Gleesons Vs Skarsgårds: Dawn Of Clint Howard (ft. guests MJ Bassett; Sean Ellis & Orlando Bloom)

23:04Chris Hewitt:We've talked about this in the past, that the subsequent review of Death Watch stung you to the point where you disposed of your collection of Empire in a rather unorthodox fashion. But that's fine. I auctioned off all my empires. We'll get past it. But we are past it now, because the trick is now not to read the reviews. No, I don't. I mean, you know, Sonia's come out. In America last night, it was this kind of one-night-only theatres across America. Oh, okay. It's a very strange release strategy, but you sort of swallow these things in modern filmmaking. However your movie gets out there is fine, as long as it gets out there.

23:39I have no idea what anybody's saying about it. I genuinely do. I mean, people say, I genuinely, I read one review early on from a Rotten Tomatoes qualified reviewer, and it was a great review. And I'm like, okay, I'm done. That's it, I'm fine. I'm good. Because the truth of the matter is for me, and every creator deals with it in different ways. Like, I'm British, so if you say a nice thing about my movie, I don't know what to do with that anyway. And are you suspicious as well? Yes, I'm always very suspicious. And then if you say something shitty about my movie, I'll just be deeply, deeply upset.

24:15And if you're indifferent to my movie, I'll be very offended. So there's no response you can give me which makes me feel good about myself. Right, okay. So better just not to bother anymore. And I know, some people are going to love the movie. they're going to because it's a really fun picture. And some people are going to hate it because it's just not their flavor or I've done it wrong in their eyes or whatever. And for the majority of people, it'll be like, that was fun. Let's have a beer.

24:41Chris Hewitt:Okay. So I can only do movies for me. The experience of making the movie is the only thing I truly care about now after having done nine movies and more hours of television than I can count. I go, okay, it has to be the experience. It has to be, what's it like on the floor with the actors and the crew putting together a story that I have in my head. Now, once it's cut, you know, like I read, Sonia, the editing process took forever for various reasons, business, financial, whatever it's going to be. It's uncreative. But it sat there for a while. And there was lots and lots. There are 25 executive producers of this movie or something.

25:18Chris Hewitt:It's one of those. It's one of those. And lots of modern movies are because of the way you combine financing to get anything made. Unless you're a studio picture, you're an indie picture. If you're an indie pitcher, you're making your money from multiple territories, and every territory is an executive producer. So that's how that gets put together. So you have to kind of understand the business of film to be able to do the creative of film. Certainly on my level, I'm not a super successful filmmaker, right? So in terms of television, I'm sort of bottom A-list TV director and sort of mid-B-list, being on a good day, feature director.

25:54right depending what the Empire says I have no idea what you guys are going to say about this movie but it may knock me down a few times nor do I to be honest that's a good thing right because you can't I'm looking you in the eye right now

26:06Chris Hewitt:I'm divorced from all of that stuff across the market I enjoyed the movie I do not know what we're going to say about it I've seen the movie okay you enjoyed it yeah I enjoyed the movie it's a fun movie right yeah there you go if you like Solomon Cain yes you will like Red Sonja right yeah I mean I think they're definitely kissing cousins yeah You know, Kane is a much darker picture. Much darker picture. That somewhat reflects me as a person, my personal evolution as well. I was much unhappier in my life making Kane. Personally, the movie is amazing and I'm incredibly proud of it. And I think, you know, 10 years later, 15 years later, I see people saying, you know, it's one of the best fantasy movies ever made, right?

26:44It's on a list for people, which I'm really proud of. And I should be proud of it, you know, for all its failings. Sonya is a lighter tone and a more positive outlook and has more compassion at its heart, right? For me, Sonya, you know, she's got this long storied history from obviously Robert E. Howard created her 1935, the short story Shadow of the Vulture, where a whole other Sonya was created. And she's only got like 30 lines of dialogue in this short story. But something about that resonated all the way through. So Roy Thomas, when he was working for Marvel, he wanted to have a female character alongside Conan.

27:19in their Marvel comic run for him. And they took Sonya and they completely reinvented her into this kind of buxom barbarian woman wearing virtually no clothes. And it was always a very male gaze-y view of a female comic book character, as they have been for generations. So I kind of knew her, and I obviously knew Bridget Nielsen's version with Arnold, which is, you know, you take that for what it is, in that run of 80s fantasy movies, you know, Lady Hawk and Beastmaster and all those things, which I adored. but they were never my fantasy. Yeah. In a very literal sense, they were never my version of fantasy and they're never what I imagined this character could be.

27:57So, and I think it was 17 years it's been in development as a movie. A long time. A long, long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

28:03Chris Hewitt:I didn't think this would ever get made, I'll be honest. No, nobody did. Nobody did. The crew who worked on this movie did not think it was going to get made. They were three months in and they were going, still don't think it's going to get made. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Only when the money's in the bank account will it get made. No, but I chased the movie, right? So after I made Solomon Cain, people said to me, what do you want to do next? Yeah. In that very, like, you don't believe them. But they said, what would you like to do? The kind of question that you'd ask me, right, over an interview.

28:26You made Solomon Cain, what's next for you? How dare you? Because you're going to ask me that at the end of this interview. What's next? Am I? Yeah, right? We'll see. We'll see. He's scribbling. He's putting a line to that question right now. Listen, look at me.

28:37Chris Hewitt:Come around to my side. I have no questions written down. This is... I have no pen. I have no pencil. This is entirely an extemporaneous interview. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so after Kane, people say, what do you want to do next? And the assumption is Conan. Right now, I've got a lot of love for Conan. I really have. But there's plenty of filmmakers who could do that. And I'd always said I wanted to do Red Sonja. And nobody understood. Because I'm trans. I don't know if you can tell. But I am trans. And I hadn't come out at that point. So people don't really understand. Why do you want to make this girl character?

29:10Because she's always been this, as I say, male gaze-y, this statuesque, buxom character. I said, no, no, I want to do something else with her. So I sort of came out, I changed my life, and carried on making movies, a lot more television then, but I tracked her. And like Robert Rodriguez was going to do a version of, famously he announced he was going to do Red Sonja with Rose McGowan. Yeah. And in fact, the poster for that version of the movie was in the studio while I was shooting my version of Red Sonja. It's still up. Really? It's a great poster, Rose McGowan licking blood off a sword. With flaming, I mean, so you know what movie you're going to get with Robert.

29:45100 % not what I was going to get. Because I remember I was nearly up for a Predator movie. Okay. I was down for the last few directors for a Predator movie. Predators, I think it was on with Adrian Brody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was me, Neil Marshall, obviously, because he and I were always kind of circling each other's projects. He was the most successful version of me. And Nimrod Antal, who was the DP who ended up getting the job. And I remember meeting Robert because I'd met with Fox. Because to me, it was a stepping stone to Alien. which is the place I always wanted to be.

30:18Chris Hewitt:Yes. The alien universe. One of our first conversations was about aliens. I'll get back to the Red Sign story in a second. No, that's okay. But I met with Robert, and we met in this bar, and he came in his cowboy hat and drank some tequila and stuff, and it was all this like, hey, we're going to do it in my Troublemaker Studios. And the script wasn't really in very good shape, but I had lots of ideas for it. And he went, you know, what I'm going to do is I'll grab a camera too, and I'll shoot some stuff. And I'm like, oh, wait a fucking moment. There's only one director on a set, and you just knew this was never going to work.

30:46Yeah. I'm like, yeah, I can't deal with this guy. He was perfectly fun, but his version of Sonya was going to be that version, a very comic book, very graphic. I'm assuming it would have been more Sin City. Yeah. Right? Great. I mean, that's a good version. It's not my version. And I know Bryan Singer was attached. For about five seconds before. Yeah, attached with a$150 million budget. Yeah, true, true. but the less said about him, the better, I think, these days. And then I think Simon West and then a bunch of others, and then Joey Soloway, who created Transparent, right? So I'm thinking, ah, damn, they went with a non-binary person, you know, they're never going to go for the tranny, right?

31:25So it was that sort of, okay, good, they've overcompensated, they're going to do something really interesting with it. And that didn't seem to go anywhere either. And I kept meeting this company and saying to them, how's Sonya coming along? And we were talking about other projects, and I pitched for it and never got it. And then they were like, yeah, we're going to make it. This isn't working. We're going to make another change. We're going to look for a director. And I just basically was in a room full of the executives and I said, just give it to me. What the hell are you playing at? Just give me the movie now.

31:54I know how to make this. I know how to make this for the price that you're talking about, which is not much at all. Like 10 % of what Brian Singer was going to get, certainly fee-wise. And when you need to do it, how you can make it. because I come from an indie low-budget filmmaking world, but I have these big genre aspirations. Yeah. So, and they, you know, they laughed and we carried on with our meeting and then they called the next morning and said, you serious, you think you can do this? I said, yep, I know how to do this. I've wanted this character for years. You know, and I pitched what I was going to do and they were like, well, yeah, whatever you want to do, we're a commercial company.

