#2. The Sub-Beacon on Glass
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Glass gets filleted, mostly by Sonny, who calls it two sequels in one — a sequel to Unbreakable and a sequel to Split, in tension with each other — with a solid opening half hour and a decent closing twenty minutes wrapped around "a boring hour of filmmaking" in which characters argue over whether superheroes are real. He grades it a C to C-minus against a solid A for Unbreakable and a B-plus for Split, uses the trio's CinemaScores (C, B-plus, B) to show why CinemaScore measures expectation rather than quality, and loves the closing reveal that Sarah Paulson runs a clover-tattooed S.H.I.E.L.D.-style cabal, which he reads as a frankly Randian idea — except that the cabal is obviously right, given that Mr. Glass murdered hundreds of people and the Beast is a cannibal. Both he and JVL are appalled that M. Night drowns Bruce Willis in a puddle, "the most incidental manner I can think of." JVL wants to love it as a love letter to Philadelphia and to Ontario Street Comics, whose real-life owner appears on screen and is a friend of his, and sermonizes that great art comes from constraints — "this is why, like, the sonnet structure produces great poetry" — noting M. Night already made his do-whatever-you-want passion project and called it Lady in the Water; only in the closing minutes does he confess he never actually saw Glass and faked the whole review. Vic, who watched Split via a Pakistani YouTube upload rather than pay $9.99 to own it, brings a pile of nitpicks: why can't the Beast just cover his eyes, how are they holding Bruce Willis in an asylum, and why does the ending have the superhero's son holding hands with a mass murderer's mother and a girl in love with a cannibal. Elsewhere: a $40 million Glass debut against $60–70 million projections, Sonny spiking the football over his Oscar-draft domination while drinking from a Death Star ice mold, the Tournament of JVLs bracket (Grudge Holding JVL badly underseeded), and Vic's daughter winning a county writing contest with an essay about her mother.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this latest episode, the Sub-Beacon rehashes the Oscar Draft, discusses the draft of JVL's multiple personalities...
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00- Maybe this will all make sense if I explain who I am.
Sonny00:00:06My name is Dr. Ellie Staple and I'm a psychiatrist.
Guest00:00:11My work concerns a particular type of delusion of grandeur. It's a growing field. I specialize in those individuals who believe they are superheroes.
?00:00:30So, good for you.
Vic00:00:46Hello and welcome to another edition of The Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Lastridges. I'd like to remind you The Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at a podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what is going on? It is January Madness. Really? Not March Madness. It's January Madness. What on earth could you be talking about?
JVL00:01:19This week has been the tournament of JVLs. You've seen this, right? It's on Twitter. It's on Twitter. It's out there on Twitter.
Vic00:01:28To those of us or those of our listeners who are not part of the cult.
JVL00:01:32Some of my friends on Twitter decided to take my split-style eccentricities and parcel them out into 64 distinct JVLs and then seed them into four regions. The misanthropic region, the crazy germaphobe region. Question.
Sonny00:01:52How is the whole thing not just the misanthropic region? Is that not the overarching?
JVL00:01:58I contain multitudes. Okay.
Vic00:02:01Has it already been? Is it going to go? Is this happening in the process of much like the bracket schedule? So here is how it has run.
JVL00:02:11So last week, the brackets themselves were distributed with all the matchups and people were encouraged to fill out their brackets and work out the tournament and then submit them. And the tournament organizer then has is going to do everything as a has been ever doing everything as a poll. Where she she puts the matchups up and then people vote for it. And then the winner will be the person whose bracket ultimately most closely resembles the results of the polls as the polls then determine the tournament progression.
Sonny00:02:43The next time our listeners decide to do something like this, we should try and get a sponsor for it. The tournament of JVL's brought to you by Dollar Shave Club.
JVL00:02:52Right.
Sonny00:02:53Or something.
JVL00:02:55There's just one thing. The Pennzoil draft. There's just one thing. That I would like to. Oh, and here's the regions are the university and universally admired character traits.
Vic00:03:06That's the weakest of the regions.
JVL00:03:09Consumer habits. That is the West region. The random personality quirks. And then the misanthropy region. And the misanthropy region is incredibly strong. Duke is there. I would just like to say that I'm pretty sure that I'm going to lose my own tournament.
Sonny00:03:28Your bracket won't work.
JVL00:03:30I didn't actually formally filled out a bracket, but I sort of mentally went through and checked out and figured out what my final four would look like. And already looking at the first round results, I'm screwed. So I'm even going to lose my own tournament. I'm not just losing the Oscar draft. Oh, we'll get to that. We'll get to my own tournament.
Vic00:03:47That's all I've got. So in other words, you have an ideal. You have an ideal of who you want to win the best of JVL, the best of you. But you think it's going to end up being the worst of you that's going to win. Is that what you're saying? Is that what you're thinking? Well, not the worst. They're all interesting in their own ways. All right.
JVL00:04:04But no, I don't want to thumb the scales by reporting the answer. We'll have an answer next week.
Vic00:04:08Are we in round of 16 yet or round of 32?
JVL00:04:11Yesterday, we completed.
Vic00:04:12We are taping on Thursday morning, right? Yes, we are. Before the show goes out. Of course we are.
JVL00:04:15And the first round was completed yesterday on Wednesday. A couple of big upsets. I think a one seed went down.
Vic00:04:21How about a 512?
JVL00:04:22Two of the five seeds won. Oh, okay. A couple of 10s, a couple of 11s. Oh, you know, 10 is an interesting one. We had a 16.
Vic00:04:28We had a 16 that not since UVA, right? I believe HangryJVL lost in the first round.
Sonny00:04:37Careful, JVL.
JVL00:04:39Yeah, I don't understand how careful was a 16 seed.
Sonny00:04:42That's easily, that should have been a five or six at least.
Vic00:04:44Where was GeorgetownJVL?
JVL00:04:47GeorgetownJVL is, hold on, he's in here. I know, I know. Georgetown Envious. Oh, he, Georgetown is a number seven seed in the misanthropy region.
Vic00:04:58So it's a tough, it's a tough, tough nut.
JVL00:05:02In the first round, Georgetown, oh, Georgetown Envious JVL was matched up against, at number 10, Grudge Holding JVL. What? That's a ridiculous.
Vic00:05:12That's a ridiculous match. It should be the other way around. Grudge Holding would be a one seed for me. Grudge Holding should be a one seed.
JVL00:05:18Yeah, absolutely. That's our guy.
Vic00:05:20Victorino, how are you? I am exhausted. I spent yesterday evening in a high school auditorium admiring the talent. Oh, you made bail. Yeah, I'm actually Skyping from County Lockup. No, I was going to say I was in the high school auditorium admiring. Pep Rally? Admiring.
JVL00:05:37Just went to the Pep Rally, the local high school on a Wednesday night. And then I forgot. No reason.
