#7. Alita: Battle Angel and the Future of Blu-Ray
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The main event is Alita: Battle Angel, and the three of them split hard: Sonny liked but didn't love it, praising Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron for building a genuinely well-composed 3D spectacle with real set pieces instead of "shaky, handheld, thrown-together-in-the-editing-bay crap," while JVL dubs it "Terminator Jailbait" and flatly insists "it's not a movie" — it has a beginning and a middle and then it just stops, with none of its three central conflicts resolved, Hugo's redemption arc covering the least bad thing he did, and Jennifer Connelly lurching from ice queen to chastened mother for no earned reason. He also savages the world building he wanted to love, arguing cyborgs should be the overclass rather than street criminals, and dismisses Motorball as incoherent rollerball. Vic attempts a "full throated defense of Alita, or should I say Lolita," which triggers a running gag of an FBI raid hauling him off for first-degree perversion, and he later mounts the defense that Rosa Salazar is over 30 and the character is 300 years old anyway. The front half is Sonny's lament that Samsung is exiting the Blu-ray business, which sends him shopping for a region-free player at around $120 and sets off a long riff with JVL on end user license agreements, DiVX, Amazon deleting 1984 off people's Kindles, and JVL's theory that streaming is capital renting you what you thought you bought — Sonny is ready to let AOC write a digital consumer bill of rights. Elsewhere: JVL's ten days solo with his kids and the Lego over/under bad beat (saved by a snowed-out Potomac Mills Lego store), watch talk with Baselworld approaching, Vic's pre-blood-test "reduced gluttony" diet, Sonny on Fighting With My Family as an $11 million WWE infomercial and proof the Rock is running for office, and box office where How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World opened at $55.5 million and Alita slid to second with $12 million.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this much-anticipated episode, the Sub-Beacon takes on Alita : Battle Angel . Sonny hates strea...
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Sub-Beacon, a podcast on movies and pop culture hosted by Sonny Bunch, Jonathan V. Last livestwiadby ExpressVPN and Calm, the number one app to help you sleep, meditate and relax. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends and leave a review. Happy Thursday, gentlemen.
Sonny00:00:53Yes, we're taping on Thursday. Hey, boys.
Vic00:00:55It's funny. I feel like I just saw you here. JVL. You survived. I made it. You survived.
Sonny00:01:02Ten days alone with my children. What was the final tally on all the things? You had a running thing on Twitter. You did. It was kind of funny. Set reps.
JVL00:01:09So the over-under on Legos, the line was set at $1,500. Gentlemen, did you have the over or the under? I had the under because that strikes me as extravagant. So this wound up as the ultimate bad beat. It started out as a very low-scoring affair. We got to midway through having spent $0, maybe like six days in, three days in, four days in with having spent $0 on Legos. And then it's like, you know, you get the over-under on a game is 50 and you get to halftime and the score is 3-0. And you're like, yeah, I'm cashing my check. But then the second half starts and the teams trade and score seven consecutive. Yes. I was going to score five consecutive touchdowns. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, God, it's down 38 points. This is really close. And that's what we got for like days five, six, seven. And then we had the snow day. Oh, yeah. And all of a sudden that under was disappearing. You could see it receding over the horizon. You thought, oh, no, oh, no.
Sonny00:02:19How did you get out to buy more Legos?
JVL00:02:21So we drove to the Lego store.
Sonny00:02:25You risked life and limb to drive to Tyson's? It was a big, no. Atomic Mill. Atomic Mill. It was the Potomac Mills mall.
JVL00:02:30It was a bigger risk to stay in our house without Legos, I think, to everybody's well-being. You got a big enough car. You can fit everybody. That's fine. And so we get to the mall and we go inside the mall and the Lego store is closed. Whoa. So the mall was open. The mall was open. But the store itself. All of the stores inside the mall were closed.
Sonny00:02:51All of the stores? Because nobody would make it in. Except for you. What's the point of even having an open mall?
JVL00:02:58What is the point of? Having the state of Virginia.
Sonny00:03:02What's the point of having commerce?
JVL00:03:04Do you know how much snow? It was two snow days.
Sonny00:03:07Yeah.
JVL00:03:08Yeah, I know. It was icy. That under was gone. We were prepared to walk in there and drop $700 on Legos. Bam. We already had the sets picked out. We were ready to go. We knew that school was almost certainly going to be canceled the next day, too. So we needed like 20 hours worth of Lego building. And activity time. And I was willing to pay for it. And anybody who had the over suddenly, after thinking they were dead, they were alive. And the bad beat of it's like, you know, all you need is the extra point to give you the over. And you think, this is great. And then they dunk it off the crossbar because the Lego store was closed.
Sonny00:03:52So the under came home. Question.
JVL00:03:54Yes.
Sonny00:03:55Do you ever put a Lego set together twice? You don't understand how my world lives.
JVL00:04:04I'm afraid to know. Because we have so many Legos that once a set is assembled, it then starts getting played with. And once it starts getting played with, it begins getting modded out and then destroyed. And then all the pieces get commingled with all the other 20s of thousands of pieces, which we have in our Lego room.
Vic00:04:21We have a room in the house devoted to it. It's called the Lego room.
JVL00:04:25And picking out individual pieces from these bins. Bins upon bins upon bins of Legos is an impossibility.
Sonny00:04:31I would sooner just buy the set again. Rather than trying to reassemble. Which is something I have done. Wouldn't that provide lots of busy time? Hunting down the blocks. Hunting down the pieces.
JVL00:04:42Your children are too young for you to understand that there is a threshold for that type of pain and concentration for a child. And it stops way short of this.
Vic00:04:54So basically what you're saying is like the Coliseum. Over time, it just starts to erode. And people are using it for other things. Because that's what they did with the blocks, yes.
JVL00:05:02Now what you guys have not asked about is...
Vic00:05:04I did ask.
JVL00:05:05I asked before the show.
Vic00:05:06If you bought a new watch.
JVL00:05:10I did not buy it yet. But do you know who I spent a long time emailing back and forth with about it?
Sonny00:05:17Watchy McWatcherson?
JVL00:05:20Mike Murphy. Oh, yeah. No, he's a watch guy. The great Mike Murphy is a huge watch guy. And he was like, well, I don't know about that. I don't know about the Fortis. I've always been a Jaeger Couture guy myself. And so we've been talking about this. And I have some ideas, some thoughts, some plans in the watch. Things are in the works. But I have not made a purchase yet. I did spend a great deal of time while my wife was away looking at YouTube videos from Archie Luxury and The Urban Gentry, who are my two favorite watch videocasts.
Vic00:05:58It's amazing.
JVL00:05:59You would love Archie Luxury. Sorry, I turned out a little bit.
Vic00:06:02You know what? Before the show, I don't think I knew you were into watches until the show. I don't think so. I've been into watches since like third grade. Right. And we just never had a watch conversation. Because had I known, speaking of Mike Murphy, I remember when I was at The Standard, I had actually invited him because I couldn't go myself. But I thought of him because I knew he was into watches. All expenses paid German government. I had a trip to the Glashütte factory in Germany.
JVL00:06:32Oh, you passed it on to Mike and not me.
Vic00:06:34Yeah, I did because I didn't know you were into watches. How many times is it? Thank you. Yeah, no, Glashütte. And I said, I don't think they make pretty good watches, I think. And Mike, of course, couldn't go because he was very busy.
Sonny00:06:50So nobody went.
JVL00:06:51Yeah. So you just found some homeless person on the street and said, Hey, would you like to go to Germany to the Glashütte factory? It was Glashütte. Maybe have a look at the Zins while you're over there.
Vic00:07:00And I think they might have even done Leica, too, because Leica is the camera. So anyway, now I know. I'm sure that invite is coming my way again.
