Disclosure Day

12:27David Sims:Vanessa Hudgens, too. Of course.

12:29Griffin Newman:The billing order is... He was like, get Hudgens, get a B, then I'm interested.

12:33David Sims:The billing order is Dwayne Johnson, Michael Caine's second billed. I assumed he'd be the and, but he's second billed. I want second billed. Joss Hutcherson returning from the first film.

12:43Griffin Newman:Yeah, he's like, hi, guys. And everyone's like, what is the first bill called?

12:46David Sims:Vanessa Hudgens... He's like Brendan Fraser was in it. Maybe returning. I don't know. Luis Guzman and Kristen Davis. She got the and. Kristen Davis. Okay.

12:55Griffin Newman:Charlotte herself.

12:57David Sims:Yeah. Good for her. Journey to the Mysterious Island.

12:59Griffin Newman:Vanessa Hudgens is not in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Was Fenn and Frazier. Yes. So did she replace Brendan Fraser? Yes, she's replaced. The Rock is actually replacing Seth Meyers, who's also in the movie. No, Journey, as I'm sure said on this podcast before, has one of my favorite trailer jokes, which is... The Pecs? No, no, no. With Brendan Fraser. Oh, oh, oh. Where they fall. How are we still falling? No, it's just they fall. and then they stop and then Breda Fisher goes we're still falling it's so funny

13:29David Sims:both of those movies made a hundred million we should next time we're looking for like end of year like what's a fun like two a two slot like you guys should just journey to where there must be

13:42Griffin Newman:an original like because it's the HG Wells like was there like a 50s journey to the center of the earth or whatever probably oh oh sure

13:50David Sims:so you can fold that in because journey 2 is adapting a different H.G. Wells book, retrofitting it. I'm sure very faithfully. No, I think there's an H.G. Wells book called The Mysterious Island. I think you're right. I'm just saying,

14:00Griffin Newman:I don't know if they really even opened the book.

14:04David Sims:The opening line of the book is, Dwayne Johnson was riding a bumblebee. And at the time, audiences were very confused. They went, I don't get what this means. Is this a foreign language? Is he speaking in tongues like Emily Blunt in Disclosure Day? And then decades later, it became clear.

14:19Griffin Newman:It's not H.G. Wells, of course. I'm sorry. It's Jules Verne. What if we did a Jules Verne Patreon series? What are some film adaptations of... 2 ,000 Leagues Under the Sea? Around the World Navy? 20 ,000 Leagues. He just knocked off 18 ,000 whole Leagues. So like the Whale started at 2 ,000 Leagues Under the Sea and then he fell to 20 ,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

14:43David Sims:There are too many Hunchbacks. Okay. Hunchback is not Jules Verne. You guys are out of control.

14:49Griffin Newman:Okay. So 20 ,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You got the Kirk Douglas, James Mason movie. So there you got that. Okay. There was also a James Mason journey to the center of the earth in 1959. Okay. Do any of you guys have a good James Mason? I'm sure I could work on one. I don't know. Is this one of his vibes? I'm thinking we do. Then there's, oh, this is a problem. We have a huge problem. There's a huge problem now that we're doing this miniseries. We've committed us to. Inhaven ein Serious Problem. Inhaven ein Serious Problem. There are two works, two versions of another work of his, Around the World in 80 Days.

15:28Griffin Newman:So there's the interminable best picture winner. Yes. And then the horrendous Steve Coogan, Jackie Chan one.

15:34David Sims:Cecil DeFrance. Another big three. When's the last time those three made a movie together? Coogan, Chan, and DeFrance. DeFrance is great. I love Cecil DeFrance. Who is DeFrance?

15:48Griffin Newman:She's a French actress. Did you ever see

15:51David Sims:Autention? No. I like skipped over all of the French horror

15:57Griffin Newman:from the new French extremity. She was the barbed wire lady in Autention. There's also a Ray Harryhausen Mysterious Island along with the, you know. And then there's a Joseph Cotton from the Earth to the Moon from 1958. Okay. That could be fun. That could be fun. So this sounds like a really quick 12 movie series? I think it's like nine. I think we're overcomplicating it. Premier to the Moon is the one in the book where they just get in a bullet and shoot it at the moon, which I always thought is pretty cool. Yeah, that's what happens

16:27David Sims:in the Melies. Yeah, well, yeah. So maybe we break these. And we throw that in too. We break these into sub-franchises. We go from the Earth to the Moon. We go Journey. We go to Leagues. We go Days. Maybe to save time, we can play them at 2X. Yeah, or 4X. Or just play them on simultaneous screens. a scream. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just be like,

16:49Griffin Newman:I see, I think there's a bee over there. Okay, we're moving on.

16:52David Sims:I'm going to ride this bee. I can't, how would he say it? Supposed to ride the bee, the bloody bee. I don't know if Michael Caine actually rides the bee because he's not riding a bee. He does. I'm sorry. There's a character poster right here. Yeah, he does. Look at his face. He's got kind of I'm riding the bee. I'm going to fucking bee. I'm riding the bee. He doesn't talk like that. He doesn't talk like that. The bee doesn't talk like that. We're talking about Disclosure Day. Yes. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Yes. Steven Spielberg decided to jump a little out of his comfort zone and make a movie about our relationship to aliens.

17:26David Sims:Hmm. This time he's blowing the doors wide open on this thing. This film is called Disclosure Day.

17:32Griffin Newman:It is directed by Steven Spielberg. Yes. It is written by David Koepp, his frequent collaborator. Story by Steven Spielberg. Pretty rare that he takes the story credit, though he's been doing it more lately. Getting really excited when they saw that credit. Yeah. They were like, ooh, Spielberg alien story, let's go.

17:50David Sims:But this has been a real mystery box movie. It was just sort of announced Spielberg kept alien film. It was untitled for a while. Then it was called The Dish, which was a terrible title. The cast was known. Everything else was kind of a mystery for a while. Wasn't there like another project that was also announced and like we weren't sure which one was going to come first? There was like the more historical drama about like Lindbergh plot against America type folks in New York. There was the bullet. Yeah, but it felt like he was unconventionally slow to land on a new project post Fablemans. That's true.

18:28David Sims:The four-year gap is long for him these days. Really long.

18:31Griffin Newman:Really for any days, I guess.

18:33David Sims:But usually he has... I mean, I think he said this in an interview that basically the longest gap he had taken previously was the one in between his crazy 93 and his crazy 97. Because even in the pandemic, he had a movie come out and Fablemans came out quickly after. And that was both him building DreamWorks and building a family. There was that feeling of like, usually he's got like 10 movies in development. And the second he's promoting one movie, you hear that he's already starting the next one. We're never going to see that kid Pope kidnapping movie,

19:06Griffin Newman:No, he dropped that. That got made. It got made? There's like an Italian movie that came out about that story. I feel like he just kind of let it, you know, he was like, forget it.

19:15David Sims:Now he's supposedly working on a Western. Now he's saying he's working on a Western. But it doesn't feel as, it feels like he slowed his clip down. And I think it's getting into a little bit more of a I don't want to work for the sake of working. I want to make a thing I feel an overriding desire to do. He's 79 years old.

19:33Griffin Newman:It is crazy how old I have a correction for you. He's 79 years young.

19:38David Sims:You are right. He's a pretty, sprightly fella. He just moved to New York. He's a New Yorker.

19:44Griffin Newman:He's a New Yorker now. I'm sure he's living 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. No, I don't know where he's at.

19:49David Sims:My old stomping grounds.

19:51Griffin Newman:I don't think it's pretty crazy that all the boomers are old. I mean, that's life.

19:55David Sims:No, it's life. It just does feel wrong to me. I think of them as being the whippersnappers, even though I was born into a world that they had already claimed.

20:05Griffin Newman:Right, they're the movie Brats or whatever, where they'd grown up by the time you were watching movies. Stevie Spielberg, he's 79. He'll be 80 in December. Is this his 40th feature film? What number are we looking at here? Oh, he's going to make me count. Let's see. Now, we're not counting Firelight. No. But we are counting Duel.

20:28David Sims:This is very much a return to, I wouldn't say return to form, but it was framed as a, guys, Spielberg is going to do the Spielberg thing again for the first time in a while. Down to a thing I saw a Redditor's post about, which was a good point. The poster for this movie is Spielberg, last name only above the title. Yeah. It is hard to think of another case where the director's name is above the title, not yet as a Steven Spielberg film. And there's also not an actor name above the title. He is, it's as if it's Schwarzenegger. You're totally right. I mean, Nolan is that, but he loves the film by Christopher Nolan.

21:07Griffin Newman:And a big, long billing block. Yeah, but the Odyssey's teaser poster is just a film by Christopher Nolan.

21:13David Sims:It's not that, you know, other people couldn't do that. But it's rare that there's a marketing campaign that is just Spielberg. Spielberg.

21:21Griffin Newman:I mean, there's disclosure day. Look, there's the number one, Lee Cronin. We all know. Yes. He can't be touched.

21:28David Sims:But that's not a billing issue. It's his mummy, David.

21:31Griffin Newman:We'd be so confused. What if he revealed, I found this mummy? That's why it's called Lee Cronin's The Mummy. It's my mummy. I didn't direct the film.

21:37David Sims:I was so scared during that movie. I was screaming. I was shaking. I was convulsing. And then someone pointed out to me, don't worry, Griffin. It's Lee Cronin's mummy. And I went, oh, my God. I didn't know who it belonged to.

21:47Griffin Newman:Oh, my God. I was waiting for the HBO Max drop.

21:50David Sims:Oh, so worried. I didn't know whose mummy it was.

21:53Griffin Newman:Peacock, whatever it's going to be on. Yeah, I feel bad for Lee Cronin.

21:55David Sims:That was a tough break. That was not his fault. Maybe it is his fault.

21:58Griffin Newman:Maybe he was like, my name has to be about the title. But that feels like a real Daffy Duck shirt thing. But I think more like, I mean, what I heard was essentially they were like, they want to make it clear it's not. The Brendan Fraser.

22:07David Sims:Yeah, Brendan Fraser. And I'm like, I would do anything else to make that clear rather than making the public think. They should have just called it Haunted Child. Yes. Just call it something else.

22:15Griffin Newman:We found a fucked up thing in the desert. We found a fucked up thing. They're like the focus features or whatever, like Twitter account. They tweeted like once a day for two weeks.

22:26David Sims:It was New Line, I think. Or whatever it was, Brendan Fraser is not in Lee Cronin's The Mummy. Yes, yes. And I thought they were doing a bit where they were leading up to like a surprise cameo.

22:38Griffin Newman:Right, I think they were not initially, they were initially going to tweet that once, then they were like, let's make it a bit. And then it was kind of a classic like, well, you made it a bit, and that's kind of like, now there's smoke. And people think there will be fire. It was classic, just to be clear,

22:52David Sims:this is not a movie based on the toy. This is based on the real.

22:55Griffin Newman:My t-shirt that says Brendan Fraser is not in the mummy. They did it like in all caps. I was like, come on. You're like, you're asking for it. They were asking for it. Lee Cronin has made, I think, three films. Steven Spielberg has made 35. Okay. 36 if you count Twilight's on the movie, which I don't. Yeah, if you're nasty. But this is his 35th feature from my count.

23:18David Sims:Yeah. Pretty good. Right. It was, there was the just sort of, he's doing a UFO movie. He's doing some sort of alien movie. Why is Spielberg going back to this? Well, we were debating this with our editor, Alan Smithy. How many alien films does Spielberg count? If you include Crystal Skull, which you have to, it's five.

23:40Griffin Newman:So the five are?

23:41David Sims:Close Encounters.

23:42Griffin Newman:Close Encounters of the third kind. Yes. E.T.

23:44David Sims:the extraterrestrial. War. Of the worlds. Then Indiana Jones and? The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And Disclosure Day. Yeah. Remember Gay E.T.? You bring him back? Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. We did like 45 hours of bits about Gay E.T. and we never landed on LGBT. Sometimes if something's like right in front of you, you just can't see it.

24:09Griffin Newman:Well, also, we did, but we definitely did say that he was the extra extraterrestrial. We did say that. Okay, good. Right, and we won many awards for that. A thing I also noted when I was writing my review is this is his first contemporary film since War of the Worlds. Uh-huh. And then I started thinking about it a little bit more. So you do have The Terminal. That's a contemporary, a fully contemporary film by him with no funny business. It takes place in an alternate reality. In a way. In which Tom Hanks is funny? No, he's very funny. It does have an alien.

24:38David Sims:It does. It has an illegal immigrant. That's so true.

24:41Griffin Newman:That is so true. From Krekloja. Oh, and normal voice? Normal accent on that? Victor Noworski. Because a lot of his, when I was thinking about it, but a lot of his contemporary set films, so here we, you know, Disclosure Day, War of the Worlds. Let's set aside Terminal for a second here. The Jurassic Park movies. Yup. I mean, is always contemporary. I guess it is. Always is contemporary. It's obviously very old fashioned, but it is set, I think, in the present day. Yeah. Sugarland Express. Sugarland Express and E.T. Duel. And Duel, sure. And Jaws. but like you know things like Jurassic Park War of the Worlds Disclosure Day it's like yeah they're set in the present day sort of but Disclosure Day is kind of set in a slightly different world from our own it's got alien tech and kind of you know like it feels Jurassic Park's a little bit the same where it's like yeah yeah this is our time but you're like yeah but it's not because they fucking made dinosaurs in it

25:46David Sims:right I think that was part of the pitch on this movie is Spielberg's gonna talk about our times. This thing that we all love, that Spielberg could make these very emotional, character-driven blockbusters that felt like they were in conversation with our world.

26:01Griffin Newman:It's also just the thing of like, hey, so few people get to do an original big movie like this, so it's awesome that he wants to. Yes. Like when he was like, I might remake Bullet, I was like, I bet you will do a good job if you do that. I don't really want you to do that. I'd rather you took a weirder swing. I also, I think... And now I'm so emotional about it.

26:21David Sims:Yeah. You're going to burp. There are, I would say, two modes that Spielberg has been operating in since this century started. One is him sort of trying to become a classicist, right? Trying to become like a Hawks or a Hughes or a Ford and to focus on maybe sort of neglected genres or more classical filmmaking styles and making kind of grown-up movies. And this whole feeling that he and George Lucas are complaining about IP culture and franchise blockbuster movies, but there's some guilt about maybe what they created. And Steven is trying to actively put the opposite type of movie into the system, which for so long, his name was so big that no matter what, basically anything he did became a massive success.

27:09David Sims:And that has fallen off the last 15 years. A little bit. A little bit. He's still Steven Spielberg, but there's no longer a guarantee, which there used to be. Lincoln made... Lincoln was humongous. Like$300 million or something crazy, right? Like it was like 180 domestic. Yeah, but that's like crazy. That's when he still was like, anything he does becomes a blockbuster.

27:29Griffin Newman:Obviously, right. West Side Story and Fableman's were not blockbusters. West Side Story was very much the COVID hangover. Fableman's was one of those things where it's like, I think that movie should have done better. Yes. Because it did quite like nothing. But it was right. And it was still, you know, 2022. and it was that thing where Universal put it on fucking streaming. The release schedule was bad. After 17 days and they were like, well, this is what we do with all our movies now. And it was just like, guys, Steven Spielberg made this.

27:59David Sims:It's running for Oscars. What was the other one I was going to throw out? I mean, The Post and Bridge of Spies both did well, but sort of like well for adult dramas. They both did like 60-70 domestic, 100 worldwide.

28:12Griffin Newman:Oh, well, you know what? I'm going to look this up on the website where it's easy to look it up.

28:16David Sims:Just kidding. They don't exist. Great. There are two modes. There's that. And then the second mode is for the last 25 years, he's constantly tempted by, can I go back and do a classic Spielberg family blockbuster? And varying levels. Posted 81, Bridged did 72. Those are both good numbers. Yeah. Yeah. There have been varying levels of success and people disagree about which ones work better than others. But I would say like, Tintin, Crystal Skull, Ready Player One. These are sort of... The BFG. The BFG. These are like, he's trying to go back home again and also trying to find a new modern mode of, how can I be in conversation with what's happening right now in blockbuster movies?