32:31We need this, this, and this from the project and we need you to make sure you hit this summer date. And I remember flying to the studio. We shot it in Bulgaria. And the studio, it had been in development for so long that the people who now ran the studio had started as assistants. And they had started this movie maybe five times. So they were like, yeah, you're just another person moving through the world as far as we're concerned. It's not going to happen. And I'm like, I'm going to get this made. I'm going to do it.

33:01Chris Hewitt:So how did you get it made? How did you galvanize this project into being? I don't truly know the answer to that question. You entered a fugue state, and a year later there was a film. It's one of those things where you just go, okay, this is going to happen. Again, one of the jobs in this business now, it's so hard to make movies and television. The industry has changed so profoundly that you really have to work with what you're given. There's no point throwing having a hissy fit about, I'm not getting enough budget, I'm not getting enough time. It's like, what have you got? I've done this enough times.

33:34I've made a bunch of movies and a bunch of TV. so I can tell you I can look at a script and I say it'll take me this number of days I'll need these resources you tell me I've got 10 million you'll get a 10 million dollar version you tell me you've got 25 million you'll get a 25 million dollar version it's a scalable skill set there are other filmmakers who go no I need 100 million dollars otherwise I can't shoot a frame and for me it's like I don't think that's the industry we exist in anymore like you know I know our friend Guillermo del Toro right Guillermo even Guillermo complains about not getting enough money yeah because his grand vision is his grand vision and he's an absolute genius.

34:08So kind of, I'd give him that money. But with someone like me, you go, all right, let's see what you got. Yeah. And so with Sonia, the great thing was we didn't want a big name to play Sonia herself. The character was the star.

34:21Chris Hewitt:Yeah. So I could look around for a great actress, Matilda Lutz, who'd been in this amazing movie called Revenge. Yeah, fantastic. So, and she had, you know, she could be ferocious and violent, but also compassionate and human, which is, that was kind of my guiding light for this character. You've seen the movie. It ends with compassion more than it ends with violence. It sort of hopefully turns the genre on its head in that way. Whilst, I mean, there's Burning Forest and Cyclopses and Sword of Actors and all the other things which I want to do. I'm ostensibly an action director. That's what I'm brought in for.

34:55Certainly in the television space now. They go, okay, we've got shit we don't know how to do. Who can do it? Fubar, Reacher, Strike Back, all that stuff. Yeah, turn on the list, yeah. I mean, even Ash vs. Evil Dead was a kind of action gore fest.

35:08Chris Hewitt:Yeah. So when I go for a TV meeting, it's like, give me the episode you don't think you can do because that's where I thrive creatively. Really? It's where I go back to saying, I just want to be on the set. Yeah. Give me the toolkit. Yeah. Give me the actors. God, I love working with actors and I love working with the crew. How are we going to put the camera here? How are we going to blow this thing up? How are we going to do it real? There's a sequence in Red Sonja, which is a burning forest. right? Yeah. There's no CG in that sequence at all. Really? It's entirely practical fire. We built a forest.

35:39We built 100 meters by 25, 30 meters of forest from, you know, Bulgarian Forestry Commission. They were chopping down the trees. Give me the trees. We planted, put the trees in the ground and stands, put gas pipes inside all the trees. This is my amazing special effects department. And I wanted it to be in rain. I remember the special effects guy said, if it's raining, I'll put the fires out. I went, yeah, but it'll look great. So it's a little bit of that, right? So we arranged these gigantic rain towers, turned the gas on, and it's like lighting a giant oven. And, you know, 200 square meters of forest went up in flames.

36:16And then we walked into the forest and shot for four nights. And Matilda's there in her skimpy armor, fighting Wallace Day in her fairly skimpy clothing. We have, you know, a very small number of extras shooting multiple times to look like a big army.

36:33Chris Hewitt:Yeah. You know, the movie, I had like 10 costumes for the bad guys and I had to just keep reshooting it and making it look like there were more of them. What is life like for you at the moment? You've moved back over here to Blighty? Yeah, I left in America for like 10 years. It was all tied up with changing my personal life. So, you know, I came out and I just thought, you know, I want to go and live on a beach in LA for a while. Not literally homeless on the beach, but right on the beach. You know, I felt like, you know, I want to do the Hollywood movie maker thing. And I was doing pretty well.

37:01So I lived there and then I bought a house in Topanga Canyon, which is a beautiful place just outside Los Angeles, which nearly burnt down at the beginning of the year. It was caught up in all those LA fires. Our house survived, but it didn't survive the, or my life didn't survive the inferno of the current American administration. So as a trans woman, you know, trying to live in America right now and trying to travel backwards and forwards across the borders, it became utterly untenable for me. So I just thought I need to come home to a place where I have some rights. And even though for trans people here it's pretty tough right now, at least I have a right to be here.

37:34They can't kick me out of my own country. And I look at what's happening politically, not wanting to get too dark too quickly, but I look at what's happening and I guess I don't understand what's happening in that country. And I need to be in a place where I can have a voice and be a little bit more militant. I mean, my transness should be utterly inconsequential to everybody except me. but it sort of isn't weirdly enough and we've become these political wedge issues and yeah, I come back, I live in this beautiful little place just outside Bath, which is one of the most wonderful cities in England near my family and I'm happy, but I'm so saddened by being forced to change my life again So what does it mean for you coming forward?

38:13I mean, were you having difficulties getting back into the country? I wasn't, I wouldn't have been Okay, so I was shooting in Canada and my immigration lawyer said do not go back across the border. You will not be making, I don't have a legal green card. I have no criminal record of any of those things. I should, yeah, you'll be taken away. You won't make it because you're a trans person and that's not recognized. You know, you will be considered an illegal person. You know, there's maybe 10 % chance you'll make it, but you want to risk the 90%. You'll either be deported, I'll just get sent to the UK, or I'll be taken somewhere first.

38:45It's happening to people all the time. And that was just not a thing I'm prepared to do. this old stage of my life. I don't want to be in an internment camp. And I'd have been sent to a male internment camp. And I'm very much not equipped for that life anymore. So it just felt like I need to be protected and protect the people I love and my family. So that was, it was very much a question. And also the other thing is that I lived in LA and for a fleeting moment of my life, I had literally everything I ever imagined I would have. A house in the Hollywood Hills, making movies in LA, going to the beach, the whole lifestyle.

39:20And it just drifted past me for just, you know, for three or four weeks of my life. And I transitioned, I become the person I always wanted to be. And I had absolute happiness. And then the election happened. And then it was all taken away. You know, day one of the administration, they depersoned trans people. And it became impossible, you know, so I had to make a decision. And my decision was to protect myself and the people I love.

39:44Chris Hewitt:I'm sure your place in Bath is very lovely, but I'm so sorry that all happened to you. That mega sucks, to put it in a phrase. Yeah, but plenty of people are having it a lot worse than I. I had a country to flee to and a place that I loved and heritage that I could embrace, but there's a lot of people who really don't know where to go. And so for me, it sucks, but I've been very happy in my life for the last 10 years, and it's another chapter. Let's see what happens next. which is not the same as asking you what you're doing next I fucking refuse anyway I do have let you go but this has been an absolute pleasure thank you so much indeed thank you Chris always lovely to talk to you cheers MJ okay that was MJ Bassett Red Zonya is out on Monday September 8th on shiny disc DVD Blu-ray etc etc etc and digitally as well now it's time to dig deep into this week's movie news there is a ton of stuff to get through a ton of stuff indeed some trailers and the like some casting news all that sort of stuff.

40:41Chris Hewitt:Let's start with Star Wars, shall we? Because last week, I think this was about, ooh, let me see, five minutes after we left the building last week came the news that they have filled out the cast of Sean Levy's Star Wars Starfighter, which is filming right now here in the good old USFK. And we knew that Ryan Gosling was in it. We knew that Mia Goth was in it. We knew that Matt Smith was in it. but we didn't know that Amy Adams is in it we did not know that Aaron Pierre is in it very cool we did not know that Jamel Westman who Helen I'm not sure if anyone else here saw the original West End production of Hamilton but he played Hamilton oh he was good he was very good yeah and Simon Bird from the Inbetweeners Simon Bird from the Inbetweeners Star Wars friend yeah very exciting so that is some interesting casting going on for this movie in which we believe that Ryan Gosling is going to be playing some sort of hotshot pilot maybe even a starfighter if you will good cast he is Ken-off he is Ken-off and maybe he will be a Kenner action figure at some point so yeah what do we make of this Amon you happy with this casting?

42:01I'm very happy with this casting I'm really happy for NPR who I'm a big big fan of I think next year is going to be big for between this and Lanterns, which is also fronting. I'm very, very excited to see him back on screen. Which was his primary? Which was his alternate? Which was his contingency? And of course, what would be his emergency? I don't know. I'm saying this was the primary. We shall soon find out. But yes, excited, excited. Excited. Jimbo? Yeah, very excited. I was excited about this before I heard it had a cast, let alone who the cast was. Obviously, it being Star Wars, I am hesitant.

