#53. The Gentlemen, Big Plungers, and Sonny’s Return
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Sonny beams in from his new Dallas office for the first remote episode, and the three of them are unanimously delighted by The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie's return to British gangster crime after his big-studio detour through The Man from U.N.C.L.E., King Arthur and Aladdin. Sonny, who always preferred the smaller films, calls it a slower, older, more contemplative Ritchie that trades hip-hop quick-cut montages for structure and narrative trickery, and singles out Colin Farrell's Irish boxer as the best performance in the movie plus Charlie Hunnam's "posh gangsterism" — his natural born role, and some of the best running he's ever done on screen — while praising Ritchie for making the Dry Eye character cold and calculating rather than wildly vicious. JVL liked it a lot too, arguing that unlike Bad Boys II to Bad Boys, this isn't Ritchie repeating himself but Ritchie getting better at his craft, and slots it as the second-best of the gangster movies behind Snatch, with Sonny agreeing it edges out Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Vic gives it a flat A, loving the casting and Matthew McConaughey's mellow voice, admitting he was won over at last by Michelle Dockery (he was always a Cousin Rose man on Downton Abbey), and noting how the film shares that show's real problem of titled English lords with grand estates and no money. His quadrant breakdown: duration briskly under two hours, violence great, nudity none, plot initially confusing because he couldn't tell how much of Hugh Grant's narration was real. He raises two nagging plot holes — the Russian gangster surely has more than three henchmen, and what drug exactly turns Eddie Marsan bestially pig-crazy — while Sonny's only question is who poisoned the lord's daughter, which they settle as a plain overdose. The gym scene inspires a long, gleeful campaign for importing the British C-word into American usage, restricted to men. On the numbers, Bad Boys for Life still leads with $17.7 million against 1917's $9.5 million and Doolittle's $7.6 million in a dead pre-Oscars zone, with The Gentlemen sixth at $5.6 million; Sonny calls 1917 a lock for best picture, Phoenix, Zellweger, Pitt and Laura Dern (a makeup award for the Holdo snub) as done deals. Around it: listeners who left angry reviews thinking Chris Cillizza had permanently replaced a co-host, Sonny's exactly-ten-hours-each-way drive with two kids and a dog and a stop at a Chewy's in Nashville, his four-year-old bragging that she has a park in her backyard, JVL's astonishing account of three-year-old G-Money producing something like 4% of his body weight that clogged a Gerber toilet and cracked the attic-chilled plunger, forcing a Home Depot run for a beehive model, and Sonny's post-move Spectrum ordeal — four departments, endless retellings, a threat to sack their office like the Visigoths, and finally just buying an Apple TV from Amazon, which arrived in eight hours. Producer Paul Crookston gets repeated thanks for making the whole remote setup work through the studio construction noise.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this latest episode sponsored by Calm, we discuss Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen . Sonny goes on a cable ran...
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00I want you to play a game with me, Ray.
Guest00:00:02I don't want to play a game.
Vic00:00:03Oh, please. No. I said play a game with me, Raymond. Right. Lovely!
Guest00:00:11I want you to imagine a character. His name is Fahok. It was spelt with a P-A, so it sounds like Fahok. Please! Harry Fahok, under Fahok. Please!
Vic00:00:26Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon, sponsored by Calm. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V Last. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Look on our podcast, search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review, especially those of you who left very bad reviews because you thought that we had actually switched one of our co-hosts who was just taking off for a week.
Sonny00:00:54This is what happens when you mess with the people.
Vic00:00:57Gentlemen, how are we sunny? How are you? Listen, we're looking at you now. How are things at the International Space Station?
Sonny00:01:05It's good up here. Ground control to Major Vic.
Vic00:01:10Very good. Good reference, by the way. Thank you. Excellent song. You remind me of John Hurt in Contact.
JVL00:01:17Were you going to say that? I was just about to say, can Sonny send us the plans to the backup ring gate that he's built?
Vic00:01:23You have to think. You have to think like they do. So, anyway.
JVL00:01:27How would you like to get back in the game?
Vic00:01:30So, it's nice to see. We're looking at you, Sonny. You're in your office. Yes.
Sonny00:01:35In Dallas.
Vic00:01:36Yes. And you have what you look like. I thought you were in the back section of Spencer's there with that black thing there with the foam on it. What is that? No, it's just a…
Sonny00:01:43That's a microphone. No, it's the… I don't understand. Is that a sex toy joke?
JVL00:01:48Once he has it near his mouth, it makes sense. Oh, I see.
Vic00:01:52You're doing product placement for the sharper image. That's great.
?00:01:55Okay.
Vic00:01:56How are you doing? What's going on? What have you been doing? How was the drive?
Sonny00:02:00It was great. It took exact… The drive was as good as it possibly could have been. It was exactly 10 hours from DC to Nashville and then exactly 10 hours from Nashville to Dallas. Granted, there were two children and a dog and a wife in the car the whole time. So, it's not entirely… It's not exactly pleasant.
JVL00:02:21Did all five living organisms make it to Dallas? Yeah.
Sonny00:02:25Yeah. We all made it. There were no murders.
Vic00:02:28So… Which was… In terms of maintenance, children, dog, wife.
Sonny00:02:35Children. Definitely children. It was… They… Keeping them amused. The baby in particular because you can just throw the tablet in front of the four-year-old. Yeah. And she's fine. But the… No, it was good. Honestly, it was literally as good as it could have been. We hit no traffic. We were… We got to Nashville at like 3:00 in the afternoon. Went to a park. Went around. Went to a Chewy's for dinner. Had some authentic… Oh, yeah.
JVL00:03:04Had some authentic… Authentic Tex-Mex. Authentic Nashville dining. The thing you can't get when you're in Washington, D.C., Maria.
Sonny00:03:09Chewy's. You know, Nashville is like a mecca for culture and dining and all that. And I saw a Chewy's a block from the hotel and I was like, "That's it. That's where we're going. That's where the family is having dinner." So it was a big win.
Vic00:03:21Big win. That's exciting. Yeah. When you arrived in Dallas, did you like walk out, look around and were like, "Meh. I think we'll just go back"?