28:56David Sims:But like, Return for My Crown. And this feels like him making a 70s movie. It's what's fascinating about it is that it doesn't feel like him being like, fuck, what did the kids like today?

29:08Griffin Newman:No, totally. He's not, Ready Player One was a little bit more of him being like, let me get in the current sandbox and see what I want to do about it. Tintin is, I want to use these new tools.

29:17David Sims:Indiana Jones is, what does this look like in a modern context?

29:20Griffin Newman:This is, you're right. This is more like Close Encounters. It is a blockbuster adult, you know, drama.

29:27David Sims:Now, the other sort of qualifier here, as we talked about when we did our original series, is that when he does the two, I just got an insane text message. When he does the two, would you believe it's about my grandmother? When he does the two Tom Cruise movies where it's like the biggest director and the biggest star in all of Hollywood are doing something together. They make these two very haunted, dark movies. They're awesome, but they're not traditional audience-pleasing blockbusters, right? He makes haunted films. So this is like the promise of kind of Spielberg face wonder, humanity-driven, character-driven, performance-driven, classic Amblin blockbuster was from the moment they start actually putting out trailers, posters, the promise of what this movie was.

30:18David Sims:David, I think you and I pretty unabashedly loved this. Huge fan of this movie. I think it's fantastic. I'm curious to see it a second time because it is a movie that is, you know, like 80 % slow burn. And I was loving the unraveling. I don't agree on slow burn. This is a very fast movie. I thought it was, it drops, first of all, the craziest opening shot of any fucking Spielberg movie ever. It's true. You could bet a billion dollars. What do you think the opening frame of this movie is? His dick. I would sooner bet that than... I would sooner bet his dick. I would sooner bet that than that it is the opening shot is...

30:56David Sims:A like... An AEW wrestler kicking the camera. It rocks. It really is so fun. But it drops you in media res and then you're on the run the whole time. You're on the run. It's very propulsive.

31:08Griffin Newman:It reminded me of Minority Report. Yeah, and obviously it has that Minority Report vibe also of like, I want to talk about what I'm thinking about right now, but with a sci-fi lens.

31:18David Sims:But it's got the Twilight Zone thing of where is this going?

31:20Griffin Newman:Yeah, sure, sure, sure. We're in the middle of this story. We'll tell you stuff as we're moving.

31:25David Sims:How are these things connected? But we got to keep moving.

31:27Griffin Newman:Right. Got to keep moving.

31:28David Sims:I mean, that's what's smart about the construction of the movie is that it's able to play both sides of the coin.

31:33Griffin Newman:It does the thing that I'm sure people don't like where everyone's like, so what's going on? And the guy's like, I'm going to tell you. We got to get to this house and then I'm going to tell you one more sentence. And then we got to do another thing. But it does it pretty well. It's also mirroring the characters themselves who don't actually know why they're being compelled to go somewhere. What you're describing, David,

31:55David Sims:usually pisses me off. And in this movie, why it works is that no one has the complete picture. Everyone has pieces of it and they're trying to strategically use what they know to get the support and the allegiance of the others, but no one has the full view of everything. Not even Colin Firth. Not even Colin Firth. Gritted teeth holding onto a stick. I'm grumpy today. Do you think Spielberg's jealous that he's probably only going to end up being the second most powerful stick of the summer movie season? Uh, go ahead. One Wish Willow fucking whipping the disclosure stick. That's a bundle of sticks.

32:33David Sims:It's one stick. It's a One Wish Willow.

32:35Griffin Newman:But he's got like the little kind of It's got some thorns It's not a bundle

32:39David Sims:It's got thorns It's got a little thorn It's a one wish willow These kids are obsessed with these one wish willows

32:44Griffin Newman:That movie I saw it with no hype Beyond like fantasy being like It's pretty It's good Like you should check it out You licked your finger

32:52David Sims:You walked out of the screen You held up to the wind And you went I think 340 domestic

32:57Griffin Newman:More than Baby Yoda I just walked out being like That was very like unpleasant and effective That was like a pretty Yeah, yeah, sure I get it. I get it. Right. I did not walk out being like, well, the world just changed. Generationally, everything is changing. But I'll also admit it's not my vibe of a movie, I suppose. So I was maybe never going to feel that way.

33:18David Sims:Back in my day, kids were using ChatGPT to do their homework. Nowadays, they're using One Wish Willows. They just got One Wish Willows. They buy a One Wish Willow and they say, my one wish is to write my next paper for me. Just one paper. Okay. So Trump administration is actually like releasing UFO files. Well, they love releasing files. That's all they do is release files. Every file that anyone would want to see, they're releasing. So if you go to war.gov slash UFO. War.gov? We live on stupid earth. It's so stupid. The dumbest planet. So he just actually did a second release on May 8th of like a bunch of stuff.

34:00I haven't gotten through it. And all of the like images and video, it's, you know, what the fuck is it?

34:06Griffin Newman:It's something we need to talk about right away. Cause people have been like, there's already been a disclosure day and like no one cared. And I'm like, well, the images are basically just like some blobs where they're like, I don't know. These blobs were weird. It's so weird how people have not cared because there's nothing to look at. I know, but still, they're acknowledging weird phenomena. It's not the same as we, aliens crashed. Yeah. We took the aliens who were alive to a room and tortured them. Well, right. And then stole their spaceships to make technology.

34:40David Sims:To make cell phones and shit.

34:40Griffin Newman:Sorry we didn't tell anyone. We used the old spark. Versus like, yeah, a plane was flying in the air and it's all blob. And the blob was weird. Yeah. And the blob kind of moved in a weird way. and we do have a video of that if you'd like to see which is sort of currently.

34:54David Sims:This is why I think the ending of this movie has to go as hard as it does because it needs to be like what if all networks were co-opted by 15 minutes of just decades of footage you know so much shit of it looks like little guys in little alien costumes. There was the moment in the film where you start to see and we're getting into spoilers and all this but there was the moment in the film where you start to see the aliens for the first time. I forget what the first images. You've seen it more recently than us, Murray. The first images for like the torture It's the torture. You know, sequence.

35:24David Sims:I started pumping, right, right. It's Josh O 'Connor showing Eve Hewson on the laptop, right? And I started pumping my fist and I was like, so he's just fucking doing it. He's just putting a gray, almond-eyed Right, like a classic man alien. I didn't really appreciate that. I was like, he's not overthinking this at all. The aliens are looking like everyone's default cultural cartoon alien and he's just rendering them realistically and is like, yeah, you know, aliens.

36:00David Sims:David! Yes? They say that the eyes are the window to the soul. They do say that. What does that make our glasses? The windows? The window frames? I don't know. The curtains? Yeah, the curtains. The point is, if you are a glasses wearer like I am or like our own producer Ben is, It's a big decision. Sure. Because this is how you introduce yourself to the world. This is how you engage with other people. You make eye contact through the frames. Sometimes it's just time for a refresh. Totally agree.

36:29Griffin Newman:All right. Well, so what about Zenni Optical?

36:33David Sims:Oh, the fine folks' Zenni glasses. The eyewear. They got fun shapes, sizes, and colors. They got a lot of colors. Right. Statement pieces. Bold statement pieces, they call them. and they're inexpensive, I would say. They're an online eyewear shop with prescription glasses, sunglasses, blue light lenses, all starting at under$30. That's crazy. That is very low. I feel like glasses often cost more than$30.

37:03Griffin Newman:Way more. But you go to Zinni.com, you pick a frame, you upload your prescription, they ship it to your door, no appointment, no store, no upsell at the counter. Easy. At that price, something kind of shifts. You're not like, do I need new glasses? You're like, why don't I try something fun, right?

37:17David Sims:Sometimes you got an old pair, they got a scratch on them. It's annoying, but you're like, am I going to go through the hassle? And what's so nice, too, about the glasses I got is just the price point. I feel so good. So good. That I'm not overpaying for a great quality pair of sunglasses.

37:35Griffin Newman:Exactly. They've got 150 ,000 five-star reviews. Yeah. And if you've never run glasses online before, they have a virtual try-on so you can see how it's going to look on your face before you commit. Mm-hmm. If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, now's the time. Go to zenni.com slash podcast and use code podcast15 for 15 % off your first order. This dials sell out, so don't sit on it. That's Z-E-N-N-I dot com slash podcast promo code podcast15.

38:05So disclosure day, you were saying that you both are, you know, fully on board.

38:11David Sims:I feel like you and Ben are moderate positive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I was not like, holy fuck, this is like a perfect movie. There were moments of it where I was like really emotionally affected and like very enraptured. And there were other moments where a like nurse asks Emily Blunt, did the trauma that happened in your childhood, did you ever seek help for that? Or like the last, you know, 15 minutes of the movie? The last 15 minutes, I was on the edge of my seat. I mean, this is the thing. we saw it with a bunch of people you know, the great, the king of TikTok himself, Reese. I was sitting next to Reese.

38:55David Sims:Alan Smithy was there. A lot of our critic friends, Esther and her soon-to-be husband, Bob. So we were all talking after the movie. And it was one of these things where like, I really think this boils down to the last 15 minutes. Either you're 100 % on board and that wins you over or you push back on it a little bit. because it's Spielberg going full Spielberg. It's him going hard, not in spectacle, but in his emotionality, in his worldview. And we'll get into it, but I just want to say the religious stuff at the end. Yes. And the nuns being like, aliens are also God's children. I was like, boo!

39:37That stinks! I loved that part. I loved that part.

39:41David Sims:That's usually a thing I bristle at in movies because I'm a dirty leftist coastal elite heathen. But that's the thing on Shyamalan movies where they get too spiritual. And I'm like, this stopped being my language. I just, this is not an in for me. I feel like I'm being recruited. In this, I bought it as a storytelling thing. It didn't feel like it was being pushed on me. They also got me. When Elizabeth Marvel's like... She's so good. In Genesis, the line is, you know, God's greatest creation on earth. Yes. I'm like in the theater. I'm going like, oh, shit. Like, I never thought about that. It was right there in the text.

40:24Oh, fuck.

40:25David Sims:God was writing about aliens. God was like, you look at the fucking aliens? That's fucking crazy. That's what God was like. I think the movie, like, what religion is supposed to do, historically it has not, but it's supposed to make you love your fellow human and have respect for humanity and other people. So, like, believe that there is some sort of higher power out there that is governing all of us and bringing us together. I think it's even... And, like, the aliens in this film are used as a device, as a this is now the thing that is bringing everyone together.

41:04Griffin Newman:And I love that unity. That's totally true. I think it's also just kind of like, he's running at the idea of, like, the answer to weird shit isn't aliens or God. You know, it can be both. You know what I mean? It's sort of like, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Like, we could find out that, I mean, sure, that aliens exist on Earth. And that doesn't mean like you have to abandon your belief system or like the way you think the world was ordered or whatever like that. It's like, you know, God can fit into that however you like. I think this movie is about... God can fit into a lot of stuff.

41:38David Sims:In my reading, this movie is about two things primarily. So, Marie, what you were saying about what religion in theory serves to do, right? I think even beyond that, it serves to give us a language, a shared language of understanding for how to be alive, right? That is the basic underlying purpose of any organized religion is a set of codes and ethics and morals and values through which to understand human existence. That gets distorted and weaponized in a million different ways, which is why I get really uneasy with religion and when movies feel like they're pushing religious text on me. I don't think this film is pushing a theological reading of the universe.

42:15David Sims:I think it is using characters with theology to explore what it's actually saying, which to me is two things, right? There's a kind of personal story in this of what Spielberg's going through in his life. And then there's a sort of larger, this is what Steven wants to say about the current state of the world. The personal story is Spielberg has always said that he doesn't like therapy or that rather he went to one therapy session and didn't find it useful. And that for him, working through his issues through his movies is always what felt productive to him. And that's why you got these movies where people went like, huh, Steven Spielberg still seems really hung up about this divorce thing.

42:48David Sims:Because it was basically men will become the most successful director in the history of Hollywood to avoid going to therapy. All this time, he's avoiding making the movie about the real thing, which is the Fablemans. He gets that out of his system. He makes the movie where everyone who works on that is like he was crying on set all the time. It was a really difficult process. He exercised something from his system. And he's promoting that movie. And he's like, I actually don't know what I make next. To a certain degree, I've been avoiding making this movie my whole career. And I don't know what I have to say.

43:16David Sims:And this is a movie about two people processing trauma. It is a movie about two characters who end up being the ones who can serve to create a catharsis for people at large through reckoning with their own trauma and their own history. Things that they have pointedly just been saying, like, I don't want to fucking think about that shit anymore. I don't need that. I'm fine. I'm functional. That's thing one. Thing two in this movie is Spielberg talks a lot about having his existential crisis during the pandemic, as many of us did. What do I fucking do now? I've just been work, work, work, work, work.

43:47David Sims:And now I'm slowed down. I can't make movies. If I only make one movie again, what is it? What's the one movie I have to make? Fablements. but also really reckoning with the world. And he said he would leave his home and just drive around for hours because he didn't know what to do with himself. And I think what this movie is commenting on is we are living in obviously a very fractured world in which people live in alternate realities and it's very impossible to get any agreement on anything. Religion is one of these things that's supposed to unify people. It has only pushed people further apart.

44:14David Sims:It has only made things more violent. And we went through this collective trauma of this horrible global pandemic that affected literally everyone on the planet to some degree, and it fractured us even further. And I think he's creating a simulation of, is there anything that could happen, a form of communication that actually unified all of humanity for a minute? And I think this movie builds to a note of and what happens now. The last word of this movie, I believe, is listen. Listen, of course. And it's sort of like, the next step is, what do we say now that we have everyone's attention? Because for one brief moment, for 15 minutes, we have collectively gotten everyone onto the exact same page.

44:55David Sims:There is now a reality that has just adjusted that we all have to understand. And I think it's basically saying there's now something new that's like replacing religion. Not that the aliens will become their own religion, but that part of it is that the Elizabeth Marvel character is someone who's not fighting this, is saying like, this doesn't negate my worldview because my worldview is less about the dogmatic text here than it is about the ideas of what we're trying to get at, which is a unification of empathy, which this movie is about, like, is there any fucking way that empathy could win again?

45:28David Sims:Right. Is there any fucking way that we could all just get on the same page about everything?

45:33Griffin Newman:Could we do this sort of fantasy from a lot of movies of, like, if we learned about, you know, extraterrestrials, would that somehow unite us? Because I think Spielberg is a sort of... I mean, is he religious? Is he spiritual? He talks about this, like... He's spiritual. He's also, he's not Catholic. He is famously Jewish. But he was raised, you know, a little more religious than he was. And then he says he kind of reconnected with it. And, you know, like, there's a lot of spiritual thought in his movie and kind of like, how do we reconcile, you know, spirituality with, you know, science and modernity.

46:07Griffin Newman:Right?

46:07David Sims:It's also, it's the dynamic of his parents, you know, a computer programmer, a musician. The scientist and the artist. There's that incredible clip. Emily Blunt and the Josh O 'Connor. I mean, truly, it's one of them. It's a communicator and a mathematician in this movie, right?

46:20Griffin Newman:And it's as he's confronting or thinking about what you're talking about of like, could empathy triumph and how could this go over today? And he's picking a whatever, DOD subcontractor, whatever Josh O 'Connor is. Basically someone who got sucked into the deep state because he's good at math.

46:39David Sims:Because he was a hacker and it was the one way he was going to get his prison sentence.

46:43Griffin Newman:Hack the planet, obviously, we all agree. Yeah. and then she's what is she? She's a weather girl she's a local meteorologist but yeah she's a meteorologist of course but you know she's a media figure she's a TV person it's almost old fashioned at this point but like I don't need Spielberg making a movie about like an influencer anyway you know what I mean? I'm fine with him alighting on she's this kind of mainstream TV face

47:08David Sims:we're going right to the end in certain ways but I think one of those moves that this movie makes that is so smart and is a move indicative of a Spielberg level of confidence and intelligence is that she breaks the story, and very quickly it gets transferred over to the actual national network news. Yeah, that was something... I'm sorry. A lot of my issues with this movie were like, yes, I am aware that I am watching a movie about aliens, so already there's a level of suspension of disbelief. But there were other things where I was just like, you know, like kind of squinting and screaming, like something doesn't pass the smell test.

