The Physical Media High Council Awards

Sean is joined by Chris Ryan, Tracy Letts, and Tim Simons for a very special episode dedicated to all things physical media. They talk through the current state of collecting, and showcase a handful of titles they personally own. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan, Tracy Letts, and Tim Simons Producer: Jack Sanders This episode is sponsored by State Farm®️. A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.®️ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is presented by State Farm. Life's full of decisions, big and small, and sometimes you make movie ones you can really stand behind. For example, I was wise enough to stick around through the mid-credits during Ryan Coogler's Sinners. And unlike my co-host Amanda, I got to see a very special sequence with the great Buddy Guy, among other things. State Farm gets it. Making confident choices can make all the difference. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create an affordable price for you. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  I'm pro-football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carry sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit mddallies.com to watch my story.

• 1:12Sean Fennessey?

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 1:23Speaker 02

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• 1:44Speaker 03

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 2:27Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessy and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about physical media. And I have convened the High Council, the tribunal of physical media fathers and sons. And I'm just absolutely delighted today to be rejoined by Tracy Letts, the king of physical media, the Crown Prince Timothy Simons, and, and our beautiful baby boy, Chris Ryan. Hi, boys. How are you doing?

• 2:53Speaker 04

  I thought you should have started this pod as this is a conversation about men and their dependencies.

• 2:57Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you've just concluded a conversation about Zen and your addiction to it. So why not plunge right into plastic? So we've, we've never done this before.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  Never done what?

• 3:07Sean Fennessey?

  Well, the three of us have never podcasted. This was long threatened when you dubbed Timothy Hitmaker.

• 3:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:14Sean Fennessey?

  For his work on various television shows, most recently, Nobody Wants This.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  I will say, when I was listening, I was up in Toronto last year, listening to that. And your commitment to the bit.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  To the Hitmaker bit?

• 3:27Speaker 05

  Of correcting Sean every time he said my name was joyous.

• 3:32Speaker 04

  I actually thought Hitmaker, before I listened to the episode, referred to Tim's ability to simply mention the name of an obscure film and immediately have it get like a Criterion edition of it. Like, you know what I mean? Like, fashion, important, physical media headlines right out of thin air, but it's not.

• 3:50Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's just about the, his stardom. I mean, his star power.

• 3:54Speaker 06

  Oh, my God. He's, he's, he sells Volkswagens. He's got his own line at, his own clothing line at Walmart. He's, he's on a hitch, he's on a show called Nobody Wants This, and he turned that into a hit. They, they considered titles like garbage, this is garbage, this show is trash, please don't watch, nobody's watching.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Just a pile of shit.

• 4:17Speaker 06

  Did you consider it all these, finally you settled on Nobody Wants This. Oh, we put Hitmaker in it and it's, there you go.

• 4:24Speaker 05

  When they announced the title, I actually didn't know. And then they sent us like, you know, all the things. I don't know if I told you this, but like, I like, you know, I put it out on social media and I was like, I truly, this is what it's, what I said. I was like, I really hope that critics enjoy this show because otherwise they are going to dog fuck us into the ground with our title. Like, we are opening ourselves up for so many ridiculous, ridiculously easy headlines.

• 4:51Sean Fennessey?

  You're lucky that you don't get the more like, don't watch.

• 4:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:55Sean Fennessey?

  From your podcast, you know, it could, it could, it cuts all ways.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  It could break bad for us, yeah.

• 5:00Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted us all to be together, cause three years ago, you came on the show when the show was not on video, and I'm sorry that you have to be on video right now. But when it was not on video and you sat in a black studio with me, and we talked about our, our terrible joy, which is, is collecting Blu-rays. And when, when you were, you were, it felt relatively recently.

• 5:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:23Sean Fennessey?

  Starting to get into it.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:25Sean Fennessey?

  And we hit upon something, obviously, there were a lot of sad people out there, a lot, a lot of men. Not all men, but a lot of men. And the feedback to that episode was very strong. We did it again. And then Tracy came in and kind of reset the table.

• 5:42Speaker 05

  He elevated it.

• 5:45Sean Fennessey?

  Due to the, not just the, you know, the power of your wit and wisdom, but your collection.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  Carlito Brigante getting out of prison.

• 5:51Sean Fennessey?

  That's just like, I run shit here.

• 5:55Sean Fennessey?

  And since then, this guy's gotten interested.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:00Sean Fennessey?

  And that's not surprising, right? You're a collector of books, you have a library at home.

• 6:05Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 6:05Sean Fennessey?

  You, uh, you love film and you love to be a part of a team. You're a good team player. And so you're, you're now like at the beginning of this. So I kind of wanted to have a conversation with you guys at the start of this about the state of the art. And I'm calling collecting physical media and art at this point, cause I do think there's an artistic qualities to it. But then I also wanna, we can talk about our favorite stuff that we've picked up this year, that we've seen, labels and titles that we like, maybe gift some things to, to, to the young man who's joining the team.

• 6:35Speaker 05

  Can, can we all agree, I assume we all had the same reaction when CR was like, hey, I picked up a couple of titles, which was to be like, it was like holding a Faberge egg. It was like, I just, I didn't wanna be too rough. I, I didn't wanna like just hit the gas.

• 6:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  Like a zero to 100 in three seconds. I was like, oh, that's, that's, that's really great, man. And my guy was like, I can't believe it's happening.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  You, him especially, it was, has been, he's been like just the right amount of encouraging.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  You know, it's like, good job, man.

• 7:07Speaker 06

  But before you picked up a couple of items, didn't you view his collecting with some skepticism?

