The "Anything But Oscars" Mailbag! Plus: ‘Hoppers’

13:52Amanda Dobbins:I like Will Poulter I'm just I'm firing off names here yeah you're just firing off the cast of Warfare that's true

13:58Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe they should just bring the whole group back together together to do Conan O 'Brien. Conan O 'Brien. Conan the Barbarian.

14:08Amanda Dobbins:I'm excited. You're excited.

14:10Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Conan, not really in your interest set. No.

14:13Amanda Dobbins:We asked Jack Sanders, our producer, to break in if there was any breaking news during this. And with four minutes to go, he broke in and I was bracing for something like more exciting than a Conan the Barbarian reboot. But that's okay.

14:25Sean Fennessey:Jack, you are empowered to break in again if something dramatic happens. again. Don't worry, I will. Okay. Any other stray thoughts? How are you feeling? You feeling good about the world of movies? You feeling good about your life?

14:35Amanda Dobbins:Those are two very different questions. Are they?

14:37Sean Fennessey:I feel like they're intertwined for me.

14:40Amanda Dobbins:Feeling good about the world of movies. Yeah, sure. I feel, I had a great time with my son. I also recorded him watching the entire two-minute Mandalorian and Grogu trailer, which I mean, I really feel Disney should be paying me at this point for this this work, but he's excited. And we also had to switch theaters because Knox's first choice of theater was sold out when we could go. So that seems good. Yeah. It was a robust scene. We ran into some school friends at Hoppers. Hi, Lorelly, if you're listening. Incredible stuff. Yeah. Films. They're great. Everything else, really don't want to get into it.

15:20Sean Fennessey:You know, I'm about to make my first half picks for the movie Fantasy League I'm in. and that goes March through August on the slate. So I've been taking a longer look at what this show is going to be.

15:33Amanda Dobbins:It goes March through August, but you haven't done it yet?

15:35Sean Fennessey:It's due on Wednesday. My picks are due on Wednesday.

15:39Amanda Dobbins:So Hail Mary is eligible.

15:41Sean Fennessey:Hail Mary is eligible and I am likely to take it. Now there's a price affixed to every movie. How much? And what I want to do is I want to introduce this game to the world at large. I want to make a big picture movie fantasy league.

15:52Amanda Dobbins:Okay.

15:53Sean Fennessey:It's something I mentioned to Jack. It will require a lot of work.

15:56Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

15:56Sean Fennessey:Probably a little bit of back-end tech. But I think it would be really fun because it's kind of in the spirit of everything that we do on the show. It's true. With the auctions and, you know, all of our previews. So I've been looking at the slate and it's not the greatest first, like, next three months of the year. Once July comes around, we're cooking. Yeah. But up until about Toy Story 5, it's not an ideal set of circumstances, which I think is pretty common. And that's usually when my panic starts to set in is like roughly April, May. Yes.

16:27Amanda Dobbins:I mean, we can annotate it, but we have a record of past years. We do. But it is, I would say mid-April.

16:35Sean Fennessey:Mid-April is when I get a little concerned. And you know what?

16:37Amanda Dobbins:And or you go to see Minecraft by yourself on a Saturday night and are like, the movies are saved.

16:42Sean Fennessey:Minecraft right into Sinners. That was a very special time for me. We kind of staved off my panic this past year.

16:48Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

16:48Sean Fennessey:I don't know if our April is going to look quite that good this time around. But I think that there's a lot to look forward to. We'll preview the summer stuff as we get a little further into the spring. But I think I'm feeling pretty good. The world at large, no.

17:01Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

17:01Sean Fennessey:Bad.

17:02Amanda Dobbins:Real bad.

17:03Sean Fennessey:Extremely bad.

17:04Amanda Dobbins:Also, I want to let you and Jack know that another International Women's Day has passed without your comment. So thanks again for all that you do. That's on me. It was on a Saturday this year. No, it was on a Sunday. Was it Sunday?

17:14Sean Fennessey:Okay, there was a big banner at the Americana. We can't even get a real day. What day is this? Yeah, it's the day of rest. I did turn to my wife and daughter when I saw that banner and I said, today is your day.

17:25Amanda Dobbins:Hey, before we start, let me just say, one of the best memes of all time. Was this, I just clacked this bracelet halfway through this recording, which I love. Thank you. It's wonderful. Is she going to, is it a one of one or is she going to be making any others?

17:38Sean Fennessey:This was individually made.

17:39Amanda Dobbins:Can I place an order? I think so. Oh, I think she would love that. Or maybe I can come make one with her.

17:43Sean Fennessey:Yeah. I mean, honestly, she would love nothing. Okay, great. Alice in a big Amanda phase right now. A big like, will Amanda be there? What's Amanda doing? Okay, thank you. That's very sweet. What color would you go with?

17:53Amanda Dobbins:I mean, I do like the blue. I guess I'd want to see the options. Red, maybe?

17:57Sean Fennessey:All manner of bead. So make a choice. Maybe not to matchy-matchy. You might want to find some differentiation here at the table. Okay, red. That is nice. That's one of my colors. Then we can be like Superman and Supergirl.

18:08Amanda Dobbins:Yes, that's exactly what it will be.

18:10Sean Fennessey:Do you think they put Supergirl so close to International Women's Day on purpose this year on the calendar?

18:13Amanda Dobbins:I was about to ask you what it is. Yeah.

18:16Sean Fennessey:You're a Supergirl, I must tell you.

18:17Amanda Dobbins:Thank you so much. every day. Should we do the mailbag? What do you think?

18:21Sean Fennessey:How do you feel about these questions?

18:23Amanda Dobbins:Good.

18:23Sean Fennessey:Yeah? Yeah. Okay.

18:25Amanda Dobbins:They're funny. Jack, are we opening up? Are people going to submit any while we're recording or not? No, they're not.

18:31Sean Fennessey:Not today, unfortunately. All right, not today. Should we just have them text you? Read your number out loud right now. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-9.

18:37Amanda Dobbins:What if someone emails during the show?

18:41Sean Fennessey:Sure. Listeners, email in to bigpickmailbag at gmail.com. If you have anything truly special, I'll fire it in.

18:47Amanda Dobbins:Because the one thing I'll say, these are great questions. I'm excited. I love our community. I also love that I no longer really look at the Big Pick mailbag account because there are a lot of unsolicited essays. People took anything but Oscars pretty literally in a film sense. And just one question of advice, anything people need to check in on?

19:15Sean Fennessey:That's it, Amanda. If any of you live listening have advice questions to send to Amanda Dobbins, email them right now. I will try to get them in at the end. You want to be dear Abby. You don't want to be a podcaster.

19:29Amanda Dobbins:I just think I have a unique perspective.

19:32Sean Fennessey:That I will not argue with. I can't say I feel good about that. That is definitely true that you are one of one. Thank you so much. You got it. All right. Let's begin the questions. Jack, where do we start? Well, I just want to say, if you email me your question nine times in a 24-hour period, I will not be reading it, not to name any names, but philliesfancr123.com, your question's not going to be read, and I'm sorry about that. Tough one. This first one is probably my favorite, and I'm guessing Sean moved it up to the front. From Paul, he's asking, in one battle after another, we see a shot of Bob Ferguson watching the Battle of Algiers on his couch.

20:12Sean Fennessey:I doubt that the local Fox affiliate and Bacton Cross would be airing this film. So, does this mean Bob is into physical media? If he were invited into the Criterion Closet, what other films do you think he'd grab? What do we think he was doing? Did he have a VHS tape? Was he watching TCM? It's TCM. But he really was like tucked in for the afternoon, you know, where he was like, this is what I'm doing today. I'm watching the Battle of Algiers in the middle of the afternoon. In the evening time, I guess his daughter went off to the dance. What time did she leave? 5?

20:40Amanda Dobbins:It's still dusk.

20:42Sean Fennessey:4.30?

20:43Amanda Dobbins:Probably 5.30 because it's springtime. No one's wearing winter coats so it's getting a little bit later in the day. But it's not like a 9 p.m. start for a school dance.

20:52Sean Fennessey:How are you feeling about daily savings, by the way?

20:54Amanda Dobbins:I'm thrilled. I went outside at 7.30 yesterday to take the trash out and I just almost started crying of happiness. I'm happy to hear that. It smells so good. I love it. This is a two-part question and I'm going to let you have part two. Okay. But I'm going to take part one. Does this mean Bob is into physical media? Fam, he does not have a phone. This guy is not investing in plastic. He is like a wash up. No, he's just, he does not know about like international, like region free, whatever. He doesn't even believe in borders. Like he's not investing. He's watching this on TCM. No, not a collector.

21:32Amanda Dobbins:That's nice. And also, are you?

21:35Sean Fennessey:Incorrect.

21:36Amanda Dobbins:If you want, he's a wash up. He's a loser. Do you want him like in your army? Fuck yeah. Okay. Bob Ferguson of the French 75. He's got a good heart. Ghetto Pat. I'm rooting for him. Rocket man. But I just, I don't. Are you kidding me? First of all, is he like on the internet checking out new releases? Does he know about all the, no. No. No.

21:55Sean Fennessey:But he has his old favorites.

21:57Amanda Dobbins:He's not.

21:58Sean Fennessey:And that's why if you were invited to the Criterion Closet, he would do wonderfully.

22:03Amanda Dobbins:That's why I said you can answer part two. because he's watching TCM. He has taste. He's just not like hoarding plastic.

22:11Sean Fennessey:In the preceding scene, we hear him talking to his daughter who could not give less of a damn about recording with his band, the old band. Sure. About getting that tube sound from the Sealy Dan records. This is an analog king. This is a guy who of course is into vinyl. This is also a broke man

22:30Amanda Dobbins:who cannot remember anything and is also watching the Battle of Algiers at like 5.30 p.m. because he's lost contact with the rest of the world and he has nothing going on. I know. God love him.

22:40Sean Fennessey:It's so fucking relatable. You know where you just like, you just talk into a cinema classic on an afternoon after you send your daughter out for the evening?

22:48Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

22:48Sean Fennessey:Goddamn.

22:49Amanda Dobbins:Bob does not have a letterboxd. Bob is not. No, he doesn't. And Bob is not. That wasn't the question. He's not into physical media, but I think he would have a lovely time and some very interesting picks in the Criterion closet. So now you made Dreamcast for him.

23:03Sean Fennessey:I've made five Criterion Closet selections on Bob's behalf. Whether he owns these discs, LaserDiscs, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K, we don't know. Probably not.

23:15Amanda Dobbins:Bob isn't into ownership.

23:17Sean Fennessey:That's very true. That's true. But the great works must be celebrated even in a socialistic experience. We still, we support artists. Listen, I believe in film preservation.

23:28Amanda Dobbins:I just don't believe that you are the only person preserving film. You know what I'm saying?

23:32Sean Fennessey:No, but I have a voice and I'm using that voice to proclaim.

23:36Amanda Dobbins:You are making capitalism work for you.

23:38Sean Fennessey:Well, that's very true. And you know what? Hopefully sending a positive message in doing so.

23:42Amanda Dobbins:And you are supporting the work of other people who actually do this. That's right. But you are a crazy person with a garage full of plastic.

23:48Sean Fennessey:I am a creator. The five films that he would either pull from the Criterion Closet or maybe he has in his stash as follows. And all of these movies are in the closet and I would recommend all of them. It's actually technically I chose seven movies. because he's pulling a box set off the shelf. One is Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. Nice little pairing about the paranoia of living in a revolutionary moment. Jean-Pierre Melville, one of the great filmmakers about war and espionage and subterranean societies. Number two, Paths of Glory, Stanley Kubrick's classic about living in ethical rejection of awful fascism.

24:27Sean Fennessey:Three revolutionary films by Usman Semben, the African filmmaker. Those films are Imiti, Zala, and Sedo. All three of those movies are amazing and underseen. Steven Soderbergh's Che. Yeah.

24:41Amanda Dobbins:That big double cardboard box.

24:43Sean Fennessey:Great film starring Benicio Del Toro, of course. Does the film Che exist in the one battle after another universe because Benicio Del Toro is in it, but so is Sensei?

24:54Amanda Dobbins:Sensei's also in it?

24:56Sean Fennessey:Well, Sensei's in Bob's universe. So does Che exist? and if Che exists is it star a different actor?

25:03Amanda Dobbins:Interesting.

25:04Sean Fennessey:You know, is it like Lou Diamond Phillips in Che?

25:07Amanda Dobbins:I'm trying to think of other in the universe. What else exists? Probably it exists and it's just a guy who looks a lot like Sensei. Okay, all right.

25:16Sean Fennessey:Interesting.

25:17Amanda Dobbins:But here's my question for you.

25:18Sean Fennessey:Or does Sensei just look like Benicio Del Toro? Is that the thing?

25:21Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

25:21Sean Fennessey:Okay.

25:22Amanda Dobbins:Here's my question. What is Bob's second favorite Steven Soderbergh film?

25:26Sean Fennessey:Full frontal. What do you think it is?

25:31Amanda Dobbins:let's see the limey you could see yeah you know

25:36Sean Fennessey:tell them I'm fucking coming yeah although Terrence Stamp in that movie has really has more Sean Penn vibes from One Battle well sure

25:44Amanda Dobbins:but you gotta know your enemy good point

25:46Sean Fennessey:good point number five Eraserhead right girl dad movie you know just like guy figuring out what it means to be a father the absolute abject terror of bringing life into this world and having to protect it yeah

25:57Amanda Dobbins:what we're doing every day

25:59Sean Fennessey:We are doing that every day. Thank you, Bob. Thank you for that question. Thank you, Paul. I didn't move this question up. Was this question sent by Paul Thomas Anderson? That is correct. Okay. Thanks, Paul. You think you would go for shortcuts? An Altman film in the PTA world?

26:15Sean Fennessey:Bob is like a real kind of single-issue voter, I would say. You know, it doesn't really... He's kind of into revolution and not much else. And I guess Steely Dan. But we don't know a whole lot about him. I'd love to know what's on his nightstand.

