Final thoughts and sign off

I say Mark, that's a jolly good couple of what is that like a poster and Elvis Presley drawing? No it's a it's a photograph, but it's not a it's an old Evis Presley poster. It's kind of like a you know it's quite a classic Presley image and then below it is this fantastic photo of Elvis combing his hair. I thought it was Morrissey yeah very good because somebody wrote underneath I went below the line on YouTube I'm really sorry I always feel like you and McGregor are diving down the toilet in train spots. Correct in order to retrieve the suppository. And the suppository that I found was someone going, Oh, Mark Combo says he doesn't listen to Morrissey anymore. Why has he got a big picture of him on the wall? It's not Morris. It's Elvis Presley, you Dimwit. You can make your life so much better by not doing that . But except we have a whole feature in our special live show, which we're doing after this in which members of the production team act out below the line comments. So they do it so you don't have to . May I just say to anybody, if you're not already, you know, ultra vanguard Easter Patreon, if you're not already tuned in this , every other week Simon and I do a live show after the recorded show, it's a lunchtime a naughty lunchtime street. And the highlight of it is that members of the production team re enact comments below the line comments from our YouTube channel. And they're basically just versions of I hate Mark because but they're all left by persons who probably should have just walked away from the screen rather than letting us know what they think. But it 's people who should be banned by the new government . The government's only looking at banning under sixteen's, it should also ban all those people leave messages on websites below the line. It always reminds me of that brilliant bit from Blazing Saddles when Gene Wilder says, Look , these are, you know, these are ordinary people , you know, salts of the earth . Moro Now, there'll be letters can I apologize in advance to day appears to be hedge cutting day in this particular part of Showbys, North London , where all the hedge cutters are hedge cutters. I'm not sure how many there are. How many hedge cutters would a hedge cutter cut if a hedge cutter would cut hedge ? Yeah , well, they're all here. So if there's a kind of a buzz , then and you're kind of yourself thinking, what's the buzz? Tell me what's happening . When do we ride into Jerusale m? Anyway, that's it's the hedge cutters of North London. They're all here . It doesn't sound like a Billy Bragg song, The Hedgecutters of North London . Hedgehopper's anonymous. They were good. They had one hit , it's good news week and then that was it. And then they moved on. Sorry , how did that go? Hedgehoppers anonymous. They had one hit. It was hedgehoppers. Hedgehoppers anonymous. That was what they were called. It's like a piece of sixties bubblegum. I don't remember it at all. It's good news week. Someone's let off a bomb somewhere contaminating the atmosphere. It's good news week. It was one of those evil destruction songs in the mid sixties. I can't remember anything. I have no memory of that at all . Well, you wouldn't have because it was before your time. It's before my time as well. It's just, you know, the kind of thing that you inhale over the years. What is a bit like asbestos, really? You just can't get rid of it it and's not good for anyone and I would never play it on the radio either. So when we get to discussing movies and things like that, what are you interested in today? It's an interesting week. We have the Fall of Douglas Weatherford, which is a strange sort of bittersweet black comedy starring Peter Mollen . There is a re issue of Boogie Knights, the Paul Thomas Anderson movie about which I have much to say because I love that film. And you may have noticed that there's a new Steven Spielberg movie. Oh yes . It's called Disclosure Day and that brings us to our very special guests plural. Yes, and we have Colmen Domingo and Emily Blunt , two of the many stars of the new Spielberg film, although Emily Blunt is kind of I think you know she's the one that's getting the rate reviews, I would say on Balance and Joshua Connor, in fact, it's Brits everywhere in Britain in that way . With only Colin Furth allowed to do his own accent. But he's because he's a patty. That's right. But Josh O'Connor and Emily Blunt are very American and Cmoanle D im iseg Aamerican and playing in Americ an, and you'll hear our conversation my conversation with them fairly shortly . What else I've got strictly bored him here, but I can't remember what did it take two? So in Taipe two there is there's a re issue of Baz Lehmann's breakthrough feature. We'll be doing that. Yes. We will also, I have to say, when we come to five questions, three questions, Your Majesty Film Club , we're going to be doing an absolute treat of a film in which I have asked you to prepare by bringing along a book that we co wrote and I hope you've done that . Well done, although that's the Korean edition. That's the one I'm going to be reading from. Are you okay fine? Well, that will be particularly that will be a particular treat. Simon reads his own review of a film in Korean . Yeah. Or if I pick up the wrong version, it'll be Chinese, but anyway , a reminder you can get Take two with no more of our brilliant ads. Some people really, really like the ads that we do and some people don't. But anyway, on Take Two, you can get none of them by heading off to our Patreon page and we're running a ninety percent off . ninety percent . I mean, why don't you just give it away Give it away, give it away now. Anyway, it's a ninety percent off promotion until the end of the month. You use the codee jun ninety, which is almost like june ninety but that won't get you anything . June ninety gets you ninety ninety ninety percent was june ninety joe ninety's sister That you had her own spinoff series. That would I'd watch that. Yeah . I would definitely watch that. I loved Joe Nighty. I so wanted to have the thing when, you know, you get in a revolving ball and then you put a pair of glasses on and you know stuff. That would just that would honestly, that would have been so great, wouldn't it? Do you think that is that 's the kind of AI that's essentially what you're going to be able to do. You're going to have all this knowledge, you're going to put on a special set of glasses and suddenly you'll know exactly how to do open heart surgery . But also the other thing about Joe Ninety that was brilliant was there was some reason that it was the kid that they could do it to, and it was something like because his brain wasn't already full of rubbish , he had more space to know all this stuff . And it was just like what a strange idea. We have the child with the super glasses and the super knowledge because his brain has got enough space in it. It was like the kind of Johnny Monic idea. I loved that show and I loved the theme. I loved all the Jerry Anderson shows. I loved all the Jerry Anderson theme tunes. An email from Matt Woodhouse who says, Dear it ends on and a brighter note. Long term listener , second time emailer first in the egg and spoon race in twenty eighteen aged forty four . Already a lot of information. Thank you, Matt As if camping wasn't bad enough , great friends and a bar make it just about bearable . A trip to a campsite near Rosson Wy a few years ago was marred by us being woken in the night. You'll see how this ties into the show, by the way. Okay , very shortly . Being woken in the night by a kaleidoscope of blue flashing lights and the sound of many vehicles. We'd chosen this site as it was on the river, and you could hire canoes for a day as a way of exploring the waterways, which meant the children might be happy and entertained for a few minutes before the endless moaning resumed. That's a bit jaded, I think. Astonishingly, a lovely time had been had by all , though the sobering realization of what was now happening changed the atmosphere for all . They were clearly searching for a body. Thankfully, after a few hours of our emergency services searching the river and the surrounding area, it turned out that it was just what do you think ? A bike? An attention seeking horny peacock, which had been heard and reported by another camper shout not used to the sound of said feathered show off, trying to attract a mate. They'd mistaken their scream for that of a child calling for help Fair play to them for trying to avert a disaster though. Never mind the thousands wasted conducting the search, lives risked and more importantly, our already terrible night sleep ruins. Wow. Love the show, Steve. Yours grumpily and still sleep deprived, Matt Wood, who's still not caught up by the sound of it from that interrupted . So last week no two weeks ago you talked about the sign of a peacock sounding like someone crying for help. Then to prove the point we had the actual No, we did it in the same week. Our production was so on I said in the introduction that a peacock sounds like a child shouting help. And I did an impression of it, which is which is and you said that's ridiculous. And I said, I bet you our top production team can get a sound of the peacock. And they did really swiftly, and they played it and it sounded uncannily like my impression of it. And you then went onto a whole riff about how I'm better at impersonating animals than human beings. Yeah, which seems fair enough, I think. But also that is that you could imagine how, I suppose, if you're camping and you hear that sound and you're not used to it. Do you ignore it if you think? That sounded like a kid shouting for help. But it's what do I say? It's remarkable. It really does sound like that. And you said what it actually says help . And I said, Well, when you play it, you listen to it , it is remarkable. In fact, our top production team have it queued right now. That's amazing. I don't think I call nine hundred and ninety nine on the basis of that, but anyway, it's a very it's a very good thing. And Matt, thank you very much indeed for pointing that out. So we'll talk Spielberg shortly, but there's another film which is I suppose most films are not coming out this week because Spielberg is coming out this week and so we get some other interesting quirky little films. Would that be right or is that