Vic00:05:42Well, I just have a lot of spirit. You know what it is? My kids grow up so fast. You know how they say the kids grow up. And then I said, wait a minute, not too fast. They're not even in high school yet. What am I doing here? And then I had to leave. No. Sir, why are you wearing a trench coat? And sunglasses at night. What is that? Like Robert Ridgely. Yeah, yeah. Robert, yeah, in high anxiety. Come with me, sir, into the men's room. Okay, no. So my daughter, she won an essay contest. Well, it's not really an essay, right? It's not like monoskew, but it's a writing contest. So the county does the whole thing where it's like a competition. There's different themes. It's all art related, but the different subject every year. This subject this year is called Heroes. And so she wrote a little story. About Dick Cheney? Had she known more, had she seen the movie, she would have picked him. And anyway, her school, her elementary school, she won her category in her school, which is grades like three to five. So that was very exciting. But then she also got an honorable mention at the county level. So we attended the county event last night. Her hero, you were wondering about this, her hero is her mother. Question. Yes.
JVL00:06:58Would her daughter be disqualified for having a parent who's one of the great editors of his generation? You're very kind. Well, here was the trick of it. I mean, that is unfair.
Vic00:07:09You'd also be surprised, especially in this county, there's lots of parents who are very into this sort of thing. Yeah, but not as good an editor as you. You are one of the great editors in Washington. You're very kind. This is like the ringer.
JVL00:07:23You can't let her be in the contest.
Vic00:07:24Yes, it's like those sweepstakes and you have to be the finalist. Anyone who works for the company can't work there, like McDonald's. Okay, no. The key was it was something she wrote in class. So I had no interference whatsoever. And, in fact, I had no idea it happened until I found out that she was a winner. And, in fact, the story she talks about where Kate rescues her in a pool, I have no memory of that either.
JVL00:07:51I like the image of her bringing her essay to you and you getting out the red pen and marking it. I'm sorry. You're dangling your gerund here, honey. The two things. Let's kill the little darlings here.
Vic00:08:04I will. You're mixing metaphors. I won't. Yes. I'm not at that point yet. Leave your nut graph up. I would say spelling is something that I can't – misspelling, I can't abide by that. And they're into this whole – you're writing it now and her penmanship is terrific. But they want to break up words. So they like to do the hyphen if they reach the end of the paper. But it's not always where it actually should be. And so I'll explain that. But other than that, I mean it was a lovely essay. It wasn't about me. But that was fine. Sonny, you have a look on your face.
?00:08:37No.
Vic00:08:37I mean I – Yeah.
Sonny00:08:39That seems very sweet that you would write about Kate.
Vic00:08:41It is.
JVL00:08:42It is. It was very nice. But my mommy does all of the yard work and the plumbing and the electrical wiring.
Vic00:08:49That goes without saying. There's nothing she can't do. I was really worried about getting into the details of what – like I don't know where my daddy is. She assembles all of the grills. Right, right. I don't know where – My dad, where am I? And my dad likes to play a game called Civilization. But anyway, it was a long ceremony because they got to show the winners their art, their film. You have kids doing movies, dance, interpretive dance, photography, reading poems, the whole thing. And so by the end – you know what it felt like? It felt like the Oscars but the part that they don't show. The technical awards that they do like three days in a row. Yeah, like at 2 p.m. and there's probably no one in the audience. And when you look in the auditorium, it's just – there's nobody else there. You know, that's what it felt like. But speaking of Oscars, Sonny Bunch, how about an Oscar draft update?
Sonny00:09:39Well, first off, let me just – All right, go ahead. Let me just – what I'm going to do right now is pour myself a victory drink. He really is.
Vic00:09:49You're getting a slow clap from JVL. His ice cube is a Death Star ice cube.
Sonny00:09:54Because I destroyed everyone in this room.
JVL00:09:56You have a spherical ice cube? I do. Let me see.
Sonny00:10:00It's shaped like – it's a mold of the Death Star.
JVL00:10:02It actually is. So, you know, spherical ice cubes are supposed to be the way you do it. I believe that's the way the Japanese do their scotch, right? Because you maximize surface area. No, minimize surface.
Sonny00:10:12I think you minimize surface area. Because you don't want to dilute it as much. Yes, yes, yes.
Vic00:10:19Even more better than that is just with no ice. And just drink it. Fill to the rim. Like a man.
Sonny00:10:25Just drink it. Just drink it out of a Nalgene bottle. That's it.
JVL00:10:30Go ahead. Go ahead, Sonny. What happens if you suck that through a life straw?
Sonny00:10:34Hey, Ryan. Here's what we need to acknowledge here is that I was right. Without even knowing it.
JVL00:10:43I was right by accident. By accident.
Sonny00:10:46Totally by accident. That I would get more points than the rest of you combined. I dominated. In every level, on every category, I dominated both. Both of you. I did so well that you literally, neither of you can beat me in the actual show itself. Even if you win all of the categories in which you're nominated and I win no categories, you can't win. So I just want to. Thank you, JVL. My sentiments exactly. I've got one more.
Vic00:11:18Speaking of which, Bohemian Rhapsody.
Sonny00:11:19I'm going to just spike the football. I'm literally spiking a football. I'm spiking a football. So here's. Question. Here's what we need to figure out. Why didn't you pick the Vice and the Favorite first and second?
Vic00:11:33Yeah.
Sonny00:11:33Because I took them as value picks.
Vic00:11:35Great value picks. You would have been. With your first pick, by the way. Obviously not counting any of my other picks. But you had the first pick. Yeah. You would have done even better had you picked not a Starsborne but Roma.
Sonny00:11:48Yeah, sure. There are other ways that I could have gotten even more points somehow. There are a lot of surprises here.
JVL00:11:55And one of which is a Starsborne. That's Starsborne. And Beale Street. Starsborne. Not a surprise to me. I believe I said a couple weeks ago, Starsborne is fading.
Sonny00:12:03You did. It's fading to eight nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay. I'm sorry. You guys doubted me for some reason. And I have dominated you so badly that there's no point in even doing the Oscar draft anymore. It's over. It's all over. So we have to figure out what we need to do next. Do we want to redraft? Do we want to just pick the nominees?
Vic00:12:28Is it only because you were locked out and picked at the end the favorite? Well, that is certainly... If you remove the favorite, because that leads the noms, doesn't it? If you remove lots of things, I might... But I would still... He's getting so touchy.
Sonny00:12:40He's getting so touchy, JVL. I would still... I still dominated. I dominated. Oh, I'm sorry that I didn't take mid-90s.
JVL00:12:46I actually listened. It's funny. I listened. That's all I have to say.
Sonny00:12:48I listened to that episode again this morning because I wanted to get hyped up for it. What?
JVL00:12:55Because I'm not sure that there's any actual evidence that you did win the draft. It never happened. It never happened.
Sonny00:13:00You can still stream it on Google Play. So, anyway, guys, I just want to... I'm sorry that I'm so much better than both of you together at this. I'm sorry about that. I can't help it. I can't help how good I am.
JVL00:13:15JVL thoughts, please. The favorite is The King Size. No, look. I mean, he... The favorite is, like, all King Size movies. You win. Oh, oh, oh.