26:31Amanda Dobbins:You think he's doing a lot of reading?

26:33Sean Fennessey:Like Anarchist Cookbook?

26:34Amanda Dobbins:Well, I definitely don't think he has a Kindle, you know? No. So, I don't know. How does Bob make money? Well, I don't know. Have we explored this? We don't know that, which means that we don't, where does the money come from to buy the DVDs? Sorry, Blu-rays.

26:51Sean Fennessey:I don't know. I think it might just be VHS tapes. Okay. I think he might just be rocking. I got to go back and look at that scene.

26:56Amanda Dobbins:Okay.

26:56Sean Fennessey:I need to see that scene for a ninth time. Just a wonderful question. Incredible way to start this. By physical media. That's my message to everyone watching right now on Netflix. What's the next question? Next question comes from Thomas. Frequently, we hear someone affectionately refer to a modern movie as something that feels like a 70s movie. In my heart, I know what that means. If you had to describe a 2020s film, what would that mean to you? What do you think of this question? Do you feel that we know the character of the films that are happening right now, or do we need more space to determine that?

27:30Amanda Dobbins:I guess we know some of the visual signifiers and some of the mood. And I think when we say it feels like a real 70s film, sometimes that means the subject matter or the performance or, you know, or the style of direction. But it can often mean that someone's just like ripping off Gordon Willis. and that's good, by the way. It is good. All good artists, you know, great artists steal. So at this point, we have a sense of what it's going to look like. The tricky part is that all the examples of what we consider to be like good films made in the 2020s, we often compare to 70s films. And so I think our definition of 2020s would be just because of subtraction, like negative.

28:19Sean Fennessey:Yes.

28:20Amanda Dobbins:Which is unfair. I guess there are... But if I had to think of examples of new cinema, like visually, that I think is genuinely really exciting, I don't know. I mean, maybe that's a reflection of me, that I am yearning for the traditional.

28:38Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I think the signature movies of the century so far is probably in some order Top Gun, Maverick, Barbie, everything everywhere all at once Oppenheimer, you know, like, you know, I'm sure there's a few others that you could throw in there, but just kind of off the top of my head, those are movies and they're, they're diff, they're all different, right? They're, those are mostly franchise stories. They're pretty heavyweight. This is, this is a very American focused point of view, obviously. I don't mean that those are the best movies. I don't mean that they're the most successful movies. There's kind of somewhere in between.

29:12Sean Fennessey:They're kind of like, when you go back, when we get to 2030 and we look back at what this decade represented, I do think that there's something about spectacle and about fusing genres together that has been pretty consistent. I think we're in a very, both a synthetic and a synthesis era where everything feels a little bit more, like Barbie is a very kind of created world, right? Right. Everything everyone wants is a very created world. It's a very hyper-stylized world. Oppenheimer even is a very stylized movie. It's not a gritty, realistic, naturalistic movie. I think when you think of like All the President's Men or, you know, the Sidney Lumet films from the 70s, those are very like on ground level, hard-bitten, naturalistic films in the way that they're shot and in their performance style.

30:01Sean Fennessey:Right now, everything is sort of like, there's a kind of extra textual mania in every movie. You know, the Mission Impossible movies that have come out in the last seven years. Minecraft. Like, these are kind of zany constructions. So, I feel like that is a thing. And I feel like that is very much the influence of the internet.

30:19Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

30:20Sean Fennessey:In terms of people's attention spans and the stylistic things that we've seen on, like, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, Facebook. all of these social media platforms over the last 15 years I feel the influence there I've personally been super excited by the YouTube influence on movies and I feel like it's really strong on horror and we're about to have this stretch this year where you've got Backrooms and Obsession and Kyle Edward Ball who made Skinnamarink has another movie coming out and there's like all of these new filmmakers I know I know the Chris Ryan voice

30:57Amanda Dobbins:I did Sean Sean. Hello, Sean.

31:01Sean Fennessey:What's happening? But I like that there is, there's like some, there's like some peanut butter getting in the chocolate right now that is kind of messing with what a movie is allowed to look like on a big screen. Yeah. That I like. But for the most part, I mean, do you agree with what I'm saying about the big movies and kind of what their character is?

31:17Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, both the hyper-production, the spectacle of it all, and also, as you said, essentially the meme or the one-shot influence reflected back into the movies. And we know that this is going to be parceled out image by image, so people are really kind of Wes Anderson-ing out, but in very specific ways. And that's not always a bad thing. I liked most of the movies that you just mentioned. The other thing I think about, and this is sort of related to the YouTube of it all, but just screens.

31:55Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

31:56Amanda Dobbins:And, you know, very obviously like phones in movies and how that affects on a plot sense. But I mean more in terms of when you see people on their phones or you see the text messages, you see surveillance footage, you see, you know, monitors in like situation rooms, all sorts of just like the presence. You see recreations of YouTube and TikTok, all the ways that we spend our time looking at screens other than a movie screen now have to be reflected back into the movies themselves. and sometimes that's done in an interesting way. Sometimes it's done in an absolutely vile way. But the movies visually trying to get their arms around the internet and all of the ways we're projected around ourselves all the time is certainly a visual signature.

32:43Sean Fennessey:I agree. I feel like there's some filmmakers who really have their arms around it. Park Chan-wook in particular. I feel like he's done a really nice job with that. What was the, there was a Soderbergh series that was on HBO a couple of years ago. It was a mini series that Ed Solomon wrote. I can't remember the name of it at the moment. Was it Full Circle? Something like that.

33:00Amanda Dobbins:Not Mosaic. Mosaic, yes. Mosaic.

33:02Sean Fennessey:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe, no, maybe it wasn't Mosaic. Maybe there was another one. I think there's also - Mosaic was the Sharon Stone one. That wasn't the one I'm thinking of.

33:09Amanda Dobbins:Full Circle sounds, yeah. Full Circle is right.

33:11Sean Fennessey:Full Circle, yeah. That also, I think, had an interest in this and this kind of idea of surveillance. And in that way, it kind of mimics the 70s and this sense of paranoia, right, that you'd find in films like The Conversation. And I can feel that coming in a little bit in mainstream movies. not really in blockbusters. It's a little bit more like in that second tier of size of film, but there's definitely some, some of the anxiety of the world is creeping in. I mean, we talked about a little bit with even just the Academy Award nominees this year, Secret Agent, One Battle, Sinners. These are all movies, but kind of like one group coming in to take over another group and doing it in subterranean ways.

33:47Sean Fennessey:But I think there's also just a little bit of a nostalgia porn pre-branded thing that is essential to it too. Like F1 is another movie that I think will be, if not memorable, like notable in the chain of big movies over the last 10 years. And that movie is kind of like a big hash of other stuff. And some of it works really well and some of it doesn't work as well. But you never watch that movie and think like, never seen this before. Like I've never seen racing like that before, but I've seen race car movies. I've seen old guys still got it movies you know I've seen reinventions of that you know hero dynamic like all of that seems very familiar so it feels like Hollywood is kind of figuring trying to figure out like what people want and the only time when it really works is when someone truly original comes along and is like I have an idea you know and Jordan Peele comes along and he's like I got something or Daniels are like we're gonna try something like that is when things really shake a little hopefully that keeps happening what's next?

34:53Sean Fennessey:before our next question just want to let you know we probably have already 15 advice questions two of which I've put at the bottom of the rundown just putting that on your radar incredible thank you guys you did it

35:03Amanda Dobbins:wow

35:03Sean Fennessey:the next question comes from Michael in honor of Send Help and Survivor 50 let's flip the classic Desert Island question around instead of what movie you'd bring what movie would you force each other to have as their only option with the idea being They can't leave the island until they finally get it.

35:21Amanda Dobbins:Double worst part of it. Easy.

35:23Sean Fennessey:Over and over again. Is it that I don't get it?

35:26Amanda Dobbins:Yeah. I don't get it. And you're resistant to it as well. You don't want to get it, you know? I think it's a good movie. On a desert island, it could really click for you.

35:37Sean Fennessey:You want me to believe it is a five-star masterpiece and you think repeated viewings will reveal that? You don't think I'll turn against it by being exposed to it so often? Because I don't have negative feelings towards it.

35:48Amanda Dobbins:I don't think that you value it. I see. And by definition, this would make you value it in the sense that it's something for you to... It's the only thing you have. Also, Bill's Point stints. You know, you go to Paris, you get a makeover, you're in New York,

36:02Sean Fennessey:King Cole Bar. Tell you something, Devil Wears Prada, not available in 4K.

36:05Amanda Dobbins:Okay. What's going on there? What's up with that? I don't know. Maybe those people are just spending their money on other things, like close, like Prada.

36:14Sean Fennessey:They probably are. The Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer ran before Hopper's. Curious, I would say, based on the audience in my movie theater. And Alice was like, what's this? I will let her know. I will take her

36:26Amanda Dobbins:and we will find out together.

36:29Sean Fennessey:First of all, just a few words on Survivor 50. Yeah. Loving it so far. Okay, good. I think the three-hour premiere was an act of evil and I don't support that. Just making any episode of television three hours is not okay. However, just love seeing all my old friends together again on an island. That's nice. Just fighting it out. It's a wonderful show. You should get involved.

36:48Amanda Dobbins:Has anyone been sent home?

36:49Sean Fennessey:Oh, certainly. Yeah. Well, we've had two tribal councils and one injury evacuation thus far. Some poor guy who is a great player named Kyle. I believe he ruptured his Achilles in full, which is not what you want. No, absolutely not. And it was one of those things where they showed it and in real time when you watched it happen, you were like, no, no, no, no. It was like watching sports, right? You knew immediately it was his Achilles. It was very tough. Wonderful. for me just in keeping with the Sam Raimi thing I think I'll just give you Evil Dead 2 and you can just sit with it and you can look at the craft and the creativity the relationship to cinema history that it has the wonders of Bruce Campbell's chin there's so much also Bruce Campbell diagnosed with a treatable but not curable cancer he announced last week I want to send my love to him one of my all time favorite actors that was very sad Evil Dead 2 just fucking banger banger okay I can appreciate craft What's your preferred format on a desert island?

37:48Sean Fennessey:Streaming?

37:50Amanda Dobbins:So am I building my own theater? Great question. Is this the Send Help Island? Or can we airlift in a full couch? Not sure that's how that's going to work.

38:04Sean Fennessey:Remind me, you would do well in the Send Help environment?

38:07Amanda Dobbins:No, no, no, no. Because, first of all, I haven't watched Survivor. Okay. So when we saw Send Help, you kept, you know, turning to me and being like, this is like they do on Survivor and they do this on Survivor. And then afterwards, I was asking you, so like, which skills did you recognize from Survivor? And like, do you and you have some practical knowledge, I guess? I don't think I do very well. I would know to like, I need to build a shelter. I need to stay out of the sun. I could build the shelter.

38:36Sean Fennessey:I have some concerns about fire.

38:37Amanda Dobbins:I mean, also, spoiler alert for Send Help. I guess. But, you know, if I had the knowledge that Rachel McAdams' character has and sent help, I'd be great.

38:47Sean Fennessey:Well, sure. That's called cheating. Okay, what's the next question? Our next question comes from Drew. With the Warner Brothers merger, I've been wondering, why don't industry giants like Apple or Disney go after this storied studio and all it has to offer? I feel like they've got more than enough money and power to obtain it, so I don't get why they never threw their hat in the ring. I actually invited Tim Cook and Bob Iger to join us. So, Tim, Bob, come on out, guys.

39:13Amanda Dobbins:I was going to say, I actually did just get my advanced degree in, like, debt load management. And so I'm able to explain Disney's balance sheet to you in, like, great detail. Disney.

39:25Sean Fennessey:I mean, Disney's just now digging out of the Fox debt. So they were never really under consideration.

39:30Amanda Dobbins:And they have enough of their own stuff that they don't actually need it to compete.

39:34Sean Fennessey:I'll tell you what. There was a lot of talk about Game Over if the Netflix deal went through. If Disney bought Warner Brothers, that would really be IP Game Over. then they would really have the complete war chest of valuable franchises. I don't think Disney was ever on the table. And particularly because they're bringing in a parks chief to now run their content business, which I think should tell you a little bit something about how they intend to monetize over the next 10 years. Apple, did we talk about Apple as like, it might have been offline where we were just like, couldn't it just be Apple and make this a little bit more coherent?

40:05Sean Fennessey:Like that would have been just preferable.

40:06Amanda Dobbins:I do think a couple weeks ago, we were at least talking about, you know, Apple has or has had a distribution deal with A24 in the past. And it was always rumored. Maybe that was what we were talking about. Yeah, and it was maybe rumored, but that like has never really happened. And it's just sort of unclear what Apple wants.

40:24Sean Fennessey:I think they are enjoying just kind of ginning up their own stuff. Yeah. You know, like they feel very proud of the F1 thing. I think their movie and TV strategy has been like a little hit or miss, but it's kind of hard to just start from nothing. And they have built up like a very credible slate. And you go to Apple TV now and you're like, there's a lot to watch here. There's a lot of shows. There's a lot of original films. There's a lot of kids content. And five years, and they can just keep doing it because it's a drop in the bucket for them, right? Structurally. And I don't, you know, I'm very curious to see where they go with movies.

40:57Sean Fennessey:I wish that they were throwing more behind theatrical movies because I think they could end up doing really good business. And even taking an L would not be that big of a deal for them. But some of it is just reputational and what can be seen. As far as acquiring, I mean, they've been very persistent. Actually, I think Eddie Q was on the town last year, vehement that he was not, that they were not going to pursue Warner Brothers. So it was never really under consideration. Could they afford it? Yeah. They would be a big, they would be doing it just to get the IP too, right? I mean, like.

41:27Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, but then it's like, What are they going to use the IP for? It sort of seems like a lot of distraction from, you know.

41:35Sean Fennessey:Here's what I think it would be.

