SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: Some Movies That Changed Filmmaking

26:45Yeah. No pressure. No. Well, for me, The French New Wave basically ushered in an era of what now I think most people might associate with indie filmmaking. Okay, okay. Like handheld camera work and what some people at the time considered amateurish camera work. Movies where maybe not a lot seemingly happens. You know, nothing grand happens, which was the case in Breathless. a lot of people didn't like it at the time because it was like, you know, not much happens. You know, the two leads in the movie, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Gene Seberg, weren't really like, didn't express a whole lot of deep love.

27:27And there weren't these big moments of love and affection and these huge action sequences. And it was described as flat by a lot of people. And I think a lot of indie movies do that, just kind of show life as it happens. Yeah, so without Breathless, we wouldn't have Bottle Rocket. Maybe. Wes Anderson's definitely a big French New Wave guy. Yeah. For sure.

27:51But Godard, Jean-Luc Godard, who directed it, and Truffaut and some other French New Wave forefathers were film critics at first. Oh, yeah? Yeah, and they decided as a group, we want to look at cinema in a new way and do something different. So they went and started making their own movies. That's like James Fenimore Cooper. Oh, yeah? The guy who wrote Last of the Mohicans. Oh, really? Yeah, he apparently used to complain that nobody wrote good books anymore. And so I think his wife or something said, well, why don't you do it, big shot? And he did. And the books he wrote weren't so great, but he went and wrote them.

28:29And he wrote a bunch of them, too. One of my favorite far sides ever is the Second to the Last of the Mohicans. it's just a line of Native Americans in the second to the last one they're online facing away you just sort of turn around and waving or I guess the camera at Gary Larson's hand so Breathless is notable for those reasons it kind of kicked off the French New Wave but the use of jump cut editing which we see so much now it was the first movie and it was very jarring at the time to see jump cuts in a movie and that's when you're showing like, I guess the best way to describe it is multiple shots of the same subject or thing from different angles.

29:13Right. It's like you indicate the progression of time or movement or something by just cutting quickly rather than focusing on somebody walking down the street for five minutes. Yeah. You cut a couple of times and all of a sudden they're just closer to the camera and then closer and closer and then they're past the camera. It's a jump cut. Yeah, or even something as simple as like you're going to leave the house, so you go and pick up your keys and you put on your coat. Instead of showing all that, you come out of the bedroom. Boom, you're putting on your coat. Boom, you're putting the keys in the door.

29:43Right, exactly. You're just showing the highlights of this progression of stuff that would otherwise be boring to watch the whole thing. But it also is used to create tension, too, because it's jarring, I guess, is probably why it creates tension. and Scorsese famously used it in Goodfellas. Oh, yes. At the end when Henry Hill is like trying to sell some guns. The cocaine sequence. De Niro, yeah, he's coked to the gills, right? And he's like trying to sell some guns to De Niro, but they don't fit the silencers. And like the helicopter's following him. He's got the sauce going. And all this stuff is being represented and compressed in a very short amount of time by the use of jump cuts.

30:25Yeah, very effective. And for budding filmmakers, it's a great way to hide mistakes of things you may not have gotten that you thought you got. Jump cutting is a really easy way to just sort of, yeah, to hide your errors. I did it a lot. In other words, when I was making little shorts. I realized in my head I was referencing the shot in Soul Taker. Have you ever seen that Mystery Science 3000? Uh-uh. His last name is Estevez. It's Martin Sheen's brother. He is a soul taker. He's next to this guy who's a soul taker. You just have to see this. Anyway, they're walking down the road and this jump cut has this progression of them.

31:13It's so unnecessary, but it's a great use of jump cut. You could tell the director was like, I can't wait to use a jump cut. That's what she did. She used it on. but go watch the MSC3K it's a good one did you see every single one of those episodes? no I still run across ones that I haven't seen nice hey and a shout out to Bill Corbett who I know is a listener oh yeah he is isn't he? I don't know if he's going to hear this one the great Bill Corbett soul taker next we are going to move on to Federico Fellinis Eight and a half. You ever seen this one? No, I haven't. Now I understand why it's called that, though.

31:57Yeah, it was one of the first, although not the first, movies about movie making, starring the great Marcello Mastroianni from La Dolce Vita, a muse of Fellini's over the years, too. And this one really kicked off the surrealist filmmaking and sort of saying you can play around and shoot a dream sequence where the guy's in traffic and then he leaves his car and floats up in the air and is being pulled down to the ground on the beach from a rope tied around his ankle. Just like go nuts. Yeah, and successive filmmakers did go nuts. Like Gondry did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Oh yeah, he's hugely influenced.

