Latest / Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage / Bonus Episode - Dream Scenario

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Bonus Episode - Dream Scenario · Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage

• 0:00
  Oh God. Oh my God.
• 0:02
  F**k!
• 0:12
  Okay, I see waves and things so this is totally uh...
• 0:18
  Shall we just make some noise for a second then play it back?
• 0:20
  Am I just working?
• 0:21
  Uh sure, yeah that sounds like a thing Peter does.
• 0:23
  Because...
• 0:29
  Yeah we're totally recording.
• 0:31
  Okay, so where were we?
• 0:33
  Uh...
• 0:35
  Good audio, okay good.
• 0:37
  Welcome to a very special episode of Caged Matt.
• 0:39
  Calling around about leading Nicko's Caged.
• 0:41
  I'm your host Sean, here with my co-host.
• 0:43
  Nick, I'm Nick.
• 0:45
  And not our producer.
• 0:47
  Yeah, Peter's not here because his family got sick.
• 0:49
  Or he's making excuses to stop hanging out with us when the day ball is out.
• 0:55
  He's just making us do more work.
• 0:57
  It's true.
• 0:59
  What are we paying him for?
• 1:01
  I'm assuming the sexual favors.
• 1:03
  But that actually goes against the whole favor thing.
• 1:07
  Yeah.
• 1:09
  Yeah, I expect freebies on the regular.
• 1:11
  That would be a favor.
• 1:13
  Yeah, that would be good. I could use a little favor here and there.
• 1:15
  Speaking of unrequited dreams, what are we talking about today Nick?
• 1:17
  Oh, we're talking about dream scenario.
• 1:19
  That's right, the new Nicolas Cage movie.
• 1:21
  Yeah, it came out. It's in theaters.
• 1:23
  And we went and saw it.
• 1:25
  Yeah, we went to SIF last night and watched it with Patreon Sean.
• 1:29
  Patreon Sean was there and Patreon John.
• 1:33
  And Patreon John. Patreon Sean and John.
• 1:35
  But not Patreon Sean John.
• 1:37
  No.
• 1:39
  He hasn't gotten on the train yet.
• 1:41
  This movie is, um, initial thought, weird.
• 1:45
  Yeah, it's a weird movie.
• 1:47
  It was enjoyable.
• 1:49
  It was fun.
• 1:51
  Let me just tell everybody what it's all about real quick.
• 1:53
  So Nicolas Cage plays Paul Matthews, a professor, a tenured professor at a university.
• 1:59
  He teaches stuff irrelevant.
• 2:03
  And right from the onset of the movie, people start like noticing that he's present in their dreams.
• 2:11
  And it's not necessarily that he's doing anything, he's just there.
• 2:17
  And as things move forward, the dreams get more...
• 2:23
  Upsetting?
• 2:25
  Yeah, and involved and everything sort of takes a turn for the nightmarish as his rise to celebrity and fall from celebrity is kind of just put out there for you.
• 2:39
  Yeah. I mean, ultimately this film is about being famous for nothing.
• 2:43
  And cancel culture.
• 2:45
  And cancel culture. I don't know how I feel about this movie.
• 2:49
  I know I liked this movie. I enjoyed watching it. I feel like there are themes that I am too stupid to understand off of a single watching.
• 2:59
  Yeah. I, like, I can't say I didn't enjoy it. I did. I don't know that I ever want to watch it again.
• 3:07
  Yeah, it's one of those, like, I'll totally watch it again. I enjoyed it to that degree.
• 3:15
  Especially if I want to ever claim to understand the movie.
• 3:21
  This is like a lobster for me. I'm like, I don't need to understand what's going on here to know I don't really like it.
• 3:27
  I love the lobster. If you're ever into reading short plays, you should read The Rhinoceros.
• 3:32
  Speaking of animal related things, it's short.
• 3:35
  Okay. Maybe seven pages. I can read that. It's about my attention span these days.
