Christian background, was essentially recruited to assassinate the head of the South Lebanon army, an individual named Antoine Lahad, or Lahad, I guess. And like the film, she actually shoots him twice. And in Suha's words, it was one bullet for Lebanon, one bullet for Palestine. She was sent to Israel for questioning, where she was questioned and beat up, and then sent back to the south of Lebanon to a prison camp known as Chiam,

which has its analog in the film and the form of this prison called Kfarayat in the film and in the play. And yes, she was tortured, and she did use to sing in prison, and she did become known as the lady who sings or the woman who sings. the playwright did interview Suha a lot to get some context for his play. And when he asked her what it was, she sang in prison. She said, oh, just whatever came into my head. Because she was in a cell that was confined and the cells next to her where people are getting tortured. So when people got tortured, she would sing to drown it out.

And so she said, yeah, I just used to sing like Abba and Depeche Mode. So it's kind of funny, like, to think that she was singing Dancing Queen in this torture prison. And in the film, like, she's like, you know, she's singing this like, oriental. lullaby, Raga things. I think it's funny how these things get translated. But obviously it wasn't going to work for the play or for the film for her to be singing dancing queen while she was in prison. Yeah, the reality is pretty surreal that way, honestly. That the reality is actually kind of weirder than the film and the play.

So it's not all parallel. There are some things that have been changed. For example, she was never on the bus that was attacked in 74 or 75. This is a famous bus massacre that is one of the inciting incidents that started the Lebanese Civil War outright. So it was kind of a big deal at the time. And it was carried out by this right-wing Christian militia group known as the Falangists, who were the same people who also carried out the Sabra and Chitla massacre, which is kind of referenced in the film as well through the burnt-down village orphanage type thing.

The Suha was not actually involved in either of those. And she wasn't, I don't know if we're going to second spoil the end. here. Oh yeah, we have, it's a spoiler. Yeah, go ahead. She wasn't like raped in prison, obviously. She didn't have that experience. That came from somewhere else. What happened was the writer, the playwright, had an interview basically talked with his friend, a Quebecois photographer named Jose Lambert, who was showing him photographs that she had taken of southern Lebanon, of the Chiam prison. They were talking about it, and she explained to him how there were some photographs that she decided not to take because the

the stories and the images were too disturbing that she didn't want to essentially materialize them. And Wedgde became very obsessed with this idea of what he called the invisible photograph. In other words, an image that exists, but not in a photograph form, which is to say an image that exists, not in reality, but is nevertheless burned into the eyes of whoever saw it. And one of those images that came to him in the form of his story that Jose told him about her person she knew at Chiam was that a lot of women, especially the mothers of refugees and Muslims at the time during the Civil War, would be taken to Chiam in order to be tortured so that the torturers would get to know where their children are. They wanted to reveal where their sons were, which oftentimes were people who are associated with either the Palestinians or the resistance or Hezbollah,

it could be kind of any of those. And so in order for the women to tell, you know, their captors where their sons were, they would torture their mothers. And so you'd get these really old women or these older women who were being tortured at the hands of younger men in front of their daughters so that the daughters would tell the torturers what would happen. And in one of these apocryphal incidences, one of the women who was being kind of tortured and who was crying

and pleading and arguing with their torture, said to him, look at me, how can you do this? I could be your mother. And that story just really kind of hit a light bulb for him and he just kind of wrote the entire play around that story and incorporated the context of those wars around it. So that's the initial context of what you're looking at, even though none of it is explicitly named in the film. Yeah, there's like a fake town name. Yeah, everything is renamed. Nothing is referred to explicitly. And there's a lot to be said there as well.

The reason he made that decision as a director or as a playwright was because kind of like me, when his parents fled that war with him, he was just a small child or at least too small to make decisions for his own. He was certainly too small to decide that he could stay or not. I was 14 when my parents and I, we all fled the country. He was 8, I believe, and then he was 14 when he went when he moved eventually to Canada. But at 8, they fled to Paris and France, and he lived there for a few years.

And then at 14, he moved to Quebec, which was one of the places we were potentially going to move to. And as a result, he felt in a sense that it wasn't his story to tell. He had never been to the south of Lebanon. and the war wasn't as vivid a memory for him, but he still wanted to tell the story. And so watching this movie and watching that context and understanding why these names were left out really ends up fucking with my head.

Because there's a lot that I personally attached to in this. To give a little bit extra context for what I think is one of the really great themes of the film and the play, which is violence and the chain of violence, the Khayyam prison was essentially abandoned in the year 2000 when Israel withdrew from the south of Lebanon and it became a museum and then in 2006 which is the war that I fled from the IAF started conducting air strikes across the country destroying several targets including the airport which is why we had to leave by boat but one of the targets that they destroyed was the Khayyam prison in 2006 in that

airstrike in the war that I fled from, ostensibly to destroy a lot of the evidence of mistreatment and human rights violations. So it's weird because it kind of directly ties to me. It's so crazy to me to think about that I am just the last link in this extremely long chain of war and violence that both the play and the film try to address and try to say, hey, wouldn't it be great if we could just, we could just not do that? Just chill out. so so that's that's a little bit of the context surrounding the play I have a lot more to say about it but I'm just going to take a breath here and have you know some reactions if he has any questions

anything I could potentially try to answer I'll try to clarify things as well I tend to ramble I'm sorry no that's fine thank you so much no is fascinating it really uh just goes to show how art can have a different experience on different people depending on what their own life experiences are because like yeah i'm i i'm watching it as a film in terms of like the more creative elements that are within it and i don't have that historical or cultural context in mind so it doesn't hit me personally in a way as something that i've ever experienced so i kind of just have to like view the world in kind of the same way that i would view a fictional world almost but it is you know despite not being a literal real adaptation, you know, it's a bit more vague than that and there's more