47:50Like, I haven't watched local news in years.

47:53Griffin Newman:Same. I can't say I watch a lot of local news. Sure. Do, like, the news people in Kansas City report on what's going on in North Korea? I mean, if nuclear war was about to break out, possibly. Yeah, I would think so. They don't just hand it over to the national news?

48:12David Sims:No, I mean, they're competitive. I think it's both. And I think this movie, you know, it's this other fascinating thing that you hear for years and it's been more and more open secret lately that like Steven Spielberg is obsessed with SNL and attends most tapings of SNL and now has moved to New York. He is a New York resident. That was my first thought of why he moved to New York. Best season. He was like, I can't keep doing the like weekly flights. I would hear that from people that he would fly in just and he'd sit behind the monitor with, you know, the people who like work on SNL are like, it's weird.

48:45David Sims:Spielberg's just always weird.

48:47Griffin Newman:It means he said like the words Doja Cat or whatever, right? You know what I mean? Like if he's having to watch like current SNL.

48:53David Sims:Also, why isn't he hosting?

48:55Griffin Newman:He's been like, I love, you know, Anita or whoever.

49:00David Sims:Steve as Domingo's dad or some shit.

49:03Griffin Newman:Didn't Domingo host SNL this year? He did an SNL, didn't he? Oh, Coleman Domingo. I meant Domingo. Oh, that's true. There's also the great character of Domingo. Yes.

49:13David Sims:Wait, did they address that on the Coleman Domingo episode? I think they didn't. Coleman Domingo was great in that episode. I believe it. You know, Coleman Domingo was a cast member of the Big Gay sketch show on Logo. I did know that, of course. I know every single thing about the Big Gay. No, I didn't know that. Coleman Domingo is like a five-tool player. I didn't know he had a comedy background. Every kind of experience you could possibly have as an actor. And it took him like 40 years to hit as one of our undeniable guys. Kate McKinnon also, of course. Yes, McKinnon. Yes. I love him in this movie.

49:38David Sims:I think he's great in this film. He's great.

49:40Griffin Newman:Of course, he's in Lincoln. I'm trying to think if he's worked. Right, he's got a small part in that. He's like the first thing you see in Lincoln. Yes, the very opening. Is it David Oyelowo, too? He's also, yeah, in that opening battle.

49:51David Sims:I don't think he's worked with Spielberg since then. I don't think so. And since then, he's been nominated twice for Best Actor.

49:58Griffin Newman:Yes. Once, I think, you know, I think he kind of snuck in there. He's a great actor. The other one, wildly deserving. Very good in Sing Sing. He's incredible in Sing Sing. Very good in Sing Sing. I did not love Rustin. I didn't either. That felt like a sort of... I didn't see it. It felt like a kind of... Richard Jenkins, The Visitor. Yeah. Yes. Kind of a better performance with Colin Firth in A Single Man back in the day where it's like, you know what? You've been around for a long time. You're a great actor. Here's a nom. And then the next year they're like, oh, you're even better in this thing.

50:29Griffin Newman:Yes. Here you go.

50:30David Sims:Colin Firth was the opposite, arguably. But he's good in both of those films. I think A Single Man is a silly movie. I think it's a silly movie. I think it's an incredible performance.

50:39Griffin Newman:He's good. I like that movie a lot. It's so fucking bad. Oh, my God. Tom Ford. He's got a new one coming. Yeah, he does, right? Yeah, and I'm very much

50:47David Sims:looking forward to it. What's it about? Like a guy who wears pants or something? And reads a book and is sad. God, remember he was going to make The Whale with James Corden? I do remember that. What? Yes. Yep, yep, yep. He had the rights option. The UN intervened on that one. Honestly, I might have... We went full disclosure on that one. I might have preferred that.

51:07Griffin Newman:Possibly. You know what? I'll see it. I'll see it I'll evaluate could it be better?

51:12David Sims:Can I ask? Please What do you think that would look like? Wait Can you do it towards me so I can capture this?

51:22Griffin Newman:I'm trying to do like a sort of a cordon face Yeah His new movie is called Cry to Heaven Oh perfect And it's an adaptation of an Anne Rice book Great So I imagine it'll be rather sumptuous That sounds amazing It's kind of fun Nicholas Holt Aaron Taylor Johnson so so far former collaborators don't sound like

51:43David Sims:his kind of guys Adele

51:45Griffin Newman:okay Kieran Hines okay George McKay who I always like yes Mark Strong okay Colin Firth Colin Firth grabbing the yeah the stick Paul Bettany our guy Hunter Schaefer sure love her Julianne Moore oh my god a lot of his guys yeah love that um I this is interesting I didn't know that you were anti Tom Ford, David. I feel like that is because maybe you're not gay enough. I don't think that's true. I'm going to be honest with you. I really don't think that's the problem here. I'm pretty sure that's not why I don't like his movies. He's a pretentious asshole. I'm going to throw out a counter argument.

52:28David Sims:Here's my counter take. His movies are not bad enough.

52:32Griffin Newman:Yeah. Both of his movies, they look pretty good and I kind of respect that about them, but they're pretty stupid. A single man is like, Firth kind of really convinces you it's a good movie. Yes. And then when you kind of lay out the plot, you're like, this was a little silly.

52:48David Sims:But it's so much just the Firth performance. It gets a lot further.

52:51Griffin Newman:Nocturnal Animals truly was one of those classic... Not dangerous animals. One of those things where I'm like, he took a script written by an 11-year-old, right? And then he cast really good actors and got it looking really slick and fancy. but like that is a really, really silly movie.

53:07David Sims:Every time I bring this up, there are always nocturnal animal defenders who get mad at me. But when I, I think I saw that movie with Joe Reed reading Ray and Joe and when I realized, oh, the structure of this movie is just going to be Amy Adams reads a chapter of a manuscript while wearing a cocktail dress and then it cuts to her going like, she makes a phone call. She gets a voicemail. She's like, hey, I read this crazy chapter. I just want to talk to you. Anyway, call me back. Reading glasses back on. Time for another chapter. Sounds great. We love women who read. That's true.

53:40Griffin Newman:We do support literacy. Just to get us a little bit back on the rails here. I want to talk about disclosure day. Can I throw out a take and I want to get your read on it? I'm currently holding the photo of Mike Myers naked in Austin Powers. Looking pretty cut, actually. Looking pretty cut. Deep V. And we're getting back on track. We are getting back on track. Yeah, this is about disclosure day. My first thought when I see Colin Firth in Disclosure Day with the beard, with the turtleneck, I'm like, is this kind of the hottest he's ever been on screen? It's a good look. I'm going to go with no. When do you think?

54:16Griffin Newman:Because I think Colin Firth's been very handsome. Firth, Firth, Firth. I think Colin Firth's been very handsome in a lot of movies. I think he's very handsome. And I guess we can't count Pride and Prejudice because that's not a movie. And I'm like, okay, maybe not ever, but like... Right. It's a great look. But like of late. Of late. Well, I was honestly kind of thinking like, where's Firth been? Kind of. Because he's obviously very good in this movie because he's good at this kind of shit.

54:40David Sims:And this is an installment of Firth Things Firth.

54:44Griffin Newman:And I was just, and I was like, I know if I look it up, it's not like there'll be gaps. Like I'm sure he works consistently and I'm sure there's some weird TV and stuff.

54:53David Sims:Yeah, I was going to say, there is some weird TV in there.

54:55Griffin Newman:And like, forgive me for forgetting about Empire of Light, you know, which was only a couple years ago. And like, you know, he does a lot of British shit that barely makes it over here. Like movies called like Mothering Sunday or, you know, where you're kind of like, well, I assume that was fine.

55:12David Sims:It's a real title just so people know. That's not a thing that David made up.

55:15Griffin Newman:Like lovely jubblies. But I feel like we've not been, you know, using our firth well enough of late.

55:23David Sims:It's a great take. I mean, just looking here, it's like, God, yeah. I mean, like King's been two. he is, you know, kind of the lead. But then you're like, he's in five movies in 2018. The Happy Prince,

55:39Griffin Newman:in which he played Oscar Wilde's friend. That's Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde. The Mercy. The Mercy, where he's on a boat. Mm-hmm. That was directed by James Marsh, who did Theory of Everything. Mommy, here we go again. Obviously, you know, something wrong with that. Smaller part. Have you guys seen Rylane? Yeah, Rylane's fine. Yeah, Rylane's good. He has a cameo in Ryleen as a tortilla chef at a Mexican restaurant called Love Guachali.

56:06David Sims:They credit him as burrito maker.

56:10Griffin Newman:Yes. It's very funny. That movie's really cute. If you want to see a picture of him in it, I will show you.

56:16David Sims:But like Mary Poppins Returns, he's the villain. That's kind of thankless. 1917 is like an extended cameo.

56:21Griffin Newman:I mean, this is kind of a better version of his Mary Poppins thing. Yeah. Of kind of like, can you just come in and kind of go like, well, I don't know about that. It's just very specifically. It's the amount of gray in his hair. Operation Mincemeat was good fun. Yeah. That one's good fun. But is he hot in it? Oh, no, no, no. I was just saying. This is what I'm talking about. I mean, he's not on hot. He looks lovely. But I'm just saying. Is he hot? The turtleneck, the beautiful lines of his shoulder. I think it's fair. The grooming.

56:51David Sims:No, I think it's a great look. I was like, hmm. The last Bridget Jones, was he a ghost? Yeah, he's dead. He's dead. He gets eaten by a fucking shark. If you're not considering

57:00Griffin Newman:He fell inside a whale Do you think he's hot in Fever Pitch way back when? A movie that was very formative for me as a child I think he looks pretty doofy He's got this sort of like puffy hair He kind of looks like Dominic Sessa there But without the interesting bone structure Well yeah I was going to say be still my heart I mean Sessa We're big Sessa fans But again he's got like striking features The idea of him in Fever Pitch Was kind of like yeah he's a bit of a dork Like he needs to clean up his act You know who's next to him there in Fever Pit?

57:29David Sims:Mark Strong. Yeah, the great. From the way back. If you discount what are basically cameos, Ryle Lane, he's credited for Barbie where they reuse footage. There's a documentary he narrated and Bridget Jones. He doesn't make a movie in between Empire of Light and Disclosure Day. What he does do in that time... He made some TV shows. The Staircase I Forgot About, the Antonio Campos. It was pretty fun. I liked it. I thought he was good in it. Never watched it. Obsessed with the documentary. He did something called Lockerbie, A Search for Truth. So that was a British thing.

57:55Griffin Newman:You know, Lockerbie is a very famous British, you know, a plane was blown up over Scotland. Okay. Over the town of Lockerbie.

58:02David Sims:And then this is really important. It's a big deal. He, of course, plays Mycroft's employer, Sir Bucaphalus Hodge.

58:12Griffin Newman:Bocephalus, I believe.

58:13David Sims:Bocephalus Hodge in Young Sherlock, a Guy Ritchie Amazon Prime original series that has no connection to the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes franchise. Guy Ritchie has two different Sherlock Holmes.

58:26Griffin Newman:Yes, in which there's boxing in both, I think. And Hero finds Tiffin played young Sherlock. I thought you were going to say that he shows up in Watson.

58:38David Sims:No, Watson, unfortunately.

58:40Griffin Newman:Watson! He plays his boss. Yeah, Watson's been canceled.

58:43David Sims:It's been axed. But now young Sherlock is here to pick up the gauntlet. And now fucking Doctor Who's been axed.

58:49Griffin Newman:Like, I'm like... Has it? Britain's got it. Yeah, they finally... I thought they just were like, oh, we're just not bringing back and shooty got one. We're going to start over. it's back to the starting board it's back to even right the last episode ended with him turning into Billy Piper and then when everyone asked like oh so what's the plan there? they're like yeah we don't know we just kind of filmed that and figured out we'd figure that out later next year just a Christmas special and they're like maybe it's possible

59:15David Sims:and Russell T. Davies was supposed to stay on for many more years

59:18Griffin Newman:100 % and the fan backlash to that moment was so intense they also clearly just didn't have anything And then, of course, right, the lack of a plan was so apparent. And finally, BBC was just like, I think we're going to just blank slate this. Like, Doctor Who's sort of out to pasture right now. And if someone's got a pitch, let us know.

59:38David Sims:Can we talk about the most important thing here? Yeah. Are we going to get back to Disclosure Day? Is this Emily Blunt's best performance ever? Oh, ooh. Ever. Ever. Possible. It's conversation. She's very good in the film.

59:48Griffin Newman:Yeah. She's phenomenal. I would I immediately was like okay this is Edge of Tomorrow level it's I mean that's the conversation for me it's like Edge of Tomorrow I haven't seen My Summer of Love that's the other one those are the three which apparently she's quite amazing in but I haven't seen it so I don't know

1:00:04David Sims:and she's obviously like unbelievably good in Devil Wears Prada but I'm giving those other three movies the advantage because she has more screen time she

1:00:12Griffin Newman:for me it's all about pain hustlers no I don't know she totally blew me away like she's really really incredible in the movie A little bit of a we take her for granted moment. It is. I have to address the elephant in the room, which is she's one of those actors who comes up a lot when you're talking about how...

1:00:31David Sims:Everyone looks like a member of the Duracell family now. Lots of cosmetic procedures have made actors, specifically actresses...

1:00:42Griffin Newman:Struggle to emote because they don't have... They are less expressive. Right. Although more and more leading men these days. That's why I was like, you know what? It's having a gosling. I got fucking Rosie O'Donnell when she was like, everyone wants to see my facelift. I'm like, yeah, they have a good facelift.

1:00:58David Sims:You look incredible. I haven't seen her. She's looking good. She looks great. Congrats to Rosie. But I think, one, it works for the character. I agree. That she is a... A meteorologist.

1:01:11Griffin Newman:She's someone on television. When I saw the trailer... It really fits the kind of local news famous... There is something so affecting about having someone who looks kind of plasticky end up being the most empathetic connector.

1:01:29David Sims:And that you see her face ultimately, her emotions transferred to her muscles, break through all of the work she's had done. There's a scene in this movie that took my breath away, And that is after a pretty crazy action set piece where they are in a car, where Emily Blunt and Joshua Conner are in a car chase. And then the car ends up hitting the side of a train and then they get pulled along in the train. And then another train is coming in the opposite direction and they have to like get, they have to survive. And they end up like climbing inside a train car at the last minute. And it is a train car full of like pianos being delivered.

1:02:11Yes, yes. and she has a panic attack.

1:02:15David Sims:It's really good. Which... It was crazy to see a character have a really understandable human reaction to surviving an action set piece. You never get that. And as she's as Josh O 'Connor is like helping her breathe and she's like, I can't feel my hands. I can't feel my hands. He's rubbing her hands against piano wires. I was like, I was like on the edge of my seat. Like when I'm like, I've had panic attacks many times. And I'm like, this is the most accurate. It's a really hard thing to perform and not look hammy as hell. It's hard to not make it just feel like a ton of fucking business.

1:02:59Griffin Newman:But what I also liked about that scene before, it's just like the first minute of it, you're like, okay, what's happening now? Like you had that thought like, well, she's got magic power. Like what is something happening to her alien abilities? And then you sort of start to settle down with Josh. as the viewer. And you're kind of like, no, no, right. She's just having a human reaction, right, as Marie said.

1:03:19David Sims:It also helps that the guy he hired to play the mathematician is naturally one of the most empathetic actors alive. He's like the most sensitive bedside manner guy.

1:03:29Griffin Newman:He's doing that Spielberg thing of like, he's the co-lead, but he's very much like, I am very happily the second lead, kind of the off-ball, like, you know, right, the emotional support character. Because it starts with him and the action invested in him. He stole the data. He's on the run. He's the snowman. Oh, he's the hero. And then as Emily Blunt's story unfolds, you're like, oh, she's kind of right. He's the alpha here. Should we start to talk about the plot?

