Speaker 1: We're Tomy Lorenzo and this is the Pop Style Opinion
Fest Tell Quitt's walk back to another edition of the
Pso I am the team, You're telt Tom Fitzgerald, and
I'm here with the low one, your tee lot. Lorenzo
has my lovely husband. I don't even know people can
understand the words that come out of my mouth anymore
when I do the intro, but they love it. And
I know we've mentioned this before, but every time we've
met someone a listener in the real world, they always
throw the lovely husband line back, which is terrible cute.
And Lorenzo is my lovely husband.
Speaker 2: I am a lovely husband.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we have ground to cover today, and once
again I need to apologize this podcast got pushed back.
We're doing it a little bit later in the week
than we wanted to, and we're tackling some topics that
are not as fresh as we might have liked for
this podcast. We're late in getting to someone, one of
which is we finally got to see The Odyssey. Yes,
and we have much to discuss about that today. But
I also wanted to address the comments that we got
on our twentieth anniversary post last week. But let me
just explain why we're so far behind on everything right now.
Is we the dogate our homework. I know I feel
like I'm giving an excuse, but you know, I'm just
trying to let people in. We're very I try and
let people into, like what it's like to publish, what
it's like to be independent media when it's just the
two of us. So we went to Ireland and Scotland
earlier in the month, as you may have noticed because
we talked about it on our podcast, and then the
timing wasn't great, but as soon as we got back
from Europe, we went out to visit our friends Mark
and Jim and our friend David on Fire Island, and
in retrospect, I would not have scheduled all of those
trips back to back like that because I'm freaking exhausted.
But and it pushed everything back. We didn't get to
the Odyssey, we didn't get to talk to you about
your comments on our post last week, so we're very late.
And I know Lorenzo absolutely adores Fire Island.
Speaker 2: Right at first, we almost thought about not going again.
We didn't go last year because we had to go
to Texas and promote our book, which we loved. So
we didn't go to Fire Island last year, and because
we had also travel last year, so this year I
was like, no, we have to go. I miss my friends.
And the only time we could all get together was
right after our trip to Europe, so because you know,
we all we have friends from all over the country
and then we get together there and spend you know,
a few days, so that only worked after our trip.
So I was like, whoa, we have to go. And
I absolutely love the island. The island is phenomenal. The
island can be whatever you want. I mean there's you know,
it's pretty much a queer island, but not anymore. We
have straight people too. You have all kinds of people
going there, and it's a beautiful place, absolutely gorgeous, no
cars allowed. It's that type of island. It's just relaxing
and wonderful. Our friend Mark and our friends Mark and
Gym they have a beautiful house there with a swimming
pool and all that, and we you know, relax, drink,
you know, and eat and do everything we need to
do to just have a wonderful time.
Speaker 1: So so thank you Mark and jam Yes.
Speaker 2: And if you want to see some pictures of our trip. Uh,
They're on our Instagram accompt.
Speaker 1: So anyway, yes, and that is why we're a little
late getting to all of this, and for that I apologize,
But hey, daddy pop Up needs to go out and
have some vacation time.
Speaker 2: Seriously, all right.
Speaker 1: Last week we wrote a post about the twentieth anniversary
of our blog, and I spent most of this year
knowing that that anniversary was on the horizon, and then
I spent most of the last month kind of tossing
around ideas about how I wanted to talk about because
I wanted to talk about it, and I want to
talk about it further today a little bit. First, I
do I want to acknowledge the response to the post
was lovely, and several of the comments that we got,
both on social media and on our own site made
me cry. I mean, people talking about where they were
in their lives when they first discovered us and where
they are in their lives now, or what we meant
to them at a certain point in their lives. You
have no idea how much meaning that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely for us, Absolutely we do not take that for
granted ever, And I keep repeating that because it's true.
Like you said, I started read it's funny because we
post that, and then we travel and I started reading
the comments and I actually had to stop it. I'm
not lying. I had to stop because they were getting
so emotion about them. I was like, I can't speed
through these. I have to take my time reading these.
People put a lot of effort to write those comments.
And anyway, it's so kind and nice, you know, to
read those comments. So thank you, thank.
Speaker 1: You so much, Yes, thank you. And I want to
follow that up by as how do I put this,
because I really don't want to make it sound like
I'm ungrateful for those comments, because I'm not. I'm extremely
grateful for them. But I think that that post. I
had a goal in mind with that post, and it
wound up becoming a much more celebratory post than I
actually had in mind when I wrote it. So let
me just sort of reaffirm a few things that I because, yes,
that post was a celebration of what we have accomplished
and what it means to still be publishing in twenty years,
and and yes, we published. We wrote two books and
two hundred bylines and five hundred episodes of you know,
the podcast, Like all of that is an accomplishment, and
I have no problem celebrating that or thanking the people
for who have stuck with us all this time. But
my goal in writing that piece was to really underline
how bad things are. And I'm not doing this to
get people to feel sorry for me, but I do
think the general public does not understand how hard it
is to be an independent form of media right now.
The big difference between when we hung out our shingle
in two thousand and six and now is that in
two thousand and six, the world was offering a whole
range of opportunities for writers who wanted to put their
work out there, and it was encouraging people to start
do things like start blogs and that sort of thing.
And for a good fifteen years that's how things were.
You had, you know, social media came along, and then
you had influencers, and then you had TikTok, and there
was all these ways in which people could suddenly become
a voice on their own away from the institutionalized voices
of legacy media. That people could go out, build a
little platform for themselves, find an audience, and make a
living off of that and In the years since, legacy
media has been bought up and consolidated by billionaires, and
social media has been bought up and consolidated by billionaires,
and now they are working as hard as they can
to make sure that all other forms of media do
not exist or do not have any sort of reach.
So we have watched, for instance, our social media reach
collapse over the last three or four years. And it
wasn't because we lost followers. It's because social media lost
all of its potency because the people in charge of
social media, they just want ai slop, They just want bots.
They don't care about things like content, and they will
and you know, a person like Elon Musk, and actually
a person like Jeff Bezos and a person like Mark Zuckerberg,
they have a vested interest in making sure that independent
voices have no platform. And I don't think they care
much about a couple of fashion bloggers. What they're really
trying to do is to get tech reporters and political
reporters to not have platforms anymore. And we are getting
stuck in the backwash of that, and it's making it
much much harder for us to do our jobs. It's
really I'm sounding an alarm here. Lorenzo and I are
not going to go anywhere like we are going to
publish until we die. We'll figure out a way to
keep doing that until we die. One of the things
we want to work on is shifting from a blog,
you know, an advertiser supported blog, to a newsletter format.