patronizing? No, not patronizing at all because there is a very well respected tradition of counter pro gramming, which is that if there is a really, really big movie out , the thing you don't want to do is to release a moderately big movie against it. What you do is you release something that's completely the other end of the scale because it's like not every one will want to see Disclosure Day. So they may want to see the fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, which is this new film by Sean Dunn, who is a filmmaker born and raised in Edinburgh , made a splash with British by the Grace of God and Kingdom Calm. This is his feature debut and it is a strange , melancholy, wistful drifting in the third act into something eerily surreal, sort of black comedy. So Peter Mullen stars. And if Peter Mullen starring is not a recommendation enough for you, you're listening to the wrong show, okay? So Peter Mullen stars, he's Kenneth. He is a widowed devotee of the titular sir , whose ghost incidentally provides a kind of from beyond the grave narration . And the narration tells us that although this character has been forgotten, Kenneth is his last chance to redeem his name and place in history. What we know of Sir Douglas Weatherford, we know from Kenneth because Kenneth works in this visitor center as a tour guide and his tours involve him dressing as Sir Douglas Weatherford , who he reveres as an eighteenth century philosopher from whom he says he is descended. So he's very, very proud of the fact that he's actually connected to this guy. And according to Kenneth, Sir Douglas Weatherford was a great man, not least due to his breakthroughs in medical science, images of which adorned the local pub. Although as the film plays out, we discover that his version of that character may be somewhat rose tinted because actually when we hear from the character he's very dispectic. Now no one cares much about Kenneth or Weatherford until in the middle of one of his tours explaining the history a van pulls up containing this kind of game of throne style TV show which is shipped up into the village and is going to take over the village thereby usurping Kenneth and his love of real history with this whole fictional game of thrones style thing. Here's a clip . So Douglas Weatherford played a central role in world history . I'm actually a descendant of Sir Douglas . We actually share a birthday . Although I say so myself, I think I'm looking pretty good for a two hundred eighty two year old . Thus, it is the question of the age The town's keen to capitalise on the show's arrival. Never fair All that fantasy was dragons you are standing in history but no one cares they' thatre standing in history. All they care about is the Game of Thrones style TV show. So Kenneth is outraged, particularly outraged when the visitor centre is effectively taken over by this television show and he's now asked to take part in all this sword and sorcery nonsense. So he sets about mounting his own rival homemade video production to tell the real story of Douglas Weatherford and put his new generation of fans to shape. Now, according to the official description of the film, it says Fall of Douglas Weatherford is a dark comedy exploring the thin line between history and fantasy. I would say that it's also about the intr ansigency of old age , the burden of grief and loneliness because a lot of it is about somebody who has lost things and is trying to invest everything they have in something else. It's partly about the anxiety of kids caring for parents who seem to be losing the plot and also the sort of the cosmic tragedy of a feeling that you're the only person who remembers history in a world in which everyone's attention span is about five seconds. It's a very odd film and when I said this thing about counter programming it is a perfect example of counter programming because believe me, it could not be further from being disclosure day . And on the one hand, if you've got a great big science fiction movie happening over here , this seems like the perfect time to say no , that's not what I want. What I want is something different . And whether you like this movie or not, and actually I did for the most part , you can pretty much guarantee it's not like anything else that's playing on screen. Clearly, Sean Dunney wrote and directed it. got It a' verys singular sense. It was at times I was reminded of the kind of the the pointed scabrousness of Martin McDonough, for example , but this has got a real kind of there is a real sense of melanch olia under it and a lot of that comes from the fact I think Peter Mullen's performance is so great. I mean whenever whenever you see Peter you've said this before you see an actor's name on something and you think okay there's going to be something of interest in here because it's that person. You know, you know it's going to be of value . And what he does is really sort of embodies that on the side on the one hand, he's cantanchorous. On the other hand, he's sad and lonely and on and it's and there's a lot of very dark humor and dark comedy in the piece, but you kind of go into the story because of his involvement in it. The way it shot, the DP is David Galago reminded me a little bit of, you remember when we were talking about Savage House last week saying that it was kind of like Barry Lyndon with leeches? It was fast that was very much your lineup. It was very much my line which I,'m very proud of which is why I just brought it out again. But it's that thing about downtrodden majesty , something that was once grand and is now not so grand. And there is this kind of going on in the film, there's this tension between this apparently grand history and then this thoroughly mundane cryidian modernity . And the other thing that I really liked about the film is this the score is by Gazelle Twin. Now do you know Gazelle Twin's work at all? No, okay. So Gazelle Twin is Elizabeth Bernholtz, who's Ivan Novello nominated composer, producer, vocalist who on her website is described as a multidisciplinary artist whose experimental composition and unconventional production style draws on diverse musical routes from sacred choral to early electronic and contemporary dance music and combines the sound of some ancient choral hymn with something altogether more modern and uncertainty. Now the thing is that I really like Gazelle Twin's work. I had interviewed Gazelle Twin when I was doing the show at Scarlet and I promise you that if I still had the Scarla Show, I would be playing Gazelle Twin's contribution to this film over and over again because it's got this score which is really eerie. It sounds like voices but, there'ss synth and other things involved in there . And the whole there's a particular track called Tempest Lament . And it's really eerie and really kind of strangely ethereal and sad and crunky and off kilter . And I know that I am particularly interested in how much music can bring to a film. But I was really conscious watching this at an awful lot of the strange off kilter atmosphere of it was working because of this terrific score by Gazellti and it reminded me actually quite a lot of the vocal score from there was a film called Mouthpeak that I reviewed on the show a few years ago. And that score gives it a real sense of heart and soul and also sadness. And that combined with Peter Mullin was with the things that really, really drew me in. As I said, it's an odd film. It is definitely not for everyone. And there's a kind of point about two thirds of the way through in which it tips over much more sort of heavily into a kind of surreal sensibility. And it is really strange, but I saw it immediately after watching Disclosure Day , and it was the perfect kind of counterpoint because it was so much a different sensibility for him. As I said, it does have a very distinct sensibility. A while back I wrote down the phrase quotidian modernity. Did you actually say that? I think I did, I'm sorry. But I am nothing if not pretentious. Just look below the line on the YouTube channel. Yes, Sud's Corner, there you go. I've been in Sud's corner quite a few times. Is it still a feature? I don't know. I mean, I confess that I haven't haven't bought private eye for a little while. I haven't had a bath . That's that is a very good callback. And a beer in a private eye, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah , although that makes it sound definitely slightly dodgy. Yeah, it does, it does. But no, I have been in I have been in suits corner many, many times and it's a badge I wear with great pride. All right, still to come. Box office top ten plus Mark talking about Boogie Nights and Disclosure Day, special guest Emily Blunt Coleman Domingo talking Spilberg in just a moment Right then we have a box office top ten at number thirteen Savage House Which we were just talking about in the previous review of Sir Douglas Weatherford. I mean I, really enjoyed it. I thought that Richard E. Grant was having terrific fun. I thought that Claire Foy was the real heart and soul of the film. And again, I mean, as with Sir Douglas Weatherford, this is out in cinemas at the same time that Disclosure Day is going to be out in cinemas. So it's it is classic counterprogramming. Void stuff on Patreon. Hello, Mr. Stuff or Mr Stuff. I'm void stuff . That's who this is from. Someone called Void, first name, stuff, second name. Okay , is that a real name do you think? I suspect well let's say that it is. Okay , someone has gone through life. Hello, I'm Void Stuff . I'm glad to see Savage House got filmed of the week last week as I had a blast watching it on Saturday . While a rather top heavy opening dumps exposition like a Dickensian novel, the characters that populate the film's bleak house are memorable enough to keep everything zipping along nicely even with a two hour runtime. I'd love to see with Nail with Richard E. Grant's character here. Chauce , yeah, Chaunt's character here, Chauncey, go head to head somehow. I think this is the first character in Grant's repertoire that could give that miserable old accidental holiday maker a run, for his money in a battle of pretentiousness, and I say that as a major compliment. Stefan on Patreon , the film may have taken inspiration from too many sources. It also seems to want to make sure this does not go unnoticed what initially is amusing becomes tiring