Sonny00:07:08Wait, wait, are you a big SLR camera? There was a time in my life. Yeah. There was a time. Question.
JVL00:07:16Mike Murphy is one of these guys who you could sit and talk to him about Watches. You could talk to him about cameras. You could talk to him about shipbuilding. He knows a little bit about everything.
Vic00:07:25Do you remember where he went to school, too? That's amazing. Georgetown. Yeah. That's back when they used to take people like that to Georgetown.
Sonny00:07:32And not just like doctor's kids. We got a poor one out for Bradley Cooper. Georgetown alum didn't really do anything at the art school. You know, I'm sure he was fine after.
JVL00:07:42I'm sure the after party he did up there. Did you see the girl next to him?
Vic00:07:44Was that his girlfriend or his wife? I think it's his girlfriend. Because everyone's talking about the Lady Gaga Vegas thing, and he comes up there, and you see all the comments. You people, you guys need to belong together. You were made for each other. Thank you, Sonny. And then you see this woman say this. In between Bradley and Lady Gaga is this gorgeous, gorgeous woman. I just don't know what the story is. Even prettier than Lady Gaga?
Sonny00:08:08She doesn't look like Snoopy.
Vic00:08:13Wow. That's so mean. There's so much hating here.
Sonny00:08:17She has kind of, she's got like floppy dog features. She looks like a very nice puppy.
JVL00:08:23Okay, Sonny, how are you? Have you recovered from, yes? Wait, should we do Vic, how was your weekend first, since we're going to talk about blue? Wait, wait, no, wait, wait. I had one more watch.
Vic00:08:30And I won't have a transition from him. Oh, no.
Sonny00:08:32I don't know what's happening. I had one more watch question. Yeah. You didn't get the black rebel from Swatch that I sent you? It has so few numbers.
Guest00:08:41It's so few anything.
Sonny00:08:43You can barely see it. It's like a black hole. It absorbs all the light. Nothing can escape from it.
JVL00:08:48What I'm looking at right now, it's so perfect for me, is a chronograph that is the special watch of the Russian space program. Oh, my God. It's satisfying all the cravings of my commie heart.
Vic00:09:01Well, you know, Russian aviator watches, remember those? That used to be a big thing. And when I was in-
JVL00:09:07It's a Swiss watch, but the Russians signed a contract with the Swiss manufacturer. Interesting. Do the Swiss make good watches? You know what? The Swiss obviously are known for their watches, but I'm a big Japanese watch fan.
Vic00:09:22I like what they do over there in the Orient. They do a lot of good things over there. The Orient? They do a lot of good things. I have an Orient. You're problematic over here.
JVL00:09:30I have an Orient. It's the name of the brand. It's a Japanese brand called Orient.
Guest00:09:34Wow.
JVL00:09:34Don't know about that. They have to change that now.
Sonny00:09:36Haven't they thought about how problematic that is? They should probably change it.
JVL00:09:39You know, Baselworld is coming up in just a couple weeks, guys.
Sonny00:09:41We're going to do a special show on it. Is Baselworld different from the Basel Art Festival? Yeah, I was thinking art.
Vic00:09:47And don't they do a Basel in Miami, too? I mean, Basel's traveling, you know?
Sonny00:09:50Yeah, Basel in Miami. Isn't that B-A-S-I-L? I don't know, man. That would be Basel. Yeah, that's a spice.
JVL00:09:57So this is the Comic-Con of watches. Oh. This is the San Diego Comic-Con of watches.
Vic00:10:01You should go. You should go for the Bulwark. You can just write for them, like, a special report. You know what? The Rob Report. You got to do the Rob Report. I don't know what that is. No, it's like the magazine for rich people. I bet you they sent somebody over there. That's insane. Okay. Rich people have magazines? Yeah, still. Sonny, how are you?
JVL00:10:19I'm fine. I'm fine. What's on your mind, I should say, huh? Did you buy 10 Blu-ray players over the weekend? I don't know. You're all stocked up.
Sonny00:10:27I'm a little bit nervous. I actually... So the reason JVL asked this is because there was a story out last week or maybe the week before. I think it was out the week before because we were going to talk about it last week. But Samsung is getting out of the Blu-ray manufacturing game, at least in the United States. They're not going to sell any more Blu-rays in the United States, which I find deeply troubling because I am the last man on the island. I'm waving my flag saying, I need discs. The streaming is no good. I like to own the things because then they can't be taken away from you if they're in some sort of digital cloud, which happens all the time. As Father Harrison, a loyal Sub-Beacon listener, was complaining about how a movie he had watched had disappeared from his iTunes library and it's still there. He can buy it again, but what's the point if it's just going to disappear again?
JVL00:11:22End user agreement. End user agreement.
?00:11:23End user agreement.
JVL00:11:23End user agreement.
Sonny00:11:23Yeah, we'll get to that in one second. We'll get to that in one second. So I did not buy, I did not run out and buy like 10 Blu-ray players to stock up on, so I have them.
JVL00:11:32Like the crazy people who went out and bought all the incandescent light bulbs?
Sonny00:11:35Yes, right. I'm not one of, like, I assume you did that. No.
Vic00:11:39I believe Richard Starr did.
Sonny00:11:40Okay.
Vic00:11:41But they still sell them, so that's good.
Sonny00:11:43No. I'm pretty sure. You can't buy them anymore. They sell them, I read somewhere that they sell them as like heat lamps. They sell incandescent bulbs as heat lamps.
Vic00:11:53Oh, okay. To get around it. Go ahead.
Sonny00:11:55Anyway, so anyway, Samsung, who I would say along with Sony make the two best, like, entry level Blu-ray players in the market, are getting out of the Blu-ray game. And I, like, I saw this and I was like, God, I think this means I need to buy a region free Blu-ray player right now. Because if they're going to start phasing all of this out, I want to make sure that I can still get this thing that I need. As some of you know, Blu-rays are coded by region. They sell movies that you can either watch in Asia, in Europe, or in the Americas, essentially, more or less. Region one. I buy, I have a fair number of discs that I want to buy that are not region appropriate. So to get around this, they sell region free Blu-ray players that they're kind of.
JVL00:12:48How much do they go for these days? I have not priced a region free Blu-ray player in a long time.
Sonny00:12:53They're, they're, I would say they're roughly this, they're, they're more expensive than an entry level Samsung Blu-ray player, but not extravagantly. So like a hundred, hundred, 10 bucks, something like that.
JVL00:13:02No.
Sonny00:13:03Um, 120 bucks maybe. I mean, it depends on which one you get. There are nicer ones or less nice ones, but, uh, uh, I'm, I'm like strongly considering getting one because this is all very disheartening to me. Now, JVL, you have a whole thing on the end user license agreements, which is one of the reasons.
Vic00:13:19Nobody reads them, which is one of the reasons I get my song. I'm clicking. Okay. I agree.
Sonny00:13:23Which is one of the reasons why people should avoid, uh, streaming media and downloads. Except for podcasts. Well, I mean, exception. Yeah. It's not like those ever disappear. Oh, wait.
JVL00:13:37Uh, so first of all, the quality is better on a Blu-ray like this is, I mean, it's like it, it's just undeniable if you, in the same way that if you are in your car and you can connect your phone to your stereo system via Bluetooth and then you switch mid-song to the auxiliary input, you will notice an immediate difference, right? Same thing with streaming. You just, you, these things are not lossless. And so you get much more robust if you have, uh, an actual disc medium, you own the thing. And so you can't take it away. And this is, this is the problem with capitalism and capitalism, the people who own the capital never want. To give any of the capital to the workers, to the proletariat, they want to keep it. And what they want is they want for you to rent it. And that is what streaming is. That's what all of the streaming is. They're saying, you don't own this copy of black Panther, which you've just purchased from Lord Bezos. You own the right to watch Lord Bezos is a thing until he changes the terms of, of your agreement and they can, I am altering the agreement.