But there are drawbacks to the newsletter format, one of
which is that you are locked into a readership like
that's it. Like the people who subscribe and pay for that,
that's it. That is the entirety of your income. Whereas
when you have an advertiser supported blog like ours, you
work to gain an audience. You work to get people
to come to your site who maybe don't come there
every day. This is something that we have had to
sort of explain to a lot of our regular readers
is that we are not a closed loop. We did
not choose to create a community, and there's nothing wrong
with sites and platforms that work and strive to create
a community of readers. We wanted an open readership. We
wanted to be treated like a general interest site, so
anybody can comment in our comment section. You don't even
have to register, and that has been sort of the
key to our success all this time is that we
did not allow ourselves to become a niche, closed community.
And what happens newsletters is that is you're locked into it,
and if you start losing readers, it's very hard to
find new ones that are going to pay for it.
Don't get me wrong, I think newsletters are where it's
at in the future. But again, to just sort of
bring this back, we had a newsletter. We still have
a newsletter. It's called Twirling Through What I love It.
We wrote some great pieces back in twenty twenty one
to twenty twenty three. Part of the two reasons I
abandon it one is having a newsletter different from a blog.
It incentivizes you to have takes. You have to have
a take, so you have to have a take on everything,
and everything has to be long form and you have
to unpack it, you know. And this wasn't our style
of writing. Our style of writing was much lighter than that.
The second problem with blogs is I mean newsletters, is
that we started our newsletter on substack when everybody was
starting on substack because it's it is the best way,
it is the best platform for earning money for writers.
Problem substack platforms nazis and comes an issue like as publishers,
we're not supposed to be on Twitter at all. As
newsletter publishers, we're not supposed to be on substack at all.
And I guess what I'm saying. I'm expressing a frustration
here because people are putting all the onus on small
business owners like us not to make these choices, when
the problem is not small business owners like us, it's
the billionaires that are making these choices untenable. Anyway, I
want to thank everyone for that, for the response to
that essay, but I did want to take some time
and talk about what we're facing as publishers right now.
And I guess if I even appeal to anybody who's
listening to this, try and remember that when you come
to our site, like turn your ad blocker off and
try and understand those ads are necessary to pay the bills.
And we're going to keep on figuring out a way
to do this. It will never stop. We love what
we do, we love talking to you guys every day,
but the world right now is working very hard to
make sure that we can't continue doing that. And it's
why you see so many sites and publications shutting down,
so many culture writers and journalists who are now out
of work and probably not returning to their fields because
the jobs just aren't there anymore. And that's what I
wanted to get across, is like, yay us, thank you
for support, but also things are bad so and I
had to work really hard not to make to make
sure that that piece wasn't bitter and angry the way
I sound right now. Probably, but I do feel like
I needed to correct the record. Lorenzo's very quiet through
all of this.
Speaker 2: I'm just listening now, I'm just listen. You're right. I
also want to make the point that the only reason,
one of the reasons why we still here, it's because
he's the two of.
Speaker 1: Us exactly low overhead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just the two of us on this site
doing everything that needs to be done to keep going. Yeah.
Also your support. Without you, guys wouldn't be here, trust me,
Thank you all they I mean we you know, we
have a great product. I believe in it, but if
you don't read it then it doesn't go anywhere. Sorry,
thank you very much. And if you like what we do,
if you think we should keep going, that's how you
support it's come to our site.
Speaker 1: Come to our site, keep your ad blocker off light
and subscribe to this podcast. Follow us our on social
media when you can.
Speaker 2: Follow us on social media Instagram, any account we.
Speaker 1: Have Blue Sky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how we survive and keep going.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's all based on you, right, absolutely, Thank you
for your support and please keep supporting us. All right,
why don't we take a short break and when we
come back, we're going to talk about House of the Dragon,
and then after that we are going deep into the Odyssey.
We'll be right back. We're back, and there's a twenty
two pound cat rolling all over this table right now
looking for affection, sticking his button my face because when
we turn these mics on tab Hunter, our big boy
just loves to be part of the conversation. So if
you hear a lot of and everything, that's that's him.
That's okay. So how's of the drug? When that arrow
went flying into Sir Kristen Cole's eye, and after I
was done cheering, I turned to Lorenzo and I said,
this is it. We're in the endgame and it's just
going to be a lot of character deaths from here
on out. I think this story is going to get
very depressing in the in the remaining few episodes.
Speaker 2: It's funny because we were watching the episode and I
was like, you know, he's very handsome.
Speaker 1: Bom dead dead, yeah, ah, but I was so happy
to see him dead. Creep, I know, creep in an asshole.
So I don't have a lot to say about this
week's episode. I I'm enduring it. It's cooking, you know,
it's on all the burners or and everything's bubbling away.
All the plots are working for me. It's probably getting
a little plot heavy. It's probably getting to the point
where it's harder and harder for me for the audience,
I think to keep track of everything that's going on.
Are just split up in so many different directions, and
I admit that I I don't really understand what some
of these where some of these storylines are going, like,
for instance, I really don't know what's going on with
ormand High Tower or any of that. I don't I
haven't read the books. Like I said in the past,
I have a bare bones understanding of where the story
goes and pretty much know how all the people who
die how they die in the story.
Speaker 2: But I feel that that the show has this need,
and I understand why to keep everybody on screen, you
know what I mean, Like because they're actors, they're they're hired,
they have so they have to have some little story
for that every so sometimes that gets to be a
little too much, but I enjoyed it. I mean, everybody's horrible,
you know. At this point, I'm like, I don't care
if we all die. I really don't, because there are horrible,
horrible people. I do appreciate some of the acting. I mean,
I still love Alison Olivia. What's her name, Olivia? I
can't remember my name? Cook, Yes, thank you. I think
she's phenomenal. She is my favorite, and I really like
her character. Her character makes sense to be, you know,
her actions her.
Speaker 1: I mean I like to hate her characters. Well that's
what I'm yeah, I mean I don't. I don't like
or admire her character. I think she's an asshole. I
think they're both assholes. I think ryan neiera and actually
the story is doing a very good job of showing
Ryania's turn, which I think I said this in the past.
I think in some ways this show seems to be
correcting the mistake of how they handled Denaris's turn in
Game of Thrones because a lot of people felt that
that turn came out of nowhere, and it didn't come
out of nowhere. But it doesn't it wasn't well handled.
Whereas Rhiniera, I mean, you can talk about all the
pain and all the you know, the the way she's
been shoved aside by the patriarchy, and the sacrifices she
has made in her life, and et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. But she's a bad queen. Yeah, she showed
a bad queen.
Speaker 2: And I think why she's so frustrated and going crazy
is because she knows that she knows that she's not
a great king.