42:40I've been hurt before. But I remain... Andor's left me in a good place Star Wars-wise. So I'm feeling pretty buoyant. Obviously, this may shatter my dreams, but I'm hoping to believe it won't. More Andor, less Rise of Skywalker. And Ben isn't here to say good movie, so we're just going to skip that bit.

42:58Chris Hewitt:Well, yeah, he's on his way. He'll suddenly burst in the room and just go, Good movie! his rise his walk detector has gone off and just like in Guy Ritchie's snatch he's making one of those really really quickly edited trips to London yeah it's like he's in his room and the little one goes hey hey but no I would like it to have a bit of like you know heft as well as fun that would be cool and I'm just slightly worried that it will be silly I know what you mean I really hope it's not I hope it takes itself the timeline is encouraging agonisingly seriously that's utterly humorous. No, I don't mean that.

43:36I just mean that I hope it's it feels original and different.

43:39Chris Hewitt:But still Star Wars. It's also very rare in that it's coming out in 2027 and so that means they don't have the time crunch that a lot of blockbusters do where they're kind of quickly scrambling to make the release date. They have a little bit of time to get this thing right. Does that mean they're up against the Bluey movie that's out in 2027? I'm just saying. Yes, they will be obliterated as all things will be also coming out in 2027 and this was announced yesterday James Gunn and his principal cast David Cornswett and Nicky Holt I don't think anyone's ever called them that Nick Holt took to Instagram and other places to announce that the next Superman film is coming in 2027 starts production soon.

44:33Chris Hewitt:It's called Man of Tomorrow. Which is just inaccurate because the man of year after next. Yeah, I know. They've got that wrong. It's a poor attention to detail. And I would hope that they pull their socks off for the movie. Might be confusing if they called it that and then by the time it comes on it's going to be confusing, isn't it? And they announced this by all releasing a piece of art from different comic book artists featuring Superman. Superman! Standing next to Lex Luthor. Ruler. Ruler of Australia. In a mech suit. Who is in a mech suit indeed. Okay, Amon, as our resident superfan. Superfan!

45:18Chris Hewitt:What's happening? Yeah, Lex is in the mech suit in the comics. Yes, I can see that, Amon. I'm about to elaborate if you give me a second. in the comics that suit has been from Apocalypse I don't know if they're gonna go this route this early and this is Apocalypse spelled in a stupid way isn't it yes A-P-O-K-O K-O L-I-S no L-I-P-S I mean yeah Apocalypse yeah yeah I don't know I'm very very happy there's a unlike some people in this room who didn't particularly like Superman Superman, which was a good film. I am very excited to see a sequel to it. And I think, you know, it's going to be good. I just like the super focused, pun intended, slate, which James Gunn has here.

46:10Like the fact that I just remember with Man of Steel and with Snyderverse, there were people calling for Superman sequel for like years and years and years. It was not coming. To get a Superman sequel announced months after the first one. I just, I love the fact that there's a plan. He's sticking to it. and I love that it's focused on the Super family because you've obviously got Supergirl coming out next year followed by this in 2027 it's really interesting that we're sticking with this family this early well there's Clayface as well right? yes which again is really cool to balance the two to have the big blockbuster well known IP stuff and to have all the James Gunn weird monster stuff at the same time is really really cool so yeah I'm a big fan and to have Lex in the Mech suit, which is powered by Kryptonite, by the way.

46:58Lex Mech. Delicious. I don't know if it's going to end very well for him, but it's cool that he's in that suit. And that, again, is something different to what we've seen from any Lex... Yes, we've never seen Superman beating Lex Luthor before. Hey, it is going to end badly for him, because you can tell in the picture Superman is holding a screwdriver.

47:16Chris Hewitt:He is. Well, here's the thing. Okay, so I think this might be... I don't know whose picture was which, but two of the pictures were Lex and Superman trading blows. One of the pictures is Lex and Superman standing beside each other and Superman's got a very chummy look on his face. Amon, what's happening here? Maybe it's a classic oh, we'll fight each other and it will be bad and then oh no, there's a bigger baddie we must work together to defeat him. Sort of X-Men 2 kind of a system. It would be interesting obviously Lex and Superman very much a villain. I mean he starts it very much also in the middle he's quite villainy it's not the most nuanced arc but it would be interesting if there's some sort of reforming going on oh Helen does love that look if it's well done I don't mind redemption I hope he has daddy issues oh my god we get a bit of it in the film but in the comics there's a comic that Superman that James Gunn took a lot of inspiration from and in that comic Superman is like if you put your mind your incredible mind to use like you could be an even bigger hero than me essentially if Lex goes that way that could be very very interesting again something different than what we've seen I want to see if I'm about Lex Luthor being a hero not this loser from Krypton is that an all-star Superman yes thank you all-star Superman alright bit more casting news before we talk about the trailers Lara Croft yes Yes, indeed.

48:51Sophie Turner. This has been percolating for so long, this show has. Of course, it is TV news. You know, if we can sneak that into the Empire podcast. But yeah, this is Phoebe Waller-Bridge's long-threatened... Threatened? Wow. It's been in the works for a very long time. And I think we got to the point where we just didn't know that it was going to come, right? Because Lara Croft hasn't had, let's say, the best history on screen. I think you had the very sort of Camp Angelina Jolie films. You had the Alicia Vikander one, which was more modeled on the rebooted Tomb Raider games, which was slightly more gritty and violent.

49:26But what will this be? And the fact that Phoebe Waller-Bridge is involved in this, the fact that she's writing this, that is the only thing that's really made me, and I think, let's be honest, most people, interested in this. It's a prime video show. But Sophie Turner's a very good choice, I think. But it also depends what they do with that character, because the character, let's be honest, in the game, is incredibly two-dimensional. so I think they have a lot of scope to do really whatever they want with it and flesh it out in whatever way they choose and I hope they do I don't imagine she's going to be hugely faithful to the game's source material I imagine she'll do what she wants with it and good Well there's a bit more to go on in the 2013 game that was the basis for the Alicia Vikander one isn't there?

50:05Who are you and where is Helen? Excuse me, I was on set of that film actually I did my research and shit When I completed Rising Zoom Raider on the PlayStation 5 I clearly saw. I mean, I didn't play a lick of it, obviously. I'm not, you know, boring. But I do think... Excuse me, that was a really good game and I enjoyed playing it. No one shouted them on. Of course not. Life is too short. But yeah, I think, you know, there's something there to go on anyway. I mean, she's iconic in his IP recognition and all this. But ultimately, Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a great writer and a great storyteller. So, you know, that bodes well.

50:40Yeah. Intrigued, but I'm going to need... a lot to really get hyped and be sold on this. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, I like that she's involved. Sophie Turner, I don't fully see it quite yet. Maybe once more information starts being revealed, we'll see how I feel. But for right now, I'm just, I'm intrigued, but I'm not fully. Like, the other super kind of film, I really enjoyed that and there was a sequel that was percolating for a while and then obviously it's not happening and we've got a series. This is the first time we've got Lara Croft as a series. that's intriguing maybe through that and through Phoebe Waller-Berger we can really dig into that character and have it be something different to what we've seen before but right now I'm not quite sold and hyped on this one yet

51:26Chris Hewitt:Okay, well we will find out soon at some point in the next couple of years I'm guessing but we're going to see it eventually we are going to see it and I had kind of begun to write it off so fair play fair play indeed alright, that's the big casting news at least the stuff I know about Anything else you guys want to talk about before we get into the trailers? I was going to say trailers. Let's go to the trailer park, shall we? Can I ask a trailer question? Yes, there's small versions of movies that entice you to go see the finished product. Okay, so smaller than TV shows as well. Yes. No, I was going to say, did any of you watch the Return to Silent Hill trailer?

52:02No. Because I didn't. And I've read about it a lot online, because this is essentially Silent Hill 2, one of the greatest video games of all time. Christoph Gans is back. He did the first Silent Hill film. and that film I thought was a great Silent Hill film like it captured the sort of the atmosphere the kind of vibe of it the aesthetic of it it just wasn't frightening and Silent Hill is one of the most scary games I mean hell you wouldn't care but it's one of the scariest games ever made so and I think there have been a lot of criticism about this trailer and I was just wondering if you'd seen it but none of you have seen it so

52:32Chris Hewitt:not only have I not seen it I had no idea it existed until you just said it right okay fully on top of things I was super excited about this and the fact that the trailers had a mixed reception as give me pause. You've got pause? I've got pause. Something scary like Silent Hill. That's right. It's not the only trailer. There have been other trailers. Specifically, there has been one for 28 years later, The Bone Temple. Yes. Absolutely. This is Nia DaCosta's follow-up to Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later, which will launch in January, 28 weeks, exactly after the first movie. They're so clever. So sneaky.