Sonny00:13:25Remember when I won the candy draft, too? More so than Star is Born. So, let's see. I've won the Halloween candy draft, and I've won the Oscar draft. I don't even know what other kind of draft I could win to dominate you again.
JVL00:13:35I'll just say this, Victorino.
Vic00:13:36Yes, JVL.
JVL00:13:38My draft strategy was predicated upon the idea that Hollywood had learned something in this Me Too era. That's right. And that Hollywood was no longer going to treat women like garbage. No, this was... And it turns out that I was too optimistic about the change we have been seeing in our society. So, you know what? Fine. I will lose a stupid draft for which there is no prize because I dared to dream of a better society that we were living in.
Vic00:14:08What you're talking about is how On the Basis of Sex only got nominated for a song. Best original song.
JVL00:14:14Wait, I'm sorry.
Vic00:14:15Is it a good song? That's what I want. Do you think it's going to win? JVL. Will it win that? Will it win the best song?
Sonny00:14:20No.
Vic00:14:21What about the purse? What about the purse?
Sonny00:14:24JVL, I have a question. What was the vorm of On the Basis of Sex?
JVL00:14:28Yeah, vorm. Well, keep in mind that we were drafting in the immediate shadow of the Kavanaugh hearings.
Sonny00:14:34So you fell prey to recency bias is what happened.
JVL00:14:38I thought that people out there in California who it turns out are a bunch of patriarchal, Trump-loving, conservative right-wing reactionaries. I thought that those people might have had their consciences shocked by what was happening in this country right now. And it turns out they just didn't. They just want to make America great again. That's why Green Book racking up nominations. I am sorry that I wasn't cynical enough to think that Hollywood would still continue to treat women like trash.
Vic00:15:10But you are, you know what, so you had that bad pick, but you were also, I'm sure Sonny was very surprised by this, as you just mentioned, Sonny, Green Book doing so well. Green Book got five nominations. You were down, but you were so down on Green Book, Sonny, and Jonathan was so up on it and bullish on it. Did it get nominated for Best Picture?
Sonny00:15:29Yeah, it got five nominations. It got about how many nominations I thought it would get.
JVL00:15:35In fairness to me, when I chose Green Book over Beale Street, it was just a pick-em.
Vic00:15:42If I had my choice at the time, I would have picked Beale over Green Book, but I think people are, the Barry Jenkins moment I think is obviously fading, the Damien Chazelle moment obviously faded.
Sonny00:15:56Well, I do think it's... Looking at, if we can be serious for a moment, if we can do some actual serious Oscar analysis for one moment, it is interesting that if Beale Street Could Talk faded so badly, and I think it has to do, I mean, I think it mostly has to do with the fact that Anna Purna did not make a serious push on it. It did a very limited release. It's only in a thousand theaters right now. It isn't doing much box office business, and it is not getting this sort of airplay that, like, Vice got. Like, Vice is a very divisive, very mixed movie critically, but it is on everybody's TV screen all the time. They sent out all the screeners, you know, it's got all the stars. It is like the sort of movie that you would expect Hollywood to reward during Oscar season on something like this.
Vic00:16:44So you can't underestimate the effect of the lobbying efforts while you're saying that.
Sonny00:16:48Yeah, and I mean, the simple fact of the matter is, if Beale Street Could Talk is the smallest of the race movies, it is the one that has gotten the least attention, it's the one that's gotten the least advertising. It looks so artsy. Again, just outside of, outside of, like, actual campaigning, you know, sending the screeners and getting the actors and director out there to do interviews, et cetera, et cetera, just in terms of, like, what people are seeing on TV all the time, how many people even know that If Beale Street Could Talk is out there? Can I be honest? Yeah.
JVL00:17:17Of course. The reason I did not pick Vice was because, based on the trailer, I thought it might be, like, kind of funny and semi-sympathetic look at Jamie. I didn't imagine it would be such an insane hack job. Had I known that, had I known that it was going to be, you know, Dick Cheney is the
Vic00:17:37most evil man in the history of the planet, then I might have thought about taking it.
Sonny00:17:41Well, you were misreading the film, as I discussed on Morning Joe several weeks ago.
JVL00:17:47Are you guys surprised by Vice?
Sonny00:17:51In terms of the noms? Yeah. I'm not surprised by Vice. Here's, you know what Vice has? Vice has a bunch of actors who... You get Academy Award nominations in it. It has Christian Bale, it has Amy Adams, it has Sam Rockwell.
Vic00:18:03Christian Bale will probably win.
Sonny00:18:04It has a good pedigree. Adam McKay got a Best... I think he got... He has gotten a Best Director nomination before, and I think he won Best Screenplay for The Big Short. And it is political in all the right ways. It is a very straightforwardly Oscar Beatty style movie, in theory. Now, when you watch the actual picture, it's a very weird Oscar movie, because it has all the fourth wall breaks and all that. It is not a straightforward historical costume drama type film. But it is... I am not surprised by it. I am not surprised by the nominations it got. The only ones I may have been a little bit surprised by were some of the smaller ones, like Editing and Hair and Makeup.
JVL00:18:53Editing is one that actually I would have given it a nomination for. I thought it was a very well-edited movie. Yeah, funnily enough.
Vic00:19:00Yeah, it has all its weird quirks. Pod thinks that Cuaron... Alfonso Cuaron. Nosoratu. Del Toro. Del Toro. Del Toro. In Orito.
Sonny00:19:11That he's going to sweep. It's possible. I think Roma could win a lot of awards.
JVL00:19:17As an industry matter, it would be insane for the Academy to go out and legitimize Netflix. I mean, this would be like in 1980, Detroit Auto Show giving its best car and show to a Toyota Camry. This is a thing which has arrived on our shores to kill your industry, and you're going to give it best picture? I have a hard time believing that that's a thing that will happen. But maybe, people don't think that way anymore.
Vic00:19:54I'm constantly being surprised by this.
Sonny00:19:58Remember that the biggest block of voters is the actors, and the actors get paid no matter what. And I don't think they, I mean, I think they care about this in the abstract, but I do not think that they are strategizing in this sort of way.
Vic00:20:12JV, I was going to say, the other thing that you were lucky about was Bohemian Rhapsody, because that was a leftover. That was something at the very end, I think, and it's like, who's going to really take it? It was a middle pick for me. A middle pick? It was a middle pick for me. It was your last pick. Was it my last pick? Yeah, yeah.
JVL00:20:23Oh, I hated that movie.
Vic00:20:26Right, right. I thought that it- With a shrug, and we said it's not going to win any music or anything, yet.
JVL00:20:31The critical response plus the box office success of it made me think that they could, I mean, people loved the movie for reasons I can't understand.
Sonny00:20:40Number 153 in the IMDb Top 250. Of all time. Of all time. It's the 153rd greatest film ever made.