Sonny00:03:29Uh… When I… When we got to Dallas? Yeah. No. When we got to Dallas, I was like… I was like, "Okay. This is great. Now, what are we going to do for the next week until our stuff gets here?" That's right. Because it took a… Took a week for the boxes to show up.
JVL00:03:44Send the kids out into your giant backyard.
Sonny00:03:46Well, I wouldn't say giant, but it's a solid backyard. It's a solid backyard with a… The nice thing about it is that it has like a playset already there. It's got like swings… Pre-install. Oh, that's nice. They didn't take it away from you.
?00:03:59…and a slide. Yeah.
Sonny00:03:59No. That was… It was there. That conveyed in the sale. So… Excellent.
JVL00:04:05I… Were the kids freaking out about it?
Sonny00:04:07They… Yeah. Well, the four-year-old keeps telling everyone she has a park in her backyard. Oh. Yeah. She has a park in her backyard. The Texas people are like, "I don't understand." Yeah. They don't get what it's like out here today. Yeah. They don't understand what it's like to live like an animal in a townhouse.
Vic00:04:23So… And how's the weather? How's the weather down there? Because it's gorgeous here today.
Sonny00:04:27Yeah. I was listening… I was listening to the Sports Junkies on the radio.com app. It was funny. Wait. So, the only thing I was really looking forward to missing, I guess, if that's the way to put it, was 106.7 The Fan, the local sports station in Washington, D.C. But I can get it on radio.com. It's fantastic. This is not even a sponsored content. I just… Wow. I just started using it.
JVL00:04:53That's radio.com.
Sonny00:04:54Radio.com. You can get a discount code at rebellermedia.com. I'm for radio.com. No, but it was… I forget where I was going with this. Weather. It's colder than people think. Weather. Weather. I heard it was like 70 degrees out there.
Vic00:05:11Not today. Today, it's about 41, 35 and raining. Back down to 35. Okay.
Sonny00:05:15Okay.
Vic00:05:16So, back to normal.
Sonny00:05:17It's back to normal now. Back to normal. Yeah. But, no. The weather here has been fine. It's been a little bit rainy, which is annoying. The park is closed when it's raining, so we can't put the kids outside.
Vic00:05:27And neighbors?
Sonny00:05:28We got a very nice box of cookies from one of our neighbors. I have not yet… My wife has been texting with them to set up a play date, but that has not yet occurred.
JVL00:05:38So, here's the most important question about your neighbors.
Sonny00:05:40Yes.
JVL00:05:41Do you have any teenage girls living nearby?
Sonny00:05:45Because I need to go tell them that Vic Mattis might show up? Is that the…
JVL00:05:50No, no, no. Listen, I would not ask Vic that question, but I would ask you that question as a normal human being. Because what teenage girls, the presence of teenage girls in your neighborhood means… Is infinite babysitting. Well, this is… Oh, yes.
Sonny00:06:02That's right. So, we actually… Our realtor, Jenny Kellogg, has been a very fantastic resource in this regard. We… So, I have a… There's a local premiere for one of the Fangoria movies coming up, VFW. And I have to go to that, and I wanted to bring Beth, but we were like, "Okay, we need to get a babysitter. Who are we going to get?" So, we just called up our realtor. It was like, "Hey, do you have any recommendations on a babysitter?" She had a name in like 10 minutes. It was great.
Vic00:06:25Oh, that's fantastic. So… We have… I have a babysitter, a high schooler down the street. She's fantastic. The other day, she walks up, and then she goes down to the local high school. I'm driving. I'm getting into my car, and then I thought, "Well, I know. It's on the way." So, I just thought maybe I roll down my window, and I say…
Sonny00:06:44Do you need a ride?
Vic00:06:45Yeah. No.
Sonny00:06:47I mean, is that wrong?
Vic00:06:48It's cold outside. Do I say, "Hey." You know. Hey. Hey. You and your friend… Cold bus stop. You and your friend need a ride down to the school.
JVL00:06:56I can… Don't stand so close to me. Come on.
Vic00:06:59Come on.
JVL00:07:00I'm not an animal. Come on. Because they would look totally cool. I mean, I thought about it.
Vic00:07:04I thought… Getting dropped off at school by the old man. What did we get? My Subaru Legacy. Yes.
Sonny00:07:09And the old… The creepy old Asian man.
Vic00:07:11I didn't know your grandfather was Filipino. Grandfather. Thank you. Thank you. You know, I did that. But it is awkward. I mean, do you say, "Hi," or whatever? I get a little nervous. So, I'm just like, "Do my thing."
Sonny00:07:20That's… It's literally…
Vic00:07:22This is literally…
Sonny00:07:23Wait. Do my thing. I mean, drive. Do my thing. I don't know if you understand me, but that is literally… It's like, you know… That is like the song. You're singing… You're telling us the song.
Vic00:07:32Just like that old man in that famous book. Okay. JVL, what's going on?
JVL00:07:38So, I had something happen to me over the weekend, which has never yet happened in eleven and a half years of parenthood.
?00:07:48Okay.
JVL00:07:49Go. Are you ready? Yeah. Go on. Because this is a Vic Matus special. Oh, boy. G-Money… Yeah. …is three years old. Ah. And he does pretty good with the potty. So do I. But he likes to hold it. He likes to hold it sometimes for days.
Sonny00:08:08Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Number two? Mm-mm.
JVL00:08:12Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And on Saturday, he was like, "I gotta poop.
?00:08:16Gotta poop.
JVL00:08:17Daddy, keep me company." So I go in, I sit down next to him on the toilet, and he starts grunting, and he's gritting his teeth. His teeth are bared and clenched down. He's getting red-faced. And I hear what sounds like on the Alaskan cruises that we used to take for the old place. Yes. Remember when the glacier calves? And it's just like . Yeah, it comes down. Yes. Yes. I hear a sound that sounds like that. And he looks at me. He's the most angelic, beatific look he's ever given me. Mm-hmm. He's like, "I got my poop in the potty." I was like, "Great. Great." So he hops off, and I look in, and it looks like there's a damn brown trout.