over time. The ending is fundamentally unsatisfactory, trying too hard to be a moral tail. End a little bit earlier and spare us what is another example of Peter Glanse the, director, and writer, basically saying, just in case you missed what I was trying to say and do I wish the film had been more condensed, the acting keeps the film alive, sadly, the edit does not. Savage House number thirteen. I really enjoyed it, you know? Pedi is at number eleven. Yeah, so this is a Teleglanguage Indian sports action drama wasn't press screened. If anybody's seen it, let us know. Correspondents at Codema. com Tuner is at number ten . Which I think both you and I enjoyed. Obviously hasn't set the box office alight , but I do think the performances the performances are good and it was last week we had an email from somebody who said that it ought to have been called Baby Grand Driver, which I thought was a joke that I wish that I had made. I think Tuna will be watched for a long time. I think it'll have its life and maybe it'll be gone next week, but I think when it turns up on a streaming service, people will think, Oh, this is good. I'm enjoying this. I also suspect it's one of the films that when Leo Woodal is absolutely everywhere in some blockbuster movie, people will go, did you ever see Tuna? Because that was actually one of his best performances. And it's kind of a timeless thriller, really? Yeah, it's not essentially based in any period, but I do think it's very good. Devil wears Prada two at number nine. It's number ten in America. Sixth week of release has done very, very well. I don't think it's great. Sorry, you? I was just zipping on here. Sheep detectives are number eight. Enjoy it very much. Really liked it. Very odd. Michael is at seven here and seven there. Didn't enjoy it very much, really didn't like it, not odd. Number six, Star Wars, The Mandalorian and Baby Odor or Michael Benteen's Potty Time in Space, I refer everybody to the finest review of the film, which was delivered by Your Child Wan, who was a great fan of the series and concluded that the film was basically a bunch of TV episodes strung together every half an hour. Yes, he enjoyed it also. Yeah, he enjoyed it. It's from. Number five, number two in America is obsession . Well, obsession is now how much money has it taken at the box office? Read that figure, Simon? ten million three hundred thir andty three five hundred and sixteen pounds twenty one pence. And it cost very, very little. And it is now sort of part of this discussion that everyone's having about Oo h has the world changed so profoundly that it's now possible for these movies to do this well and the answer seems to be well it hasn't happened suddenly I mean it has been happening for a while but yeah I mean I thought obsession was terrific but I think it's great that it's done as well as it had but, we still have the number four ahead of it, which is which is backrooms. Which in its second week of release has taken how much ? It has taken eight million six hundred eight thousand eight million , six hundred and fifty one thousand eight hundred and eighty one pounds and three p. It's I'd just like to add to everybody Simon is adding the pence numbers as a joke. It could be true. It could be true, but it isn't true. But that is, I mean, just look at that. Number five and number four , those two films which between them wouldn't fill the catering budget of the biggest movies that are being released at the moment, have between them taken eighteen million . It's astonishing. So backrooms at Ford, number three in America, the backrooms says Charlotte, aged thirty eight in London, which is how she signs her email. The backrooms left me feeling completely discomb obulated. It was deeply unsettling and genuinely frightening and it made me feel scared in a way I don't think I've ever experienced before. What a remarkable achievement for a film. More than that, though, it gave me a real surge of excitement about the potential of YouTube as a platform for discovering diverse hidden talent. It offers young artists and filmmakers opportunities to showcase their work in ways that might once have been impossible, opening doors for people who may otherwise have been overlooked or never had access to the film industry So backrooms is it number four. There's more on backrooms in the overflow car park . Sign up for extra takes on patreon. com and you use june ninety until the end of the month for ninety percent off. This is going to be repeated until you're fed up with the fact and you actually just go okay, I'll just sign up then right and number three is Masters of the Universe is a new entry Nathan Pavey on Patreon says Masters of the Universe was silly fun, lots of throwbacks to the original cartoon toy line it's not going to win any awards, especially not in CGI but sometimes you need a bit of nostalgic ridiculous fun. Eddie says What I can't quite pin down is why I liked it so much. Perhaps it was the mood or simply a strong hit of nostalgia. Not just for Heman, but for the broader eighties fantasy style it channels, unashamedly c amp, unbothered by seriousness, run down as I may be, I was swept up in it and even got chills when Adam finally got the power. It made me feel like a kid again, something I haven't experienced in a cinema for quite a while. And Amand says for one listener , the real magic of this Masters of the Universe film isn't just nostalgia. It's that it captures the spirit of the original filmmation cartoon where action always came with a moral core . Director Travis Knight leans into that tone delivering something that's big, strange, and joyfully sincere, with wild characters bombastic, synth heavy scoring, and a cast that's fully committed, particularly a standout skeleton. The result is a film that feels like less like a cynical reboot and more like a heartfelt continuation, one that lands especially well for those who grew up with it, but still has enough energy and imagination to pull in new audi ences. Finally, Dr. Smith earned this, I thought the soundtrack was phenomenal. Brian May's guitarists were epic, the lush rock lines pushed the film along, the needle drops were spot on, the music pushed the heroism through the whole story. The soundtrack needs some critical acclaim, love the movie as a whole, but let's show some love for the music . So that is for Masters of the Universe and number three. Well, we did show some love for the music when reviewing the film and I agree . I think it's colourful fun, entertaining, throwaway stuff. It is half an hour too long . But it's, you know, it's jolly and it is Jared Leto's best performance . Again, to repeat, you can't see his face and his voice doesn't sound like him, but it is his best performance. I thought it was perfectly fine . I don't feel strongly about it either way, but it's very nice to hear that people have had such positive reactions to it because if you are a devotee of Masters of the Universe and you have an emotional investment in it, then it's great that it seems to have to have paid that back. So good. I'm really pleased. Number two is the amazing digital circus col the last act? And it looks as though it's taken like two hundred quid more than Masters of the Universe. Yeah, so basically, this is the final installment of this animated web series , Australian animated web series, of which I knew nothing at all until it turned up in cinemas. Partly inspired apparently by the writings of Harlan Ellison, it's going to come to streaming on the nineteenth So just last night I just dipped into a little bit of the previous series which seemed very strange and I will then I'll review when it comes when it comes to it. But it was basically because it's the last installment they put it into cinemas. And it's done astonishingly big business . So once again, everything is in flux . The rules do seem to have changed quite profoundly. Funnily enough, I bumped into a friend of mine who works in distribution just in Oxford Street just yesterday . And I said, How's it going? And they were saying, Well, a particular film had opened and completely tanked . And they'd been surprised because they thought the film would do quite well and it really hadn't at all, hadn't touched the sides of the box office. And he said, But in the meantime , amazing digital circus is cleaned up. And I said, because I'm me , what's amazing digital circus? And that was the first I heard of it. David on Patreon, the amazing digital circus was, unfortunately for me, a let down ending to a very good and promising TV series. I have to admit though that because I came to the series very late, literally like two days before the film came out, I wasn't as emotionally invested in the characters as many people are. The show deals with a lot of issues such as anxiety, abandonment, abandonment, and so on , all things that I'm lucky enough not to have in my life, so I'm very much aware that I am not the target audience for the show and whilst I enjoyed the series the finale didn't quite deliver on the potential darkness that had been teased before The description of it is follows a group of humans trapped inside a circus themed virtual reality simulation where they're overseen by an erratic artificial intelligence while coping with personal traumas and psychological tendenc . And from the brief bit that I've seen, it looks quite interesting. And number one is Scary Movies six . This from Tom in Doncaster . Dear Mark and Simon, since COVID it's been rare for me to be in a truly full screening Dune Part two Oppenheimer Barbie Wicked So it was a real surprise booking scary movie and finding the screen nearly sold out . Critics haven't been kind, so expectations were low, and yes, the film itself is only okay . There are a few laughs, especially the get out parody, but nothing remarkable. What was remarkable was the audience. It's been a long time since I've watched a comedy with a full house and the film clearly landed, big laughs, people sharing moments, quoting lines as they left. I walked out with a spring in my step, not because the film was great, but because of the shared joy in the room , a reminder that sometimes the magic isn't on screen but in the audience around you. Colin Scott says this latest installment is the most miserable experience I've ever had in the cinema . So on the one hand , literally zero laughs. I could