32:41Darren Aronofsky did some weird stuff here or there. Yeah, David Lynch and Terry Gilliam, of course. Yeah, just basically surrealism. is what I'm taking Fellini introduced into this. Yeah, for real. And besides the surrealism, that opening sequence of 8 1⁄2 where the director, he's the director in the movie, Guido is stuck in traffic. It's really claustrophobic feeling, and that's why he floats away and escapes that traffic jam. But that was directly mimicked in R.E.M.'s Everybody Hurts video. Oh, yeah. And the beginning of the movie Falling Down. Do you remember that? That started with the traffic jam that Michael Douglas just left.

33:24He doesn't float. He gets like an Uzi. I saw that again the other day, most of it. Does it hold up? It's weird. It alternately felt way ahead of its time and also very dated. Yeah. Because the stuff that Michael Douglas is doing felt way ahead of its time. but then there was I just forgot about that whole weird subplots with Robert Duvall retiring and he had this wife that was henpecking him and like this retirement party they were trying to throw I forgot about that too yeah it was just so unnecessary it felt really weird and out of place the other day when I was watching it was there like a jump cut montage where he's putting on his watch his gold retirement watch no But then, too, Barbara Hershey is in Venice at home with the daughter, and he spends a whole day coming there to grab them, basically.

34:17And the whole time she just keeps calling the cops, like, I know he's coming, I know he's coming. And I was watching the other day, I was like, freaking leave. Oh, yeah. What are you doing there? Yeah, that's a movie character thing. Yeah. You know, that's just bad writing, bad directing. When you just walk right past the ability to leave, you missed a huge step. Where were we? Falling down? I think that pretty much sums up 8.5. I think so too. Falling down. Boom. So Chuck, we got a little more left. We got more films. Is this making you want to watch films? Yeah. Me too. I feel like eating ice cream, watching a film and scratching from poison ivy lately.

34:56Yeah, and burning this office down. You know if that happens now, suspicion is going to fall on you for saying that. That's alright. We'll be right back after this.

35:14New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast. And every week, we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.

35:50Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind inside and out healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection.

36:28We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years' experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name.

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37:51All right, so we're back with our awesome jingles, which, by the way, we have to thank John Begin. John Begin. Begin the Begin. He even emailed with the pronunciation of his name. But he, the original guy who did our jingle, the first jingle ever, Rusty Mattias, or Mattias. Man, I'm not good with the pronunciation. Well, anyway, Rusty, who's band The Sheepdogs, are on tour right now. Yeah. Just because his work was so original, we contacted him and said, hey, we've got this other guy who's done, like, covers of your work. Can we use these? He's like, totally. Mash it up, brother. Yeah, and John's been making awesome, like, versions of it ever since.

38:33Yeah, they're both great and talented. Thanks to you both. And go check out, I think, what did you say they're on tour, right? Yeah, The Sheepdogs. Yeah, go check out The Sheepdogs. Yeah. And in town near you. Yeah. All right, let's finish with these two in reverse order. Okay, Toy Story was a big one. Hugely innovative. Huge. Oh, yeah. And again, it's one of those things where now almost everything about it seems pedestrian. Sure. Or what it did. Yeah, yeah. See, it's still a great movie, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. But the innovations that it undertook just seemed pedestrian. But at the time, it was totally groundbreaking.

39:10Yeah, game changer. It was the first CGI movie, all CGI movie ever. Yeah. That was enormous. Well, yeah, and I remember at the time seeing it and just being like, wow, this is the future of animated films. What's the best all CGI animated film you've ever seen visually? Well, I haven't seen a lot of them these days because Emily doesn't like those. So I probably wouldn't be the best person to ask. Holly from Stuff Mom, or Stuff You Missed in History Class. she'd probably be the one to ask for my money have you seen the adventures of tin tin oh yeah that was amazing mind blowing yeah I saw that on your recommendation and really really liked it yeah the story was great the action was great the characters were great but the CGI the computer animation is I think possibly the best ever done yeah and that's a bit of a different style than say like Up or The Incredibles It's not nearly as cartoonish.

40:09It's like the... I think it's the motion capture. Yeah. I think that's what they did for that. Oh, yeah. With Up, it would strictly be totally just animation, right? Yeah, but I mean, they're both animation. Right. But yeah, Man Tintin, that was really good. It was good. I was surprised how much I liked that. But Up was good, too, and Toy Story was good, too. But all of these things came as a result of the ground that Toy Story broke. Absolutely. In 1995, like you said, what seems like a common thing today, I mean, you don't see cell animation anymore. It's almost. I know. I kind of miss it. I totally miss it.

