The Watch - The Beauty of ‘Roma’ and What We’re Catching Up on Over the Holidays | The Watch (Ep. 315)

Episode Date: December 18, 2018

Alfonso Cuarón's ‘Roma’ premiered on Netflix last week, and the debate over whether you can properly enjoy it outside of the theater continues (10:02), but either way the movie is a cinematic delight (22:21). Chris and Andy decide what television they’re going to catch up over the holidays (35:08), including ‘My Brilliant Friend’ and ‘Money Heist’ (41:00). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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My name is Andy Greenwald. I have no distinct role at the ringer.com. Joining me on the other line live from Aramingo Avenue, it's Chris Ryan. Hey, buddy. What's up, man? How are you? Did you say my name? I said your name, but I said it kind of, I went low.

You know, when you go high, I go. go low. I do the reverse Michelle Obama. Oh, so you're like, this is like the Mitch McConnell holding a gold brick podcast hosting jobs you're doing. Listen, listen, I may not be good at dinner parties, but I get my judicial appointments through. So I made it early...

Kaya and I are here in the studio in Los Angeles just looking at each other because a minute ago, before we recorded, everyone's like, look, Andy, like, it's on you. You're in studio today. You're going to have to host this show. And I was like, okay, Chris, I accept the mantle. Not 30 seconds into it, I make a judicial appointment.

joke, and all of a sudden you're hosting. You can't help it. You are a natural. I was born to host. I was born to host. What's going on with you? I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just gobsmacked here. I was ready to really run point on this show with all the topics, pop cultural topics we have

to talk about today. I don't know. I'm not used to being in this power position with you, buddy. I don't know what to do with myself. I miss you. I'll tell a couple of anecdotes to vamp while you try and think of ways to segue into Roma, which we're going to talk about today and that we missed in Tuchet.

Well, no, here's my thought. We could have done a mea culpa. I could have done a whole week's worth of mea culpa episodes about things we missed. But I think there's a version of this, and I'm pitching to you live on the air, where we pay it forward because I think that many people have some time off,

and even if they don't have a ton of time off, they may want to escape their families. And so I think that this might be an opportunity to talk about things that we would like to engage with, aspirational things. Things maybe they're coming out in the next few weeks or things that we know we missed, we've been reminded about.

So we're going to pay it forward. We're going to talk about things that we'd like to see and why. And maybe because we're also soliciting tweets and whatever's for a mailbag episode, maybe people can throw some stuff on there that they think we should check out also or things that they themselves are going to make,

are going to finally see through or see in the spirit of giving. Yeah, absolutely. I love hearing about this. because for years, I've entertained you with my airplane movie stories. So what was this like for you? You have a whole different, by the way, people don't realize this. You have a whole different strategy and approach to travel than I do. You don't leave hours before the sun rises.

You are leaving it a very reasonable time. No, I love the 230 flight, you know what I mean? Because it's just like you get up, you have a little from Friedman's works, and then I'll be on the 230 flight. I guess, you know, just to be a movie unto itself, right? and, you know, when they come down the aisle and they look you in the eye and they're like, are you prepared to save lives on this flight should shit go sideways? What do you do?

Do you lock eyes and you nod? I start reciting dialogue from the Denzel Washington Classic flight. I say, what's the name of your son? Tell Trevor you love him into the black box. I usually get in a little bit of trouble with the TSA when I do that. But you ever have that moment when you... Oh, it's so beautiful. But it actually makes you more anxious because you're like, do I carmically deserve this?

And it almost makes way. Yes. I think that's exactly right. Well, that was compounded by the fact that the guy who did sit next to me. And, you know, in the end, I feel like we can say we were friends. We shared a lot. A second. Lovely.

My boy proceeds to crush in pill form. Okay. And then while in this dripped out peanut. M&Ms, like while asleep, but he's just like MNM's into his mouth, somewhat on my... And then he wakes up for food service. What kind of answer do you think he was expecting? What the flight attendant said?

She was like, what do you mean? What I got drinks? It's the fucking drink cart. It felt like I needed to step in. So I just sort of lean forward and handed him the menu for the inflate. Were you lightly fingering the menu the whole time? Were you just browsing your options? You're like, God, I, you know, do I get the Southwest Turkey breakfast wrap or the Southwest Turkey Club sandwich where they swap out the bread at noon?