make a funnier parody in my own front room and I am not a funny person. So I disagree with Mark's assertion that this is probably the best in the series. It really isn't. Please never let away ans anywhere near this sort of word processor or camera ever again . So more discussion on current films in the overflow car park, but that's scary movies at number one. Well, interestingly enough , a critic friend of mine just as I was going into the screen ing of Disclosure Day said to me, you know, you were very kind to Scary Movie Six . And I said, Well, I don't know that I was because what I was saying was, I do think it's probably the best of the series. I know that obviously one of the listeners doesn't agree with that , but because I could see that there were jokes in it that would be crowd pleasing Friday night fare . And from that first email and I'm again just nothing but delighted that you had such a great experience. And I love the fact that you've described it as being, you know, the magic isn't on the screen, the magic is in the room because there are jokes in it that I could see would land well with an audience. And I and I called it right when I said, you know, I don't like it at all, but I can see that it may well have a big opening weekend. My suspicion is and we might see how this plays out that next week it'll be virtually gone. Like it will have dropped three or four places and then that'll be it that it was it was absolutely the Friday that it opened weekend . But again, I'll say the key issue for me is that all the things in it that are funny hark back to the old Wayne's brothers back catalog back to things like Hollywood Shuffle, I'm going to get you sucked at that kind of stuff and they have nothing to do with horror movies. It's just a shame that this has to be strapped around a horror movie spoof because that is the one thing that the scary movie series has never understood is scary movies . And box office fans , don't forget that take Ultra, which is available exclusively to Patreon Ultras we have a feature called Grossly Remarkable, which is a monthly box office feature where you get to sound like a right, clever clogs when you go down the pub because you'll have lots of facts and figures. And of course, Mark, don't forget you can use your June ninety, not june ninety, but you can use your june ninety to get ninety percent off until the end of the month. I can't believe ninety percent off . ninety. I mean, not just eighty five Anyway, that's enough corporate nons . We talk with Emily Blunt and Coleman Domingo, it's Spielberg . It's Disclosure Day and everything is next So our guests this week are two of the stars of the new Steven Spurbug film Disclosure Day, Emily Blunt and Colman Domingo. Do we need to go so ciario, of course, young Victoria, Devil Wears Prada, Luper, Mary Poppins Returns Into the Woods, a quiet place Oppenheimer and so on. Coleman Domingo, two time Tony W inner Fear of the Walking Dead, Marini's Black Bottom, Color Purple, Rustin Sinsing or Emmy for Euphoria, Oscar Nums for Rustin and for singing, so these are two class performers and they are about to perform for you after this clip from Disclosure Day . If this is all their plan, you can be sure it's in their interest, not ours. That's a very lonely way to look at the world. Now don't condescend to me. I'm listening to you, Noah. Something I've learned quite a bit about. From your friends? Yes . They regard empathy as an evolutionary advantage, as the foremost evolution ary advantage. In fact the core of animate existence , our rejection of this understanding is leading us to our extinction. That is a clip from Disclosure Tay. I'm delighted to say that Colman Dominger, Emily Bunts have joined us. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Hello. What are you eating? Be honest. I was eating a Percy pig before you. What were you eating before you started huffing pigs? I actually have a Percy pig in my hand as well. outside with a big bag of messy pigs. Listen, whenever I'm in the UK, gummies are my thing. You know, she's gonna be best gummies . She's very worried about my energy pay. Insane. So on the subject of the film , is there anything in your career that is as buzzy and as exciting as a new Spielberg film with the hint of science fiction and aliens? I mean, it's just extraordinary. I mean, Colm Stane,ven Spielberg did find this genre. Truly. This is his genre . And so we screamed with excitement when we got the call to meet him. Then when we read the scripts, you say we me and Colman. Yeah. Because Cmoanle and I are together . We joined up the arm. Congratulations . John and Gral are fine . Absolutely. They're absolutely fine with it. Yeah, we were just, why were we just really delighted? Really? Blown backwards. Yeah, truly truly because the idea, I mean, it's such a huge film. I mean, it's typical Spielberg. He takes you to the wildest parts of your imagination , that innocent child in you, but also he takes you to worlds that you that are unknown, that the anticip ation that he has in his movies, and now we're actually in it. So it's kind of cool. Comment, tell us about Hugo. Tell us about your character. Hugo is someone who knows way more than everyone else. He's sort of puppeteering and really there's the whole film is basically a race for information, whether or not we want to expose information or withhold it. And he's on the side of he believes he has reasons why it should be out there in the world. And so you'll find that out in the movie. But he's someone who's a bit more I think he's the philosopher and the heart in that way of like of this whole idea . And I think there's other sides who are looking at more, you know, commercializ ing things and a bit more rigid about rules . Emily, tell us about Margaret. So you present the weather on the local. So we're in Kansas. So it's a thriller. It's the present day it's Kansas. You're on the television. She is the weather girl at a TV station in Kansas City . And I think she's a restless , quite scatty, tangentle person trying to find her sense of belonging, sense of self , can't quite grasp purchase of what she wants in life . And I think she's just looking for really what she was made for. And I don't think she ever anticipated she was made for the kind of journey that she goes on on Disclosure Day, but I think she's a very classic Spielberg character, those people who are in a situation where they're way over their heads. I think Steph loenves outsiders . He loves people who are sort of white knuckling their way through something extraordinary. What can you say the gifts that your character has? Because very early on in the film we see you turning up at the TV station , you start to speak and then you start making noises spoken about this. But what can you tell us about that gift and what on earth you're doing? Well, it's sort of what to say so I don't give too much away , you know, as I talk to you, but she has a gift has been bestowed upon her. Something has been triggered from an experience she had in her childhood that she has a foggy, blurry recollection of and everything is suddenly exposed on national television and really at the core of she sort of represents the theme of empathy in the film. She has really bestowed the most amplified version of this . The film is kind of about empathy really, and your character Colm seems to be also one of the most empathetic characters out there. I know Steven Spielberg has talked about empathy being a superpower, which kind of means that Elon Musk is not going to like this film, but who cares? But you are you are both, you represent very powerful examples empathetic . Hugo believes in the possibility of leaning into the other and not being afraid of it. Because I think there's always some thoughts about like, oh that the things outside of ourselves are going to harm us in some way. But that's actually not the reality. We have to actually lean into it and get to understand and know. And so I think we can parcel that out whether it's about non human life form, UAPs, or could be your neighbor. You know what I mean? To lean into the thing and to like don't be afraid of the things that you don't know . Lean into it. Is there any extent to which Colman, you are sort of representing Steven Spielberg? That's a great question. Are you Steven Spielberg in this field? Because it felt to me as though you were the director of this thing.. This is your show No, he's like the puppeteer. He is the puppet. In many ways, I think I don't know what Stephen would say to that, but I do feel that I am kind of a surrogate for Stephen's philosophy. I feel like that's him. He's got that that sparkle, that belief that hope and humanity . But hope and humanity. Truly. So I feel like possibly a surrogate, I'd like to believe so. When Stephen would direct me in certain scenes, I would see that sparkle in his eye and that hope and belief. And I literally would just zone in on that and say, I'm going to play a little bit of that. Can I ask you both what it's like to be on a on the set and being directed by one of the all time greats? He just walked out walked down the corridor, the thrill and excitem ent of people just as they see him. But when you're being directed when you're in the set, whether it be an intimate close up scene or whether it be an action scene, what is that, what is that like? I just feel he maintains the intimacy and he protect s you very much . He sort of shields you from the iconography that comes with him. You know, he sort of wants you to be blind to that. And it's just in his incredibly humanistic tendencies, you know, he just is able to be a friend to you, be emboldening to you . And he's obsessed with actors. He's very curious about them about what you might bring. There's great spontaneity to his sets. You don't feel straight jacketed by him . Nothing seems overwhelming, even though some of those sets were absolutely ginormous and extraordinary . But it's his. It's his nature that protects you from the ripple effect that you just felt as he walked walks down the corridor. He wants to be one of you. I did find his spontaneity so exciting. You know, you would ever come in every day. And you'd kind of walk through it and stagger through it and he'd watch what you wanted to do in the scene. And then he'd walk away for a bit and he goes, okay, this is what we're going to do and