40:40Like the new Mickey Mouse is all weird and CG. Like stuff from our generation should have just been discontinued. Yeah. And then you just come up with all new stuff that's CGI. Strawberry Shortcake, not supposed to be CGI. It just all looks weird now. Yeah. I wish there would have, people would have done a little bit of both still. Because I think cell animation like, I think the Iron Giant came out after Toy Story, and they did sell animation. Yeah. And that was great. Yeah. Great movie. I haven't seen that. Oh, it's really good. You'd like it. It was a movie for grownups, and Toy Story sort of laid the way for that because it was one of the first movies, I guess, cartoony kids' movies, to really have a lot of dialogue that flew over kids' heads, that adults got a little nod and a wink.

41:27What, Toy Story? Yeah. Yeah. Not like dirty humor, but... It's not like Fritz the Cat. No, no, no, but a little entendre here and there that adults might appreciate that kids won't understand. Right. Those are the best jokes. Right.

41:40And now we have, you know, Best Animated Feature in the Oscars, which definitely came straight out of the original Toy Story because movies started being considered before they created its own category. Up and Toy Story 3 were actually nominated for regular Best Picture. Yeah. And I think everyone was like, ooh, we need to get them their own category because we can't have an animated movie win Best Picture, can we? Well, Up would have come after the Best Animated Picture category came out. Oh, really? So that kind of goes as a testament to just how amazing that movie is. Yeah, that's right. That it was still up for Best Picture.

42:19Oh, it was both? I don't know if it was up for, it probably was up for Best Animated as well, but it was definitely also up for Best Picture while there was an animated category. Yeah, I never considered that. Bam. That was a good movie. Yeah. It was sweet. So I got nothing else in Toy Story. Well, then what about the last one? Yeah. 2001 A Space Odyssey. Man. Quite a film. You sent this essay on Criterion. I think Criterion.com, but you know the Criterion Collection. Yeah. It was written, I guess, in 1988. Even though it says posted in 1988. It's like there wasn't an internet to post it on in 1988.

42:59Maybe it means posted it in the mail. Maybe. But I realized I can read film essays about Stanley Kubrick's work all day long. Yeah, me too. I love that documentary, Room 227. What was it? 227? 237. 246? 237? 247? You know the one about the shining conspiracy theories. Yeah, the number of the room is amazing. I can't remember, though. I read a bunch of articles. I think 237. I read a bunch of articles around the release of that documentary, which were basically like film essays on The Shining. I read this one amazing one from several years ago about Eyes Wide Shut. Oh, yeah, me too. About how it's like a masterpiece of sociology.

43:48I love that movie. Studying sociology. A lot of people hate that movie. Yeah. And then now this, like 2001. I'm sure there's tons out there to consume, But I can just read that stuff all day long because that guy was so just amazingly detailed as a director. Yeah, I agree. I can read more about his work, critical essays on his work than any other director. It's just unbelievable. It's almost like it's its own genre. It is. You know? Kubrickian. Yeah. It's got a word named after it. And well, it should. So 2001, A Space Odyssey, 1968. Blue Minds back then, blows minds today. one for its just the amazing look and the technical achievement it ate us really well I mean if you see a movie from 1968 about outer space it still looks like the future yeah you don't expect it to hold up well but it totally does so much so that a lot of the George Lucas and Ridley Scott were just like it's done we might as well give up yeah George Lucas when Star Wars came out said Star Wars is technically comparable but for my money 2001 and one is by far the better movie.

44:55Yeah, everyone was sort of intimidated, I think, by how talented Kubrick was. Well, plus also, you have to take into account that he made this movie at a time when other sci-fi movies were just pure schlock. Oh, yeah. So not only to make the movie in this way, this visually amazing and amazing with an audio soundtrack and just totally innovative, it also took that mindset. to just completely go in a different direction that everybody else has as well. Yeah, of course, I think about Ridley Scott saying that, and then he goes on to make Alien and Blade Runner after that. I mean, he held up his end.