leeway when it comes to the accuracy of events. Still, these are real things that have affected real people at the same time. Wow. Yeah. I'm just trying to think of a good angle to come back from that one. I'm just thinking about it now because that is a lot of like extra stuff to think about. I can furnish you with more if you want. Please do. As Adam mentioned, this isn't, it wasn't actually written from Westish perspective with the intention of being a historical drama. He wanted to write more of a Greek tragedy, which is kind of why the kind of the

whole Oedipus aspect of it comes in and becomes so affiliated with a story. On the topic of authenticity, of fidelity, not just to what it's trying to represent present, but also from the adaptation from the film to the play, there were some interesting differences and similarities. When Villeneuve saw the play in 2004, he decided he wanted to adapt it, but he couldn't really use much of the script because it's a very performative piece. There's a lot of things that have the trappings of theater where you kind of speak outwardly, you're talking more to the audience, you're monologuing in a sense. And so a lot of it, most of it had to be rewritten. None of the Arabic is in the play, except for kind of a

sequence where the main character learns how to read and write, where she's learning the Arabic alphabet, so she recites them. But the play is almost always performed by French actors or French Canadian actors who don't speak Arabic. So it wouldn't have made sense for that to work. So the way the Arabic is written in the film is unbelievably accurate. Authentic. It's authentic to the point where I know that he didn't write it. That's how authentic because there's no way he could have written it. One of the examples that I give, which really struck me the first time I saw the film, the scene where Jean goes back to the country, goes to her mother's village, try to find out what happened, and she goes into this house with a whole

bunch of women in it, if you guys remember that scene. And she's trying to tell them, hey, I'm looking for somebody. They don't want to speak English. Tea party. Basically, yeah. It's a huge room with like, you know, 15, 20 women, which is also a setting that is not unfamiliar. It's kind of more of a countryside thing where you have women who gossip, who are less educated, who live in these, large these houses together. And when she tells them her name, she says, and who she's looking for, she says, I'm looking for Nal Marwan,

and she gives them a picture. And one of the women recognizes Nalal. And she says, in Arabic, to anyone who's related to Marwan, we say, la, ehla, la sehla. Which is kind of a pun. And it's also dialectically localized, which is to say that in formal Arabic,

You would say, ahlan and sahalan. Ahlan meaning parents or family. Sahel mean would be like a piece of land, like a farm, something you would use for agriculture, a large flat piece of land. So when you welcome someone to your home and you say, ahlan and saelan, you're basically telling them, you know, you have my family, you have my farm, you're welcome here. And the word la in Arabic means no.

So when this character says, la ahele, and la Sahla, she's saying, I don't give you my family or my farm. And it's kind of like a snarky, like, little pun. Just like a play on words that's like impossible to translate for subtitles. You can't really translate it. It's kind of like if you invited someone to your home and said, hey, welcome, don't make yourself at home. Right?

It's kind of like that. And it's funny because there's layers of translation. So she says that. The French translator in the film goes to John and says, the fis of Nawal Marwan are not here and then the English subtitles says

the daughters of Nawal Marwan are not welcome here so there's like three layers of translation which is fucked to me because I speak all of those languages and I can like see it getting mangled through this the telephone game

this telephone game it's so it's kind of insane but that there's no way he wrote that like that's just to play on words somebody who spoke not just spoke Arabic but also has a sense of humor and loves the language not only created that word,

but if you noticed, I said it's supposed to be pronounced Ahlan and the film, she just says, Ahela, which is a dialect that you get in North Jordan,

Palestine, southern Lebanon. So it's kind of a Lebanese dialect. And so the problem that they run into is that Wedjde is trying to tell this story of childhood loss, of the chain of violence,

and it turns into the Nivenivian Nerville attempt to try to tell a story about war in general. And he's using, as his vehicle, a very, very specific war to tell that story. And in doing so, what he ends up doing is evoking the faces, the dialects, historical events, geographical locations that remind you, or remind me of a very specific country without actually ever explicitly naming the country. anywhere in the film. So when I have to sit there and go, well, yeah, it's authentic, but then you have to ask, well, authentic relative to what? If something is authentic,

it has to be authentic relative to something. But the thing that it's trying to be authentic to is never mentioned anywhere in the canon. So that's actually actually been the subject of some criticism which I've read of the film, which claims that isn't this kind of hypocritical, isn't there some element of erasure that's going on here when you're never actually explicitly naming any of the people that are involved in this. Funny enough, the playwright did try to do this. Like when he was rehearsing the play where they were trying it, but they would say, you know, Lebanon, they would say the refugees,

the Palestinian refugees, they would say the Falange party. And then he just, while they were rehearsing it, West she just couldn't do it. He was like, I can't do this. This is, in his words, I can't translate this too well because in French, he would say he had an ontological problem with it, which doesn't translate that well into English. but essentially he was saying that it doesn't feel right to him. It's not, it feels like he doesn't, he's being an imposter. He doesn't own that story. So it's kind of crazy. And then it has to go to a French Canadian director who also doesn't speak Arabic, but who did a pretty unbelievably staggering job at recreating and adapting this film, this play in a really authentic way.

That's one of the things that I respect a lot about a lot of my favorite, favorite directors is that they're able to, even if they're not personally familiar with a subject, they're able to put so much effort and dedication into it that they can find the right people to make sure that things are portrayed authentically or, you know, even just do their own research in a way. Obviously, with Denisville Nove, there has to have been like an actual team to help localize a lot of the language and phrasing and authenticity in general. Another thing that comes to mind is like Michelle Hanukkah's happy end where it's like the internet culture is in that movie and he's not familiar with it at all but he just gave enough of a shit

to be like okay I'm going to actually research this I'm actually going to portray things in a realistic way I love that and it's far too often where you see directors that tackle subjects that they have no familiarity on and then just wind up being like well this is what I think it is so nobody else will know and you can totally tell Yeah.

You can tell I have no familiarity with that. Yeah. When you're kind of like ostracizing the audience or making it so that people who are more familiar with a subject aren't really able to enjoy it as much because it'll stick out like a sore thumb to them. And do you think that vague approach to not directly reference everything by name kind of enhances the way this specific story unfolds too? because I'm glad you mentioned the the Greek kind of tragedy angle to it because we mentioned the kind of old boy reveal at the end and when that hits it feels more like a kind of literary Greek tragedy kind of beat that I really wasn't expecting.