Vic00:20:49See, aren't you glad you took it in the end? So I guess- Oh! I'm just saying, no, I don't know what you're saying. I'm just saying that, you know, you didn't want it, you were repulsed by it, and then you were, like, reluctant, then you got kind of curious, and then you said, okay, I'll take it in the end, and then now you're happy. It's like, you know what? I'm really glad I did. It worked out for you. It did. It did.
Sonny00:21:11So here's one other thing I want to highlight. We all- We got, between the three of us-
JVL00:21:17I'm sorry. I can't hold it in anymore. Sorry.
Sonny00:21:22He was reluctant at first.
Vic00:21:23He broke. He did. He broke. Okay.
Sonny00:21:25Between the three of us, we got all of the Best Picture nominees. Oh. Which is a triumph for all of us. How many were there? There were eight. Eight. Eight total. We got all of them. The biggest surprise to me, outside of the world of our draft, which I dominated and which I won, and everyone should acknowledge that I'm the best- You can edit this part out since you said this earlier. Other than that, the most surprising thing was Cold War. Yes. Cold War taking a Best Director-
JVL00:21:56I'm doing this just for you, man. Oh, easy. I'm going to react.
Sonny00:21:58He's not even paying attention to you. That doesn't even make sense. I like looking at it. Cold War taking Best Director nomination and Best Cinematography and some other stuff. I'm pleasantly surprised because I like Cold War a lot. I want to see it. I like Cold War a lot. I'm sure it'll be on Amazon Prime soon because it was distributed by Amazon. Oh, good. You should definitely see it.
Vic00:22:22Yeah.
Sonny00:22:23But I was pleasantly surprised by that and also pleasantly surprised by- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs getting three nominations, I think it was. The song, too. For Best Song. And that song is great. And also Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume, whatever. But I am a little bit surprised. But again, I shouldn't be because the Coens have a great pedigree. I mean, people love the Coen brothers and they should because the Coen brothers are great.
Vic00:22:48I'm still surprised that the most noms besides Romwe is the favorite. Did that surprise you?
Sonny00:22:53It surprised me that it got so- that it took three acting nominations, including two acting nominations and supporting actress. That surprised me a little bit. And I, frankly, was surprised that it got a Best Picture nomination. But this is, again, the reason I picked it is because I thought it would rack up a lot of those minor costuming, production design, etc. And it did. It got like five or six of those awards. So, once again, my strategy was perfect. Do you know why it did so well?
Vic00:23:22Why, JVL? Because gout is so hot right now. I thought you were going to say something else. Gout is so hot right now. No, it's all about the gout. Because gout. Gout is everywhere. It is everywhere. So many of my fellow sufferers are sending me so many links to stories that are coming up, popping up about gout.
Sonny00:23:34And it's, I just want to highlight again that I picked a movie about strong women. A movie about strong women who succeeded despite the patriarchy's attempt to keep them down. And it was also a good movie. You know, so one of us had a better woke strategy than the other. All right.
Vic00:23:50Right now, based on the nominees, not on the draft, but on the nominees, who do you think is going to win Best Picture? Because I don't think it's A Star is Born.
Sonny00:24:00I think it's a green book. I think it's a green book. I think, I mean, especially with the Bryan Singer story dropping as soon as it did after the nominations came out.
Vic00:24:10Oh, because of the Don Shirley characters. Did you see the Atlantic's press release about this?
Sonny00:24:14Well, the Atlantic saying that Hearst had killed it and we ran it. Yeah.
JVL00:24:18And when it had made it through legal vetting, made it through legal at Hearst, made it through fact. So this is, okay, so for people who are not like us. So the Atlantic has a giant story about Bryan Singer in it, which is not especially favorable to Bryan Singer. And it turns out they released a statement today from the two authors of the piece saying that we had worked on this story for years for Esquire. It had made it through the editorial process. It had made it through the fact checking. And then it had been vetted by the Hearst legal department. And only then did Hearst corporate decide to come in and kill it. And that we were happy to be. We were happy to be able to bring it over to the Atlantic, where it was again vetted editorially, again fact checked, and again went through legal. But then Atlantic did not roll over like a bunch of, what time is it, Sonny? Like a bunch of f***ing p***ies and back out of the story. And so they ran it. And good for them. And the reason for this, I would guess, if I had to sort of, is because Esquire is dependent on putting celebrities on the cover. And so you can, if you are connected to Singer, you could go. Talk to them and say, you will never get one of my clients to pose on your cover ever again if you run this story. And Esquire, like all of those glossy glamour magazines, lives and dies by its celebrity covers. And the Atlantic is like, yeah.
Vic00:25:42Right. Yeah. He didn't direct the new X-Men movie that's coming out, did he?
Sonny00:25:47No. Okay. Simon Kinberg did, I believe. That is apparently a disaster. It keeps having preview screenings and they keep looking at the trailer and it's not doing it for me. Dark Phoenix?
Vic00:25:55Dark Phoenix.
Sonny00:25:57They've pushed, it's actually amazing. They're going to do two terrible Dark Phoenix movies in the span of about 15 years. That's impressive. I'm actually not even mad. I'm impressed. The Bryan Singer story is, I mean, it's obviously horrible, but also it is fascinating in that it is now the emphasis of the entire Oscar campaign for Bohemian Rhapsody to be like, Bryan Singer was barely there. He left. He got fired. He was, I, Rami Malek was on, was getting-
JVL00:26:32Rami Malek was like, who?
Sonny00:26:32Rami Malek was giving an interview. He was like, I had conceived of this idea of Freddie Mercury years before Bryan Singer was involved. I mean, they really are just trying to like death of Stalin him out of the picture. They are just airbrushing him out as best as they can. And I don't think it'll work. I mean, this is why for all of the problems that Green Book has with the woke set, I do think that it is, it is the sort of- movie that is appealing enough to general audiences. It's appealing enough to stupid voters that it will, that it will, that it will rack up.
Vic00:27:06It's culturally accurate for its time.
Sonny00:27:08It will, it will, it will, I think it's going to take home- Mingi. I think it ends up taking home best picture. I mean, the other problem that Bohemian Rhapsody has is that it's a s***ball movie. Well, I mean, leave aside that.
Vic00:27:19JVL, your pick then, who do you think is going to be best pick?
JVL00:27:22I, I have no idea. I know who it should be. It should be Black Panther. No. Nonsense. Okay. Victorino, who do you, who do you think and who do you think it should? Well, this is the other question. Sonny, who do you, who should of the nominees win best picture?
Sonny00:27:39I think of all of these movies that I like to star as born the most.
JVL00:27:43Okay.
Vic00:27:44Victorino, you? I think it's going to be Roma based on everything that I've seen on the nominate. They love them. They love, they love, they love all of, obviously his 10 nominations. Who do I think is going to win?
JVL00:27:54And only one quarter of the people who have started watching it have turned it off. Well, so, you know, people must love it.
Vic00:28:00Those numbers are unclear. Those numbers are unclear. We can only tell you how many people hit play for the first five seconds. And, and, and I like, we make jokes about this. Green Book is good. I like Green Book. I hope it wins.