45:34And Prometheus, man. Yeah. People don't like Prometheus. I don't care. It's a cool movie. No, I liked it too. I thought, okay, one flaw, the big flaw to me was, and I'm sure it's like part of the subtext or the context or one of the texts, but the engineer coming back to life or coming out of hibernation after however long and just immediately inflicting violence on these pea-brained humans who are showing him no threat whatsoever. Yeah. I just thought it was a little... It wasn't explained well enough, I think, for my taste. Yeah, I think I agree with you. But when I'm watching a Ridley Scott movie, I just assume if I'm missing something, he has an explanation for it I'm just not catching it I think I read some stuff about how it tied into the alien canon and realized I need to go see it again with all this knowledge that I wasn't really thinking about and maybe I'd like it more but I haven't done that yet so back to 2001 it was also notable for being bookended basically with 30 minutes of silence on both ends of the movie the first 30 minutes are and when I say silent I mean no dialogue and the last 30 minutes have no dialogue yeah the last line comes like a full 30 minutes before the end yeah and over the 146 minutes there are only 40 minutes of dialogue and the whole thing and that's why I just when people compare something like Interstellar and call it Kubrickian I just want to smash Hulk smash did you not like Interstellar?

47:15not really oh I liked it I was super let down despite McConaughey doing Wooderson in the future, I still liked it. I even liked him in it. I liked a lot of the parts of it, but to me it's anti-Kubrickian because every 10 minutes they're explaining everything that's going on all over again. That was another thing. Just like Inception. Ellen Page's entire character was written in to explain what was going on every 10 minutes. Yeah, and I felt like Interstellar was the same way. It's like Christopher Nolan needs to just trust his audience a little bit like Kubrick did and say figure it out or don't.

47:51But I'm not going to stop every 10 minutes just to explain everything. Here's what's going on, remember? If you didn't get it right, here's what's going on again. Well, I think if they are labeling something like Interstellar as Kubrickian, one of the ways that you can interpret that is that he rooted his 2001 in science fact. Yeah. Right? So, like, the stuff that the astronauts are, like, dealing with and the things that are going on and the conditions of space, it was all factual. Whereas with Interstellar, same thing. They went to really great lengths to do what they could to make everything scientifically factual.

48:33Aside from the fact that the idea that you could go into a black hole and then come back out or something like that. Sure. Drifting in space, that's not going to happen. but for the most part, Interstellar was scientifically accurate. So maybe that's what they meant when they called it Kubrickian. Because you're absolutely right. They did explain a lot and went to great lengths to explain a lot, whereas with 2001, you just watch it the first five times like, what just happened? Yeah. And apparently Cary Grant had that same reaction as well. That was Rock Hudson. Rock Hudson, that's right. Yeah, the original screening that Roger Ebert was at in L.A., Rock Hudson just left and said, can somebody tell me what the hell that was about?

49:11Yeah, and it wasn't even over yet. Yeah. Well, the reason it has science fact and not science fiction is because Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, it wasn't actually a book that was made into a movie. It was a book made after a movie, and they collaborated on both. They went to Carl Sagan, of course, of Cosmos, and said... He said, you're going to make billions and billions of dollars. That was pretty good. Was it? Yeah. That sounded a lot like him. They went to Carl Sagan and said, hey, we want to portray these extraterrestrials. Are they... Maybe the Star Child is... Or they turned Dave into the Star Child.

49:56Right. Are they humanoids? What are they going to look like? And Sagan was like, they were very unlikely to be humanoid. So Kubrick did the smart thing and was just like, well, we just won't show him at all. Instead of making a fool of myself, like signs, I'm making some dumb looking alien. Oh, man. Man. Let me just not show the aliens. Very smart move. Yeah. Getting back to the story of 2001. Although, I think the village is underrated. Yeah. I can stomach that one. What about, well, you like the Sixth Sense, right? Everybody like the Sixth Sense. Sure. I guess that was it for him. I loved Unbreakable.

50:38Unbreakable. Yeah. That was one where, like, yeah, I think it was maybe even better the second time. Yeah. I still like that movie. But he also made that Lady in the Water movie and the one with Marky Mark. The people were jumping off. Four Brothers. No. Three Kings. Is it the one in the elevator? No. He just produced that one. Oh, I know what you're talking about. The one where people are jumping off of buildings and stuff. Yeah, inexplicably. Yeah. I didn't see that either. I couldn't get through 10 minutes of that movie. So 2001, back to good movies, had a three-part structure, but not a conventional three-act structure that you might be used to in movies, which is why it confounded people like Rock Hudson.