53:10Chris Hewitt:So, so sneaky. It's fair to say that you shouldn't watch this trailer if you didn't watch the first 28 years later. And I also think that we are going to impose, this is very, this is rare. This may even be new. I don't know. For the next, what, five minutes, this is a spoiler zone. So if you have not seen 28 years later, I do not think we can discuss the Bone Temple trailer without referring to the offense of 28 years later. So therefore, if you haven't seen that film, skip ahead approximately five minutes. Okay. All right. Are they gone? They've gone. I'm saying it's hard to hold a candle to the trailer for the first film with the kind of boots, boots, going up and down again.

53:53Chris Hewitt:I think this is a good job. I was very, very taken by this trailer. Yeah, the ending, the 28 years later, is completely crazy in the best way. I'm excited to see more of that character. 28 years later, to me, is the biggest surprise of the year for me. I did not expect it to go that hard. I think it's one of the best films of the year. I think it's awesome. And it's exciting to see Nia DeCosta get to put her own stamp on the franchise. This is a really great trailer. So, pumped. This is a great trailer. It focuses primarily on Dr. Kelson, who is the Ralph Fiennes character. Oh, it's a bit of a cowboy, bro.

54:26Chris Hewitt:From the first movie. And he is, as we know, a good man. And there's a really interesting moment in the trailer where he makes some sort of breakthrough in his bond with Samson, who is the Big Willie style infected. They call them Alpha. Alpha, yes, I'm sorry. And there's another shot later in the trailer where we see that Samson, his eyes appear to be not as infected-y. That's a technical term. It's in your medical textbooks. Look it up. And I think evolution and change and the idea that humanity has had its shot is something that runs through a lot of these quote-unquote zombie films certainly is something Romero was obsessed with.

55:10Chris Hewitt:And I wonder if that is something that is playing into this movie that the infected are becoming more and more human and the next phase in human evolution, if you will. Certainly seems like it because there's a shot in the trailer where Dr. Kelson gets very close to Samson and sort of puts his hand on his shoulder. That's what I was talking about. Yeah. You don't do that unless some changes. Well, he's suicidally brave anyway. But also, he tranquilizes them, doesn't he? Like, he has. Yes, but I'm not sure he's tranquilized in that scene. No, I think the sense of getting from the trailer is that he hasn't tranquilized Samson at that point, and Samson has let him get that close.

55:49Chris Hewitt:And Samson certainly seems, you know, he's displaying very, very human traits at the end of the last movie where he was, you know, looking for his baby and trying to hunt people down and going on a rip-roaring rampage of revenge. I think there's some really interesting things going on here. we get very brief shots, I think, of Aaron Taylor Johnson as Jamie, the dad of Spike, who is now part of the Jimmies, along with a terrible wig. And there's, one of the things I worried about from the last movie, obviously, Jodie Comer is no longer with us, sadly. And I did worry about the lack of a strong, not that way, but like of a significant female character in these movies.

56:31Chris Hewitt:Aaron Kellyman, who was one of the Jimmies in this, would seem to be the main female character in 28 years later, The Bone Temple. So you're seeing this as a sort of an I Am Legend thing, potentially. I'm wondering if that's the way it's going. Or a warm bodies thing. Possibly. They're becoming more human. Unzombified. Possibly. And I wonder if Kelson has, because we know that he has theories about stuff and there's a significance, of course, of the infected baby, the alpha's baby that we saw being born in the last movie that doesn't seem to be infected, seems to be human. What is going on? And how smart is Kelson?

57:07Chris Hewitt:He seems to be studying these things. I have to say, the trailer was released at the same time as the poster. I hope that the poster isn't the spoiler that I think it might be. It's interesting. I don't know if you guys have seen the poster. I haven't. I'm not going to now. I don't know. Yeah. I'm sure they haven't done it. I'm sure they haven't released what is a big spoiler. But yeah, it's an interesting one because of course, as we all know, now having seen 28 years later that poster is a big spoiler the poster for that is a big spoiler and I wonder if that's a theme that's going to run through these movies and I hope they get to make the third one I'm with you I'm on 28 Years Later is one of my films of the year it's absolutely terrific and I cannot wait to see where they go with this one and also more infected and it looks more like a straight thrill ride in a way that the first one was until it wasn't yeah excited hyped alright start listening again people who have not seen 28 years later people on the bus with their fingers in their ears go la la la la la la la la la because you guys want to talk about some other trailers don't you?

58:12Sure do.

58:13Chris Hewitt:What is it? I want to talk about Wuthering Heights a little bit. I bet you do. Yeah. Wow. Not the song. Oh lordy. No, no. Charlie XCX actually. Oh yeah. You're having a brat summer. Oh my god. Well more Margot Robbie and Jacob Hardy. Oh, boy. I'm having a jolly brat summer me. No, this is the first trailer for Emerald Fennell's version of Wuthering Heights. Margot Robbie and Jacob Lorty. Slightly controversial casting in the main roles. It's fair to say. He's Kathy and she's Heathcliff? I did not see that coming. Actually, weirdly, in this trailer, he does appear at times to be cosplaying as Aaron Taylor-Johnson in 28 Years Later.

58:55He's got a lot of hair. It's genuinely, I didn't recognize him for a second. but it's very much leaning into the horniness of the book which has some people up in arms some people going wow people were not that horny in those days how dare you and actual Victorian scholars going maybe get a grip I think they did get a grip I think they did there we go I think we can expect it to be wildly unfaithful to really anything history the novel each other each other but I think it will be quite cool on the basis of this trailer this was a really really encouraging look at the film and the poster is very clever because it's designed like a 70s romance cover in a way that I find amusing but also intriguing so I'm here for it I'm a bit more on board than I was featuring all new songs by Charlie SCX yes I really appreciate any trailer but especially a trailer like this where the music is bespoke to the trailer rather than something which is just drafted in.

1:00:00And Charlie XCX is doing the music. You can tell that she crafted this particular song or this particular trailer, and it makes it so much more effective. It's incredibly catchy. It's very, very catchy. And even the way it stops and starts that is in sync with the footage, I love that sort of thing. So very, very effective trailer.

1:00:18Chris Hewitt:All right. I have not seen it yet, but I have heard that it is a fairy horny and I obviously passed out when I came to. That's why I missed the trailer. Well, you don't approve of that kind of thing. I do not approve of that kind of thing. They'll be making money hand over fist. That's for sure. When Wuthering Heights comes out. Is it Valentine's Day? The day before, I think. 13th, but yes. All right. Is Valentine's Day the 14th again this year? They need to move it. You would think. I know. I know. Terrible. Anyway, other dates are available, saying Valentine. Okay, that's exciting. One trailer I wanted to talk about.

1:00:56Chris Hewitt:I completely forgot to talk about this last week. Did you guys see this trailer? Probably not. It's called... It's Bradley Cooper's new movie. I did see this trailer. Thank God. Someone's doing a job. Is This Thing On is what it's called. And it stars Will Arnett as a man who in midlife, moment of crisis, he is getting divorced, wanders into a comedy store, on a whim, puts his name down to go on stage for an open mic slot. And finds he's really good at it. So it's the marvelous Mr. Maisel? No, it's not. But this is the actual... That's exactly the plot. This is the actual life story of John Bishop.

1:01:36Chris Hewitt:Bishop? Yes. Yes, James. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Empire Podcast. James genuinely shuts down. This time is the podcast. He shuts down and he's operating on like 1 % auxiliary power. and that is just he's scanning the room for aliens references and then he wakes up and goes Bishop that is unfortunately entirely accurate I can see you weren't listening and then you heard the word Bishop he went Bishop Bishop as in the 1986 film Aliens played by Bill Paxton yes I know that reference Bishop Lutz Henriksen but yes oh sorry oh boy I'm sorry that's worse than me mixing up two Star Wars oh my god the late great Bill Paxton of course was Private Hudson I know he was I fucking know he was oh my god I'm gonna leave that in I could cut that out I could be the bigger man but I'm not going to I'm gonna leave it in showing that even I can get things wrong from time to time clearly I wasn't listening I was just scanning number 1 % of my auxiliary I feel you Evil Dead 2?

1:02:43Chris Hewitt:yes Sam Raimi 1987 Bruce Campbell is amazing I think Bruce Campbell plays Bishop in that movie doesn't he? of course being an android and also Ash from Alien and Ash is an evil dad oh my god it's all connected

1:02:56Chris Hewitt:Sam Raimi and Ted Raimi turn up to this Royal Rumble I think the copulas are fucked by the way there's your there's your dynasty how about the Howards we forgot the Howards we forgot the Howards did we though Bryce Dallas would take people down she can run in heels so who are the other Howards there's Ron there's Clint is Clint still with us yeah isn't he okay good I wasn't sure you just killed Clint Howard Jesus

1:03:29harsh

1:03:29Chris Hewitt:I like to pre-record my obits as you know James every week of the podcast since we've been going I've done a Clint Howard obituary and I have to cut it out every single week I got very sad news this week guys we lost the great Clint Howard very sad indeed Do you remember what we were talking about? Is this thing on? Is this thing on? It really interests me because this is a Bradley Cooper movie that he co-wrote with Will Arnett and it is John Bishop's life story. They have been inspired by Bill Paxton and aliens. They have adapted his life story but they have transposed it to the United States of America.