JVL00:28:13I would just briefly before we move on from this on the, the Netflix turning off, you know, people who haven't completed the movie, I would say on average, when is the last time you saw a person? A theater goer walk out of a movie on average of every hundred people you see in an audience. What percentage of them do you think lifetime have you witnessed walking out of a movie?
Sonny00:28:40Would you say it's 25%? I would say it's lower than that. I would say it's much.
JVL00:28:44Would you say it's lower than half a percent?
Sonny00:28:47Yeah, probably in the zero. It's somewhere between zero and 1%, I would say.
JVL00:28:51Interesting.
Sonny00:28:52With the exception of a couple of like, of, of aggressively. Avant-garde. Avant-garde films like Mother.
Vic00:29:01Oh, the Lars von Trier one with Matt Dillon as a serial killer. I would walk out of that one. That sounds awful.
Sonny00:29:05It sounds pretty intense. Yeah, I couldn't do that.
Vic00:29:08Okay, well, thank you, JVL. And good luck on your multiple personality draft. Speaking of multiple personalities, over the weekend, Glass shattered the box office. Oh, look at that. That is A+. A plus, thank you. Yes, it shattered the box office by airbender standards with $40 million. Followed by The Upside. I was surprised by that, by the way. Yes, we'll get to that in a second. And Aquaman, in third place with $10 million. Aquaman has now done over $300 million domestic. Box office thoughts, fellas.
Sonny00:29:41JVL, you said you were shocked.
JVL00:29:42I was shocked that it debuted at $40 million. I thought it would be much bigger than that. I thought that the way that people really liked Split, the fact that this is, like The Incredibles 2, sort of a long-in-the-making sequel. Because Split was not a sequel. I mean, Split was its own thing that was then shoehorned into the universe. Sequel to a movie that I think was quite beloved.
Sonny00:30:08No, no, no. Unbreakable was not quite beloved, but it has grown over time.
JVL00:30:12No, that's what I meant. I'm sorry.
Sonny00:30:14I meant it had become, like The Princess Bride,
JVL00:30:15Unbreakable was a movie which people have fallen in love with over time and now look back on incredibly fondly.
Sonny00:30:21I do think it is. So Unbreakable is a slightly weird movie in that it was, dismissed at the time because it was not like The Sixth Sense. These three movies are actually a perfect representation of why cinema score is a useful metric and why it is also not a good arbiter of quality. So if you look at Unbreakable, Split, and Glass, Unbreakable got a C. Split got a B+, and Glass got a B. Now, the reason Unbreakable got a C is because it was nothing like The Sixth Sense. It was totally different. It was totally different in tone and totally different in what the movie actually was. It's more of a drama than a horror film. It's very well done. Split, on the other hand, was essentially the first really good M. Night Shyamalan movie in a decade. So people saw it and they were like, oh, yeah, that's pretty good. B+, sure, why not? And Glass, which is the worst of these three movies by a significant margin, I think, got a B because it wasn't that different from Split. It was like, okay, this is the movie I was expecting to see more or less. All right, it's got James McAvoy, it's got Bruce Willis, it's got Sam Jackson. This is fine. It's fine. Yeah. But in terms of which of these movies is best, Unbreakable is a solid A. Split, I think, is about a B+, and Glass, I think, is a C to C-. And this is why it doesn't – cinema score is interesting but is not a very good metric of quality. In terms of box office projections, JVL, I was also a little surprised it was only $50 million over the four-day weekend, if you include MLK Jr. It was about $50 million. About $50 million. And the other studios had been predicting in the $70 million range. Why was it low? I don't know. I do think that there's – I think it got some bad reviews. It got some bad buzz from critics, unlike Split, which got really good reviews and debuted to – they both debuted at $40 million. And I think the expectations for these films are very different. I mean, expectations for Split was like $10 or $12 million. It debuts at $40. Expectations for Glass was $60, $70. It debuts at $40. So, like, they both grossed about the same amount of money. On similar budgets, Glass cost about $20 million. Split cost about $9 million. But because of expectations, again, you're looking at two very different results.
JVL00:32:46Question. Yeah. Could this have been the result of environmental factors? I am thinking specifically about the NFL championship games, both of which were barn burners, both of which – people were really into and which essentially cut a full day off of movie going.
Sonny00:33:02But it was soft before Sunday.
JVL00:33:03It was soft before Sunday.
Vic00:33:05JVL, did you get a chance to see Glass? Sort of. Okay. Understood. I got a chance to see Split because somebody from, I think, Pakistan uploaded on YouTube. But I also – I didn't finish the whole thing. You're shaking your head, Sonny. You can just buy it. Yeah, for $9.90. I don't want to buy Split. You can rent it. You can rent it for $10.
Sonny00:33:28You can rent it for $3. No.
Vic00:33:29I checked Amazon and Netflix and the only option was to buy for $9.99 online. I'm not buying it. You could expense it.
Sonny00:33:36You could have just expensed it here at the office.
JVL00:33:38They don't. Okay. They don't pay you enough money to – I don't want to own it. The guy who will go for 15 different martinis in old-fashioned to the palm –
Vic00:33:48What are you talking about? That was just yesterday. It happened yesterday. $3 for intellectual property. $10. Not information wants to be. It's free. It's the principle. I'm not paying $10 for Split. If you'd gone to the theater, it would have been $18. I'm going to see it in the first place. I'm going to have to do it for the show. Anyway, $9.99 for Split. Really? Do you want to own Split for $9.99? I mean, really. Yes.
Sonny00:34:12I like paying content creators for their work. No. No.
Vic00:34:15Anyway, I saw – You see, we work in intellectual property. What are you talking about? So it's a good thing if people – I saw actually there was also the IGN 10-minute version where they do a summary of the movie on YouTube.
JVL00:34:25That was good enough for Split.
Vic00:34:27Anyway, Sonny, do you want to give a quick – Did anyone else see it? No. I saw it, but that was it. Sonny, do you want to give a quick big boy review of Glass for those of us and spoiler alerts? Yeah. Can we just do this as a spoiler?
JVL00:34:41This is going to be all spoilers. We got your click and your download anyway. If you don't want to be spoiled on an M. Night Shyamalan.
Sonny00:34:48Frankly, you already got the best part of the show where I was bragging about the Oscar draft for 15, 20 minutes.
Vic00:34:54Did you see the look on my face in JVL? It was disgusting. It's disgusting. We're done. The show's done now. Okay, we're done enough.
Sonny00:35:01Okay, Glass. Glass is the conclusion of M. Night Shyamalan's faux trilogy that started with Unbreakable, ran through Split, and now ends with Glass. It is about the emergence of superheroes, kind of. It's a very strange movie because it is very much two sequels in one. It is a sequel to Unbreakable, and it is a sequel to Split. And both of those movies are in tension with each other. I think that there is a way you could have put them together that made more sense than how it worked here. But basically what happens is in the early going, David Dunn, who is the Bruce Willis character from Unbreakable, takes down the Horde, who is the James McAvoy character from Split. And in the process of this, both of them are captured and sent to a mental hospital where Elijah Price, I think is his name, is the Sam Jackson character. The Sam Jackson character from Unbreakable is being held prisoner because he's a crazy person. He murdered hundreds of people and he's insane. So you get all three of these characters together. Sarah Paulson shows up as a psychiatrist and she's like, you are all crazy. You think you're superheroes, but you're not superheroes because you're just normal people and you have these delusions. And we live in this media environment where everybody tells you that you're superheroes, but you're not. You're just normal.