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Um, it wasn't really that, I mean, I think I view Sean with skepticism and we like to like make fun of Sean's pathologies, but like, I think it was more just like, you know, can't let Sean leave Earth's orbit. So anything he likes, we gotta take him down two or three degrees.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  I see.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  Um, but I always admired it. And when I would go to your house, I would see all these titles. Uh, and I was just like, I think I got to the point where I had had a couple of things that I had just been counting on always being on streaming disappear. Uh, whether or not like they just like a rights issue, or whether they just like vanished because they were too obscure. And as I like started to like reckon with the idea that like, I didn't truly own any of my favorite cultural artifacts anymore. I just wanted to right a wrong. And it had a lot to do with listening to you guys podcast about this stuff because, you know, it, I know you talk about it like it's this crippling addiction, but it's obviously also like a huge celebration of something and a way of being like, I don't want

• 8:12Speaker 04

  to go quietly into the night of everything being ones and zeros on an Amazon web service. Like I wanted to be something that I can always have.

• 8:21Sean Fennessey?

  Very quickly though, it did evolve for Chris where he wasn't just acquiring, you know, his favorite Friedkin and Coppola movies. He was like, have you seen this Enzo Castellari movie about an Italian mobster who blows people up? And that's what happens, right?

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 8:38Sean Fennessey?

  That's what happens.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  That was the moment where I kinda knew it was like, I ordered three unseen Italian crime movies and I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  Folks are in. This is the thing though, I, I started this being like, I want to have a good copy of like my hundred favorite movies. Uh, and Simmons is doing the same thing where he's just buying all of like the rewatchables movies on 4K, but he's like setting these very strong limits because I think he's like, I don't want to turn this into buying Larry Bird posters all over again where like I'm on eBay all night. But then as soon as I started finding out about some of these other labels from you guys and from the labels themselves, just reading like, I guess I was just finding like pockets of cinema history that I did not know existed or things that I just never, if I saw it on Tubi one night, I was like, that's pretty cool, but it's like a shit dubbed version and the, the print's not very good. And you, your eye, it's basically like learning how

• 9:32Speaker 04

  to see movies again when you start watching them like this.

• 9:35Sean Fennessey?

  How do you think everything's going in this world? I feel like it's gotten a lot bigger even since we last talked about it at length.

• 9:41Speaker 06

  Well, bigger and smaller both, right? In that the DVD market at large is still like 1% of what it used to be. A couple of the big box stores have taken them off the shelves entirely. So they're not ubiquitous. They're not a major part of the business the way they once were. But these boutique labels continue to put out these titles when they, you know, they continue to upgrade titles that we've had for years and years, or they unearth titles we didn't know about before. Price points are going up, certainly for international sales. Price points are really going up.

• 10:23Speaker 06

  You know, there's sometimes a lot of bells and whistles and boxes and action figures and posters and stuff to help drive that price point up. So it becomes a little more specialized. But what you say is true that there are a lot of people who are into this and who are discovering the joys of this, the joys of owning this physical media and having it on your shelf and being able to put it on and not having to worry about whether or not it's streaming somewhere or not. There are no gatekeepers, right? For that in the way that there is for streaming. I mean, and also, of course, once you get used to it and you watch a movie on streaming

• 11:04Speaker 06

  and then you see the sort of lousy haloing effects and all the stuff going on visually, you say, ah, sure would be nice to have this scene at night and not be noticing all of this extra visual noise going on. Sure would be nice to have a... And of course, over the years, TVs have gotten bigger. Technology's gotten more sophisticated.

• 11:28Speaker 06

  With a 4K on a good system, uh, it's, it's pretty much reference quality.

• 11:34Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  I'll say just, I'm sure you've said this many times, there's probably a really good list of movies that would be like the conversion film, like the film that would convert you to physical media. And for me, it was the first one I got was The Thing, um, John Carpenter's The Thing. And I, I think I saw the text that I sent you guys where I was like, oh, this is what they're talking about. Like, I did not, like, you can see the grains of snow as the helicopters flying over. Like, the sound is astonishing, like, everything, the night is so much richer. Like, all of these things that I had taken for granted or I'd never really seen in this movie because I've always watched on VHS or like streaming. I was like, oh, now this is proof of concept then, like, I'm, I'm totally sold. I used to think it was a little bit more like, I don't know if you've noticed,

• 12:19Speaker 04

  but the grades between this and this, and I'm like, I don't really care about that.

• 12:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's impossible to not sound that way when talking about that level of detail and technological interest, but it is true. Like, it is just undeniably true.

• 12:31Speaker 06

  Because those grains of snow actually change your viewing of the movie. The snow is, it's, it's not theoretical. It's not like, yeah, I'm pretty sure this scene is set in winter or at night. It's like, no, somebody actually worked hard to make this look like that. And so to be able to see the way it was intended to be represented is, it's a difference maker.

• 12:52Speaker 05

  Can I tell you off of that, two things that happened since we have last on this, uh, that are related to my kids. There, one of them is, uh, that now, like, we have a thing in my house called like Papa Movie Nights, where I'll choose one and we all sit down as a family, or my wife will choose one. A really big one recently was I showed my kids 2001 for the first time, and it played like gangbusters. It was incredible.

• 13:18Speaker 06

  Nice.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  And

• 13:19Speaker 06

  How old are your kids?

• 13:20Speaker 05

  They're 13.

• 13:21Speaker 06

  Right.

• 13:21Speaker 05

  And I, and like, look, this is like hyperbolic, um, but I was talking to my wife and, and, and she was like, why is this so important to you? And I like, I kind of pulled it out where I was like, I don't know if this is really true, but I was like, you know, moms have the ability to like talk about menstruation and like guide their children through that. Dads have the ability to show their children 2001 for the first time.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Just coach Lily, man.

• 13:49Speaker 05

  I'm sure she was like fucking Googling divorce.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  So it has gotten to the point when Papa Movie Nights, when I say like, oh, we're gonna be watching this. My son, he, he like is a very like sort of organized kid. I noticed without really asking that at a certain point in doing this, he went straight to the shelf.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  First to go look for it rather than, and because it was, oh, I'll search that up on iTunes or just watch to see where it's playing. And it just subtly switched to he's going to the stacks first. And then the other thing that happened, and this was both of my kids, we were watching a movie. When you're talking about the haloing at night and, and at one point there might've even like, like maybe the connection was bad. And all of a sudden it like dropped down from 1080 to 720 or whatever. And the kids were like, what's happening? What is this? Why don't I like, this isn't good. And I was in the back of my head, I was like, oh, I've got them. I was able to pause it and be like, what's happening right now is buffering.