?00:08:55Yeah.
JVL00:08:56In there. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that if this thing was 18 inches, it was an inch. And it was so thick around. I am not kidding. This is for real. I very nearly reached in to pull it out so I could lay it on a piece of plastic and measure it. Because I've never in my life seen anything like it. This is literally a South Park episode.
Vic00:09:28No, I mean, yes, yes. That's like how Elvis died, you know, something that big.
JVL00:09:34So G-Money weighs 27 pounds. This thing must have been 4% of his body weight. He then flushes the toilet and it clogs. Of course.
Vic00:09:47Not because of toilet paper, this isn't like the three-year-old got into, like I was supervising the toilet papers.
JVL00:09:52It clogs. So I go up into the attic and I get the toilet paper. The plunger. And I'm kind of like, wow, I can't believe it. He is now a man. This is like his bar mitzvah. You keep your plunger in the attic? Yeah, because we never use it. We never use it. I keep it in the outside attic, not the inside attic, because we have two attics. And so anyways, I'm thinking to myself, like this is, now he is a man. Like he clogged a toilet. This is crazy because we have really good toilets. We have the fancy Gerbers, which are that anybody who does plumbing will tell you Gerber. Gerber's the best. They're better than the overrated Totos.
Vic00:10:25They make babies? They make babies.
JVL00:10:27Baby food and toilets.
Sonny00:10:28It's a different company. Can you flush a whole, can you flush a whole box of golf balls down there?
JVL00:10:32Oh yeah. So I get out the plunger and I'm going at it and I'm going at it and I'm going at it with the plunger. And this thing is so bad that it breaks the plunger. So we have, we have one of the old, like the rubber, it looks like a little half cup.
Vic00:10:46So what do you mean it broke it? It went inverted?
JVL00:10:48I mean that the... The handle snapped off? No. And it splashes everywhere? The rubber cracked. Oh wow. So the, the rubber on the thing cracked. Now it is possible this has something to do with it having been cold. It being in the attic.
Sonny00:11:02Yes. Well you put it, you put it in the attic where it's exposed to all of the heat and the cold.
JVL00:11:07Yes, the elements. But the point is I had to go out... It's not a barrel of bourbon. ...to the Home Depot and get a fancy new beehive plunger. Oh yeah.
Sonny00:11:15Did you get the, the one with like the, the like structure that creates the suction and the vacuum?
JVL00:11:20Yes. Yeah. You gotta get that. And even with that, I had to go at that thing for a good three minutes before it finally exploded. I don't know how this is physiologically possible, Victorino.
Vic00:11:31There are certain websites that you could have recorded this and it would have been
JVL00:11:34very popular. Because it was, I've never seen anything like it. I don't know how somebody fits that in their body when they are as tiny.
Vic00:11:42Yeah. Well, it's, it's, that had to come out. Oh. That had to come out. It reminds me of a, a Brit, a Brit once telling me when he was traveling overseas and something horrific that he had seen in, in, in a third world, uh, toilet. He described it was, it was, it was like a dreadnought of the chocolate variety.
JVL00:12:00He said. I kid you not. It was insane. Okay. Wait. That was the most exciting thing that happened to me this weekend.
Vic00:12:06I still can't stop. Graffing about it. It was so nuts. Thank you. Thank you.
JVL00:12:11Thank you JVL.
Vic00:12:12Uh, how are you Victorino? Well, speaking of which, you know, I had an, I had a nice Superbowl and what I did, speaking of which I made chili on, uh, the Saturday before, because it takes, I put two 12 ounce bottles of Sam Adams in my wonderful Le Creuset. But when you eat, when it's ready at first, as you know, with these things, is that a, is that a crock pot? What is it? A Dutch oven? A giant Dutch oven? No, not a crock pot. It's a Dutch oven. Dutch oven jokes aside.
JVL00:12:37Those things are so expensive.
Vic00:12:39They are. It is. We have one of them. I don't remember. Is it one of the Star Wars?
JVL00:12:44Maybe from the wedding.
Vic00:12:45We've had it for a long time. Is it one of the Star Wars Le Creusets? And it retains heat. It retains heat amazingly. So I put it there, but it does take it back. It takes about a day or so to congeal and to get all the flavors together. So in the bitter, because when you first have the chili with the beer, there's still a little bit of a bitterness there, but the next day it's great. I am still eating that chili. And it's NASA's. I'll have some today. Thursday. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully it's not an explosive situation. Speaking of explosive situations over the weekend, bad boys for life continued to blow up the box office with $17.7 million, followed by 1917 with nine and a half million. And in third place. It was Doolittle with $7.6 million box office thoughts. I'm surprised that it seems like it's the same movies every week.
Sonny00:13:37Well, it is kind of a dead, dead time at the box office. This is like between, uh, Superbowl and the Oscars and everything else. It is just like a total, total dead zone. This is why we're getting, you know, a bunch of terrible horror movies, like the turning, uh, dumped, dumped at this time of year. Um, I don't know. I don't really have any box office thoughts. I'm kind of glad to see 1917 doing well. It's nice to see a movie without big stars and it's an original concept and BAFTA. Yeah. One, a bunch of BAFTAs. That's not surprising because it is the BAFTAs of course is the, uh, the British Oscars. Uh, and this is a very British movie starring very British people, uh, directed by a very British person.
Vic00:14:18So, and, and, and how do you think it's going to do on Sunday?
Sonny00:14:21Uh, if I had to guess, uh, 1917. 1917 takes best picture and probably best director. Um, uh, I think those are for gimmick movie. Those are probably the only major awards that it wins. Cinematography? Uh, it might, it might win cinematography, uh, Deakins, Deakins might win, um, lighting.
JVL00:14:45I mean, it should get a bunch of technical awards.
Sonny00:14:47I don't know. We'll see. It's always hard to tell what's going to happen with those. I don't know.
Vic00:14:51They are doing major construction by the way. I don't know if you can hear it. I could actually hear that. Yeah. But, uh, they're actually going to break through the wall and we're going to see the construction guys at any moment.