JVL00:36:23And that goes on for like an hour.
Sonny00:36:25That's like an hour of the movie. And it is disastrously paced, this film. The biggest problem with Glass, I think, is that you have a pretty solid opening 20 or 30 minutes. And you have, I think, a pretty solid closing 20 minutes or so. We can argue about that in a moment. I like the twist at the end, which I'll get to in a sec. But in the middle, you have just over and over and over again people talking about whether or not superheroes are real and whether or not these actors are superheroes and whether or not comic books. structure matters in real life. And it is just a kind of, it's a boring slog. We keep hopping to Anya Taylor-Joy, who was the victim in Split, the girl. And we keep hopping back to Bruce Willis' kid from Unbreakable. And they're both in this movie and they're fine, but they are doing essentially the same thing. There's a lot of overlap. It's boring. It's just a boring hour of filmmaking. And then you get to the end, which is basically a big showdown between the three. They're super-powered people. And the big twist is that Sarah Paulson is the head of some sort of secret Illuminati-type society. They all have little clover tattoos on. I thought this might be their way to try and backdoor this into a Cloverfield universe. See, because they've got a whole field of clover tattoos. But I actually thought that might be what they were doing for a second. I'm glad they didn't. But, again, the idea that is introduced in those last minutes, that there is a cabal of people who are dedicated to convincing super-human people that they are normal is interesting. It is basically the idea of the Incredibles. It is basically the—it is Randian. It is, frankly, an Ayn Rand twist that these normal people are trying to keep down these extraordinary people because the extraordinary people upset the balance of power in the world. And, frankly, those people are right. The Cloverfield people are talking— Totally right because you know— Because of the balance, the imbalance. You know who Mr. Glass was? He killed hundreds of people, burned down a building, derailed a train, blew up an airplane. He is an insane person, and he needed to be stopped. The Beast, mass murderer, cannibal, killing women, eating them. Gross. Terrible. Granted, this also means that we lose Bruce Willis' character, but, you know, sometimes you've got to drown your hero in a puddle to save the world.
Vic00:38:53So, anyway, that was lovely. Thank you, Sonny. But that's my problem with it, is that, you know, had there not been any Bruce Willis, these people would have continued terrorizing and eating people. But a quick question for you, for either of you. James McAvoy, did he ever get any sort of Golden Globe or Oscar nom for his performance?
Sonny00:39:17No.
Vic00:39:18Why?
Sonny00:39:20Because he's working hard. It looks like he's working hard. James McAvoy is my favorite part of these last two films because he's hamming it up real hard on screen. And I like that. I like it when actors just kind of throw caution into the wind and, you know, really ham it up. He did. Because his stuff is actually entertaining to watch, unlike everything else that's happening in the hospital.
Vic00:39:43But you think it's because he was hamming it up that people are just...
Sonny00:39:47People are not taking him seriously. This is not a movie that is going to get a lot of Oscar nominations or Golden Globe nominations. It takes a lot of work.
Vic00:39:52He's doing 24 personalities. JVL, you have a look of consternation. You have a look of disgust on your face right now.
JVL00:40:00I think that X-Men First Class is the only time James McAvoy hasn't hammed it up on screen.
Sonny00:40:08Well, basically all of the X-Men movies. He's very staid.
JVL00:40:12In everything else he does, he's just... Ready for this. Well, wanted. Ready for this. Wanted. He's pretty. Wanted Wimbledon.
Vic00:40:19I saw him in an episode of Foil's War, and he was a young lad, and he played it completely straight. That was... For James McAvoy, playing it completely straight. He's my favorite thing about Atomic Blonde. I was thinking about Atomic Blonde. Yeah, roided up. Okay, JV. He is also...
JVL00:40:38What's going on? A lot of high... Low weight, high rep, skinless chicken. Atonement.
Sonny00:40:44Atonement. He's playing that very straight.
JVL00:40:46Okay. Okay. I like James McAvoy. I don't dislike him. Class slot. So, I want to love this movie because it's a love letter to Philadelphia, the way all of M. Night's movies are. And there's another scene at Ontario Street Comics, which is my favorite comic book shop on the planet.
Sonny00:41:07It's amazing. So, that's really... They're really filming there. I would have cut all that out. Everything in the comic book store is terrible. Well, of course.
Vic00:41:15They kept the same guy, didn't they? The comic book guy behind the counter is the same one.
JVL00:41:19That's because he's the owner of Ontario Street. I know him.
Vic00:41:21So, it's real. It's all real.
JVL00:41:22No, he's a real guy. I know him. In fact, when I was up there with my buddy... My buddy, Chris, a couple months ago, we were at Ontario Street and we had a nice long conversation with him. Wait, is he...
Sonny00:41:31So, he's also the guy from Unbreakable? Yes. Who, like, take... Who wheels Samuel Jackson out of the...
JVL00:41:37Yeah. That's crazy. But... Yes to all of this. Sonny is always right. Okay? Fine. Fine. It's not a great movie and I have a lot of questions and... Oh, I've got tons.
?00:41:55The...
JVL00:41:55The Sarah Paulson character?
Sonny00:41:58That's essentially S.H.I.E.L.D., right? The organization was like, oh, we're the Illuminati. Something like that.
JVL00:42:03No, they're S.H.I.E.L.D. And what does S.H.I.E.L.D. do? S.H.I.E.L.D. is there to fight all these shadow wars with crazy forces that normal society is not capable of handling. And they are, as you say, Sonny, correct to try to put a lid on all of this stuff because it's bad and it's destabilizing. And it's... I appreciate that we didn't get all mutant rights in it because that, you know, again, as we've discussed, is itself problematic. But, yeah, like, this is... Yes. We should have the Sarah Paulson's or we want them on that wall. We need them on that wall.
Sonny00:42:34Do you think... Here's the very weird thing about Glass to me was that it seems that M. Night Shyamalan is incredibly sympathetic to Mr. Glass in his search for meaning and purpose in the world. And it seems to me he's incredibly sympathetic to the Horde, who, again, mass murdering cannibal. And then he drowns... Drowns Bruce Willis in a puddle, which almost, I mean, literally feels like a slap in the face of the audience. Who he? Well, I mean, M. Night Shyamalan as, like, the director, creator of this. Right. I mean, it feels like... It felt like that. It feels like, here's the one character you love and I'm going to dispose of him in the most incidental manner I can think of.
Vic00:43:18I waited to the end because I was still holding out hope that Bruce Willis was going to emerge from that water. But, no. I killed him. And I didn't stay to the end of the credits. I assume... Was there a stinger?