Speaker 1: One of the things that it was struck me watching
it last night was the idea that, you know, I'm
not saying anything new about George or Martin in relation
to how he views Tolkien. In some ways, all of
this was written as a response to Tolkien. He wanted
to take a different approach. He wanted to I wouldn't
say correct, but he wanted to do things differently from
the way Tolkien did them. And one of the things
that really strikes me about these stories is I mean,
when Tolkien talks about Middle Earth, he talks about just
kings as these wise and wondrous creatures of nobility, whereas
in in Uh the Dragon and How's of the Dragon,
Song of Ice and Fire and all these stories, the
basic premise of these stories is no, kings are terrible,
Kings are inbred monster. You actually cannot take a throne
without becoming a monster, and that is endemic to the
storyline here. So she is just fulfilling the viewpoint of
this entire stories, much in the same way that Ara
Gorn fulfills the viewpoint of Tolkien by becoming nearly a
Jesus figure by the end of the story. It's a
complete upending of Tolkien's view and it's the difference between
when a European writes fantasy and when an American writes fantasy.
I'm not saying it's a better version, and I mean
I would even go so far as to say it's
not always a more interesting version, because sometimes this stuff
gets really old, like just watching all of these assholes
take the throne over and over and over again, it
gets old. So but I do think it's closer to history,
closer to the world as we know it to start
with the assumption that anybody who takes a throne is
not at heart a good or noble per, and strangely enough,
that will tie into our odyssey discussion later. So I
do like that, and I like that they're handling it
in a way that makes it clear that a Rania
is not a good queen, be she never probably would
have been a good queen, and say, no one can
be a good queen. No one can rule and still
be a good person. Which isn't to say necessarily that, oh,
the throne has corrupted her, although it has partially corrupted her. Essentially,
that whole family is so innately corrupt that nobody in
it could possibly do a good job. Allison. Yes, I
have some feeling for Allison, and I think Olivia Cook
is doing an amazing job of showing someone who is
trying desperately to maintain some sort of control in a
situation where she has almost no control and she's in
constant danger.
Speaker 2: But what I like about her character is that she's
fully aware. She knows what's going on, you know, better
than most of them, because I think most of them
are just a about a lot of things.
Speaker 1: Can I just jump in. I do think that is
the difference between her and Rhiniera, and it's why she
might possibly come off a slightly more sympathetic character is
that she doesn't just know what's going on. She knows
what she did right, unlike Ryaniera, who does not face
up to any of the things that she did that
have you know, brought blowback against her. Alison understands she
made choices. They were not good choices, and she's stuck
where she is now because of those choices, so there
is some regret in that. However, she'd fuck over her
I mean, she'd kill off all her sons in order
to save her daughter, which I guess is a form
of nobility. But she also married her daughter off to
one of her sons, and I did like that. Helena
called her out on that. What else, so we have
the two queens. I mean everything that Damon does is
not interesting to me at all.
Speaker 2: No, I think Damon now he's just a monster. I mean,
there's nothing interesting about the care.
Speaker 1: I don't think Matt Smith is finding anything interesting in
that portrayal.
Speaker 2: There's no nuance, there's no variation of his It's just
an asshole. He's just an asshole, whereas people.
Speaker 1: Like Agon and Amons who are assholes much in the
same way their uncle is. I feel like those performances
have some nuance to them where you kind of feel
something for those people. You feel that they're struggling in.
Speaker 2: Some way, right. I wish they spent more time with
the other folks like Oh White than Hugh Hammer. You know,
the whole thing with the wife and all that. I
would want more of that, like a little side story.
Speaker 1: I don't really find it interesting. You just think, Youugh
the Hammers he is good looking.
Speaker 2: No, but that's not it. It's just that you know,
you need to show the other people. Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I agree with that on some level.
And I can tell that alf and Hugh their storylines
are going somewhere. They are not obeying their queen, they're
not happy with their queen, and they both got dragons.
Speaker 2: So but I couldn't care less about Raina and her
madness and her dragon.
Speaker 1: And here's my issue with Raina. It's Raina. Now, it's Raina.
Speaker 2: It's Raina.
Speaker 1: I think it was interesting that they they combined her
character with a different character from the books in order
to tell this storyline. With Sheepstealer, but it doesn't actually
make sense. Like she, the character in the books who
has Sheepstealer, is not noble. She's not a member of
a house. She's just a side character who's able to
control the dragon by giving a member of the royal
household this role. She's sort of stuck like, Oh, she
wants to see her her family again, but she also
wants to hold on to her dragon and live in
a case like, I don't understand what what do you want?
What are your motivations here? I do love Lady Jail.
Oh my god, I knew I could see the smile
on your face. I'm like, he's noting to talk about
Lady Jane.
Speaker 2: Put her in her plates, you know, like girl, But
I would she really slap a targarian princess and.
Speaker 1: Threaten her a targarian princess with a dragon. I do
love Lady James, and I love that actress, love the performance.
But I'm like, all of that, that whole situation in
the veil, I'm not sure that makes any sense to
me at all. Where is that going? I don't understand it.
I agree as similarly, as much as I love Alice
rivers at Haaren Hall. It's starting to go on a
little fucking nowhere, actually, you know, I mean, I guess
it's going somewhere. But didn't we have all of this
last season with her and Damon?
Speaker 2: I can't. I feel like, like I said, I feel
they just need to have these people acting and they
just give them something.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is an amazing cast. I'll give them.
Speaker 2: It's great. And the whole thing with Aim and I
don't quite understand what's going on. They having a relationship
now or she's trying.
Speaker 1: I mean, she wants that Haroen Hols. She wants Haron Hall,
and so she's going to figure out a way she
will find a man to fuck to get Haroen Hall.
Speaker 2: My god, because come on, that's an option of it's not.
Speaker 1: Going to marry into nobility.
Speaker 2: But she's obsessed with that place. She wants it, and
then she's doing whatever she can.
Speaker 1: Carlss Vilaria, it looks like he's dead.
Speaker 2: Is he? People are questioning that online. I actually like
his character, but he felt a little I'm I don't
know what. Yeah, I'm.
Speaker 1: Yes, you had me for a while. And I think
part of it is that actor's performance where it's like,
could you just loosen up just a little bit? You're
so stiff, And I realized that's a choice he's making
as an actor. But like the scene with him and Baila,
yeah kissing, no heat there at all, because the guy
is just so stiff I need, especially since this character
has gone through such an enormous shift in his perspective,
his father has welcomed him. He is sitting at the
Queen's table, like you should have a difference in your performance,
but instead you're still the same stiff, sort of overly formal,
kind of wounded guy. I just he stopped being interesting
to me once he went wound up sitting at the
Queen's table.
