Latest / Intentionally Blank / The Best Knives Out Movie — Intentionally Blank Ep. 257

Transcript

The Best Knives Out Movie — Intentionally Blank Ep. 257 · Intentionally Blank

0:04
SPEAKER_02: All right.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna actually talk about it this time.
0:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:09
SPEAKER_02: So I always say anytime there's a popular heist that I got like thousands of emails about it.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: It's usually 10 or 12.
0:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:19
SPEAKER_02: Right?
0:19
SPEAKER_02: But when I get 10 or 12 in one day, all for the same heist, it feels like it feels like a party.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Currently in my inbox, I have 72 emails about the Kit Kat heist.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: Which does not count the five or six Discord messages I got, at least 10 texts that I got, and everything that was sent to publicity and marketing.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: This is how big this heist was.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: I heard about it, not from fans, not from emails or anything, before any of that happened.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: I actually read the headline and said, Oh, Dan's gonna tell me about this.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: This thing's gonna happen.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: And I read the article myself.
0:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so uh if anyone out there for some reason did not already hear this story 72 times, 12 tons of Kit Kat bars were stolen on route from Italy headed for Poland.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: And so somewhere along that route, the Kit Cats were stolen.
1:22
SPEAKER_02: They still don't really have any leads on this.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: They don't know who did it.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: It was very much a uh tricky heist.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: It probably is the same kind of thing we've been seeing a lot in the States with false shipping companies who falsified their, you know, orders and stuff and were able to just make off with it.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: But they disappeared halfway through the trip, which is kind of what is crazy.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that is what I'm seeing from the Nest.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: So many of our favorite things you know Kit Cats, which we've discussed on the show before, is it what is a Kit Kat?
2:09
SPEAKER_02: What constitutes a Kit Kat?
2:10
SPEAKER_02: So I've been doing some research.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
2:13
SPEAKER_02: First of all, a Kit Kat, the bar is called a Kit Kat, and then the individual sections, do you know what the official name for those is?
2:23
SPEAKER_02: No.
2:23
SPEAKER_02: A finger.
2:25
SPEAKER_02: Really?
2:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: A finger of a Kit Kat.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: I like it.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: So the Kit Kat fingers, KitKats were invented in the 30s.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
2:33
SPEAKER_02: Initially, they were the four finger bars.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: That's how they were invented.
2:40
SPEAKER_02: Right.
2:40
SPEAKER_02: In 30s, so I was right.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: We had this whole conversation where I'm like, the whole thing's a Kit Kat.
2:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: In 37, they came out with the two-finger bars, which today in the modern world outnumber the four fingers globally.
2:56
SPEAKER_02: They're extremely popular, especially in Asia.
2:59
SPEAKER_02: There are more two-fingers.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: In Europe, this particular heist was the four-finger bars.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: There were four hundred and thirteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-three candy bars.
3:14
SPEAKER_02: So that means that we can go four, thirteen, seven ninety-three times four.
3:21
SPEAKER_02: These thieves stole 1,655,172 fingers of a Kit Kat.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: So obviously, the Kit Kat burglars is the low-hanging fruit.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious if our intelligent audience will have other options because that one's just a little, you know.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that's the one that half of the articles will have used as their joke.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: The Kit Kat burglars.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: The finger lickers.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Ooh, that's not too bad.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: If you want to prescribe to why, like in Japan they're so popular, because of the chart or how it's pronounced, kitsukatsu, is surely you will win.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: These could be the good luck bandits.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: They stole all of them with the hope of just getting so much good luck.
4:04
SPEAKER_02: If it's kitsukatsu, can't we call them the katsu burglars?
4:09
SPEAKER_02: You could because they sound like they're stealing uh fried chicken.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: Or they're uh the cat girl burglars.
4:19
SPEAKER_02: The kit cat girl burglars?
4:21
SPEAKER_02: It's it's the girl in the middle that really sets us apart from other news sources.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: Except these weren't the Japanese Kit Kats, which are better.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: Though in America we have uh non-Nestly, ethically sourced Kit Kats.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh because the Kit Kats in America are made by Hershey's.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: And so they taste worse.