he knows exactly the shots and how to convey. Just wondering how can be spontaneous in a movie like this. Because from the outside we'd imagine that it's all rigid. You say this so prepped of course, I'm sure he's prepped for a year for this film but made a lot of decisions with his department heads, et cetera. But in the day as well he's s,ort of looking for that special, that magic, that thing that you can only get when the divine resides on set. You're like, Oh, this is now, I'm in the room with all these people with Emily and Coleman and Josh and Colin and Eve, and this is what's now sparking him. And he's always looking for an in and what's the thing that has surprised him that he hadn't anticipated. And he's just learnt over the years that that is his superpower is just to spot something. And you see, he just drops in on it. Yes. I'm going to focus on this. I'm going to rack focus to that. And that wasn't set up. A lot of it was set up, but he said, Oh no, now I see you give me other ideas of what the story is. Yeah. At what stage did you say, Emily that George is your fav ourite film. I mean, I think probably from about the age like my early twenties was actually when I came back to it because I remember being absolutely traumatized by it when my dad brought it home when I was about eight I think 'cause he wanted to watch it because he'd seen it many times. He loves that movie. I was horrified, terrified by it. I was definitely a victim of Spielberg when it came to the ocean. And I'm still I'm still really uncomfortable in the ocean, I'm like but then I started watching it in my early twenties and then John and I my husband and I became completely obsessed with watching it and we've watched every behind the scenes you could imagine on it. And I think what I love about it is it's not about a shark . It's about fear and it's about and it's about the unknown. And I think it's about not only is there this three hundred sixty, you feel it visually their isolation at sea, but it's their own emotional isolation and how they deal with fear. That's it became a performance piece for me more than anything . Finally, there's so many things that we could pick up on. But when you got to see this picture , with everything added in with the effects and John Williams score, Coleman, what did what did you think? Did you watch it alone? I watched it alone. I watched it alone in the Steven Spielberg Theatre at Universal. Did you have Percy Pigs with you? I didn't have any Percy Pigs, so I was widely out of I was too nervous. But I really was nervous and I was jumping out of my seat and I was filled with it's as if I didn't read the script. I knew what was going to happen , but there was so much things that I didn't know . And then by the time I got to the end, I just sat there, and I sat there overwhelmed with emotion. And I was trying to figure out why was I sobbing like this? And I called Steven immediately and I said, Thank you so much . You really believe in our humanity and the possibility of what we can be. And I thought that was that's the most beautiful thing that I felt. I remember when you saw it all put together ? I saw it with Josh and the two of us sat there gripping each other and yelling and laughing. And I think we forgot that it's a real gift where as an actor you can go, oh I forget I'm even in that movie because you just swept along for the ride. It was I felt limlbess. I couldn't even walk . It was I was so thrilled. It's a fantastic ride. I can't wait to go and see it again. Oh good. Thank you. Emily Collin, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Dean. Get your pursy pigs out. Daniel A Spielberg junket is just astonishing. The numbers of people that were around there were absolutely incredible. You're used to them and then you see a movie like this and you realize a military operation, isn't it? Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah . And I said to as I was sort of taking a long time gathering my stuff together, I said to Emily , just by saying , Jules is not about a shark, you do realize that you've just lit erally a problem again , which we had sorted and put to bed because Steven did tell Mark and I that it is about a shark. Of course it's about a shark. And then you come on and then you say that and you just spoiled it for everybody. Anyway, so we had a laugh. And clearly , I know that they're very good at what they're doing, but there was a great atmosphere in the room. Coleman was terrific. I hadn't met him before , but they just seemed to be like a very good bunch of people who clearly enjoyed being part of one of the movies of the year, you know? Yeah, yeah. Okay , so I'd like to take a chunk of time for us to discuss this if that's okay because obviously it is the big movie the week and you've seen it and we've just done that interview. So this won't be brief. Okay so disclosure day al,ien encounter , a sci fi adventure from Steven Spielberg, of course, whose back catalog includes the genre defining ET Close Encounters more recently AI in that I said more recently more recently than those films. So apparently Spielberg was inspired to return to the alien visitation theme after reading an article in the New York Times called Glowing Auras and Black Money, the Pentagon's Mysterious UFO program , which had rekindled his interest in the subject. And there's been a lot of stuff about Spielberg saying, you know, I do believe in alien visitation . On the case of this, he originated the story as he did on things like poltergeist and Goonies . But the script is by David Kepp. David Kepp's writing credits, he has some great writing credits, but they include Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Sculge, Care wrote, The Dan Brown adaptations, Angels and Demons and Inferno, which as you know, I'm not a fan of . And most recently, Jurassic Park Rebirth, which as I said when I read the film is one of the worst written films I've ever seen. Apparently for Disclosure Day, he did forty two drafts of the screenplay. Yeah, it's incredible . Which leaves one wondering what the forty third one would have been like. So as you said brilliantly in that interview , it's an action movie about empathy in which aliens, as we heard in that clip, so this isn't a plot spoiler, consider empathy as the strongest evolutionary power. So Emily Blunt is Kansas Kans,as City TV weather anchor. Margaret Fairchild, when I hear Margaret Fairchild, I hear Morgan Le Fae. I don't know whether that's just me, but it seems to me, you know, the sort of enchantress from the King of the Arthurian legend. Anyway, she has an encounter with an exotic bird. This bird flies in through the window and looks at her. And after this, she suddenly finds herself the human equivalent of the babelfish from Hitchhiker's guide. She can speak and understand any language. More importantly, she appears to be able to almost read people's minds and know exactly what they're thinking and how they're feeling and what they need. So she becomes the most profoundly empathetic person in the room. Empathy is a superpower . Josh O'Connor, meanwhile, is this nerdy cyber specialist Dan, who seems to be at the beginning, we meet him at resting match, he's on the run from the authorities having somehow paloined of great value to them , which is to do with the disclosure or enclosure of information about alien landings . Then we have Colman Domingo, who is Hugo, who is the disclosure advocate, who he described the story as being a race for information story . And Emily Blunt's character calls him in the film The Man Who Knows Everything. So basically the most the ultimate basil exposition, Domingo himself described the character as a puppeteer. And you described him as being the Stephen Spielberg on screen. He's basically he's the author there. He's the author. He's the director. He's the guy who was there to explain everything . Then you have Colin Furth at his most sinister with a sinister beard as Noah Scanlan who is this spook who is on Josh O'Connor's trail clearly has hidden issues of his own and is deeply deeply beardy and weird . And then you have Josh O'Connor's partner, Jane , who's got a secret of her own about her own past , and her past directly link s to one of the things that Disclosure Day does, which is a discussion about if we discovered that there are aliens , would it cause all religion on Earth to basically have an existential meltdown, which incidentally is a subject which is addressed quite profoundly in contact, which is a film that you and I both love . There is the very clear thing set up about Jodie Foster, the scientist and Matthew McConaughey, the kind of the evangelical character, and can science and religion coexist? So first things first, this is a Spielberg movie. No one does grand scale adventure and action like Steven Spielberg. There is a scene in this film involving two cars and a train that is properly nail biting in a kind of dual meets the French connection kind of way. I mean it, was really, really gripping and it's you know, no one does this stuff as well as Spielberg. There are tense chases, there are equally tense standoffs. There is mystery and intrigue aplenty. There is even a moment in which it effectively does the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter. And incidentally , the thing, the alien artifact that is being passed around is clearly a Harry Potter w, isandn't it? I mean, it's they hold it like a wand, it glows like a wand. Yes. Let's get Ray Feins in to explain it one more to explain that what is it? Because was it the elder wand? Is it? The thing that he had clearly never heard of when you asked him where it came from. So it's kind of, I mean, yes, it's space aliens, but it's also Harry Potter. Now all this and I want to be absolutely clear about this from the from the outset, okay ? This is all really good , you know, pop corn, Friday night, multiplex pleasing. And I don't mean any of this is a negative . You go along to see a Spielberg movie with action and adventure and stuff and you are going to get it because he delivers and big screen get the biggest screen and the best sound system you can find. Yeah and get it, you know, get it get there early, you know, stock up and the performances are terrific. I have always absolutely loved Emily Blunt, but I think I think Colin Furth is really terrific in this. I think he's I think