1:03:56David Sims:Yeah, so an AEW wrestler kicks in the camera. We see Josh O 'Connor's at a match. He's with a backpack. He's trying to negotiate a handoff, but he's surrounded by government agents. Colin Firth does show up here or is it all his underlings? Colin Firth shows up in the back alley. Eve Hewson, who, if you don't know, is Bono's daughter.

1:04:18Griffin Newman:She sure is. Oh, okay. I told you, Ben, but you didn't listen. Whenever I talk about you two, this is what you hear.

1:04:26David Sims:You know what's funny? You know what's funny, Ben, is she actually she's biologically Bono's daughter, but she wasn't conceived in the traditional sense. One day she just showed up on an iPod. That's a pretty good joke. That is a pretty good joke. I started thinking about it, and I was like, I better not trip over this wording because I'm sitting on a fucking hot hand. Suddenly I got a royal flush. I just got to slap this thing down on the table. You know, she's been acting for a while. Yeah, she's phenomenal in the nick, which was, I think, most people's first exposure to her. That's what I knew her from.

1:04:57David Sims:Bridge of Spies. She's worked with Spielberg before. She's one of the daughters being like, dad, I got a date. She's the one who's got the boyfriend. She's recently, well, she was on Bad Sisters on Apple TV. She was in Flora and Son, which is half a good - I never saw that. Everyone liked her in that. She's great in it. It's half a good movie. All the parts with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in it made me want to throw something at my screen. What, Marie? You don't want to hear me play music? I just want to share my music with you. I liked her. I wrote a song. And why don't I have a conversation about AI?

1:05:29David Sims:Why did I like her? Wow, your Joko Lev is really good.

1:05:32Griffin Newman:Yes, my one good impression. I don't really remember her in J. Kelly. She plays the woman, the actress in the flashback.

1:05:40David Sims:She's the one they fought over. yeah she's the one who left uh she's good in it she's got that one big scene oh yeah I think she's a good she's definitely like I saw the mother of the daughters right I think it's implied that she's the mother of the daughters uh or at least one of them I think I don't remember I like Jay Kelly my guy yeah he's a good movie

1:05:59Griffin Newman:JK remember who

1:06:00David Sims:that's a movie that

1:06:01Griffin Newman:bring him back what if this is like Jay Kelly 2 it's on the schedule

1:06:04David Sims:it's not a perfect film but I think that film's a lot uh darker and meaner than people think it is

1:06:09Griffin Newman:100 % the movie ends with him crying saying fucked up. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Okay, so back to the disclosure. Eve Hewson plays Jane, the girlfriend of Daniel, played by Josh O 'Connor. And she has been held hostage to use as a bargaining chip. Yes, because he's stolen some stuff. He's got an alien stick. Right, he's stolen the function data and an alien stick. We don't know what any, at this point in the movie, we don't know what the hell's going on. We just know that he's got a stick and you can't touch it with bare hands.

1:06:41David Sims:He's got to use a glove. They all go, you don't know how to operate that thing. Right. And he tries to do this handoff and get her back to safety. And she basically is like, I just had to fucking survive being kidnapped because of you. I'm not leaving your fucking side. It is such a great Spielberg kind of setup to be like, here's a relationship that's at a bit of a crux point of is this about to get really serious or not? And now they're being tested in like a world altering event. and they're trying to use this event to establish better lines of communication, right? Like it's basically a young couple being like, are we really going to make this work or not?

1:07:18They also, you realize that they don't really know anything about each other. Totally. So she did not know that he was, she doesn't know why any of this is happening. She also didn't know that he was previously in jail.

1:07:30David Sims:Didn't know that, she knew he had a mysterious government job. He didn't know that she was a novitiate. So she had spent the time to potentially become a nun.

1:07:40Griffin Newman:What would you think if you're dating someone and they dropped that info? Like, I actually was almost nun. I almost went nun. Honestly, I think it's kind of hot. Yeah.

1:07:50David Sims:I think it depends on, like, what's your relationship to all of that today? It's all true. Would be my first question. But I think, you know, it's like, oh, most people who I know, like, are no, the whole, like, oh, I lost the calling thing. I'm like, nah, you wanted to have sex. and she says we've had sex it's a brutal they're never going to overcome that in the marketing right the vow of chastity thing it's just a horrible sell

1:08:17Griffin Newman:sure well I mean but like I really liked when Regina Hall yes Regina Hall was on Amy Poehler's podcast and she talked about how she almost became a nun Regina Hall almost became a nun I really recommend it it's really funny and she talks about how like a lot of convents, not every convent, but a lot of convents, they guard against the like, we're not your backup. So if you're like 38, they sniff you out of like, hey, just because you're not happy with like, however things have gone, you don't get to just like be a nun now. Like, you know, just kind of be like, well, I want to just live with you guys.

1:08:53Griffin Newman:And who cares about dating or like, you know, having a job or whatever.

1:08:57David Sims:It's kind of like a saving Silverman situation. If that helps translate it, you know, where the nuns can kind of sniff out. Oh, you're not, You're avoiding something.

1:09:05Griffin Newman:And then at one point, Regina's like, and some of them, like if you've had more than three sexual partners, which I don't know about you, Amy, but Amy's like, oh, I've, you know, and it's very funny.

1:09:14David Sims:There's that moment where Amy Poehler goes, what was it like working with Leonardo DiCaprio? And she like scratches her eyelid and she goes, the problem is he's just very green. Yeah, yeah, I did see that clip. He doesn't have a lot of experience. Speaking of Regina Hall and Leonardo DiCaprio, I was thinking about one battle after another a lot during this movie. The on the run nature. The on-the-run nature, the alien sticks kind of look like the music devices. There's a lot of... They hide out with nuns. There's a lot of, like, dodge, like, car chases. This is true. And so I was like, oh, okay.

1:09:49It's cool. I know why Spielberg liked One Battle so much.

1:09:52David Sims:This movie has, like, four or five kind of classical set pieces that are, like, beautifully Spielberg staged.

1:09:58Griffin Newman:Yeah, it's got some proper, you know, right, like, blockbuster stuff.

1:10:01David Sims:But they're not super long in a way where we've gotten so used to a creep of if a sequence starts. It's got to be like 20 minutes. 20. Yeah. Truly. And I kept thinking like, I know your big takeaway, David, was like, it's so tender. I was surprised by how tender it was. I think was the word you used. Tender. Tender-ass movie. And I was just like, it's really like classical. It feels like really kind of like simple and focused in its own weird way down to like, oh they're trying to like cross this train comes it's clipping them the train is being the car is being dragged by the train and you're like this is fun is it going to be 15 minutes and you're like no it's four it's pretty brief and it's yeah

1:10:41Griffin Newman:they handle it in a way that regular people at their absolute adrenaline limit might be able to handle it and then they're really freaked out after there's a sequence they're not like oh that was crazy anyway you know like

1:10:53David Sims:a car turns invisible and you're seeing the effects of water and stuff I really like that. I like that too. It's so 50s. Oh, so is he going to do 15 minutes of invisible car chase now? And you're like, no, three. Try Another Day did. Try Another Day handled that. It's so funny to the physical comedy of it where they keep running into the invisible stuff. I really enjoyed that. It's very goofy. The guy falling into the window. Oh, I loved it. But that's Spielberg tonal management.

1:11:18Griffin Newman:Can I tell you? Please. Just derailing the pod here, but I just want to tell you. The four winners of this year's honorary Oscars. Oh. Were they just announced? Just announced. Okay. Did Harrison Ford get it? No.

1:11:31David Sims:Can you give us the categories of profession? First. Okay. She just guessed one of them. Wow. They're finally giving Glenn the award. It's a little rude to Glenn. It's actually a little rude to Glenn.

1:11:40Griffin Newman:Glenn didn't show up in November. It's maybe the meanest thing anyone has ever done to her. She's not going to win a competitive Oscar, or she will in the classic, like, well, now that we gave you an honorary,

1:11:50David Sims:the Paul Newman. I threw out to Marie, is there any chance that there's a stealth candidate in Sunrise on the Reaping? Yeah, and I was like, I don't think she's probably in it enough.

1:11:59Griffin Newman:And my whole thing is like, she was really good in the fucking Wake Up Dead Man. And, you know, they didn't even try. Because it's kind of like, all right, so Glenn Close is one. Another is a producing team. Is it Kennedy and Marshall? No, you probably won't. Indie producers. Legendary indie producers. Christine Vashon. There you go. Oh, and Pam Koppler. Oh, that's awesome. Oh, that makes me so happy. Another is a very, very esteemed workaholic director who's still working even though he's old and he's a bit of a grump and he has no competitive Oscar. Similar to Glenn Close. But a lot of nominations.

1:12:35Griffin Newman:I can't believe he doesn't have an Oscar. Ridley Scott. Ridley Scott. There we go. And I'm sure his speech will be sunshiny.

1:12:41David Sims:Well, the problem is they're going to have Grover present the award to him and get his order wrong. David's doing the face. The fourth, I think, might excite you, Griffin Newman,

1:12:51Griffin Newman:because it's an animator. It's an animator. An animator. He makes the cartoons.

1:12:58David Sims:Feature films?

1:12:59Griffin Newman:Don Bluth.

1:13:00David Sims:No. Don Bluth. What medium of animation is his partner? He worked at Disney for very many years,

1:13:05Griffin Newman:and he's worked at Hanna-Barbera. Is it Glen Keane? Pixar. Nope. He's also a pioneer in his field, an African-American animator.

1:13:15David Sims:Oh, it's Floyd Norman? Floyd Norman. A legend. 90 years old. A legend. Worked on Toy Story 2. Yes, but also worked on like... You know, Sleeping Beauty or whatever. He's a bit of a Forrest Gump in animation. That's a very cool one. That's a very cool one. It's a good four. Yeah. Or five. Marie just had a really funny reaction, which is I pulled the name Floyd Norman and she looked stunned that I could know a name of someone that obscure. And then I saw her face settle into like, if he doesn't know that, then who is he? Yeah, kind of. That was the arc. You were like, how did you pull that? Well, right.

1:13:45David Sims:You're fucking you. That's the shit in your brain. Floyd Norman, that's awesome. But now I'm also really excited to learn about this guy. Yeah, he's a really cool guy. I think he's written a book. He might have been the first African-American animator at Disney. He worked on Sleep. He was a cleanup artist on Sleeping Beauty. He's been everywhere. But also like Alvin and the Chipmunks in the 80s and Robot Chicken. That's so fucking cool. Yeah, it was like when Pixar got big enough that they needed to hire more animators. It was such a big deal that it's like we can get Floyd Norman. And I think he worked on like two or three at that point in time.

1:14:18David Sims:Disclosure day. Disclosure day. Okay, so this trade-off happens. and Eve escape. And then we got to talk about our introduction to Emily Blunt. That's where it's kind of taken us. So they escape and they hide out in a convent. We now jump over to meeting Emily Blunt. So her and her boyfriend, played by Wyatt Russell. David's boyfriend.

1:14:39Griffin Newman:Wait, I see my, I mean, I do love the guy. You love him. Yeah, he's great. He's great. They're hanging out in their cool loft in Kansas City, Missouri. Yeah. And she is...

1:14:49David Sims:I'd be a Royal season ticket holder.

1:14:51Griffin Newman:It'd be fun.

1:14:52David Sims:That sounds like it would make the movie a lot more interesting. I'm going to say... If you were this character and you had season tickets... Has anyone here ever been to Kansas City? No, never been to Kansas.

1:15:00Griffin Newman:Nor have I been to Kansas City of Missouri. My aunt Dawn and Uncle Ken moved out there for a bit and I went to visit them as a child. A lot of fun art museums and stuff for kids there. Kind of like an underrated art city. I'd like to go. I want to go to Kauffman Stadium before it closes. I want to get some of that BBQ. I think they got a big old zoo and aquarium. I think they got some cool stuff. That's right, because they have their own BBQ. Which is a rub based, less saucy based.

1:15:28David Sims:Friend of the show, Past and Future Guest Heidi Gardner from there. And she has a house there. But invests a lot into the community and has a lot of cool projects in particular coming up. Shout out to Kansas. Why didn't you ask him? He's the barbecue guy. Right. How did you not pick that up? What's your school? What's my school? Low and slow.

1:16:00David Sims:David, quick question and be honest. I solemnly swear, I will tell the truth and nothing but it. Thank you. When did you last actually think about how much fiber you're eating? I can't say I think about it enough.

1:16:14Griffin Newman:Actually think about it. I don't know. Not recently enough.

1:16:17David Sims:I'm not talking protein. I'm not talking calories. Fiber. Fiber. It's important. Fiber. In the U.S., fewer than one in 10 adults hit their daily recommended intake, and fiber isn't a bonus nutrient. It's foundational. Fullness, gut health, something that certainly affects me, energy, blood sugar, it touches all of it. And as someone who struggles with, let's say, I do too. Digestion issues. Sometimes I try to be mindful of fiber, and that's where Huel comes in. Sponsor of the podcast, H-U-E-L. Huel! Huel! Huel. Huelhauser. Here's what Huel actually is. It's not Huel Hauser, who was himself California Gold.

1:16:54David Sims:Huel is nutritionally complete food. One bottle or one scoop gives you everything a real meal is supposed to give you. Protein, fiber, carbs, 27 essential vitamins and minerals. This is like the cast of Ocean's Eleven in terms of how star-studded it is in the digestive world. It's designed by nutritionists to be a full meal, not a protein shake. You have fuel instead of food when you don't have time for a healthy meal. As someone who's not good at scheduling and structuring his life, I will admit they sent over a big box, the chocolate peanut butter flavored. And I have a couple of times realized, oh, I forgot to eat a meal.

1:17:29David Sims:Grab a bottle of this out of the fridge. It hits just right. Some days I'm locked in. I go to the gym. I meal prep. For me, those days are called never. It literally never happens. Other days, and I call these days every day, I look up and realize it's 2 p.m. and I've had coffee and nothing healthy. That actually is a little bit too accurate. Puel is the first thing that's actually helped me stay consistent instead of falling off every time my schedule blows up in the way I just said. The ready to drink I grab on the way out the door, 35 grams of protein, 7 grams of fiber, 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, under five bucks, and Don Cheadle uncredited.

1:18:07David Sims:Cheaper than a latte, and it fills me up so I'm not back in the fridge five minutes later. And David, the powder, the powder is also super easy. It's 40 grams of protein, same complete nutrition. You shake it with water and it's a meal ready in under a minute. I wish there was some kind of limited time offer. I wish there was an offer with a ticking clock. Yes. Wait a second. You can get Huel today with our exclusive offer of 15 % off online with the code CHECK at Huel.com slash CHECK. That's H-U-E-L dot com slash C-H-E-C-K. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show.

1:19:02David?

1:19:03David Sims:Yes? My name is Griffin Eamon and I love movies. What? That's not what you say. You say? Oh, my name is David Sims and I love movies. Blanket? Blanket! If you love movies like us, you should be listening to the Eye of the Duck podcast named after the Eye of the Duck scene. Do you know about this? Isn't it David Lynch? He said every movie has a scene that defines the whole, the way the Eye of the Duck represents the duck. Every time we do an ad read for our friends at Eye of the Duck. You try to remember this anecdote. I do. But on each episode of their podcast, they explain the anecdote well. and host Dom Nero and Adam Vulrich, friends of the show, friends of my life, explore a movie by finding its most essential scene.

1:19:44David Sims:And right now, Dom and Adam are celebrating the films of Studio Ghibli. You ever hear of them, David? I love those movies. And obviously we've covered some of them on our show, but not all. Not all. And in fact, I will be going on their show soon to cover a film that was not covered in our series that I have never seen before. I'll be watching Pompoco for the first time. Yes. one of the most testicle-driven animated films ever made? Is that, what do you say? It's got a lot of balls in it. It's got balls in it, right?