4:41
SPEAKER_02: Whereas KitKats globally are made by Nestle.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: And if there's ever a company you are morally justified in stealing from, it is Nestle.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: So there's a whole bunch of things going on with that.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: But there we are.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about your news story.
4:56
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
4:56
SPEAKER_02: So there you go.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: Thank you to everyone.
4:58
SPEAKER_02: Initially, when I was sitting at about 24 emails, I thought I'm gonna write down everyone's name and give all the names.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: At this point, that would be well over a hundred names.
5:09
SPEAKER_02: So and so I'm not gonna do that.
5:11
SPEAKER_02: But you know who you are.
5:13
SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much for sending them in.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: I was really hoping that we would hit 100 just in emails, but it topped out at 72.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: So can I add a new recurring segment to our podcast?
5:25
SPEAKER_00: This is a change of topic entirely.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: New recurring segment because something happened the other week that I'm like, I need to tell Dan about this.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: The new recurring segment is holy crap, I'm old.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: I think that's been a recurring segment in our lives for a while.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and it's getting worse.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: It's getting worse.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: I am teaching my class at BYU, and I had two occurrences on two separate weeks that I think you'll find amusing.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: The first is I talked about the denois of a story as part of, you know, talking about the structure of a story.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And I had a student raise his hand and be like, what's a denamois?
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, I'm this kid, by the way.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm like, oh, and I actually I feel bad because I didn't mean to say it dismissively.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: I was just like, we don't have time to cover it all.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: This is probably just a thing for you to Google.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: It's high school level stuff.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: So go ahead and look it up.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: You'll figure it out.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: And then another student raised their hand and said, I don't know that term either.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Wait, who doesn't know denouis?
6:23
SPEAKER_00: They all raised their hands.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: And do they not teach that in the I paused and I realized they don't teach denouis in high school anymore.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: I had it like four years in a row.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: So it's one of these things that you assume.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: I think they've just gone ahead and changed it to falling action.
6:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: They don't want to say denois.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to say a confusing French word, which makes sense, right?
6:47
SPEAKER_00: But for a moment, I realized it's one of those things that you've been taught a thing in high school for so many times you're like, this is just standard.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Everyone will know this.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: And I kid you not, the next week I had the question, what's a floppy disk?
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Not asked ironically, not asked to make me feel old.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: A sweet, wonderful student just said, Um, well, what's a floppy disk again?
7:15
SPEAKER_00: Because I was telling my story about how I wrote my books at the front desk and I'd have to save them on floppy disk.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, and I said save icon, and they're like, oh, one of those things.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: And so holy crap, I'm old.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: I thought that they would joke about things like that.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: Because we went entered a period of like 10 years where people joke about, oh, what's a floppy disk?
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Now it's on iconic.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: Now they genuinely don't.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: Now they genuinely don't know.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: All of the icons that we use for stuff, like most Gen Z.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, let's say lots of Gen Z and certainly most of Gen Alpha have never seen a telephone that looks like the phone icon that we use for everything.
7:58
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
7:58
SPEAKER_02: A television icon, those are like old CRT 1980s TVs.
8:04
SPEAKER_02: But you know, if people used modern shapes for our icons, everything would be a rectangle.
8:10
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
8:10
SPEAKER_02: So we can't really do that.
8:12
SPEAKER_02: I did see a fun thing on Reddit.
8:15
SPEAKER_02: A guy was a teacher in Japan, and his students said, Why is the save icon a vending machine?
8:24
SPEAKER_02: And I looked at the save icon on my computer screen.
8:28
SPEAKER_02: I was like, you know, that does kind of look like a vending machine with a little washing can of something sitting there.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, yeah.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: There you are, Dan.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm old.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm older than you by what?
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Two years?
8:42
SPEAKER_00: One year.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: One year.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: You're 50, right?
8:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm 50.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: So you're turning 50 this year?
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm a year and three months younger, December to March.
8:50
SPEAKER_02: So I will turn 50 next year in 2017.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: When I'm 51, you'll turn 50.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that tracks.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: Ah, well.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: There we are.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy your 40s.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've got you've got so much time left in them.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: I know.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be so great.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: So wait, in high school, they didn't just call it falling action.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: They called it whatever that word.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: That's the that's the word for falling action.