Speaker 2: I did like the whole thing with what is GWayne
and Darren, you know the kids? Yes, that's interesting. I do.
Speaker 1: What's happening with the High Towers is interesting to me.
I'm just not sure how it relates to the story
at all anymore. And I do like GWayne a lot,
and and Ormond is a lot of fun to watch,
so I'm willing to see it play out, but I'm
finding it very disconnected.
Speaker 2: And they kind of forgot Aimen a little bit, and
we didn't see much.
Speaker 1: Of Amon's and heron hall. No which wagon agon is
at the one with the burned face, Yeah they I
mean we did see him a little bit. Yeah, But again,
it just feels like that a lot of like we're
waiting for the final I'm not the final battle, but
we're waiting for something to happen. I'm enjoying it. It's
a much better season than last season. And I feel
like part of the reason this is all working so
well is that they have the end game in mind
and they actually know what it is, unlike how Game
of Thrones, where they really didn't know what the ending
was according.
Speaker 2: To is this the last season?
Speaker 1: No? Last next season is the last season, so.
Speaker 2: There's more coming.
Speaker 1: There's like what ten episodes left total? Eleven maybe, And
I like that. I like that they're not going to
drag this out for too long and they know how
it's going to end. And I feel that everything right
now in the story is slowly turning towards that ending.
That's why I said we're in the endgame here, like
it's just going to be a lot of death in
the stretch from here on out.
Speaker 2: Although I didn't read the books, I feel like I
can follow. Now, you know, I'm not lost right as
I was in the past, so now I enjoy it.
Speaker 1: The writing is very efficient. They are very good at
making sure that everyone's name is mentioned and everyone's agenda
is pointed out, and they do a really really good
job of balancing all of.
Speaker 2: These Yeah, and then this area, obviously she's gonna turn, and.
Speaker 1: It looks like it it looks like she might turn.
I mean, Allison might have gotten her Hawk center, which
would be quite a coup on Allison's part. I love Helena,
Oh Helena. I just want her to tell everyone to
fuck off and leave her alone.
Speaker 2: I know she's an interesting character.
Speaker 1: I think that I want her to do something really dark.
I want her to, like poison someone or just do something.
You need to get a little of your own back, girl.
You just all these people are manipulating you. You need
to do it, all right, to anything.
Speaker 2: Else, I think, become pretty much everybody.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take another break, yep, and then we'll
come back and dive deep into the Odyssey. We'll be
right back. We're back, and we finally got to see
the Odyssey last night. I said to Lorenzo literally on Monday,
when we were coming back from Fire Island. I said,
you know, I know we have to do a podcast,
but I really want us to be part of this
conversation everyone's talking about and we haven't seen yet. So
that was part of the reason why we haven't. We
didn't do a podcast before earlier in the week is
because we needed to go and see this. So I'm
still processing this. I will say I'm a big fan
of Nolan's films. I don't think he's a flawless director,
but I have seen all of his films and I
think he is a very technically adept, very thoughtful director.
I don't think this film is as good as Oppenheimer,
which won him the Oscar last year. I do think
it's a very very very good film. I don't think
it's a masterpiece. I think that's what I'm trying to
say here. However, that is not really a criticism, because
ninety nine percent of films are not masterpieces. And I
would go so far as to say as ninety percent
of all very very good films are not masterpieces. It
takes a lot to make a masterpiece, and I don't
think that's what this is. I think I just want
to go ahead, and then I'm going to toss to you.
I just I'm starting off with that because the initial
round of reviews were so rapturous for this film that
I just wanted to start off with I think this
is a very good film. I'm not necessarily in agreement
that it is quite as good as everyone is saying, good,
all right, go ahead.
Speaker 2: I was interested because it's, you know, it's an interesting story,
a very famous story. Many movies have been made in
serious TV series about it, so I was curious to
see his take on it. I think he's over praised,
in my opinion in general as a director. I think
people to tend to look at him and think everything
he does is flawless, which I don't agree. I think
he's an interesting director. He has an interesting take on things,
the way he directs his movies. But I don't know.
Sometimes I don't know. I think he's a little I
don't know, full little what full of himself as a director,
and stubborn sometimes on his decisions, like like the way
he sees things and he wants to direct things in
a certain way, and sometimes it don't make sense in
the story in the movie, but he wants it that
way because it's I don't know, it's controversial wards or
it's a different take on something I think he is.
We'll get to that point here, to this point here
with obviously anyway. So I was curious and then all this,
you know, all these articles written about it, like with
the cast, because he hired all these people, and you know,
hired you know, black people, brown people, and they're not
all white, and then they're not what we imagine the
artist it should be. So all this conversation, and I
was really curious. I was like, all right, let's see.
I watched the trailer. I was like, all right, you
can't see much, but okay, let's see. I'll wait. You know,
I have my like I said, I know the story.
I was a fan of some of the fifties movies
about it, you know, the Troy and Everything story. So
I was curious. I really wanted to see how he
and I was hoping, because it's twenty twenty six, that
the technowledge that we have right now would work, you know,
like would make magic and present a different version of it,
a more interesting version with a.
Speaker 1: Lot more critical of this film than I feel.
Speaker 2: So I was like, all right, let me, let me
see it. Let's go see it, And you know that's
my introduction, all right.
Speaker 1: I think it's stunningly gorgeous film. I think it's an
incredibly thoughtful film. I think he wrestles with the themes
of the poem and he tries to subdue them into
a cinematic form as best he can. I think he
makes some choices that perhaps are questionable, and in fact,
I'm going to question a few of them. I am
not an expert on the poem at all, but I
am trying to look at this cinematically and to see
if he accomplished his goals as a director. And in
order to do that, you do have to have some
understanding of where he diverged from the poem. But I
am not an expert, so I would not You should
not expect me to have any sort of insights into
Homer or into epic poetry at the Bronze Age or
anything like that. But overall impressions, let's say, let's start
with this. I loved how he made the world seem
mysterious and magical but also really small when you get
into and I know that the film was shot in
like six different countries, and I mean they were pretty
they were. He was shot in the Sahara, it was
shot in Scotland, it was shot in Iceland as well
as in the Mediterranean. But the sense that you get
in this film is that they are just wandering around
in a small patch of space and they just cannot
get home. And at the same token, even though the
world that they are in is not that long, I mean,
because let's face that. I mean, he took him ten
years to get home, but it's not like he sailed
to America or anything like that. He didn't discover new continents.
It all takes place in the Mediterranean for the most part,
but it's three thousand years ago, and you know, it's
much more difficult to travel. And I felt that the
film did a good job of saying that without saying it.
At the same token, he makes the world look and
feel mysterious, weird and old. I loved the castle in Ithaca.