• 14:59Speaker 05

  And you know where buffering does not happen?

• 15:03Speaker 05

  I realized should not be allowed to have children.

• 15:06Speaker 04

  You're preparing them for a life, like such a cool life at college when they're like, this actually, it's somewhere I turned pretty is not buffering correctly.

• 15:16Sean Fennessey?

  So when we recorded some years ago, I had personal rules that I'd set for myself about how much money I was willing to spend.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, all right.

• 15:25Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Everybody reaches for a beverage.

• 15:29Sean Fennessey?

  We need to hydrate to have this conversation. And I was trying to hold myself under $40. I was trying to hold per title because, and Tracy pointed out that like increasingly there are these limited editions that include posters and, you know, soundtracks and additional items that will bump up the prices. But we're, we're getting into this interesting place where just a steelbook 4K release of a major title is like just kind of 44.99 MSRP right now. Like it is impossible if you're trying to keep up your collection in the way that you think it should be, the way it should look. It's it's getting a lot more expensive and I am, I don't want to have too much negative

• 16:09Sean Fennessey?

  energy around this conversation, but I am a little bit concerned that it's going into collecting Faberge eggs rather than enjoying movies and it being communal. And one thing that I am like always talking about on this show is just that the act of going to movies, I think should be like an extremely affordable communal experience that it is not, I did not like when they put the Odyssey tickets on sale one year early. Cause I was like, this is alienating people. It's like leaving people out of the experience, the fun of doing this, being able to do it together. Now I, I am lucky that I can afford to buy this stuff and I like buying nice versions of new movies, but it is, and I know inflation is hitting, but it is getting very expensive to do this, even without some of the knickknacks.

• 16:53Speaker 06

  Look, man, I went to see Weapons in the movie theater. Whatever sentence you were about to say, it started with Tracy Letts saying, look, man. Listen, Jack. I went to see that movie in the movie theater. It's very hard for me to get to the movie theater these days because I have young kids. We don't live near a movie theater. It's just easier for us to watch films in the basement, but I wanted to see the movie because I didn't want people to spoil the movie for me. So I went by myself. I watched a matinee price. I got my popcorn and my Coke. By the time I paid for all that, you're

• 17:33Speaker 06

  looking at 30 bucks. Well, I could own the movie forever for that price.

• 17:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that's true.

• 17:40Speaker 06

  I just don't see it as a lot more expensive than what I'm paying for. And if I were to take a family of four to see the movie, how much am I laying out for that?

• 17:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, but that's an unforgettable communal experience in which you've gone out and done something together.

• 17:54Speaker 06

  Sometimes it's a forgettable communal experience.

• 17:56Sean Fennessey?

  That is true.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  Are you talking specifically about like? For a limited time only, the alien egg with all the alien films inside of it. Or like, are you talking about just like a steel book?

• 18:06Sean Fennessey?

  I'll give you a very specific example. I won't forget this because we have a, we have a text chain, a years-long text chain about new physical media stuff. And I remember when Studio Canal announced The Conversation on 4K, which was a very big deal that obviously all four of us really love. And I think you were the first on it that was like, hey, this is here. It's like $79.99 and it includes a cassette with the soundtrack to the film on it. But it's here and this is a big deal. And my first reaction at that point was like, one, it's Studio Canal. I'll wait for the US conversion. There will be a US edition, ultimately there was from Lionsgate Limited. And two, I just don't want to pay 80 bucks. And I've still not bought it and it's still 80 bucks.

• 18:49Sean Fennessey?

  And maybe it'll go on sale or something, but I have some sort of like moral rejection of charging $80 for a movie where you could get the entire Godfather trilogy box set on 4K for less money than that right now. And so I, maybe it's just a roadblock in my mind. I hear what you're saying about the movies. The movies are too, going to the movies is too expensive as well. But there is like an up, like a gouging and, and up pricing happening right now. But I'm a little, I, you know, I'm not trying to be too man of the people here. We're talking about collecting shit, but it, it just feels a little expensive.

• 19:22Speaker 06

  I, I don't disagree with that. I mean, and I do think there is a line and obviously everybody has to set the line for themselves about what they'll, what, I mean, I bought The Conversation box.

• 19:33Speaker 05

  I also did. But like a few weeks later, I was like, am I ever going to play that cassette tape?

• 19:40Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  I mean, it's very cool. But am I ever, am I going to watch the movie again? A hundred percent. But am I going to play that cassette tape? I don't know.

• 19:47Speaker 06

  And Studio Canal does awfully nice work. That is a gorgeous reference level disc of Conversation. That's one, right? It's one you want on the shelf.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  I wonder if you are experiencing. There's a moment in my baseball card collecting life when, you know, when I remember when I was a kid, buying tons of packs and part of it was like trying to collect all of a year of TOPS or Donruss or whatever, but I also would like make up games where I would like put the guys all out like on a field and like narrate like a baseball game, use the baseball cards basically as like and ruining the condition of the baseball cards, but like had hours and hours of like World Series's in my head. And then the Ken Griffey Jr. Rookie Card from Upper Deck came out and it felt like in my

• 20:36Speaker 04

  life, that was where you take a thing that you get and you immediately put it in the hardest to break case possible and put it away because it's like this is now just, it's not like something that brings you joy. It's something that's like a collector's item. And I wonder if the conversation is like this for you is like this turning point where you're like, I want this, this is Coppola, this is Hackman, I love this movie, but I don't want to spend $80, half of the, half of the, you know, project is something I'm never going to use.

• 21:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 21:05Speaker 04

  Like I, I don't know. And it's just like, it goes right into a case to never to be touched.

• 21:10Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I would, it's a movie that I would watch and will watch when I eventually break down and buy it. And it'll probably be right after this recording because I've had crippling jealousy knowing that they both own it.

• 21:18Speaker 04

  And you'll also buy it and then I'll wait for it to go like 30% off and I'll be like, pretty good.