9:16
SPEAKER_02: You have the climax and then you have the denouement.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: Cool.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: And we all had the little charts that we had to look at.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
9:22
SPEAKER_02: Nope.
9:22
SPEAKER_02: Didn't even happen in my high school.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: But did they teach you that chart with rising action, falling action, and things like that?
9:28
SPEAKER_01: Did they do story structure at all?
9:30
SPEAKER_01: I got the circle and that was it.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: I never got the chart.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:35
SPEAKER_02: The circle, like the You got it, Ollie?
9:37
SPEAKER_02: The descent into hell hero's journey circle.
9:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the hero's journey circle is the only way to do it.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: The heroes journey circle is a perfectly acceptable way to tell that.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: Ollie says he got the thing and then yeah.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: But they didn't call it denouis for you.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: So there we are.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: A word has been cast from the English language for being too French.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: Never mind that half of our language.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: They te mois in like expensive prep schools.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sure they do, actually.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: Public schools, falling action.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: I bet if you go to Hot of Hood in Salt Lake, that they refuse to call it falling action.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: They probably use the French word for rising action too, whatever that is.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: It's just denouis backwards.
10:23
SPEAKER_02: Which I no, I cannot just off the top of my head.
10:27
SPEAKER_02: No, I can't, because Dainois is a T, I believe.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: It's meant.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: M-E-N-T.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: M E N T.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: Mwadib.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Good job, Ollie.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: There you are.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: All right.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about Wake Up Dead Man.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about Wake Up Dead Man.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Non-Spoiler First, we will warn you when we get into spoiler.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: As a recap, I believe we're both aligned on really loving knives out.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And then the second one, uh Glass of Onion.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: I gave a lower view to than you when we did our thing, I believe, when we talked about it.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: We were both lower than one.
11:10
unknown: Yeah.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: We'd have to look it up.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: We were maybe around sevens.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting to me.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: I've become more fond of it.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: After.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting to me how much public opinion has turned against Glass Onion.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:23
SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if that's just a general trend since it came out, or if it's after Wake Up Dead Man came out and everyone's like, oh, you can't.
11:33
SPEAKER_02: These sequels can be amazing.
11:36
SPEAKER_02: Right.
11:36
SPEAKER_02: I think that I, when it came out, I liked Glass Onion less than most people.
11:41
SPEAKER_02: And now I feel like I like it more than most people.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: So maybe we had about the same thing.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: You just have to realize Glass Onion's a comedy rather than a murder mystery.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there really isn't a mystery at all.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: It's just quirky characters doing funny things and poor Benoit Blanc being trapped in the middle of it, trying to solve a mystery when there really isn't one for him to solve and being kerflummixed.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's fun.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: If you accept it on the terms of what it is rather than what you expect it to be, I think Glass Onion's a good film.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:13
SPEAKER_02: Well, and the direction of it is all still fantastic.
12:16
SPEAKER_02: The characters are all wonderful.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: It's just that the mystery does not click together and it kind of cheats a little.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: He always cheats a little in each of his films by showing you character perspective rather than objective.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't necessarily make it clear that you're getting character's perspective rather than objective perspective.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Meaning you'll see something on screen, you'll be like, oh, that's what happened.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: No, that was the character perspective.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: As long as you understand he does that, it's a subtle cheat.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: But we in all of our storytelling, like when I call it a cheat, it's the sort of cheat that we use.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: It's similar to the cheat that I use, like in Mistborn, where Kel Sier knows a thing and is not telling the audience, even though we're in his head.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: Like you occasionally need to.
12:58
SPEAKER_02: You need to do that.
12:59
SPEAKER_02: And I don't think the Knives Out movies have ever literally lied to us about something that stops us from solving the mystery.
13:08
SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: So like we can do a little bit more of a spoiler in Glass Onion.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: Like Glass Onion shows us a shot occasionally of a character from a character perspective, and somebody else isn't there that was there.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: Stuff like that.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember that.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: There's a really big example of this one in Wake Up Dead Man that we will we will talk about when we get to spoilers.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: But there's a very one where it's like we're seeing through someone's eyes, we see a character.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: I think I know what you're talking about who's not on screen because the character's like a little loopy and is going through trauma and they imagine something.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: You definitely know what you're talking about there.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's the screen is lying to us, but it's lying to us through the eyes of a character who believes they're saying something.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: So I would give knives out these right now, knives out to ten.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go eight on Glass Onion.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: I think I was originally seven.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: I will leave it at seven.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Seven's fair for Glass Onion.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: Maybe seven is right.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: And then Wake Up Dead Man somehow a ten that's better than the first one.
