Latest / The Radio From Hell Show - Best Of / Sean Means Movie Reviews For February 24th, 2025

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Sean Means Movie Reviews For February 24th, 2025 · The Radio From Hell Show - Best Of

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Well, here he is. Sean means he's an editor and
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: reporter at the Salt Lake Tribune. Sltrib dot com is
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: where you can go and find all of that stuff.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: And if you want to find Sean's movie criticisms, and
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: there are many of them, you can go to movie
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: cricket dot net. Good morning, mister means.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Good morning. What do we got?
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  Speaker 3: We have two art house movies and two mainstream movies
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  Speaker 3: this week to talk about. We'll start on the art
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  Speaker 3: house side. We have Parthenopy. I used to think it
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  Speaker 3: was Parthenope, but I was corrected.
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  Speaker 2: It looks like it.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, this is from the Italian director Pallas Sorrentino, who
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  Speaker 3: could not shoot a non beautiful movie if you paid
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  Speaker 3: him to. He's very central, very gorgeous, set on the
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  Speaker 3: Italian sea side, and that's beautiful. And the young woman
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  Speaker 3: who's the title character is amazingly beautiful as well. Parthapy
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  Speaker 3: is figuring out the effect her beauty has on the
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  Speaker 3: men around her. She has an interesting relationship with her
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  Speaker 3: melancholy brother and his classmate, sort of a threesome thing
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  Speaker 3: happening there and the romance with the classmate, but she
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  Speaker 3: wants something more out of life. She tried first, at
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  Speaker 3: one point tries being an actress because somebody tells her
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  Speaker 3: she's beautiful and she could be an actress. But then
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  Speaker 3: which gets her off track from what she really wants
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  Speaker 3: to do, which has learned, which is to study anthropology.
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  Speaker 3: Very beautiful, like I said, this actress Celeste della Porto.
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  Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah, she's amazing and she's also really good.
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  Speaker 3: But the problem here is, says not a lot to
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  Speaker 3: hold this movie together, Sorrentino. He did The Great Beauty
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  Speaker 3: a few years ago, won the Oscar for International Film.
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  Speaker 3: So the issue is that it's all it's all the
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  Speaker 3: visuals and all the beauty of it, and it's it's
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  Speaker 3: not really coherent. I gave it two and a half stars.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: Parthetopy is playing at the Broadway and the Century sixteen.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: So all right, okay, all right. The next one is
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  Speaker 3: No Other Land. This is a documentary. It's actually nominated
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  Speaker 3: for the Oscar. Filmed in the occupied territories of the
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  Speaker 3: West Bank. The four directors there's two Palestinian filmmakers and
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  Speaker 3: two israel filmmakers who made this movie and they capture
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  Speaker 3: what's happening in a group of villages where Palestinians have
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  Speaker 3: been living for more than a century, but the Israelis
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  Speaker 3: claim they need the land to practice driving their tanks,
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  Speaker 3: and the courts are on the Israeli side here. So
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  Speaker 3: the Israeli military comes in destroy someone's house and they
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  Speaker 3: leads them to pick up their belongings to go somewhere else,
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  Speaker 3: and they keep doing this over and over again. One
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  Speaker 3: of the filmmakers, one of the Palistini filmmakers, is also
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  Speaker 3: an activist, these leading protests against the destruction, and one
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  Speaker 3: of the Israeli filmmakers is a journalist who's trying to
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  Speaker 3: cover these demolitions for the readers back in Israel, to
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  Speaker 3: make them care about this stuff, and they're kind of
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  Speaker 3: the two main characters of the story. One of the
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  Speaker 3: interesting things is, like I said, this movie is you know,
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  Speaker 3: been at film festivals, one awards at festivals, and it's
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  Speaker 3: nominated for an Oscar.
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  Speaker 2: It does not have a US distributor.
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  Speaker 3: Really it got here because the filmmakers themselves are distributing
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  Speaker 3: into twenty three cities around the country, including them, so
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  Speaker 3: like it's.
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  Speaker 2: One of them. It's at the Broadway.
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  Speaker 3: It's really eye opening, and it's really a more complicated
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  Speaker 3: picture of what's happening on the West Bank than the
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  Speaker 3: most Americans know about it. They they finished shooting it
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  Speaker 3: just before October seventh, twenty twenty three, just before then
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: the moss attacks, which I think, which which which makes
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  Speaker 3: it hard to parse and separate out all the different
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: issues of that very complicated place.
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  Speaker 2: But it is worth it to sort.
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  Speaker 3: Of know what's going on and get it, get it,
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  Speaker 3: get a view of what's going on that you don't
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  Speaker 3: necessarily I always see three and a half Stars or
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  Speaker 3: no other land. It's at the Broadway, right, It's really
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  Speaker 3: it's really worth watching eve And and we're thinking.
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  Speaker 2: About the whole issue.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: So right next to the mainstream we have The Unbreakable Boy.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I like, what did you write this? Alcoholism with a
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  Speaker 1: side with autism on the side.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: This is advertised as the true story of an inspirational
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  Speaker 3: thirteen year old kid named Austin who has who has
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  Speaker 3: brittle bone disease, so he's had dozens of broad factors
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  Speaker 3: for his young life, and he has autism. So a
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  Speaker 3: good chunk of the movie is about this kid's awkwardness
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  Speaker 3: around the kids and how optimistic and resilient he is.