Like, so many choices for a young man. You're laughing when I had the chicken and orchard wrap. I know you so well. A little bit. A little bit. Wow, so did he appreciate, in the spirit of the city of Brotherly Lovenol, did he appreciate your sort of micromanaging the situation? You know what he said to me? I can't wait.

He said, appreciate you. That's beautiful. That's really... And you got a Coke and a can of Pringles and he went back to sleep. That was my flight. Wait, I got a couple things here. Now, I got to speak up for people who have, whether intentionally or not, ingested medication that may make you a little bit drowsy.

Because we used to have a whole thing where we would say, you know, like if this happened when we were visiting our families as you are, and maybe we needed to sleep, maybe we need a little NyQuil or sleeping aid, that the telltale sign of taking one of these pills would that you would wake up covered in crumb, like amoroso hot dog bun crumbs. Like over-the-counter sleep aids make people like unnaturally hungry.

Like I think that is a normal reaction. So you can't blame it, dude. Also, he knew, I'm standing up for my guy here, he knew there were no screens on this flight. This flight to Philadelphia, the afternoon flight that you choose, is like a child who is two years older under in my home. No screen time.

No screen time. It's an interesting experience. You know, everybody's got, but the thing you've been entertained. This is 269. That's so unbrand. That's so on. A rollicking send-up of Thatcher era, Britain.

So we were just all having a great time on the flight, and yeah, I'm happy to be home. I have a follow up. Do you think the story you just told me and the listeners, Do you think that Nick Foles could tell the same story about Carson Wentz sitting next to him on the flight home from last night's game? Do you think Carson Wentz, midway home with a fully broken back, was like, hi, what drinks do you have? Yeah, do you guys have drinks? You guys have drinks?

I have a terrible punishing thirst. Do you think that's possible? Yeah, he was also like, I have these 11 nightquills I'm taking from my spine. From my broken spine that the team doctor gave me. Wow. Well, to go from, well, actually, know what? Here's their segue, Chris. What you just told us has the beauty, the purity, and the poetry of real life, as does Alfonso

Coron's masterpiece, Roma. What do you think about that? Life is the details. And what I want to do is talk about this movie with you. And I want to talk about it in two stages. Okay. First, I think we should talk about why people should see it and how they should see it and what it is in case they're not familiar. And then perhaps Kaya could shoot off the air horn that I see on her desk to signify the second portion of the conversation because we should talk about it in detail.

But I feel like it's too new. It was in theaters for a short time and limited release and it is on Netflix now. And I want to be able to talk about it generally before we spoil it so people can engage and then tap back out. and then tap back in for our holiday wish list. How do you feel about that? Yeah, that sounds great. So the first thing to say about this movie, which is Quaron's most personal film to date,

a labor of love, follow up to gravity, you could all watch it on your phone right now. Please don't. Please don't. This is the hill that I'm sketching out for this conversation. Please go see it in the theater because I know, I know. listen, I know. I know what it sounds like for me of all people to be saying this. And if it's not playing in a theater near you, or if you have children under the age of 10 months and you don't have a babysitter, okay, fine. But this is as good as it gets in my opinion, in my extremely limited cinematic experience and opinion. This was like the most pure cinema, the most beautiful moving film that I can remember seeing in quite some time. And I am so grateful that I saw it in a theater,

both because the sound was amazing and it was beautiful and was overwhelming. The images are just stunning, but also because it is a movie that asks something of you in a way that a lot of great films do. And I think it asks things of you in terms of patience, in terms of what you can tolerate, in terms of what you're focusing on, that if you had a second screen in front of you,

if you could go to the bathroom, if you just wanted to grab a couple more Doritos from your own personal snack cart, you will interrupt the experience. And I know this sounds so old-fashioned and judgy, but I don't want that experience interrupted for you, people of America. I don't.

Yeah, I'm culture. You know it. I can't go see it in the theaters with each other these experiences. I agree, and I don't want to be a snob about this. And I am generally for the democratization of art and culture. I think it is ultimately a really good thing that a movie this beautiful and human and powerful and exceptional is available to as many people as possible.