14:09
SPEAKER_02: It's better and different.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: And the thing is, Wake Up Dead Man does not have the humor that Knives Out does.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like Glass Onion sucked out all the humor from Wake Up Dead Man.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: Wake Up Dead Man is not very funny.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: And you know, Knives Out had a very good mystery.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: It had this incredibly lovable protagonist, but then it also had, you know, Chris Evans was very funny.
14:34
SPEAKER_02: Benoit Blanc was really funny.
14:35
SPEAKER_02: Benoit Blanc was funny.
14:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:37
SPEAKER_02: Um the main female actress?
14:40
SPEAKER_02: No, I'm thinking of the Jamie Lee Curtis.
14:44
SPEAKER_02: She was very funny in that movie.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: We don't really have any of that in Wake Up Deadman.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: Like Benoit Blanc is not funny in this.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: He's not quite the fish out of water.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: He's moving more into a bit of a Columbo sort of I'm here, I'm a little befuddled, I'm less befuddled than I act, and I'm doing this to keep people off balance a little bit.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: There's occasional little Benoit Blanc character quirks.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: He's still the same character, but we're not getting him as a fish out of water as a joke like we got in the other two.
15:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: And while there is as in the first two, Wake Up Dead Man also has, you know, a stacked cast of famous character actors.
15:28
SPEAKER_02: I feel like most of them didn't get a lot to do in this one, and I was a little disappointed in that.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is basically a two-person show.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: It's really, I mean, three, I'd argue three.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think three is three is is is fair.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: Three or four.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, a lot of the side characters.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Like this is really the the thing you need to know about this movie is like Ben Wablock doesn't walk on screen until a half hour into it.
15:54
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Right?
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Which is incredible.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: It is, you go and you're just like, we are gonna linger and tell the story of this main protagonist.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna tell it really well before we even get to uh the murder mystery.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that performance is wonderful.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know I've seen that guy in other stuff, I cannot remember his name, but the one who plays the young priest hits it out of the park.
16:22
SPEAKER_02: Josh Brolin as the old priest, absolutely wonderful.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: And then what's her name as the old lady that kind of helps run the church?
16:32
SPEAKER_02: It's a Glenn Close.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: Glenn Close.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she's incredible.
16:36
SPEAKER_02: And so it's really those three.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: And then a little bit of Benoit Blanc, who's doing a job.
16:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Blanc shows up.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: He's doing a good job.
16:43
SPEAKER_02: And everybody else is there and they do important things, but not in the same way that we had the Cast of Thousands feel in the other two movies.
16:53
SPEAKER_02: And I really like that.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Just to give like each of these movies are a different movie.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: He didn't make knives out again and again.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: He's made very different styles of mysteries, uh, farce, and now this intense character study.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: And that's what elevates this one is this intense look at a character and religion through multiple perspectives, and you know, flawed but humanized, very root forable in his flawed nature.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Just really, really well done.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: Like you feel like you're watching a mystery, but you feel like you're watching a drama on the level of a merchant ivory film, right?
17:35
SPEAKER_00: It's just so good.
17:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:37
SPEAKER_02: And the religion aspect of it is really kind of core to the whole thing.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: And that more than anything else is what really impressed me about this because the entire story is focused in and around a Catholic church and the people who run it, the people who attend it, etc.
17:58
SPEAKER_02: And the movie managed to give us a really nuanced and intelligent take on religion without ever forcing an opinion on us.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: Benoit Blanc is a devout atheist.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Devout's even the wrong term to use.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: A confirmed atheist.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: Avowed atheist.
18:19
SPEAKER_02: Young priest cares so deeply about this.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: And I think the way that he walked that line in writing the script so well is that it is not a story about is this real or not.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: It is a story about how does religion affect people's lives, how does it affect their behavior, and what value and what problems does it bring to the people who believe and the people who don't believe.
18:50
SPEAKER_02: And it had great answers from many different perspectives all on that central premise.