Vic00:14:51Pray.
JVL00:14:51And this is, yeah. This is bad. It's always been bad. This is, this is the Divics. And you may remember Divics, right? And so Divics fought DVD when we swent from tapes to, to DVD. Don't forget Laserdiscs.
Vic00:15:05And, uh, yeah, Laserdisc. You know, Chris Wershoven had a Laserdisc player.
JVL00:15:09My dad. In his room. That's how rich he was. Uh, anyway, so the Divics model was that you were going to get the discs for like $4, but then the Divics player was going to be connected by a modem to the Divics mothership and you were going to pay. For every time you watched it and it failed because this isn't Europe and people don't work like that. People want to own the things they own. Uh, but the P the only reason Divics existed was because that's really what the content people wanted. They wanted to be, to be renting their content to you, not selling it. And they have now finally found a way to do it.
Sonny00:15:43Basically the way through to do that is streaming. The studios want to treat the end user, us, the consumer, like they treat the theaters. Yes. Uh, so when I, I remember a few. Last year when I interviewed somebody at Warner brothers about, uh, IMAX and, you know, kind of it was whatever I was interviewing somebody at Warner brothers distribution and I was like, you know, so, you know, when, when theaters play your movies or, you know, when theater, when theaters rent your movies and they're like, well, they're actually renting a license to show the movie. And I was just like, okay, guy, but like that is, that is, that is, that is literally what they're trying to do with, with consumers. And it's bad. Look, I'm not, uh, I'm, I'm pretty, pretty, uh, far. Far to the right of JVL on the capitalism versus communism issue. JVL being a Soviet apparatchik. I don't even want to know who you're supporting in 2020. I don't want to know. He is my co-pilot. But I, I am, I am about to the point where I think it is time for some sort of, look, if we can get AOC to do a consumer bill of rights. Oh, she'll get everybody. On the, on, on, on digital media. I think it would be totally worth it. And I think it would be good. I think it would be, uh, you know, and it's not just movies. Of course, this happens with music. This happens with books. I remember, I remember I very ironically, there was a story about, uh, was it 1984 that people had downloaded to their Kindles and, uh, it was, it was like, it was like a, it was essentially a bootleg copy of 1984. It was, it was not supposed to be on the, in the Kindle store. It was, it was, it was not, it was not, you know, licensed by whoever. So Amazon went in and deleted the book from people's Kindles and people were upset. People were very upset. And I think for good reason, I mean, look, I, I understand the idea. I understand the idea that you shouldn't be able to buy something that is stolen and that is essentially what was happening. Like you shouldn't be able to buy stolen goods, but at the same time, Amazon shouldn't be selling it to you.
JVL00:17:32It's even like this with devices. So you don't really own your iPhone in any meaningful way, right? So you buy yourself an iPhone.
Vic00:17:40Physically, let's shut it down.
JVL00:17:41And there are, there are things that if you go and tamper with pieces of the operating system or whatnot, that the next time you go and do an upload, your phone will be bricked. It'll just turn to a brick because you have, and Apple's response is you violated the end user agreement. The whole idea of the end user agreement, I find astonishing and I can't believe that it actually holds up in court. So the end user agreement is a contract that the seller creates with the buyer, which says that you are purchasing this thing, but you aren't actually, you are purchasing it only to use it by the very specific terms that we will set out for you. And I don't understand how that works. Like, do you own the thing? Or do you not? Because otherwise, which all you're doing is renting it with terms of according to a license, right?
Vic00:18:29But this is right up Kate's alley because she she'll still go to Target and buy the DVDs, you know, and rather than rely on streaming because it's just not it's not.
JVL00:18:38Well, it's not reliable. And the other problem she buys DVDs and not Blu-rays.
Vic00:18:42Well, yeah, Blu-rays, I just call them DVDs generically. But it's got the blue all the time. Yeah, they've got the thing in there. It's a blue. The thing is blue. The jewel case.
Sonny00:18:50I mean, I, I am at the point now where I think that. I will probably never buy a 4K player just because with right with the way it's it's a yeah, it's going away. What what's the point? What's the point going to be right? I don't know. I'm anyway, I'm like, I'm actually kind of sad about this because I am. I am. As you know, I built like mountains of bookshelves in my house for not only the books, but also the DVDs and one day, one day they'll all be gone.
Vic00:19:21And the same thing you mentioned with iTunes. Because, you know, if you transfer stuff like from one laptop, you get a new laptop. Sometimes not that all that stuff comes over. I've lost things in the process. All the stuff I downloaded from LimeWire and Maxtor is gone. LimeWire. That's just so unfair. And stuff you can't find anywhere anymore. You know, there was great stuff. I'm talking about music.
Sonny00:19:43Yeah, music. You're talking about like old Bruce Springsteen concerts, right? Old stuff.
Vic00:19:47Bootlegs. Stuff that people just put up there, man. Because that was like, there was a free time. We just thrown stuff up there on the internet and it would take me like 40 minutes to download.
Sonny00:19:57I will say that it's gone.
Vic00:19:59It's all gone. So five minutes later, you were done with it.
Sonny00:20:01The government. Oh, thank you. Yes. I will say that this is the response.
JVL00:20:06Come on.
Sonny00:20:07The response of the studios to this move to streaming and digital only is in part because of their rampant piracy. And, you know, they're trying to claw back anything that they can. So, yeah, I blame everyone for this. I'm the only victim. I'm the only blameless person here. I'm the victim. As usual. As usual. I'm the victim. I'm I'm I'm going to lose something I love because everybody else is a bag of question.
JVL00:20:34Thank you. Question, Sonny.
Sonny00:20:36Yeah.
JVL00:20:36So last week we didn't have a show because the snow interfered with my ability to get in here, but also to see a movie. Yes. Yes. And I contemplated going and torrenting a copy of the movie. And I was going to offset that by buying a ticket. And then just not using it. Would if I had done that, if I had gone and gotten myself a pirated from the Pirate Bay, I'm sure Pirate Bay doesn't exist anymore. But from one of the torrents, a copy of a movie that is in theaters to watch in my home. But I but I offset it by buying a physical ticket using my phone and that. But it didn't go moral. Would that be OK?
Sonny00:21:15You're asking about moral offset.
JVL00:21:17Yes. I'm asking you and your and your as a as an advocate of the content creators.
Sonny00:21:22I would say that that is probably that is it is less objectionable than torrenting it and not buying a ticket. I would say it's still objectionable because you are still contributing to the marketplace where this sort of thing is an effective mode of transmitting illicit materials.
JVL00:21:41What if I bought two tickets and didn't use them?
Sonny00:21:46Well, it's the same. It's the same problem.
JVL00:21:47I mean, no matter how many I'm coming to the theater goers even more now, what I'm saying is I understand. That what I'm doing is wrong. So I would like to pay you a premium.
Sonny00:21:56Yeah. Well, if the theaters want it, if the distributors wanted you to be able to pay a premium to watch a movie in your home, they would offer that service. They are still the content owners and they still should have some say over how you experience it. Fair enough.
JVL00:22:09I'll tell you what else I would pay premium for. I pay a premium to never have to see the trailer for us ever again. If there was an upgrade for the ticket and said for an extra five dollars, we won't show the trailer for us. Us?
Guest00:22:23That's it. You're raising your hand.
JVL00:22:24Take my money.
Vic00:22:25I was talking to Sonny about this because of what movies are coming up and he mentions us. And he goes, well, you know, JVL is not going to see that movie. The trailer was too much?
Guest00:22:32The trailer was too much for you?