1:04:10Right.

1:04:10Chris Hewitt:And Will Arnett is... And so it's loosely inspired by him but also very specifically that is John Bishop's origin story. he was getting a divorce he was very very down he didn't know what to do with his life he walked into a comedy club I believe in Liverpool put his name down walked on stage had no idea what he was going to say and ended up becoming one of the country's top comedians I have several questions about this how did Bradley Cooper and Will Arnett hear about John Bishop's life story and B how do they understand a word he said well genuinely it must have been through a third party who also inspired the marvellous Mrs.

1:04:43Maisel I'm just saying alright

1:04:47Chris Hewitt:It looks like a good trailer. Yeah. It is a good trailer, and it's intriguing because we haven't seen Bradley Cooper in this mode before in terms of doing something which is a little bit more broadly comedic. That's not what I think about when I think about Star is Born and Maestro. And he is in this movie as an actor, but it seems like he's taking... An actor. It seems like he's taking more of a very supportive role, which again is not something that we've seen from him in the previous two films where he's very heavily in it. and yeah he's getting back to his hangover days you know it's kind of a throwback also I don't think it's a comedy I think it's going to be a full on drama okay yeah but yeah it could be a late comer in the Oscar race some very very sad news on which to end the podcast news section this week Hell's Post we lost Graham Greene we did one of the great character actors I feel like of the last what three decades yeah from Dances with Wolves that's where I think we first saw him really first came to our attention probably fantastic Native American actor I loved him he's got a supporting role in Die Hard with a Vengeance he's good in that he's one of the cops at the school isn't he with the bomb yes where the bomb's about to go on yes he is he's very very good in that indeed recently he was seen in the likes of Tulsa King and he was seen in Echo as well he showed up in Echo Reservation Dogs Reservation Dogs yeah he was just an absolutely wonderful actor he brought a sort of very solid dependable likeable although he didn't always play good guys of course presence in pretty much everything he was in and yeah he passed away at the age of just 73 that's young man yeah very very very sad indeed I mean he's been in lots of stuff over the years as well the likes of Maverick and The Green Mile and Thunderheart which is a Val Kilmer movie that I think is very little seen but is actually really good so I would recommend Somebody put up a clip of that this week, and I was watching it.

1:06:46His interactions with Val Kilmer and that were actually very, very funny. He stops them for speeding, and Val Kilmer's like, let me see the radar gun, let me see the radar, and he's like, I don't need a radar gun. I could just tell you were going, and it's four miles over the limit. Like, I could just tell. I could read it in the wind. Amazing. Yeah, good, good guy.

1:07:07Chris Hewitt:Good, good guy indeed. Graham Green, who passed away this week at the age of just 73. Time now for our second guests, because there's two of them, I guess. So this week sees the release of the boxing drama The Cut, which is a boxing drama, but with a difference. And that it stars Orlando Bloom as a character simply known as Boxer. We'd never learn his name in the movie. Something I completely forgot to follow up on when I talked to Orlando Bloom and the film's director, Sean Ellis, which is what you're about to hear. This is a fascinating movie. is about a boxer who gets an unexpected, very, very late shot at a title fight, but he is overweight because he's over the hill.

1:07:46Chris Hewitt:And he's now just basically a boxing trainer. And so he has one week to lose the weight that he needs to lose in order to make the weigh-in. And the only way to do that is via some very unorthodox and, frankly, illegal methods. So not a lot of boxing in this movie. Instead, it is a psychological drama that actually tiptoes into horror at times. as Boxer loses his mind as he is trying to lose some weight as well. Good cast in this. John Turturro as a very, very scary trainer who shouts at him a lot. Katrina Balfe as his partner, both in and out of the ring. And I really enjoyed it. I really liked it.

1:08:26Chris Hewitt:I was really taken by it. And I was delighted to talk to Orlando Bloom for the second time in just a few months on the Emperor Podcast. And he was joined by Sean Ellis. I spoke to him on Zoom. And here it is. Enjoy. We're delighted to be joined on the Emperor podcast by the star and director of the cut to separate people, Orlando Bloom and Sean Ellis. How are you both? Good. Thank you. Thanks for having us, mate. Yeah, good to have you here. Are you jet lagged, Orlando? Where have you just flown in from? I have just come from California. I am beside myself. I don't know what's going on. I think it's getting worse as the years trundle on.

1:08:59I'm like, I thought I could handle jet lag, but it seems not as much as I used to. And then you're going back today and then you're back next week as well. Jesus.

1:09:09Chris Hewitt:Yeah. So it's not good, but it's, it must be good in a way because it must get you into a similar head state to the one that you shot the cut in. Yeah. There you go. Nice segue. Thank you. I'm a professional. Yeah. That was a pretty unusual head space to be in for sure. Yeah. It's funny. If you don't give yourself nutrition, sleep or water, what it'll do to your brain definitely leans into it all. because for people who haven't seen the film obviously this is going out I think the day that the movie comes out you play a boxer who is called in the film boxer and he has to lose an incredible amount of weight in a very very short space of time in order to make the weight weigh in for a major comeback fight and this meant that you had to effectively lose a lot of weight yourself I mean it's incredible the contrast between boxer at the beginning of the movie and boxer at the end uh and i wanted to talk to you both about that and how you approach that and how you approach that safely and just what that experience was like for you yeah i mean we had a nutritionist um philip goglier who became highly recommended um from my agency and i think he worked with christian bale on some of his stuff so he knew what he was doing he was testing my blood and he sort of pared me down from three meals to two to one and then just protein shakes and which you know actually they were the hardest thing to let go of the protein shakes i've got this delicious form protein powder it's so tasty but um i um went into just tuna and cucumber for weeks um and and and and then right towards the end not even drinking water but um gee yeah it was it was right at the end you were doing those epsom salt baths yeah that's right and i mean that was i mean you i mean we had to shoot in reverse chronological order so orlando had to show up at the beginning of the movie at his lightest weight and then we shot the end of the movie first and then he was slowly able to intake calories and and but at that those first few days he was like he had no energy his brain fog he was paranoid all the sort of things that like food deprivation bring um so yeah it was it was tough on him and and you know in between takes i've seen him he was lying on the floor and and yet you were still had the energy like to do the push-ups to get your body like pumped and it was just crazy his body at that point because it he had like how much percentage body fat would you go down to like three or something three percent like body fat and it was yeah i mean his skin was paper thin um it was kind of amazing um but yeah then then then he started putting on weight as we went um because very easy to put the weight on and take it off um and obviously you know being starved of calories it's very difficult to work so so yeah reverse chronological order was the way that we made the film and then by the end of the shoot, we were doing the beginning of the movie and he put on all the weight that he needed to.

1:12:26So yeah, that resulted in that very dramatic sort of beginning and end difference of what you see in the film.

1:12:36Chris Hewitt:It's wild because shooting in that way also means that by the beginning of the movie, Boxer's in really good shape but he's not in fighting shape so you had to be very careful about that as well because Orlando in this movie, you know, the beginning of the film you look better than I've ever looked or will ever look and yet Boxer's still a little bit like, I'm not quite there yet so that must be a fine line to walk in terms of the physicality of the character Yeah, I mean, like Sean was saying I had to, the heart, one of the hardest things was like, I actually really liked the way I felt when I was really like, not when I was super light, but like at different points.

1:13:17And then I had to just like gorge to get it all on. But for it to look believable and feel, it was really important that I got as much food into me as possible to make that kind of like traumatic weight loss work. I think you see it in my face as well, really, honestly, I think at the end. Oh, that scene in the end in the bathroom. where you just look gaunt and you know and you know bless you because i was orlando really kept tabs on where he was emotionally in the character um which is a very difficult thing to do when you're shooting in reverse because if you think about it he's he's coming at it from from complete reverse or it's not as if he's thinking okay this scene i'm I'm here.

1:14:09He's got to go, he's got to go to his character right at the end of the film and play him as the end of the film. And then slowly bring back parts of his character to match where we are in the timeline. So, I mean, it's amazing. I mean, when we, we did the first, when I saw the first rough car, my biggest worry was have we pulled that off emotionally? Like does his character work emotionally? But, you know, to Orlando's credit, he knew exactly where he was and delivered that character to us beat by beat by beat, which was, you know, a marvel to watch once I put it together. And I was like, wow, he's just he's managed to know where he is at any given point and give us the thing that we needed for that scene under very difficult conditions.

1:15:04and obviously body and brain under complete distress of being starved and eat calories and stuff. So, yeah, it was one of the proud moments watching that character come alive like that.