Sonny00:15:01I thought Paul was like a banging on the table back there. Yeah, that's right.
JVL00:15:06It's no, no, no. It's insane. Paul really hates 1917. And he's so upset. Gimmick movie.
Vic00:15:11Gimmick movie. He's sawing. He's sawing his way out of the studio. Um.
JVL00:15:15Can we, can we pause here? Victorino. Sure. Thank Paul.
Vic00:15:19He was in my shout out. He's in my shout out. If you don't, if you want me to do it later, I can do it. We can do it now. He's in Kingston producing this episode of the Sub-Beacon.
JVL00:15:28This show would not happen without Paul having made it happen.
Vic00:15:32He is a technical genius. He's like Sherman from Mr. Peabody and Sherman.
JVL00:15:36Anybody from the SSEU who wanted to send Paul a thank you because otherwise this thing wouldn't have happened. They should send it to like either me or Vic and we will get it to him because he at least deserves some old Forester or something.
Vic00:15:51Oh my gosh.
JVL00:15:52Oh wow. There are no actually.
Sonny00:15:55Yeah.
JVL00:15:56Okay.
Vic00:15:57I can really hear that. Do we want to put this on pause while this ends. What do you want to do? This is insane.
Sonny00:16:01Yeah.
?00:16:02Let's pause.
Sonny00:16:03Do you hear that Sonny? I can hear it. Let's stop.
Vic00:16:07A little more song and then it's going to start up again for the people at the Monuments Economic Group.
Sonny00:16:17Okay. Well, we'll figure it out.
Vic00:16:19It's fine. Okay. I guess we're going to continue right along.
JVL00:16:23You know, I did not realize that the. The Oscars were this weekend. It's happening. Uh, so no pool. We didn't do any, nothing special for the Oscars.
Vic00:16:32Didn't.
Sonny00:16:33No, that's because I, I've dominated you guys so thoroughly in every draft of every variety that we've done. I figured you guys just didn't want to do it this year.
Vic00:16:41I was going to pick Moonlight. Thank you.
JVL00:16:43Uh, okay. I was going to pick King size. Oh. I pick all the movies that are over an hour long. What a Jip. What a Jip. Uh, uh, so, so the big winner, do you have a big winner?
Sonny00:16:56You guys are so jealous that I am so much better at this stuff than you. It's actually kind of shocking. By cheating. By cheating. It's actually kind of shocking.
Vic00:17:04It's disturbing. Do you have a, is any movie going to sweep?
Sonny00:17:07Uh, no. Dominate. No, I, I don't think any movie really has dominated in, in a long time. You, you, it's been a while since you had something take like eight, eight awards or, or something like that. Yeah. I mean, look, I, I think that here, here are the locks at this point. I think 1917. is basically a lock for best picture i think uh uh you're it's either going to be mendez or bong for best director uh it's going to be tarantino for best original screenplay um i i wouldn't be surprised if gerwig gets the adapted screenplay but it also might be what uh taika watiti uh for for the hitler movie um uh which is not a gimmick movie funny funny hitler movie uh uh which you know hitler moonrise kingdom uh which is uh which which was its own little thing uh and then phoenix is definitely going to win best actor renee zellweger will win best actress laura dern will win best supporting actress and brad pitt will win best supporting actor i mean like everything you all of the major first folks all of the major categories are basically spoken for
JVL00:18:12at this point almost i mean i i do hold on yeah what was so i have paid zero attention to this brad pitt was nominated for best supporting yes what was dicaprio nominated for best
Sonny00:18:23actor , okay, he dicaprio was best actor brad pitt was best supporting actor he's not gonna win uh no no joaquin phoenix is joaquin phoenix is 100 gonna win best actor joaquin joaquin phoenix has won every uh every precursor award more or less yeah no yeah his performance is crazy it
Vic00:18:42is yeah it's crazy it is crazy did you mention laura dern sonny yeah laura dern's gonna win for marriage story oh i thought you were gonna say for uh uh the last jedi no that's
?00:18:53the
Sonny00:18:53she was snubbed this is a makeup award she was snubbed right she was snubbed like al pacino
Vic00:18:58al pacino and the godfather that's right holdo holdo is the great un-un-unrewarded character yeah sure okay great um uh we're actually going to talk about however on this episode a movie that came in sixth place guy ritchie's the gentleman which made 5.6 million dollars over the weekend i thought this was a very interesting movie if we can hear it through the construction
Sonny00:19:23i mean it's not on my end so i can just do my review and then right hold on
Vic00:19:30we should leave all this in this is great stuff sonny how about a big boy review of the gentleman
Sonny00:19:37so the gentleman is guy ritchie's return to the british gangster thriller crime heist type movie uh that had made him famous uh you know this is kind of how we got to start with lock stock and revolver rock and roller those are those are uh uh kind of my favorite of his movies and he has kind of shifted away from that mode of filmmaking in the last few years uh trying to get into the kind of big budget studio spectacular mode movies like uh the man from uncle which is pretty good chav king arthur which is pretty bad uh and aladdin which is hit and miss um monster uh uh and uh i did aladdin sherlock holmes aladdin oh yeah oh yeah and the bad sherlock holmes movies um uh uh so you know he's he uh he he has he's tried to he he has i think successfully i think you could say like shifted into becoming a mainstream big budget blockbuster type filmmaker uh but i really prefer these smaller movies um and i liked the gentleman a lot so the gentleman is kind of standard richie gangster stuff in that it is a bunch of kind of uh interwoven storylines that all come together at the end with uh you know kind of big archetypal some might say stereotypical uh characters uh uh competing against each other in this in this uh in the struggle for control of the british marijuana trade uh matthew mcconaughey stars as mickey who's a american born um lower class kid who wins a road scholarship uh goes to england learns that he can make way more money selling weed to the toffs and gets into the gets into the game that way uh he wants to sell his business to the guy from succession i can't even remember what his name is uh who is a jewish gangster uh also american looking looking to muscle his way into the uh the the british weed trade strong jeremy strong jeremy is he is he mark related to mark strong at all because i said when i saw jeremy strong i was like oh mark strong brother but no definitely not definitely not i hope not because definitely not
JVL00:21:48brother that is yeah the worst sibling like one guy