I think that's that there isn't really a downside to that. What I want to articulate, if I can, is that it's just really wonderful to maximize the experience. It deserves it. Yeah, you know, it's interesting is that most people, I think when they hear these conversations happening and as they've sort of been following along with the debate about how to best see Roma, which Coronis himself has said, like obviously ideally you would see it in a movie theater. But I think we assume that we're talking about, I think that the reason. why it's such a valuable movie to see, you know, unless you have experiences you would in the movie theater and this movie is... I totally agree.

I mean, Quaron, even people who have not loved all of his movies have always said what a master technician he is. And it filled me with such joy to see the kind of technical mastery that was put to good use in gravity, which even if people didn't buy the movie emotionally, I think people were very impressed by technically. To see that level... Did you buy gravity emotionally? Were you in on that?

Yeah. I love that movie. I did totally. But I think that to see this level of contemporary technical artistry, not just like framing and lighting, which matters too, but a deep understanding of, of, you know, there's CG in this movie, but we don't notice it, right? I mean, I just think to turn those abilities onto such a human story is really inspirational and wonderful.

But I love what you said about sound, and I agree. I saw it here in L.A. at the Vista Theater, an old theater. The sound was an absolute knockout. And that really matters in general. If there are people who are much more cinematically snobby than I am who will always tell you that it matters. And of course it matters because I met someone I was working on Briar Patch. There are brilliant technicians. This is what they do.

This is what they think about and what they care about. And all movies and TV are better because of them. But some movies, you know, you're still going to enjoy your best version of it, and that's okay, even if it's on the back of a seat on an airline flight that is not the airline that Chris just flew. But for me, and again, everyone's experience with this movie is going to be different. But Mexico City is my favorite place in the world to visit. I have many dear friends there. I have many memories there.

I love traveling there as much as possible. And this movie sounds and physically feels like a place to a degree that I think is almost unprecedented in my experience of movies. The movie opens, and again, this is another testament to why you should probably see it in a theater where you can't get up. I mean, it opens with a sort of hypnotic, soapy water going on the cement floor of a garage just over and over. but the way that floor sounds when people step on it, when water hits it, the way the doors close not quite all the way and the walls aren't quite thick enough and you can tell that the cold of the evening is going to seep in even while it's not going to do much during the heat of the day.

The sounds of the streets, the dogs barking. This is my experience sleeping in my friend's apartment in Chapultepec in Mexico City. Like I felt it and I felt it before the movie even started. And that was so thrilling. And even if you don't have those specific memories, it's going to speak to you and transport you in a way that is worth experiencing. Yeah, you know, things like appreciated the most was their achievement. Yeah, I think we get away from that a lot, but I think that, especially in today's blockbuster-obsessed era,

both on TV as well, you know, though it means something different on TV, I think cinema is the greatest instrument for exploring actual lived-in life, the life that happens in between moments of upheaval, in between history. And through real life, we can better understand those moments of upheaval and that. history. And this movie is a really bracing reminder of that ability. Obviously, this movie will play very differently to people who are from Mexico City or from Mexico who grew up in this era, who grew up, the children of people who survived this era. But I think that it is universal, the idea of, as you said, the mundanity of existence in the face of extraordinary circumstances. And so for people who don't know the full story, it is a, I think he's admitted, a deeply autobiographical film of Carron's

upper middle class upbringing in the beautiful Colonial Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. It's a neighborhood that was home to a lot of families like his. Parents were professionals with live-in help. Beautiful old classic style buildings. It was a neighborhood that was really ravaged by the earthquake that happened about 10 or 15 years after the events of this movie. And then in the last 5-10 years has been reborn as a hipster paradise. And do you do the architecture much different than the one that we see in the movie since the earthquake or is it pretty much the same? No, it's the same. I mean, it's just a stunningly beautiful neighborhood, but a lot of the buildings, the older buildings, were foundationally unsound after the earthquake. And so a lot of families left the neighborhood and bad elements moved in. Now it's been reclaimed. And, you know, a few years ago, there were just these sprawling houses and buildings that were just, you know, like four floors with an art gallery and a pulcaria in the basement. And now it's, you know, it's a very, there's a lot of money there now. So it's a lot trendier. But a lot of, there isn't that.