• 21:24Speaker 05

  And then you're also going to go and buy a tape deck. I mean, like it's all the like ancillary stuff that you have to like that. I, I think that, I think one thing I've learned over like the last couple of years is like, there is that initial thing, like if, when they come out with like those limited things, like I pulled the trigger on the conversation, but there have been plenty of those where I haven't, even though it is like, man, that's beautiful. Uh, because I'm like, that movie simply is not important enough to me personally. To justify spending that amount of money on it. And I'm glad, like, those things I am like, I'm glad that exists for the people who are so dialed into that movie that they want to do that.

• 22:08Speaker 05

  But I think ultimately, the thing that I find that I'm after the most, and I know I brought him up on like, the Real Ones text thread, are, nobody wants this first season DP, a guy named Adrian Pankrea, is like a savant about transfers and bit rates and all that stuff. He understands, like, ultimately, the thing that I'm looking for is like, what is the best version, the best transfer of the intended, of the intended look? And going to him for that. And so sometimes it is like, okay, well, this one might be more expensive, but I might

• 22:49Speaker 05

  ask him, and he'll be like, actually, like, that, whatever, that, that transfer, that, whatever, is actually less like the intended look. And so like, this one is better. And so sometimes, that's sort of the thing that I'm chasing.

• 23:03Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to ask you guys about that, since you've watched a lot of stuff like this. Over the last couple of years, there have been some filmmakers who have been very particular about upscaling, even with AI, the look of some of their movies. So like, Fincher? Fincher, James Cameron, like, these, they have very specific ideas about modernizing the way that their films that were made 30, 40 years ago look. Some fans reject this. They hate seeing the movie changed in any way. Some people are comfortable with it, don't even think about it. You don't have to have a philosophical feeling about it, but do you feel that you are watching movies now, looking at whether or not it feels the way that it did when you first saw the movie decades ago? Or are you looking for something to be improved? Like, what's your mentality about it going into watching something that's been converted?

• 23:44Speaker 05

  Oh, I don't know that I have a blanket idea about that. I

• 23:51Speaker 06

  I don't, I don't know what makes it pornography, but I know it when I see it. Whatever that old phrase is, right? It's like, so when, when I watch the conversation, I know looking at it's like, that's the way that's supposed to look.

• 24:05Speaker 06

  You know, I had the experience recently of revisiting Star Wars for the first time since my childhood because my kids, you know, are now, my seven-year-old boy is interested in that stuff. And I couldn't find the original fucking Star Wars. It's not available. I didn't realize this was a thing because I haven't been tracking this conversation.

• 24:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good one to bring up. I mean, we just did this, that, A New Hope on the rewatchables earlier this year, and there was some conversation in that discussion about the same thing. There are projects online where you can find the kind of reconstructed original version of the movie, but not, not on physical. You know, there's not, you can't pop a disc in that shows you what it looked like in 1977.

• 24:44Speaker 06

  Here's how out of the loop I am. I didn't know it was called A New Hope. I thought it was called Star Wars.

• 24:50Sean Fennessey?

  Not Star Wars, guys. Star Wars, Marvel, you're, you're out. What else are you out on?

• 24:54Speaker 06

  I'm not out on it. I just, or I suppose I've been out on it since I was a kid, right? And I was certainly happy to show it to my son.

• 25:04Sean Fennessey?

  Did you enjoy it?

• 25:06Speaker 06

  Uh, did I enjoy it? Well, I didn't enjoy the, the, the digital, uh,

• 25:12Sean Fennessey?

  The new creature sucks.

• 25:13Speaker 06

  CGI. It was just like, well, that looks like shit.

• 25:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Speaker 06

  Uh, and I don't know what your feelings about this are. I, the, the climax of Star Wars has got to be the most boring climax for, for a great.

• 25:26Sean Fennessey?

  100% wrong. One of the worst takes I've ever heard.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  The trench run?

• 25:31Speaker 06

  Trying to drop the little sperm into the, into the, into the, into the Death Stars.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Got me pregnant.

• 25:40Speaker 06

  So boring.

• 25:42Sean Fennessey?

  That is, uh, it's a fireable fence. What you've just said.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  I honestly, I hope you do get aggregated on that. I hope they're just like, okay.

• 25:52Sean Fennessey?

  You're right, though, that like, that is something that was basically taken away. There was an original vision and the filmmaker himself wanted to change it. And he didn't want what he originally did to be out there. I will say, I'm sure you felt this as a writer, even as a journalist. I would finish a piece, turn it in and immediately be like, that's, this is trash. Like, I cannot believe I allowed myself to hand this in. And when I would read it back, have like immense self-loathing. So like, I have, I have empathy for the experience of somebody made something, they did their best. They put it out in the world. Everybody loved it, but they didn't feel as good about it as they could. But I think sometimes something goes out in the world and it belongs to everybody else.

• 26:31Sean Fennessey?

  And the changing of things, the way that the Cameron Blu-rays look, the 4Ks, is just odd to me.

• 26:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:39Sean Fennessey?

  It just feels, you know, part of what's so great about those movies is also what's great about Star Wars is they feel handmade.

• 26:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:45Sean Fennessey?

  They feel like you can, you can feel someone carving out, you know, a sculpture from a piece of metal and then putting it on screen. And so I don't like when that stuff feels glossy and, and, and, and kind of like moisturized, you know?

• 26:59Speaker 05

  Right. I will throw this out, and this is going to lead to a question for Tracy, but I, like, I was watching, uh, like a 4K of Escape from New York, uh, like a month ago. And there was something, e- even though the technology is at this point 40 years old, there was something so beautiful and so real about this obviously handmade New York City skyline that had been comped in, that I think you would think that, uh, like a 4K version of that would make it look worse. It just, for whatever reason, makes it look better. And I think that's awesome. And trying to fix that later, I kind of don't love. But I think the question that I'm going to ask is like the authorial intent versus, once you put it out, does it belong to you?