18:57
SPEAKER_02: It was so cool.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: This is just a great example of how you can take a genre film in many ways do more with it because you have that structure to pull you along.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: This is what I love about like when people say, Why do you write fantasy?
19:14
SPEAKER_00: Why do you write mysteries?
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Why do you write thrillers?
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Why do you write horror, Dan?
19:17
SPEAKER_00: I think the structure of a really well-put together plot helps these things all move because you have deadlines, you have kind of time bombs, you have stressors on the characters.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: And it's what I love about genre fiction.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: It's why I'm always going to love something like this more than like The Dead by James Joyce, which is also an intense character study because there's stakes and there's motion and there's uh a crucible, and that lets all of these personalities manifest.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:51
SPEAKER_02: Well, and that crucible is really strong.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: Donald, do they teach what a crucible is in high school these days?
19:58
SPEAKER_02: I read the crucible in high school.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh yes.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm more the word comes from the crucible.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: So a crucible is a thing that you use in smithing where you purify stuff by heating it up as hot as it gets.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: And in literary terms, what we mean when we talk about a crucible is we're gonna put all these characters in a situation where the stakes are incredibly high, and then that is going to reveal who they really are.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: Horror and thriller and mystery are so good at this.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
20:29
SPEAKER_02: Because you get to learn, you know, these various people's different opinions on how religion is valuable or not through the way they act in the middle of a murder scenario.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: So let's go ahead and move to spoilers.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: So if you haven't seen this, it is worth turning off our podcast and watching it right now.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
20:51
SPEAKER_02: But do we please please don't let us spoil this movie for you because it is really good.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: And it is a mystery, which means the twists are a big part, and where the twists are revealed are a big part of what makes the story work.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: It's on Netflix, which you either have or you have a friend who has it.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: Please go watch it before you listen to the rest of this.
21:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be a hard year for me, by the way, because Donald promised to keep our ratings of films, and we forgot to rate Madam Webb.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give Madam Webb, I think, a negative nine, maybe a negative eight.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Negative eight and a half.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Negative eight and a half.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: On your scale, is negative ten better than negative nine?
21:32
SPEAKER_00: If so, once you get under, it's how watchable, how much fun would you have watching it?
21:37
SPEAKER_00: And so, but I'm going to give, as we said, Wake Up Dead Men a 10 out of 10.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Those are my two ratings so far.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: And we can at the end of the year review all the things that we saw and see if we're going to.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: But spoilers, I mentioned before a little bit of a cheat.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: And you saw it like we do see Jeff Bridges alive.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: Josh Brolin.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: Josh Brolin.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: We do see him alive after he comes out of the tomb.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Through the perspective of the young priest who is like hallucinating from lack of sleep and things like this.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: And when that moment happened, it's a little bit of a cheat because it made me go back and reassess all my guesses.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: Because by that point I had guessed correctly what was going on.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: And it threw me for a loop for a bit in a cheat because then it turned out that I had guessed correctly.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Guessing correctly is not a big deal for this film, even though I do think you should watch it before having us spoil it, because the pieces are all there.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: And in a good film like this, the pieces are there.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: And so it's more of a I think it's this.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, I think it's this.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's this and then this, and then okay.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: It all falls together, and then you see it happen and you feel like you were able to actually solve the mystery.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: The bit where you see him come out of the tomb and walk into the woods, I was still thinking that could totally be someone else.
22:59
SPEAKER_02: It could be, and I think it may have.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: And I think it probably was.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if they filmed it with the character Groundskeeper, or if they filmed it with him.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Like I would love to know if they filmed that shot with Josh Brolin or with the Groundskeeper, because Josh Brolin has a different build.
23:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's from so far away, they may have filmed it, you know, the B-roll producer.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it could just be filmed it with costumer.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: It's none of them.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: That's probably what it is.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: But then we cut and he scrambles in there and we see a shot of Josh Brolin.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like coming toward him.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And it freaks him out.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And it makes us think and reassess.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: And then it shows like he wakes up and it's somebody else who's dead, and then it makes you think that he killed them, which is not a cheat.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: But for a while, even past that, I'm like, he saw Jeff Bridges.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: Not Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: Josh Brolin is turning into Jeff Bridges slowly as he ages, in my head.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: Like that totally could have been Jeff Bridges.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: A younger Jeff Bridges could have had that role.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm like, no, it was it was all just a hallucination.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm I'm like, all right.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: So the movie is, I think, the mystery I've seen that's not in Agatha Christie that fits together the best.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: Even Knives Out, I felt like once it was explained to me, I'm like, this fits together.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: But this one, each piece clicked so well that when the reveal happened, and I had figured it out, but just before, like all the pieces of it, I was in awe of just saying it's like when you see a puzzle, you put the last piece together.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: That I think is one of my favorite things about the film.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:38
SPEAKER_02: It was so well constructed.
24:41
SPEAKER_02: It is a locked room mystery that is at the same time about locked room mysteries.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
24:47
SPEAKER_02: Very overtly, which is the nice little meta twist to it.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And they tell you right near the beginning, they run down the options, but they leave one off, you know, and that's the indication of who it'd be.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Like I can't remember what the ones they eliminated are, but the one they didn't eliminate is he wasn't dead, but someone killed him right after, right?
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Which tells you it has to be one of two people.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: It has to be our protagonist, or it has to be Jeremy Renner.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: The doctor.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Because he runs in to check on him.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: And then you're like, okay, he killed him, but there's more to it than that.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: The moment they did that, you know.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: And then they really emphasize, you know, him and things like that.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: But you're like, he doesn't have the right motive.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: It's too obvious.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: And so then you have to bring Meryl Streep or Glenn Close.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: Glenn Close, Glenn Close.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: I said Meryl Streep again.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: In some alternate reality, there's a version of this movie with Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Meryl Streep.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Where um foghorn, leg horn.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: And that was the fun part was me figuring out, all right, what's the other link?
25:45
SPEAKER_00: And then as you start to get that, it fits together, but you need to figure out the whole she was lying as a girl thing and the where the treasure is before you can get that last piece, which is why you don't solve it even though you feel like you have right from near the beginning, which is just so cool.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: It's really well constructed.
26:07
SPEAKER_02: One of the things I really love about it.
26:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:09
SPEAKER_02: Because like we said, it's the three religious people young priest, old priest, lady who helps out.
26:14
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
26:15
SPEAKER_02: That's who the story is about.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: And Benoit Blanc is kind of just along for the ride.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: But there's a couple of things he does that are so good.
26:25
SPEAKER_02: First of all, he has two big moments throughout the movie where he has figured out what's going on.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:33
SPEAKER_02: And he doesn't say it.
26:35
SPEAKER_02: He says something else that makes the whole audience go, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: Oh, and then they kind of catch up to him.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: And that's so smart.
26:45
SPEAKER_02: But also, he starts, you know, his first appearance, he walks into the empty church, starts talking to the young priest, and the conversation is about religion.
26:55
SPEAKER_02: What do you see when you look around in this church?
26:57
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
26:58
SPEAKER_02: And he says, I see a story that is trying to be told to me.
27:01
SPEAKER_02: And that is the thesis statement for the rest of the movie.
27:04
SPEAKER_02: It is so clever.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: Both in terms of what a religion is, but also, you know, the mystery itself is a story being told to us.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: Right.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: And the killer is the one who is telling us a specific story through the details they focus on and the details they leave out.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
27:22
SPEAKER_02: And it's just, oh, the writing is so good in this movie.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: The thing that took me the longest was figuring out that Glenn Close had lied.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Because again, it's the cheat.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: He cuts and he shows what happens from her perspective.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: And then you take it as law.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't until I realized that the other shot was a lie that I remembered he did this.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh yeah.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: Like the treasure and all of that.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: And so again, he uses these dirty tricks, and that you gotta be aware of him.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: You want to figure it out.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: But about two-thirds of the way through, I realized that the movie, while the movie itself is a story, the characters in it are constantly telling stories.
28:05
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
28:06
SPEAKER_02: Here is what happened to me when I was a little girl.
28:08
SPEAKER_02: Here is what was the other big one?
28:11
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I want you to write your whole experience down.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: And then I'm going to read.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: And that's how the story begins.
28:17
SPEAKER_02: And there's so many different moments like that where a character is telling another character a story.