Sonny00:21:52since dennis and randy quaid yeah no really um but uh uh yeah so anyway uh and they are they are kind of mixed up with a with an asian gangster uh called dry eye now i i i'm not gonna like i don't want to get into the plot of this movie too much because i i i part of the fun is just watching it kind of all play out uh but here's what i found most interesting about this this flick is that it almost feels like kind of an older uh more mature guy richie gangster movie it felt a little bit slower it felt it's still stylized but it is not stylized in the way that uh lock stock or snatch was stylized you know gone are kind of the um the hip-hop quick cut montages um uh instead uh he he relies a little bit more on structure here and a little bit more on um uh i i don't know how to describe it exactly but like uh uh narrative trickery i think than than he does in some of his other movies though those movies also still are uh are very much uh products of of narrative trickery so i don't know uh but it it definitely feels it definitely feels like a little bit more contemplative a little bit more uh mature a little bit older um and i don't know i kind of i loved it i loved it i i think it's great uh i uh uh enjoyed kind of the way that that Richie plays with our expectations a bit there are there are several occasions in the movie where moments of uh kind of what what would be perceived as hilarious violence uh turn out to be imaginations of a uh a british reporter who's played by Hugh Grant in this movie
JVL00:23:41um i can't believe you left him out when you were listening yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no i well i
Sonny00:23:47haven't i haven't even gotten to Colin Farrell yet Colin Farrell who has who has like the best performance in this movie i think as the as a irish boxer loved him um uh who is a who's a mentor to a bunch of uh you know gangster types so uh anyway i uh i liked it i i hope uh i hope
Vic00:24:08you guys liked it as much as i did yeah i loved it thank you sonny i thought it was um i thought it was i loved the casting and i thought everybody was perfectly cast especially Matthew McConaughey he's got such a mellow and calm voice JVL
JVL00:24:22so we are back to talk about my favorite sponsor calm.com that's c-a-l-m.com it is an app for your phone or your ipad or your device that has guided meditations breathing exercises cool white noise and what we use it for all the time in our house sleep stories so we we do sleep stories all the time whenever i do this spot i i often tell you i just like pull up what we listened to last night with one of the kids but i actually found something as i was just noodling around the app last night and the kids didn't listen to it because i wanted to save it for this show all right are you boys are you ready sonny are you ready go for it yeah
Guest00:25:06well hello there i'm matthew mcconaughey and tonight i'll be reading a special sleep story
JVL00:25:16called wonder that that's right matthew mcconaughey all right all right all right matthew mcconaughey doing a sleep story on calm so this is what they add new stories every week they add new all new everything new breathing exercises new meditations every single week and they get people with great voices and so some of the people you get are like poets or surfers some people's the voices you know before and some people like matthew mcconaughey you're into as soon as you hear this you're like yes of course matthew mcconaughey would put me to sleep because the guy's got a great voice voice so everything about it is fantastic it works on kids like you cannot believe and it works for adults too we use it sometimes too although in fairness my children normally wear me out so much that i fall asleep on my own anyhow for a limited time our show listeners will get 25 off a calm premium subscription at calm.com/subbeacon it comes with unlimited access to calm's entire library and new content added every week get started today at calm.com/subbeacon that's calm.com/subbeacon
Vic00:26:30thank you JVL how'd you like that Matthew McConaughey fantastic something else right yeah i know it puts me in a mellow mood uh so uh JVL what did you think about this movie i liked it i liked it a lot uh i mean
JVL00:26:44it's it's it's fluffy it is as anybody who likes british gangster movies will really enjoy this i think because it's not derivative it's you know in a lot of ways snatch is derivative of lock stock and two smoking barrels but it's an improved version of it right so it's you know it it isn't bad boys two to bad boys one or they're just redoing the same thing it's it's Guy Ritchie's getting better at his craft and this is not derivative of any way except that it's in the same general vein as Sonny said it's it's a more mature version of it it's a great deal of fun uh the story is good the performances are fantastic uh it's really i don't know i i enjoy the heck out of it like i would think for our listeners in general oh this movie is going to hit all
Vic00:27:33of your pleasure centers it did most yes i gave this movie an a yeah so let's break it down duration under two hours very brisk amazing yep and okay let's say plot i was worried at first i was a little confused Hugh Grant's talked to him and i'm thinking is this like is he talking about a fictional script about something that hasn't happened is Matthew McConaughey who we see early on just in his imagination what is happening so it took me some a while to figure out is this happening also concurrently sort of where it's like partly real and partly speculative on Hugh Grant's part about the you know because there's missing you know there's gaps in the story so i it made i had you have to work on it in that sense or at least i did uh violence is great uh nudity there's none but i'll tell you i was pleasantly surprised by Michelle Dockery who i knew from Downton Abbey she's always come across as being very cold to me i was never a fan of hers i always like Cousin Rose uh thank you uh but anybody who watched Downton
JVL00:28:36Abbey and wasn't into Michelle Dockery is insane Cousin Rose and she because Cousin
Vic00:28:41Rose would have been attracted to me just to rebel against the family thank you very much uh but uh Michelle Dockery was great in in in this uh and also you know speaking of Downton Abbey both that series and this movie touches on uh uh this this uh very real problem which is english lords and earls having these grand titles and big old properties but no longer the money yeah you know and and and so what do they do how can they keep hold of these gorgeous estates and it's a great idea that says uh that where Matthew McConaughey comes in and says well i'll you know grow my pot here and it's never killed anyone so you know it's not like lord what's his name lord george and the heroine you know the the asian uh gangsters and so um that was really interesting so i again i gave it an a you mentioned colin farrell sonny uh really sort of unexpected i mean you know i like him fine but did you know
JVL00:29:36i thought he was great funny like this because i like colin farrell and everything i've ever
Sonny00:29:40seen yeah but what about in bruges have you he was funny and in bruges yeah funny but
Vic00:29:44also dark that was a dark movie for i thought that was a dark movie but uh um all the way going back to when he played witwer
JVL00:29:50in minority report yeah you know it's very good i mean yeah daredevil one of the worst superhero movies ever made and colin farrell is great in every scene he's in and that's
Vic00:30:01right my favorite part uh obviously spoiler alerts is in the end when he gives the four symbol you know he gives four fingers to like i did i did you not say favors four favors
JVL00:30:10yeah four times something about the part as written reminded me of the brad pitt part in snatch in the way that brad pitt sort of steals every scene he's in in that movie and maybe just because they're both boxers or maybe it's just because both of them are so damn funny because there's nothing really going on that's the same but i don't know i did i did have um three concerns or like