• 27:44Speaker 05

  As somebody who is a writer, who is a playwright, how much do you believe in that idea of authorial intent versus, once it's out there, it's now, it now belongs to them?

• 27:58Speaker 06

  Well, look, I'm a playwright, so I write a thing that is a blueprint for other people's productions. I want them to do my play, but certainly they get to do what they want with my play, right? They get to change the set, they get to cast it the way they want, they get to emphasize different things. They just have to do the play that I wrote. They don't get to change the ending of my play.

• 28:18Sean Fennessey?

  Do you ever update, though? Because you're restaging a bug.

• 28:21Speaker 06

  I don't, and I don't at all. And it's just my own feeling about, I write a play and it gets published and I put it on the shelf and I feel like that's who I was when I wrote that, right? That's a record of that moment, for better or worse. Now, there are playwrights who mess with that. Tony Kushner is somebody certainly who has gone in and tinkered with plays after the fact. Tennessee Williams tinkered with plays after the fact, and Edward Albee tinkered a lot. I would suggest that Mr. Albee made improvements to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf when he went back in and messed with it some years

• 29:04Speaker 06

  later, but he totally fucked up The Zoo Story. He paired The Zoo Story with this other one act play that he wrote many years later, and now you're not allowed to perform one without the other. The Zoo Story is now a one act of a two act or a two play evening. To me, I think it's a little fucked up. The Zoo Story was a perfect thing, and then, as far as I'm concerned, he rendered it a somewhat imperfect thing. But, you know, I guess my point is, it's up to the author, you know, how much they want to tinker with stuff. Is there stuff that I would like, that were I to go and revisit, I would change? Sure, there probably is, but I don't view it that way. I'm just like, that's who I was when I wrote.

• 29:47Sean Fennessey?

  And you, of course, have done this as well with the Reheat, your second rewatchables podcast about the film Heat.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  I am always going into the files and taking out, corrupting, incriminating statements.

• 29:59Sean Fennessey?

  And any of Andy's good jokes, you cut all those as soon as you can.

• 30:02Speaker 06

  Let me tell you something. I've got about five pages of revisions for the Chicago movie draft. There's a lot I'd like to revisit from that time.

• 30:12Sean Fennessey?

  There's no revising in podcasting.

• 30:14Speaker 06

  In podcasts, it's just done. It's out there and it's done. You don't get to go.

• 30:18Sean Fennessey?

  He's the one who told me it's all one podcast. Unfortunately, we never stop.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  I think it's actually, as far as like Fincher goes, and I know people have noticed that like he's going into like seven and taking dust off of the Kevin Spacey's glasses, lenses, or something like that. That to me is just maniac shit. And that's actually perfect for David Fincher. Like, of course, if you let him do this, he will lose himself in a maze of decisions that have never actually affected the viewer.

• 30:45Sean Fennessey?

  I believe the Fight Club 4K has been delayed multiple times for this reason.

• 30:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 06

  Really?

• 30:51Sean Fennessey?

  That the work is not completed because he is not satisfied with where it stands.

• 30:55Speaker 05

  I feel like I talked about this. I may have even brought it up on the first one, but there are like, what that makes me think of is like the oner in Children of Men when the blood hits the camera. Or like in that, in the

• 31:07Sean Fennessey?

  And they don't stop.

• 31:08Speaker 05

  The, like, when the uh, when they're doing the, like, do you hear the lambs screaming Clarice? Like, there are moments on Jodie Foster where the camera is out of focus. There are these moments where I'm like, oh, this reminds us that, yeah, that might take you out of the reality for a moment. But it reminds me that human beings made it.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  And there is a part of me that doesn't want to see them figure out how to get that blood off the camera. Or to somehow get that Jodie Foster shot perfectly tack focus. Like, so I don't know. I mean, like, there is a part of, I don't want to lose that. I don't want to have that be correct because that was part of the magic.

• 31:49Speaker 06

  I agree with that 100%. The, the, uh, there are some famous shots of Frank Sinatra in Manchurian Candidate that are also out of focus. That, you know, I, I guess in the moment, they said, well, it kind of makes a certain amount of sense, uh, given what's going on with the character. So in some ways, it was a happy accident. I still view it as that. Does somebody want to go in and now refocus the picture on Frank Sinatra? I would hate it if that happened.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:17Sean Fennessey?

  What's good about what's happening right now in physical media?

• 32:20Speaker 06

  Oh, man, such variety, such variety and such excavation going on. We talked to, and we will talk more about Radiance, I'm sure, the company out of the UK. I just became a subscriber. I, I, I think I was maybe one of the first subscribers and they've now added that as a feature on the web. You can just subscribe and whatever they, whatever they come out, what they're going to send you. And it's totally worth it because the titles, there are so many titles they put out. I just like, I've never heard of this movie before.

• 32:55Sean Fennessey?

  It is remarkable.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Had to stop myself from bringing all Radiance titles.

• 32:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. The, the curation is pretty crazy and it is, it's like, um, it's like going to graduate film school or something where you're like, okay, I've gotten the classics down, but now it's a fine green combination too of what they're doing, I think, which is that they're finding lesser known works by great filmmakers, but then they're also helping you discover many filmmakers you've probably never heard of before, who maybe in their home countries are well-known or at least a part of the cinematic history. But here, or in the UK, it is the work of like what someone who works at the Museum of Modern Art does.

• 33:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:32Sean Fennessey?

  Or the, you know, the, any museum, really, it is like rediscovering and contextualizing why something matters in a movement. And it's very cool. I, I would say that, that for me, their films are still hit and miss in terms of whether or not I actually like the title. The packaging, the contextualization, extras, everything like with that is always world-class.

• 33:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's, you know, it's like anything else with movies, some, some you like and some you don't like. But I probably own like 50% of their catalog, which is a lot of movies. And it's exciting to pop something in and have no idea what I'm going to get.

• 34:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:08Sean Fennessey?

  That's something that is getting harder for me as I get older. So I love that feeling that they give.

• 34:15Speaker 06

  How many movies you got roughly?

• 34:17Sean Fennessey?