1:15:23Chris Hewitt:Oh, thanks, buddy. I mean, Orlando, how do you keep track of Boxer's journey in that case? I've spoken to actors over the years It's about how to keep track of shooting non-chronologically and where you're meant to be in any given day. But, you know, do you have a chart? Do you write stuff down or is it all up here in the head? And did the diet and being deprived of calories, that must have made it difficult, having brain fog, for example, things like that, must have been. Yeah, yeah, I mean, all of that was very real, the paranoia, the brain fog, the feelings of confusion and terror. But somehow it worked for my brain.

1:16:06I don't know what it was, but like my brain, I was like, I remember we would shoot this and I'd be like, okay, great. Well, if this is the end result, then we've got to make sure that this bit down here will play like that. And I talked to Sean about that. and also we had that great um our continuity gal and we would and i would just be like i'd be like okay just remember that somehow i would was able to remember obviously what we shot but and and then tie it to stuff that we were doing and that was coming and i almost knew the script so well in the character that i'd be like well we're playing this end piece but this is what this is going to be like let's make sure it's colored with that i don't know my brain somehow worked it worked really well for the way my brain thinks, which is probably a bit scattered, if I'm honest.

1:16:57So somehow this ADD seemed to sort of come into, it seemed to play to one of those, at A strength anyway, if you can call it that.

1:17:09Chris Hewitt:Sean, it's a really fascinating story as well, because it's a boxing movie, but it's also not a boxing movie. And in some ways it's a horror film. Was that what attracted you to it? I mean, I was attracted to it because I wanted to make a boxing movie, but I didn't know what type of boxing movie because I felt that most boxing movies had been done and had been done so well. So I didn't want to just copy another boxing movie. So I had been wanting to do, you know, I've become very interested in combat. I've been a martial artist most of my life and I've been quite physical in And that's respect.

1:17:52So I, you know, I respond to that kind of material. So definitely boxing was something I wanted to do. But it wasn't until I read the script, I was like, you know, exactly what you just said there. It's a boxing film with no boxing, which was super intriguing. I was like, wow, this is really interesting. I think there was a little bit more boxing in the script. And I think we stripped it out a little bit, you know, because I just thought, well, let's go there. let's make it more about the journey to the to the ring rather than you know because generally the rocky scenario is it's always about the fight um which is great but you know we had we had the budget for a drama and we didn't have a budget for rocky so um it was very much about let's make it about the drama and let's do it from that point of view and what that athlete has to do in order to do the thing that he's talented at um which is lose weight in order to get into the ring which in its weird way you know sounds odd but anyone that's ever done it or any boxers that actually have to had to have done it they understand how grueling it is and it becomes its own you know it becomes its own fight with its own you know first second and third act you know right there just in that process which is i just i thought that was fascinating and just and again you know a boxing drama about a boxer rather than the action of boxing we talked about

1:19:29Chris Hewitt:your working relationship with that but how did it start i mean honestly we were lucky to get sean i i um i felt we very lucky we i developed the the idea with um mark lane he he had this idea and we threw it back and forth for a while and we're trying to chew on what it would look like and how it could work and and and somebody slipped it to sean and you know i'm a huge fan of his and and and i think you know what sean did so brilliantly is that we actually had a shoestring budget and you're actually in like only a handful of locations and a lot of it took place in this one room in the hotel where the weight cut is happening and stuff and and you never feel like you're in there for very long because of the way that he shot it and he kept lighting it and it's all kind of um and so you know that was you know sean as a dop you know director was really had had a great vision for it um and i i just man i just wanted to do something where i'm like burn the barn down let's take the brakes off swing for the fences what have you got you know why don't you what and and you know i guess retaliation or romans was a script that you know a movie that I'd done with Mark previously, he produced that movie.

1:20:42And I think he saw that there was like, there was another gear in me that nobody was really like interested in or asking to see or whatever. And I think Sean maybe thought there was something after we spoke about it. Our first chat was very interesting. And I mean, Orlando's commitment to it was obvious. and I think our first conversation was yeah but you don't know who's a boxer and that was our biggest like how do we get past that and do you physically look like this kind of you know washed up boxer on the wrong side of his prime you know and then I think we had discussions about what that could look like makeup wise or you know tricks or whatever and and then and then obviously you know orlando's commitment to it was what was exciting for me and i thought this is going to be an amazing challenge to make a boxing film with no boxing and and do something with orlando that honestly that people haven't seen before and see and haven't seen him in that way before as well i mean you know and so when we started to having meetings with Mark Coulier, who was the makeup designer on this, who'd been working on these amazing kind of subtle special effects makeup that actually was practical.

1:22:11You could suddenly see this transformation of what we know as Orlando to somebody that we didn't quite recognize, but we knew him enough to know that, hey, we know this guy, but in the context of everything i believe and i buy that he is a boxer and it was you know broken nose and eyelids adjustments and and it knew he had these ears didn't you yeah collie flowers like boxes ears and sort of scars and stuff and then you know it was amazing just uh just to sort of suddenly then see that uh that character come up come out of that and then the accent obviously was one of the other big things that we yeah we had which we should talk to you about yeah

1:23:03gary grunel's a dialect coach i've worked with many times and i love him and his son jerry his son um louis was um was around when i was sort of starting off and when i was like i was just doing some zooms getting my head in the game for the dialect and and louis was there and and jerry was like well you know louis was a nearly pro boxer i was like really he was like yeah yeah and and you know and uh and i was like and he's and he and he had and he's from dublin and he had all the sounds and he worked he'd been training with all these boxes so i i just basically louis came and moved over to the uk live with me and we sort of sparred and he was like we talk in irish all day long oh you know around the clock you know and he just kind of added a couple of subtle little things that come off the plane and go that's flash what you know when he comes off the plane that's flash what you know stuff like that that like just and just all these little things to kind of add add that add the subtlety and and authenticity i hope to what you know worked for the for the dialect so but yeah it was great to have him it's it's grand i mean the listeners to

1:24:12Chris Hewitt:the podcast will know that if there's a shonky Irish accent, Orlando, I will pounce. I will pounce on the accent, but no, you pulled it off. Oh, grand. We had Katrina doing her own accent as well. So the two of them, for me, it just made a lot of sense that the character went from Ireland to Vegas. It felt like a huge journey. And I think that there's a sort of history of that sort of Irish fighting spirit, which I really love. And so, yeah. And then again, you know, obviously it tied in with the troubles and the upbringing and the sort of, you know, the violence that youngsters have experienced and how it's sort of, you know, how they're still dealing with it.

1:24:59And I thought that was really interesting as well. That's why we went to Ireland, basically.

1:25:05Chris Hewitt:it's been an absolute pleasure sean orlando thanks very much indeed very much thanks so much great to see you likewise okay that was sean ellis and orlando bloom we'll be talking about the cut in just a couple of minutes folks but now it is time to dig deep into the films around this week in the multiplex and on your sofa plex it's reviews section of course i think there's only really one place to start and that is with the first collaboration of Denzel Washington and Spike Lee. This is her first collaboration since wait, is it, he got game? Inside Man. Answer my own question. You answered it quicker as well.

1:25:45Chris Hewitt:Technically we were both right. So this is Highest to Lois which is a remake of an Akira Kurosawa movie, High and Low. Jimbo, what's this one about? This is indeed a Spike Lee joint and it is, as you said, a broad remake of Kurosawa's High and Low, which is itself an adaptation of Ed McBain's 1959 novel King's Ransom. Nice fat for you there. But in this version, though, so Washington plays this sort of New York music mogul called David King, and he's a legend of the industry, kind of a kingmaker, if you will. He's living the life, he's trying to regain control of his company. He's a big shot, definitely a questionable father, I would say.

1:26:21He kind of prioritises work over his teenage son, Trey, who resents him a little bit, all of which becomes very much more pointed when Trey is snatched from basketball practice by kidnappers, except he isn't. And instead of actually grabbing Trey, they instead snatch the son of his kind of ex-con driver and body man who's played by Jeffrey Wright. And then what kind of unfolds after that is the conundrum of whether he is prepared to pay a ransom of$17.5 million for another man's son. And it kind of goes from there. It's this David in Cannes, I want to say, and it got a pretty positive response there.

1:26:54I have a very specific issue with this film and I believe this is going to be a very James thing and I wanted to get this out of the way first I'm very glad you're here I know exactly what you're about to say I had a real problem with Howard Drosten's score I found it incredibly overbearing overblown all these brass drums this kind of jazzy bit I felt like 90s network TV to me I remember this really emotional dialogue scene there's this jazz piano kind of wailing away in the background and you're just like, dude, shut the fuck up. This sort of crazy jazz flute sort of busts out. And I was thinking at the time, I'm saying, is this the mix?

1:27:33Full disclosure, I didn't see this in cinema. I watched it on the screening site. I thought, is this the sound mix? Like, why? It just felt very, very intrusive to me. And for the first half of the film, it pulled me out of the film. I found it incredibly distracting. All of that said, the film, about the halfway point, it kind of shifts up a gear. It's quite, you know, it's character-led. It's quite an interesting look at him as a man, as a man trying to recapture his youth and his greatness, dealing with kind of maybe his failings as a father and his failings as a businessman, but also his successes as well.