28:23
SPEAKER_02: And like I said, around two-thirds of the way through, I realized, okay, that's the trick he's pulling.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: Every story being told to us has the potential to be fake or misremembered or a purposeful lie.
28:40
SPEAKER_02: And then the pieces started to come together much better.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, fantastic film.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what else to say about spoilers other than the scene where the priest helps the lady on the phone.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Like this is obviously the scene from the movie.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Like if there's a best scene in the movie, I think a lot of people will say, you know, the priest is calling the lady who's with the documents and things.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: And he's really busy.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: He's got a good thing.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not just that he's busy.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: He has just, in the pursuit of the treasure, destroyed a statue of Jesus.
29:13
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: He has.
29:15
SPEAKER_02: And it is his Nadir, his do they teach Nadir in school?
29:20
SPEAKER_02: I learned this after high school.
29:22
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
29:22
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: The lowest point of his life.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, their only lead left to get the treasure is to call the lady who hires out backhoes or whatever.
29:33
SPEAKER_02: And he's depressed and frustrated on himself.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: Mad at himself for what he's done.
29:40
SPEAKER_02: And in the course of talking to that lady, he is a priest again.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: He remembers it.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: There's a moment.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: It's the what makes that whole scene work is that he's about to hang up and go on and just be a detective.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: And there's a moment where he says, Oh, wait.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: I am here for these people.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: And he closes the door on Benoit Blanc.
30:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: And he says, I'm not a detective.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to solve a mystery.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm here to help these people.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: And he walks away.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: And Benoit Blanc then opens the door again to him praying.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: And he's made the transition.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: He's not a detective.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: He'd gotten caught up in all this.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: He is a priest.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's when after that he tries to like give himself up and things soon after, not exactly after, but that you know, and Ben Wablanc is not having any of it.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Just that scene is the most important scene in the whole film.
30:28
SPEAKER_02: And that conversation, you know, let me help you on the phone, all of it is so great.
30:33
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
30:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what else to say about this movie.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: I loved it.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: To give credit to the amazing actor, it's Josh O'Connor.
30:41
SPEAKER_01: He's the one that plays Judd.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: He's incredible.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: He is incredible in this role.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: The whole movie hangs on him.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: What else have I seen him in?
30:48
SPEAKER_01: What else are it seems to be?
30:49
SPEAKER_01: So I looked it up.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: He was in Challengers in 2024.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: His other big one probably is the mastermind Emma.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: He was in Cinderella.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wait, which Emma?
30:58
SPEAKER_01: The 2020 Emma.
30:59
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the new Emma.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: The Anna Taylor Joy one?
31:02
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
31:02
SPEAKER_02: He was I remember him now.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: He was good in that one too.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: I like him as an actor.
31:07
SPEAKER_02: Maybe I have to watch the show.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: I'm hoping we see more movies.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, Challengers, everyone says, is fantastic.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, go watch the movie.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: If for some reason you, you know, listen to this stupid thing without uh watching the movie.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: And Dan, go watch Project Hail Mary.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: Because I said to people after watching Wake Up Dead Man, I'm like, this is gonna hands down be the best movie I see this year.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: And then I remembered Project Hail Mary's coming out and Doom Three were coming out.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: And so at the end of the year, I'm gonna have to pick between Wake Up Dead Men, Project Hail Mary, and Doom 3.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: And you know, that's gonna be a hard choice for me.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I want to give you homework too.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: I will watch Project Hail Mary.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: You watch Sinners.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: Sinners?
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh yes.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Sinners.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm worried that Sinners will be too graphic for me.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Life Stayed Away.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Like vampire movies are often just too gory.
32:04
SPEAKER_02: There's really about 20 or 30 minutes of vampire movie, and the rest of the time it is historical movie.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: But I just don't like those really gruesome vampire films.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk about it.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: I can't promise.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: I'll chat with you more about how graphic it is.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: I I know it's a movie I can't show to Emily.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, when can I watch this film?
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be hard.
32:29
SPEAKER_02: Very good though.
32:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I have heard it is very good.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: The other 2025 movie I watched was One Battle After Another.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:37
SPEAKER_02: Which I don't know how I would rank it, but I can see why it won Best Picture.
32:42
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't have given it best picture, but I can see why it won.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: Alright.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: There we are.
32:47
SPEAKER_02: How's that, Ben?