• 3:42
  But yeah, this movie, it's, it's hard to explain. So I'm just going to talk about, like, other things.
• 3:48
  The main part of this movie is about dreams and, like, the interaction with them.
• 3:54
  So I was sitting up last night and I was thinking about a couple different dreams that I've had in my life.
• 3:59
  Some recurring nightmares, like the earliest recurring nightmare that I remember having as a child plays on standard dream tropes,
• 4:07
  like you're flying or you're naked in school things.
• 4:10
  And then also just like the weirder bend of dreams from, like, external stimulus.
• 4:16
  Mine would be a nicotine patch during one of my many, many attempts to quit smoking.
• 4:22
  I never had, like, super out there dreams.
• 4:27
  Like, when I was a kid, I had a recurring nightmare about, like, an event where a face would show up in the moon
• 4:34
  and then people would turn into, like, monkey critters and, like, go bananas. Huh.
• 4:40
  But that's really, like, the most surreal they ever get.
• 4:43
  As I've gotten older, they've turned into, you know, stress dreams about I'm not going to graduate school.
• 4:48
  Or I forgot that I had this one math class that I've never shone up to and it's the final.
• 4:53
  I did actually miss a final one time. This was non dream related.
• 4:58
  I just had the schedule wrong. I slept through it and I came the next day for the final and they're like, no,
• 5:05
  you can have an incomplete and you just have to take the test.
• 5:08
  But then the professor quit, like he went to a different school.
• 5:11
  So I never got the test rescheduled.
• 5:14
  So I just had an incomplete and like a music theory class forever.
• 5:18
  Actually, yes, it's still an incomplete.
• 5:22
  So like my earliest remembered nightmare.
• 5:25
  And this is a really weird one. I remember waking up like my parents were watching some Whoopi Goldberg movie downstairs.
• 5:34
  But I would have these. This is like the time I remember it.
• 5:38
  But it would be like just a sleep paralysis kind of dream where I'm just stuck there and it's a full field of white.
• 5:45
  Like all I see is white and then in slow motion, Lincoln logs would just kind of pass across my field of vision,
• 5:52
  like rotating and floating. And that was it.
• 5:55
  Like nothing else happened, but I was just terrified.
• 6:00
  And I always had a good relationship with Lincoln logs.
• 6:02
  So I don't know what that is all about. Somebody analyze that and tell me in the comments.
• 6:08
  I started dreaming again recently. I stopped drinking about three weeks ago.
• 6:12
  I haven't had any alcohol, but I've been sleeping better.
• 6:15
  But my brain is also like deciding it's like bored now. Let's let's get let's start to get weird.
• 6:21
  Oh, yeah. I had a dream.
• 6:23
  The most recent dream I remember, and I only remember it because it woke me up at three in the morning.
• 6:27
  I was really mad about it is it was like all of our friends hanging out at like a cabin, lake house, whatever.
• 6:35
  And we're just doing nothing.
• 6:37
  And Peter is just staring at this glass top table just very intently, slowly looks up, turns to me, says, makes a joke.
• 6:46
  But it's just gibberish or like backwards. And just in the dream, I think it's hilarious.
• 6:51
  And then a second later, so in the dream, I just started cackling.
• 6:54
  And then I wake up at three in the morning and I couldn't get back to sleep.
• 6:59
  I was really mad at Peter for that. Oh, yeah. That's worth being mad at Peter.
• 7:04
  Have you ever had any of those like like iconic dreams like a flying dream?
• 7:10
  No, no, I don't think I've ever had like specifically flying.
• 7:14
  But there was a period where I used to have Spider-Man dreams and I would web slay.
• 7:18
  That's awesome. It was so much cooler than flying.
• 7:21
  Oh, just swinging around through a city. That was pretty rad.
• 7:25
  Incorrect. I have had a flying dream once.
• 7:28
  All I could think the entire time was what if this stops working?
• 7:34
  Yeah. So you start flying really low to the ground.