1:28:03And then there's a class level as well, because Jeffrey Wright is his driver in the Kurosawa film. It's a chauffeur who's kind of a meek little chauffeur. Here, he's actually very punchy and bolshy. And the way the police treat him when they know it's his son that's been taken versus how they treated David King is very different. And I think that's very telling as well. and you find yourself getting furious about all of that. But once it sort of kicks into, I want to say almost thriller mode, like once Denzel is running around, there's a bit of action in there, it does shift gear, and actually I found that really, really compelling.

1:28:36There's a particular scene in this, which is once genius, but also baffling to me. There is a... I don't want to spoil anything. Let's say the first sort of action beat of the film, there is an event, a key event that's plot to the film. It involves action, Denzel's in it. It is brilliantly staged. is incredibly well conceived. This is a scene, let's say, it's the kind of scene we've seen many times before in films. This, I thought, was a really inventive take on it. But the way it's shot is at times genius, where there's kind of intercuttings with a street festival, but then also completely discombobulating, because in the middle of this action sequence, we cut to, and no word of a lie, Rosie Perez and Anthony Ramos as themselves at a street festival.

1:29:17And I was just like, what is actually happening here? Like, it was completely baffling to me. And you combine that with some of these stylistic flourishes. Like, he does these sort of almost George Lucas-esque screen wipes using the record label logo. And again, I find... I mean, look, I get that he's swinging for the fences. He's going nuts with this stuff. But all of these things took me out a little bit.

1:29:36Chris Hewitt:Oh, that sounds great. I love it. I'm not saying they're necessarily bad things, but I found them quite distracting. That said, once this kicks into, I think, you know, proper sort of action thriller mode, I couldn't look away from it. Absolutely riveted. There is a... Rap battle confrontation, which for me was the high point of this film, which I thought was genius. Brilliantly written, brilliantly acted. I think Denzel is all swagger. The carrot he has as this guy, King, is fantastic. There's a bit where he literally asks James Brown and Aretha Franklin for help. And it sounds kind of goofy, but actually it really works on screen.

1:30:07Really, really liked that. But I said, but all of that said, like, liked the film a lot, but the music in particular, I just can't sign off on. Sorry. I fully agree. High five, Amon. High five. You're both wrong.

1:30:23Chris Hewitt:I am checking the clock. It is 15.54 on Thursday, the 4th of September in the year of our Elordi 2025. We have finally found a movie score that Amon Warman is not on board with. Why? Here's the thing. I've actually listened to the score in isolation. In isolation is a pleasant enough listen, but in this film, it is utterly ruinous. The film and the score are never in lockstep. They are always the furthest away from each other they can possibly be. And as you mentioned, it's overbearing. It's obvious. And yeah, I just, I don't understand how they went with this. Howard Jocelyn has worked with Spike Lee a lot, but he's been his orchestrator.

1:31:08Spike Lee's number one composer that he's worked with on seven films is Terrence Blanchard, a composer who I love. The Five Bloods is a fantastic score. Black Clansman has a fantastic score. Inside Man has a fantastic score. that's all Terrence Blanchard Howard Jocelyn it just it does not work it does not ever feel in lockstep with the film and for the first half of this movie it really really pulled me out of it the second this is a film of two halves like the film is called Highest to Lowest my experience of the film is Lowest to Highest because the second half of this movie where it really begins to cook is really really exciting the rat battle which you mentioned is one of my scenes of the year it is utterly phenomenal it's sit up in your seat cinema capital C-I-N-E-M-A I freaking love that I also love the themes check out Mr.

1:31:56Dictionary over here that's how you spell apocalypse

1:32:02oh my gosh I also love the themes this film is playing with which feels like it extends beyond the film and into our world in terms of Spike Lee and Denzel being sort of the elder statesman of the industry and talking about AI and talking about the natural gifts which people should and need to rely on. I thought all that was delivered very well as well. And Denzel, when he's in magnetic swagger form, he's just incredible to watch. One thing though, you mentioned, you know, the running around in this film. There's a moment, there's a sequence where it becomes very clear that we're not watching Denzel Washington.

1:32:36We're watching Denzel Washington's stuntman. It is the most unintentionally funny scene I've seen to have others here. There's a moment where he leaps over a barrier so smoothly and I just burst out laughing. it was incredible how dare you think that Denzel couldn't do that it was a big Liam in Taken 3 moment I'm offended oh there was actually a big Liam film out this week as well by the way but I loved this I think it is essentially Spike Lee's musical and I think that's why the score is very very consciously and intentionally overbearing in almost every scene I mean it opens literally with a song from Oklahoma it opens with Oh What a Beautiful Morning over shots of the New York skyline and it is lush and glorious and totally ott and i was kind of in it from then i noticed the score a lot i also fucking loved it um i was very tense for the first half because it is a very very tense film um at that point and then i sort of realized what was going on at about the halfway mark again and then i just had a blast for the last half but it is to me this is a musical it is literally all it's lacking is one giant dance number and it would be a musical everything else about it just has flow and rhythm and it is spike lee just having the best time with his old mate and just like not having to worry at all about the acting it's like i've got denzel don't have to fucking worry about that at all i'm just going to throw everything else at the screen um the colors are saturated and glorious.

1:34:06It looks like a 50s Technicolor Western. I adore it. I love it so much. It's my favourite Spike Lee movie in years. The cinematography, I should say, is amazing. Yeah, it's really amazing. It makes New York look stunning. Yeah. It's his first time also back in New York for like 10 years. And I think you can, you feel the kind of euphoria of that in the filmmaking as well. I also agree with Empire's four-star review, which was written by H. O 'Hara, but I think he or she, whoever they are, has really got it right there. I agree with the four I would go three oh you do literally the score knocks a star off wow it's so ruinous do you know what I can't remember the last time a score crippled a movie like this for the first half of it I genuinely was very much in the kind of middling to low three star camp but the second half redeemed it for me it's euphoria euphoria euphoria euphoria

1:34:56Chris Hewitt:alright so Amon to three James is a four Helen agrees with her brother Henry O 'Hara who wrote that review go and check out the return of Denzel and Spike, one of cinema's greatest double acts. Four stars end for highest, two lowest. Speaking of one of cinema's greatest double acts, and a segue I just came up with organically. Let's talk about the Warrens, shall we? The return of Ed and Lorraine for the last time? For the last rites, anyway. Oh, yes, the country in last rites. And who better to talk about last rites than our most Catholic member, Helen O 'Hara. Wow, thanks. We're in the colors of Celtic, for God's sake.

1:35:37Chris Hewitt:That's true, I am. Yes, so this is Patrick Wilson's Ed Warren and Vera Farmiga's Lorraine. Back once again, they are... With the renegade master. I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking the same thing, and then I was like, no, we've got a young person in the house. Let's not baffle him. Yeah, this is them back. There is another demon slash ghost to be fought. this is a weird film because I counted right I checked my watch it is an hour and a quarter before they enter the house where the actual haunting that we're focused on in this film happens right so we see the prelude involving that family who are the Smurls the Smurls the Smurls okay yeah we see that we see everything that sort of happens to them after they bring an evil haunted mirror into their house what the fuck are they doing do not bring an evil haunted mirror into your house I mean they don't know Oh, it's an evil haunted mirror.

1:36:32Their justification for it is complete nonsense, though. Why? One of the babies looks like the... I mean, no. Come on. I didn't see that. It's got cherubs on top, and it's a grandparent's present, and they go, look, the baby looks like you when you were a baby. That is 100 % a grandparent thing to say.

1:36:48Chris Hewitt:All babies look like you did when you were a baby. The glass is broken. Come on. Look, they're doing their best for their granddaughter's confirmation. Give them a break, you monster. Don't forget, if Amon were in any horror film, they would be 15 minutes long, because he would leave immediately. He literally messaged me after the film going, I don't understand why they were in the house. They should have left the house. Why did they go back in the house? That is a legitimate criticism. If this was... This is the type of horror movie that only makes sense with a white family. If this is a black family, they'd be out of that house.

1:37:18Honestly. But like their entire extended family lives in the house. Who are they going to? All of their family is in the house. Sleeping on the street is preferable to going back into a knowingly haunted house.

1:37:27Chris Hewitt:He's not wrong. Yes, no one ever got killed in the streets. anyway anyway let's get back to the review of the country anyway yes in the meantime what we're seeing is we see a bit of a flashback to Ed and Lorraine when their daughter Judy was born we now then cut to sort of the 1986 of the present day of the film which is where Judy and I are growing up and is dating Ben Hardy Tony and well we don't know yet and you know so they're like a young couple and they're on the verge of things but also she's having terrifying visions because she's inherited her mother's powers. So it's all set for a big confrontation, which we were told will change their lives forever.