So that was a genuine surprise for me, which to be honest, I wasn't really quite sure how it was feeling about it at first because it does, it did just catch me completely off guard. I was not expecting the story to go that kind of direction based on how, as you were saying, it comes across even without knowing this insider information you give me right now. It came across as if it was trying to be as respectful as humanly possible and then all of a sudden,

treading it with care. Yeah. Yeah, and then it pulls this thing out, which is essential to the kind of thematic through line coming together at the end. And I think it does make it worth it for that reason, but I did have to kind of shift the way I viewed the movie. so did I if that helps I also didn't like the twist the first time I saw a movie oh good well I was like why is this so over the top this was so authentic and then all of a sudden there's this you know weird rape and he's the dad and the what is what like I was so confused and angry the first time I saw the film because it because up to that point it just had me and then it just became this weird thing

but I've come to terms with a twist now on the second viewing and recontextualizing what I know because there's there's not just like there's like you said there's symbolic and thematic elements to it. Violence literally breeds more violence. And also comes from this other historical context of this, at least apocryphal story that actually potentially may have happened, that Wednesday was at least inspired enough to write around for his entire play. So it's kind of the centerpiece of the whole thing.

And it feels like it's all in service of trying to get that one dramatic beat to actually work. And I think it works better in the play as a beat. It's more, what do you, it fits better with a, style because the play is a little bit like performative. Does it feel less like a gotcha? So in the film it takes a little bit more of a delicate touch, I think. And I don't know if it works. I had a question for Ralph in terms of authenticity because there's a lot of Italian films

that get mentioned on this podcast and have been recommended. And I've seen a lot of them with Adam as well. And a lot of them really good. And you've talked a lot in the past about how a lot of the authenticity of it, a lot of just taking you there, the food, the environment, the building. the language puts you in the film in a way that is different than a normal film, I guess, a standard film. Yeah.

And I felt that for the first time watching this movie because there's not that many films out. There's a lot of Italian movies out there. There's not that many movies out there that are set in kind of a cultural Lebanon that I can cling on to. And I'm just wondering, do you have any experiences with films that are trying to do that with your culture, but completely fail. And what kind of reaction, what kind of reaction does that end up evoking in you? Do you still view it as a film,

or do you think it's more of something personal that just really went the wrong way? Yeah, well, it's definitely a criticism of a movie. Well, movie Gotti. Yeah, I knew that was coming. I was not offensive to Italian. I was just ready for you to think, yeah, just because of the Italian food and everything.

But it's hard, I don't get, like, offended by it or anything. I just think it adds a lot to a film, like Adam was saying, People who are from that region or people who are experienced with these kind of things should have more appreciation for the movie, not less appreciation when they see these things played out. It shouldn't be completely unrealistic in how it's portrayed. I think it adds a lot. Yeah. What's another one?

I'm trying to think of like a, because Goddy was like such an obvious answer. Yeah. If I think of another less obvious one, I'll come back to you. If there's any good ones that you think are worth mentioning because they're good, like the one, like Happiest Lazar was a film I actually really enjoyed. Yeah. Yeah, and that's from Italy too. There's like Italian films and then there's like Italian American like Scorsese, like made in New York or whatever. The Safti Brothers, no, that's not really sad.

Safty brothers are more, yeah, but they're more authentic to New York. Cinema Paradiso is one we talked about. Yeah. That I think is very authentic to that time period. Bicycle Thieves? You ever see that? That's pretty old though. That's really old.

That's a great one though. Yeah. Those are just a few I recommend that are like actually good That's why I wanted to hear you talk about this because you know you're clearly much more experienced with the background of the backdrop of this film and I am like I had no idea about any of this I was just watching it as kind of a great tragedy as a drama and all of that stuff enhanced the story Yeah, but the story itself was really compelling and that's why I thought the twist worked Because it's really like it's from the perspective of these young people like uncovering

the truth about their past, which is, I'm sure, how, like, that's the perspective many people watching this movie in Canada or Quebec, like, would take with this movie. And so that's why I thought the twist really worked at the end. It was, like, a perfect tie-in or tying, it tied everything up so well with that theme. You know, you know what I'm trying to say? No, yeah. Makes sense. I kind of want to talk about some of the choices in this movie because they, uh,

obviously the bus scene is like one of the most like brutal and impactful scenes of the movie. It's like absolutely horrifying and I love the way it's presented. It gets the emotions across very, very

well. Gail mentioned as we were watching this like at the end the sun as he's now in Quebec he's got a job like cleaning buses which is kind of an interesting little tie-in.

Yeah, there's things about this movie that kind of fit together really well in the same way that, you know, a lot of the choices in something like being John Malkovich tie in really well. It's like, okay, that right there is a purposeful choice. Another one that I noticed was right after they got the reveal of the prison babies being twins, it cuts to... Swimming pool. Yeah, the swimming pool and we get that dramatic kind of like

sound effect as both of them jump into the pool, which is not just a great way to kind of add that, you might even call it like a trailer sound effect cue. However, it's more... You cynical people. Reasonable and realistic in this because it's like, okay, you can believe it's from the film's universe, but also it ties back into how the babies were initially

supposed to be thrown in the river. And now we see the two. I didn't even think of that. Yeah, dude. That stood out to me. That's amazing. I didn't even think of that. Yeah.

So it's a really clever way to show things. It gives the audience like a lot of credit, doesn't it? There's some particular standout moments to me. There was that shot I loved the metal detector. Oh yeah. Love that shot. Yeah. It sets up just, you know, that side of it so clearly without saying a single word.

And the same with like the close up on one of the characters like, battered and bloody feet as they're pacing in the cell. And it just builds such a picture and like such an emotional image without having to over-explain anything or rely on dialogue to over-explain. It really embraces the visual side of it, which I've always liked about his movies. What a talented visual storytelling. Yep. Holy shit.