41:36Amanda Dobbins:They don't need to sell Mickey Mouse or Batman branded iPads, you know? They don't. They just have iPads.

41:43Sean Fennessey:I think it would be not for the tech and the hardware. I think it would probably be a big experiential shift where they would actually start exploring theme parks. They would start exploring different lines of business that are much more experiential, one-to-one, person-to-person in the real world, which they don't really do.

41:59Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

42:00Sean Fennessey:And that's just a totally different kind of a business, and you have to build up a whole infrastructure to do that. That's the one thing with Warner Brothers. And there was talk even of one of the studio lots being transformed into kind of like an experiential playground for people who love movies or TV shows.

42:17Amanda Dobbins:Right. I think the Paramount lot. And then they would move to Warner.

42:19Sean Fennessey:There's some centrality there, but there's no fucking parking there. So I don't know how that would work. But if they wanted to get involved in that business, in addition to being able to just have Batman and Harry Potter, I guess I could see that. And also HBO obviously just matches very neatly with what Apple TV has been.

42:35Amanda Dobbins:Correct.

42:35Sean Fennessey:You know, like just tonally the vibe of the shows, even some of the administration and people like Richard Plepler advising on Apple content. So that it would make sense. They just they didn't want to do it. Yeah. So they didn't do it.

42:47Amanda Dobbins:You know what I was wondering about the other day? related to Apple. Whatever happened to the the iPhone? Vision Pro. Vision Pro. I was thinking about it because I went to the eye doctor and was basically given a vision pro to do a test. A good version of AI. It's a pretty fancy eye doctor. And then it's our local eye doctor. I recommend them. What's his name? Jim Eye Doctor? Yeah, exactly. And then I was like, oh, I haven't seen or heard from those things in actual years. and that was I mean I remembered it because that was another like not quite experiential but their version of experiential right and also trying to merge in with video game streaming whatever and that just didn't happen

43:30Sean Fennessey:it didn't happen I tested one out Van Lathan is the only person I know who actually bought one and he enjoyed it I watched some of a movie and a really unique kind of baseball game experience with the headset and I thought it was very cool I can't imagine wearing a headset for hours on end. That's just not something that seems fun to me. Yeah. And it is, you know, I just rewatched Ready Player One to prepare for the Stephen Spielberg conversation that I'm having later this week. And, you know, that movie, which I think is pretty cool, actually, and a little bit misunderstood, is about the hellscape of like plugging yourself in and not unplugging.

44:05Sean Fennessey:And so I think that there was some wisdom in that.

44:08Amanda Dobbins:Yeah. But I just, I thought of it because their version of experiential is still gadget-based because that's ultimately what they are. They are, you know, and the most recent iteration didn't work, but I do still think their business aim is to release another product that they can sell rather than, you know, a Batman theme park.

44:26Sean Fennessey:I think you're right. What's our next question? Next question comes from Skylar. My question is related to a comment Amanda made in the alternative Oscars episode about how she visits the Rebecca Ferguson Death Bridge every time she is in Venice.

44:39Amanda Dobbins:I mean, it's been twice, but it is true.

44:41Sean Fennessey:Every time. Every time. Maybe this year too. My question is simple. Is Venice the greatest film location in the world? If not, what is?

44:50Amanda Dobbins:I don't know. I mean, Paris, New York.

44:53Sean Fennessey:It's New York for me. Yeah. But that's, you know, I've got some biases there.

44:56Amanda Dobbins:I just want to put Paris in as a European location. They've done good work.

45:01Sean Fennessey:Absolutely. No question about it. The light?

45:03Amanda Dobbins:Just right.

45:04Sean Fennessey:What's the name of that bridge?

45:06Amanda Dobbins:Oh, I don't know. I don't speak Italian. Let's see. Venice Mission Impossible Bridge. Venezia Brizia. Dead Reckoning Bridge. Let's see. the bridge of, hold on.

45:17Sean Fennessey:You got this, Mama. Hang in there, Mama.

45:19Amanda Dobbins:But S-I-G-H-S, not C-Y's. Size, like I sighed.

45:28Sean Fennessey:S-I-G-H-S? Yes. The bridge of size?

45:31Amanda Dobbins:Apparently. Wow, that's dramatic. That was not what I was expecting. I mean, this is an AI thing, so I gotta... I was expecting like,

45:40Sean Fennessey:mozzarella, Montepulciano.

45:41Amanda Dobbins:Sure, you know, that is not respectful. of the Italian people. Is this, are we on Netflix right now? Okay. Is this going out live? I don't know. Let's see. Now I'm looking on Reddit and I don't, I don't, some people just talking about their opinions of this scene, which they didn't like. So we're going to go with Bridge of Sighs, which apparently also Lord Byron wrote about. Again, this is an AI answer, so it's wrong, most likely. Okay, good to know. There are a lot of bridges in Venice, so, but there's a little bit of a crowd when I'm there usually.

46:14Sean Fennessey:I have not been to Venice before. I can't say how it matches specifically. I think Rome, speaking of Italy, is also a wonderful movie location.

46:23Amanda Dobbins:Rome, dynamite.

46:24Sean Fennessey:Love Rome, the city. Had a wonderful time there.

46:29Amanda Dobbins:London, not bad.

46:30Sean Fennessey:London is interesting. You know, we can just name large cities. Chicago is a fine city. You know, I think Oslo. I enjoy Oslo.

46:42Amanda Dobbins:Have you been to Oslo? No. Okay.

46:44Sean Fennessey:But I've enjoyed the cinema of the Norwegians.

46:46Amanda Dobbins:Now I'm just thinking of all of the places where Bond did opening sequences. So Mexico City, that's a really good one.

46:53Sean Fennessey:Yes, I love Mexico City.

46:54Amanda Dobbins:Let's see. I mean, we haven't said Los Angeles. Pretty good.

46:58Sean Fennessey:I was just about to say that. It took about a dozen names to get to the point. Well, I mean, it was. It was. And then they stopped letting us shoot movies here, you know? I am dramatically overrate Crime 101 because I'm like, I know what that is. That's very rare to be able to look at a movie and say, I know what that is in 2026. I don't know. I got to get to Venice one of these days. When's that going to be?

47:19Amanda Dobbins:I don't know whether it'll be this year, but... It won't be.

47:21Sean Fennessey:I've already signed up for Telluride, so I won't be going to Venice.

47:24Amanda Dobbins:Maybe one year. It's great.

47:26Sean Fennessey:Okay. What's the next question? Next question comes from Tim. What is a movie you objectively know is flawed, messy, and maybe even chaotic, but you still defend with your whole heart? This comes right on the heels of The Bride absolutely tanking at the box office. like far worse than anyone could have imagined. I think it was tracking for between 12 and 18 million dollars on Thursday and it finished at seven million dollars.

47:51Amanda Dobbins:You know it's bad when Just Jared does its Instagram card and says it's bad news for the bride at the box office. And I was like, damn, even Just Jared is getting in on the bride. They're not regularly doing box office criticism.

48:04Sean Fennessey:Yeah, it's a very dramatic underperformance for that film.

48:07Amanda Dobbins:I skipped this question in my prep and was like, I'll come back to it, but I forgot. so you gotta go first. Because anytime people are like, it's flawed, it's messy, but you know it's perfect. No, to me it is perfect, therefore it's not flawed.

48:20Sean Fennessey:And that was actually at the center of...

48:23Amanda Dobbins:Me with the Love Actually cards.

48:25Sean Fennessey:To me, it is perfect. That's like, I think that I really cotton to a kind of insane, I went for it kind of a movie that doesn't totally come together. I really have a real sentimentality about those kinds of movies. It's why I was defending The Bride and pretty much enjoyed my experience watching it while also acknowledging it has a lot of problems. And we talked about Mickey 17. We talked about Babylon. We talked about these movies.

48:50Amanda Dobbins:Here comes The Motherfucking Bride. I realized I was falling asleep last night that I didn't say that on our podcast. But that's a real thing that she says. That's how she ends the prologue. And then it says The Bride. And I liked the typeface, like the font that they use. Very cool. That's my one nice thing about The Bride.

49:09Sean Fennessey:There's a somewhat similar question to this about disasters that we'll get to in a minute. And it feels like they kind of feel intertwined because, I don't know, my easy answer for this is always Congo, which is the dumbest movie of all time that I think is a five-star classic.

49:24Amanda Dobbins:Well, I was about to say Triple Frontier.

49:26Sean Fennessey:Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, is it chaotic?

49:31Amanda Dobbins:I don't know. They're just on the side of a mountain for a while, and I'm not really sure about any of the choices that Ben Affleck's making. Yeah, but that's just like guys being dudes. And I think Charlie Hunnam has a breakdown in a Publix, you know?

49:41Sean Fennessey:I know. So relatable. Holy shit.

49:44Amanda Dobbins:You ever been to a Publix? I have, yeah.

49:45Sean Fennessey:Okay.

49:46Amanda Dobbins:You don't need to say it like that. It's fine.

49:48Sean Fennessey:How did I say it?

49:49Amanda Dobbins:Well, you were just like, that's the thing that you people in the South have and we don't really care about it.

49:53Sean Fennessey:That's not what I said. It was dismissive. You know what? The shopping, the supermarket that I think of most when it comes to the South is Food Lion.

50:03Amanda Dobbins:Oh, yeah.

50:04Sean Fennessey:Because Food Lion, when I would visit North Carolina. Oh, yeah. We would always hit the food line on the first day.

50:08Amanda Dobbins:That is where my grandparents in North Carolina shopped always. Yeah. Yeah.

50:11Sean Fennessey:Is the food line still kicking around?

50:12Amanda Dobbins:I hope so.

50:13Sean Fennessey:Okay, cool. You know what was elite going to college in Ithaca? Was Wegmans. And Wegmans is kind of spread now.

50:20Amanda Dobbins:I've heard a lot about Wegmans. Still have never been.

50:24Sean Fennessey:Wegmans, Jack. It's where I first purchased alcohol under the age of 21 with a fake ID. Congratulations. Sam Adams pumpkin beer for October. Nice. Sure.

50:33Amanda Dobbins:This is Sanders lore. I love it. I would really like to go to Wegmans because I really like grocery stores and I like grocery store, like, you know, tourism.

50:42Sean Fennessey:Sure.

50:42Amanda Dobbins:But I just I've never made it to a Wegmans.

50:45Sean Fennessey:I feel like it is expanding. And it was the first it was I don't know if it predates Whole Foods entirely, but it was the first time where I was like, this is a lot of fucking grocery store. Yeah. Like there are a lot of places to get being 18 and just being like, I'll just buy every bad junk food that I was not allowed to eat as a kid in my mom's house. Thrilling experience. Anyway, I don't know how we got here. What's the next question? Next question comes from Thomas. What are some upcoming titles that you hope will be world premiering at this year's Cannes Film Festival? Should we make an announcement?

51:16Amanda Dobbins:Sure. We're booked for Cannes. It's happening. Yeah. Cannes 2026. Sean and Amanda.

51:22Sean Fennessey:We're going.

51:23Amanda Dobbins:We are going. We're credentials. We're going.

51:25Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

51:26Amanda Dobbins:We have a place to stay. I got to submit that expense report. That's a good reminder. Thanks so much. And I have some outfit concepts. as do you.

51:37Sean Fennessey:So I'm pretty excited. I am excited. I'm a little nervous.

51:41Amanda Dobbins:Why?

51:41Sean Fennessey:Because this is kind of the last mountain to scale in terms of like... And you don't feel you'll be good enough? Well, I just don't know what to expect. It's a lot. It's a very long festival.

51:51Amanda Dobbins:It's a 12-day festival.

51:52Sean Fennessey:I want to do a good job being at the festival. But just given what our job is, it's not really coherent for us to be out for 13 days. So I'm trying to figure out how we can pull that off. And I want to see as much as possible. Like that's my disease, right? It's trying to like knock everything off the list. And that's not totally achievable at Cannes. So I want to just play chess properly.

52:13Amanda Dobbins:Well, it's very different from what I understand Telluride to be, which is just everyone convenes together for three days and does trust falls and then like we just see films. That's not what it's like, but continue. And I'm assuming that this is a little bit more like Venice. It is also ticketed like Venice. Yes. So I look forward to us up at like 1 a.m. on the French ticketing website. But you'll be able to see a lot. You do also, bless you, you don't have to file reviews three times a day.

52:46Sean Fennessey:I don't, but I want to try to find a way to cover it in real-ish time.

52:50Amanda Dobbins:Yes.

52:51Sean Fennessey:You know, like real-ish.

52:52Amanda Dobbins:But that is different than having to go to three press conferences and then file. So I think you'll be able to see a lot.

52:58Sean Fennessey:You're right. We're very lucky in terms of the way that we cover the movies and cover the festivals. I'm really grateful that we've been able to figure that out in the way that we have. And I don't want to spoil, actually, what I think is usually a very fun episode where we convene to talk about what we've seen. And I think we should also divide and conquer a little bit, too. Like, you should definitely see some stuff that I can't make and vice versa. But there's a lot of potentially great stuff this year. I don't know if there's anything on the like, I don't, you know, the like killers of the flower moon level.

53:30Sean Fennessey:Right. You know, I don't know that that's sort of like it would be my hope and dream to see the world premiere of blank blank.

53:36Amanda Dobbins:Or even the year of Megalopolis and Horizon and a lot of other things that turned out to be fairly disastrous.

53:47Sean Fennessey:Right, outrageous misfires.

53:48Amanda Dobbins:But were historic.

53:50Sean Fennessey:Yeah. See, that's a really good answer to the previous question. Like, Horizon is kind of a mess, but I enjoyed it. Megalopolis is kind of a mess, but I really need to revisit it because I didn't like it very much. So.

53:59Amanda Dobbins:What is Kevin Costner doing opening Zero Bond in Las Vegas? What is Zero Bond? It's just the new. Listen, he was just at a club opening with Tom Brady and Alex Earle.