Vic00:22:33That is a scary effing movie. You know what, though? Honestly, I'd still. No, am I wrong? Like, I would still. It looks terrifying. It looks terrifying. No, it looks terrifying. Everything about it looks terrifying. Rorschach mask. Everything about it looks scary. Honestly, if you had a choice, if you had a choice, you had to see one movie, Pet Sematary or Us.
Sonny00:22:48Us.
Vic00:22:48Yeah, me too. I would definitely watch Us.
Sonny00:22:52So I read, we're getting way off topic here. I read Pet Sematary for the first time about two years ago when my daughter was like one and a half or two. I just like starting to like amble around the house. And I was like, yeah, sure. This is a good time to read Pet Sematary about the child who wanders into the street and gets swacked by a 18 wheeler, 18 wheeler, but big rig. Anyway. Yeah. No, the trailer for Us is terrifying. Yeah. The music. It is. It really is.
Vic00:23:23It's disturbing. But he's pretty good stuff. Pretty good. You must know what he's doing.
Sonny00:23:27Do you think Key ever gets mad that Peele is now like the senior partner in Key and Peele?
JVL00:23:35Well, Key's a really good actor, though. He's an okay actor. I think he's pretty great.
Sonny00:23:40I think he's. Every time I see him in something. I think he's like a barely above replacement comic component to any. No, I think he'd do just about anything.
JVL00:23:47I would put him in anything. You'd put him in anything? He's a great screen presence.
Sonny00:23:50Oh, one thing. One thing we forgot to mention. In last Monday. On Monday's Oscar episode. Yeah, three days ago. So, Vic, were you actually watching the Oscars? Yes. Most of it. Did you see the commercial for the new Scorsese movie?
Vic00:24:08No, I saw the ones. Well, I know I saw the Rolex commercials with Scorsese and James Cameron.
Sonny00:24:13No, so there's a commercial for the Scorsese movie that's coming out on Netflix. What's it called? The House Painter or something. Oh, no. Or whatever it's called. I can't remember. The commercial was just a series of title cards, like, from the director, Martin Scorsese, re-teaming with blah, blah. And it's just, like, words against a black screen. It's obvious that they don't have any usable footage from this film yet. And, like, because they're doing all this de-aging stuff.
Vic00:24:42Oh, is that what they're, yeah.
Sonny00:24:44I was like, is this an intentional thing where they're going to surprise us with the impressiveness of the effects? It's because they don't know how many. Or is it because they just don't have anything to show us yet? Yeah.
Vic00:24:55So it was the latter.
Sonny00:24:56I think it's the latter.
Vic00:24:57All right. No, I didn't. I don't know. Maybe I had temporarily blacked out because I'm on this diet, you know, as I'm getting ready for my blood test coming up at the end of the week. Oh, yeah. You know, so I'm, you know, even today, you could tell. I mean, on the Monday episode, and now I'm a little off because I'm trying to cut back on the calories. Last night, I just had a calzone for dinner. The Irishman. I'm sorry. The Irishman.
JVL00:25:19$140 million budget Netflix has given him. A hundred forty million dollars for a streaming movie. That's a lot.
Vic00:25:26Good luck.
JVL00:25:26That's a lot. So, yeah. When is it? I'm sorry.
Vic00:25:28I'm blacking out again. Friday morning. And so, I mean, I don't even know if I can make it to that. How's your gout?
JVL00:25:35I thought I felt a twinge the other day.
Vic00:25:38We had gone out to dinner just to be friendly. I had a beer. You're never, you know, gout sufferers should always stay away from beer or a lot of beer. And so, I worried about the twinge, but I'm fine. And I think I'm being, you know, hydrating whenever you, you know. Using the bathroom is good, you know, and flush out the system and exercise is good. But, like, but the other day I'm trying to do sort of more RG diet.
JVL00:26:03Oh, it's not even Lent. It's not even Lent.
Vic00:26:06So, what will you give up for Lent then? Well, this is what, well, I usually give up playing Civilization for Lent. But we'll talk to that next week's episode. But for the RG, for example, over the weekend, I had one slice of pizza instead of two.
Sonny00:26:22Reduced gluttony. That's what gets bad. Where'd you get the pizza from?
Vic00:26:26The Italian store down the street after we went bowling with my son for his birthday and two of his buddies. Did you go in there and go, hey, gabagool! Hey, gabagool! Hey, uffa! Uffa! How about that green book? Mingia! Mingia! Oh, my wrong! I got something for you guts. Okay. So, I got, you know, so anyway, but I'm just focusing on getting food. Well, I don't know because how many of the people at the Italian store are actually Italian? It's Arlington. You know, it's not, it's not Jersey. And Jersey is a whole different scene. Jersey, every other block, there's an Italian store or a Chinese restaurant.
JVL00:27:03And the people actually talk that way in the Jersey Italian store. That's right. I'm telling you.
Vic00:27:07I got, no, here it's different. Here, here it's different. This is a couple generations later. But yeah, I have friends up there whose mothers will still come and fathers will still call me Victor. You know? Victor!
Guest00:27:18Hey, Victor. So, Christopher! So, anyway.
Vic00:27:22That's a Sopranos reference. That's a great Sopranos reference. JVL. That's a great Sopranos reference. I'm losing focus here. We are all over the place. We're all over the place. So, anyway, I'm just hoping for, and once I have the, I have the blood test coming up and then the following Tuesday is the meeting with the doctor to discuss the results. But not only that, but they weigh you at that. So, I really have to keep down the weight. But fittingly, it's going to be on Tuesday, Fat Tuesday. So, I have the morning meeting and after that, it's going to be nuts. It's going to be like martinis and steak and calf's liver and fried chicken.
Sonny00:27:57So, it's going to be like a Friday lunch.
Vic00:27:59Like a normal Friday for me from a couple of weeks ago, but not in the last week.
JVL00:28:02Because what matters to your health is not how you're actually doing, but how you present for five minutes at the doctor's office.
Vic00:28:08Yes.
JVL00:28:09Yes, JVL.
Vic00:28:10Yes, JVL. And after that. Pray for his children. After that, I'm just going to be indulging all of my forbidden pleasures. Speaking of which, over the weekend. I don't even.
Guest00:28:21I don't even know why that just happened.
Vic00:28:23Why is that? Why is that a transition? It's a weird transition. Over the weekend, Alita Battle Angel fell to second place with 12 million because I didn't know how to transition to how to train your dragon, the hidden world. But that came in first place with $55 million, $55.5 million. And that's a two day. This is crazy. And the Lego Movie 2 stayed in third place with 10 million. Box office thoughts. It hasn't been a good two. Two weeks for Alita, has it?
Sonny00:28:54No, no. We'll talk more about Alita in a bit. I'd like to I'd like to highlight fighting with my family. Are we going to talk about this next week? Maybe. Do we have to? Well, it's a wrestling movie.
Vic00:29:07I felt like I saw the whole movie watching the trailer. That's another one where it's like they show you. Oh, I wonder if the brother's going to get in. Oh, oh, I guess he doesn't.