same sort of freewheeling spirit of discovery, but it is a beautiful, beautiful neighborhood architecturally and in terms of its spirit. It's set during 1970 and 1971, which is a period of great political upheaval in Mexico City. And what's stunning about it, and maybe this is the point where we begin to slowly sound the air horn, is that it is at once a, as you said, I'll say it again, sort of mundane recitation, evocation of childhood and of a childhood in a specific place, but it is also in a way that is so hard I can't even comprehend how he did this it's so delicately done it is it wants a recreation of it but also in a way an examination of it and on some level it's not apology isn't the word but in an attempt to understand better who really

bore the burden of what was happening in the world and it's a movie about a privileged young man who was grown up relatively privileged and that has had an incredible career going back and and thinking about who held his life together to allow him to succeed. And it was primarily the women in his life. And that was his mother. And more importantly, at least moving from the autobiographical to the fictional, the character in this film, Cleo, who is an indigenous woman who is the living housekeeper for the family. And it tells the story through her eyes.

And it is pretty astonishing the way it does. And it's grounded in an incredible performance by Elisa Aparizio. Yeah, you know, one of the things that I kept thinking about, and I guess Kai can I wouldn't say I walk closer and a little bit with New York. And feeling like this, like that was kind of all day. Like she's like almost there. Foreigner in Mexico City.

Yeah, it seems reductive to say this. But when you see something you haven't seen before, the physical experience of that emotion in a movie theater or potentially again on your couch after setting up a great sound system, whatever, it's really why we do this and why we chase this stuff. And there are a number of moments in this movie, particularly when they're running down the street through the neighborhood,

which again, the recreation of era is just, I don't know how they did the magic trick and I almost don't want to know. But also moments when characters like Cleo are in movie theaters. You know, obviously this is Quaron's vision, so cinema plays an outsized role in his own experience and the experience that he gives to his characters. But, yeah, the idea of uncertainty and seeing is really powerful in this movie. And I'll take it a step further, which is to say,

the movie does a really incredible job of unsettling you even in moments that don't, in moments where you're not anticipating that. And I think that it says something profound about life in general. It also says something profound about the differences and experience where, you know, from my own privileged childhood growing up, not far from Aramingo Avenue,

wherever you were today. A moment of a stone throat. There's, there, you know, obviously I think about this a lot anyway because of what's going on in the world now and because I also have children, but also the 80s and 90s as relatively stable times in retrospect. But in this version of Mexico City, in Cleo's life and in the lives of the children, even at moments where things seem calm in places that ought to be calm and safe, uncertainty can strike and chaos can overwhelm you.

And I don't remember being as viscerally afraid, honestly, a film as I was when an earthquake hits. Now, earthquakes hit Mexico City a lot. Like, my friends call me or text me and be like, that was a bad one. We had to pull over. That is a fact of life there, you know, but similarly, the moments when the people are just shooting guns in the countryside, or there's a fire, if you are listening to this, and like me, are lucky enough to have lived life mostly free of terrors of earthquakes and fires. Now I live in California, so I no longer share that. But of, you know, people being gunned down in the street in front of you,

this movie does an incredibly artistic job of articulating what it is like to never be too far from wonder or fear. Yeah, and also... Yes, right, life isn't stopping. You know, one of the major set pieces of the film involves shopping for a crib

while clearly something is brewing outside and then a riot breaks out, incredibly violent and historically scarring riot in Mexican history. breaks out outside of the department store. People are just leading their lives when these things happen around them. And the movie communicates that in such a devastating way. Yeah, so it's like, one of the things that's sort of fascinating is that this has like

been a really good year for really been catching people. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's not, it's interesting. There's the sort of pie in the sky optimist version of what Netflix is doing would be that allowing people easy access to a film like Roma is a natural next step from people binge watching parts unknown or something. There is an intellectual and emotional curiosity that shows that are easily bingeable and accessible in gender

that might lead to further journeying. And maybe the algorithm can help us with that or whatever. But, I mean, personally, obviously, I'm in the tank for both of those things. that connection makes sense to me. But yeah, the version of the world that Netflix, at least for PR reasons, spins. And I mean, I have no reason to doubt their intention. I just, you know, whoever, it's such a monolith.