I thought it was so fucking gorgeous. I loved that
it already looks three thousand years old. And maybe there's
some question as to whether or not it should look
as old as it looked, but it felt like we
were in an old civilization, which at the time, this civilization,
it actually had been around for a long time, so
it would have had some weight too. Right, let's see
what else. I I don't think the film has much,
and I could be wrong. People might be mad at me.
Maybe I just missed it all, but I didn't think
the film had much in terms of a soundtrack. In
terms of the music, I look. I have a lot
of memory of the music in the film at all.
Speaker 2: I look for it because they use that same guy
who just won an Oscar I can't remember his name,
long haired guy, and he's very talented, and they use
him and he's very good. So I was listening trying
to pay attention to the soundtrack very little. It wasn't like,
you know, pumping circumstin now. This wasn't a lot.
Speaker 1: And I think I think a lot of Nolan's choices
in this film, for good or for ill, was that
he wanted to avoid a lot of cliches about the
cinematic depictions of the Bronze Age. So everybody speaks with
an American accent, even the British actors do. He cast
you know, he did racially blind casting and that sort
of thing, and when it comes to the music, I
think he wanted to avoid anything that sounded like, you know,
old timey Greek, like you know, people plucking liars and
harps and stuff like that. I think he wanted to
avoid anything that's smacked up cliche.
Speaker 2: Right. He is a Swedish composer. His name is Ludwig Garanzen.
He won for Oppenheimer and you know he's done tanted
his work with Nolan before. He's a very talented composer.
And apparently Nolan said that they he didn't want orchestra,
they didn't want like sounded sound a little too modern. Yeah, well,
I think anyway.
Speaker 1: It's not a criticism of the film, but it really
struck me later. I was like, wow, I can't remember
one musical moment at all.
Speaker 2: I can't. Yes, I agree, and I mean I.
Speaker 1: Guess you could actually see that as a criticism because
it plays into a larger criticism. But that I do
have about the work, and it's true of Nolan in general,
is that it's cold. His films are cold, and they're clinical,
and there's a certain detachment in his films and in
films like the Batman films or in Memento or in Oppenheimer,
that sort of detachment works well with the story, and
I think it it didn't work well here. This is
a story about passion and fire and sex and blood
and music and food, you know, like it, and we
didn't get any of that, and we just got this
sense that all of these people are living a very
dry sort of life. And I don't think that's a
very good way to depict a Bronze Age culture. Like
they weren't. They had a rich life, They had a
very rich cultural life, they had a rich history. They
and all of that is is kind of kept as
minimalist as possible because that is his style of directing.
Speaker 2: Right, I think, all right, here's my take. It's a
very old story. It's like, what three thousand year old story.
That's why the journey feels so special because you know,
it took Otis's like a lot of time to go
from front A from point A to point B. So
it it's an old story, so you know it, And
that plays a lot into the whole story that it
took it took him a long time and everything was unknown,
you know, all these lands, all these places. So I
think that's what's special about the story, what he confronted,
what he saw when he went to every island, and
so that I needed that. I think that's part of
the story, is that it's the the absurd, all the
things that he saw on every land, that he had
to go through on every land. So I needed that.
I was expecting that. I mean, it's it's what is
it like twenty four books or something, the region of
the story. Of course, he can't cover everything, but I
felt like he missed a couple of things that I
wish was in the movie. But again, you make choices.
I'm not you know, you choose what you want to show.
I felt that not having the gods more present, Yeah,
can we shelve that.
Speaker 1: Because that's a whole conversation I am planning.
Speaker 2: I missed that part. It felt like the decisions. It
felt to me. We'll talk about it later, but it
felt to me that whatever they were going through, it
was just the weather. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the philosophical aspect of how
we handle the gods, but that's a way to earth.
I wanted to get into the form and what we
liked and disliked before we start getting into the themes.
I also want to run down almost all of the
major performances and talk about course. So uh, And I
struggled in the beginning.
Speaker 2: Can I just say a few more? I struggle in
the beginning with the language. But I went back and
forth on that. Let me just let me just finish
my thought here. At first, I was like, this is
very common length, it's a very common language. It doesn't
feel like a little special. But again it's my brain
going back to all the old versions of the story.
It felt a little simple. But then I kept watching
the movie. I kept seeing the movie in a movie theater,
and I'm like, you know, it makes sense here. I
understand where this is going, the language and the cinematography,
and you know, it's it's a more realistic approach the story,
their conversations and all that. So I guess the language
works here, but and I'll add more to it later.
The common language combined with very bad performances is just
threw me.
Speaker 1: Off, all right, So I guess we'll get into the
themes then. And I don't think we are going to
agree on this, but I he's a very deliberate director.
He makes very deliberate choices. So for him to have
everyone speaking in an American accent. There was a point
to that, and I don't think it had anything to
do with class or anything like that, because as an Englishman,
I don't think he thinks. I don't think that's how
he would have approached it, like, oh, the classic characters
have English accents and the non classic characters don't. That
isn't what he did. That's what they did in Star Wars.
All the evil people had English accents and all the
good people had American ones. So there's a lot about
this film that diverges from the themes and style of
Homer of the original poem. And that isn't because Nolan
didn't understand it, or that because he necessarily rejected it.
It's that he is trying to, for lack of a
better term, he's americanizing the story, and he's doing that
on purpose. He isn't. I mean, I could be wrong.
This is my read. I feel that he cast, he
did racially blindcasting, and then gave everyone an American accent
because he is making a film about America in the
present day. When you look at the story about about Okay,
there's so much here that I have to unpack that
we're going to get into the casting as well. So
about halfway through the film, I was having problems with Odysseus.
I was having problems with Matt Damon's performance because I
felt like he wasn't modulating his performance at all. I
felt he was just giving me Matt Damon, and I'm like,
I don't forget the sense that this is some great
warrior king. I just feel like some guy from Boston.
But exactly again, Lorenzo, I think that's deliberate and well.
First off, Nolan said in an interview for The Vulture,
he said he cast Matt Damon specifically for that reason.
He knew that people would listen to this guy and
assume that this guy was a good guy because of
the persona. And this is what I want to say
about all of the casting choices, especially when you get
into the major major stars in this film, and it
is a star studded film, they are all being cast
because of their persona. So Matt Damon plays a guy.