Sonny00:43:31I looked it up online and they said there was no stinger, so I didn't stay through it. Because I was also watching it. This was also one in the morning by the time credits start rolling when I was watching it. Okay. All right.
Vic00:43:40No, that was very... Did you love it? No, I wanted to. You know, and I had recently rewatched Unbreakable with my son. It's good. It's so good. It's really good. And here's the other thing is, you know, from the get-go, just the camera work is so very thoughtful. I mean... He's really taking his time.
JVL00:43:58The reflection in that very curved, old, black and white, cathode ray tube TV early on. Great scene. We're seeing young Elijah Glass.
Vic00:44:10Oh, yeah, yeah. No. And it's all shot in reflection of that green glass. Absolutely. No, it's touching.
Sonny00:44:15The whole thing is very... And he does something similar early on in the shopping. In the department store where she has a baby. That's all shot basically into the mirror. But also, like, the scene on the train. The scene on the train where we... We are introduced to David Dunn, and he is kind of hitting on... He's awkwardly hitting on this agent, and we're learning about his life. It's incredibly well done. It's a four or five minute... Hitchcockian. Single shot. Totally Hitchcockian. Single shot where the camera's just kind of going back and forth between the seats. Like, you're the little girl who he sees watching this happen. And it is incredibly efficient. I mean, the thing about Unbreakable is that it's a hundred minute movie, essentially. The credits start rolling after a hundred minutes.
Vic00:44:58It was so surprisingly short. You expect these... Every movie now has to be over two hours, and it was like, wow, we're done.
Sonny00:45:03And Glass is two hours and nine minutes, and if you couldn't find 30 minutes to cut out of that movie... Easily. And look, this is... Again, this is M. Night saying, I paid $20 million to make this movie. He funded it himself. He got distribution with others, but he funded the filming of this movie. And it is him saying, I'm making the movie I want to make. And I... There's something... There's something to be said for that. There's something to be said for the auteur theory, and to be said for directors stamping their vision on the world. But it doesn't work, and it doesn't work in ways that are so obvious that should have... If somebody had done a second polish on this draft, or if somebody had just read the script, if somebody had just read the script and said to M. Night, look, if you keep mentioning this tower, you don't actually have to have the fight there. You can still have, like, a twist where the tower beams... The tower beams out the videos or something, or they show the video on the tower, and that reveals to the world the existence of these superhuman people, all right? But, like, instead of just mentioning it over and over and over again and then leaving it, you can't do that. It doesn't work. It totally messes with people's expectations and perceptions, and I, like, I get the whole Ryan Johnson, we want to subvert the expectations, but, like, it doesn't work. It doesn't work.
JVL00:46:25Question?
Sonny00:46:26Yes. JVL.
JVL00:46:27Didn't M. Night already make the movie he wanted to make? It was called Lady in the Water. Different. Right. I mean, he's already done his giant passion project, then, hasn't he? And, you know, I don't care what the audiences think. I'm going to tell you what I believe as a filmmaker. And it was called Lady in the Water. It made, like, $5. Yeah. Right. Thank you, Johnny. I'm just saying, like, you know, he's got to do it again.
Sonny00:46:54No, I totally agree.
JVL00:46:55Do you know where great art comes from? It comes from constraints. It comes from artists having to work around and through and over constraints. This is why, like, the sonnet structure produces great poetry. Because once you tell people, oh, you don't have to worry, you're just like, oh, okay, free verse, everything. This is... Jaws. Constraints.
Vic00:47:15Yes. Okay. I have a question. The flashes of light. Couldn't the beast just cover his eyes and run through the door? How does the beast like Spider-Man on the wall?
Sonny00:47:27Because he's superhuman. Yeah.
JVL00:47:29But, like, what is the superhuman mechanism for that?
Sonny00:47:31Well, he's got really strong fingers.
JVL00:47:32He crunches into it.
Sonny00:47:33I don't know.
Vic00:47:34But he can't go forward to the door because the light flashes. He closes his eyes. Covers with his hand.
JVL00:47:40I don't understand. Vic, do you have a lot of questions? Because I'd like to hear all of them.
Vic00:47:43They're all weird. I was thinking about Owen Gleiberman at Variety. He calls it the MNCU, the M. Night Cinematic Universe, you know, which is... But his thing is he needs to stop writing his own material to direct. And rather have somebody else do it because it's obviously not working. Again, I wanted to like it. I did not like that revelation of the S.H.I.E.L.D. ending. You know, oh, I see what it's going to do. And maybe, what, there's more? Is there going to be more out of this? I also didn't like, by the way, the end where they're all holding hands as friends. Okay? So it's David Dunn's son, who, by the way, who was a great child actor. He was on Gladiator. Yep. Spencer Treat.
Sonny00:48:24Yeah.
Vic00:48:25Spencer Treat Clark. That's right. Clark Treat.
Sonny00:48:27He still works. He works. It's turned out he's been working. I think he went to school. He's been working for like 15 years. Oh. 16 years. But in the end, they're all holding hands.
Vic00:48:37And I'm like, let me get this straight. So the son of the superhero is friends with the mother of the mass murderer and a girl who basically is in love with a cannibal.
Sonny00:48:45Exactly. No, this is what I'm saying. That I think M. Night Shyamalan's sympathies in this film are all messed up. They're all messed up. And they're bad. I mean, they're like almost morally. Merely objectionable. Leave aside whether or not it makes artistic sense. It just, the whole thing is a mess. JVL, do you have more questions? No. Okay. This has been a long show already.
Vic00:49:12Oh, has it? Well, we're only at 40 minutes. We got plenty of time left. It feels like it's long. The whole twist thing at the end. Okay. So there's the twist of that, that Sarah Paulson is not. How are they able to keep Bruce Willis in a mental asylum? Doing what? For saving girls from the horde. You know, that made no sense. But the other thing was. Vigilanteism is technically illegal. Yeah, I guess. But they're, you know, and so, okay, oh, this is why they're keeping him. Because they're not real police or they're not real. It's all just part of this secret institution. Does that mean the other patients are also superheroes? We don't know about that. But the other twist, of course, is the revelation that the Beast's or the horde's father. Didn't just leave. He was on the train. He loved you, you know? And it's like the end of High Anxiety, you know, where the doctor tells Mel Brooks, you
JVL00:50:03know, he says, Richard, he says, you know, what does he say?
Vic00:50:05You don't hate heights. You hate your parents. Oh, okay. You know, and everything is solved.
Sonny00:50:10There's also an element of Hancock in this movie, in the revelation that, like, you have to keep, once a hero emerges, a villain emerges, and they create some sort of, you know, things get out of hand, I think is what it said. That is kind of actually exactly what happens in Hancock with Will Smith and Charlie Starrin, that, like, they have to be kept apart, otherwise things start getting, things start getting nutty.
Vic00:50:32So does this mean, is this the end of the trilogy or what? I hope so. Depends on JVL.