1:20:12Griffin Newman:We will, I guess maybe one day we'll cover Takahata, but who knows? So it'll be very exciting to listen to that.

1:20:18David Sims:This is their first series devoted completely to animation. I love that. And the work of a single studio. So join them as they enter the studio of dreams and madness. They're going long on masterpieces like Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies, and do you want to take this one? Yoshifu Mikondo's Whisper of the Heart

1:20:37Griffin Newman:which we covered way back when. We did. Great movie. Country Roads Take Me Home etc. This series beginning with the 1984 classic Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind continues all the way through Miyazaki's final question mark film. The boy and the heron. Who knows? Maybe he'll make another one. And for listeners who want to go even deeper Adam and Dom are expanding on that lineup over on Patreon Eye of the Duck after hours five bucks a month you can get exclusive coverage appreciably works like Lupin III, The Castle of Cagliostro, hidden gems like Hiroyuki Morita's The Cat Returns. Great movie that I've seen 100 times.

1:21:12Griffin Newman:My daughter really likes it. And Studio Pono X, Mary and the Witch's Flower. Not as good? It's a pretty interesting movie. That's from a Miyazaki acolyte, you know, from a trainee or whatever, like an apprentice. That's all you get from subscribing to After Hours. You also hear weekly analysis of industry news, thoughts on new releases and film and television recommendations for it to watch or play. Yes, even video games.

1:21:33David Sims:I've been on the show several times over the last five years. They've explored a lot of franchises that we've covered on the show. I've gone on specifically to cover some movies that we haven't in those franchises. So when they did Toy Story, I did a Lightyear episode for people who ask, why no Lightyear on Blank Check? You can listen to that. Dial of Destiny, I did with Connor Ratliff. They've also done the Alien franchise, Mission Impossible, Evil Dead, Jurassic Park. And they also will catalog movements things like 80s dark fantasy cyberpunk space films and movies about UFOs. Yes. So you can explore the scenes at the heart of your favorite movies and follow Eye of the Duck wherever you get your podcasts.

1:22:12David Sims:New episodes drop every Monday brought to you by the Morbid Network. I like saying Morbid Network in such an uplifting way. Brought to you by the Morbid Network. The Morbid Network.

1:22:35Emily Blunt. She is a meteorologist. She wants to be a serious news reporter.

1:22:41David Sims:She's trying to get that break. I like this couple. Yeah, he seems to be, Wyatt Russell seems to be like a little laid back. Slacker musician, younger dude. She witnesses a cardinal. Lands on their open window. Comes in the room. Yes. And then all of a sudden, she starts speaking in Russian. this scene rolls. It's a really cool scene. Our buddy Sean Fantasy was talking on Big Picture about the end of Oak Street coming out. Yeah, the David Robert Mitchell dino. I kind of think that looks good. I think it looks awesome. Okay, cool. And he was talking about his optimism for that movie. And he put his finger on a thing that I've felt for a long time and I've never been able to verbalize.

1:23:21David Sims:But he's like, my single favorite thing in the movies, the best feeling I can have is that sort of extended Twilight Zone thing of where is this going? Like pieces are being laid out and I don't understand how they fit together. And even if a movie sticks the landing and satisfies me with the answers, he was like, there's no feeling I like more than being in the middle of a movie like that. And this movie is so good at doing this shit. We're like, why is suddenly everyone reacting really weird to this bird? The movie gets really quiet. The John Williams score in this film is excellent. Yeah. But it barely kicks in until the second hour.

1:23:56Griffin Newman:But it is a very good score.

1:23:57David Sims:The first hour is kind of silent.

1:23:59Griffin Newman:you know after you know like his post score is so minimal right and it's sort of like and didn't he not do obviously West Side Story like he did Dial of Destiny which that score as I've said fucking rules actually rocks yeah but that wasn't for Spielberg but I'm like did he do I mean his Fableman score I just kind of remember being like lovely I think it's really lovely but not like I don't like I can't summon any themes from it or like you know not like sticking in my head and I was like I wonder if he's just kind of moved to this you know Right. Like, he does softer, quieter stuff. This requires a little more oomph.

1:24:33It felt like the jazz slash atonal sort of stuff, which I have always appreciated about him.

1:24:43David Sims:But this moment with the Cardinal landing, you could imagine a version of it in which the Williams score starts swelling already and the camera pushes in on her face of wonder. And instead, everything is just kind of slow and eerie and quiet. And then this moment of her speaking Russian goes on way longer than you'd think. They also like, okay, so to talk a little bit about the trailers for this movie, they reveal that she does the speaking in a weird alien dialect. That was the first trailer, which was otherwise pretty vague, but was built around the set piece of. That might have been the only trailer I saw.

1:25:18Did they show her speaking other languages?

1:25:20David Sims:No. Like that to me, I was like, oh, totally. Right. And, you know, that the scene of her speaking in the alien language while live on air recalls so many videos that tend to go viral now of like local newscaster has stroke.

1:25:36Griffin Newman:Yeah. That are always so strange and odd to watch. Unfortunately, right. Yes. Like we found there's an odd and it's like it's not even so much that you're watching someone suffer, but it's kind of like watch reality break. Yes. Right. Like watch everything just be normal and then not normal. You know, like, yes. I think it has to be inspired by that.

1:25:55David Sims:And I even wonder if that was the starting point for this character being a broadcaster. But the things that are so strange about those moments is not just that reality is breaking, but it's people who are so trained and polished and composed. And you see their survival instincts kicking in where they're still kind of like carrying themselves correctly, but what they're saying no longer makes sense. And so we know that moment's coming because it's in the trailer. You start speaking in Russian, which is this other thing you hear that sometimes people have these bizarre medical side effects where they wake up and they're fluent in another language or they start speaking in tongues or whatever it is.

1:26:31David Sims:And the scene's just very odd. She gets in her car to drive to work. She's running behind. A cop pulls her over. And then she does this fucking emotional reading of him. You're trying to arrest me because you got in a fight with her and she knows every specific detail. And for a second, you're like, is this this character's sort of like party trick that she's learned how to read people and she doesn't know it's her facts. A mentalist thing. Right, but she's getting close enough. She can guess, right. Yes. And instead, she is shaken by it. What just came out of me? And then she goes into her workplace and starts the broadcast.

1:27:06Well, first she starts speaking to someone in Korean. Right, right, right.

1:27:11David Sims:There's a Korean war that we're on the brink of and they have a Korean guest who's speaking as an expert and they're having trouble with the translator. And she jumps in and like clarifies everything. And everyone's like, since when do you know Korean? She's like, what are you talking about? I don't know Korean. All this is fascinating where you're like, you're watching Emily Blunt pivot so fast to do things hyper competently and then immediately have no memory of what she just did or understanding of how it came off. Well, I think it's not that she's hearing it as English. Right.

1:27:41Griffin Newman:She doesn't know she's doing anything weird. Yeah, she's not forgetting. It's similar to later when Josh O 'Connor is like, I know what she said. Everyone's like, no one knows what she said. They've been given the codex. The way that information is revealed in the movies, I think is really cool because we don't learn that Josh O 'Connor is someone who has also had an alien encounter until further in the film. We don't learn that he was able to understand her alien language on the TV broadcast until a little later. And we also, the way that they reveal that this stuff, like I think I assumed that Emily Blunt always had this power especially when she's like talking to the police officer but then to realize that it just came on I think the Cardinal activated it oh totally I mean I had really avoided any advertising for this movie I didn't watch the full trailer but I'd obviously seen the teaser a couple times

1:28:43David Sims:the full trailer also literally dropped while we were in the screening and I watched it afterwards. And I was like, there are 10 things in this trailer that I never would have put in the marketing in a way that bummed me out.

1:28:55Griffin Newman:Yeah, I mean, early stuff was vague. You're trying to get people in.

1:28:59David Sims:I get it.

1:29:00Griffin Newman:And that early trailer was heavy on the animal stuff, almost to the point of abstraction where you're just kind of like, is this movie about... I mean, I get that it's aliens or something, but is this movie about animals being in league with aliens or something? Also, it's not just the animals. It's the shot of the home that looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting. It does. Yes. And everyone's like, the fuck is this?

1:29:22David Sims:There were CGI complaints. Yeah. It makes sense in the context of the movie, the way the scene plays out. But somewhere around this, concurrently, we've set up that Colin Firth is the head of the agency. Everyone's gone into sort of crisis mode. It's called Wardex. Wardex.

1:29:37Griffin Newman:Wardex is in crisis mode because stuff's been stolen. Yes. And people who work for it are missing.

1:29:42David Sims:And in particular, Coleman Domingo, a manager.

1:29:45Griffin Newman:Coleman Domingo, who's high up, is missing, Hugo.

1:29:47David Sims:And he's a guy on a headset. He basically has the air of a stage manager. Right.

1:29:52Griffin Newman:He's literally in a warehouse and they're making something.

1:29:55David Sims:They're building a set around him and he's sort of talking to Josh O 'Connor and saying like, you know, follow the plan. It'll be okay.

1:30:01Griffin Newman:Everything's going to be okay. I love this guy. It's going to be all right. You're just going to make it happen. It's also a very fun subversion to have his character be so like warm and chill versus like, we need you here ASAP. Right. You know? You have to go. So often, man on phone is like really like, like kind of riling up the tension. And this every time he's like, it's okay.

1:30:27David Sims:This is the first place I felt the manifestation of 50 years of Steven Spielberg studying SNL. Because like Heidi is one of the people who would tell me about him coming to visit. And I'd go like, so what does he do? And she said, he just is obsessed with how the show gets made. He loves just watching it come together and the stuff you can't see unless you're in the studio during the commercial breaks, how calmly people construct a set out of nowhere, right? All these sets are like in slats that have to be rebuilt and dressed in like 90 seconds.

1:30:58Griffin Newman:No, obviously it's been much covered over the years, but the way that Estenol is made is crazy.

1:31:03David Sims:Insane. And he loves the dance of that and he loves the hyper-professionalism of that. And it certainly manifests in the final, final sequence, which we'll get to. But everything about Hugo felt very, this is like SNL AD. You know, this is floor manager. This is just watching the team just do everything very calmly and be like, it'll get done. And like at this time, Hugo and Daniel are in contact with each other. But Emily Blunt is kind of on her own. You don't know how she's connected. And then, so, Hugo and his employees get Josh and Eve to a safe house, which is like a farmhouse. And then we learn what the alien stick does.

1:31:48Griffin Newman:Sort of. I feel like the impression is it actually probably does more stuff. Yes. This is just a thing it can do. They've figured out. Yeah. But it seems to, all the alien stuff seems to kind of amount to sort of an empathic power of like, they can kind of see in your head or talk to you in your head, right? This sort of classic gray big head thing of like, maybe they're telepathic, like, right, you know? Yeah, it's psychic abilities.

1:32:11David Sims:Right, right, right. But that's what makes them more powerful than us is that they've cracked empathy. Maybe. At a time where we've become more divided.

1:32:19Griffin Newman:And like the stick is maybe like an amplifier, like a radio antenna that just kind of like zaps your brain to a thousand. Yeah, Colin Firth will hold the stick and he'll look at a photo of someone. They call it diving. And then he can kind of present in their like personal space and talk to them, but no one else can see them. So it's kind of like, I guess it's just like he's in their heads.

1:32:43David Sims:They also make it clear that Coleman Domingo was the main one who operated this, that it's like a high skill level thing.

1:32:49Griffin Newman:And Coleman Domingo probably, you sort of get the idea, is a more empathetic person. Innately. So he's probably better at it. He's innately more empathetic,

1:32:56David Sims:but also by wielding this, he has now learned more. He has absorbed their feelings. Their message has gotten through to him. And that's why he has basically become radicalized of we got to open the doors. We got to let everyone know. So they're explaining the stick, but they're also setting up with the videos of really why they're forming this resistance, which is that this company, this private company has been torturing aliens. Yes.

1:33:23Griffin Newman:And look, I think David Kep and Spielberg are smart about it. It's like, we're going to do the classic conspiracy theory. It's going to be the basics that even an audience member who doesn't care about this stuff might know. Just to sort of lay out what we kind of learned. It's like, there's definitely was like a crash. Area 51 definitely is a place where alien stuff is. That was the start.

1:33:42David Sims:Richard Nixon brought fucking Jackie Gleason there. Yeah. Richard Nixon maybe brought Jackie Gleason there to see an alien

1:33:48Griffin Newman:because he was drunk and was like, want to see an alien? That's a conspiracy theory. Yeah, totally. That Nixon would get drunk and be like, get the alien box out. I want to look at it, you know, or whatever. And that like, there's a company or a subcontractor in the DOD that has basically men in black style moved beyond governmental control by making money off of like patenting tech. Sorry. Like that's how they do it. The first thing that comes up. And so no one can even tell them what they're, you know, what to do anymore. When I googled Nixon, Jackie Gleason UFO is a clip from the Joe Rogan experience.

1:34:24Good. Yep. Good.

1:34:26David Sims:I thought Drew McGregor was very good in this movie, by the way. And no one's really used him as an actor this well since Zookeeper, maybe? Is he in that? Yeah, he is. He plays the villain. He's actually incredibly bad. It feels like he won a contest or lost a contest and was forced to be in the movie. When you look up what's called the disclosure movement,

1:34:43Griffin Newman:which is people who believe, you know, this is government covering up for aliens. I sent this to the big, you know, to the News and Deals thread. Sure. You know, this is the first guy pictured on Wikipedia.

1:34:56David Sims:And I believe Chris Ryan said, this looks like a guy who runs a boutique physical media website out of his garage. And I think I said blooddiscs.shop app. I don't know. I think he looks more like a Pawn Stars kind of guy. Right, right.

1:35:10Griffin Newman:Kind of like, I can give you 22 ,000. You know, like, yeah, that kind of guy.

1:35:14David Sims:These things aren't mutually exclusive, Marie. Guy's buying pallets of discs from Europe. And also he's doing some pawning on the side.

1:35:20Griffin Newman:And, you know, and Sean and Chris or Sean and Alex are like, oh, yeah, that guy's like the star of the documentary. Age of Disclosure. Age of Disclosure.

1:35:28David Sims:Which got very big on Amazon a year or two ago.

1:35:30Griffin Newman:He's a guy who worked at the DOD and is basically like, well, I know people who knew things. Right. Because as much, again, as I was like, well, stuff's been disclosed. It's like the big hearing that Congress had, a couple of people testified where they're like, well, someone I worked with told me that they saw an alien. You know, there was never the compelling thing. It was more just hearsay, kind of indirect testimony. Nobody sat down and was like, I worked at the Department of Defense and my job was cover up aliens. And I'm going to admit it now. And I dapped up an alien and it was chill as hell.

1:36:04Griffin Newman:And when I touched his skin, I got powers and I saw rainbows. I saw new colors.

1:36:11David Sims:And he's from Zeta Reticuli or whatever. I think another thing this movie is doing is yes.

1:36:15Griffin Newman:So I was like, yes, this movie is playing in that pool. Yes. And it's a bit of a pool where when you, Yeah, it's a Joe Rogan-y pool. It's a Joe Rogan-y pool.

1:36:22David Sims:Because Joe Rogan loves that shit. Is there too much money at stake? And then you have what feels very Spielberg-y and for some people might be a little too corny. And I bought that because I felt like they did just the right amount. The idea that all of this behavior was justified by a sense of self-preservation or defensiveness that then has sort of justified perhaps advanced interrogation techniques and such. But also there's so much money at stake that they're continuing to justify all of their reasoning. While also hiding behind this, it's for the good of the people. That's the thing.

1:36:57Griffin Newman:Right. A person is smart.

1:36:59David Sims:People are dumb, panicky animals. Can't handle it.

1:37:01Griffin Newman:Others would just kind of be like, okay.

1:37:04David Sims:I'd dap them and I'd say, thanks, God. I'd be like, oh my God, this is incredible. Life is magical. Yeah. The universe is incredible. I'm trying to think of what it would take for me to believe it. I'd either have to like.