he is doing sinister beady really, really well. So the first thing to say is it's a good rumping adventure movie . Now we get into the more problematic area for me . The story clearly has echoes of close encounters, inasmuch as you have central characters who , due to an earlier engagement with aliens , find themselves possessed of some mysterious knowledge that is driving them nuts until they discover what the purpose of that knowledge is. Now that is basically the plot of close encounters , okay? But in close encounters , the knowledge that is given to Richard Drefus' character he has the image of Devil's tab, but he doesn't know what it is. He's just got this shape in his head. It's got this, you know, it's this distinctively shaped landmark thing in I think it's north of Wyoming. And this image obsesses him so much that his life falls apart. The character's life falls apart, he starts making it out of mashed potatoes, then he starts making it out of mud. Everything falls apart. The family completely collapsed because he's been driven nuts. And it is it's a really, really haunting idea with a kind of somewhat bleak ending. I think spoiling closing encounters is perfectly f ine, which is that in the end the character leaves his family and goes off in the spaceship because it's the only way he can be happy is having this knowledge explained to him finally. Now in this case , you have this the weird thing, which is that Josh O'Connor's knowledge is an incredible he can speak the language of maths and Emily Blunt's ability is that she's this incredible empath who can understand everybody in any language and what they need. And somehow these two things are the kind of key element to explaining what is going on with the plot. Somehow these two disparate elements figure out how the mystery is going to is going to unravel itself. So my problems are these firstly , I think that in the third act , the action of the third act makes no sense at all. I mean, I think it's perfectly fine. I'm not bothered by and I don't want to give anything away about what happens in the third act, but I think I think it's like it's an action adventure rom and you go, no, hang on, hang on. That does not mean were you surprised when Jesus I was surprised when Jesus turned up and it was played by Jared Leto was a shock was just a matter I mean a you know obvious obvious bit of casting but well done fact. that he The was speaking fluent Aramaic and Emily Blunt's character understood him, I thought was a good callback joke, you know, well done for that . But if you thought that at the end of close encounters it required a willing suspension of disbelief to believe that the authorities would allow the Richard Drefers character to wander onto the spaceship . Honestly, this requires a whole levitation lifting system of disbelief to believe that this is how the end thing would but it doesn't matter. That's okay. I can kind of, you know, clock your logic at the door and let your emotions do the talking. And for a film which has got this kind of empathy thing going on, I can just about do that. The bigger problem is this that when we finally get to the Denimon the explanations , it did feel to me an awful lot like a very very, old fashioned kind of series of revelations. You remember in close encounters, there's the thing when the airmen come back from, they disappeared in the Bermuda triangle or something. There's like a really weird thing with all these air su anddd haveen ly turned up from nowhere. And it's like, wow , wow, that's amazing. The point is we now live in an age in which in two thousand six, Anton Deck made a Roswell movie called Alien Autop sy . And we live in a world in which in two thousand two, M. Knight Schimalan made a crop circles movie, Science . And I think that when we think of Spielberg and Spielberg imagining alien encounters . What we think is, you know, give me something amazing, give me something that I hadn't imagined. Give me something two thousand one , and you don't get that. What you get is a late entry in Spielberg's filmography. I mean he's a filmmaker in his late seventies and honestly the sensibility of disclosure day is it's a film that could be from the late seventies . It's very old fashioned and its ideas are very old fashioned outside of that central light that central thing about what happens if we disclose this information ? He's the film shot by Janish Kraminsky, he's shot worked with many times before thirty five mill , there is a lot of lens flare. Now, it's interesting that the lens flare particularly happens in a particular circumstance in a particular set that has, because of its nature in the plot, a nostalgic thing. But it is almost at times like JJ Abrams doing a parody of Steven Spielberg which is, you know, Steven Spielberg likes lens flare , let's do a ton of lens flare . And I also think that in an age in which a rival talked about the way in which we'd have to redefine language to communicate with aliens or under the skin talked about the way in which you'd have to rethink the concept of humanity to talk about aliens . It's just not satisfying profoundly to have something which is so old fashioned in its revelations. And finally and this I throw this open the audience , when you see it , the music at the beginning of the end credits literally sounded to me like a quote from the X files . And I thought, oh , okay that's the thing. That's that's that's what it's doing. It's it's almost throwing back and this is from the guy who kind of invented this this genre of filmmaking. It's almost throwing back to a TV series from a previous century . So so the key thing is I enjoyed it. I thought it was fine. I thought the performances were terrific and there were some nice ideas in it . But it's ultimately such an old fashioned movie , not and not in a wonderfully nostalgic way, but in a kind of okay, I think I need something better than that at the end of this because I think we've moved too far . And what I really need is the heartbreak of Richard Dreyfus' character getting the spaceship and turning his back on humanity because of what's happened as a result of this encounter rather than what we get here . I throw this to you now. What do you feel? Because I know you loved it. I mean, I agree with most of what you're saying. It was old fashioned, but I think it was old fashioned in a way that would if the kids were still in the house , I would say right, let's all go and see this because there is some magic that is happening here . I think what I would say is I enjoyed it because there was enough Spielbergian magic to make this film happen . You are absolutely correct. I was disappointed about Roswell and Crop Circles, which we know are fate. We've done with that. We have moved on from that. Even at and deck no faith . It's a it's not a this is not a genre defining film in the way Close Encounters was. And you're absolutely right to mention a rival which is a masterpiece and did make you think, wow, I have never seen this before . This is wonderful . And every time I watch it, I kind of forgotten about the twists and have forgotten quite how brilliant it is . Also the digital animals were not quite good enough. Can I can I embarrassed to say we're not can I just okay so can I just raise this very quickly ? So the shonky digital animals, which I said, I can't believe you can spend this much money on a movie and get chonky digital fox how hard is it to do a fox? I mean, you know, Lars Vontrier did a talking fox in Antichrist. It's not that hard. And somebody said to me, Ah , it's on purpose because as the plot reveals , they're not what you think they are. All right. And I yeah, and I went, yeah, no , they're shocky digital animals . But I left but I left I left the screening with a smile because I think you can and there's a reason that I apologize for this in case it drives people mad, but there is a reason I mentioned Elon Musk in that interview . Because he has said that empathy is a weakness . The fact that it is this film at this time , yes , means that I mean, imagine so we're here. We live in the UK. That's great. Imagine if you live in the country that has this sour , corrupted cruel White House running things. You have to say that's not how we would that's not they are not the values that we have. is here is a guy who's been doing this for fifty years and he is still enchanted with the world. He still believes in compassion, that empathy is a superpower and this. So this so this film at this time works and I would like to take the family to go and see it. With all of the reservations that you have quite correctly analyzed , I left feeling that the world was a better place for this film. And I would say that actually that is you and I have done this version of this show together for several decades and I've always felt privileged to work with you on it. And I think that at its best it's this. It's that I can go as a critic, I think all these things are true and you can say what you just said because you're absolutely right because, in a world in which Elon Musk and the rest of it's happening, a film whose headline plot is empathy is a superpower is on the side of things that are good. So in the same way that War of the Worlds, the Spielberg version has to be seen in the context of nine hundred eleven It didn't just appear out of nowhere. This film didn't just appear out of nowhere . And you will never get these , you know, Spielberg or any of these actors to talk about this because that's not what they do. But when I mentioned Elon Musk, Coleman particularly smiled and nodded. I think that's fair enough to say , you know, because they know , because this is their world, where empathy is under attack, and people, you know, that it's seen as a weakness by a lot of very noisy and wealthy people. So for a film to come out and say, You know what? Actually, it's the thing that makes us hum an , you know, is quite a gift, I think. And may I just say having just said that impassionately about and I do, I honestly do feel that about working with you, Simon, it is a privilege for exactly this reason. One of our top product ion team on the nerdier side of the thing have just put a message which says chaos reigns . I know, you know . So I just and one final point which I don't think is and I think I've got the name of this person , right? Okay there is one person