You have to understand that. And I'm not crazy that
he did it this way. That Nolan has this obsession
with memory and with timelines, and he forced it into
this story so that Odysseus has amnesia, and there's multiple
and there's all these flashbacks, and nothing is told in
a linear way, and I kind of got annoyed with
the whole thing. However, when we get to the end
of the movie and he's telling about his regrets about
the sack of Troy, you realize that he has been
lying to you as a narrator through the entire movie,
and that Odysseus is actually terrible. We get hints of
this throughout the story. We get hints of his he
keeps making these bold mistakes. He shoots the cyclops when
he shouldn't have done that, that sort of thing. But
it's not until we get to the end of the
film that we realize, Okay, he has been lying the
whole time. He was bad throughout this whole movie. It's
very notable that you see scenes of his soldiers beheading
women and ravishing, you know, ravaging women and burning down
you never see him do it. And he tells this
version of the story that holds him up as this
moral figure when in fact, he's been lying to you
the whole time, and he has been a dark figure,
a violent figure, and a liar throughout this entire story.
So this, to me is my take on why I
think he's making a commentary about America. I'm not necessarily
saying it's an allegory or anything like that, but he
wanted to tell a story about a violent, disruptive culture
that is dying because it's lost its way, because it's
lost its moral center. And to him in twenty twenty six,
the best way to shorthand best shorthand way to do
that is to constantly refer to America.
Speaker 2: Interesting take, and I.
Speaker 1: Do think that's why so many of the choices he
makes are in I don't think all of them work,
and we can talk about the gods in fact, do
you want to lead right into that?
Speaker 2: No, I just felt that it's not if you don't
know the stories, not very clear why things are happening.
I agree with that it feels like things are happening
because it's bed weather or the island is dangerous, but
you know, there's a reason why their boats went that way,
or because they had that kind of weather, you know,
and because certain things appeared or not.
Speaker 1: It makes some really strange choices here to be sort
of circumspect about the existence of the gods, and in fact,
he makes Odysseus out to be basically an atheist, which
makes no fucking sense at all. And there are parts
of it where I've I've said this to you when
we were leaving the theater, I was like, you know,
I'm not an expert, but I do know this. When
you get into Greek drama, Greek poems and Greek plays,
gods are not concepts. They are physical, actual people who
speak and interact and do things. And that was the
belief of the Greeks back then. So when you have
this sort of Judeo Christian idea of invisible gods in
the scott like, no, that's not that's not what they thought.
What I don't like and I don't think characters like
Odysseus would have acted that way, right, That's.
Speaker 2: Why I don't like his choices. Sometimes he makes he
makes these choices, and sometimes they make no sense at all,
or they don't they're.
Speaker 1: Not Are you talking about Odysseus or Nolan.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about Nolan and Joe Like he pretty much
had no god, but then he decided to have Athena because.
Speaker 1: You know, well he he If.
Speaker 2: You have Tom Holland, then you have to have Zindan
in the movie, So let's let let's let's get up.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, he didn't have Athena, he had no guilt. Well,
Nolan shot it in such a way and that reveal.
Listen that I heard that there was a last minute
reveal about who Zendeya really quote unquote really is in
the film. So I was ready for it to happen.
But when it did happen, I was like, Okay, that's
poignan as hell, that's heartbreaking as hell. And he hasn't
been having visions of Athena all this time. He's been
having visions of the girl that got killed at Athena's temple.
She is his guilt embodied, yes, but in the story
is I know. But in the movie, right, he made it,
and that's part of the theme is and this is
why I feel it's really confused, because putting aside Zendeya,
who I really felt by the end of that final
scene where he's confessing about the sack of Troy, I
thought that made it clear that she's not a goddess,
she's his guilt.
Speaker 2: I understood that at the end.
Speaker 1: And my point is that doesn't that's fine whatever I
don't care. I didn't. But you had a Cyclops, you
had the Lystragonian giants, you had seriously turning them into pigs.
You had skill in charibdis, you know, pulling them out
of the open ocean. You had all of these mythological
figures and monsters and witches, and you didn't shy away
from depicting them as monsters and witches. Right, why are
you being weird about the gods? And again, I think
this comes down to he did not want to do
like a Ray Harryhausen Clash of the Titans kind of thing.
He did not want to show Zeus on a mountaintop
or Hermes running or whatever the hell the story required,
because from his perspective as a director, that would have
been cheesy as hell. And I get that. But what
we wound up with was a sort of Christian version
of the gods, which, you know, the sort of you
never see them, they're mysterious.
Speaker 2: No, that's not it, That's not how the Greeks saw them. No.
I mean, if you if you're going to embrace that
kind of story, you have to you have to ignore
how to have gods. You have to acknowledge the gods
I mean, they're the reasons why shit is happening. You know,
the guys are deciding where the where the fuck they
go and who kills them or tried to kill them
or you know, it's it's not that simply.
Speaker 1: I did roll my eyes, like the scenes with Calypso
where she's like, you know, serving as a therapist and
there's all this thunder happening because if you know the stories,
Zeus wanted her to let him go. So that's Zeus
yelling at her.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: I realized we can't have Lawrence Olivier come down holding
a lightning bolt and getting a speech. But that you know,
as a director, you need to come up with better ideas.
That to me was the major failing.
Speaker 2: And certain combinations made no sense to me. She's someone
giving him the lotus flower, which is not the case
in the whole way. Now, I mean, yeah, avoiding certain
things like there's things that were interesting in the story
that he didn't show, which is fine, it's your choice.
You avoided them. The leather bag situation, what else, things
like that that I wish it was there but wasn't.
That's but it felt to me that the women just
showed up and you know, like I mean, it felt
to me that every time there was a woman, you know,
there was not much there. They were just there to
I don't know, support the man, and and.
Speaker 1: I wish they hadn't get that.
Speaker 2: I wish they had explore those characters a little more.
I mean, it is it's not very clear what Calypso
is or I don't know. I just that felt to
me that.
Speaker 1: I'll grant you that. I think again, the Calypso here,
this scenario was I don't know why we're being so
circumspect here she is a se nymph, like she's obviously
got him under a certain amount of control. Like why
are we pretending that she's just some gorgeous woman fishing?
But I do want to see this actually makes a
good segue into the point about casting. Why don't we
take a short break now when we get back, we'll
talk about that. We're back talking about the Odyssey, and
now we're going to talk about the casting. Lorenzo doesn't
like of these actors, so you need to take all
that with a grain of salt. But I do want
to point out a few things here. As I noted,
he cast Matt Damon because he knew the audience would
assume that Matt Damon was a good guy doing moral things,
telling the truth. He's essentially the Jimmy Stewart of his generation.
He's that kind of actor where the audience is on
board immediately. Similarly, you can look at Charlie's m M.
You don't need to explain too much about what's going
on there because it's Charlie's. She looks like that, and
all you need to do is say he's stuck with
this stunningly gorgeous creature who will not let him go.