  I thought like over 5,000, I'm in that, in that range.

• 34:21Speaker 06

  You guys?

• 34:22Speaker 05

  I'm creeping up on 900. Like, I'm, I'm not, I'm not there, I'm not there into the K's yet, but I'm creeping up on it. There are gonna be conversations if it overflows the two shelves that I have. You know what I mean? I'm nervous about that.

• 34:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, conversations. You mean with your wife?

• 34:41Speaker 05

  With, yeah, with my wife and family.

• 34:42Sean Fennessey?

  Just buy a new house. Just for the stuff. Just, why not?

• 34:47Speaker 04

  I think I got 100 to 150, but I'm.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  Oh, man, it hasn't been that long and I love this.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  Bleeding out of the shelves and starting to have vertical stacks that are like, kind of drawing some, some sideline glances here and there.

• 34:59Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have an accurate count at the moment?

• 35:02Speaker 06

  It's never gonna be totally accurate because there are, I have cer-, you know, some short films listed, they're, it's never gonna be totally accurate. It's roughly 11,500.

• 35:15Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 35:16Speaker 05

  What are we looking at for presentation?

• 35:20Speaker 05

  Are you double stacked? Are you vertical stacked?

• 35:22Speaker 06

  We're running out of room. That's a lot, that takes up a lot of real estate. 11,500. By the way, my wife is completely agreeable to this. A podcast with Blu-ray widows.

• 35:38Speaker 05

  It's gonna be such a short podcast. Just the three of them being like, what the fuck?

• 35:43Speaker 04

  I think the mistake.

• 35:44Speaker 05

  Are you fucking kidding me? And then they're like, alright, roll fucking credits.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  The mistake I made was ever saying, here's what I'm doing. I'm just getting like Jurassic Park and like the Godfather movies and like, we're just gonna have the core titles. And then, you know, she turns her back and I'm like watching Yakuza Graveyard and she's just like, a core title of yours, I've, I'm sure. And it's just like, it's just getting a little out of.

• 36:12Sean Fennessey?

  So I wore this Werner Herzog t-shirt today because.

• 36:18Sean Fennessey?

  Herzog is an important part of my physical media journey and it's with my wife because my wife and I were on a very big Herzog movie watching kick in, I guess, maybe like the late 2000s. Whenever Rescue Dawn came out, the Christian Bale movie, which was an adaptation of Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which was like a documentary that he made that I think is one of his best movies. And we'd watched Little Dieter and then we went to go see Rescue Dawn and I was like, God, I fucking, we just, we loved Herzog movies. And so that was around the time of the Shout! Factory box set of his movies, which compiled basically everything from whatever it was, 1970 through 1995. And I used that as a way

• 37:01Sean Fennessey?

  to start doing this in a way that would be acceptable to her. Cause I was like, I'll get this, we'll watch all the movies, we'll watch The White Diamond, you'll be completely baffled by Strajek, but it'll be like a fun thing for us to do. And then huge Hitchcock fan, we did it with Hitchcock, huge Woody Allen fan, we did it with Woody Allen. And they were points of connection for us to watch the movies together. We weren't doing philosophical talk about the transfer and how this captures the cinematic experience. It was just, this is in a pre-streaming era, rather than rent a movie, this was how you could watch it if it wasn't on television. And then like at some point, I just started buying things that she didn't give a fuck about.

• 37:46Speaker 06

  Right.

• 37:47Sean Fennessey?

  And then it became my collection. And then obviously it's gone onto very terrible space, but to her credit, does not give me shit about this at all. She's like, this is your one thing. This is your thing that you're interested, this is your hobby that is not a part of my life, but for now, we have enough space to let you do this. So if she was, if she was on the Widows pod, and maybe that would be a better experience than, than the other Widows experience your wife had, I think she'd be like, yeah, my husband is weird, but I'm, I'm willing to give space if he can give me space for my weirdness, which I do.

• 38:22Speaker 06

  Right. I, I, I think Carrie would say much the same thing. And given some of the proclivities over the course of my 60 years on this planet, she would say, it's a good thing you're.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  Could be worse.

• 38:34Speaker 05

  This is what you.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  Beats smoking Camel Blues. Getting lost downtown. For sure.

• 38:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's no booze, no drugs, no cigarettes, you know, no cheating, no car or boat obsession. You know, there's all kinds of terrible, terrible things that could be done in its place.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 38:50Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. What is exciting to you about what's going on right now?

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Well, I just, I want to read this because this is like a tweet that I saw that I really liked.

• 39:01Speaker 05

  From the bottom of a little emperor, Ashley something filmmaker.

• 39:07Sean Fennessey?

  Your burner.

• 39:07Speaker 05

  This is my worst movie beyond reclamation, serious, but only for true sicko completists who will never see the light of God. Not even I will watch this again. Vinegar syndrome now available in limited edition $40 media book slip case with 40 page booklet. I just love that there is something so true about this that it is like, here's the worst fucking movie possible. But even the filmmaker would be like, only a fucking sicko completist would buy this. And they're just like, here we have a limited edition.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  I think that happens.

• 39:44Speaker 05

  Wait, what was the question?

• 39:45Speaker 04

  That happens almost naturally. Like I, I think that no matter what, if enough time goes by, you're just like, you know what, man? Public Enemies isn't bad. You know what I mean? Like it eventually happens, but it's like, if Public Enemies also came inside of a Tommy gun, you know, with a poster, I'd probably be like, no, Public Enemies is one of his.

• 40:05Speaker 05

  You auditioned for Public Enemies?

• 40:07Speaker 06

  No.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  You didn't?

• 40:08Speaker 04

  Did you audition?

• 40:09Speaker 05

  I did.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 40:11Speaker 05

  I mean, it was like, you know, in Chicago at the time, and I thought maybe you would have.

• 40:15Speaker 06

  No.

• 40:15Sean Fennessey?

  Did you audition for Depp's part? What did you, what were you up for?

• 40:18Speaker 05

  I did. I heard it was down between he and I.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  You're so Dylan.