Yeah. Very, very intelligently constructed. No awkward exposition in this movie. Yeah. Right. It doesn't hold your hand at all. Uh-huh. The reveal isn't like, there's no words actually explain.

No. The big old boy twist. You just piece it together on your own. And the gasp is like a, it's like a jump scare moment. Yeah. When she's like, oh, yeah. I was like, holy shit. Yeah, the performances really helped sell it too.

Excellent. Did you like the old age makeup toward the end? Like on the woman? I didn't have any issues with it, for sure. I thought it looked okay. Yeah, you thought it was a little distracting. That and one other criticism, there's like a scream sound effect that's used like in the torture. section of the movie like off in the background and that's used in like a Halloween

decoration oh no no like a zombie oh yeah so when I heard that I was like I was kind of chuckling but I'm sure they made that decoration after the movie came out or I don't know if they took it from the movie I don't know what happened but a lot of stuff that took me out of the film shows yeah there's like minor criticisms where that took me out of the films universe but it wasn't something to where I would take off many points for it mm-hmm just little things As we mentioned on the episode with Matt Johnson, French Canadian films have a really good pool of talented actors. And I wish that was true for all Canadian films, but French Canadian ones in particular, they've got a really good community of actors. And I'm happy to see French Canadian films where it's like, okay, wow, I'm actually like impressed.

Yeah, the performances were pretty strong. Yeah, always particularly French Canadian movies have strong performances. really helps sell everything in the film. I love how the progression of the character was shown, and I love that it never felt like cheap or undeserved when we see how she gets radicalized the mother character. Like it felt very logical and very true and genuine. Also, the way they showed the brother grow up,

I thought that was really effective, Because it's kind of told out of time, like you see the brother grow up, but it's not really going on at the same time as the story's taking place. Yeah, it's very nonlinear. And that could feel kind of cheap, but it ends up working, I think, especially because the story starts like with the brother being young. And the radio head music too. It constantly comes back to like kind of remind you of that again. It's very, it feels very purposeful. Yeah, the chapters were broken up very neatly.

There's a nice pacing and energy to it, like each. chapter felt like a new justified sort of story, I guess, or part of the story. Anything else you wanted to add, Alex, or Ralph? I think Gail might have a couple more things. Yeah, we've kind of covered most of the details that I've noted down. My only other kind of main thing that I noted was how I thought the rape scene was well done for such a, like, horrific subject material that is, you know, you're dancing on thin ice with the way you portray it. It was tasteful. Yeah. The way they choose to do that is,

um, effective. I mean, Denia Villeneuve's previous film was like about like a, a in-cell school shooting in Canada. So, like, yeah, he wouldn't have been, uh, unfamiliar with tackling sensitive subject matters at this point, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess you do have a couple more thing that I wanted to point out. Um, There were, yeah, so we were talking about things that took you out of the movie. There were a couple of translations that took me out of the movie, like near the end, where Simon goes to Doressa, and he gets invited over for tea by this guy in the neighborhood, and he has a translator with him, and the guy asks him, you know, why he's here,

and then the translator says he just asked you why you're here and what your name is, even though the guy never asked him what his name was in Arabic. So that took me out of it. There's stuff like that. I'd be able to ignore that if it was a subtitle. But what really made that moment stand out was that the guy said something in Arabic, and then the guy translating it to French to the character in the film, translated it incorrectly.

Like, not just incorrectly, he added a thing that was needed for like a plot device for the story. It's like, oh, he's asking you what your name is because he has to tell him, oh, I'm the son of the woman who sings, so it would drive the story forward. So I definitely felt like cheap to me. It's like, ah, come on, you ask you've gotten into someone, no one was paying attention on set on the day. Anyway. Unless that's like supposed to be a part of his. character or something that he added that, you never know.

But I mean, even if we ignore that, there's, as you've mentioned, tons of other... A couple others. Misf translations, I guess. I love the thematic decision to have a notary be the main driver of the plot.

Because, like, that... So in the play itself, this is expanded on a lot more explicitly. Like, there's a lot of really, you know, obvious references to the chain of violence. There's an entire sequence just to give you an idea that goes, when she gets to the orphanage in the play and she asks the doctor, why did they burn down the orphanage?

He goes into this whole super long. She feels like, well, they did it to get revenge because two days ago, the militia men hanged three teenagers who ventured out of the camps. Why did they hang the three teenagers? Because two refugees from the camp raped and killed a girl from the village. Why did they kill and raped the girl? Because the Muslim men stored a stoneed refugee family earlier in the day. Why did they do that? Because refugees had burned down a house near the hill.

And that's halfway into the paragraph, right? And it just kind of keeps going. And it ends with, why did they burn down the crop? Well, there's certainly a reason, but my memory ends there. I don't recall any further, but the story can go on for a long time, from threat to needle, from anger to anger, from punishment to sadness, from rape to murder, right up to the beginning of the world. Very thematic. Yeah, and it's this chain of violence idea. And in the film, what if the nor do you says, death leaves tracks, which is kind of an interesting line that stood out to me.

because that's his job, but also in the story, you know, it makes sense. Everything's being recorded as it happens. It gets referenced in the film when he's like, go see Shamsadine. He's going to tell you all this, you know, he's going to tell you what happened to the orphanage. And Simone's like, how is this random guy going to remember what happened 25 years ago? And Nordy's like, he's a warlord. These people have long memories. And it's like, that line also stood out to me.

It's like, yes, people have long memories when it comes to these things. And all the references that they're making to these chain of violence, again, just ends like today. It doesn't really end. We're all trying to get out of it. But like I'm the last link in that chain that's currently alive. I don't know. Like I'm not going to have any children probably. But who knows?

Gay adjacent. Yeah, I'm gay. Spoiler. I'm also a furry. I did quite a true. Trust me, telling your parents you're a furry when you're from the Middle East is more awkward than telling them that you're gay. That's hell of a conversation. Yeah. I mean, how's the furry community back in Lebanon?