51:24They called them movements. The first movement was the Dawn of Man sequence with the apes with the monolith. and he has that great part where he throws his little bone tool up in the air, and then it morphs into, well, not morphs, but maybe it's a dissolve into the spinning in outer space. It's called a match cut. Yeah, a match cut. And of the rotation of what we now know was a nuclear warhead, because I read that little article, 20 Things You Didn't Know About 2001. I didn't know those were nuclear warheads necessarily in outer space. They made it a little more vague initially. Initially, it was going to be more explicit, and they were going to explode it in outer space.

52:09Right. But he said, no, it's a little too close to... The ending of... Strange Love. Strange Love, yeah. Yeah, so let's not do that. Yeah. Probably a good choice. Yeah, but as a result, some people have taken it to mean that that match cut was supposed to show how far humans have come. Right. From using a bone to murder somebody to satellites in space. but if you know that the satellite is actually loaded down with nuclear warheads, that match cut demonstrates how little humans have changed from using a bone to murder somebody to using satellites to murder somebody. The motif is still the same, and it's murder.

52:47Yeah. He's going for some deep things. Oh, yeah. A lot of metaphor happening. Yeah. I mean, supposedly in every single shot, because he started out as a still photographer, right? Oh, yeah. supposedly every frame of a Kubrick movie, there is nothing that isn't unintentional in place there. By him, he did a lot of his own set decorating. Yeah, like the pencil holder on the desk in the office of the guy at the Shining Hotel was where it's supposed to be. Right, and if it has a picture of a goat head inscribed on it, that means something. Right. It's not accidental. Yeah, although we'll say room 237, which I think may have been the point, is a little bit like, these people are crazy.

53:28Not like, oh man, I just see what they're saying in all this. Right. I was just thinking these people are nuts. Right. It was just kind of enjoyable to hear their interpretations of it. Well, and I think it was a comment on obsession and fandom more so than The Shining. For sure. But I thought some of their ideas were interesting. Totally. I said room 227, didn't I? Like one of the conspiracy theorists was like, Mary. Wasn't Room 227 like a sitcom? Yeah, it was just called 227. Okay, yeah, 227. Gotcha. Remember with Jack K? She'd be like, Mary. Oh, okay. That's what my impression was. What'd you think I was doing?

54:06Well, I wasn't sure what you meant. Just being a weirdo? Yeah. Yeah, okay. The second movement was, of course, the Hal sequence. The computer, the Hal, was it the Hal 9000? Yeah. Really creepy, and Hal ended up being a lot of people's favorite character, even though it was just a voice, the supercomputer on the Discovery ship. I remember he's like, what are you doing, Dave? It's so creepy. I had the Mad Magazine spoof of 2001 when I was a kid. It was great. Yeah. And then the third movement is when Dave moves on to the next stage of human development with these extraterrestrials that you only hear.

54:47And basically, it's when it comes full circle, the third movement. And the third movement is the one that has almost, well, it's really just the second movement that has dialogue. Some of the alternate titles for 2001, Journey Beyond the Stars. Terrible. Universe, not bad. Tunnel to the Stars. Not so great. Planet Fall. That sounds bad. Sounds like a James Bond movie. And then How the Solar System Was Won as a play on How the West Was Won. Yeah, which movie geeks would find that appealing, but everybody else would say that's dumb. You ruined everything. Yeah, and Kubrick was, this is the last thing I have, he was so obsessive with protecting his material that he allegedly, I don't think allegedly, I think he did, have all the sets and props and miniatures destroyed after he shot it so they would never be reused, which is a common thing at the time.

55:46Yeah. Like, hey, we're doing a space movie. Go get that space ring from Stanley's set. Yeah. Let's reuse it for Planetfall. He also destroyed all of the footage that didn't make it into the original theatrical release. Yeah. Destroyed. It's gone. Yeah, so they wouldn't one day after his death recut it, which they invariably probably would have done. Yep. He's a smart man. Yeah, we should just do a podcast on Kubrick. Okay. I'm down for that challenge. A B.A. dude. Yes. One of my heroes. Yeah. Cinematically. You got anything else? I got nothing else. If you want to know more about movies, if you like this one, you would probably also love our exploitation episode.

56:31Oh, yeah. Exploitation movie episode. That was a fun one. What else have we talked about movies in? Cannonball Run. Oh, yeah. That had a lot to do with the movie. Yeah, our James Bond episode. Yeah. Yeah, we've had a few of these, and people always respond to these. They're like, you guys should have a spinoff show. Do you want to do an all-movie podcast? Sure. Maybe one day. Maybe. Remember, if you're looking for any of these, press Control-F or Apple-F in your web browser and search that way on our podcast archive page. You can also search for this article on How Stuff Works by typing movies in and seeing what comes up.