A world where everyone who has a Netflix subscription has access to the nominees or the movies that are considered for Best Foreign Film, that's a better world on some level, right? Because, I mean, even on a very basic level, if you sit down and watch Roma and you haven't travel to Mexico or you don't have a fixed opinion about Mexico and you live in America at this moment when Mexico is spoken of in very, very hostile and fear-mongering terms, the mundanity of aspects of this world and the universality of it are going to be very, very eye-opening, right? This idea that not just the relatively luxurious existence that they had in this house in Roma, but Mexico is a multicultural society in a way that.

presents its own challenges, and they have their own blind spots in terms of treatment of indigenous people and the class structure that's sort of systemic in the life. These are issues that we talk about in our country. These are universal issues, and it's presumptuous to think that only we can tell stories about them or that other people don't have their own, other nations and other people don't, an artist, don't have their own ideas to put forward. And ultimately, it's, you know, like, this movie moved me so much that I'm speaking about art in these very, like, aspirational, optimistic terms.

but that's what good movies can do. The great accomplishment of this movie is it supposed to... We just talk about Quaron for a second because I truly think it's incredible that he has the skill set that he has and used it to do this. I don't mean it as a slight against his career because he's always been such a bravora technician.

And, you know, Children of Men is an incredible film. Gravity is an incredible film. I'm not dinging those to say that I think this is something else. entirely. This is a movie that looks backwards in terms of its subject matter. It's a period piece. It looks slightly backward in terms of its ambition because it is just pure classic cinema, right? I mean, it's in black and white. It's a little bit of a origin story for a life in the way that old-fashioned Hollywood smart movies strove to be. But it's forward-looking, too, in its inclusion,

in its humanity, but also in the technical precision and wildly contemporary effects that it uses to pull it off. We'll be right back after stuff that we are going to try and catch up on. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by the big homies at Sonos. Meet Sonos Beam, the smart compact sound bar for your TV and the newest addition to the easy to use home sound system. Let me tell you guys something personal here. I love watching television at home, obviously, but I have some issues because sometimes when I'm watching television, I have children who are sleeping and I need to control the sound very, very specifically. Thanks to the Sonos Beam, my sound experience on my TV is 100 times better.

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I have to bring us back from the commercial. So here we are, we're back from commercial. How many Nyquels have you popped between our Roma conversation and now? And M's all over the place. It's just rolling around like marbles. So we wanted to talk about... So as Chris said at the beginning,

on Thursday show, it's our annual The Wall, it's our people of the year, artistic contributions of the year. Those are things that we watched and enjoyed and people that we loved. I feel like we could talk briefly, and we haven't prepped this. I have two things in mind.

You may as well. Things that we have not seen yet, but we feel that we ought to. And one for me is I think I'm going to spend, try to spend some time over the next few weeks watching HBO's My Brilliant Friend. Have you watched this at all? I have watched a few episodes, yeah.

You have. See, this is what happens because Chris actually watches this. My wife was writing about it for New York Magazine, so I was on, like, processed with those. So these Ferranti novels are fascinating to me. They are a total literary phenomenon, and they've missed me entirely. And they're published by Europa editions, which is weird. Like, I actually, that's my favorite publisher.

Yes, I know that's a nerdy thing to say. They publish generally. Like, I will buy their books because they're almost always good, especially in their World Noir series. But these are far and away their bestsellers. I've not read them. They're written by a pseudonymous writer, right? Her name is not Elena Ferrante.

We don't actually know her real name. and they are painstaking, detailed memoirs, or not memoirs, it's fiction, but about young girls growing into young women and women best friends in Italy. Is that fair to say that's correct? That's the reading of it? Yes. Yeah. And so HBO, they were global bestsellers and then HBO and Italian television partnered to make this show. And apparently it's fantastic.

And I was caught in this place of, I still felt maybe I should read the books first. But I think I'm going to throw that away because everyone is saying these are exceptional. just as television. What ultimately, I mean, we should just bring her on, but what did your wife, how did she fall on this? Because people are hitting us up constantly being like, why aren't you talking about this? Yeah, maybe also check this out.