Yeah, it's thriving. Yeah, it was fucking weird. But yeah, I just love that decision as well. Like, just having that chain of violence. And it's like, at the end of the movie, the letter that she gives to her children says, it's your turn. Like, you have to break the chain. You have to break the, the silence has been broken.

You have to break this chain of violence. In the play, the letter to her daughter tells her basically, I know you're angry at me, just like I was angry at my mother. but, you know, we have to break this chain of violence. And that's obviously another theme of the work that translates through the adaptations and is brought to life by kind of all these characters and all these plot elements that come together really nicely. So I really love, like, every decision that went into this film.

And I love Villeneuve's work. I also love the rival for similar reasons. Still a couple that you need to see. Yeah, I haven't seen prisoners or enemy yet. So those are on the list. The two Jelenhulls. Yeah, the Gillen Howell. Yeah.

catalogs really arranged at this point. He hasn't made a bad movie like for like 10 years pretty much. I mean, Polytechnic I wouldn't even say is a bad movie, but like every movie of his has been pretty great. I think this is one of his best for me. So yeah, have fun editing all that. How did you, with this new context,

does this change the way that you guys see the film at all? Like if knowing the director's intent, do you think he still achieved it? attempt to tell a story about war in general or universally, but using a very specific war to tell it, that's the one part that I'm like, I don't know if he achieved that from you, because I can't, I can't read this as a general war. I know what this is talking about. But I'm one, but I mean, clearly that hit for most people. I'm just wondering if that's been enhanced or if that's taken anything away. Like, what do you guys, what's the takeaway here? I think it works in two

ways because clearly you are you're able to add so much more kind of depth to the movie but on its own without any of the context it still works and achieves delivering its overarching kind of themes and goals in a powerful way so yeah I think that really works in that regard yeah there's all this hidden surface though that you kind of uncovered that's very interesting so it does make me kind of look at I want to watch the movie again and yeah it already felt like one of those movies that almost requires a rewatch. Yeah, right. Because just the way it's structured and now you'll definitely read things that are

at the beginning of the movie, the seeds that are sown that you would have missed because you don't know what's coming, all that kind of juicy stuff. Yeah, definitely worth a second watch. And, uh, Gael mentioned to me earlier today. Oh, yeah. This is a very strange timing for him. Fertuitous timing. Yeah.

I'm carrying my Lebanese passport. with me. I just unearthed it from like a drawer. And it's open to the page that got stamped in Cyprus when we docked. We had to take a boat because like I mentioned, the airport had been bombed. And the date is July the 23rd, 2006, which is 14 years ago almost to the day of recording. So up until now, as of time of recording, I've lived most of my life in Lebanon. Yeah. And in a couple of days, I will have crossed the threshold and I will have been living in Canada for longer than I had been living in Lebanon for more than 14 years. So it's kind of fortuitous timing. Really crazy. Yeah, you've got some coincidences. Really good timing on the recommendation, I guess.

Thanks, Alex. Yeah, complete accident. I guess something good had to come from the British foreign office. That's a joke for the UK listeners. All right, yeah. Thank you so much for adding to the discussion. I figured it would be great to have you on because you had a lot to say about it. That made our whole segment like 10 times more valuable. Yeah, yeah, no worries.

Sometimes it's good to just have someone, you know, share their experiences and talk for a bit anyway. It would be a waste to not have had him on to, you know, add that extra context yeah yeah and I'm sure a lot of people listening will think of the film differently because of it too so I hope so do we want to give um ratings yeah yeah sure I'll lead us off um yeah despite that kind of reveal at the end which threw me off a little bit um everything it was the only like minor problem I had and even then just through talking about it and acknowledging the kind of Greek tragedy aspect of it.

I mean, it's such a small thing at this point. And I just won't bother me in the future with rewatches, I'm sure. But yeah, overall, this was a solid kind of four and a half stars for me. I really liked the story that was told and my takeaway from it in the end. Yeah, I'm right there with you. Four and a half, nine out of ten. Oh, shit. Yeah.

I'm giving it a nine out of ten. Yeah. Wow. That's actually, I think I'm also giving it a nine out of ten. It was two and between a nine out of ten. for me, but yeah, I don't know. It's a very personal story for me, so it's really difficult for me to actually take a more objective view of it.

So trying to keep that factor in mind, I'm trying to give it like a fair score. I think nine is a fair score for this film. Is this the first episode of the podcast where everybody has rated the same rating for the same film, but two films were discussed, because we also gave Artemis Fell a one out of ten.

All three of them are. United States. No, one out of ten. Oh. No. So, yeah, we all said one and a ten for Arna's. And then we all said nine and ten for Ensemble. So there was literally zero discrepancy in any of the ratings for both films in this episode.

This is also the first episode of Sardana cast where exactly half the people talking are gay furries. Uh-oh. So we're making it. We're balancing it out, guys. We're balancing things out. We're coming for you. Like in Artemis fell, they said, the fairies are taken over. the world.

Farries. Farries. Oh, yeah. That was pretty funny. All right, yeah, let's do question time. So this is about the show where we head over to the Sardonicurus. Crest. So this is about the show where we head over to the Sardonicas subreddit,

where there is a lovely suggestion thread where you can ask whatever you like. We're going to start off with this one from Ginger Don 14, who said, what is a classic movie that you genuinely hate? this kind of thing is asked all the time one of those common questions well okay should I just open up the IMDB top 250 or what like yeah that's a great idea

there's a overrated classics there should be considered a classic I guess does ET count I never like I never liked yeah I would say ET counts I love ET I'm sorry it doesn't do anything for me that's fair enough What about like a BS kind of answer?

Because it's so obvious, but like birth of a nation. I haven't even seen it. Me neither. I mean, I know what it is. But I haven't seen it. Yeah. Let's see. What do we got here?

Oh, God. Because I don't like, a lot of these, I just feel like, okay, they probably don't deserve to be on the top 250. But not a lot that I, like, genuinely hate. Yeah, some of these are just. Also so recent. The IMDB 250 is just like Marvel movies and like superhero movies. Yeah. Oh, God.