Vic00:30:38one is a question and the other two were kind of weird plot holes so i didn't think it was perfect and in fact um early on i was worried that the movie might drag too much uh because you have such high expectations if you see snatch in those kind of movies you're expecting this thing but it does eventually then pick up and it does come together uh sort of uh midway so so the first uh was a question which is in the end he's um uh mcconaughey's telling uh um jeremy strong his character matthew to to transfer funds or uh and a pound of the pound of flesh so like is that real i mean is he is it is it one or the other was it supposed to be both both both so like in seven yes okay uh okay and then and then the other two are kind of i don't know about these uh potential plot holes one the russian problem i don't think it's really solved i mean they they they they got rid of the the three goons but i assume that a russian gangster has more than three henchmen and they'll be coming after him that's my thought yes no okay yeah i mean at
JVL00:31:46some point you gotta let the beefs die right i don't know i mean okay and then and then final
Vic00:31:50finally uh i love eddie marsan he always plays the same sort of weaselly guy kind of has a weaselly look i i loved it i thought it was funny the reactions to the video that they don't show you which is even better of course um but i wasn't completely convinced that uh he was given some drug that made him go uh bestiality crazy with the pigs like what drug is that and he doesn't
Sonny00:32:13remember vick wants to know i want to know so i don't have that problem i don't want to remember i don't want to remember my carnal lust for the porcine friends that's right my my one best
JVL00:32:27best inspector lestrade ever in the history of sherlock holmes adaptations okay all right my
Sonny00:32:33one question uh on the on this whole movie in terms of plot was who was it that poisoned
Vic00:32:41the lord's daughter so she ods is that is that she just od took it with her she took it with her when she left the uh drug den oh is that is that what it was yeah i think she did she just
Sonny00:32:55od she wasn't like poisoned by one of the gangs no okay that's the only thing i wasn't 100 sure
Vic00:33:01i i and i i enjoyed the uh the whole uh uh subplot with the asian uh warlords and the gangsters there
Sonny00:33:09i thought i thought i thought that was actually i i thought it was actually very good and i thought again richie does something kind of clever here which is that he makes dry eye smart and cold and calculating as opposed to like wild and vicious um uh at least at the beginning right so like the the in the introductory scene when hugh grant's uh journalist character introduces him it's like uh it's like kind of a stereotypical image of an asian gangster like firing a machine gun wildly into the air and cackling maniacally and then charlie hunnam's character we haven't even talked about charlie hunnam uh uh yet but charlie hunnam's character is like that's not the dry eye i know and hugh grant's character is like oh yes i was just trying to make sure you were paying attention and it's like a more urbane um uh kind of standard british gangster he just happens to be uh asian uh charlie hunnam is fantastic in this movie this might be charlie hunnam's great role it's certainly some of the best running he's ever done on screen that was some serious running there's some there's some good running but like some of his best running the the just like everything he's covering ground
JVL00:34:16when he runs and he's not running in place which will win the best running happens is when you run yeah if you run in place though that doesn't do any good
Sonny00:34:24because you're just running in place you gotta run well there's a guy who was getting ready to
Vic00:34:27do that and he says really you know that doesn't work he says that to him doesn't he the kid the
Sonny00:34:32best the best part is when he i like again i i love the scene where he's chasing the uh the kids who have taken the video of the dead body and then he's just he just like pulls out the machine gun and fires it into the air he's like i'm tired of this uh that i i just i there there's there is something about charlie hunnam uh who has uh this kind of posh gangsterism in this movie uh that that really that is like his natural born role it's
JVL00:35:00like it's a winston wolf right like a british winston wolf he's a he's a half chief of staff
Sonny00:35:06yeah not not quite i mean winston wolf is like a straight up very well dressed is a straight up fixer this guy's more of um he's more of a uh uh what's it from the godfather uh no no no no uh consigliere consigliere yeah he's more of a consigliere i think okay it's it's great
JVL00:35:29can i say my so one of my favorite bits in the movie is so uh so these these hoodlums break into a grow house yeah and they go sitting and they're dressed in these insane burberry tracksuits and they're setting up cameras everywhere and all of a sudden a couple guys start walking out for viral check check out who's here and then more guys start coming out and more guys and we are thinking that the joke is that these hoodlums about to get their asses beat but then it turns out the joke is actually the opposite where these hoodlums are all trained fighters yeah they're all mma yeah and they beat the crap out of all these guys and then the first thing they do like in the van on the way home is cut it together into a fight porn video with like cool french mc solar right in the back around and post it on youtube because that's what the kids today would do yeah that's right that's
Vic00:36:24what makes it funny fight porn that's right uh no i thought it was great uh do you where does it fall
Sonny00:36:29in the guy richie uvra uvra uh i don't think it's as i i still think snatch is his best film uh but i probably i probably like this more than lock stock and two smoking barrels
JVL00:36:42yeah i would say this is the one two three in that order one or the second best of his gangster movies can we also talk briefly about the insanely funny and we can't actually talk about the substance of it but the anti-political correctness scene in the boxing gym oh yeah yes one of the guys is called uh a thing something thing and then he gets like
Guest00:37:08all upset about it and colin farrell is like no he's i don't know i can't even say it because he
JVL00:37:15says i don't know how to describe the scene he says no no the way he's not saying all of that no no i forget it's descriptive i forget what the actual even see it as indeed as a term of endearment right that he feels like he can use that with you yeah yeah i forget i forget what
Sonny00:37:29the actual term was but he calls him like a black idiot or something right and he's like we're not see not a black idiot see you next tuesday yeah uh okay yeah uh and then he's like no no he can't call me that that's racist and he's like well i did he's not saying that all black people are are c words just you which is which is you know fair point yeah can i just say
JVL00:37:49i think everything in american culture would be literally every single thing you threw around that more better if we were allowed to use the c word the way british agreed i want not this is my