57:06And since I said How Stuff Works, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Mike DuPont really clears something up for us on Scientific Method. Okay. Hey, guys. It was a great... Well, actually, he doesn't say it was great. I think I just made that up. Hey, guys. Your scientific method podcast has a consistent misuse of what a scientific law is in relation to the working of the scientific method. It appears that you believe that a law, e.g. Newton's law of gravity, is inheld in higher esteem than theory, and that eventually a theory matures into a law. I think I probably did think that because of politics.

57:42Right. You know? Yeah. How a bill becomes a law. Right. Exactly. He says, when in fact theory is considerably more robust than a law, a law is a mathematical model that describes observed behavior, does not answer the why. Right. Theory does answer why something happens. Did we not say that? I thought we did. Like, I knew that. I remember finding that out from the research. I just can't believe it didn't come out of my mouth. He claims we did not. And I feel like I'm learning this, so I definitely did not. Okay, go ahead. But you may have. For example, Newton's law of gravitational attraction describes the action of two bodies that can be used for pretty much everything.

58:19It is perfect for describing what happens, but it cannot tell you why the two items are attracted or drill down to the underlying mechanism. Yeah, law is like much more succinct. It just is what it is. Nor is the law even universal and could not be used to explain the perihelion procession of Mercury's orbit. Burn. In comparison, Einstein's theory of general relativity was eventually used to solve the mercury issue. Oh, yeah, the mercury issue. And the standard model, along with the recent discovery of the Higgs boson by CERN, can answer the why do these two masses attracted to each other question.

58:58I think what you mean is why are these two masses attracted to one another? Mike? It's pretty teleological. Theory is considerably more developed and richer than a scientific law, which is more of a tool that is applicable to a wide range of applications. Keep up the good work. That is Mike DuPont. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for that. Of the Valley Forge DuPonts? I think so. Huh. Have you seen Foxcatcher? Oh, no. I've heard it's good. Is it good? No. Oh, really? I don't think so, no. I've heard it's kind of slow. It's beyond slow. Really? Oh, yeah. I can understand why the Academy loved it. Sure. A lot of people, I'm sure, do like it.

59:40I was not a fan of Fox Catcher. I think people generally seeing a turn by an actor like Steve Curl doing something really different, they're knocked out by that. No. I still can't believe you didn't like Birdman. No. Spoiler alert for people who have not seen Birdman. The following conversation is full of spoilers. Yes. What didn't you like about it? So I thought Michael Keaton was good. Okay. Who plays his daughter, Emily Blunt? Is that who that is? Emma Stone. Emma Stone. Excellent. Okay. Ed Norton, even pretty good. Okay. So the acting was fine. Who is Naomi Watts was in it? Yeah. She did great.

1:00:20Okay. So yes, the acting was fine. Sure. The acting was fine. I thought the photography was amazing. Yeah. The whole seemingly one take thing kind of knocked you out probably. I didn't even pick up on that, but yes, it did. It was more, for me, the juxtaposition of the story, which was pretty boring and realistic in everyday life. Even though it was about a Broadway production, it was still about the everyday life of it. Sure. Against the surrealism that's threaded and embedded throughout the whole movie, I didn't like that. Okay. It was like choose one or the other, man. Gotcha. It irked me. and then just that one part with the critic where Michael Keaton tells off the critic I thought Michael Keaton did a wonderful job but just the whole point that it was in there of like the director you know using Michael Keaton's character to tell off all the critics he's ever wanted to tell off in his movie I just thought it was pretentious and I thought it was kind of clumsy in that sense too and it was enough that it tainted it yeah and then the ending I did not like the ending at all.

1:01:34Yeah. At all. That'll ruin a good movie. Because it completely went contrary to all the other stuff that he went out of his way to point out was fake or fraudulent or not real. And then all of a sudden it is? What? Yeah. No, choose one or the other. The director refused to make very important decisions and I think that that ruined the movie. That is a very well thought out criticism, I think. Thank you. Thank you very much. Sure. Man, that was the end of listener mail even, wasn't it? Yeah, because now I'm not like, geez, Josh is weird. He didn't like Birdman. Now I'm like, Josh didn't like Birdman.

1:02:11He has good reasons. Thank you. Thank you. I like justifying my opinion. Don't we all? So if you want to get in touch with Chuck and I, or Jerry, who I apparently just spoiled Birdman for, you can contact us via Twitter at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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