Sonny00:29:14OK, I'm here's why I find the movie interesting. I read your review. Maybe maybe we read your review. Thank you. Are you edited it? Uh, what's the Venn diagram on those two statements? Well, there's, you know, you know, you know what, uh, what glasses look like. Kind of like that. Uh, so I maybe we don't have to do a whole episode on it. I find it interesting, not so much as like a piece of storytelling or a piece of filmmaking, because it's pretty it's pretty mediocre on all those fronts. It's like a very standard underdog story. It's it's it is totally acceptably directed by Stephen. Merchant, who I think is actually deeply funny. I like Stephen Merchant a lot. His shows with Ricky Gervais are all fantastic. And he's the credited director on, I think, all of those shows on on the British extras and on, uh, I'm sorry, British The Office extras and and and the other things he has done with Gervais. So I like Stephen Merchant a lot. He's in the film very briefly. But it is it is so it's about the WWE diva Paige, who comes from nowhere in England, a family of wrestlers, and they have some, you know, little podunk league in Norwich. And she comes to join the NXT program. And it's a big deal for them, obviously. But her brother wanted to be a wrestler and now he'll never be a wrestler. And then she goes out and defeats the diva champion AJ Lee. Remember AJ Lee? I remember to to strip her of her title that she had held for 500 million days or whatever. Somehow I knew this whole story, even though I stopped. Watching wrestling years ago anyway. Anyway, the film is fine. It's totally acceptable. The Rock gets top billing as star, even though he's in the film for about five minutes total, maybe, maybe 10. And he also is the top line producer. This is like, this is a rock passion project. And what is, what's, what's interesting about the film is that it is not a particularly grand piece of cinema, but it is a very real effort at myth making and trying to rejigger this. This idea of wrestling in the public consciousness. So like when people think about wrestling, they think about old wrestlers dying from steroid use.
Vic00:31:28Darren, Darren Aronofsky.
Sonny00:31:30They think of, right. They think of, they think of like trashy soap opera for dudes. They think of, you know, um, scantily clad women, terrible endings, Chris Benoit, et cetera, et cetera, Paul Cogan, even, you know, right. And this movie is an effort to recast wrestling as this thing that gets kids out of the projects. As this thing that gets people out of life of crime, as this thing that brings families together and gives them purpose and meaning and the rock plays this kind of saintly figure giving all of these opportunities and chances to people and I have never been more convinced in my life that the rock is running for office than when I was watching this film because it is, it is 100%, it's 100% a purse, a piece of like personal and professional mythologizing. Um, so that's why I find it interesting and I would be, I'd be curious to get your take on it because again, this is a WWE studios film. This is a, this is essentially, this is an $11 million infomercial for WWE and all the good they do in the world. And all of the, all of the characters are, you know, they're either, they're portrayed at first as like heartless or mean, but they all have really good reasons for doing what they do. They have these WWE divas who are like clearly ex-strippers or whatever. And like, they're, they're there and they're, they're like making fun of, and Paige is like, Paige is like, they're making fun of me. And they're like, no, we're not, we're talking about how much she loves her daughter and wants to do this so she can provide a life for her child. And it's like, it is, it's just this whole thing. This it's every, every time you think somebody is bad, they're good. Every time you think somebody is, you know, uh, on the, on the also is conspicuously absent from this film is Vince McMahon. Totally absent.
Vic00:33:09Is he in the credits at all?
Sonny00:33:10I, I didn't sit through the whole thing. But he's not, he's not, he's not, he's not, he is nowhere to be seen on screen. And there's even a moment in the film where it would actually make a lot of sense for him to be there, Paige is at WrestleMania. She's given this chance to go do the WWE, you know, fight, whatever. Uh, and this is in, it's like a shadowy skybox at WrestleMania and there's a guy out, there's like a big beefy security guard out front and I'm like, okay, this is where Vince McMahon's gonna be like, no, you're gonna go out there and you're gonna, but no, it's the rock again, the rock just dispensing all of these career opportunities anyway, I find the whole thing very fascinating again, as a piece of corporate mythologizing more than anything else.
JVL00:33:45Okay.
Sonny00:33:46I'm into it. So he's, so he's running for president, so he's running for president. We don't have to talk about it. I've said everything. I want to say about it, but like, okay, but it's, it's something when it's on cable, when it's stream, when it's on BitTorrent and the pirate bay.
Vic00:33:59Oh, good. Check it out. Good. Uh, but, uh, we, you did see, uh, Alita. Yes. JVL.
JVL00:34:05I saw it. Did anyone else see it? I saw it. Did, did anyone else see it?
Vic00:34:10Alita battle angel is the titular story of a 26th century budding hunter warrior, or at least she wants to be a hunter warrior. She's got an unadvairable. Standage though. Martian technology. Her fellow bounty hunters don't think that's legal. I say she's barely legal, but allow me to give a full throated defense of Alita. Or should I say Lolita?
Guest00:34:33FBI, this is the raid. I'm serving an arrest warrant for the Eastern district of Virginia for first degree perversion.
Vic00:34:38Okay. What's happening here? What is this? Don't take my phone.
?00:34:50Wow.
Sonny00:34:55That was, uh, I did not see that coming today. JVL, you okay?
JVL00:35:00Is he going to be okay?
Sonny00:35:01I told you guys to stop joking about this sort of thing on text message. How do you think they found out about it? Will that be federal pound me in the a** prison?
JVL00:35:07Okay, come on. Or white collar prison.
Vic00:35:10Let me just say that Gene has been advised by his counsel not to continue the review. So we'll just move on. I hope we see him again someday. I just hope I get my phone back.
JVL00:35:20I don't know if that's the way you write out a character.
Vic00:35:23Sonny, how about a real review?
Sonny00:35:26All right. Alita Battle Angel is from the director Robert Rodriguez, who we know as the mind behind Spy Kids. But also Sin City and El Mariachi and all sorts of stuff. Super versatile. Love Robert Rodriguez. And producer James Cameron. This has been a James Cameron passion project for like a decade. I remember buying shares of Alita Battle Angel on the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Ten years ago.
Guest00:35:51The Hollywood Stock Exchange. Remember HSX? It still exists, doesn't it? Oh, yeah.
Sonny00:35:55I think I've still got shares of Alita in my portfolio. I was in the top hundred on that at one point in time. So anyway, James Cameron passion project. It is about a female cyborg who was found in a trash dump by Christoph Waltz. He puts her back together and turns out she's some sort of super battle droid thing. And she needs to learn how to be a real girl. She needs to learn how to have emotions and have a life. She wants to regain her memories. She wants to learn what it's like to live and love and go on. That was so nice. I enjoyed this movie. I don't love it because it has this kind of shoehorned in love story that is like the hallmark of every James Cameron movie. And it doesn't really work here. I quite enjoyed all of the action sequences. I quite enjoyed all of the fights. I liked the world building. I liked this world that they're living in. And I enjoyed it. I had a good time in the theater. Okay.
Vic00:37:05Thank you, Sonny. I wanted to share further thoughts, but I need to collect myself and calm down. In the meantime, JVL, I need to calm down.
JVL00:37:14This is your greatest troll job ever.
Sonny00:37:16What are you talking about?
JVL00:37:17I can't believe we'll get to that. So our friends at... Calm.com are back to sponsor us again, which is wonderful. Calm.com, that's C-A-L-M.com. Calm.com is an app for your phone. And it gives you an enormous library of guided meditations and sleep stories. I actually tried one of the guided meditations over the last week when I was having a particularly awesome moment with Flash and G-Money. And it helped. It was great. But what we really used were the sleep stories. The sleep stories are what I use to put my children to bed every single night. We've been using them for years at this point. We pay for it full freight. I'm like the president of the Calm.com fan club. Allow me to play for you, boys, the story my girls were listening to most over the last 10 days. This is The 17th Princess, which is being narrated by Stephen Lyons.
Guest00:38:20Good evening. My name's Stephen. And tonight's story is a fairy tale called The 17th Princess, written by Chris Advanson.