• 40:22Speaker 06

  I did turn down a small role in Black Hat, which I thought would.

• 40:27Speaker 05

  Oh, which one?

• 40:28Speaker 04

  God damn it.

• 40:30Speaker 05

  Okay, now, okay, Chris and I are sitting up a little straighter right now.

• 40:35Speaker 06

  And I have to say.

• 40:37Sean Fennessey?

  Was it the Viola Davis part?

• 40:39Speaker 06

  No, it was a small part and I couldn't make heads or tails out of the script when I read it. Because at that time.

• 40:44Sean Fennessey?

  I'll bet.

• 40:45Speaker 06

  It was pretty, uh, it was pretty forward thinking about, right, that technology.

• 40:50Sean Fennessey?

  Very much so.

• 40:51Speaker 06

  Now you look at it and somebody is like, you under, I was like, oh, that's what the script meant.

• 40:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 05

  It always made perfect sense to me.

• 40:58Sean Fennessey?

  I had the curve as always, like, man.

• 41:01Speaker 05

  Uh, I just want to shout out, uh, that, uh, I did, I was telling you guys earlier, I went to that Canelo Crawford fight.

• 41:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 05

  And you know that meme of Leo, like, you know, when he's pointing at the thing from, uh, it was like in the lead up, we were like hanging out at a bar, getting a drink and they were like, you know, showing people in the crowd. And they were all showing immensely famous people. And then they fucking cut to Holt McCallany and I did. Truly, I was at the fight, nowhere close to the man. I shouted, that's my fucking guy.

• 41:39Speaker 05

  Just cause, I don't know, I fucking love Holt McCallany and I was thinking about Black Hat because it's a, it's a great film. Only would have been made better if I, if you were in it.

• 41:48Sean Fennessey?

  That's the only way it could have been.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  It's the only way it could have been approved of.

• 41:52Sean Fennessey?

  I hear Holt McCallany and I think of Mindhunter and how we'll never have a physical edition of Mindhunter. And that's an entire era of David Fincher's career.

• 42:01Speaker 05

  It bums me out that we won't have the killer on 4K, that we won't have.

• 42:06Sean Fennessey?

  We might, I mean Netflix has licensed titles, of course.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  I was able to find Killers of the Flower Moon in like that Italian 4K.

• 42:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I did as well. And you bought that as well, didn't you?

• 42:17Speaker 06

  I did not.

• 42:17Sean Fennessey?

  You did not?

• 42:18Speaker 06

  No.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  No?

• 42:20Sean Fennessey?

  Not a fan. Not a fan of Marty?

• 42:21Speaker 06

  No, I, I love Marty. I, I, I just assume someday that's going to be available in a.

• 42:27Sean Fennessey?

  I hope so.

• 42:28Speaker 06

  I don't feel the need to get the Italian 4K.

• 42:30Sean Fennessey?

  But from you, that's so strange because I do feel that you have the international edition of many movies.

• 42:35Speaker 06

  I'm a man of many contradictions.

• 42:39Sean Fennessey?

  What's been, what's been good to you? How are you feeling?

• 42:42Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 42:43Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel like you're slipping into the abyss a little bit?

• 42:45Speaker 04

  A little bit. I can see why. I remember like, you know, this has obviously been documented in,

• 42:53Speaker 04

  fuck, what's the Steve Shemmy movie about record collecting?

• 42:56Sean Fennessey?

  Ghost World?

• 42:57Speaker 04

  Ghost World. This is documented in Ghost World to some extent, but there is that feeling like when you're getting into music and then you start buying records and then you start finding out about musical history and, you know, record collecting history. And then you're like, I buy blue 78s and that's what I do. And I've been conscious of like, not wanting it to turn into collecting blue 78s at the expense of seeing weapons and at the expense of like, watching new movies and understanding what is actually shaping culture now. That being said, there are three genres of films that I am now like, I guess I'm just gonna buy all of these if I can. And Yakuza movies from the Japanese new wave, spaghetti westerns, best things I can find, and Italian

• 43:38Speaker 04

  police dramas from the seventies. And I'm like, this is kind of like, there's like 300 movies here that I haven't seen. Or if I've seen them, they're like, really bad versions of them on TV at some point. And they are the ones, especially the spaghetti westerns, that I feel like I have noticed the largest leap in quality going from the way I'd traditionally seen them on cable or streaming to having a 4K or Blu-ray of them and how they look and how they feel. And it's also just really fun to just be like, alright, now I'm gonna look for all the Damiani movies and now I'm not gonna look for all of these. And it's just like, it's just been a really like, honestly

• 44:18Speaker 04

  refreshing, replenished my love of like, watching films in some ways.

• 44:24Speaker 06

  You know, you're looking at thousands of movies. Those three genres you named total in the thousands when you add them all together. In fact, I remember talking to William Friedkin about this, when I had sort of learned about politi- politi-ateki movies.

• 44:39Speaker 04

  Yes, I just didn't want to butcher the word.

• 44:41Speaker 06

  And, you know, which mostly all come from French Connection.

• 44:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 06

  I mean, French Connection is the original. I said, Bill, are you aware of the subgenre that you spawned that created hundreds and hundreds? I was like, oh yeah, oh no, I know, I know all about it.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  Proud, not proud?

• 45:00Speaker 06

  Sure, very proud.

• 45:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:01Speaker 06

  I mean,

• 45:03Speaker 06

  For a guy with not a huge filmography, he made two movies that spawned maybe thousands of movies, I mean between.

• 45:13Sean Fennessey?

  French Connection and Jade.

• 45:14Speaker 06

  And Blue Chips.

• 45:16Speaker 04

  I do, I will say to your point, though, about like the hit rate of actually loving the film, is that with those 70s Italian crime movies, they're 60% of them are basically as good as watching the Beastie Boys sabotage video, you know, it's like a lot of guys sliding over the hood of a car. I'd be like, "I'm ready!" And you know, like.

• 45:38Sean Fennessey?

  But it's a, but it creates, popping them on creates a vibe that is very difficult to replace and enjoyable.