Don't get me wrong, I don't love that Calypso wasn't
explained better, but I am explaining his casting choices. So
when you cast Shirley's Theren, you don't really need to
explain too much about what's going on there. She looked
fucking amazing, and this shows up.
Speaker 2: It is a your perfume campaign.
Speaker 1: I mean she was in nets and rags and she looked, Oh,
it's just explecting amazing.
Speaker 2: It's der commercial right now.
Speaker 1: Similarly, Lupita and Yango I gasped the first time they
showed her because you know she's I already know what
Lupita looks like but they had her all done up
like a queen and jewelry and everything. Again, you cast
Lapita and Youngo in that role because A she's undeniably
beautiful and B she just gives you regal. She looks
like a queen. And when you put her in those
like you know, old style Greek jewelry and every you know,
Bronze era jewelry and fashions, and I realized that none
of that stuff was accurate. She just feels like she
belongs there. She looks like she belongs in that world.
Speaker 2: But that that was my point. Yeah, my previous point
is that these women are were just gorgeous women.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true of well, I yes, I
don't think that's true of seriously, and I don't don't
think that's true of Penelope.
Speaker 2: Penelope was an exception because she's the major exception, well
because of an Anne Hathway's incredible performance.
Speaker 1: Yes, Anne Hathaway won for the Ages.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: That was like I kept thinking of, and I mean
this as a compliment, when her and Matt Damon were together.
First off, I was like, wow, look at those middle
aged faces, man, And I do like that. Nolan really
lingered on that, you know, lingered on the fact because
they are playing characters who are probably slightly older than
they actually are. Because she's the mother to uh Telemachus.
Well no, granted she's old enough to be mother to
an eighteen year old, but it felt like I was
watching like Sean Connery and Katherine Hepburn. It just felt
old school, and with her especially, it just felt like
an old school diva turn. She ate.
Speaker 2: She was phenomena. I love.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, go ahead, No, she was.
Speaker 2: Phenomena because she was able to convey all the emotions,
all she was going through as a mother, as a wife,
and all that, all the queen as the queen, all
the waiting, all the stress to deal with those suitors,
and all that. She did a phenomenal I think, I
think you have to do that. You have to embody
the story. You have to embody the character so that
it becomes believable that you look at that person and
you believe that that person went through hell, went through
a lot of stuff. Well not necessarily him, but went
through a lot of stuff. And you look at her
and you can tell. And when she opens her mouth,
she she does it.
Speaker 1: She doesn't about her performance is that she spends most
about whispering yes, and but whispering with an intensity because
she is intense and she is angry. But at the
same token, she is extremely vulnerable and scared.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean she has to be behind a wall.
Speaker 1: So she's fierce in her line deliveries. But she's also timid.
She manages a timidity at the same time. It's such
a well modulate to performance. And honestly, if she doesn't
get an Oscar for that, that's crazy to me.
Speaker 2: She should at least be nominated.
Speaker 1: She will be, I mean, and Matt Past will be nominated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is anyway, But she she is phenomenal. Let
me just say one more thing. I was looking at
her and I was like, wow, you came a long
way as an actress.
Speaker 1: She really really did. She really really really did. She
is like a standing testament to movie stars who become
better over time. Yes, who allowed their movie stardom to
make them better actors, and she is a prime example
of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean truly there and performance was you know, delivered.
Speaker 1: It was this week Emily Wilson, the translator of the
the Odyssey, who you know, the right wingers hate and
who Nolan. Nolan used her translation for his version of
the script. She came out with an article in the
London Review of Books this Week and it was nasty
and there was a lot of blowback to it. She
was highly highly critical of the film, and a lot
of people felt it was nasty of her to be
so critical of a film like She apparently had sold
a million copies of her book after an old announced
that he was doing the movie, so a lot of
people felt like, well, you're trashing a film that made you,
that is making you rich. I don't really want to
get into too much about her piece. I do think
she was looking at it, obviously from the perspective of
a scholar of that era and that material, and I
don't think that actually makes for a very interesting film
review because you're just going to list all the things
that they got wrong, which is essentially what she did.
But she did talk a lot about Charlie's theron being
a therapist, and I was like that one, I will
grant you. I don't like those scenes at all. There's
no sense of mystery there and she just talks like
she's in you know, southern California meeting you were in
her office, like it just didn't be a ancient or
weird or fucked up the way it should have.
Speaker 2: Been, because Nolan was obsessed with him not remembering things
and she was there to try to get those information. No,
she's greedy, she is selfish to the she you know,
she kept him on the island so that she could
it's a rape essentially, so she could screw him for
seven years.
Speaker 1: And all of that is tossed out the ways because
she's so gorgeous.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing. There's no sex in the movie.
Speaker 1: I agree with, and that was something Emily Wilson pointed out.
And again, yet they lead such dry lives in those stories,
just that no one enjoys food, no one enjoys drinking,
no one fucks, no one sings.
Speaker 2: And there's no I don't need to see sex scenes,
but I but sex was a very important part why
these men did the thing they did. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: A Calypso sex scene was probably required. Yes, And the
fact that because her time together is completely sexless, and
he looks like he's about nine hundred years old in
those scenes.
Speaker 2: I mean he lived with Circey for a while. I
mean none of that. I understand this choice.
Speaker 1: But but and he yeah, he slept with her, he
slept with Princess Nasoga, right, he slept with everybody. Yeah,
they don't. And again this comes again. It's all about
him being an unreliable narrator. So, for all we know,
the Odysseus of the movie was going around and fucking
all these people, but he had a story to tell
about his returning to his beloved wife.
Speaker 2: So and he didn't.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I'm giving Nolan too much credit here,
but but that I do understand the idea that we're
not going to show how terrible Odysseus is until the
very end of the movie, which is that's silly because
it's his obsession with timelines.
Speaker 2: It's not a journey.
Speaker 1: I uh huh. I agree with that.
Speaker 2: If you think of a journey, people go through things
right and betrayal, you know, fucking out the people, screwing up,
you know, betraying your your your your you know, your
people whatever, and then you come back. So this way
is just very black and white. Okay, well I'm just
going here, Oh my god, the weather and then you know,
oh my god, you know, our boat blah blah blah,
and I'm back and it's it's that's not what a
journey is about. Yeah, the whole story. I mean, the
reason why this story is so wonderful is because he
go through so much, you know, there's so much, so much,
a lot of challenge, you know, a lot of things happen, right,
and that he has to go through with his people,
with his you know, and I don't know, it felt
a little light to me. That's what I meant by
the language. Also, you combine the language and the performance.
I thought the I mean, I absolutely hated Tom Holland.
He eats horrible in the movie.