1:37:18Griffin Newman:So this is the big question, right? Would it work on you? The disclosure? I'd have to like meet an alien face to face. Sure. Or it would have to be like a like legitimate press conference. Like Obama saying we killed Osama, but just not Trump. Someone else walking out.

1:37:36David Sims:If any of it happens during the Trump administration, then I don't believe it. Here's what it would take for me. Okay, go ahead. And then I have a thought. LGBT absolutely eating its snatch game. Like he comes out like Waylon Flowers and Madom. At the Tony's. Yeah. Just where would LGBT host the Tony's? Right.

1:37:57Griffin Newman:You know, like. I thought Pink did a great job. I didn't watch. I also, it was one of those things where one minute I was like, why is Pink hosting that? And I was like, well, you know what? She's a born entertainer. Yeah, she was well.

1:38:08David Sims:Ben and I were seeing Zodiac with a friend of the show, Leslie Hadlin. We were hooting and hollering. We were having a grand old time. Do you think we will find the Zodiac killer or, like, believable evidence of aliens? Well, it was Arthur Lee Allen, and we all know this.

1:38:28Griffin Newman:Those knives in his car were for a chicken he killed for dinner. Doesn't the DNA not match on the post? Who cares? David, what were you going to say? So, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but right, like, the end of the movie, which we'll, you know, we'll discuss things we're missing. But, you know, like, yes, they show a bunch of clips and you could kind of explain away clips. But then the movie is ending with them pointing a camera at an alien who is then looking down the lens going, listen to me, I am an alien. I think that would really, would start to move the needle a little bit.

1:39:03David Sims:There's just so much footage

1:39:04Griffin Newman:that is ultimately revealed here. But then, right, I've already debated this with some people where they're like, oh, I don't think, you know, in this age of no one believes anything in AI and Trump. And I'm like, right, But people believe that things are getting covered up. Like, why would they not believe that it's like, hey, it's true?

1:39:19David Sims:This is one of the things that Spielberg is like setting for himself as a challenge is what could you do that actually would grab everyone's attention and hold everyone together?

1:39:29Griffin Newman:Make a movie about a guy who snaps a twig to have a girl like you.

1:39:33David Sims:One wish, Willow. Is there something happening where Emily Blunt is using her like powers of empathy to then make everyone, like to connect with everyone over the airwaves. I think at that point it's getting a little metaphorical more than actual. I think it's not like she's sending the vibes through the TV. She can definitely like read the alien, you know, and kind of translate. It's just the thing where I'm like, oh, this is a moment where every, like he shows like people on the subway, on their phones, people, they've stopped walking. They are just all glued. And I'm like, I don't know. No?

1:40:08I don't know. Aliens? You don't know what? I buy it. but this is the moment. I'd be like, oh, there's someone on like a Kansas City news channel who's talking about aliens. The movie's gonna live or die on this.

1:40:19David Sims:I 100 % believe that if I was on the subway and like, I could see the moment where like someone's phone pings and another person's phone pings and then everyone in the car is like, are you seeing this? There have been moments like this and this would be the biggest one that had ever happened in the history of humanity. Definitely. By the way, it plays out down to even just the transferring of like, oh no, this is getting bumped up to the nightly news. This is no longer Emily Blunt's broadcast. She breaks the story. This woman, I think, is so fucking good who plays the newscaster at the end.

1:40:51Griffin Newman:Yeah, she is really good. The one, the newscaster, she's having to play like, I don't know what's going on. I'm processing this in real time. Would you cry? Yeah, maybe.

1:41:01David Sims:I don't know. I kind of think so. I got choked up watching this film when that happens. I got choked. I didn't get choked up during the disclosure part. I got choked up during the, uh, when they're in the house. Um, which, oh, yeah, yeah. What happens? Uh, so it's, uh, oh, wait, before we get there, we just have to acknowledge another thing, which is that, uh, Eve Hewson has been, at one point, is taken over by, uh, Colin Firth's directives to, she needs to eliminate. He's trying to jump in her brain. Yeah. And get her to. Basically kill her boyfriend, Josh O 'Connor. And she's, She's she is. This is this is why I wasn't bumping on this, is that there's the movie's a dangerous risk of getting into can faith overcome all.

1:41:52David Sims:But I think you can read it more literally that it's not that like the power of Jesus is stopping the alien technology from being used in a bad way. It's that like the way she is squeezing the cross necklace and causing like, you know, pain in her hand and actual like lacerations is like the literalization of how she applies her beliefs to be able to guide her through situations, not the inherent power of those beliefs, if that makes any sense. That was the distinction for me. And it's down to the fact that she's causing herself pain, right? That it's not a self-punishment thing as a sacrifice.

1:42:32David Sims:It's that, like, the idea of the cross doesn't really do anything. It's what you apply it to that is made manifest then. But she basically, yes, is, like, using a tremendous amount of willpower to stop Colin Firth from making her kill him. And there are a lot of cool shots with, like, reflections and a knife. And it gets into them needing to evolve their level of communication, their relationship, where she's like, I don't trust me, tie me up. I should be withheld or restrained. And I love the bit of him and they go to a random hotel and he immediately tries to find every single item in the hotel that has the name or the address because he's like her eyes are a transmission device.

1:43:16David Sims:Right. It's really cool.

1:43:18Griffin Newman:How does he eventually move something? He's holding the Stick The one wish willow The diving stick Oh no He's holding a piece of paper That he wrote down Oh right His Because he is able to He sees the clip of Emily Blunt Speaking alien language And is like Oh that's a mathematical equation He starts translating it by hand On a piece of paper From the hotel notepad

1:43:40David Sims:While he thinks she's sleeping He's holding it in his hand And he drops it And so she can see Immediately Immediately Yeah This was the thing I forgot to finish setting up. But this notion that the Colin Firth character is so completely curdled that he is so kind of like Colonel Kurtz died in his beliefs, largely in the wake of his wife's death. He lost his emotional center. This man's completely corrupted now. And the way that Coleman Domingo tries to relate to him of like, you used to actually think about things and now you're so concerned with losing your position, your money, your status, your power.

1:44:16David Sims:These people who just then, you know, the desire for security, even when you become a billionaire, just completely rots your fucking brain. And you'll do anything to make sure that no one takes a dollar from you anymore, basically.

1:44:31Griffin Newman:Yeah, and I think Spielberg's commenting, obviously, on like people who crave power and government and then will do anything to keep it working for, say, Donald Trump.

1:44:42David Sims:Sorry to say his name. You heard of this guy? If you say it too loudly, Robert De Niro is going to break into this studio. He's no good. Kool-Aid man style.

1:44:50Griffin Newman:Throwing up his middle fingers. But I also, the implication I sort of got is like, you know, maybe back in the day, Hugo and Converse Carcinoa, you know, were like, we're gonna one day figure out

1:45:04David Sims:how to finesse this out.

1:45:07Griffin Newman:And then at some point, Hugo realized like, oh no, you're never right. Your plan is to just keep making money on this shit. Yes. Keep operating in the background, but never actually let people know about it because like that you're just too scared of like losing control of strongly that this is I am correct.

1:45:24David Sims:It will destroy society if we allow them.

1:45:27Griffin Newman:But one of my favorite things is at the end when he's finally cooked. Who plays the underling? I don't know, but he was very good. OK, his name, I think, is Henry Lloyd Hughes. You know, he's just like the guy who with the gun, right? Like the guy who's kind of his his his fist. but like there's just that moment where finally when the broadcast is starting where Firth just sits in the chair and he's like fine he's British too it's over yeah a lot of British cats Spielberg respects the Brit

1:45:52David Sims:where was this filmed primarily?

1:45:55Griffin Newman:New Jersey was filmed in New Jersey well shout out Huntington, New Jersey Ben also a little Atlanta a little New York City but yeah like the Cape May Seashore Line Railroad was used for the railway shout out to the Jersey Shore There you go. Did that in a little accent. You did? Janusz obviously shot it. Janusz Kaminski shot that scene in Spielberg. She did. Did you know that? I did, yeah. Edited by Sarah Brother, who directed, who edited like the last bunch of Spielberg movies with Michael Kahn, but is getting the solo credit here. I mean, Michael Kahn is like 96.

1:46:36David Sims:Michael Kahn is 95 years young. He's 95 years young. John Williams is 94. Like there was something striking looking at the credits of this movie and realizing like the guys that Spielberg has been with for decades and Janusz is a little younger than Steve. Yeah, yeah. Janusz is still out there. But when he started, he found a bunch, Steve was the young guy and he found a bunch of collaborators who had 10 years experience on him. Right. And these guys are getting really, they're dancing around retirement. Right. These are sort of the final laps around for a lot of them. They get captured in the hotel or at least Daniel does.

1:47:11Jane escapes with the stick. We cut back to Margaret who has left the hospital, ditched her friggin lame ass boyfriend. We tried to sell her down the river.

1:47:23Griffin Newman:He's sort of, it's a good Spielberg character because you empathize that he's like, well, I think my girlfriend's having a mental episode.

1:47:32David Sims:It also starts and it feels like this couple's going to break up in six weeks. Yeah, definitely they're already kind of weird

1:47:37Griffin Newman:because she's like, I think we should move again. And he's like, but I want to like sell guitars in Kansas City or whatever it is he seems to do. It's unclear. But, you know, the thing we've sort of mentioned, but it's like when they're in the gas station, it's pandemonium because everyone's prepping for what seems to be maybe not the end of the world, but some kind of escalation in a foreign war, like Russia, North Korea, that might be like a nuclear exchange or something. Something crazy is happening. None of our main characters care. No. Ever. No. You know, so it's all backgrounded. And I love that it's all kind of just like, you know, North Korea, you kind of just hear this sort of vague, like, you know, yeah,

1:48:16David Sims:the situation continues to escalate. It's also, if anything, and they make it, you know, textual at one point, but there's a concern of, will anything we do even be able to cut through the noise? Right.

1:48:26Griffin Newman:There's like, there's already such a big story happening. Yeah. But so, yeah. So like when Wyatt Russell is finally kind of clearly like, I think I need to, you know, hand Emily off to the authorities. they're in a gas station where it's all popping off. Yes. So she can kind of sneak out. Calls and reports her. Right. Emily and Josh link up. Wait, do we, I'm sorry. One more. Do we like the scene where it takes him three times to run over the phone with the car? Oh, I love that. Such a loser. I love that. She's like, you didn't fuck it. The wheels didn't even get it. That was so funny. Drive forward.

1:48:57Griffin Newman:And like, I was watching it being like, I also would struggle. It's like, I don't know exactly where the wheel is when I'm sitting in the car. It's really good.

1:49:04David Sims:She's really funny. Yeah. At this point, they establish, you kind of see what the other people are seeing as they're talking to Emily Blunt. Where there's like that shot in the trailer where you see like an old woman turn into Emily Blunt when the camera passes a guy's, the back of a guy's head. And without any context, you're like, oh, is she a shapeshifter? but really that is just like the visual way to represent that every time she is connecting with someone she is they are seeing her as someone i read it as it's one of her powers much like the language thing it's like when that's what she needs to do that's what it is because you have the scene later where she gets out of custody and she does it by looking at 15 consecutive people right and to each of those people she is the the one person who a silent look from yes would make them stop in their tracks.

1:49:58I thought that sequence was insane.

1:49:59David Sims:I thought that sequence was incredible. That's another time when I started to like kind of tear up a bit. I was like, oh my god. I think this is going to be so beautiful. That's how she frees Josh. Yep. Yes. And then they are like, we just got to get back to Kansas. She started off leaving Kansas, but now she's got to get back to Kansas. They just find each other in the way that Hugo said of like, you'll know where to go. She'll know how to reach you. There were always two. Yeah. When they get to Hugo in his little warehouse where he is, we find out that he has been reconstructing her home from childhood and it is important that they reconstruct the circumstances.

1:50:37David Sims:Circumcision? Nope. In fact, David, I have to push back here. They do not reconstruct Steven Spielberg's circumcision. The problem is the aliens have been circumcised. And then you're like, wait, what's he worried about?

1:50:50Griffin Newman:This was his problem?

1:50:52David Sims:It's an anti-circumcision street. And he starts going on weird TikTok interviews with circumcision influencers. I must call out, who else recently reconstructed their childhood home in exacting detail to then restage the events of primal trauma? Huh, wait, who? Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg. Yes, and the Fablemans. Yes.

1:51:13Griffin Newman:I wonder if... Because I feel like this movie was entirely built post-Fablemans. Yeah, correct. If he's reckoning with what a strange emotional experience that was for him.

1:51:25David Sims:to reenact these things.

1:51:27Griffin Newman:To build these things, right? Because so much of the magic trick of the movie. And what I love also is that when Emily Blunt is confronted with her home, she's not just like, wow. She's like, all right, so it's my house. What's going on? Why is this my house? I know this is my house. She's totally overwhelmed. And yes, I am the exact age that... They say that she's 38, which Emily Blunt is not 38. How old do you think she is, though? I think she's like 43. Yeah, she's not that much older. But I am 37 and a half.

1:52:02David Sims:I'm 37 and a half as well. Marie and I are very close. We're very close. You're 40. I'm 40. And Ben's about to turn 41. But just like the way that the house looked, the TV, the stacked VHSs, and then when you got to her bedroom, I was just like, oh. I started thinking like how I would react if someone reconstructed my house. Because my home was torn down. Yeah. My parents gave up where I grew up. Yeah. So I can never go back. All my homes. Yeah. And I just, I started to think about what an overwhelming experience.

1:52:39Griffin Newman:No, totally. I know. Like I could, I always visit my house in London. I visited your house in London. I stood outside and took a picture for you. Well, it's in Dyslington, right? Yes, it's in Dyslington. And there's a little, there's a little, there's a little blue plaque outside saying, David Sims. My street does have a blue plaque on it, but not my road. It's a, I think it's Kwame and Karuna. It's a very interesting person. It says bark, bark, woof, woof, the dog lived here. Maybe one day there will be a blue plaque. Maybe. Famous podcaster, David Sims. And people go like, another new low for blue plaques.

1:53:14Griffin Newman:God, I didn't think they could get any stupider. Famous podcaster, Jesus Christ. Used to just be like Charles Dickens. Now it's fucking this guy. Co-creator of Gay E.T., David Sims?

1:53:25David Sims:And then someone's like, oh, actually, that's pretty funny. He's like, all right, all right, maybe it's funny. They didn't even land on LGBT and they're like, he caught up with it like two years later. Ben, does your dad live in the home that you grew up in? He does, yeah.

1:53:37Griffin Newman:Not only does he live in the home he grew up in, he lives in like a family home that's generations.

1:53:42David Sims:It was my great-grandmother's home. And that's where the genes were buried. That's a home built - Hollowed ground! Built by Hosley. Is your bedroom still your bedroom or has it been converted? Does it have like Ninja Turtles posters and shit? No, that all was taken down. At this point, it just functions as a guest room. What happens next? You basically, you get the chase, the train. And then they're in the house and they both are, you know, they're holding the stick and they have to like, they have to kind of go back to the moment of what we learned to be their first alien encounter. Coleman Domingo has been focused on her.

1:54:20David Sims:We're trying to find her. He knows that there was a human, a child that was abducted by an alien. What he realizes when Joshua Conner calls him and tells him that he can understand what she said on the broadcast, there were two, there were always two. Of course there were. That they were abducted together as children by a bunch of woodland critters in their Thomas Kinkade Christmas cottage. That's how they visualized it to them so that the children would not be terrified, which is why it looks so artificial. And they were imbued with these powers of communication to hopefully be able to someday...

1:54:53David Sims:Maria, are you about to cry at this idea? I don't know. I'm thinking about... I think this movie's incredible. I'm thinking about how, because they're animals, it's often brought up as kind of like a failure of humanity that we have more empathy for animals than we do for other humans. That people get more upset when they see animals being hurt in movies than they do... Like the classic Hurricane Katrina,

1:55:14Griffin Newman:people are more freaked out when they saw a dog on a roof, you know, even though they've been watching suffering. And there is something that the aliens have chosen to present themselves as like, I know just there's like a scene where you see the way the fox is looking at them.