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  Speaker 3: He's like always happy, always positive. But that's the half
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  Speaker 3: that's in the ads. The other half is about the
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  Speaker 3: boy's dad and how the dad has trouble coping with
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  Speaker 3: his son's issues, and then soon he's got a different
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  Speaker 3: problem is that he drinks too much. And we've all
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  Speaker 3: seen movies about alcoholism that handle this one hundred times
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  Speaker 3: better than this movie does, because none of those movies
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  Speaker 3: have Zachary Levi.
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  Speaker 2: In the lead. Ooh, he's bad, he's you.
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  Speaker 3: Know, he's that manchild thing got old after the second
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  Speaker 3: Hizam movie, let alone, after Harold in the Purple Crayon
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  Speaker 3: being a jerk father. Nobody needs this. The kid who
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  Speaker 3: plays Austin is good. His name is Jacob Leaval.
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  Speaker 4: Is he a local?
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  Speaker 2: No, no, no, this is all this is.
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  Speaker 3: I think they filmed this in Oklahoma, so there's no
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  Speaker 3: local connection here.
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  Speaker 2: One and a half stars and a half. This is
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  Speaker 2: just not all right. Let's get to the one that
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  Speaker 2: everyone's talking about. The monkey. The monkey.
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  Speaker 3: This is loosely based on a Stephen King short story
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  Speaker 3: about one of those wind up monkey toys with the
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  Speaker 3: with the drum and so on, and every time someone
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  Speaker 3: winds up the toy, somebody somewhere dies and.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, somebody somewhere It doesn't have to be in the
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  Speaker 2: same room as the monkey.
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  Speaker 3: Not necessarily, although yeah, no, it's although usually it is
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  Speaker 3: tied to somebody that the people who own the monkey know, so.
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  Speaker 2: In some way. Uh.
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  Speaker 3: And the director, the director here is Osgoode Perkins, who
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: did Long Legs.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh.
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  Speaker 3: He really leans into the deaths, trying trying to be
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  Speaker 3: as creatively gruesome as possible.
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  Speaker 2: Uh. And and and be funny. Uh.
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  Speaker 3: It's it's like it's a horror It calls it a
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  Speaker 3: horror comedy. And the deaths, I mean, one of them
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: happens at a tapanaki restaurant, so Beni Hannah, I.
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  Speaker 2: Could see how that had happened.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I saw the tattoo shop went online. That's you know,
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  Speaker 4: that's a different movie. That's that's the next that's the next.
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  Speaker 2: Final destination, but similar, similar idea. That's the ideas that
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  Speaker 2: were The problem here is that Perkins can't keep it's consistent.
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  Speaker 3: The main story is about a pair of twins who
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  Speaker 3: wind up with the monkey and they discover it's a curse,
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  Speaker 3: and the curse and so on, and that stuff is
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  Speaker 3: very serious and it doesn't gibe so well with the
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  Speaker 3: weird you know, explode your people who explode on contact
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  Speaker 3: and bleed, you know, blood spattered everywhere and all this.
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  Speaker 3: So two and a half stars, it's it's kind of
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  Speaker 3: it's it's kind of uneven. I was I wish I
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  Speaker 3: was hoping for better.
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  Speaker 1: Did you say, did you say that they wind up
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  Speaker 1: with the monkey on purpose?
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  Speaker 4: I feel lucky because I have one of these monkey toys.
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  Speaker 4: But it's not a wind up, it's battery. So okay,
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  Speaker 4: I'm okay. Is the monkey cursed? The toy curse? Is
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  Speaker 4: that what happened?
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  Speaker 3: There's something there's there's something going and we don't get
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  Speaker 3: a full.
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  Speaker 2: Explanation of the monkey's origins. That will save that for
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  Speaker 2: the sequel.
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  Speaker 3: Was going to say, yeah, there'll be a prequel Monkey
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  Speaker 3: Monkey two origins or something.
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  Speaker 2: So two and a half for that, two and a
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  Speaker 2: half for the monkey. All right, what do we got
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  Speaker 2: next week? Next week we.
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  Speaker 3: Have Last Breath, which is a diving rescue movie with
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  Speaker 3: Woody Harrelson and Simoulu And we have riff Raff, which
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: is a gangster comedy with Bill Murray and Pete Davidson.
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  Speaker 3: And to my knowledge, they're not going to allow me
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: to see either of those before they open. So interesting. Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: but the reason, here's the thing next weekend is the Oscars.
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  Speaker 2: Oh that's why. And the and the.
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  Speaker 3: Track record for movies that open on Oscar weekend is
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  Speaker 3: not strong.
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  Speaker 2: Well, maybe we have you in just to do we'll
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: talk about will we will talking about the Oscars next.
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  Speaker 2: That'll be great. All right, Okay, thank you very much.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Sean means sltrib dot com, movie cricket dot net, go there.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Sean Patrick means.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: So the first time that Ed Brass is hearing that
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: there's another Final Destination movie, he's very exciting to look.
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  Speaker 2: Forward to Bloodlines. I think it's called. Yeah, thank you,