Sonny00:37:59this is like a passion i will die on this passion project of mine is the the c word mostly to men i
JVL00:38:06think they only call men that yes yes c word is underrated right so could can we make the c word happen so long as it is only applied to men is that does that then make everybody okay well that
Vic00:38:19still and we're not allowed to do you know what why is it that americans don't get upset at the
JVL00:38:23brits for for using it it's a cultural thing oh i'm sorry so so the the american culture pc warriors are like they just like wow that's just their culture we're not bothered by look man i i'm
Sonny00:38:36with you i want i want the c word to be used all the time in every situation i want it when i when
JVL00:38:42i when i get to the high powered movie studio when i get to the when i get to the button of scripts movies that were in development who could start changing just start just start inserting the c
Sonny00:38:55word into scripts yeah yeah okay i'll start doing that what's the line we need to get rid of the c
JVL00:39:00word or the c word's got to go in arrested development the closest i've ever seen this is the arrest development joke where they're talking about the boat the c word s-e-a-w-a-r-d and uh and she walks in he says job get rid of the c word lucille bluth walks in and says i'll go when i'm good and ready okay do we have any other thoughts it's kind of a short episode once we take out all the construction noises oh yeah it'll be five minutes long i pause it but
Vic00:39:29it felt long because it took i think 20 minutes once we got all the technicalities but we got this to work uh and it worked on your end this is amazing yeah it's like you never left us we'll
Sonny00:39:38see we'll see we'll see if we can keep this going we'll see um i uh uh no i i mean we we'll have some outtakes here there's got to be some outtake stuff to talk about sure sure i do okay we haven't even talked about my dealings with spectrum yet you could have added that to uh we'll get to that we'll get to that after the after the credits okay wonderful i have one
Vic00:40:01two we could do we could do two then that's that's that's great this will work out just fine do you have any other corrections and shout outs can we shout out to paul again paul crookston thank you paul this episode spent a lot of time yesterday in the studio figuring out the mix minus so what
JVL00:40:18as a thank you you know whatever whatever not fire him yeah that's a good one that's not fire
Sonny00:40:25not fire him for doing his job that's true thank you okay paul are you listening paul can you hear me sitting right here can you hear me though is he got headphones on i can't see him okay good
JVL00:40:34good paul what watch are you wearing today i don't wear a watch you don't wear a watch now i'm not going to get it of course he doesn't wear a watch he's a millennial man well we are gonna fix that that's what we're gonna do no you know what bam that's
Vic00:40:48happening paul today free snacks and free soda for you in the office you should take
Sonny00:40:56miss that son take him take him take him to the poke bowl give him get him a medium it'll be a
Vic00:41:00large when he's with me yeah right right happen okay good listen that's all the time we're giving not really to this episode questions comments complaints compliments tweet us at sonny bunch at victorino mattis jv last are you coming back you came back a little bit well oh i came back to
JVL00:41:18push uh to help push rebellermedia.com rebellermedia.com yeah that's right i uh i came
Vic00:41:24back you know if oh and last week's episode you did different you came back oh i did come back
JVL00:41:29for last episode i can't believe we haven't talked about that at all because sonny's non-reaction to that yeah it drove me insane did you did you listen as i knew as i knew you were designing
Sonny00:41:40it to do uh you have to understand i don't listen to podcasts that i'm not on so if i'm not on a podcast i'm not going to listen to it and i don't listen to most podcasts i am on because i hate the sound of my voice so i don't actually listen to podcasts this is a true story i have probably produced more podcasts than i have actually listened to i i have produced more podcast series than individual episodes of podcasts uh i have listened to i think you mean
JVL00:42:08to tell me you don't listen to the commentary podcast i don't listen to any podcasts i don't
Sonny00:42:12listen to any podcasts i just don't listen to podcasts i i when i when i want to vl saying that when i when i listen to things i listen to like books on tape audiobooks audibles if you will okay well be sure to subscribe to us on itunes i wish you could see me shrugging because i'm just i'm shrugging right now i just don't listen to podcasts i can see you in our half second delay so when you when you when you did this thing with soliza everyone started uh like atting me on twitter and i was like oh that's unfortunate well i guess i'm done with that show not listening to that since i'm not on it
Vic00:42:48but i'm back i'm back just type in sub-beacon at our podcasts we're there leave a review a nice review look sonny's back i'm back all your friends until next time
JVL00:43:00you didn't even notice how we gave soliza the he actually did that i know i i literally did not listen to the episode i literally did not so just for you i well it was like a rick d's long distance dedication to you you you you trolled me you trolled me and i trolled you
Sonny00:43:24right back wasn't a troll you did a love letter you did a gimmick podcast and i refuse to take part oh boy look at that we we're getting trolled right now uh sonny that's the 1917 of podcasts
JVL00:43:37that one how is the why you mean the best podcast of the year ever
Vic00:43:42uh-huh before we get to that your cable situation i saw you as a blue check mark on twitter then started doing the whole thing oh man i had i i had so
JVL00:43:55spectrum so i was so excited to leave i was so excited spectrum which i do because i had you guys remember my spectrum meltdown last summer no i don't remember that i do remember that because
Sonny00:44:06it was down at the beach yeah yeah oh right right right the one at the beach yeah i do remember no i so i i was excited to leave uh comcast behind comcast is gone i was like new came company new new start fresh start uh and i was so excited that i tried i tried to set up service ahead of time right so i called like three weeks before i moved i called spectrum and i said i would like to start my service on this day on january 23rd or whatever uh can you ship the equipment but delay it so it will get there like a day before i get there so it's not just sitting on my front stoop and the lady i talked to on the phone was like yeah that's totally fine we can 100 do that we'll start the service on that day we'll ship the box out the day before it'll be great so i go i go through this whole process uh i want to get i wanted to get an apple tv instead of a cable box uh so i could watch i so i could like instead of instead of like renting a cable box and giving it back i would just keep the apple tv at the end of it uh and then everything was going to be perfect so i i call and i set all this up and literally like an hour later i got a there's an email pops into my inbox shipment from fedex uh scheduled to arrive at your new house in one day from spectrum and i get back on the phone with spectrum like what is this why you said you were going to delay and they were like oh we're sorry i don't know what happened uh technically we're not even allowed to delay shipments like that so i don't know why they agreed to it so i was like okay fine so uh so the