1:55:28David Sims:I like that they stack up on top of each other. I like that they make a little kind of like, yeah.

1:55:34Griffin Newman:I mean, I was interesting. The animal stuff, animal stuff never really works on me, which probably means I'm a monster. Although, I mean, like I can find an animal cute and not want to see an animal be in peril. But like, for me, I was much more just like the kid stuff gets me of just like the idea of a kid not knowing what's happening and all that, you know, like now that just like freaks me out so much.

1:55:55David Sims:You're right, Murray, that there's the thing of like, if they presented to us as aliens, would we be terrified? And they presented as humans, would we be distrusting? Only by presenting as a magical deer, cardinal and raccoon who all stack up on top of each other and are good friends. the big three, dear raccoon, of course, would we feel safe and comfortable enough? Yeah, I want to share because I've said on this podcast many times that I am jealous of people who've been abducted by aliens. Yes, you have said that. And that is something that I've always wanted. Friend of the show, Chris Berube.

1:56:29The great Chris Berube. Producer and sometimes host of 99 % Invisible, great podcast. A person who is so nice he makes you feel like an asshole.

1:56:37David Sims:I was about to say the friendliest man in the world. There's no more genuine friendly person than Chris Berube. Was he abducted by an alien? Probably. No, but I was talking to him about this movie and my relationship with aliens. And he did challenge me where he said, wouldn't that be really scary? I was like, huh. Obviously.

1:56:56Griffin Newman:Maybe. You are more talking about like kind of, again, like I feel like we're all nostalgic for the 90s aesthetic around alien abductions, which... bright light. Right. Which also bled a little bit into, and I'm not going to call you out here, Ben, but drug subcultures, right? Of kind of like t-shirts where there's a gray alien and maybe he has a joint and he's got his fingers up and he's coming in peace. The fifth lead of this movie is that guy. There's also like the SNL skit, the Alien Encounter skit, where it's like three of them had had, like, I was bathed in a warm light and I felt held and cared for and it was magical.

1:57:39And then you have Cape Kid being like, actually, they stuck stuff up my butt. I was Donald Duck in it. Like, I guess in my mind, I'm like, I'm going to show them Sega Genesis. And we're going to have a blast. They'd love it. ToeJam & Earl. They'd love ToeJam & Earl. Yeah, dude.

1:57:57David Sims:They would. They would. Those are their kind of guys.

1:58:07So good, so good, so good. New markdowns up to 70 % off are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Stock up and stay big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories, and more must-haves for summer. Join the Nordiclub to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.

1:58:38Okay, yeah, disclosure day. Little kids getting abducted by aliens. Yes, that seems very effective.

1:58:45David Sims:It's very effective. They remember everything. They remember everything. Colin Firth is still trying to fucking fuck with their shit. They have to, like, make themselves invisible, which is another thing you can do with the alien stick. Invisible car. And we discussed that sequence, that that was really fun. Yeah, invisible house. Bunch of guys get bonked. Good. A lot of guys get bonked. I do want to say, and this is like, if we're talking about like empathy in cinema, one of the guys that plays one of Hugo's assistants, I think his name is like Brandon Wilson. The entire movie, every time they showed him, I was like, I know this guy from somewhere, but I don't think that he's an actor.

1:59:24I think he's someone that I know who like happens to be in a movie. Like I just felt like I had some sort of different connection with him. This guy? No Brandon Wilson Well I don't know who Brandon

1:59:34Griffin Newman:He's not showing up Maybe his name's wrong No you're right Brandon Wilson here he is He's in Nickel Boys That's the whole thing Where I thought I knew him Because that movie's so empathetic The movie placed you in his head And so the whole time Well you're placed in the other guy's head For most of the movie And that guy's your friend And then only after the movie When I looked it up And I was like Oh it's the guy from Nickel Boys I was like guys That's a crazy reaction Thank you for solving this That's a really good movie no shit that I have not felt the desire to rewatch because it's so emotionally demanding and all that.

2:00:09David Sims:It's such a complete experience. Just throw it on. Yeah, if you're listening to this and you've never seen Nickel Boys, you should watch Nickel Boys. Nickel Boys 40X. If we can get it back in theaters for a little 40X make it even more of an empathetic experience.

2:00:23Griffin Newman:It's so funny how interested you are in ruining movies with 40X.

2:00:27David Sims:I'm sorry. you pronounced preserving the art of theatrical movie going in a very strange way. Hoppers is now on Disney Plus and I was watching it with my my like three and a half year old nephew who loved it. It must have sucked sitting in a steel chair back uninterrupted. Well the whole time I was having like PTSD flashbacks to like being jostled around. We had a great time.

2:00:50Griffin Newman:We were hopping about. You guys saw Hoppers in a... Yeah. With the Ehrlichs. Still to this date my only 4DX experience and both Ehrlich and I were like we don't know how you do this.

2:00:59David Sims:I'm going tonight and I went last night. I'm doing two consecutive nights. What did you see last night? I took my little cousin to see He-Man, Masters of the Universe last night. And then tonight I'm going to see Scary Movie. In 40th. Are they going to smoke up that theater? Yeah, 100 % get better. And I'm going to laugh. I'm going to laugh. That's pretty funny. Thank you. One of the other people in Hugo's crew. Noah Robbins. Her name? Gabby Beans. That's a great name. Oh, yes. She's a very good actor.

2:01:32Griffin Newman:Yeah. I like her. I was just looking her up, Gabby Beans. We've also got... Because it is the classic Spielberg. He's so famous. He doesn't have to worry too much about star power thing. Hettien Park, who I really like, who plays this character a lot, plays the kind of like... Call him first, number four. Right. The person next to the boss on the phone being like, okay, get it done. Get it done, right? You know, like, but, you know, she's really good.

2:02:02David Sims:You're saying that he doesn't need to cast Major Star,

2:02:04Griffin Newman:but... Jeremy Seamus.

2:02:05David Sims:Gabby Beans, of course, was Honeydont's personal assistant. Honeydont's secretary. You don't get more famous than that. And they have, like,

2:02:12Griffin Newman:bits about coffee or whatever?

2:02:13David Sims:Yeah, they do the coffee bits. Spider.

2:02:15Griffin Newman:Her secretary. Jeremy Seamus, you know... I love him. Who's a great theater actor. I mean, he's done TV. Yeah, but great local New York actor. Incredible New York theater actor. Yeah. He's like, what is, I mean, he's in charge of the local broadcast. You know, he's like Emily Blunt's boss or whatever. He's so fucking good. I like when he doesn't want to, he's like, why am I going to get off the air right now? Right, because he has basically two scenes. And scene one is him being like, why are you late? And like, this is so stressful, you know. And then scene two is her returning and being like.

2:02:46Oh, you're talking about the manager. I thought you were talking about the guy anchor.

2:02:51Griffin Newman:Oh, well, he is funny when he's doing. Yeah. But no, no. And her returning and being like, this is what we're going to do. And he's like, I don't really get it, but okay. And you watch him snap into action. He's so good. Yeah, I agree. Don't you think? Yeah. But he's also reacting to her suggestive power. Of course, she's working on him. She's working on him. But that's okay.

2:03:08David Sims:But that's where you realize this movie is going to build to a final set piece of they just have to get on the news and they have to show everyone everything. And this is the real SNL thing because this becomes a sequence that's a tribute to live switchboard editors. Totally.

2:03:22Griffin Newman:so that's oh i found that so thrilling so cool and like look i'm someone snl for sure i love sports like it's something where sometimes in sports you'll see a behind the scenes look at that of like and here's how that play was you know called live in the in the broadcast but where you see the guys ready three three you know ready 10 10 yeah yeah like the oscars is perfect for

2:03:45David Sims:junior speech where he's in real time directing right get a camera over to her right now you know

2:03:50Griffin Newman:I want to see the mom. I want to see the, you know, like, you know, like, and then just, right. But just the whole, like, ready three, three, you know, like just the way they have some kind of internal Metro.

2:03:59David Sims:So cool. I'm going to invoke it. Uh-oh. It reminded me of Sully, where you will cut to a sequence where the hero of the sequence is a guy you met 30 seconds ago, not the lead character, you know, where it's like, suddenly who's pulling this off? People were just meeting for the first time. Our characters have taken us to this point, but this is new. You know who else pulled it off? Sully. Sully. 100. Chesley, Sully, Sully. I thought when they cut to the like NBC headquarters in New York, I thought we were going to get like a cameo from like... From Lorne? No, maybe not from Lorne. Or Domingo. Can I do my impression of Lorne at the Tony?

2:04:35David Sims:Yeah, okay. Marie, phone out. Phone out. Marie, get a picture. Okay, wait, sorry. He was sitting low, low and slow, barbecue style. Dude, when Schmig...

2:04:45Griffin Newman:You know, they announced Schmigadoon. Yeah. And for some reason he accepted. I mean, I know he's a producer, but I don't think he's the lead. No. But it just cuts to him. Radio City just like...

2:05:00Griffin Newman:It was just like fucking Lauren? Like, really? Like, I love Lauren. Like, I was fine with Lauren. Lauren's cool. It was a very anticlimactic final award. That was just one of those Tonys. I love the Tonys. Me too. But every year there's this strain to the Tonys even more of the Oscars of like, we're really trying to sell mainstream America on the things we have on offer right now, right? On like what Broadway's got for you. And some years, it rocks. Like they're like, look at all this cool shit. And you're like, yeah, this rocks. And some years it's like, Schmigadoon's the best musical. And unfortunately, we must also contractually because it was nominated, presented like a number from Titanic or whatever.

2:05:40You're a Titanic, Kate.

2:05:42Griffin Newman:So bad, dude. Have you seen it? It's the most epic bacon millennial like loser shit. Throw it in the ocean. I saw Titanic. like four years ago at the old UCB thing. That's where it belongs. That's where it must stay. Not on Broadway. What do you say? But what is Frankie Grandi

2:06:00David Sims:supposed to do? If we don't give him the space. You don't like the fact that the character is named Victor Garber? That's so funny to me. That sounds like a funny joke. It's so funny. I'm laughing. Listen to me laugh. You guys suck. No, they don't suck. I think that does sound kind of funny. I haven't seen it. Romley texted me that she was watching it the other day and said it was terrible. it's one of those things that,

2:06:20Griffin Newman:you know, it broke containment. Like it belonged, you know, on Off Off Off, you know, like Broadway. Did you know that, yeah, Lorne Michaels has two Tonys. He also produced Leopold Statt. Oh, he's got two Tonys. That's wild. So we see a montage. Yes. It's really long. Of the whole history of aliens.

2:06:38David Sims:Different. Stuff that is always. Video quality, different formats. Looms large. Yeah. And other stuff I'm not familiar with. I feel like if you're a real head, you're probably really recognizing a lot of this stuff. Joe Rogan would have a lot to say about him. Or I would prefer to shout out Tom Delanche. Oh sure, yes. Tom would have a lot to say. And I did say this before we started recording but I watched a documentary by James Fox last night to prepare for this.

2:07:09Griffin Newman:And it was called? I don't remember the fucking name of it. I'm going to have to look it up again. And what did the Fox say? And it was not... Griffin got a different joke out before I was going to say, and it was not the star of Ray and Collateral. It was not that. Go see the kingdom. James Fox. Was called The Phenomenon, but it was narrated by Peter Coyote. Oh, right. And I was like, there really is something crazy about the guy who narrates Ken Burns, like historical docs, narrating a thing about like, you know, New Mexico, Socorro, New Mexico, like alien encounters or whatever.

2:07:48David Sims:To me, it's more crazy that it's Keyman from fucking E.T. being like, this is real now. Yes. Griff said this to Marie and she went, hmm, sure. I went, yeah. But he's mostly a Ken Burns guy. I was plotted for my bravery. Is he also in Bitter Moon? I think so. He's the other guy in Bitter Moon. I believe so. Is that right? Checking. It's a long sequence. Him and Hugh. What I like is that I like that it goes into real time, basically. That the movie slows. They're not even showing you this really from the perspective of our characters. You're seeing people see it, but you're also just seeing it. And you're seeing ships, you're seeing cell phone videos, you're seeing Super 8 footage, you're seeing like bad DV camera footage, you're seeing everything.

2:08:28David Sims:You're seeing the aliens, you're seeing the torture. And then they start to wheel in to the television studio. An old alien in a wheelchair. And I did kind of grab Reese, the king of TikTok, and go like, is he gonna fucking do it? This is, so when I said the ending didn't really work for me. I just had trouble buying all of it. That people are affected by it? That it would work. That it would go over. There's like a moment where like someone at NBC News is like, I put the footage through our AI filter and they confirmed it's 99 % not AI or whatever. And I'm like, okay, like that. You think people wouldn't believe it because of AI?

2:09:07I needed a little more skepticism.

2:09:11Griffin Newman:I mean, but the whole movie is built to this idea happen. We have to just think about the ensuing minutes and hours. You know what I mean? It's not like that all flashes and they're like, anyway, that was your one look at it. It's like, this is just the start of all of this is now just out. I think I have this problem generally with alien or monster movies that anytime I see it,

2:09:38David Sims:it's the thing, then it is like,

2:09:42Griffin Newman:it feels fake. It gets deflated for me. Is it Night of the Demon? Oh, sure. The classic old movie where they show the demon and you're like, ah, fuck, you didn't have enough money for the demon. There's some great movie where it's like the atmosphere is so good. This movie is incredible. And they're like, and now behold the demon. And I'm just like, oh, it looks okay. Something like Under the Skin really works for me because we spend most of the time aliens like a human but acting weird and I'm like yeah Man Who Fell to Earth like those sorts of things work better I mean I'm looking at it now it looks pretty fucking good I don't know yeah that looks awesome I don't know it looks awesome pretty good demon yeah I think that Steve knocked it out of the park with this alien design I think it looks great yeah I love the design and I like the ships I like the weird

2:10:27David Sims:kind of X ships yeah yeah yeah the ships are really cool

2:10:32Griffin Newman:yeah hell yeah you get a little glimpses up I love this

2:10:34David Sims:but we walked out and like half of our friends were like he really went full Spielberg at the end huh and I'm like he went full Spielberg at the end. It's truly like, yeah.

2:10:43Griffin Newman:My review is Spielberg plays the movie because the end of the movie is everyone watching. And it's just every single face, mouth ajar, kind of, right, you know, just, yeah. There is a line that I really liked from the movie. Elizabeth Marvel says when she's talking to Eve Hewson about how she lost her calling or whatever. And she tells her, like, you didn't lose faith in God, you lost faith in humanity. and that is what caused you to turn away from your faith and believing in something. I think I unfortunately am just so cynical right now about other people that I...

2:11:23David Sims:I don't disagree with that, but this movie successfully made me buy in the world, the reality of the film that it would work. I don't believe it would work in life and I don't feel good about anything. But I did buy it within the context of the movie. I think once we got to, like, once I actually saw, like, NBC News. And then I was like, okay, now, like, that's when it started to feel a little more. Well, their programming is totally lost. I mean, they wouldn't know what to do with this. So what do you think happens? People are just like, eh, whatever. We don't know. And then they just go back into film Twitter and just are posting.

2:11:58Well, I mean, film Twitter's pretty good.

2:12:00Griffin Newman:Let them post through it. You know, like, what if there's a GIF? Okay. What if? I am having I don't know if I believe that a broadcast in Kansas City would get picked up right away you gotta roll with this a little bit you just gotta roll with this a little bit

2:12:17David Sims:I think it would these things would move fast they really would especially in an internet age where people can communicate with each other this much I can see it showing up on the internet before it gets but I think about I mean you invoked it but I think about shit like the night that they fucking got Bin Laden

2:12:34Griffin Newman:which is one of the last times that I was like, I think I have to turn the news on. Yes, I'm hearing. And that will happen again when something crazy happens. Yeah. Which we won't say because we don't want anyone coming after us to investigate us. When it happens. When it happens.

2:12:49David Sims:Yes, when it happens.

2:12:51Griffin Newman:Okay, well, the box office game.