1:38:07Now, that's a little overselling it. I thought this was scary. I am a wimp. We have established this. I thought it was scary in the way that the Conjuring films are. I think it's got a nice blend of very classical mix of, you know, proper scares, creeping, slow building tension, jump scares. Everything in the film is creepy, so you're always kind of on edge, or I am because I'm a wuss. But at the same time, this is also kind of a soap opera, and it's a huge amount of faff about the Warren family and their ins and outs. And, oh, do we trust this new boyfriend? Oh, do we like him? Is he one of us?

1:38:41I don't know. So it just kind of goes on for a long time. It is a two and a quarter hour movie. I think that's a bit long. It's directed by Michael Chavez, who did the previous Conjuring movie. The Devil Made Me Do It. The Devil Made Me Do It. There is a James Wan cameo.

1:38:57Chris Hewitt:Oh. There's a scene that kind of has basically a sort of Warren reunion of lots of people that they know. So we see some of the stars of the previous films and he's in the background with period inappropriate hair. There I said it. So it's all very kind of cozy and nice and warm feeling, but it's also terrifying. It's a weird mix. Did you like it? I did. I gave it three stars, which is a recommendation. Oh, Henry O 'Hara wrote this one as well, did he? No, this was me. Oh, this was you. Okay. Amon renowned fraidy cat yeah good yes no yes good I had a solid time I agree with a lot of what Helen's saying that some of the scares are really well constructed there's a scene that takes place in this hall of mirrors which I think was really really good my other main criticism aside from the stupid ass decision making by the family is a little bit of clarity goes a long way in the horror film especially when you're setting up what the demon spirit etc can or can't do there's a moment in the film that flies in the face of everything that had been established about what the demon can't do until a certain point and which just didn't work for me um i really like patrick wilson and vera farmiga they know these roles and their character so well my favorite bit of acting in this is the moment when they go to the house and commit to actually we're gonna be involved they have an entire conversation with their body language without saying one word of dialogue and you can tell exactly what they're thinking as they commit to actually doing this thing.

1:40:30It's really, really great acting. Also, there is a young Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga who were cast perfectly. I don't know their names, but my goodness, they were perfect. Really well cast. So yeah, I had a good time, but yeah, I will not be watching this one again.

1:40:45Chris Hewitt:All right. Three stars in for The Conjuring Last Rite. Is this really it for the Warrens? I always, massive Astovitz box office pending if this film makes money it ain't the last anything I guarantee that have the Warrens done their last grift sorry ghost busting case I don't know listen I hope that finally we can find some Warren piece three stars then for The Country and Last Rites next up The Cut Hells Bells yes so this is as you said before Orlando Bloom's boxer having to lose way too much weight in one week in order to be able to fight this comeback fight. Now, he and his wife agree going into this, if it gets unhealthy, if it gets impossible, we're going to back out, we can do that.

1:41:32When it comes to it, he doesn't want to do that and keeps going to more and more extreme lengths. So it is a physical and a mental torment, essentially, for him. He clearly also comes into it with quite a lot of issues. We see some flashbacks to his youth in Northern Ireland, somewhat explaining some of those. but this is a guy who is already not in a healthy place and he only gets less and less healthy as he goes through this ordeal. And John Turturro essentially plays the devil, I would say, in this. He is a trainer who can get her done and he can maybe get him down to potentially the right weight but he is going to throw absolutely everything at it whether it is legal, whether it is ethical, whether it is safe, he doesn't give a hoot and he will push this guy to the edge and maybe beyond it.

1:42:21I find this pretty riveting, actually. Really tough and unpleasant at times, but really, really good. Great performance from Orlando Bloom. Good Irish accent. I mean, you know... It passed muster I gave from the seal of approval

1:42:36Chris Hewitt:in the interview. I feel like there's a couple of tiny moments around the edges, but generally speaking... It's a very specific one as well. Yeah, he hits the mark, I would say. And yeah, good from Katrina Balfe because I think she hits that quite difficult balance of being convincingly worried, but also she wants to be supportive and this could mean a lot for them. They have a gym together. And she's in that world. She understands where he's coming from. She grew up in that world even more than he did. And so you can see all of this fighting and her reactions to all of this happening. Yeah, it's a weird one because in the final half hour in particular, it varies between almost thriller, like almost crime thriller at one point, definitely horror movie at one point like it's really mixing up its genres but it it keeps its focus on box or the character and that's where it needs to be I thought it was really impressive yeah I thought it was really really good too I appreciated that it's not really a box movie it's taking place in the boxing world which we haven't really gotten much movies like this that focus on people making the weight before a match the novelty that comes with that I thought it was really good and I agree with you on Orlando Bloom like he's having a nice little mini resurgence right now I really enjoyed him in deep cover I think it was the best thing in that movie and for this film he's very physically committed to his performance his character in deep cover would love this performance he really would he really really would I like the chemistry he had with Catra on the Balfe as well I actually missed her in the final act of this film she steps away from for plot reasons and I missed scenes of those two together when they're on screen it's electric there's one scene in particular where he gets into the wire of what he's trying to do.

1:44:20And it's really raw. So yeah, really, really good.

1:44:23Chris Hewitt:Not sure we have an Empire review for this one yet, but I'm in the four-star camp. I don't know about you guys. Yeah, me too. All right, sounds good to me. And then four stars for The Cut, which is out in cinemas this week and digitally in about a month or so. Real quick, I'm on the return of Ethan Coen as a solo director with Honey Don't. Yes, so this is the second in his planned lesbian B-movies trilogy that he's doing with his wife, Trisha Cook, and also his creative partner, Trisha Cook. It stars Margaret Qualley as Honey O'Donoghue. She is a small-town private investigator. And there's been a series of murders that are linked to a mysterious church led by Drew, who's played by one Captain America himself, Chris Evans.

1:45:06This starts off great. The opening credits are really, really fun. They basically use signs from the town and instead of signs, it's the names of the actors and the other people involved. It's a really, really cool opening credits. After that, it gets duller and duller and duller. This is one of those 90-minute movies that feels a lot longer than 90 minutes. I was nodding off. I always sort of snapped myself out of it. I was nodding off a bit during this film and I was wondering, is that more because I'm tired or is it because of the film? And having thought about it some more, I think it's because of the film.

1:45:41It is the film. I think it's a shaggy dog story, even though it's only 90 minutes. It doesn't actually have a lot of effect of detecting. A lot of this stuff happens in a way that isn't in any way connected with her or her case. And so it's a very strange approach. I think she's a really good character. I really, really liked her in this. I thought her, you know, relationships with, like, Aubrey Plaza's sort of police records officer was interesting. I thought Charlie Day's character as this dimwit policeman. Charlie Day's in this! Yeah.

1:46:11Chris Hewitt:Charlie Day's in this! who refuses to accept that she's gay. I thought that was hilarious, actually. That feels like... Because he was very good-hearted about it, but he was just like, no, you're not. We're going to go out someday. That feels like the most Charlie Day character I can imagine. Yeah, that's great. I did enjoy that. And there are some enjoyable moments in Fitz and Starks in this, but everyone is playing the same note in their character over and over and over again. It just doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't progress. Too thin to be impactful. yeah that's a shame this one got two stars from one H.

1:46:44O 'Hara no no seriously it's weird Harrod O 'Hara yep

1:46:48Chris Hewitt:that was a lot of films to get through and you did very very well because we do have a time limit sadly for this week because that is it that is it for this week's Emperor Podcast join us next week for more film related fun when we'll be joined by returning to the podcast the great Sam Riley star of Islands and next week it is the end of Downton Abbey folks the release of Downton Abbey Last Rites means that we will be joined by Hugh Goodtown himself Hugh Bonifil and Alan Leach from the X-Men that's exciting so I'm glad no one laughed at that I thought I'd get a laugh from a mom at least I laughed but no when you laughed after I nervously laughed because no one laughed but anyway it's all good not even Hugh laughed James is just appalled by the lack of respect for Downton Abbey I think absolutely it's the grand finale for fuck's sake is it though box office pending maybe the Warrens could go into Downton Abbey anyway we don't have time we really don't this sounds like a great thing but we do not have time but anyway that is it join us next I've done that bit anyway until we meet again until then until that auspicious occasion goodbye from my three colleagues of such lethal cunning goodbye Mon Warman peace goodbye James Dyer goodbye Chris goodbye Helena on the Pilot TV podcast don't you fucking dare don't you fucking dare what just happened I'm going to need a young priest and an old priest no I'm just going to move on from plugging Pilot and say please like and subscribe my Instagram channel and my TikTok and your OnlyFans and my OnlyFans at James C.

1:48:26Chris Hewitt:Dyer yes yes indeed alright and it's goodbye from Hugh Hugh have you enjoyed it I've loved it thank you I don't believe him

1:48:38Chris Hewitt:I genuinely don't believe you Hugh but I'm glad that you've been here thank you thank you for coming in and it's goodbye from me I'm off to think about Clint Howard and be sad he's not dead he will be forever in our hearts and on our screens see you next time bye

1:49:05Thank you.