Speaker 1: I do think Tom Holland and Sunday are the two
weakest performances in the film. I don't think they were
up to the material. Well, first of all, I don't
think the material asked much of either of them, But
that was probably Nolan realizing that he couldn't ass much
of either of them. I don't hate them as much
as you do, but I agree with you that they're
not actors of any great No, not really. And and
Tom Holland just has two or three expressions that he
cycles throughout that.
Speaker 2: And he's he sounds like a teenager number one, and
I know the character is not about tag, but anyway,
there's a scene with when end Hathaway's.
Speaker 1: Like showing him showing you her guts.
Speaker 2: He's just staring at her the whole time, like what
is going on? Dude? Your mom is talking to you,
yell at you have some reaction here. And the same
thing with India. There's a scene where she she's looking
at him and some some something about going back home
with Matt Damon. There's a scene a very serious thing,
emotional thing, and then she acts like she's pouting.
Speaker 1: She looks, she pounce a lot. She resorts to that
pou a lot. And it was in euphoria. It's in
the Spider Man movies, like like.
Speaker 2: He he's expressing I don't know, I forget the scene,
but he's talking think about going back and it was
time to go back or something like that, and she
pounced and I'm like what.
Speaker 1: Anyway, However, there was a scene I think it's when
they're leaving Hades, which I have to admit that scene
in Hades was fucking stunning with all the black sand
and everything, and sin On speaking, I know you didn't
like Elliott Page in this movie. But I thought sin
On was fucking stunning in that scene, and I thought
his performance was amazing in that scene. Yeah, I also think, again,
why did you cast a very slightly built trans masculine
man for this role. That's why. I mean, people all thought,
all the right wingers thought that that he had cast
Elliott as Achilles or something like that, But no, he
cast him as you know, the one that Odyssey has
fucked over, the one that got fucked over by everybody,
the one who clearly wasn't suited for battle, right, That's
why he cast him. That's and to me, that's very
interesting casting. It's very thoughtful casting. So I get all
of that, and I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: I felt that the performances had no weight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I don't agree. I think Damon was excellent.
I think Hathaway was excellent. I think I was disappointed
with John leg I think Samantha Morton was fucking amazing.
You really weretant you didn't think Lego Ozama was good.
He's gonna get nominated. I thought it was probably when
I thought he was amazing.
Speaker 2: He didn't know what to do with Mia Goss. I
mean she has a Yeah, he didn't know what to
do with it.
Speaker 1: He didn't know what to do with her. And I
loved her the little bits of her that I saw.
I love her the character. There's more to the character. Well,
I know he hangs all the maids exactly. Well, they're
not going to show that. We're not going to show
because he's you know, they don't want him to be
too much of a monster.
Speaker 2: Samantha Morton was awesome.
Speaker 1: She was That scene was very disturbing.
Speaker 2: That's what I was expecting more of Nolan in twenty
twenty six with all the technology and everything we have
available today.
Speaker 1: Like when she's she's molding their faces.
Speaker 2: Turning them into pigs. That was gorgeous to look at.
It disturbing, disturbing, but I was expecting more of that.
I mean, come on, yeah, do more of that. But no,
I thought it was awesome and she was really really good.
Speaker 1: She was very good and I liked that. Again. I
really want to go back and watch this film a
second time, because you know, he waits until the end
of the film to show to you that Odysseus is
actually a terrible person. But that's how she was reacting
to him. I mean, her reaction to him and his
men was understandable and relatable if you think about the
world that she lives in, and you know, again, if
you go back and watch it a second time. I
think there are a lot of hints throughout the film
that the story you're not getting is not completely true.
And I think that is a major scene, because you
if you believe everything that Odysseus is telling you up
to that point, and if you believe that his men
were very friendly and nice to her when they first
got there, then she's acting crazy. What the hell's wrong
with that bitch. You get to the end of the
story and you find out its and his men were
horrible and monsters and they were violating Zeus's law everywhere
they went. Her response actually makes much. It's protective, it's correct,
it's the right way for her to act. So I
do think it was interesting and I think it's an
excellent film that is going to get a fuck ton
of Oscar nominations. Of course, I think many of those
nominations will be warranted. I really think a Hathaway, Damon Legozamo,
they are all getting.
Speaker 2: And Samantha probably Samantha.
Speaker 1: Morton is definitely going to get one.
Speaker 2: I thought Robert Pattinson was okay.
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought he was great. Again, going back to
the casting thing. If you want some snively little shithead
they can't trust and you are waiting for someone to
kill him, you cast Robert Pattinson. Everybody he cast was
cast for those reasons because they're movie stars and they
already come with baggage. And he was using that in
the store in a way that I thought was very smart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I feel like, don't. I mean, now
you know, Yeah, it's like going to the supermarket. You
buy certain items because you you you know you can
rely on them for certain things. I don't think that's
acting to me. That's not acting to me. It's picking
people who you know you can rely on. But that's
not acting to me.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about their acting. I'm talking about their casting.
Speaker 2: Well that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: You good casting is when you were casting movie stars.
You cast people according to how you know the audience
is going to react.
Speaker 2: Why. I think the keyword he's movie star, they're probably
that's the mistake in casting them. I have to say,
I absolutely love all right. Yeah, we disagree on this
I absolutely loved him, Himish Patel whatever, he was very good.
I thought his expressions, his loyalty, it was just heartbreaking.
I thought that he did a phenomenal job. I really
liked his performance.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind seeing him get nominated as well. But no,
Zendeia and Tom Holland absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Terrible, terrible, absolutely terrible. Sometimes you don't know if it's
a Dune movie or whatever the hell she doing because
it's the same expression, the same poddy.
Speaker 1: Oh right, yeah, she pounded all the way through doing
as well, Yeah, it's her thing, it's her thing.
Speaker 2: And then why is she there? Because Tom Holland is there.
They have to work together, they can't be separated anyway.
He was terrible. He was really really bad. That guy
can't do anything but Spider Man.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's He was quite as bad as
Lorenzo was making it out to be terrible. This is
a great film with some questionable choices that are worthy
of being discussed. But I don't agree with Lorenzo's take
on everyone being terrible in this movie. And I want
to hear what you guys all think. Yes, so let's
do you anything else you want to add.
Speaker 2: The locations were absolutely gorgeous, and it's an interesting take.
It misses a lot of stuff I don't I didn't
hate the movie. I thought the movie had an interesting
take and uh, but some important parts were missing and
most of the performances were terrible. That's mighty all right, then,
we'd love to hear what you guys think. We'll be
back next We'll be back tomorrow with a bittercut movie club.
We're watching Blue Moon, and we'll be back next week
with whatever crosses our eyes or crosses our desk. Until then,
take care of yourselves. Love you Meana, by bye bye