2:12:53David Sims:Disclosure day. I would guess right now that it's going to open to 40, which feels like in the middle of where the projections are. But I really have no idea, and I don't know how it's going to play. I've had friends for the last couple of weeks because we got to see this early. And thank you to the kind folks at Universal for helping us with podcast scheduling. But people have asked me what I think about it. And then it's followed by, do you think it's going to work? Is it going to work as an Oscar movie? Is it going to work as a box office movie? And I went, I don't know. It's really classical.

2:13:18David Sims:It's really old fashioned. It's classic Steve, but it doesn't feel in conversation with this moment in a way that maybe is what people want because this feels like a moment of everyone rejecting the traditional blockbuster model the last 20 years. Now, they're mostly rejecting it for 20-somethings with One Wish Willows in back rooms. And this is literally the elder statesman. I was so excited when Spielberg was on Rewatchables.

2:13:43Griffin Newman:He's like, I'm about to go see back rooms. I'm excited. It just rocks. And then he gave a red carpet interview where he shouted Payne Parsons and Cray Barker out. And he's like, they're young guys. And I was young. And I think it's so great. And I'm like, you know what? Good for you, Steve.

2:13:56David Sims:One of the greatest moments in the history of podcasting is on the 2001 Rewatchables where Bill Simmons... Where Simmons is like, Joyce 2's pretty good. Check it out. No, the moment for me, that's the best where he goes, but 70 millimeters back now, do you know about this? As if Steven Spielberg isn't... I think Bill's having a little fun

2:14:14Griffin Newman:when he says that. I don't know. It's a great moment either way. The part of the magic of Bill Simmons, in my opinion, though, is you're always kind of like, does he know he's doing a bit or not? Who knows? Half the time he does. Yeah. I compared... I said this movie felt like a Shyamalan movie to me, which I am a Shyamalan fan. It does feel Shyamalan. It's very Shyamalan. It's very Shyamalan. Yes. But I also think that it's going to run into the Shyamalan thing of it being so open-hearted and earnest that it's going to rub people the wrong way. Yeah. I think it's going to be divisive. Yeah. I really don't know.

2:14:45Griffin Newman:No, I think so. It's going to be quite polarizing. And then, as with almost all the movies he makes, a few years later, people are going to be like, Spielberg kind of cooked on that one, huh? I'm re-watching it. It's like, it's got a few sequences that are really hidden. It's just what's happened with all of these movies of his. Even Ready Player One, the most hated of them, I like Ready Player One. I'm a fierce defender. Has its fierce defenders. And yeah, it's just, you know, it's just what our man's doing. I rewatched The Post last night and I remember being like, eh, on it when it came out.

2:15:17The ending is still, I think, somewhat disastrous.

2:15:20Griffin Newman:I agree with that. I don't really even... Is the Supreme Court steps? No, it's like they're setting up the like Nixon extended universe and they start with like the Watergate. It's a cliffhanger

2:15:30David Sims:that he never made good on with the sequel.

2:15:32Griffin Newman:You have no idea what's going to happen. Well, what do you mean what happened? He went to see an alien with Jackie Gleason. He's picking up the thread here. But there are just some really good shots in it and I'm like, oh man, this is like... You know who's in that movie? Tracy Letts? Lettsy. Carrie Coon? Both of them.

2:15:49David Sims:I have felt even in the Spielberg movies I have loved in the last 20 years that he's had a bit of a running ending problem that he doesn't know how to leave well enough alone. That's true. He overstates things four times.

2:16:00Griffin Newman:This is a full stop ending for him. It's great. That's rare because usually he loves to nap a lot.

2:16:05David Sims:Like the disclosure is big, but then it just ends at the exact moment. And I was just like, he hasn't done that. The kind of the one time he's fully nailed the ending for me

2:16:14Griffin Newman:since Jurassic Park. One more thing with him on Rewatchables. We're like, I do truly love that he was like, I made Ready Player One because I loved to end that. Like I, because of the ending where he's like, by the way, it's closed a few days a week. Yeah, unclogged. You can go outside, please. He's like,

2:16:28David Sims:that's why I made that movie. He also was like, my kids hated me for that one. Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah. Fucking tell them. Spielbeak. So we think Obsession is going to be number two at the box office again?

2:16:39Griffin Newman:Oh, right. Yeah, I think possibly. I think Scary Movie and Masters of the Universe will likely drop quite a bit. And so I would put Obsession at two. I'd put those at like three and four. You were asking Marie. Maybe Backrooms is

2:16:51David Sims:kicking around at five. I don't think there's any other big release this week. You were asking, do you think Scary Movie is going to have a big drop? That franchise maybe traditionally has the biggest second weekend drops of any franchise ever. Yeah. My all-time favorite stat is that Scary Movie 4 made a quarter of its domestic total on its opening day. It made like 20 on Friday and then it went to like 10 to 5 and ended up at 60.

2:17:15Griffin Newman:Some other movies coming out this week. Stop That Train, which was not made with AI. Well, not! No, AI! Nope. It wasn't! Made by hand. If I keep saying this, people will believe me. And a movie that Alison Willemore told me rocks, The Furious. Yes. It's like a Hong Kong action movie. I want to check this out. So did David Erlich. I want to go see it. Gotta see that. Mandalorian and Grogu. Oh, I'm actually predicting that to quintuple its wood grows and jump back up.

2:17:43David Sims:Everyone's realizing it's good now.

2:17:46Griffin Newman:That is the next present my daughter is going to get for continuing to stay in bed. Galactic Snack and Grogu? Correct. which she's very excited to receive. Of course, what do you think? The first of the fucking bag of toys I brought back that are swag from people who give us nice toys.

2:18:01David Sims:Let's say mostly Reese, the king of TikTok. The wonderful Reese, king of TikTok. Gave you a lot of Nintendo swag and I gave you Galactic Snack and Grogu. Exactly. What was the first that you gave? Bowser Jr.? Bingo. He's an all-star. She's just like fucking Bowser Jr. He's got the paintbrush. The best guy in the world. What was your joke? You made a joke about someone else's son having a magical paintbrush.

2:18:19Griffin Newman:I can't remember.

2:18:19David Sims:I just like this as a joke structure that anyone's son has a magic paintbrush.

2:18:22Griffin Newman:It was the name Junior that activated me, but I can't remember. Yeah, so Mando and Grogu does exist. Oh, Wayne Groh Jr. was my joke. Oh, right. The Heat 2 will have Wayne Groh Jr. and he has a paintbrush.

2:18:36David Sims:We were saying that Tim Simons should read for Wayne Groh Jr. in Heat 2. Wait, that's so good. And then Sim said Wayne Groh Jr. and his magic paintbrush. He's got a magic paintbrush. Wait, but I haven't read Heat 2, so I'm very confused about the time. Don't worry.

2:18:55Griffin Newman:When you read Heat 2 you stay confused. It won't make anything more clear. It rocks to be clear. But you don't read Heat 2 and go, I definitely see how this is a movie. You're like, whoa, okay. All right. You know what? Mikey Man, I trust you. But yeah, I mean, there's nothing else big this week. So yeah, I do think it'll be mostly these holdovers. I do. I got the hard number

2:19:17David Sims:so I just want to share with this. Toy Story 5, which I do think is going to roll this summer. I do think Odyssey being R-rated kind of solidifies unless Spider-Man is way better than we're guessing. It does feel like Toy Story 5 kind of has the runway now. I mean, I

2:19:33Griffin Newman:know what you mean, but the Odyssey pre-sale stuff is completely unprecedented and insane. Like, it's just kind of insane. Also, Oppenheimer is more, ostensibly more boring and also rated R.

2:19:46David Sims:Yes. And three hours. But couldn't be Barbie, and Toy Story 5 It might make Barbie members.

2:19:51Griffin Newman:It might. The family movie thing, it's just like, people, you know, are like, yeah, it'll have legs for, you know, for years because of, you know, family movie stuff. And it's like, that can be true. But then oddly, sometimes it's not. Like, Disclosure Day is also hoping for, its second weekend is a Father's Day weekend. Oh. It's hoping for a nice hold, I think, because of that. It's a good dad movie. Because, right, it's going for dad, but obviously it will be up against Toy Story 5. I don't think Leviticus or The Death of Robin Hood are really too threatening there. Then the next week, you got Supergirl.

2:20:23Griffin Newman:And I think now with these fucking superhero movies, it seems like it's just kind of like they open okay. Supergirl's not going to get the blank check bump. So I think that's really good. That's so brutal. And I... And also, there's another thing standing in Toy Story 5's way. My most anticipated movie of the summer, Minions vs. Monsters.

2:20:41David Sims:Minions and Monsters. It's got some time before Minions swings around.

2:20:45Griffin Newman:It's got two weeks.

2:20:46David Sims:Okay.

2:20:47Griffin Newman:But beyond that, every time I see a Minions Monsters trailer.

2:20:50David Sims:I'm like, am I into the Minions now? It looks strange. I just want to read because I got the actual numbers here. Scary Movie 4 opened to 44 million and ended up at 90. It was a straight double and the first four days it opened on Easter weekend, it went from 19 to 13 to 7 to 3 on four consecutive days. That's how these movies perform. Yes. But in 4DX, smoke.

2:21:18Griffin Newman:So you saw Okay so You saw Scary Movie 4 and 4 No he's seen that tonight I thought you already saw it though No he's

2:21:26David Sims:You're going back Second time in 40X Look it's Promises made to friends You saw it for the first time With Mitchie I saw it with Mitch and Zach Carey Right And Abelicherry Yeah it was great And Micas And Micas The great Micas Yeah And what's the What's the other thing you saw in 40X Yesterday I saw He Man and I Which I've also seen twice both movies I kind of like yeah two movies you didn't write really recommend no look I'm pro movies there's stuff in He-Man I like they fixed half of the script and if they had another year I probably would fully like it as a movie I'm gonna watch it

2:22:02Griffin Newman:but I will say the initial reaction had me push it down the sort of priority list a little bit

2:22:09David Sims:especially with it not being based on things you care about at all I don't care about these things

2:22:15Griffin Newman:it's true He-Man is not one of my one of my fellas I do

2:22:18David Sims:I just I really do you care Ben? He-Man? no you never had it I'm really I'm smarting from what they did to my boy Orko they did not is he not in it at all or is it a hurting situation? they do an in-credit thing that I think is worse than if he hadn't been in it period now if there was a Thundercats then I'd be in I believe Adam I watched some Thundercats Wingard is supposed to do Thundercats really?

2:22:39Griffin Newman:the one for me is if Matt Johnson really is making a Magic the Gathering movie he's really serious about it That is the like sleeper code activated. Do you know what I did the other day? And then this has to be the end of the episode. Yeah. So I went to a baseball card store because I'm obsessed with baseball cards again. So I went to a card store. Yeah. But I'm looking for baseball cards.

2:22:56David Sims:David now just spends so much time buying toys and trading cards. I want to call out the context. I don't buy toys. For your daughter. For my wife. For her wife.

2:23:04Griffin Newman:Well, mostly I'm getting free toys for my daughter. But yeah, sure. I buy her a lot. I'm not saying you're collecting for yourself. I'm just saying suddenly. With the card, baseball cards. Love the baseball cards. I'm in the store. I'm like hey do you have this and I'm like oh no it doesn't drop series 2 of the 2026 tops you know like doesn't drop till next week and physically I'm kind of like oh that's fine I'm walking around and I see Magic the Gathering which has gone all in much like Lego back in the day on like they just do like you know Lord of the Rings cards now right like they just they just let license them out and I loved that game when I was a kid they had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Magic the Gathering cards so I bought a fucking box of them wait a second because we did a role playing game we did Years ago.

2:23:44Griffin Newman:And that was kind of a fun format. Magic is a little, because it's like a strategy game, though. It's a little less fun like to maybe record. Got it. I don't know. I don't know. I've never played. All right. Well, we get it. You're cool.

2:23:56David Sims:No, it's fine. Ben, can you do me a favor as we wrap this episode up? Yeah. Can you turn the printer on so I can print the sides for the audition I'm going to run to go do? Yes. Thank you. We have a printer here? Yeah, we do. It's right there. Oh. I mean, thank God we have some things that are useful in this office. Hey, what? An office full of useful things. So next week, we start Andrew Stanton. Yeah. That's right. The Toy Story 5 episode. A little film called Finding Nemo. We'll be coming at a delay.

2:24:22Griffin Newman:I hope we cut out the part where I basically threatened to murder you about three hours, 15 minutes in. Yeah, I also hope we cut that out. In the Finding Nemo episode? Yeah. Just because if we don't, it'll be really... More fuel for the fire of like, oh, David wants to murder Griffin Newman.

2:24:34David Sims:It's also just like, I'm not going to agree to license it out to the Netflix doc in five years. Right. Wait, no. My family. If Netflix wants it. Who murders who? My estate. Excuse me. So you're going to murder him? Yeah. Okay. That's what he claims in the Nemo episode. No. I don't say that. And look, we'll cut all of it out, but he gets like detailed. I know.

2:24:53Griffin Newman:That sounds like a Doughboys episode where Mike starts talking. Mitch starts talking. You're like, wait, Mitch, have you planned something? That's when they talk about having sex on the show. That's true. Doughboys is the best podcast in the world. Stanton's starting with Finding Nemo. A little known film. Yes. A small one by him. Yes. One of the most successful movies. With the great Rebecca Alter from Vulture. We got Becca. And then, yes, we will discuss, you know, some very successful films and also in the blink of an eye. Yes. I mean, successful, I mean, financially successful.

2:25:22David Sims:And John Carter, the definitive Hollywood bounce of the last 25 years. It's a bounce. I'm really excited to reread that New Yorker article.

2:25:30Griffin Newman:It's one of the best. And, you know, somewhere in the middle there, we will, of course, discuss Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, as previously mentioned.

2:25:37David Sims:Yes. And that series will end with Toy Story 5, which will obviously be late, but it means I'll have gotten to see it Two times. Yeah, you'll have percolated on it because we're recording it next week because he's off. I have tickets on vacation. I'm going, well, it's work. I'm seeing it a third time after we record the episode. That is the actual fact. So have you already seen it? No, we're all seeing it together. Yeah. And then I'm seeing it the night before we record. Oh, okay. And then I'm seeing it again the night after we record. So I get three in before I go to insert foreign country here.

2:26:07David Sims:Wow. The printer's running, which means everything's working and I'm going to run out of here. Thank you all for listening. please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Tune in next week for Pod C, a miniseries on the films of Andrew Stan that has to be said that way or else it doesn't make any sense. Pod C. Pod C. You can also check out our Patreon over at patreon.com slash blank check. That's so true. It's so true.

2:26:29Griffin Newman:We are currently covering, I want to say. We just recently released the Billie Eilish Hit Me Hard and Soft. I don't remember the exact title. The Concert Tour 3D. slash our trip to Wisconsin. Yeah, as well as paired with a live discussion at the Wisconsin Film Festival we did about BabeTube in the city.

2:26:52David Sims:I mean, no offense when I tell you that's what the episode is. I appreciate that, Greg. Of course. And then, yes, we're running through RoboCop. Robert Cop.

2:27:01Griffin Newman:Yes, that's right. Robert Cop. A movie with one really good one. And then some bump.

2:27:06David Sims:Yeah, it's one of the types of commentary series we do.

2:27:10Griffin Newman:Yes.

2:27:10David Sims:Failure to ever make one good follow-up. And frustration mounting. Yes. Yes. But I think they're all fun episodes. I certainly go Griff mode on several areas. So does that mean that David threatens to murder you again? No, I feel like we actually had good times on those ones.

2:27:26Griffin Newman:Generally, I think our frustrations are with the Robert Copp franchise. Yeah. On those ones. We have a mutual enemy. We start to get a little grumpy on those. The 2014 one is so bad. So bad that I just remember being really mad. You got worked up.

2:27:41David Sims:Ben got really worked up. Anyway, tune in for that. And as always...

2:28:09and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery in the Great American Novel, with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by BlankCheck Productions.