JVL00:38:37So good. What a deep bass. It's so good. And just a little bit of a hint of an accent. And so with the sleep stories, the library is always growing. They're adding new ones constantly. They have these beautiful voices, people who are narrating. A lot of them are actors. And the app is so simple that your kids can even work it themselves. So we have for my girls have the Calm app on their little iPods that they use so that they can set up their own sleep stories. Even my niece, who is 18. No, I guess she's now two and a half now. She sets up and chooses her own. And she actually is super into The 17th Princess right now, too. And it's amazing. It is like Benadryl for your children. And I like to I find myself frequently choosing when they ask me to be the DJ, be the sleep story DJ. I will choose like by length because they're all identified. You know, it tells you this one's 12 minutes. This one's 25 minutes. And so if I think they're especially sort of a little bit wound up and I don't want them to be, I will choose a longer sleep story for them. They're amazing. They put the kids to bed. My girls can't sleep without them. It is if you have kids and your kids. Are not the world's best sleepers. You should have calm.com right now. Sub-Beacon listeners are going to get 25% off of the calm premium subscription. You just go to calm.com slash sub-beacon. That's C-A-L-M dot com slash sub-beacon. It gets you unlimited access to all of their content. It's absolutely worth it. It would be worth it without the discount. It would be worth it at twice the price. So if you've got kids, go do it. Again, that's calm.com slash sub-beacon. Sub-Beacon and get your kids to sleep. Thank you, JVL.
Vic00:40:25So, Sonny, I can tell JVL was curious about this. You liked it, but you didn't love it.
Sonny00:40:31Yeah, I liked it, but I didn't love it. My problem with it is that it sets up this whole world. It sets up this sequel that we'll never see because the movie is kind of tanking. It's like the end of Flash Gordon.
JVL00:40:41JVL, what did you think about the movie? Terminator Jailbait is a film from Roger Rodriguez. It's terrible. It's not a movie. What do you mean it's not a movie? It's not a movie.
Vic00:40:54I thought you were going to say you loved it. I wasn't sure where you were going with that. Okay.
JVL00:40:57I don't want to disappoint you, Vic, but don't go Googling Rosa Salazar because she doesn't look like Alita. Movies have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Sonny00:41:07Yeah.
JVL00:41:08This movie has a beginning and a middle, and then it ends. There is no end to the story. Agreed. The central conflicts of this movie are, one, she has to understand who she is. Two, she has to get into the sky. Sky City or whatever it's called. And three, she has to defeat Nova. Is that what the Sky City bad guy is? Nova. Those are the three central conflicts. None of those are resolved by the end of this movie. Instead, we devolve into this weird rollerball type thing called Motorball, which doesn't make any sense. It is a game in which people are allowed to do anything they want. They can just kill each other while they're playing the game. Gladiatorial Combat. Well, except... Or like the one in Harry Potter. Is it called? Quidditch? Quidditch, sorry. It's nothing like that. I can't remember names I'm blacking out over here. Except that it doesn't make any sense because people are trying to play the game instead of just killing each other. If there are no rules, then it should be Gladiatorial Combat. Everybody should just kill each other and then you pick up the ball and put it in the hoop or whatnot. But instead, you have half of the players treating it as if it's a roller derby and the other half treating it as if it's... The Battle Royale or something. Well, I mean, it's a game of skill.
Sonny00:42:23You have to figure out which tack you want to take.
JVL00:42:27None of this makes any sense. Murder tack or game tack? The character of Alita does not make any sense. Why is she in love with this guy, Yugo? Yeah, this is the worst part of it. But the problem is it undercuts her as a badass, right? Because she's an idiot. And even like, again, just as a piece of narration, it doesn't work. So she... He is... Taking over cyborgs and stripping them for parts on the side. And then she finds out that this is his shadow life. But he says he feels bad about it. And she forgives him. And then he becomes a cyborg. And lost in all of this is that he has sold her out to one of the villains. And she never learns about that. So, like, you know, he does this redemption arc. But it's only for, like, the least bad thing he did. Not the most bad thing.
Vic00:43:14Nothing pays off. This is not a movie. Also, the recovery time for Hugo... To go from human to cyborg.
Guest00:43:21And next thing you know, he's scaling up that thing. That was quick.
JVL00:43:25Nothing in it is earned. Even from its own... Even if you just say, oh, well, it's just the first part in a series. You can't expect it to tell a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end. So, Jennifer Connelly's character goes from this, like, villain ice queen to chastened mother figure. How? Why? Nothing is earned. Jennifer Connelly's character literally just shows up. She's mean and evil. And wearing all this weird but kind of awesome 27th century lingerie. And then she shows up somehow at a secret meeting in a church to see Alita and Hugo. You're trolling me with this thing that you like it. No, I enjoyed it.
Sonny00:44:07I enjoyed it. Go ahead, Vic.
Vic00:44:09I thought it was fine. I'm like, well, what's going to happen? Do I really want to know what's going to happen in the end? Will there be a sequel? It was okay. And then you find out the villain is Ed Norton. I'm like, oh, side me up. That was wild. Wasn't that wild? What did you mean, like, blown away? Was Ed Norton? You know who he looks like?
JVL00:44:26It's a good thing he took the glass off. He looks like Dana Carvey. You know who he looks like is James Cameron.
Vic00:44:30It looks like James Cameron looking down from his sky city at his playthings. It's basically him.
Sonny00:44:35No, so look, I don't disagree with anything that you just said, JVL. Everything that you said is totally right. It's a bit of a sloppy piece of storytelling. As spectacle, I thought it was one of the best. put-together films that I have seen in some time. I saw it in 3D. I don't know if you saw it in 3D. I did not. So I saw it in 3D, and the 3D effect is fine. But the thing that you have to remember is that because it is Robert Rodriguez and because it is James Cameron, it is filmed specifically with 3D in mind. And even if you don't want to watch the 3D, which I don't think it's necessary. I don't think the 3D added that much to it. What it means is that they have filmed it in a very exacting and very specific sort of way where shots are established. It's not the shaky, handheld, thrown-together-in-the-editing-bay crap that you get all the time. It is a very well-thought-out and filmed and executed series of set pieces. And I always really appreciate that. That is the thing that I like the most about these sorts of movies is that it is thoughtfully put together in the execution phase. Now, look, I agree that the love story, which, again, this is like a James Cameron thing. If you go look through all his movies, it's all about the love story. And this is his big... The only love story he ever gets right? True Lies.
JVL00:45:59It's a great one. It's a great one. It's a great one, my husband and wife.
Sonny00:46:03Also, Aliens, for the little girl, but, you know, protecting Newt. But this is James Cameron's biggest innovation. It doesn't have anything to do with 3D or filming in Avatar and all that. It has to do with this idea that here's how you get men, men, women into a theater is that you give them action and you give them love and you shove it together. You make it kiss, make it make out. That was good. And then, and, and like, that's, that's why he is, that's why he's a very good businessman. Now, again, I don't think it works at all in this film because I don't think Salazar and Hugo have any sort of chemistry at all. None of, nothing about their relationship makes any sense. Like you say, it's totally unearned. You could have gotten rid of all that and instead focused on literally anything else. Jennifer Connelly, give Jennifer Connelly a real... A real character arc. More Doc Edo.
JVL00:46:51Monster hunting with Doc Edo.
Sonny00:46:53Totally. That would be great. Christoph Waltz is very good in this movie.
JVL00:46:56Christoph Waltz is great in everything. We haven't really... He's really good.
Sonny00:47:00Okay, Igor. The, the... I thought that was pretty good.
Vic00:47:04Thank you. That's his Austrian accent. Accent.
Sonny00:47:09The, sorry. We haven't really discussed the fact that Christoph Waltz wields a rocket-powered sledgehammer.
Vic00:47:16It's very lightweight.
Sonny00:47:17It's not rocket-powered. It has a torch on the side. It has a torch on the side of it. It's a sledgehammer. It's a rocket. It helps to propel. It helps to propel the swing. It's a jet propulsion hammer.
JVL00:47:26How is it that he, as a fully human guy, is able to function as a hunter-warrior?
Sonny00:47:32Well, because he's so, he's got that hammer with the jet engine on the back of it.