54:10Sean Fennessey:Wow.

54:11Amanda Dobbins:This weekend. That's exciting. I have some. They really need to get that Horizon money back.

54:15Sean Fennessey:Okay. So Alex Earle and Tom Brady, that's officially happening. That's public.

54:18Amanda Dobbins:They have been seen a lot of the same places.

54:21Sean Fennessey:That sounds great. Movies at Cannes. We did go through this a bit in January in terms of what we thought could happen, but here's the list that I made. Yeah. Tell me if you have additions, any other thoughts. The Adventures of Cliff Booth. Netflix doesn't premiere movies there, so I assume that's not going to happen.

54:39Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

54:40Sean Fennessey:But it's QT and Fincher.

54:43Amanda Dobbins:Well, it's this summer is the release. It is this summer. And it's not like September 15th, which would technically be the definition of summer. We don't know either. Again, this is on Netflix. We don't know shit.

54:55Sean Fennessey:I also don't have any information, so I'm not pretending like I do. I have not talked to Gwen about it.

54:59Amanda Dobbins:I just Fincher has a history of Venice. Yes. And Netflix is very, very Venice forward. So if they wanted to do something splashy.

55:08Sean Fennessey:Yes, but this would be my number one with a bullet in terms of anticipation. Are you kidding?

55:10Amanda Dobbins:That would be so exciting.

55:12Sean Fennessey:I have to put The Way of the Wind, the Terrence Malick movie, which has been rumored for seven consecutive years. Some people seem to think this could be the year. I think April 9th is the announcement date. So we have a full month till we find out what's coming. Jack of Spades, the new Joel Cohen movie, which I think I took in the auction.

55:28Amanda Dobbins:That sounds right.

55:30Sean Fennessey:Nicholas Winding Refn's Her Private Hell will almost certainly be there.

55:34Amanda Dobbins:CR, come to Cannes.

55:35Sean Fennessey:Yeah, that is... You think Chris is watching right now? On Netflix? Yeah. I think he has to make his own podcast right now.

55:41Amanda Dobbins:I will... They're usually wrapped by now. That's true. I will say the last time we know, but the last time we went live, like I heard from a lot of friends and loved ones by a text message, just noting that everyone's silent right now.

55:53Sean Fennessey:So it's a good point. Would you would you say you have a lot of friends and loved ones? It depends on the day. That's exactly how I feel. Don't we all feel that way? Isn't that the mystery of life? Yeah. You know, sometimes you're so alone and sometimes we're so together. Disclosure day, perhaps. I'd love it. The new Steven Spielberg film, which I think it'll only come out maybe three weeks or four weeks after Cannes. That seems definitely possible. Spielberg has premiered five films out of competition. I think he has only competed for the Palme d 'Or one time, and it was for his first theatrical feature film, The Sugar Land Express.

56:30Sean Fennessey:I've been doing a lot of Steven Spielberg. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited for her disclosure today, too.

56:36Amanda Dobbins:Oh, I'm also excited for you to talk to Steven Spielberg.

56:38Sean Fennessey:Oh, yeah, I'm nervous. Digger?

56:41Amanda Dobbins:I think that's a Venice.

56:42Sean Fennessey:I think you're right. The Entertainment System is Down, Ruben Oslin's new film.

56:47Amanda Dobbins:This, to me, he's, you know, the Prince of Cannes, so that seems like a no-brainer. Also, that means that, once again, Kirsten Dunst and I would be sharing the same air. Yeah. How do we get you guys together socially? I don't know, and I really don't want to force it, right? What if I pursue it?

57:04Sean Fennessey:I have some contacts.

57:05Amanda Dobbins:She's genuinely cool, so she's not... I don't want him to be like, hey, this person wants to be your friend. The one time I met her, she was great. We just talked about kid stuff. so she's lovely but we

57:15Sean Fennessey:don't know hey this person wants to be your friend no one would you can't be introed that way

57:19Amanda Dobbins:well I know

57:19Sean Fennessey:I feel like you guys would get along great I do as well

57:22Amanda Dobbins:but any of like the fake the Hollywood bullshit setup is just not gonna work okay

57:26Sean Fennessey:you know

57:27Amanda Dobbins:so I gotta I gotta think smart

57:29Sean Fennessey:do you like her because she's real talk central just like you yeah or she's like we're just cutting through it absolutely yeah okay I get that that's nice do you think she has many loved ones and friends

57:40Amanda Dobbins:I think she does I think she probably does too

57:42Sean Fennessey:so she doesn't need any more. Okay, Paper Tiger, James Gray's new movie?

57:46Amanda Dobbins:I hope so. Speaking of big in France.

57:49Sean Fennessey:I kind of want to ask him, should I email him right now? You think James is watching on Netflix? Probably not. Almost certainly not. Does he have Netflix? We should talk about that. 1949, Pavel Pavlikowski's new movie. This would be really fun. There's naturally a bunch of very exciting potential international films. Fjord also with Renato Reinsva. And, oh my gosh, what is Bucky Barnes' name? Sebastian. Stan, thank you. Hope Nahung Jin's new movie I haven't seen The Wailing in like 10 years I'm just gonna rewatch The Wailing before Cannes just in case this movie is playing there Al Becerra's Out of This World starring Riley Keough his first English language work I'm pretty excited about is there anything else that you're thinking about that could be there?

58:38Sean Fennessey:I mean I think you took the big ones You think Mando and Grogu will do a at a competition US screening? Well when are we gonna see it? That's the real challenge for our scheduling And how am I gonna see it with my child?

58:48Amanda Dobbins:I mean it's fine Chris Ryan's taking him as he knows he says he's not seeing the film and then I told him that he will be seeing it with Knox who will be so locked in who's so excited has so many questions you know and maybe Joanna and Mallory who have become kind of my like my like ask Jeeves but instead it's ask how Savar questions about the Mandalorian

59:10Sean Fennessey:interesting how you think of them as service people and not loved ones or friends

59:14Amanda Dobbins:they're lovely but when Knox asked me is Grogu an animal or a human at 5 30 on a Thursday? What am I supposed to do? And then he follows up with, can you ask the director? That's actually, I'm like, I don't know. I can't, but these people know they're close enough.

59:28Sean Fennessey:Okay. So we'll ask Mallory and Joanna. I never had Jon Favreau on the pod. Should I pursue that? I guess so. On Knox's behalf. And then I'll present the list of questions. Always been a fan of Jon Favreau. I don't really, you know, his career has taken a turn that wouldn't be my first choice, but you know that those early stretch of the swingers story was iconic to me one of the first screenplays I ever bought was Jon Favreau screenplay for swingers have him on it's a little personal

59:55Amanda Dobbins:maybe he'll be in can for the out of you know out of competition screening yeah and we can all see it together

1:00:01Sean Fennessey:you think he's pumped for Fjord

1:00:04Amanda Dobbins:you don't know him you don't know

1:00:06Sean Fennessey:I don't I know he loves movies yeah I hope he likes Fjord any other any other thoughts on can you're excited

1:00:12Amanda Dobbins:I'd like to go to the cap okay so if you're having a party just think of me you probably also we should go on a boat how are you on sea?

1:00:22Sean Fennessey:fine I'm from Long Island

1:00:22Amanda Dobbins:you're never ever sick at sea?

1:00:23Sean Fennessey:no

1:00:24Amanda Dobbins:um okay then we'd like to go on a boat

1:00:27Sean Fennessey:I didn't say I want to I mean if you want to

1:00:31Amanda Dobbins:because if you're out there you're going to be a can let us know

1:00:33Sean Fennessey:are there movies playing there? that's the thing I'm most excited about

1:00:36Amanda Dobbins:mornings are for movies

1:00:37Sean Fennessey:uh huh

1:00:38Amanda Dobbins:then the evenings are for boats

1:00:40Sean Fennessey:is that how it works?

1:00:42Amanda Dobbins:I would hope that I mean I'm just basing this on the Venice of it all, but that all of the, you know, the big movies at least get press screenings in the morning so then you can do the press conference and then they have like the premiere later at night. That's what I would assume.

1:00:56Sean Fennessey:Do you feel that you'd like to go to press screenings or premieres?

1:00:59Amanda Dobbins:Press screenings as much as I can. I mean, it would be fun to do one premiere, you know, and just see all the hoopla, but it's inefficient.

1:01:07Sean Fennessey:I see. Good question. Thank you for asking. All right, Jack, what's up? Next question comes from Brandon. Every March, especially after the Oscars happen, I like to watch a bunch of baseball movies in the lead up to opening day. What are your favorite garbage sports movies and why don't we get them anymore?

1:01:24Amanda Dobbins:Opening day in my house on Saturday.

1:01:27Sean Fennessey:Yes, Little League has begun.

1:01:29Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, that's right.

1:01:30Sean Fennessey:I saw the Instagram clip. I'm very supportive of this. The line drive up the middle. Yes.

1:01:34Amanda Dobbins:There we go. This is a nice tradition. I like baseball movies. I like sports movies. These were important to my childhood. Like bad movies about sports that aren't regularly broadcast on American television.

1:01:48Sean Fennessey:I have a bunch of these as well. I didn't write mine down. I will just say they don't happen anymore because audiences don't show up for them. And that this was like stock and trade Disney strategy for 30 plus years. That almost every year without fail, there would be a new kind of like high concept, low execution movie for nine-year-olds about sports. and you've listed some of them here. Others not listed include like The Little Giants, for example. Angels in the Outfield. You know, there were a lot of movies that were like that when I was, you know, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 where you could kind of count on them at all times and there was definitely a generation.

1:02:27Sean Fennessey:Our generation had our stretch of these and they, I think that they really carried on and extended to people who were in their like 30s, even their 20s and now it feels like if you're like 15, what are the sports movies of your life? Like Creed? I mean... Warrior? You know, like what are the...

1:02:44Amanda Dobbins:Creed would be great. If the youth are embracing Creed.

1:02:49Sean Fennessey:Yeah. The way back?

1:02:50Amanda Dobbins:I mean, that would be exciting. I do remember taking... F1? Our littlest cousin Max on Thanksgiving to Creed 2. Hi, Max, if you're listening. And as the lights went down, he said, so what happened in Creed 1? So I don't think that, you know, that generation, 18-ish, is embracing Creed. Does Max listen to the show? Sometimes. But listen, he's in college. She's got a lot of obligations.

1:03:13Sean Fennessey:What makes you more concerned? Loved ones of which you have many listening to the show or famous people that you've heard listen to the show? Because we've now heard some prominent famous people are listening.

1:03:24Amanda Dobbins:No famous people or no people who work in cinema should ever listen to this podcast. Okay. Why? Because they know things. Like they, first of all, they know where, they know all the secrets, but like they know how things work. And this is a fan thing. This is a celebration. I think there should be some distance.

1:03:45Sean Fennessey:Would you say this is a fandom podcast?

1:03:48Amanda Dobbins:No, because I think we're often too mean. But I also don't really feel that artists should read criticism of their work, positive or negative. I don't know how you can preserve that. Well, let's see. I think people should be themselves.

1:04:02Sean Fennessey:And if they are neurotic and need to see that feedback, I think they should.

1:04:06Amanda Dobbins:I think that obviously artists are different from people engaged in a commercial enterprise that has to make money, which movies also are. And you kind of do have to take some of that feedback. But no, I don't think filmmakers should be listening to what we have to say. I think you could just go and create and there's hearing us and there's listening.

1:04:27Sean Fennessey:Right.

1:04:28Amanda Dobbins:Sure. But I don't know. We don't look at the comments. I hear a lot of feedback. But do I listen? This is what I'm saying. so famous people good job on everything you're doing and I would say to you what I say to the rest of the job mob go outside

1:04:44Sean Fennessey:okay what were your garbage sports movies

1:04:46Amanda Dobbins:so Cutting Edge essential yep just absolutely dynamite related Mighty Ducks The Sandlot is not garbage but it's for children

1:04:56Sean Fennessey:I don't think any of these first three movies are garbage I don't either they're garbage in the classical like we love this

1:05:01Amanda Dobbins:Cutting Edge written by Tony Gilroy yeah

1:05:03Sean Fennessey:The Sandlot is an A-plus masterpiece.

1:05:05Amanda Dobbins:So is the next film, Bring It On, which is a straight-up masterpiece and is also about a competition, cheerleading. Chariots of Fire, which my parents tried to show me when I was like 10. And great, you know, the theme song and the guys running on the beach. It's very good. It's not really garbage, but also it won Best Picture over... That's 1980, right? Yeah, so it won over Raging Bull. It did. So I don't know whether we can defend that. No.

1:05:35Sean Fennessey:That was Ordinary People.

1:05:37Amanda Dobbins:Oh, that's right. So what did it win over?

1:05:39Sean Fennessey:I think Chariots of Fire is 84?

1:05:42Amanda Dobbins:81. That's close. 81, okay.

1:05:44Sean Fennessey:And what did it win over there? Well, I just Googled Chariots of Fire.

1:05:48Amanda Dobbins:So 1982 Oscars. We got to really standardize this. Okay. It won over Reds.

1:05:55Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Yeah, that's tough. For me, that's a split.

1:05:57Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, and that was a split. 81 for directing. Anyway. I don't like that. It is really funny. you follow people around who are running or exercising with the chariots of fire you like the vangelis the theme yeah of course it's very beautiful run to it no but like sometimes when knocks is on the playground and i'm trying to get him to run somewhere i play it on my phone and then we run along and it gets him from a to b can i tell you something i've been preparing for um

1:06:23Sean Fennessey:the to live and die in la rewatchables which is recording immediately after this normal day for me. Congratulations. And I used to think that the 80s sucked. And I used to think that the pop music from the 80s was not interesting. And I didn't really like the cinema. I'm coming around.

1:06:38Amanda Dobbins:Listen, Harold Faltermeyer, a god in our house.

1:06:41Sean Fennessey:Wow.