I really didn't like Haxar Ridge. That's not really a classic. Even if it's on the top 250. Yeah, it's not really classic. I'm just scrolling through the shit. Like I hate, I wish I hated Green Book, but I really... I wish I hated Green Book. I kind of do hate Green Book.

It's definitely overrated. I guess it's the best picture where it's like by definition. It's supposed to be a classic or something, right? I don't know. Right. I mean, a lot of the best picture winners, especially compared to movies that could have won, like, Shakespeare in Love, I think that was the same year as like, was it saving Private Ryan? Like, you know, there's all these great movies that won best, that didn't win best picture.

And then there's like all these other ones that deserve it. What's a classic movie that I actually hate? You'd probably hate a lot of westerns. Why would you say that? I'm assuming a lot, but how many have you seen? I haven't seen a lot. Okay. I mean, I've seen like El Topo and a couple.

others but there's like the there's there's there's the ones that I know I'm supposed to see that I still haven't gotten to yet that and ugly yeah unforgiven but just haven't gotten around to them yet I can't imagine you genuinely hating yeah I mean I use the word hate I'm I live with Adam so yeah you have to trust me on this one I mean like I don't know because like I want to say Star Wars I just like I hate Star Wars as a discussion as a concept more than I hate the individual film themselves, I guess. I hate the idea of Star Wars. Yeah.

Yeah. I hate. There are a few movies I hate that are like that. I've never seen Shakespeare in love, but I hate it because saving private Ryan deserve to win. Yeah, whichever, whichever movie, like, steals the best picture from a more deserved title is a good hate option. Inside Out.

Yeah, I guess, like, inside out, I kind of hate. When I hear classic movies, though, I, yeah, I kind of think older. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. We'll see even the definition, really. Just classic movie. But a lot of classic movies tend to be very good, so. Yeah. Which is nothing jumps to my head.

Yeah, exactly. It's rare for me to really be anti-one. Mm-hmm. Well, I don't know, because, like, there's a lot of bad movies that are considered to be classics, but not necessarily highly rated. like Jim Carries the Mask or something, you know, like just random... That's a good point. Random movies that everybody knows and remembers because they were so big,

but aren't going to show up on the top 250 or anything. That's true. I suppose that is like Space Jam's a classic. Yeah, yeah. But I don't even hate Space Jam. I love Space Jam. Yeah, I don't either. It's my jam.

Come on and slam. Yeah, I mean, classic movies almost by definition a good movie. Almost. A Christmas story? Would you consider that? Christmas story is for sure classic. I haven't seen it recently enough to know if I hated or not. I tried watching it.

It's like, I don't know, maybe it's too cute for my taste, but I thought it was unwatchable. I shut it off, like 15 minutes in. So I guess I hate that movie. Yeah, I mean, it's like a lot of 90s comedies that are just terrible. But are classics in a way. They aged very poorly. The Nutty Professor. Lyer, liar.

Just things that like I think people have nostalgia for but yeah upon re-watch my one if I guess if you count those comedies is Step-brothers a lot of people love that one yeah that's considered a classic by somebody I couldn't really get really far into it Man baby the movie okay yeah people love it then man yeah comedy yeah I don't get it At least he's like some movies he's a basketball player or... Yeah, they ran out a job, so his job was to be a man child. Yeah, they ran out of job, so he's just a man child, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

90s comedies will be my answer. Let's move on this one then. Let's do this one from Hiro. Ooh. In the February 2019 episode about Disney and Madagascar, Adam complains about Disney censoring their old. offensive content and expresses his wish that they could make the original uncut content available with a disclaimer ahead of it.

Cut to one year later and Disney is doing exactly that on Disney Plus with much of their old content and they're being widely crucified for it. I'm curious to know what Adams and Alex's and Ralph's thoughts are on this development. Do you think that this may be a no-win situation for Disney? Who's criticizing? I mean like because what I don't know who's criticizing them. I've only seen like a couple screenshots and memes of this shit. But the ones that I noticed people criticizing were ones that like they had a description next to like the recent remake of Aladdin saying like these might have cultural depictions that are offensive to some viewers and are outdated and not fit for current Disney or whatever.

It's like this movie came out like a year or two ago. And so that's totally different. They have been censoring a lot. So I don't think it's unreasonable to call them out as hypocrites for this because all throughout that platform they're censoring random shit. They censored, like, the logo on a hat of, what's that show called? Gravity Falls, yeah. They, like, censored, and not even all the episodes. And not even, like, on the, yeah.

That shows from, like, five years ago. It looks like it could be, like, a Muslim symbol or something. It, like, just completely did that. There's, like, Darrell Hannah in, like, some mermaid movie or whatever the fuck it was. I've never actually seen it. And they added CG hair. like extensions to her hair to cover her butt as she ran into the ocean and it looks so weird and just like just unnatural so i mean people want to call out disney for not actually providing these uncensored things because they are still censoring them i think that's totally legitimate i don't really know where all the arguments are coming from though yeah because like there are definitely some of their older movies that need it and you can't really edit around it because the five i i saw listed in like an article I was reading from Forbes about it was Dumbo

obviously Peter Pan because of the Native American stuff Lady and the Tramp for his reasons The Jungle Book The Hyena Goose Stepping in the Lion King And the Aristro cats Sorry yeah Of because of the Siamese cat Yeah I mean there's tons

But I think it's important to view these things as like a product of their time I think it's more offensive to clotheau as though these things never happened or to try and pretend as such exactly I'm sure they got some criticism but that's part of what comes with acknowledging these things they got criticized okay they're still around they'll be fun I didn't know about like Aladdin and gravity falls and any of that yeah I hadn't heard of here that's actually what yeah they've been censoring stuff throughout their platform so they can't like have their cake and eat it too and pretend like

exactly they're not doing that just by adding a little bit yeah the messaging's very confusing and apparently they even changed like one of the words and one of the lyrics to the new Aladdin anyway. They changed like a skut was telling me about this yesterday. I forget what it was like in one of the opening songs. They changed like...