Vic00:47:35Here's, okay. Although, on the one hand, on the other, okay? So, the problems I had was, this movie reminded me a lot, visually, of Ready Player One. Yeah. It looked like it. Also, the villain, Gruishka, reminded me of Iroh. A very large, large-headed, large-bodied sort of villain. You felt sympathy for him. I felt sympathy. I love Gruishka. Voiced by the great Jackie Earle Haley. I love that guy. He was a great child actor. So, I mean, it was. Great Rorschach. Yes. And so, that part, I thought, was weird. However, in defense of Alita, two things. One, as you mentioned, Rosa Salazar is, like, over 30 years old. And number two, Alita's character is over 300 years old, okay? So, she's old.
Sonny00:48:19You're not into that.
Vic00:48:21I'm just saying. There's nothing wrong with. It's a 300-year-old woman. All woman. If loving a 300-year-old half-Martian is wrong, then there you go.
JVL00:48:33You know, Sonny, you said you liked the world building.
Sonny00:48:37Yes.
JVL00:48:38I like it.
Sonny00:48:39I like this trash city that they live in.
JVL00:48:41I wanted to like the world building because world building is very important to me. But I thought this was incredibly sloppy. None of it makes sense. The economics of it. In a world where cyborgs are everywhere, cyborgs would be the overclass, not the underclass. And here it's the opposite, where the cyborgs are sort of the people who are street criminals or bounty hunters and the humans are the people who are scientists and the upper. I mean, cyborgs are looked down upon as being sort of monsters. Why would that be? It should be economically, it should be much more expensive to be a cyborg, right? And you can do all the things that the humans can't do. And so this was a century. A central problem with the world moving.
Sonny00:49:20Nobody wants to look like a monster, JVL. Nobody wants to be turned into a monster just because it gives you some blades for hands or whatever. I loved all the little, the like, hunter-warrior guys in that bar. Like the guy with the dog pack.
JVL00:49:37Yeah, I loved them, except that none of them then did anything. Well, they had that great fight. But the characters, so they introduce all these characters. Literally, they take 30 seconds of screen time with a hand. That's Screwjob. And that's Dog Handler Man. And so they introduce all these people and then none of them do anything. Then they fight. I don't understand what more you want.
Vic00:49:57Well, it's interesting. I actually went to the theater. I brought my son because I thought he might like it. He didn't like it. I think he was like, he got a shrug. He was also like, Dad, why are you wearing a trench coat? And sunglasses. That's weird, too. But no, he was nonplussed. I think that would be the JVL word for it is nonplussed. But I thought it was fine. I thought it was fine. But as you know, and you've talked about it. You've talked about this before. Anime does not do too well. This is not in the box office. Oh, is it? This is like another discussion we should have. Manga versus anima.
JVL00:50:30This is from a manga classic. And I have never, I consume a lot of comic books. And I consume a lot of comic books in all sorts of genres. I love the superhero stuff. I love indie books. I love. Straight graphic novels, some of which are done now by independent artists like Killing and Dying or comedians. I have never gotten the manga thing. I've tried a couple times. It's black and white. The shapes are weird. You've got to read them from back to front. What's the difference? Like Hebrew books. What's the difference? I don't understand the question.
Vic00:51:09Of anime versus manga. Anime is like cartoons. And manga is comic books. Oh, okay.
Sonny00:51:18Sometimes a manga comic book will be adapted into an anime cartoon. Like, for instance, Dragon Ball was a comic book first and then it became a TV show.
JVL00:51:27Either of you. So, Victorino, you're not a manga guy. No.
Sonny00:51:31Sonny, are you? No. I read Akira when they re-released. They released Akira in English, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago. I bought that set. And I was like, yeah, this is fine. It doesn't do much for me.
JVL00:51:42It doesn't do. And I don't know why. Because I love Japanese stuff. I love Japanese watches. I love Star Blazers. I like anime a lot. Do you like anime?
Sonny00:51:48What was Ghost in the Shell? So, Ghost in the Shell is... It was manga and then anime, right?
JVL00:51:54Yes. And Ghost in the Shell, I loved. This struck me as just poor man's Ghost in the Shell all over, right? I mean, Ghost in the Shell, all of us really enjoyed that, right? Yeah. Oh, come on. Don't go giving me the, yeah, you know, they're basically the same.
?00:52:09Yeah.
Sonny00:52:09No, I think Ghost in the Shell is probably better. I think Ghost in the Shell is probably better. Probably better. Ghost in the Shell is better because it doesn't, it keeps the, like, like, love story stuff very much on the back burner, right? It's not until the end that you find out that ScarJo and Michael Pitt were, like, into each other in the before time, in the long, long ago. That's not the only reason that it's better, Sonny. It's among the reasons.
JVL00:52:32Oh, my God.
Sonny00:52:33I mean, you like the world building. The world building is fine, but it's basically just a Blade Runner knockoff.
JVL00:52:39Okay. No, it's talking back to Blade Runner.
Sonny00:52:40It's just Blade Runner, but now, but, like, newer Blade Runner.
JVL00:52:45I have a question for both of you. Yes, JVL. There is a long tradition of mythical female warriors that stretches from comic books through pop culture through manga and anime and even video games from Wonder Woman to Red Sonja to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chun-Li, Forever Carlisle, The Dead or Alive Girls and Tekken and Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat, and Alita stands in this line. Is that exploitive or progressive?
Sonny00:53:17I'm not. Discuss. I don't understand the question.
Vic00:53:18I don't understand the question.
JVL00:53:21What do you mean you don't understand the question? I don't.
Sonny00:53:23I don't understand. Are you asking if using women as action heroes is exploitative? Or throwing Alita into the mix? Or progressive?
JVL00:53:30No, in the way that it has been done. Oh.
Sonny00:53:35Is it exploitive or progressive? Do you mean because they are- So is Red Sonja exploitive or progressive?
Vic00:53:41It depends. When is that new Red Sonja movie going to come out? That was supposed to be coming out soon. And, sorry, who- Is Alita exploitive or progressive? Say his name!
Sonny00:53:50Say his name! He's on the back burner right now. Is Alita explo- I don't- I mean, I think it's a false choice. I don't think it has to be either. It doesn't have to be either. You could say neither. I think it's probably- I mean, I would say that most of these are probably neither. Would you say that Underworld, for instance, is exploitive or progressive? I mean, you've got all of the- You've got Kate Beckinsale in hot leather, but also-
JVL00:54:17Progressive?
Sonny00:54:19But they have to say it's progressive because- Like, I don't think it has to be, you know, one thing or the- Like, is Captain Marvel exploitive? Well, we'll find out. We'll find out.
JVL00:54:28Captain Marvel is progressive. Very progressive. Can we take a brief detour for Captain Marvel for five seconds? Did you see the story about how Brie Larson was so upset about the way that so many entertainment reporters are white and male? Notice she didn't say straight. That she- Decided to demand that- She demanded a specific reporter be assigned to write the profile of her for whatever, I forget.
Sonny00:54:56Marie Claire or something.
JVL00:54:57I'll do it. Yeah, I mean- So this was positioned as, this is an amazing story of how great she is.
Sonny00:55:04And I look at this- I look at it as a journalism ethics problem. Journalism ethics thing. I'm sorry.
JVL00:55:07Marie Claire assented to use the writer to write the profile that the subject of the profile demanded? Are you kidding me?
Vic00:55:14Well, I'm sure who she chose, she doesn't know well. And will be tough.
Sonny00:55:18Yeah. I mean, this gets back into the real problem that celebrity journalism is not real journalism. It's not, this is all a series of backscratching- But everybody pretends that, this is the problem. It's a series of backscratching deals. People pretend that it is journalism. And this is why Bryan Singer, for instance, was able to kill a completely vetted story in Esquire. And The Atlantic ran it because The Atlantic is real journalism and Esquire is celebrity journalism.