She liked it quite a bit, obviously. I think, you know, it's the same thing that happens with any adaptation is that if you have a deep personal connection to the source material, you're always going to have a complicated relationship with. I think there's two kinds of literary adaptations where there's the kind where you really, they're almost impossible tasks

because what you have to do is honor the intense as you said like internal passion that a legion of fans have for the material and in that regard it sounds like my brilliant friend has more in common with a Game of Thrones honestly and that it was a whole world for people

that really consumed aspects of their lives and now here's a different version of it it somehow seems to have succeeded fans seem to really like it the other version of a literary adaptation I guess would be like little drummer girl where it's like 30, almost 40 years on from the book, it's been adapted before, we're just going to do a hard, tight diamond of our version of this.

Yeah, and sure. Is there opportunity in what you've seen from my brilliant friend for some light, light, Neapolitan accent work on your part? And I feel like, you know, I've been a really long time. And I think you and I, I mean, you know, it's not just him. We've received just, we've received a lot of messages of support that really, you know, it's not just that you've done a great Richard Madden impression that you've really boiled down all six hours of the bodyguard into one refrain.

So it might not get better than that. It's hard to, you know, 2018. I didn't think that I... I do, but we can go back and forth. Well, I have one that's essentially like a couple of things, which is, you know, in the shows that they have. And number one, that I get asked about the most, which I have not done at all.

This is Casa de Papel, right? The House of Paper. Casa de Papel. The House of Paper. And then the other one that I'm going to check out is 1983, which is sort of more of a conspiracy. That sounds amazing. It's incredible to me that we live in an era of television where now with TV it is possible to just go pure genre for us. And I don't mean pure genre like we're hype on Lord of the Rings.

What I mean is there was a period like the beginning of this century where I think both you and I just fully stopped reading. and I say this intentionally capitalized important literary novels and we were just reading Pelicanos paperbacks and then everything else that we learned from those books and following down the rabbit hole of mystery writers, crime writers,

thriller writers. And it was possible to choose aside, basically, and there was just simply too much to be reading everything. Now with TV, you could just be a crime fan. You could just go country to country, language to language. You could just do this on Netflix

and just watch these things that are specifically for us. And I know that the most boring thing that I repeat on the show is about how I wish things were more universal, blah, blah, blah. And here I am flipping sides, but it's our podcast, I can do it. Like, that could be worse. Could be worse. Yeah. I mean, like, it definitely, it's like when you, the sensation of wanting something made for you, that is a very unique satisfaction when you find it.

Yeah, I never really considered how, I say that a lot, especially recently when we've been hearing about all these projects that seem literally incepted from your cerebral cortex. but how much Frontier, yeah. But how much the first bar on Netflix of recommended for you drives everything

that they do? That it's not just an attempt to sort of corral an unwieldy content library. It's really their goal. Their goal is to be able

to say, here are the 16 things that we've made for you through our production partners all around the world because they want you mainlining this shit,

right? Like they don't, it isn't really built for, you can do it. I mean, there's a lot of stuff on there, but systems like Netflix aren't really built for you to triple light fantastic across different styles and genres. Yeah, it would be... No, that's actually, I really like this,

because I haven't considered it, and we actually don't know how many categories Netflix has internally and how many they offer, but let's fire up our Netflix machines tonight and copy down the first five bars, because I know for me, it's always like international whatever, food shows, comedies with strong female leads. And it must get...

Yeah, that's the thing too, because my wife and I share our Netflix, so it'll be like... Yo, if you want to be real, real here, I'm going to put my wife on blast and say that she is not a fan of. It's not that she doesn't know how to do it. She doesn't have any, see any reason to distinguish between who's watching Andrew or kids. So I will be scrolling through. It'll be like salt, fat, acid heat, money heist. Ozark Season 2 Glow

Barbie's Dreamhouse And I'm like Yo Now I'm not saying my wife's watching that There's nothing wrong with watching it But I'm saying that when She doesn't switch off, yeah I'm saying that when she's firing it up

For the other members of our household I'm like, you're dragging down my rhythm You're dragging down my algo baby Come on So we're doing... You're going to hate this Speaking of the other members of my household Chris, I am really

fired up for Mary Poppins returns Now... allow it. Do you have any relationship with Mary Poppins is here for the first time as I'm now retroactively calling the film?

That's what it's called? No, no, the first... It was Mary Poppins. Yeah, I know. I was just saying, like, you know how Star Wars became episode four later? This is the podcast where we asked the tough questions. On that, you know, I just... Jack, that Mary Poppins.