1:06:42Amanda Dobbins:I don't know what, I know nothing besides his music. So I don't, and his contributions to cinema. So like, I don't. In the event he has 10

1:06:48Sean Fennessey:people tied up in his basement. Don't like bring the politics to me.

1:06:51Amanda Dobbins:I don't know. I haven't done that research. Yeah, powerful stuff.

1:06:57Sean Fennessey:Okay, a couple of others. Wait, I didn't get to say Wimbledon?

1:07:00Amanda Dobbins:Speaking of Kirsten Dunst. Wimbledon stinks, but okay. Excuse me. Tin Cup? Yeah. That's more up your alley. It also stinks, but whatever. No, stop, please stop,

1:07:11Sean Fennessey:please stop.

1:07:12Amanda Dobbins:Molly's Game? She was a competitive skier! That is garbage sports if I've ever seen it. We should go with Molly's Game watch along. Garbage, oh my god, we should. That would be good. That's so fun. Okay, no one watches those, but it would be great.

1:07:26Sean Fennessey:No, they don't.

1:07:27Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, and then Blue Crush.

1:07:29Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I don't know if I've seen that.

1:07:32Amanda Dobbins:That was... Oh, yeah, Kate Osworth. Yeah, I've seen that. That was a thing when we were young. Jack, Blue Crush, ever heard of it?

1:07:37Sean Fennessey:No.

1:07:37Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

1:07:38Sean Fennessey:There we go. I mean, a few others, like Miracle is just good, you know, but that's kind of in the same zone. Remember, the Titans is a famous version of this.

1:07:46Amanda Dobbins:This isn't a list of good sports movies. Those are mainstream sports movies. Mainstream and garbage. is different. Sure. Yeah.

1:07:54Sean Fennessey:That's kind of The Big Green, the soccer movie. You ever see that one?

1:07:57Amanda Dobbins:No, I never saw that one.

1:07:58Sean Fennessey:You're kind of anti-soccer, aren't you?

1:08:00Amanda Dobbins:No. I'm at soccer practice every Saturday except when it's my turn to stay home with a sleeping baby.

1:08:06Sean Fennessey:Thunderstruck starring Kevin Durant.

1:08:07Amanda Dobbins:I haven't seen this.

1:08:09Sean Fennessey:It came out like seven years ago. Starring Kevin Durant. It was when he was still on the Oklahoma City Thunder. Thunderstruck is a play on words.

1:08:15Amanda Dobbins:And he's the star?

1:08:16Sean Fennessey:He's the co-star along with a young boy.

1:08:19Amanda Dobbins:But like how much screen time? How much does the movie rest on Kevin Durant's shoulders?

1:08:24Sean Fennessey:Inadequate amount. A teenage klutz becomes the star of his high school basketball team when he magically acquires the abilities of his hero, NBA star Kevin Durant. But the switch leaves Durant unable to score. Oh, dear. It's kind of a body swap. Okay. With NBA. I haven't seen it. How did it turn out? What's the body swap movie? It's terrible. What's the body swap movie with Kirk Cameron and Dudley Moore? Is that what you're called? I don't. I think that's who's in the cast. Like father, like son? Yeah. Is that it? Is it? No, is it Judge Reinhold with Kirk Cameron? What is this?

1:08:59Amanda Dobbins:Let's see. No, this is the father and son are switching minds in this.

1:09:04Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Like father, like son. Yeah. That movie is a banger. Is there a Judge Reinhold body swap movie too? I feel like there is. Yeah. Vice versa. Fuck yeah. Vice versa is actually the superior film.

1:09:14Amanda Dobbins:Okay.

1:09:14Sean Fennessey:Vice versa is Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage. And they body swap.

1:09:18Amanda Dobbins:Wow.

1:09:19Sean Fennessey:And it is fucking good, let me tell you.

1:09:22Amanda Dobbins:Okay. We're talking about sports movies right now?

1:09:24Sean Fennessey:Are we?

1:09:27Sean Fennessey:I said Thunderstruck. People were screaming at the TV. I mean, Karate Kid.

1:09:33Amanda Dobbins:Sure. But like, is that garbage? I guess it is. I don't know whether... What's the definition of garbage here?

1:09:41Sean Fennessey:Ralph Macchio, the pride of Long Island. Yeah. Thank you to Ralph. Noted Mets fan. Okay, what's the next question? Next question comes from Patrick from Ghana. What recent underseen or underappreciated movies do you see becoming a cult classic in the future? What do you think about my theory of the holy trinity of low wattage, late 2010s, early 2020s rom-coms of Palm Springs, Plus One, and Set It Up?

1:10:08Amanda Dobbins:These are good. Key attributes are that they have, if not the next generation of movie stars, but like young stars. We really like Glenn Powell, Andy Samberg, Christina Miladi. Zoe Deutsch is the other in Set It Up. And then plus one is Jack Quaden, Maya Erskine. Plus one, like, barely seen at all. So if anyone has not seen that, what a delight.

1:10:35Sean Fennessey:I feel like we should do a new rom-com canon. Okay. I was thinking about this and I was like, because these other movies that I listed here, and I'm not saying these are the best answers ever, but I'm like these already kind of have their own cults they already they had like instant cults because of the filmmaker who was attached or whatever and I remember when Set It Up came out and Set It Up it's like 2016 it's a long time ago now but when it came out I was like what the hell is this it was one of the only times I can remember in the last 10 years where I was like where did this come from who made this whose idea was this and probably because it was like based in part of Grantland but you know still there was something in it where I was like how did this get over the line given what was happening in movies at that time.

1:11:15Sean Fennessey:And I do feel that the same vibe is in Plus One in Palm Springs, where it's like, it's dramedy. There's like real world stakes, but it's kind of silly. You know, in Palm Springs' case, it's more elevated because of the time travel concept.

1:11:28Amanda Dobbins:The tricky thing is that these are all direct-to-streaming.

1:11:33Sean Fennessey:That's the other thing.

1:11:34Amanda Dobbins:Which, there's been no shortage of direct-to-streaming romantic comedies. Films and TV shows, but like a lot of movies in the last 10 years. Yes. many of them starring our greatest former movie stars and most of them like quite bad but it does seem like the high profile not very good streamers still get all of the like the attention and where things are where things are directed

1:12:01Sean Fennessey:yeah no I think you're right there's I think there's like I think those three movies I listed are kind of like the hidden bridge yeah to the kissing booth to all the boys I loved before the Colleen Hoover wave like they're not those movies are not really that funny. They're much more in the sort of like romance kind of teen obsession. And the other movies are more calm than rom, I would say.

1:12:25Amanda Dobbins:Yeah. Or like more vibey. I guess so.

1:12:30Sean Fennessey:Is that the best word I can come up with?

1:12:31Amanda Dobbins:They're traditional rom-coms where the people are like opposed and at war until the very last moment when they like kiss and make up. That's it. And so much about what's going on is the world that it's set in or like the premise. Palm Springs being like, oh, we're Groundhog Daying it. But at a wedding. Also, many of these two out of three wedding based. They both start at weddings. Do they end? They don't end at weddings.

1:12:59Sean Fennessey:Plus one is such a banger because it deploys this really, really well. I know.

1:13:03Amanda Dobbins:But your wedding rule is, would you like to state it?

1:13:05Sean Fennessey:If your film opens with a wedding, good. If it ends with a wedding, bad.

1:13:08Amanda Dobbins:Right. Right. Palm Springs does end with a wedding, but it's not.

1:13:14Sean Fennessey:Well, it's kind of a continuous loop of wedding. Okay.

1:13:16Amanda Dobbins:So it's allowed. And the other things, those are just different genres. Like the kissing booth, it's the teen thing, which is very different. And the Colleen Hoover stuff is romance, weird, whatever. So I think part of the reasons that these work is because they are just really traditional structured rom-coms.

1:13:37Sean Fennessey:I agree. If they don't have a cult, I'd like to inspire one.

1:13:39Amanda Dobbins:Okay, good idea. The rest of your list is good.

1:13:42Sean Fennessey:So some other ideas I had for this Pearl, which I do think is basically a cult movie already. I think, you know, the Tai West trilogy is well known and well covered, but like that movie in particular, I think has like a cosplay quality to it where people are just obsessed with that character. Bottoms? I just saw that

1:13:59Amanda Dobbins:Alex Ross Perry put a question in here.

1:14:01Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I put it in there for him.

1:14:04Amanda Dobbins:No, Bottoms is great.

1:14:05Sean Fennessey:Bottoms is great. Very funny.

1:14:05Amanda Dobbins:But not super well seen. Yeah.

1:14:08Sean Fennessey:But I think generationally well seen by younger moviegoers.

1:14:11Amanda Dobbins:And also has like Io Debrey and Rachel Sennett and Molly Gordon and... Taya Gerber. Yeah, like everybody. Yeah. All the people who have then... A whole generation. Yeah.

1:14:23Sean Fennessey:Bo is Afraid.

1:14:24Amanda Dobbins:Great movie.

1:14:25Sean Fennessey:That I think will be dramatically reclaimed in the next 10 years.

1:14:28Amanda Dobbins:Okay.

1:14:29Sean Fennessey:Red Rocket.

1:14:30Amanda Dobbins:Loved it.

1:14:31Sean Fennessey:Honestly, this is the one that I would have picked for all the Oscar hosannas for Sean. I feel like this is like maybe his best movie. Salt Burn?

1:14:40Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, but that was also, it was reclaimed as soon as it hit Amazon Prime. It was watched.

1:14:46Sean Fennessey:Was anybody like this is actually good? I think a lot of young people. What do you think, Jack? I don't know if a lot of young people were saying it's good, but I feel like it did penetrate like the Gen Z pop culture stream.

1:14:59Amanda Dobbins:Chris Ryan?

1:15:00Sean Fennessey:He enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he identified with the lead character.

1:15:03Amanda Dobbins:more than any other Emerald Fennell movie. For you. Yes.

1:15:07Sean Fennessey:That was your favorite of the three.

1:15:09Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

1:15:09Sean Fennessey:Okay. Better Man?

1:15:12Amanda Dobbins:We tried instantly.

1:15:14Sean Fennessey:Yossi's fave.

1:15:15Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

1:15:15Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Malignant. Have you seen Malignant?

1:15:19Amanda Dobbins:No. Which one is that?

1:15:20Sean Fennessey:Malignant is a good movie swap. OMG. Holy cow. Just look up the log line. Actually, don't. Don't read anything. I didn't.

1:15:27Amanda Dobbins:I looked at the poster and then I closed it.

1:15:29Sean Fennessey:It's a James Wan movie that came out during COVID.

1:15:31Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

1:15:31Sean Fennessey:When he was like, I'm just going to put set aside the major franchises that I work on for one minute and just make this bonkers original horror movie. And it's crazy.

1:15:41Amanda Dobbins:I added a couple. Game Night?

1:15:43Sean Fennessey:I think it's there.

1:15:44Amanda Dobbins:I do think it's there, but it's like we aren't we aren't saying it out loud yet. Every single time it comes up, everyone's like, oh, yeah. Remember how Game Night was the funniest movie ever made? And it still is. It was funny the first time I saw it. It's funny on rewatch. How can that be profitable for Frito-Lay? Oh, no. He died. Which I realized when we saw Send Help, I accidentally, I did that, like, in homage by accident. It was just kind of in my head. Yeah, so Challengers, I think, also.

1:16:16Sean Fennessey:Yes.

1:16:16Amanda Dobbins:A hit, though. Sure, but a modest hit.

1:16:20Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

1:16:21Amanda Dobbins:And then, I was wondering whether Marty Supreme counts for this.

1:16:26Sean Fennessey:I think the last two are too big, And I think that they're great examples of a legitimate power of a handful of people who are under the age of 35. Yeah. And we're doing 35 under 35 in April. And I'm excited for it. I'm a little concerned about it given the like some of the new audience we've discovered in the last two years. We haven't done this project in the last couple of years. A lot of haters come out for this episode. It's usually like a really controversial episode that we do.

1:16:57Amanda Dobbins:I think it's going to be, you mean that just because of the negativity or because we have young people who are going to be like, okay, mom and dad. Both.

1:17:05Sean Fennessey:You know, I think it kind of is coming in all directions. I mean, it's really good. Honestly, I like it when it's really noisy like that. But, you know, we had a debate about Margot versus Timothee Chalamet the last time we did that episode. And you've held tightly to Margot. Understandably, because she was coming right off of Barbie. I think I was pushing for Timothee.

1:17:24Amanda Dobbins:but it was once again it's reflective of what they've done versus what they're gonna do so it's like are we forecasting or are we marking the moment in time because now yes you're right it's Timmy

1:17:38Sean Fennessey:and did Margot Robbie cross the 35 threshold yeah she's not eligible so okay interesting yeah she's oh she's 35 she just turned 35 yeah okay uh what's the next question next question comes from Day what would you like to see in the new X-Men movie coming from Jake Schreier. P.S. The outfits go hard, Amanda.

1:17:57Amanda Dobbins:Thank you. Well.

1:18:07Sean Fennessey:I want something that feels familiar but new. Okay. I want the Chris Claremont era yellow and blue costumes. I want the classic team. I want Storm and Cyclops and Jean Grey and Wolverine and Beast and Professor Xavier and I want to see Rogue I want to see some of the like tier B characters you know Jubilee Archangel be interested in that I want to see them fight Magneto okay you know I want to see like a classical X-Men story and I don't want them to have to redo any of the stories they've previously done. It would be interesting to see them try to do something brand new. That would be risky. Comic book movies don't usually not use source material.

1:18:58Sean Fennessey:I imagine they are because one, it like pats the fan on the head, you know, where they're like, oh good, Age of Apocalypse, you like this, you know, Dark Phoenix, you'll enjoy this. And it's also like, because they're usually big epic stories, it's very legible for Normie Amanda. That's pretty much it. You know, I think I could probably personally do 12 consecutive episodes, wish casting, like fan casting, who should play the X-Men. Actually, I made an offer to the legendary News and Deals text thread, which includes the Blank Check guys and Alex Ross Perry and a few other friends. Where I'm like, if you guys are all in LA at the same time, we will do an X-Men fan casting episode.