JVL00:45:31spectrum move so one person tells you something and then when you talk to somebody else they say well that person didn't say it and if they did they
Sonny00:45:36weren't allowed to yeah supposed to so i so i so whatever i like have my realtor came over and grabbed the box for me put it in the house it's fine uh so i get i we move to the house and we get there and none of our stuff is here obviously but there is a box from spectrum so i go and i set up the cable and it's a self-install kit i was told that the house had been pre-wired for cable and it was kind of uh except for the fact that the cable was not actually plugged into anything so i go to set it up and i get everything all set up and of course there's no signal so i have to call spectrum they're like okay we'll send somebody out this is the one good part of this whole situation the guy who came out here was fantastically competent got everything done got it all squared away perfect thank you john or whatever your name was uh you're you're the best it wasn't so
JVL00:46:21perfect that you bothered to remember his name
Sonny00:46:23no no i didn't depends on this sonny you know i i did not i did not uh but thank you thank you to that guy he was great uh so then uh i noticed that all i have are the uh all i had was the cable router and the cable modem so i don't have my apple tv so i call spectrum again i say hey i was supposed to have an apple tv in this self-install kit and that one never came oh okay yeah yeah sure sure hold on let me transfer you to apple guy transfers me to the apple department i have to explain the whole problem again he's like okay we'll send one out he transfers me to somebody else to send it out and i have to explain the whole problem again so i do this like four times until i finally uh get somebody who was like okay yeah yeah we'll send the apple we'll send the apple tv out it should come in like two days two days later nothing has come uh so this isn't a huge problem because i still don't have my my stuff which is coming via mayflower it's it but once my stuff actually gets here i'm like okay i can't watch tv i can't actually watch the tv that i'm paying for so i call spectrum again and i say hey for the love of god send me a freaking apple tv here so i can please uh get this set up and taken care of and they're like oh yeah yeah hold on we'll get you we'll get that set up right away we'll get that and once again the same thing transferred to like four different people i have to explain the thing four different times and still no apple tv comes so i call them up two days later and i'm saying hey for i for for god's sake i'm going to i'm going to burn down your office i'm going to sack it like the visigoths taking rome if you don't send me an apple tv so they're like okay fine we'll send it out so they finally do send it out they send it out ups but they require a signature they send it to my empty house where no one is that requires a signature so i'm like so it doesn't come the first day i'm like okay well this is great uh i let me change it so i can pick it up at the ups store they have they have altered the things so i can't actually uh i can't have it held at a ups store they i can't have it i can't have it left on my doorstop i there has to physically be somebody at my house for like eight hours a day whenever the ups guy could show up so i just canceled it i just canceled i had it sent back to spectrum and i bought one from amazon.com and let me tell you about the purchase from amazon.com it came eight hours later it came it came eight hours later right to my house i was able to set it up myself without any muss or fuss uh and this is why the long story i've i've gone on for five minutes about this now but i have a point the point the point is that whenever you see a survey of organizations that are trusted by the people of the united states of america you know what's always at the top amazon google in the military and you know why amazon google in the military are at the top because they get stuff done they get here's amazon i order it from amazon it's there eight days later you know what i love amazon fantastic i google something i get the results in 0.0006 seconds fantastic love you google uh i try to deal with a cable company and it's 17 phone calls with five idiots uh who can't help me so that's that it was it was the most intensely frustrating thing that i've ever uh i've ever had to put up with with a cable company and once again i had com i've had comcast for 15 years before this i never had anything that was remotely this frustrating so
Vic00:49:37what i wanted to know sonny is you tweeted it out and then immediately and everyone jumped on and then immediately i saw they commented and please uh dm us and tell us what the problem is how did that go over uh the dm you know
Sonny00:49:50the guy on the dm uh end of things was at the very least quick and responsive he was not helpful in any way uh he was not actually helpful but he was same experience i had but he was
JVL00:50:01he was like response team is merely there to make it look to the public like they're responding yeah oh please let's talk yeah yeah yeah yeah so we want to help you with this dms and we'll get the problem figured out they never can actually do that
Vic00:50:12so so the lesson learned here is spectrum is bad as opposed to i got confused when you were complaining because i was thinking you were talking about spectra vision from the hotel rooms back in the day that's good that works well that works well you know why i like that because it was like two minutes a free preview that's really all i need you know to watch harry and the hendersons right right right so anyway that was my that was my
Sonny00:50:34spectrum story uh hopefully everyone stuck around for
Vic00:50:37that okay good we're good i'm good victorina you said you had
JVL00:50:41something else oh yeah come on okay we still have some
Vic00:50:44time you know uh as some people remember on twitter uh sunday was my birthday and happy birthday thank you and i got uh something that i've always wanted which is a giant stainless steel cocktail shaker
JVL00:51:01a giant one how like how many inches how how it's huge
Vic00:51:07i don't know no no it's huge and and it's enough that my complaint was that if i make a martini it's barely enough for me and another person so this is one of the taller ones you know share um is it double-sided two
Sonny00:51:19can you pour it out of both ears it's all for me do you just drink it straight
Vic00:51:23out of the shaker well this is where i can fit about three big martinis in there but i also thought so like one lunch four if i take the ice out yes one lunch if i take the ice out and just have chilled gin from the freezer then i could just do gin and vermouth without having the ice in there to dilute it yeah you don't you wouldn't want to do that the vic mattis special i'm sure that's fine
?00:51:46Thank you.
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