• 7:36
  Pretty much. It's like totally negating the joy of flying.
• 7:40
  I don't understand how this works in the first place.
• 7:43
  What if it stops? I like that.
• 7:47
  I like that your brain forces a little bit of concern and reality.
• 7:52
  OK, I'm going to send this recording to my therapist today because I'm just remembering other dreams.
• 7:56
  Like I have a recurring stress during where I'm in a car that either like the parking brake isn't quite working,
• 8:03
  so it's just sliding. But sometimes I'm in the back seat of the car having to steer it as it's coming out of control.
• 8:08
  OK, but there's no one in the front seat.
• 8:10
  So are you like hugging across the driver's seat? Yeah, like I'm driving the car,
• 8:16
  but from the back seat for reasons I've never cleared by.
• 8:19
  Yeah, and that doesn't make sense. I've seen your legs. They're really short.
• 8:22
  You wouldn't be able to reach up front.
• 8:24
  No, like the car's out of control. Like I'm not controlling the speed.
• 8:27
  I'm just trying to control like where it's going.
• 8:30
  I'd be concerned about the speed as well. Yeah. Mostly the stopping.
• 8:34
  So my external stimulus during my nicotine patch dreams, and I don't know if like you've never taken that or used a nicotine patch.
• 8:41
  I mean, I had a friend when I worked in fast food who was trying to quit smoking,
• 8:46
  and I don't know if it was a show of solidarity or just sleep deprivation.
• 8:50
  But let me see what that's about. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 8:53
  For a non smoker, bad idea. Yeah.
• 8:56
  Having that constant like insertion of nicotine like into your bloodstream, like while you're asleep, it does like strange, weird things.
• 9:06
  And I've never been able to recreate it without putting on a nicotine patch.
• 9:11
  It usually has to be in the mid to higher level of nicotine.
• 9:15
  But I had this one dream one time, and it was just so weird.
• 9:20
  I was in college and I was walking down the street in my college town.
• 9:24
  The dreams express are not that of a cake man, but solely of Nick.
• 9:30
  Yeah. Nick and his nicotine problems, which I don't have anymore, thankfully.
• 9:34
  So I'm walking down this street and this person that I know from school is walking down towards me.
• 9:40
  And maybe they waved or something or not.
• 9:43
  And I just like start running towards them and I'm like turning into this demon at the same time.
• 9:50
  And as I get up to them, I just bought this enormous boner that's also a chainsaw.
• 9:58
  And it just like swings up and like rips through their body, like from between their legs and then cleanly all the way up through the head.
• 10:05
  And their body just falls apart. And I ran through it.
• 10:09
  And then that was the dream. It's like I just kept running.
• 10:13
  Were you watching a bunch of anime at this time?
• 10:15
  Were you watching Devilman? It seems like something that would be in Devilman.
• 10:18
  I don't even know Devilman, but I'm willing to try it if it's anything like this dream.
• 10:22
  We should watch some Devilman sometimes. It's weird.
• 10:26
  So dream scenario.
• 10:28
  Yeah. You're going to get some weird dreams. I don't think there's ever like a...
• 10:33
  The dreams themselves seem fairly sedate within the film.
• 10:36
  Yeah, they're very much little snippets.
• 10:40
  But Nicolas Cage gives such a good performance throughout the whole movie.
• 10:45
  And I love his characterization.
• 10:48
  And I really enjoyed like just the times that like in dreams, he's allowed to like be free with his acting choices.
• 10:56
  Oh, he's so good in this film.
• 10:59
  It's really something.
• 11:00
  Yeah. This is such an amazing performance by the man.
• 11:03
  I don't know if this is a movie I'll go back to. I really do appreciate his acting and his role.
• 11:10
  I think he did a stellar job and the whole cast did a really good job.
• 11:14
  Performances by his wife.
• 11:18
  I will say, I was...
• 11:19
  Really good. The children did really well.