1:19:40Sean Fennessey:But they'll never all be in LA at the same time, so we'll never actually make that episode. What do you want from an X-Men movie?

1:19:47Amanda Dobbins:I'd like for you to be happy. Okay, thank you. And I think I mean that both sincerely and also in the sense that I don't know if I can deal with the level of the breakdown. The fallout, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because this, you know, this will make many waves. It's not just that this movie is bad, but they've besmirched this legacy and then they, you know, killed a whole studio and lots of people lost their jobs and all for what? For this. For an X-Men movie that does not, you know, make the X-Men men happy.

1:20:17Sean Fennessey:You nailed it, man. That's actually it. It's like when you boil down the Fox deal to its barest essential. It's barest essential as X-Men. It's gotten other stuff, right? We just talked about getting Conan and getting to do Alien and Predator and getting to do Deadpool versus Wolverine and Fantastic Four and all that stuff.

1:20:36Amanda Dobbins:But getting to do.

1:20:39Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Remember, I don't want to talk about Fantastic Four. Anyway, I think, yeah, there will be a crash out amongst Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Z alike. Because X-Men is very, very sacred and very inspiring to young people who discover that comic book. Because it's a story about outcasts, people who are trying to find each other. Found family. Your favorite. But it actually literally is that.

1:21:02Amanda Dobbins:It's nice to find a family.

1:21:02Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and it's about figuring out what makes you special instead of what makes you different. And that's a beautiful way of telling a story. I really think X-Men is very, very intellectually deep in a way that is uncommon for a lot of comic books and also very legible for young kids. So I like it. After seeing Thunderbolts, do you think Schreier has the right sensibility for the material? I do. I think that movie is now maybe a bit underrated relative to what comic book movies have been since 2019. It's by no means perfect, but I do think he has a background in YA. and X-Men is YA. You know, it's about young kids going to school and figuring out their powers.

1:21:43Amanda Dobbins:I like that. I obviously prefer Spider-Man to all the other. The kid, teens are the right entry point. Also, Psy can say Spider-Man now, just so you know. Spider-Man. The problem is

1:21:54Sean Fennessey:you can't have teen Wolverine.

1:21:56Amanda Dobbins:Why not?

1:21:57Sean Fennessey:Because he's just not a teenager. You know, like Logan, Weapon X, he was like a man.

1:22:03Amanda Dobbins:Oh, I see.

1:22:03Sean Fennessey:When they put the adamantium in his body.

1:22:05Amanda Dobbins:Okay. And they don't time travel?

1:22:07Sean Fennessey:They do time travel.

1:22:08Amanda Dobbins:Well, there you go.

1:22:09Sean Fennessey:You want old, well, they did old Logan and younger X-Men, right? Didn't they already do that? No? You guys don't remember? Yeah, there you go. Days of Future Past, right? Isn't that what happens in that? I'm fairly certain that's what happens in that. Okay.

1:22:23Amanda Dobbins:Did you see that one? Is that the one where they go to Argentina or whatever?

1:22:28Sean Fennessey:No idea what you mean.

1:22:31Amanda Dobbins:Anyone?

1:22:33Sean Fennessey:Are you thinking of -

1:22:33Amanda Dobbins:Michael Fassbender?

1:22:35Sean Fennessey:Oh, that's first class. No, that's not that one.

1:22:37Amanda Dobbins:All right.

1:22:37Sean Fennessey:They go to Argentina in that one?

1:22:38Amanda Dobbins:I don't know where they go. Okay. Somewhere. All right.

1:22:41Sean Fennessey:What's the next question? That's a generous question. Thank you, Day. Next question comes from Tom from England. On longer journeys, I have started downloading a movie I have seen many times and then play the audio only through my car speakers. If you were to do this, which movie would you choose? Probably Network, because I can do network word for word.

1:23:00Amanda Dobbins:I was going to say A Few Good Men.

1:23:02Sean Fennessey:Another movie I've memorized large chunks of. Exactly. And also you don't really need the visuals. Yeah.

1:23:08Amanda Dobbins:It's a lot of, there's not a lot of empty air.

1:23:11Sean Fennessey:There's something to a movie that you can listen to. I shared this with you recently. I don't think I said this on the show. I watched the movie Nuremberg on December 24th, 2025. Right. And here's why I did it. One, I was obviously cramming for the year-end movies. I think Nuremberg is on Netflix now. You haven't seen it yet? No, I keep forgetting. It's probably worth a chat at some point.

1:23:33Amanda Dobbins:You keep saying this, but then there are all these other movies. Can we put it on the Movies We Missed episode? Yeah, that's a great idea.

1:23:41Sean Fennessey:I won't say anything about it, but here's how I watched it. I was building a five-foot-tall dollhouse for my daughter. Spoiler alert, Alice. Santa is not real. She's not listening. So I'm building this dollhouse on Christmas Eve, and it was an ornate, complicated act.

1:23:59Amanda Dobbins:It's quite impressive.

1:24:00Sean Fennessey:It is a very large edifice.

1:24:02Amanda Dobbins:Does it close or is it? It does not. It's open. Yes, so it's just kind of like the.

1:24:06Sean Fennessey:Very Toni Collette and hereditary. Yeah. You know, the miniatures are there. And, you know, we have a demon who obviously is living in our home. And so, you know, I couldn't really see the TV while I was building it because it was so tall. But I had Nuremberg on and I found Nuremberg to be an amazing movie to listen to. Because it's just people yelling at each other in rooms and over explaining the state of the world. Yeah. Led one another. And so what I heard, I found an enjoyable way to pass the time.

1:24:33Amanda Dobbins:When I was seven or eight, I got really into, and we would drive a lot to see, but my grandparents lived in Tennessee and North Carolina. And so this was in the olden days before iPads kids. And I would get books on tape. But what I liked was not just the narrated audio book. They were like audio plays of Agatha Christie mysteries that the, like, I think it was the BBC. They're amazing. and they can still, you can get them on Libby or whatever. I really recommend them. But they had the same, you know, there were people, it was kind of like Prairie Home Companion. They had people doing sounds and people doing like enough of a theatrical to set the vibe.

1:25:13Amanda Dobbins:And it was sort of like listening to a movie. They're great. I recommend that. But I guess you could also just listen to Miss Marple on, without looking at it.

1:25:22Sean Fennessey:Semi-related, have you read Saicho Matsumoto's Tokyo Express? us?

1:25:26Amanda Dobbins:I don't think so.

1:25:27Sean Fennessey:Eileen was eyeing this recently. And it's sort of an Agatha Christie-esque Japanese detective novel that apparently is very good.

1:25:36Amanda Dobbins:Oh, no, I haven't read this one.

1:25:37Sean Fennessey:I figured if someone had read it, you would have read it. Okay, what's the next question? Next question comes from Brandon. What is your most memorable movie theater experience ever?

1:25:49Sean Fennessey:I vividly recall seeing There's Something About Mary which I did with 10 friends

1:25:57Amanda Dobbins:oh that's cute

1:25:59Sean Fennessey:and we were huge huge huge Farrelly brothers and and and Jim Carrey and you know like super slapstick comedy fans and And I don't know if buzz worked differently at that time in history, but the pre-release buzz on There's Something About Mary, probably powered entirely by trailers and commercials, was like, this will be the funniest movie that ever touches your soul. And at the moment, it was. Like, it was. It was like going to see fucking Led Zeppelin or something.

1:26:34Amanda Dobbins:Were you reading Entertainment Weekly by then?

1:26:36Sean Fennessey:I was, yeah. Whether my friends were, I doubt. I probably was like the plug for all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

1:26:41Amanda Dobbins:So, but then you started. And then you're like, no, we really got it. we gotta do this. It was pretty,

1:26:45Sean Fennessey:pretty electrifying. Gotta be honest. I was a teenage boy living on Long Island, you know, what do you want?

1:26:49Amanda Dobbins:That's beautiful. I'm trying to think. So, as a child, I remember going to see Clueless at Lenox Mall with my mother. I was 11, 10 turning 11. And just remember being like, wow, I'm allowed to get to see something this quote unquote grown up. And also movies can be like this. I also remember seeing a year later Jerry Maguire with my mother, which was a pretty scarring experience because of the sex scene. I remember seeing The American President with my dad multiple times in theaters. So that's sort of a, I think we saw it four times in theaters.

1:27:26Sean Fennessey:Four times you both went together?

1:27:27Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

1:27:28Sean Fennessey:Wow.

1:27:29Amanda Dobbins:We just, we really liked it.

1:27:30Sean Fennessey:That's very sweet.

1:27:30Amanda Dobbins:Well, yeah, it was, he likes movies.

1:27:32Sean Fennessey:That's when a centrist liberal America was still possible. That's true.

1:27:36Amanda Dobbins:1995, that was the end of it. So I guess 95, big movie year. Let's see. And then as a grown up, I'm trying to think. I think a lot about the Irishman premiere. Oh, that was very memorable. Yeah. Which was. That was great. At the Chinese theater in Hollywood and was like a big deal and very fancy and everyone was there. And then wound up being one of the last big premieres that we went to before COVID. So. That's a great call. But and I also just remember like the end of that movie and in the still of the night. like playing through the Chinese. It really, really works. So, and then I remember taking my son and your son to sing it in the rain, your daughter to sing it in the rain at Vidya's.

1:28:22Sean Fennessey:I was going to say, where's my son?

1:28:25Amanda Dobbins:Give me back my son!

1:28:29Amanda Dobbins:And then they all started dancing in the front during the actual song, singing in the rain. That's very sweet. It was really, very special.

1:28:36Sean Fennessey:More recent adult ones for me. I mentioned this on our 25 for 25, but I was at the New York Film Festival premiere of The Social Network in September of 2010, which was incredible. I took Alice to see Wish when she was barely two years old and I watched something happen that happened to me that is just unforgettable and is like a huge part of our relationship right now, which is very special. I don't know, more recent fare. I'm trying to think of what's a, like an exciting festival screen. Oh, Uncut Gems at Telluride. that was fucking electric. And it was amazing because 25 % of the people were there left because they were like, this is disgusting to me.

1:29:16Sean Fennessey:And the other 75 % of us sickos were absolutely vibrating. Good question. I'm not an astronaut. I don't need an astronaut. Audiences have spoken. Project Hail Mary is an awe-inspiring masterpiece.

1:29:30Amanda Dobbins:So I met an alien.

1:29:33Sean Fennessey:If you've fallen out of love with going to the movies, this one will bring you back. Ryan Gosling in the first must-see movie of 2026. Project Hail Mary, rated PG-13, may be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters March 20th. This episode is brought to you by the Active Cash credit card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game and grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me. The ActiveCash credit card from Wells Fargo.

1:30:13Sean Fennessey:Be a two percenter. Learn more at wellsfargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply. Okay, what's next? Next question comes from our good friend, Alex Ross Perry. He asks, I wanted to know if you and Amanda have to take those passport style photos that serve as the banner for every episode by looking at the camera and giving a big old smile every single episode? And if so, do you do it at the beginning or end of the recording?

1:30:42Amanda Dobbins:What, you think AI is doing this? You think we're just changing our little outfits with the AI every time? No, of course we do it. We do it at the end. Here's the alternative, Alex Ross Perry. It's a thumbnail that is a screen grab of you frozen at the most heinous facial expressive moment that you possibly could make. And then the Green Goblin photoshopped into every single, like, around you, like, five of them trying to eat you. And then it just shows up and it, like, pops out at you, like, YouTube or Spotify. You're just going about your business. You're trying to hit Rafi, you know, to please your children.

1:31:22Amanda Dobbins:And then your face being eaten by the Green Goblin going like, ah, is just frozen there. Please make that screenshot. Yeah. Yeah, we do a direct-to-camera thumbnail, Alex Ross Perry. We're going to do it after this one. I don't do a big old smile. Sometimes on NBA group chat, you know, they're getting like snazzy with the little... Finger guns. Yeah, everything.

1:31:44Sean Fennessey:Should we do like this one time, you know, just some dance moves?

1:31:48Amanda Dobbins:Oh, like Pulp Fiction or whatever? No, because then immediately once the photo exists, it gets taken out of context, right?

1:31:56Sean Fennessey:Very good point.

1:31:56Amanda Dobbins:so and I have enough out of my control being live on Netflix as we are right now so that's my one attempt to art direct this what do we do with our thumbnails anyone have any thoughts

1:32:10Sean Fennessey:I don't care okay you know I've been on the rewatchables on video for some time now and every single photo of me promoting an episode of the rewatchables is me awkwardly laughing at something Chris has said every single time they're like this is going to be gold guys we'll just put Sean right in the middle and he'll look like a freak. And you know what? That's showbiz, baby. You know, like, what can I say? That's just how it works. Okay, what's next? Thanks, Alex. Next question comes from Jeffrey. Joffrey or Jeffrey? I apologize. It's Jeffrey. I recently saw Charlie Kaufman speak at Synecdoche, New York screening at Yale and was reminded of how much his work changed when he started directing his own screenplays.

1:32:51Sean Fennessey:With every Best Director winner dating back to the 2013 Academy Awards, having written or co-written their films and all five nominees writing their own films this year? Is something being lost in the old way of a great screenwriter turning over a script to a great director? This is a great question and a wonderful observation about how things have changed. I personally, I think you too, we're auteurists. We love people who conceive and imagine and build all from whole cloth. However...

1:33:21Amanda Dobbins:Well, the reason that we're so excited about that is because we came of age and came to love cinema in like the great heyday of wonderful directors taking great scripts from screenwriters and turning them into this classic, they don't make them anymore like this anymore, studio fair. So we were excited by what was new and what the younger generation was doing. And, you know, I think we'll all still really feel that way. And there's nothing, I think, both of us more exciting than someone who just has like, who has it all in their head. They see it and they've written it. They know what it's supposed to look like.