sort of overlooked, but it's difficult to talk about because this is literally in the last few ten minutes of the film. Okay, there is an actor who I think is called Courtney Grace , who plays the NBC News Anchor , who is covering all the stuff that Mark's just explained. All of that is happening and being explained in the last ten minutes. Yes. Because that's the role of the Denmark. Yes. And she is the anchor who is interrupting coverage of what appears to be like almost new war. Imperval. Okay, careful. Bad stuff happening abroad. She has to break away from that to bring you this story. And she's and she's the anchor thing, what are we watching? And then she has to react to the film that comes up . And I thought she was fantastic. I thought she met that is, you know, first of all, this is the story that a news anchor would dream of getting . We move away from this huge story to bring you this what? What is this? We're watching and I just thought I thought she got it absolutely right and I should say C,ourtney, once again , that you do know that because as we've spoken about before, you were on air live when nine hundred eleven happened and the instruction that you were given was just describe what you're seeing Yeah . Well that 's and that had been told me when we started the whole thing. But to be able to react, I mean, obviously she's an actor and it's describing no, I understand but it's easy to get that wrong, you know, and go all bombastic or whatever, but I thought she had the right balance of humanity and general I can't believe quite what we're seeing. Yes. And I would say and I would say that if you think that that, then means that that is a job well done because you actually know what that's like. Yeah, okay. That's well, that's very kind. I mean to do it whilst being envisioned is something else altogether. So I think we've done a good job because I think I want people to go and see it because it's amazing and there's so much and Emily Blunt is can do anything. She does one she walks on water . She's like, you know, earlier we're talking about actors who like who if they're in a movie you're going to go okay well there's going to be something interesting in there she is definitely one . F Llikeorence Pugh is another one. Absolutely. She was I was talking to Matt Hag, the author who's wrote a book called The Midnight Library, Huge International Hit. And it's going to be a movie and Florence Pugh is going to be at the heart of it. You go, okay, well, that's going to be good then, isn't it? Because it's got Florence Pew in it. And Emily Blund is definitely one of those people who, you know, you could do Sicario and you can do this. So this is yeah, go something to see. Well, it may be it's movie of the week. I dread to think and you're going to dread to think. I dread to think what you're going to say when we get to the end. But anyway, obviously, once you've seen disclosures, I'm sure there'll be a lot of correspondence on that correspondence at Carbonama. com. Do we have time should we do the laughter lift? Yeah, go ahead. Do you have a sense of gay abandon at the moment? I do. I feel both of those things. Okay, so here we go then. Let's step in and play the music. Now I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to say this properly because this is like a written joke probably. But hey Mark, what fruit did Romeo and Juliette eat . I don't know what fruit did Romeo and Juliette eat Cantil . Cantilope It doesn't really work. It doesn't, because actually the fruit that they talk about is pomegranate. So that's the correct answer. It's just not funny. It's a cantiloupe Not gone. Mark, did you know that Mortal Kombat was actually based on a Scandinavian church song? I didn't. It was a finish . And with all this talk about Warwick Student Radio reminds me of my japes during those years. I once went to a once went to a fancy dress party with a girl on my back. Who are you supposed to be? said the host. I'm a turtle, said I. Well, who's that on your back then? Oh, I said that's Miss Shell Very good . What's still to come? This is where Mark says my review of Boogie Nights plus I was going to do that. I knew that's what it was. Okay, what's to come? Mark? It's a re issue of Boogie Nights. Oh, excellent, on the way . Okay, so we've got some boogie night stuff to come, but first of all, an email from a name with held person . Okay . This is there's quite a long version of this, but this is the shortened version. But it raises some interesting points, which I think you might be interested in. Okay, and it says, I am Name With Held, a film graduate with a particular interest in censorship history. So this is very much your strong Okay topic. I'm writing because I'm concerned about what feels like a quiet but significant shift at the BBFC in recent years , specifically a move away from transparency under Natasha Kolplinsky's presidency. Publicly, the BBFC continues to promote its classifications as quote trust ed, particularly across streaming platforms. However, there's growing evidence of increased reliance on AI assisted tools which appear to prioritize isolated flagged moments over a full viewing of context and tone. This can lead to odd inconsistencies such as material previously rated eighteen being downgraded without clear or detailed justification and raises questions about how much of the process is now automated. At the same time, it's become much harder to understand how decisions are actually made. Content warnings can emit key thematic elements, especially when they're subtextual, while inquiries to the BBCF tend to yield brief generic responses that don't fully address the question, resources that were once invaluable to researchers and enthusiasts, such as, quote, recently rated listings, detailed case studies and access to archival material have also been quietly reduced or removed. For those of us interested in film history and classification, this feels like a notable step backwards from an organization that once highlighted its processes openly to one where key aspects are now increasingly opaque . Given your longstanding engagement with the BBFC and your work on its history, I wondered if this is something that you might consider exploring or raising publicly says name with held person but film graduate with an interest in this sort of thing . Okay, well I confess that I have not heard of this . I have been a great admirer of the BBFC since the kind of the turn of the century rejig and I think that they have done terrific work . I know nothing about what you seem to be talking about is AI being used to flag specific moments which is which were it a thing would be a return to a previous more box ticky age and also the stuff that you're saying about access to online information and ar chive stuff. Now I am not aware of any of this happening . What I do know is that I still have some contacts with the BBFC when Natasha Kaplinsky took over, I thought she was a very good appointment. I did a launch event with them . So I will this on to them for comment. And I'll also I'll speak to a couple of people that I know who know something about the workings of the BBFC. So genuinely I don't know anything about this and I am not aware of it happening, but I will make some inquiries and see what I can find out and see if we can maybe get a reply from the BBFC because you know this is clearly something which is a matter of concern. Thank you for sending me the email but I stress again this is the first time I'm hearing this . So I'll look into it. More, I'm sure there'll be more on this story in future weeks and your thoughts at correspondence at Cermanabao dot com. So there is something that's back out which I suspect you're going to enjoy talking about. Well, so Boogie Nights is being reissued. It is a four K restoration. This is happening sort of more and more at the moment sort of four K restorations and films are coming back in cinemas and doing very well. As you know, I was talking recently about the fact that we are very soon going to have a four K restoration of Ken Russell's The Devils in Cinemas in the Full Director's Cart and also in Take two, there's a four K restoration of strictly ballroom . So honestly, I'm always delighted when older movies make reappearances in cinema, particularly when it's Boogie Night. So Boogie Night is kind of the film that broke Paul Thomas And not broke him as he broke him in half but kind of broke him big because he'd made which sounds weird in the film that broke him he'd made hard eight, which was ninety six which was the year before and then Boogie Knights came out and I remember really clearly being in Cannes the year before Boogie Knights came out and people were talking about it. There was a lot of buzz about this film. So if you haven't seen it, it is a sprawling good fellas inflected drama set in the San Fernando Valley following the rise of a young hustler who makes his name in the adult film industry first in the nostalgic celluloid driven days of the nineteen seventies, which was the kind of the days of Porno chic. That was the days of when deep throat and all that stuff kind of became the subject of time magazine articles. And then in the eighties , as that gives way to the rise of video driven imperatives, and the world this is a world in which as one of the characters says, we just we just keep shooting . And performative sex gives way to drugs , violence, nastiness. So the film starts with our anti hero who's played by Mark Wahlberg, and this was a breakthrough role for Mark Wahlberg , doing dishes before being spotted as a potential talent by adult filmmaker Jack Horner here is a clip. Hey , hey . Working your long month . More's giving me the job? Yeah. You from around here, I mean, Canoga, Musita No, you know where Torres is? Yeah . How do you get it? Take the bus . So where do you want to be? Excuse me? Well, I mean, you take the bus from Torrence to come here to proceed to do this job. Can't you get a job like this at Torrence? Yeah, but I don't want to. Okay Okay , my name is Jack . Eddie, Eddie Adams. Eddie Adams from Toronto's. Yep Jack Warner, filmmaker. Really? Yeah . I'll make you adult films exotic pictures. I'm going to come back to the table and you know have a dream . He makes adult films, exotic pictures . So the character at that point that Wargbur play'ings is called Eddie, but not for