• 11:21
  I was bummed that Tim Meadows wasn't getting more to do.
• 11:24
  I would have loved Tim Meadows.
• 11:26
  Yeah. I would have loved more from Tim Meadows, but just his inclusion in the movie was very nice.
• 11:32
  Yeah. And Michael Cera as a tech bro, influencer, marketing guru.
• 11:39
  Yeah.
• 11:40
  Like a bad one.
• 11:41
  Because one of the things is they want to try and like find a way to use him in dreams to advertise things.
• 11:46
  So they're like, we'll just put pictures of you holding Sprite.
• 11:49
  Not right, you know, around 9 p.m.
• 11:51
  So people will like inflate you with Sprite. Maybe they'll bring about Sprite.
• 11:54
  Yeah. It's a strange movie.
• 11:59
  I will say I did enjoy the theater experience. I did enjoy the SIF experience because there were a few people in the audience who were having reactions to this film.
• 12:07
  Like when he starts getting like canceled, when like the dreams start going dark and he starts getting blamed for that.
• 12:15
  You know, there is someone a few rows ahead of us.
• 12:17
  It's like, come on. No, no, come on.
• 12:21
  Yeah. Being able to see movies and theaters is just terrific.
• 12:25
  I'm glad we're well and thoroughly past the times of COVID restrictions and things like that.
• 12:32
  Think of it as you will. It's nice to be able to see movies together.
• 12:37
  Yeah. I will say that was one of the odd parts of the film is when we get to the canceling.
• 12:44
  And then it's just like trying to up until he tries to like apologize for it. Like this guy's getting a really bum rap because he has done absolutely nothing.
• 12:55
  Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know how much of this will we'll get in just for spoilers and stuff like that.
• 13:03
  But Peter can make that decision. So if you're upset about what is or is not included in this episode, it's on Peter.
• 13:10
  Yeah. But yeah, it's it's an odd one. Like having sat with it for a night, I'm like, I probably enjoyed it more than I did in the moment.
• 13:19
  There are some very uncomfortable and hard to watch scenes in this film, not because they're like gruesome.
• 13:25
  Now there's one pretty gruesome scene, but just the awkwardness of the scene and the awkwardness of this character dealing with his son and celebrity.
• 13:35
  Yeah. Like there were times where I was like, I couldn't look at the screen for how cringey it was.
• 13:42
  Now, the writers and the director did a really good job of portraying people who would not be accustomed to or equipped to handle meteoric rises like global celebrity status.
• 13:57
  And the effect that's going to have on them, their lives, their families lives and everything.
• 14:05
  I will say I have one major critique of this film, which is I think it needed to end 10 minutes earlier.
• 14:12
  Like it gets into this really meta somewhat explaining what's happening, but not really.
• 14:19
  And then it gets just it plays with a lot of fun ideas at the end, but doesn't really use them for anything.
• 14:24
  And I'm like, if you were going to do that, it should have been throughout the whole project rather than just bumping it into the end.
• 14:31
  And once you see it, you'll know because it takes a weird sci fi slant.
• 14:36
  Yeah, I mean, I can see how you're going out of that. I enjoyed how it ended. I thought it was fine.
• 14:42
  I liked just the natural progression of how people approach new technologies, thoughts, everything else.
• 14:50
  It has to come with time. I don't think there's a really long period that this movie covers.
• 14:57
  Seems to be maybe just like maybe two months. Yeah. So I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the ending.
• 15:05
  I would recommend it to people. I think it was a lot of fun.
• 15:09
  It's a lot of fun trying to figure out how you want to talk about it with other people.
• 15:16
  And it's just yeah, five months walked out of that theater yesterday. We're all just like, huh?
• 15:23
  Yeah, it's it's a very interesting movie.
• 15:26
  And the concept of it is, you know, something something to take home for the holidays and talk with your grandma about.
• 15:34
  Yeah, maybe she'll dream of Nicholas Cage. I know I will. Bye bye. Bye bye.