1:34:01Amanda Dobbins:They understand it, that it is kind of the closest you can get to film as a sculpture or a painting or as like fine art. So I do really value that. But also like Aaron Sorkin is directing The Social Reckoning. Like why? God help us. And that is someone who wrote the screenplays for some of my favorite movies that were then directed by Rob Reiner and David Fincher. And it's like, and now he's just doing it by himself. So...

1:34:31Sean Fennessey:I think there's two reasons for this. This is a very interesting question to me. I've given this some thought in the past too. One of the reasons is because obviously the studios are not taking the chances on those kinds of stories that you were talking about that are written by screenwriters. And it's just much harder to submit. It was much harder up until about two years ago to just submit a spec script and hope that anything could happen. The idea of a movie like Send Help Getting Made is super exciting because that just came from two veteran screenwriters who'd been writing movies for decades.

1:34:56Sean Fennessey:And that's a movie that they had written, you know, I don't know how many years ago it was, five, six, seven. And Raimi was like, I'll do this one. And that's kind of how the business should work like 30 % of the time. Yeah. Where there's just a good idea floating around and someone grabs it who has a lot of skill and they can transform it into something. It feels like that business is coming back. We were raised, you know, in like the Shane Black era, right, where Shane Black was like writing these mind-blowing screenplays and selling them for a million dollars. And that person was venerated in the same way that like William Goldman was venerated before that.

1:35:26Sean Fennessey:William Goldman never directed a movie. Sorkin obviously working in the same tradition. I think it's coming back a little bit. The sales are, the spec sales. The spec sales are up this year, which is really cool. Kaufman's a really good example. I like his films as a director, but I do not like them more than when he's working with Spike Jones. And him and Spike Jones together to me is as magical as it gets. In fact, I was listening to the How to Live and Die in L.A. commentary track with William Friedkin last night. And he was talking about his favorite films of all time and what they all did.

1:35:59Sean Fennessey:And he listed a handful of movies. All About Eve was certainly one of them. But there were a couple of others. And he said the things that these movies do is you have no idea where the story is going and they surprise you. They upend your expectations and then they surprise you. And he said the best modern example of that is when Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze get together. And I was like, that's such a random coincidence that that was part of that question. I think sometimes great screenwriters, one, they're not as trained in the art of filmmaking. So when they try to take their hand at it, like someone like Aaron Sorkin, he didn't train as a film director.

1:36:32Sean Fennessey:And a film director is an artistic craft. And I find that he's a little bit lacking stylistically to those who have worked on his films before. there's also just like something going on with the marketing and primacy of the one guy or the one girl and like movie studios have latched onto this very wisely where it's like this is a Christopher Nolan movie and that is the selling point

1:36:58Amanda Dobbins:as our friend David Sims wrote recently I mean and as we have been discussing you know movie stars are long gone replaced by Batman and Spider-Man and Harry Potter and so David observed that now it is the director that gets sold as like this is the it's a star vehicle but it's a star vehicle for Christopher Nolan or Greta Gerwig or Jordan Peele this is

1:37:21Sean Fennessey:not a mistake this is something that movie studios have learned through market research and looking at the audiences because as movies get smaller the people who go consistently are sickos and they are signing up for brands and those brands are not as frequently stars they're much more these people who create. It's like being really interested in an author and buying any book that they write. It's the same kind of fandom. I'm obviously one of these fans too, so I relate to it, but it has come at the expense of the stock-and-trade screenwriter, and that's a little sad.

1:37:50Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

1:37:50Sean Fennessey:What's next? Next question comes from Reina. After watching the studio, I re-watched The Player, and I was wondering, what are some of your favorite Hollywood satire movies? there are a lot

1:38:06Amanda Dobbins:I know you made a long list of many of the classics I added a couple

1:38:12Sean Fennessey:the top three classic Hollywood editions of this are Sullivan's Travel Singing in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard presumably if you're listening to the show you've heard of those movies they're three of our favorite movies we talk about them all the time on the show they all I think operate in a different register of satire when it comes to Hollywood and achieve their ends in different ways

1:38:32Amanda Dobbins:we should also say that since the player was mentioned in the question it's not also on the list which would be in it would be a top four it would be a mal rushmore situation no question

1:38:43Sean Fennessey:handful that i'm thought of hail caesar tropic thunder um the hollywood shuffle the loved one is a little bit of an underrated one it's a tony richardson um movie from the 1960s that has a lot of fun. Albert Brooks is the muse. Bowfinger. Speaking of Criterion, there's a great edition of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter starring Jane Mansfield that I think is very funny. State and Maine. Blazing Saddles, especially like the last 20 minutes of Blazing Saddles when it becomes clear that they're inside of a movie. I've been thinking about Blazing Saddles a lot because I'm thinking about Mel Brooks who's turning 100 and, you know, his career really deserves as much acclaim as it can get while he's still with us.

1:39:24Sean Fennessey:What else did you add?

1:39:25Amanda Dobbins:Speaking of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, Adaptation, which is the satire of many things, but screenwriting is certainly one of them. And then Notting Hill, which may have a sweet ending, but is pretty acidic about movie stars and certainly about Alec Baldwin as a movie star.

1:39:43Sean Fennessey:Yes. Did we ever do an episode about Hollywood satires?

1:39:49Amanda Dobbins:I think so, but maybe during the pandemic. Okay. But we could go back.

1:39:55Sean Fennessey:Okay, let's keep going.

1:39:56Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, are we going to talk about hoppers?

1:39:58Sean Fennessey:Yeah, let's keep buzzing. We're going to do two more questions. Okay. Should I make one of them life advice? Yes. Okay. Last movie-related question comes from Kyle. What films really capture the people or culture of the city or state you grew up in? There's a whole history of Long Island cinema, many of which get it very, very right. No movie gets it more right than The Wolf of Wall Street.

1:40:24Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

1:40:25Sean Fennessey:Which doesn't take place entirely on Long Island, but it captures the Long Island aggro bro better than any movie I've ever seen. Married to the Mob and Goodfellas are sort of antecedents for this. They are like much more in the, in the sort of like the production design, the vocal intonations of people, the relationships that they make. First half of Married to the Mob, second half of Goodfellas, you know, sort of like when they're in the suburbs moments of those movies. Steve Buscemi's film Trees Lounge is an all-time Long Island classic and as somebody who spent a lot of time in bars with his dad as a kid that's what it's like to be in a bar Hal Hartley's Trust is unforgettable it was Frank Oz's In-N-Out starring Kevin Kline was shooting in Northport which is one town over for me when I was a teenager and there was a huge flurry around that movie when I was a kid and I remember it very well and it takes place on Long Island And No Hard Feelings in Montauk, which I think is a really good, like, the locals in the beach town, you know, in the tourist town representation.

1:41:34Sean Fennessey:Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A lot of Long Island Railroad in that movie. Final Destination 1. Yeah. You know, just sad Jets fans getting annihilated by death. And then the cinema of Ed Burns. Sure. You know, especially the brothers McMullen.

1:41:52Amanda Dobbins:Have you seen the family McMullen? I haven't.

1:41:54Sean Fennessey:but I will watch it. I'm a Burns completist.

1:41:58Amanda Dobbins:I'm a fan.

1:41:59Sean Fennessey:Of the film?

1:42:00Amanda Dobbins:No, of Ed Burns.

1:42:01Sean Fennessey:Oh, yeah, okay.

1:42:02Amanda Dobbins:Yeah, and of his choice to marry Christy Turlington. Good job.

1:42:05Sean Fennessey:I'm a fan of that choice as well. They put Tracee Ellis Ross in the mix there too. She's joining the McMullen family. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to see it. I'm intrigued. It's on HBO Max. Okay, what's Atlanta?

1:42:16Amanda Dobbins:So the thing about Atlanta is that now every movie is filmed there, but not that many good movies are set there. Yep. so to get the vibe and to movies actually that represent Atlanta I'm sorry to say that Gone with the Wind represents well listen yeah it happened there and Atlanta is like has been and you feel that was when it was at its best can be a very racist city and then the other historical one I thought of was Selma which obviously is in Alabama but Dr. King was from Atlanta, like a very important part of the fabric and history of Atlanta. And also John Lewis is featured pretty prominently in Selma.

1:42:57Amanda Dobbins:And that was our congressperson for many years growing up and like a absolute Atlanta legend. So those are Atlanta historical. Then present day, drumline.

1:43:08Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

1:43:09Amanda Dobbins:You know, and the like HBCUs. And I believe that is like a made up one in Atlanta.

1:43:15Sean Fennessey:Nick Cannon.

1:43:17Amanda Dobbins:Contagion, which the CDC, back when it existed.

1:43:21Sean Fennessey:Yes.

1:43:21Amanda Dobbins:CDC is important. It's there. I went to summer camp near the CDC for many years, and I'm healthy and thriving, and I believe in vaccines.

1:43:29Sean Fennessey:Yes, and you have many friends and close loved ones, yes.

1:43:32Amanda Dobbins:And then, I mean, every Marvel movie, I guess. I don't know. So Black Panther starts with a heist at the High Museum of Art. and I, it's not identified as the High Museum of Art, of course. I grew up two blocks from the High Museum of Art. And I went there all the time and played in the front lawn all the time. And then the library where I went to story time was right across the street.

1:43:57Sean Fennessey:Wow.

1:43:58Amanda Dobbins:So I didn't witness any heists in my time, nor did I meet any superheroes.

1:44:03Sean Fennessey:Okay.

1:44:03Amanda Dobbins:But -

1:44:04Sean Fennessey:Eric Killmonger, not exactly a superhero, right?

1:44:07Amanda Dobbins:Well, thwarted, I guess, you know, and he's angry about it. He's trying to steal it back.

1:44:11Sean Fennessey:That's true.

1:44:13Amanda Dobbins:I don't know Atlanta I it's good it's good and it's bad

1:44:17Sean Fennessey:okay

1:44:18Amanda Dobbins:you had a tough experience but you weren't properly in the city of Atlanta so

1:44:22Sean Fennessey:no

1:44:22Amanda Dobbins:Long Island is I feel the same way yeah

1:44:24Sean Fennessey:it's good it's bad it's like any place okay what's our last question before chatting hoppers a little bit last question live life advice with Dustin he writes in I recently ordered an engagement ring for my long time girlfriend but I've been struggling to come up with a fun and meaningful way to propose We're both cinephiles and are going to TIFF for the second year in a row this fall Should I work our love of cinema into my proposal? What do you think? I mean, yes, absolutely

1:44:53Amanda Dobbins:It's like I don't think Where are you on a public proposal?

1:44:59Sean Fennessey:It's not what I would do

1:44:59Amanda Dobbins:It's not what I would do either It's not what happened to me And I don't think I'm a big fan of TIFF Excited that you guys are going But we shouldn't be trying to rent out a screen to do some sort of will you marry me public sort of thing. I couldn't in a good conscience. Let's just game it out. I don't know. I've never been to TIFF. I've never been to Canada.

1:45:19Sean Fennessey:You book a friends and family only mass screening of Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride. The greatest love story ever told. You and your gal come out. You introduce the film. You say, hey, my name's Dustin. This is Maggie Jr. you're madly in love with each other.

1:45:39Amanda Dobbins:Yeah.

1:45:39Sean Fennessey:This is an expression of our love. Two monsters trying to make their way across the United States of America or Toronto. I guess Toronto and Canada. This is a Canadian story. And I guess Niagara Falls figures prominently in the film The Bride. Oh, yeah.

1:45:52Amanda Dobbins:That's right. That looked real fake.

1:45:53Sean Fennessey:And after the film is over, stick around. We've got a special surprise for you all. No, no, no, no.

1:45:59Amanda Dobbins:No, no, no. I mean, what you have to do is you either have to get in touch with Jesse Buckley's people and or film your film your own drop in. And instead of here comes the motherfucking bride or. Wait, you want to cut the film? Yeah. And then you either listen, you've already rented out a friends and family screening for the bride in Canada. I can't recommend any of that. No, I don't. You know, I don't know. I don't think public. But what's like a small thing that you could do for movie night? I mean, let's see. I don't. I don't. I honestly, it's great that you have shared interests. A gimmicky proposal, you don't really have to do it.

1:46:43Amanda Dobbins:Do something from the heart. I still don't remember anything my husband said to me during the proposal because I was so surprised and I like sort of blacked out. He says it was nice. I'm sure that it was. I said yes.

1:46:55Sean Fennessey:Did you fear dying alone? No.

1:47:00Amanda Dobbins:I didn't. Me either. You know the story of this is that we didn't really we didn't have a conversation about it. It's not like I picked out a ring or anything. We had one conversation about my very ambivalent feelings about the institution of marriage because of, you know, previous events, child of divorce. World War Two?

1:47:22Sean Fennessey:I don't know what you mean.

1:47:24Amanda Dobbins:Sure, all of that. And like and nothing happened. And six months went by. And then just like out of nowhere. So I didn't remember. And that was nice. I thought it was very romantic. One of the most romantic things that you can do, even though I think marriage is like a pretty weird institution and it's primarily a business arrangement, one of the most romantic things you can do is ask someone to marry you. So just do that. Just do it. Like, do it meaningfully. Probably not in public. I don't know if you need a photographer hidden, but that's up to you. And then you can go see a movie.

1:48:00Sean Fennessey:That's good advice. Okay, thank you. Let's leave it there. Thank you for all of these wonderful questions. We had a bunch more, but we just didn't have time to get to them. We will be doing another mailbag immediately after the Academy Awards. So maybe some of these questions can float into that mailbag.

1:48:12Amanda Dobbins:That will be about the Oscars, though.

1:48:14Sean Fennessey:Almost entirely, yeah. But, you know, maybe we'll just sprinkle in some other stuff for fun. You know, just to keep it loose. How are you feeling about your 2027 Oscar picks? It's only 11 and a half months away. It's going to be great. Hoppers.