Yeah. Wasn't a big Disney house that I grew up in. No, I didn't really watch it a lot either. But let me tell you I've made up for that in the last few years. It's not only, it is a wonderful movie. It is wonderful in the

ways all that Pixar garbage is not because it is not noisy. It is clever, entertaining, musical, relatively placid and it's like three and a half hours fucking long. So, you can just fire that bad boy up on an iPad on a cross-country flight and everybody's

happy. So it really ticks a lot of crucial boxes. And I'm excited about this movie because I love Emily Blunt. I love Lin-Manuel Miranda. Love Dick Van Dyke. But I know nothing about it. I'm intentionally not reading reviews. I'm intentionally trying to squash my own cynicism about why Disney felt the need to do this now after 50 years.

And whether, like, Rob Marshall and these people are the right... Do you haven't been firing up to, like, what Mary Poppins' return meets for Brexit? No. What concerns me... is that Mary Poppins returns didn't only consult with Tony Lipps family and Mahershal Ali's character's family was not consulted in the making of Mary Poppins returns.

So that's a deep, deep, Oscar-shiving Green Book talk. But no, here's the only thing I know about it. And our friend and colleague, Sean Fantasy, said this to me the other night, which was, it's a kid's movie. Now, for Sean, I think that was kind of a negative. With blood coming out of his eyes?

No, it's coming out of his whatever. No, he didn't say it with the venom I just put it into. I put into it. But there is an incredible, it is definitely, I can put on a big boy hat and try to appreciate movies just as art. Like I do think inside out is a really good movie by Pixar. I have liked Pixar movies before. It's just that when I wear the hat I mostly wear, which is a child-sized beanie. unlike the shit is trash for children.

I am happy that they may have attempted to capture that spirit. Now, it's hard to capture a spirit of childlike wonder a half a century later for purely cynical and commercial reasons. But I really hope they did do as he says and made a movie for children to enjoy because that is what it ought to be. And weirdly, we are way far away from that as a goal in most filmmaking these days. That all seems doable. That seems to doable. We're just going to cram those in before TrueD comes back. When is True D come back?

The 13th. Of January. Man, really getting into it. 2019. Do you want to do a little temperature check on that for our audience? My temperature check is... The Old the Dark you can watch on Netflix, too, which had lots of problems, but... My goal in this podcast going forward still, and it always has been, well, it has been since this aired,

is to do the Colin Farrell Coke Bender episode of The Watch, like to capture the energy. like to capture the energy of that one moment not with drugs. Are we watchables of that or actually we just drink Droyo Studio? No, neither.

Weirdly, I'm just trying to create our version of that and then we can be done. Like that would be our... Remember when he almost has like a fucking heart attack in that scene? Yeah.

Look, that rules. When he's like gripping his chest I was like, Colin Farrell is a real one, man. Colin Farrell is the realest one. And I, I still will ride for that character on otherwise a disappointing show.

But I'm excited that you are fired up. I think that you have always run a clean ship when it comes to stock market prognostications in the culture of business, you know? Yeah. I think that you're trustworthy steward of people's hedge funds. Try to away. Yeah. Where it's like I'm concerned. What better way to say it?

So I feel like we're wrapping up here. You probably have to go get a roast pork sandwich or something. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. We'll be back on Thursday with a show that we recorded in person, and it's our annual episode, The Wall, People of the Year. We will then wish all of you, or we should now, we wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Season. We will be back with one new original episode in 2018

that will not be the Colin Farrell Coke Bender episode. But we'll let you know. It will be a mailbag episode. It'll just be the heart attack. It'll just be the heart attack. We'll go right into it. It'll just be Rob Wrigal having a heart attack and stuff, brothers. But for 45 minutes, with a break for a son-no's commercial in the middle.

There's a call-out now for mailbag questions for this final mail-back episode of the year. Let us know the name of your personalized algorithm. Yeah, I think that that's really, I'm very interested in that. My personal algorithm is, happy holidays and thank you to our listeners, and happy holidays to you, Chris. wear layers when you're in the cold and come back soon. Happy holidays, Baranskys! Today's episode of the watch was brought to you by the big homies at Sonos. Meet Sonos Beam, the smart compact soundbar for your TV.

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