When they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. No, yeah, that was from the original Aladdin that got controversy. But in the new one, they changed the word like barbaric to savage. And they just like didn't even make it better. The savages. The savages. They was disinualized.

I don't know. I just heard that for me. scoot. If you guys want a really good, go to YouTube and look up the Arabic version of Arabian Knights, it is so brilliant, it's so well saying. That's a treat. Definitely just go to YouTube and look that up. It's worth a listen. Just the translation, obviously.

Disney's stupid. I don't like them. That's the moral. They deserve criticism no matter what they do. Nah, I mean, they should make good movies on Disney Plus. That's what they should do. Yeah, and don't hide your fucked up. history.

Yeah. Okay. Let's do this one then from M. Knight Needs an Oscar who says, here's a big boy question for you. What are your thoughts on the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise and the upcoming movie? Get not

safe for work if you need to. Is it like going to theaters or is it like a Netflix movie that they licensed? This is one of those projects that's been just floating around for a while. Yeah. Okay. Okay. As we all know, it's kind of an old, yeah, it's kind of an old subject.

played it for like 10 minutes like the first one I thought it was okay and then that was it I think that's how it was designed to be played I don't know I played the first two of them I didn't like beat the games or anything I was just like well I guess I'm seeing what this is like and it wasn't scary it was just really

really annoying it was like baby's first horror game you know it looks like it was created in some like ridiculously old engine looks like it was like a flash game from like 2004 or some shit like I don't know What about the movie?

How bad do you think the movie is going to be? It's not going to be good because I mean like even the fans of Five Nights of Freddy's even though there's nothing for me there. I know that the fans of those games are more interested in like the lore behind it and like all the crazy things you can discover and the hidden blah blah blah blah what really happened at Freddy Fasbears or whatever fuck it was. I don't think that that's going to be presented that well in the movie. They're going to wind up having to like over explain it pretty much, which kind of takes away the mystery, horror, like, spooky elements of it.

There will be a lot of jump scares, I bet. Yeah, it's not going to be good. And what are they going to do? It's like a children's property. They're not going to make anything genuinely scary about it. Yeah, true. Is it a children's property? It's basically for kids.

It's a horror game for like little babies. Oh, okay. That's why it sucks. I thought you genuinely meant it was made for children. I mean, like, no, it's, I don't know if it was. intending on being that from the beginning but it certainly is I think they're gonna go for a PG-13 they can't really really horror movie yeah that's good like everybody who wants to see it as like a child though and mark a player no by now so it could be like a goose

kind of movie I guess like kind of it's a horror movie but it's for kids like yeah comedy kind of I don't know what they're gonna do I don't know I feel like they're gonna go more hardcore with it but we'll see Rated R. We'll see what they do. Not rated R because adults don't care. Damn. Really throwing shade at Five Nose at Freddy.

It sucks. It's fucking awful. They made like a new game every like six months too. Which like just goes to show like what's put into it. A little oversaturated. Yeah. There was like a bunch of merchandise that I saw. I saw it like stores.

Yeah, you can get like pot vinyl. I was like what the hell's all this? Uh-huh. It's like plushies of them and figures and shirts. with Freddy Fosbear on it. Yeah, because people just like the character designs and the monsters and the Golden Freddy and all that. It's dumb.

Five Knights of Freddy's. There's an alarming amount of five nights at Freddy's porn on E621. It has a huge community. It really gets in the way of my masturbatory stuff. Get the fuck out of here. There's so many of these fucking games. I know.

I know. Because they take like a few months. make. Aren't there like so many characters at this point that there's like a phone game

where you can like tap on I'm sure there is to it's to like crazy the amount of content there is yeah it's just so boring

it wasn't scary it's like oops I jumped scare just really wasn't earned it was like just really manipulative

but it works like there are really easy ways to scare people and those things find their way into games and movies it's just I don't prefer

things presented that way really cheap manipulative like oh it's dark oh look to the left look to the right oh it's in front of your screen he's just going to scream at you like okay boom did you ever watch um like

Markiplah doing it on the hardest difficulty and he's been like training for like days because it's so difficult and he's just got to like flick all these switches it's hilarious to watch yeah yeah I can't say

I'll probably just set out of that much of that so ridiculous So are there any horror games you like? Yeah, there's a bunch. The anti-five Knights of Freddy's. Yeah, I mean, I love... Amnesia of the Dark Descent was really, really good for the time. And I would love to play through that again.

I thought that it was very cleverly designed in terms of, like, what the mechanics were for the game and how they incorporated that into how you were scared. Soma is more of, like, a science fiction-y story. story-driven game, but it's also a horror game, I believe, from the same people. I like Outlast. I love the story of Soma. Outlast one was fun. I don't think it has much more capability.

I like the camera thing, like the night vision and all that. Yeah, there's some cool elements to it. It adds to the mood a lot. I think all that's cool. There's a new one coming, I think. The Resident Evil games are pretty, I mean, some of them are going for more like goofy action. Yeah. The more horror-driven ones, like, seven or two that are really good.

The remaster on two they made, it was fucking great. I really like Silent Hill 2 through 4. Silent Hill 1 is also good. Everything after 4 is just garbage. There is an alarming amount of resident evil porn on E3Sk. Stop looking it up. There's like every kind of porn. I bet.

My masturbation. If you want to coom and be scared at the same time. Often it often goes to do tend to happen in conjunction. Prey is kind of a horror game. Kind of, yeah. It's like alien. Yeah, I enjoyed that one. Yeah, I can do a couple more.

Let's do this one from Angus Boyd. Yeah, Angus Boyd asks. A question for Ralph. In Hollywood high school films, there are all these types of characters, the jock, the hot blonde, etc. The teenagers also act very PG. Being from the UK, this all seems very unnatural. Is high school genuinely like this, or is it just another terrible? attempt by a multi-billionaire company trying to relate to a teenage audience.