1:48:29Amanda Dobbins:Have they announced the date for the 2027 Oscars?

1:48:32Sean Fennessey:Yeah, it's July 18th, 2027, which I think is a really good idea. And they should keep pushing it back. Hoppers is directed by Daniel Chong. It's his first feature for Pixar, though not his first feature film. It's written by Jesse Andrews, and the story is by Chong and Andrews. The voice cast includes Piper Kurta, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, and Dave Franco. The story is as follows. when scientists discover a way to transform human consciousness into robotic animals, Mabel uses the new technology to uncover mysteries of the animal world that are beyond anything she could have ever imagined.

1:49:10Sean Fennessey:What did you think of Hoppers? I had a nice time, as did my four-year-old son.

1:49:19Amanda Dobbins:It was a little convoluted, is it not?

1:49:22Sean Fennessey:It is.

1:49:23Amanda Dobbins:It's a little, and I would say the most succinct review was delivered by my son 20, maybe 25 minutes into Hoppers when he just said very loudly, this is not Hoppers because he had not seen any of the animals advertised on the billboard just yet. And very shortly thereafter, King George, the beaver and, you know, and all the other animals of the animal kingdom showed up and he was very excited. I don't think he could tell you reliably anything that happened in the film hoppers afterwards. But spending time with animals and trying to, you know, be a force for good in the world, I'm pro.

1:50:09Sean Fennessey:Yes. I'm with you. I like this movie. Yeah. I thought it was perhaps the most laugh out loud funny Pixar movie in a long time. I thought it had really good jokes. Yes. It had a couple of real gasp moments. There's one in particular where one character is eliminated that I was like, oh my. Oh, that was funny.

1:50:27Amanda Dobbins:It was great. It was a great moment.

1:50:28Sean Fennessey:There's a handful of moments like this that are surprising and played for laughs. Yeah. And the slapstick of it is very good. I think the voice performances are great in this movie. I thought Dave Franco and Meryl Streep in particular were excellent. It's crazy to just be saying Meryl Streep and Hoppers, but she's in there. Yeah. It is ornately plotted. and I would say, I don't want to say it's challenging for a little kid, but I'll tell you this, in the same way that Knox had a reaction 20 minutes in, about an hour in, Alice, who I would describe as a high-level plot understander, given that she has like a real mastery of the Star Wars universe at four and a half years old, turned to me one hour in, she said, Dad, what is this movie about?

1:51:18Sean Fennessey:And I couldn't answer that succinctly and quietly for her in the movie theater. But I think, and you know what? Maybe for eight-year-olds, it's super easy to understand. But because of the experience that we find ourselves in as parents going to see these movies, I'm watching it through her eyes a little bit more. And it's okay for them to not understand every plot detail. But this is a wacky plot.

1:51:37Amanda Dobbins:Yeah. To be fair to Hoppers, my son can't really recount the plots of anything that he sees. But it is, it's a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat on an animatronic beaver. or a robot beaver. I don't want to get the technology wrong.

1:51:54Sean Fennessey:It's a robot with the power to accept consciousness.

1:51:57Amanda Dobbins:In a real battle with my son over whether robots are good or evil and really about drones and whether drones are good or evil, I'm obviously anti-drones in all cases. And he, as a contrarian opinion, is just like drones. Yeah, I'm into it. I like them. You don't like them, but I do because I think he likes them when they're flying around at the park. Of course. And then robots, he's very interested in Siri. That's very complicated. You know, he likes to talk to Siri. So I didn't love it when robots were lionized in this film. But it was so confusing. Like, it was a robot for such a short period of time that I think it really just passed over Knox's head.

1:52:43Sean Fennessey:I personally didn't find the actual plot confusing to understand, like as an adult. No. I don't think it's, I think most people will understand the movie. I think for young kids, it's just a lot of information. It's just a lot of jumps. And it's also, I mean, it's like, it's also a few different kinds of films. Like it is kind of a body swap, body horror movie in a way. It's also like a conservationist comedy. You know, it's very thorough Ralph Waldo Emerson in terms of how it thinks about like the transcendental relationship to nature and how fulfilling and powerful that can be for the young Mabel character and her relationship with her grandmother.

1:53:16Sean Fennessey:I found that stuff to be very touching. Yeah. Very classical Pixar.

1:53:19Amanda Dobbins:I mean, there's a 10-minute, very moving prologue about Loss. Yes. That animates the, sorry, that does animate the rest of the film.

1:53:28Sean Fennessey:Literally.

1:53:29Amanda Dobbins:Pun intended, I guess. I also like, especially young Mabel, I loved. I really would have liked a whole movie about young Mabel. Yes. Then she turns into a teenager, which I guess you have to be to have access to the research lab where they're turning into, I get it from a plot place, but I was really into angry seven-year-old Mabel trying to free all the reptile pets in her classrooms.

1:53:53Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I think there's something interesting too about how old is the kid in the story that you're telling for a Pixar film. You know, in Elio, I think he was maybe like eight or nine. In this movie, Mabel is a teenager. Yeah, she's 19. She's an activist teenager. And that has got to be the oldest lead. She's living on her own. short of soul, I guess.

1:54:16Amanda Dobbins:She goes to school. She goes to college in Beaverton. She doesn't always attend her classes, but she's college age.

1:54:22Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and so that choice, I think, leads to kind of a naturally little bit more elevated experience where this kind of like this collision of science and the real world and politics. Initially, the villain of the film is a Gavin Newsom-esque mayor named Jerry, voiced by Jon Hamm, who is up to no good. He's trying to build a bridge and in doing so, he is sending the wildlife racing away from their natural habitat and so that's really what Mabel is trying to preserve and there's like a couple things about this movie that I didn't totally click with clearly like Mabel is trying to make some chaos to transform the human world to let the animals return to their safe place because she believes that they should have their own sanctuaries and they shouldn't be disrupted by humans and also she has this emotional connection to her family and the way that she kind of came to understand herself and be more at peace by being in that world herself.

1:55:20Sean Fennessey:So then she's like kind of setting up an animal plot to undermine the humans. But then she accidentally kills the queen of the insects. And when she does so, all the creatures want to go kill a politician and Mabel. And they go on a mad spree. And then one of the butterflies' son grows up to be an evil butterfly king.

1:55:48Amanda Dobbins:Titus, yeah.

1:55:48Sean Fennessey:Titus and then he goes into the robot body of Jerry once they've been cat like it's a very yeah there's it's just going in a lot of places and it's a lot of it's a lot of plot in the final 40 minutes of the movie and then the movie has a naturally like sweet conclusion like the bad guy was eliminated and the other bad guy learned a lesson and then we're gonna clean up this place after a forest fire, which is a little...

1:56:15Amanda Dobbins:That was tough. Yeah, I was thinking about when they finished script development on this. Yeah. Because...

1:56:24Sean Fennessey:I mean, these movies take years to make, obviously. Yeah, I assumed. But just we're a year out of the wildfires here in Los Angeles. And that was unfortunate to see my wife said something about it immediately afterwards. And then Jerry's just like cleaning up the forest and he hasn't lost office despite all the terrible things that he's done. And it's like, okay, we got this, you guys. We can conserve the environment. I don't know. I was left a little like, I guess this is solved then. Thanks, Hoppers.

1:56:51Amanda Dobbins:And you get a job at the local research thing, but we can't be animals anymore. So instead, the professor has a whole whiteboard of other ideas of things. So science continues, but in harmony with nature. Yeah. I don't know. I mostly just laughed at the animals like my child did. Yeah, the jokes are good.

1:57:12Sean Fennessey:Yeah. And it's very entertaining.

1:57:14Amanda Dobbins:Like in the I did think it was notable that to me, the funniest joke was about an iPhone and about using voice like voice to text or text to voice and emojis and but we've, you know, a lot of. Yeah. But like and not that's the only thing that Knox remembers. As soon as I start going beaver, beaver, beaver, he remembers the potato punchline. So it works.

1:57:40Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

1:57:40Amanda Dobbins:I thought Bobby Moynihan was really funny. And the like the George character has the classic like I would buy it, you know, a stuffy merchandisable. I'm rooting for this person. Very funny, endearing. I thought the ways that their expressions, but their and their eyes change depending on whether they were like talking between animals. I love that. Yeah. And so the thing, the innate child thing of wouldn't it be fun to be an animal and be able to talk to animals, which, you know, all children. or most children do feel, I thought they realized really well. I just, everything else was involved. I say that, but we sat next to like two grownups on a date to see the Pixar movie in the middle of the afternoon, which is really cool.

1:58:26Amanda Dobbins:And I was mostly nervous about making sure that my child, you know, behaved appropriately. But it did remind me that these movies have the burden of like a much wider audience now.

1:58:37Sean Fennessey:They have to support both audiences. They really do. It's a very good point. yeah I think so Chong shared a kind of like 2D animation preview of what the film looked like at an early stage and it was a pure Miyazaki style hand-drawn experience of two beavers going up the river and it was beautiful yeah we don't know how the movie would have poured it over in that way but I do think that there's something in the like hyper mania of kids movies and that extends to good kids movies like this, like Zootopia 2. Like these are pretty good movies. But there's something like really antic about them that you don't find in a Miyazaki movie.

1:59:18Sean Fennessey:And I wonder what this movie would have been if it had removed a little bit of the like robot chaos mania. Sure. And been a little bit more ground level. Like a little bit more Ponyo. If it would have been a better movie. And frankly, if Chong might have been like almost more well suited to that, I can kind of feel just the like poptimist Pixar stuff going on in the film at times. It's not like, it doesn't make it bad, but it did make me wondering about the alternative.

1:59:48Amanda Dobbins:Well, you can feel it in the pacing. And it both just, it does have jokes every few minutes, but it's almost like it's the kid version of the Netflix. Make sure that you have something that you have to look at the screen at every five seconds because people are going to be looking away. And so it's just over here, over here, over here. And it worked. You know, my kids sat happily, but it felt overstuffed. And it kind of just, you can really feel the divide between, okay, we're putting this stuff in for the bigger kids and the grownups and we're putting this stuff in because we know we have to get a new younger audience.

2:00:23Amanda Dobbins:They are not cohesive.

2:00:25Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I find with a lot of these movies, I can hear the noises of 15 adults in a room like negotiating between what's going to work at what time in the movie. And that's just a product of having seen every single one of these multiple times and really liking a lot of them. But it's very hard to go back to a more innocent viewing experience of seeing Toy Story for the first time, where even though I was probably 13 at the time, there just felt like something extraordinary that had never been done was happening. But just the use of that 3D animation style at that time felt so novel. And now that has been the experience we've lived in for 30 years as animation consumers.

2:01:03and so when I saw that 2D image I was like there's there's a reason why a Miyazaki movie still feels

2:01:10Sean Fennessey:special and still feels different and there's a reason why Spider-Verse still feels special because that's different than this that is that the texture of those movies is unlike just what every Pixar movie looks like you mentioned Luca earlier Luca is one of the few Pixar movies that looks totally different like the visual palette is so dramatically different um I don't mean to dump on the movie I think it's like very good and I'm glad that it's successful and doing well but But I had some, and I've seen it twice now. So I had some time to kind of mull it over and kind of work through how much did this really follow through on all of its intentions.

2:01:44Amanda Dobbins:Yeah. I don't know that it has real lasting power in the mind of the people in my house either. It has not been brought up several times. But like once since we saw it. But Mandalorian and Grogu lives run free. And I did also forget that the movie theater we went to had like Zootopia two popcorn buckets still out. They just have them all. They're making popcorn buckets for everything apparently. Yes, they do.

2:02:11Sean Fennessey:Yeah. About to get that skin and marine popcorn bucket.

2:02:15Amanda Dobbins:My son was like begging me like, please, please, can we have this? Please. He was holding it, you know, because it's just a friendly snake. And you did it. That's where he is. No, of course not. No. Where am I going to put that?

2:02:30Sean Fennessey:on his head after consumption we got popcorn and then when the movie ended Alice said can I have M &M's so we just got M &M's after the movie

2:02:39Amanda Dobbins:oh that's really nice Nox kept trying to buy me peanut M &M's because he knows I like them that's true and he kept being like mama I really want to get these for you mama can I get them and I was like this is a generous act yeah but it's self-serving but I appreciate the creativity yeah of trying to think that he can buy it for me and then yeah it's smart Anyway, he had a nice time.

2:03:00Sean Fennessey:How did you feel our live experience went? Did this break two minutes in and we don't know?

2:03:04Amanda Dobbins:Jack? No, it's good?

2:03:06Sean Fennessey:It's all good. Nothing broke.

2:03:08Amanda Dobbins:We're still on Netflix?

2:03:09Sean Fennessey:Who's watching? My mom, my girlfriend. Is President Trump watching?

2:03:14Amanda Dobbins:I really, really hope not.

2:03:16Sean Fennessey:This has been a great episode of The Big Picture. Thank you to Jack Sanders, Lucas Kavanaugh. Yeah. Yeah, thank you to our producer, Jack Sanders, for navigating these live waters. Thanks to Lucas. Thanks to everybody here at Spotify who helps make this happen for us. We appreciate it. This was a road test.

2:03:33Amanda Dobbins:Yes.

2:03:34Sean Fennessey:For next Sunday's episode. Sunday night. But that's not our next episode. Our next episode is on Thursday. We're going to be making our final Oscar predictions.

2:03:43Amanda Dobbins:You're going to wait till Thursday to put it up? Are you sure you're not going to say put it up as soon as it's ready, Jack? Because I want my wisdom to be up.

2:03:50Sean Fennessey:There's a reason why I can't do that. That I will reveal to you on the episode.

2:03:54Amanda Dobbins:Okay. How exciting.

2:03:57Sean Fennessey:Jack how'd you feel about this good Home run Okay come see us on next Thursday Thanks to everybody for watching at home All dozen of you We'll see you next time

2:04:25you