JVL00:55:41I mean, it's- Have you read the Columbia Journalism Review behind the scenes on this? No, I haven't. I just saw it yesterday. Oh, it's so good. I just saw it yesterday. The two writers name names. Oh, really?
Sonny00:55:50Oh my gosh, that's good. That's great. It's pretty awesome. That's great. That's great because some hack from Esquire was crapping on The Free Beacon the other day. Like, oh, not expected. Charles Pierce? Yeah, who do you think it was? The only person you can name at Esquire. But, you know, I don't think he has much of a leg to stand on when it comes to journalistic ethics at the moment. We need a Captain Marvel gate. Gamer gate, but for Captain Marvel. It's about ethics in celebrity journalism. Ethics in journalism. There you go.
Vic00:56:18The real problem. Do we have any other thoughts on Alita?
Sonny00:56:21I just think it's great. And I'm sad that we're not going to see a sequel. Hopefully, maybe it'll make like $300 million in China and save it.
JVL00:56:28I was going to say, I was expecting more from you. You didn't like it? No, I thought it was fine. Scale of 1 to 10, how hot do you find Alita?
Sonny00:56:37Question.
JVL00:56:38Question. Don't you know what just happened?
Sonny00:56:40Do you realize what just happened in this studio? They'll never know it's you. Question, Vic. Vic. Vic. Sonny. Vic, question. Sonny. Did you lose interest in the movie when she got her other body? The new body?
Vic00:56:51No. That's when she becomes, that's when it becomes legit. The proportions expanded. No, no, no.
Guest00:56:56You guys are sick.
Vic00:56:57No, no. Not at all. Is that the problem here? I'm not even answering that. Was that the? I am not. I'm not even answering that. I'm like, you know what?
Sonny00:57:03Like Ricky Martin. I can see some flashing lights in the background. Really? They're coming back. Question.
Vic00:57:08Remember when Barbara Walters asked Ricky Martin if he was gay and Ricky Martin said, I'm not going to dignify that question. Question. I'm not going to dignify your question. Okay. We'll take that as a yes.
JVL00:57:17Dressing up as a leader for Halloween.
Vic00:57:19Okay. Can we move on? Can we just move on? Notice he didn't answer. Can we move on? I'm just going to say this on a completely unrelated note. A completely unrelated note. Did anyone read the story? It was maybe the New York Post about the sex bot with Scarlett Johansson's face.
JVL00:57:36No. Very disturbing.
Vic00:57:38Check it out. What? Yes. And it's like this. Speaking of ghost in the shell. I mean. Yeah. Yes. But you could check it out. It's on the Internet. Just type it in. Just be careful because I know sometimes you think that cybercrime is something that happens to other people. You may not think that, you know, no one looks at your data or that hackers can't grab your passwords or credit card details, but you'd be wrong. Stealing data from unsuspecting people on public Wi-Fi is one of the simplest and cheapest ways for hackers to make money. When you leave your Internet connection unencrypted, you might as well be writing your passwords and credit card numbers on a huge billboard for the rest of the world to see. That's why I decided to take action to protect myself from cybercriminals. I use ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN secures and anonymizes your Internet browsing by encrypting your data and hiding your public IP address. ExpressVPN has easy-to-use apps that run seamlessly in the background of your computer, phone, and tablet. Turning on ExpressVPN protection only takes one click. Using ExpressVPN, I can safely surf on public Wi-Fi without being snooped on or having my personal data stolen. For less than $7 a month, you can get the same ExpressVPN protection that I have. ExpressVPN is rated the number one VPN service by TechRadar and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Protect your online activity today and find out how you can get three months free at ExpressVPN.com slash WFB. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash W-F-B for three months. Three months free with a one-year package. Visit ExpressVPN.com slash W-F-B to learn more. All right, corrections, additions, anything. I hope this satisfies everybody that we had a nice lengthy episode.
JVL00:59:31I had a correction. Uh-oh. Correction from our Monday episode. I actually won the Oscar draft by picking ten winners, which is more than Vic and Sonny combined. You guys combined for nine winners. Wow.
Sonny00:59:44I got ten. This is very interesting. President Hillary Clinton has a lot of thoughts about this. President Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote by three million votes, but yet did not win the presidency. Oh, I'm sorry. Democratic nominee in 2008, Hillary Clinton, also has some thoughts on this. After she won all of those primaries and racked up all those votes. And yet she didn't play by the rules. She didn't win by the rules established. So she lost. I don't play by the rules, Sonny. You lost. I chose to pick winners. I was playing a different game. You lost. That's fine. It's OK. It's OK. It's like when you didn't pick anything king size in the candy draft. You didn't think outside the box enough. You were stuck in your little. Anything with chocolate in it.
JVL01:00:26I pick anything with sugar in it. Anything that comes in a wrapper.
Vic01:00:30OK. That's all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments. Tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch.
Sonny01:00:38At JV Last. Loser of the Oscar draft.
Vic01:00:40Be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in SubBeacon under podcasts. We are there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
JVL01:00:57I had something happen to me at Alita Battle Angel that has never happened to me in a movie theater before. Or so you think. Would you care to guess?
Vic01:01:08Yeah. I'm afraid.
JVL01:01:09Go ahead. And four hours later, it finally went down. So. There was.
Vic01:01:17A couple there with a child. Oh, yeah. A lot of kids.
JVL01:01:22I'm guessing four-year-old child. There were kids. Which is fine. I have no problem with that. Midway through the movie, I assume that this child was bored out of her skull because she suddenly appeared with a tablet-like device in her hands and began watching a different movie.
Guest01:01:41No, no, no, no.
JVL01:01:43With the sound turned all the way up. Here are my thoughts.
Sonny01:01:51No wonder you hated this movie. You had the worst movie experience.
JVL01:01:54Terrible. That's just terrible. It didn't bother me. Honestly, it didn't bother me.
Vic01:01:57Oh, come on.
JVL01:01:57It didn't bother me. What bothered me is this. If you want to tell me that you have to go see a movie and you don't want to bring your kid, but you got to bring your kid, I say, okay, well, I mean, you should get a babysitter. But then you say, look, I just can't get a sitter. And this movie is so amazing. I have to bring my kid with me to this movie. So a movie like Alita. Because Jurassic Park is unbelievable. Dunkirk is so... I have to go see The Dark Knight Rises. I have to see Avengers Infinity War. Everything has been building up. I would say, you know what? I think this is bad parenting, but okay, whatever. To do that for Alita Battle Angel?
Sonny01:02:38That's so good. This happened to me for Spectre. This exact thing happened to me for Spectre. Totally crowded theater. Totally crowded theater. I'm sitting. My wife is on my right-hand side. On my left-hand side, there is a mother and a small child, five or six, to see Spectre, the James Bond movie. Because I'm sure that child is dying to see it. And 30 minutes into the film, pulls out a handheld video game of some sort and just starts playing it. And I looked... I did the... Do you have like a dad stare? Like where you kind of like squint your eyes at a child and you put the fear into the I don't.
JVL01:03:18Do you look like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino?
Sonny01:03:20Kind of. Kind of. But I just... Can I see it? Well, I can't really do it because there's nobody here annoying me enough. Oh, how about this guy? But the...
JVL01:03:30I won the Oscar draft.
Sonny01:03:31You didn't though. That's the thing. It doesn't bother me because it's not true. But I like just... I stared at this child until she like shrunk into her chair and pulled the thing next to her chest and like turned away from me. Because I was like... This is... I was... It was insane. It was... I mean, it's like... Leave aside the whole bringing your kid to the theater thing. It's just rude to do that. I'm sure it's fine.
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