JVL00:50:38Depends on the percentage hold to week two. Right? Because Split held like crazy.
Sonny00:50:42Split did very well. Split played for a long, long time. Split grossed almost $300 million worldwide. Yeah. Off a $9 million budget.
JVL00:50:50Is this the first accidental trilogy we can remember?
Sonny00:50:56You mean aside from Star Wars?
JVL00:51:01Yeah, I guess, you know, I would say this. The trilogies in expanded universes used to be accidental. Like, when they happened, it was nobody intended. Like, oh my gosh, look what we have here. We have a franchise. And over the last 20 years, it has been exactly the opposite, which is every property is conceived, well, we could have a series of franchises, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is the first, I would say, in recent memory. Time that we've gotten, although maybe not, maybe I'm like overlooking all the Blumhouse stuff. Like, Saw was not intended to span 10 movies or something like that.
Sonny00:51:34Saw or like the, but those were also slasher. Like, slasher films have always spawned franchises like that.
JVL00:51:39And those are sequels, not like actual stories. Yeah. I mean, this really is a universe with a story and an idea behind it. And it seems like it came about almost by accident.
Sonny00:51:51And I want more of Mr. Glass.
JVL00:51:53I always want more. He's the most interesting of the three characters.
Vic00:51:55But they're gone. They're all dead. Well, that's the problem. I always find more amusing movies that intend for a sequel, but they never happen because the movie bombs.
JVL00:52:04Remo Williams, The Adventure Begins. Buckaroo Banzai.
Vic00:52:06Yeah. The End of Flash Gordon, where there's Ming's ring and then somebody says the end and somebody picks it up and then question mark. You know, it's period. It's actually a period. And of course, now the problem with the Mummy movie, right? With Tom Cruise. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
JVL00:52:21Extended Monster Universe.
Vic00:52:22Oof.
JVL00:52:23Oof. That was a... Although the Godzilla. The Godzilla Universe is doing pretty well. Have you seen all the trailers out for Godzilla King of Monsters?
Sonny00:52:31Mm-hmm. It looks pretty great.
JVL00:52:32It does look pretty great. What's the...
Vic00:52:33Remind me. What is the three-headed... Is that Rodan? King Ghidorah? No. Maybe that's it. Rodan is the bird. Oh, the bird. The mothra. The mothra's in it. Mothra's in it. Rodan's in it. I know listeners are screaming at us right now because they didn't mean the three-headed I'll effort it so they can stop yelling at the car. It's a fantastic Hydra-like creature and I guess that'll be interesting. I don't know. Okay. Other thoughts? That's it. That's it. We're M-Nighted out. Are we M-Nighted out? Okay.
Sonny00:52:59I think we're done.
Vic00:53:00King Ghidorah. King Ghidorah. That's my pick. I could be any of them. That's what I just said. King Ghidorah. Thank you. You've raked again, Sonny. Yeah, that's right.
Sonny00:53:08Oh, where's that?
Vic00:53:10Look. Oh, good. Oh, he just spiked it again. Okay. Where does glass rank? Above? Below? Lady in the water and airbender and such?
Sonny00:53:20The official M-Night Shyamalan raking is as follows. Number one, unbreakable. Number two, signs. Number three, six cents. Number four, I'll go with split. Number five, the village. There's kind of a gap. Then I'll go with glass. And then everything else is just in a big pile of filth at the bottom. Well, except the visit. The visit's okay. I don't know. It's somewhere. But the happening after Earth and the last airbender are all, and Lady in the Water, all bad. Just in the bottom. Again, in the heap, heap, trash heap of history.
Vic00:53:54I was so excited. I was so excited to see. I remember this because I loved those first three movies, right? Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. And I was really excited. Oh, Lady in the Water. That looks really good, too. It's got Paul Giamatti, who's hot now, after Sideways. And you, JVL, had seen it and told me, do not see this movie. It is awful. It's so bad. And then you told me about the looking for the great writer.
JVL00:54:16But it's the movie that he wanted to make. Yet again. But this was really, like, he had three very successful movies. And so all of a sudden, the studio just said, whatever you want to do, do it.
Sonny00:54:26Lady in the Water. Lady in the Water was supposed to be his comeback from The Village, which was not well-received and is actually pretty good. I know a friend of the show, Adam Kuyper, is big on this. But I like it a lot.
Vic00:54:37Adam grew up in The Village. Just kidding. I don't know. Did people figure out the ending of The Village before the ending of The Village? Mostly. I mean, majority-wise.
Sonny00:54:45I figured out the ending of The Village when I saw the first trailer because I was like, oh, it's set in olden times. It must actually be set in modern day. Because that's what M. Night Shyamalan was at this point. Oh, that's good.
Vic00:55:00Okay, that's it. We're done. No corrections and additions, I assume. Everybody's cool. Everyone's perfect. Wonderful. Especially me. That's definitely all the time we're giving you this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus, at Sonny Bunch. At JVLast. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in SubBeacon under podcasts. And we're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
Sonny00:55:26I got nothing.
Vic00:55:33You got nothing. What do you got, Vic? Just an apology. Quick apology. Who did you kill this time? Remember we were talking about Cold War.
JVL00:55:41Oh, you killed someone, didn't you?
Vic00:55:43So we were talking. No, not really. Not really. We were talking about Cold War. I don't know if this actually made the, this might have gotten left on the cutting room floor. But we were talking about Cold War and you were talking about, and those movies. And I was talking about how much I love those Eastern European films. I'd taken a class on it and I'd watch all these things, especially, and Man of Iron.
JVL00:56:00I believe you said that that was the one class that semester that you decided to do well in. I did.
Vic00:56:04I picked one at Georgetown. You know how it is, JVL. You pick one class to do well in and the other ones. I had a class on military security and diplomacy and like, I bought the book twice because I didn't know I bought it the first time. I just hadn't read it. I still never read it. And it was on something on proliferation. There was a submarine on the cover. It was a submarine on the cover. I said, I got to get that book. Oh, I have. I'm on the hunt for Red October. That's what it's based on. So anyway, but I wanted to make a reference to Andre Vajda.
Sonny00:56:35Vajda. Vajda. Yes. Andre Vajda.
Vic00:56:38And then while we were riffing on that, I made a joke about Vajda because I was thinking of Andy Vajda. He died. He died. On Sunday.
Sonny00:56:46So.
Vic00:56:46Killed another person. Apologies for accidentally mentioning. To his family. No, I mean, I'm best better off mentioning people who have already died. So, sorry.
JVL00:56:54Well, I have one little thing for you guys.
Vic00:56:56JVL.
?00:56:56I didn't actually see the movie.
JVL00:56:59I was just faking my way through that one. I've never done that before. It was like being back in third grade again at the lunch table with the A-team.
Sonny00:57:07Shameless. Did you, you really didn't go see the movie? You just talked about it without. Absolutely. It's not fine.
?00:57:17It's not fine.
Spot something wrong in this episode? Suggest a correction →
Comments
Loading…