long, because he is going to transform himself as Dirk Diggler. Now the roots of Boogie Knights are in a short that Paul Thomas on made in the nineteen eighties called the Dirk Diggler story and you can find it on YouTube. It's not very long. It's like half an hour forty minutes or something. And it's really worth seeing if you're a Boogie enthusiast, I'm sure it'll be on the I'm sure it's on the DVDs. That's probably how it's how it's on YouTube. The story also draws on the real life stories of people like John Holmes and on the Wonderland murders which themselves were the subject of a James Cox film with starting with Val Kilmer in from two thousand three called Wonderland . Boogie Nights was a career defining film for Mark Warburg . The role you discussed this with Paul Thomas Anderson when you were talking about one battle after another was originally offered to . C remanember you Oh no, you got me there. Yeah, go on. You were talking to him about one battle after another and you said you finally got to work with Leonardo DiCapria. Because he was originally going to be in the role. Yeah. And you said it implies it because what happened was he turned it down in order to go and do a movie about a boat that sinks, right? So instead, it falls to Mark Warberg. And then in the end Paul Thomas Hansen and Leonardo DiCaprio make one battle after another, which goes on to win best picture. So as for Wahlberg , he gets, I think, his greatest role as Dirk Diggler, incidentally, a role for which he has subsequently apologized . He has literally apologised for making Boogie Nights, saying I just always hope that God is a movie fan and also forgiving because I've made some poor choices in my past. Boogie Nights is up there at the top of that list. Nope, I didn't know that. No, top of that list in the Bad Movie Choices Mark is your roles in Transformers The Last Night or The Happening or the Truth about Charlie or the Daddy's home movies or most recently flight risk , which you'll remember is the movie in which he's actually got a bald head, but he plays bald so badly that it looks like he's wearing a bald wig. I mean , how about Mark you apologize for those films first before you start apologizing for the best film you ever made and will ever make the weird thing ? What did he say? What was he worried about? It was a moral thing. It was a moral thing. Yeah, it was the fact that he'd made a movie about in which he played Dirk Diggler, this porn star who rises up through the industry in the nineteen seventies and in the eighties and he thought well that was, you know, was a terrible career choice. It isn't a terrible career choice. And I will get also to why it isn't in terms of the morality of the film in a little bit , but I interviewed Mark Warburg for radio one when Boogie Nights came out and he was he was lovely . I mean, back then he said he was using Boogie Night as a way of apologizing for his role in Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. And those is it Calvin Klein underwear that he was advertising? He said, yeah, no, finally, this is great because I've got a lot of stuff behind me and I said what sort of stuff he said well like running around in your underpants. I mean that's not something to be proud of. So I think firstly Mark Wallberg needs to get his priorities straight and sort out what you should be proud of and what he shouldn't be proud of frankly funky bunch, you know, they're okay. My own feeling is that like Awson Wells, Mart Warberg has kind of lived his career backwards and started out with his best work and then slowly reversing into this kind of ever more depressing catalogue of flatulent ring kissing nonsense. The thing is Bookie Knights is brilliant because it is a brilliant role and he is far from the best thing in the movie. He's terrific in it, but he's far from the best thing because there are so many great things. I mean the other, cast memb ers include get this, right? Phillip Symore Hoffman, John C. Riley, William H. Macy, and Oscar nominated Julianne Moore. That core group incidentally then went on to be the core team with Paul Thomas Anderson in Magnolia , which follows very hard on the heels of Boogie Knights and which I know you're a huge fan of Magnolia. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's you know, as ensemble cast go, it's amazing. The other nominations that it got along for with Julianne Moore was it got a nomination for best original screenplay and best supporting actor for Bert Reynolds who in another one of these sort of weird twists of faith, swivered about doing the role for ages, didn't want to do it, didn't think it was a good idea and then ends up getting that all important Occarn nomination. Now, in terms of that thing about , you know, I want to apologize because it was a bad choice. It would be easy to think that a film about the porn industry would be, you know, somehow scuzzy and downbeat and immoral and all those all those things that Wallberg appears to be worrying about if you ever listen to the commentary track of Boogie Night on DVD, there is a moment in it in which Heather Graham , who's who plays Roller Girl in the film, is terrific in it. Again, one of her best roles as well says that despite the fact that the film is set in the porn industry, it has a very kind of sweet family drama subtext. And she says, and you know, the interesting thing is that that is highlighted in a really good review of the film that was written in Sight and Sound Magazine, you know, the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound Magazine. Well, guess who wrote that review? I can't possibly take a punt. Was it James Boy King? No He's the only one I can think of. Go on, who'd you think? Who'd you think wrote that review? Pete Bradshaw. No, go on, just stop doing the funny answers. No, obviously . No . The good lady Professor Her indoors wrote it. Oh, okay. Well, I wouldn't have thought that that was exactly you. But the point is she's right. I mean both Heather Graham and well the good lady for Terror indoors is always right of course Heather Graham in this particular case is right because what she's doing is highlighting something which is absolutely central to the film is that at the heart of it it, does have this real sweetness. And there is a morality which is a human . It's about people together in circumstances , you know, that are ch anging in strange and sometimes terrible ways . There is a scene in the later part of the film in which they visit the home of this character played by Alfred Melina, which is one of the scariest things I've ever seen because as this scene is playing out, there is a character wandering around randomly throwing cherry bombs onto the wall making these banging noises that are absolutely terrifying. I mean it, is an astonishingly accomplished film. People talk about the, you know, the steadicam work at the beginning and the kind of very good fellas thing about coming into the house, the pool, all that sort of stuff. Fine. Okay, yeah, stylistically, we know that Paul Thomas Anderson is an amazing visual stylist. I mean, look at one battle after another, look at the River of Hill sequence. He always has been . But Bookie Knights has got heart, it's got soul, it's got humor. It's the period detail is astonishing . And it is the work of a master craftsman filmmaker spreading his wings . And from here, as I said, to Magnolia, and from Magnolia to Punch Drunk L ove . And just a what a joy that it's back in it's back to I love I love Boogie Knights. I think it's just a wonderful movie. And I'm and Marky Mark is absolutely brilliant in it. It is the best thing he ever did. He ever will do, and it remains one of my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movies and how thrilling that it's back in Cinemas. Correspondents at Covinama. com before we go , we have a little Watts on here from UNA from View Digital Community Media in Bel fast. On Thursday the eighteenth of june at seven PM we'll be at the Indie Bookstore, the bookshelf in Newry County darn along with our friends at Newie. We'll be hosting a screening of a short documentary spotlighting the voices of migrant women in Northern Ireland . Migrant women seen and heard was co creat ed with migrant women themselves. It highlights the hidden cultural barriers that they face every day . It marks both Refugee Week and Indie News Week in Northern Ireland. Tickets are free and available on the viewdigital. org website . Well, fantastic. When Ona sent us that she couldn't possibly have known what unfolding in Northern Ireland in the last few d . So if ever there was a time to go and support this particular film, I think now is the time to do that. Una, thank you very much indeed . As she says, tickets are free and available on the view digital. org website. A very timely suggestion. From there, that's it for this week. This has been a Sony Music Entertainment production, this week's team, Jen Eric, Josh and Heather, producer was Dom Redactor Simon Paul who was briefly back in the country, but we'll be gone soon. In Take two, we're directing you to the overflow carpark for more chat about current film releases. More on Tuna, more the Baby Yoda film, you know, whatever it's called. More Richie Grant Swaziland or as Watini, I think you have to call it now chat existential horror and in question Schmest will be asked with all the different versions of the Odyssey coming up . Are we all in fact watching the same film? Mark will be definitely answering whether Alan Delon ever lived in Hume Crescent in Manchester with a girl apart from the fact that we might not get there because that might just fall off the end of the show. Come and join us on Patreon for all the exclusive good stuff Mark, what is your film of the week? Well, I think as we have discovered between us , disclosure day. We'll be back next week. Mark's review of Toy Story five will be included. Have you seen it yet? No seeing it Monday. Okay, all right, very, very exciting. I will bestow a year's ultra membership on that first email. There we go. Matt Woodhouse, who was the guy who told us about the strutting peacock that wasn't a child calling for help. So Matt Woodhouse gets a year's ultra membership. What a joy that is. He's correspondent of the week. Thank you very much, Deve for listening. There will be another take which has landed very close to this one.