You got it. It's what teenagers should act like in school. That's basically what they push. I mean, we're not like savages, but it's not like, I feel like that's very 80s. Like kids in the 70s and 80s were probably like that, but not so much anymore. Kids just go on their phone. They hate school. They see through it, the indoctrination center, that it is. If you want an honest depiction of what an American high school is really like I think the best example is 13 reasons why season four absolutely to the words right everyone's gay and everyone's a rapist and they're covering up crimes and people go crazy and they any show you can find on Netflix captures high

school it's how kids show up Riverdale everybody looks like they're 30 is yes the template big mouth is like a perfect yeah I mean like you have to understand that like especially for larger projects These are all like older writers that are so detached from what young people's lives are actually like So it's very very infrequently ever going to be Genuine so it's just pure laziness but we still eat it up we still love it like the characters on Riverdale are not how I think high school kids acts like high school kids I guess really like those characters They really relate to them yeah and they won't be like them mm-hmm yeah because obviously I'm from

the UK so I just can't relate to any of these like American high school type settings. They always seem like absurd to me. I mean, you say that, but then every depiction of like UK high schools is either like Hogwarts or the wall. So I don't know. Yeah, how many examples really are there. Yeah, I'm sure there's a range. I bet there's some schools that are really nice in the United States.

They're probably private schools like on the coast. Yeah. Like in California. In North America, we have like mandatory red cups. everybody has to drink out of in school? You got to have the red plastic cups. They're enforced by law. Really?

Damn it. Yes, really. That's the, like, apparently UK people don't do the red cup thing as much. No, yeah, we don't really. They're starting to sell them now. We're just adopting all the, like, American culture, so you can buy them now. Hell yeah. Story of my life, honestly.

All right, want to do one more? Yeah. Let's do this silly one then from Papa Marks O'9. If there were a movie about the life of Derek Savage in the vein of Tim Burton's Ed Wood, who would you cast as Daddy Derek? Oh, God. Philip Seymour Hoffman, except he's dead. That would be the person.

That did cross my mind, too, if he was alive. Because he's so versatile. He would pull it off. He could pull it off. I can't think of anyone else. Joaquin Phoenix. Yeah, yeah, probably. You could do it.

Man, I wouldn't buy Joaquin at all. Any great, like, method actor could do it. Yeah, that's fair. Daniel DeLewis could do it if you were doing a bunch of, yeah, like a little bit of a... Daniel DeLuze is looking Derek Savage. He comes back after years of not acting. For his magnum, opens. He leaves retirement, yeah.

As Daddy Derek. A Sardonicast, the listener actually replied to the question saying Sam Rockwell, which I thought was an interesting. Yeah, that could work. It's a very good choice. But also Henry Winkler, too. I don't know what that is. I don't know what that is. Who's that?

Uh, Google him. You've probably seen him in like American sitcoms and stuff like that. He kind of has the look a little bit. He's got the comedic kind of chops to do it. It looks pretty old right now. People might know him from a rest of development. Oh yeah. Yeah, you never know.

I don't know. Get fucking Will Smith in there. Yeah, why not? That'd be a good one. Yeah, why not? Anybody. With a... Jaden playing Coolcat.

Yeah. Uh-oh. Oh no What is this image You know the invisible photograph That's one of them Now I can't I can't unsee that

It would be an interesting film I would love to see it I think we need like a real documentary For sure It'll happen Yeah Very fascinating character It's so much

It just needs like an ending of some kind Yeah exactly right Where's it gonna end What is this building up to Yeah, exactly Tell the Swinton Yeah She can do it

Why not She can do it In her bravest role To date I think we found it She gains a few pounds She'd do it Yeah, she good

I trust her Put some wig on Yeah Who would direct Oh God Danny Villeneuf Hell yeah Give it to Villenev

Yeah Yeah to really give it That backburn Michael Hanneke Yeah You got to get like legendary people to be in this movie It's got to be the greatest movie of all time Oh directed by Gaspar Noah

Oh that would be a trip Wow that would be intense yeah Turn it into something just like Existentially disturbing Let's get caught in on the screenplay We can do this All right So there's a film recommendation

and it is my turn. We're going to be having a guest on also next episode. And so the guest kind of helped me pick this movie. Both of us have not seen it, but we're both looking forward to it. I don't know if Alex or Ralph have seen it. But yeah, the guest is Jared Gilman, who you might know from acting in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. And the film is Moonrise Kingdom.

No. The film. is uh... nineteen ninety one's ricky o the story of ricky rik i dash o h colon the story of r i c y nineteen ninety one and uh... have either of you seen it no no i have no okay cool looking forward to it it'll be uh...

fresh experience for everybody and uh... i've been looking forward to it haven't really looked up too much about it but i've got a vague idea of what kind of thing it's supposed to be like. And yeah, hopefully it's easy to find. I didn't really look that up. I don't think there's like multiple cuts or anything. So yeah, we'll talk about that next episode. Awesome.

If you want to support the show, sardonicast.com, sign up for premium. $2 a month. We'll get you these episodes early as they're edited. Also, patreon.com slash sardonicast. Also, we got merch. Thank you for joining, Gael. Thank you for providing so much to the conversation. Do you have anything you'd like to plug?

Twitter, Twitch, anything? I'm on Twitter. People want to slide into the DMs. Uh, Vexel. Sorry, it's at underscore Vexel. That's B-E-X-E-L. Okay. So, uh, say hi.

Plug your Twitch, maybe? Um, I guess I do stream Vexel underscore TV. I mostly stream chess, but I've been doing other games recently. Okay. Yeah, it's fun. Thanks. I appreciate it. Awesome.

It's, uh, it's feeding time. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, guys. had a good time. Yeah, he has a good service here. I'm a great admirer of yours. He listens to every

episode. He's your biggest fan. Almost a fanatic one would say. But I am not a stalker. Great quote. All right. Bye, bye, bye, everybody. Thanks for listening.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.