• 45:47Speaker 06

  And because I'm DJ at the house and I pick out the movies, I've had to be careful about some of that. Like I put on one of those DeLeo movies that I had not seen. I put it on for me and Carrie and Carrie was just like, "This is the worst thing I've ever seen. This is terrible."

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. There's one that's like about a police, police commissioner. He's the commissioner, but he's like 26 and is like the hottest guy ever and just goes around like having sex with all of Rome. And he's like, "I'm the commissioner."

• 46:16Sean Fennessey?

  And you thought, he's a role model.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is, this is better than Weapons.

• 46:23Sean Fennessey?

  Any new labels that you're switched on to? I feel like last year you brought a lot to the table. I don't know if it has anything emerged recently that is like very exciting?

• 46:35Speaker 06

  Probably have to get into the case to talk about this, because I don't have a...

• 46:38Sean Fennessey?

  We have multiple cases. We've asked everybody to bring their, to show their work today. So Chris has brought in some titles, Tim's brought in some titles, you've brought an entire suitcase. I've also brought an entire bag that includes some of your choices as well.

• 46:50Speaker 06

  My suitcase is not filled with the, just choices of mine. It's also filled with some doubles. Now, why do I have doubles of movies?

• 46:59Sean Fennessey?

  Good question.

• 47:00Speaker 06

  Well, maybe I didn't look carefully at the, at the online order form and I had a two there instead of a one. And I got, and...

• 47:07Speaker 04

  That's where it gets you.

• 47:08Speaker 06

  Reselling these things is a real challenge.

• 47:11Sean Fennessey?

  Nothing wrong with owning two copies of Jade. I'm just gonna say that.

• 47:14Speaker 06

  So I've done some re-gifting and I'll be doing some re-gifting today. Maybe that's a reason, or maybe, well, maybe there's a variety of reasons why I have multiple copies of something, but I'm... We have a, we have a new, a new collector in our midst.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  And membership has privileges.

• 47:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, one, one last line of thought before we dig into the specific titles. Replacing is something that I am encountering a lot as a challenge intellectually. Where I have a lot of titles on, on Blu-ray. I have, among all of my favorite filmmakers, every title on Blu-ray that is available. And in some cases, the DVD. But many films are being replaced in 4K now. And is your mentality immediately replace the lesser edition?

• 48:00Speaker 06

  Just give in, man. Just give in. If you've got, I, I, I, I was you once, man. I was you once, sitting there going, I've already bought this. I've seen it, it looks fine, I don't need to upgrade. Just give in and upgrade.

• 48:17Speaker 04

  And when you give in, just take the Blu-rays to, donate them to the library.

• 48:21Speaker 06

  Do you know how many fucking copies of Kind Hearts and Cornets I've bought in my life? Do you know how many?

• 48:27Sean Fennessey?

  Tell us.

• 48:28Speaker 06

  Seven. I've bought Kind Hearts and Cornets seven times.

• 48:33Sean Fennessey?

  Why?

• 48:34Speaker 06

  Because it's, because it started out as a not great DVD and then became a better DVD. And then became a not great Blu-ray and then became a better Blu-ray. And just on up the ladder.

• 48:47Speaker 04

  I did ask him when, when I first, when I first got into this shit. I was just like, one thing you have to promise me is that there will not be like a 6K or an 8K. And then I'm just gonna have to do this all over again in five years.

• 49:00Sean Fennessey?

  I said there won't, but I might have been wrong.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  I think there is ultimately going to be an 8K, but from what I have heard, the human eye cannot detect the difference.

• 49:08Sean Fennessey?

  That's right, that's right. But Chris is, is part cyborg already.

• 49:11Speaker 05

  Whatever, flash forward six years, it's now the four of us and like two other people in this room being like, you know what about 8Ks, there's just something you can't describe. I'm, I'm not altogether there with where, where Tracy, I'm gonna be the counterpoint.

• 49:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 49:27Speaker 05

  Of, I think it's important, same thing with like that thing that we were having, the conversation that we were having about the conversation, that if it's important to you to, to do it, like the sorcerer, for me, like the sorcerer, that Criterion 4K that happened, like that was something that I immediately pre-ordered, like didn't wait for a sale, I was like, that's happening. And because I forgot to look at the thing, I think I ended up having two copies shipped to the house because I ordered it from two different places because I had forgotten and I was so excited. So I think if it's important to you, you can do it. But like, if there's a movie that you're like, I kind of like that movie, and there's also no reason for me to own it on Blu-ray, and I do, there's

• 50:11Speaker 05

  no reason for you to upgrade that movie that you kind of don't really like. You know what I mean? I just think if like, if it's important to you, I think that's important.

• 50:20Speaker 06

  I agree with that. I, I, my collection of Kino Lorber Blu-rays is extensive. I have a lot of them. Some of the movies, I mean, Kino Lorber puts out a lot of movies, and so some of them are great, some of them are classics, and some of them are not. Some of them are Barquero with Lee Van Cleef, which is a not great western. And if a new 4K of Barquero comes out, I'm not going to buy it. Though I have watched the Blu-ray of Barquero with Lee Van Cleef.

• 50:51Speaker 05

  I just want you to know you are bullying right now.

• 50:53Speaker 06

  You kids, you kids, you poor kids, you poor, you all so beautifully parented.

• 51:26Sean Fennessey?

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• 52:43Sean Fennessey?

  Who's presenting first? Do you want to present first? I have a bunch of your stuff here.

• 52:50Speaker 06

  Can I open my suitcase?

• 52:51Sean Fennessey?

  Of course you may.

• 52:53Speaker 05

  While he's opening his suitcase, I just want to mention that, like, the Emmys were last night. I'm like a little hungover. I think I'm still, like, I made these choices this morning.

• 53:03Sean Fennessey?

  In a rush?

• 53:05Speaker 05

  Not in a rush. It was a slow rush and it was a little fuzzy.

• 53:10Sean Fennessey?

  Are you experiencing blue regret right now?

• 53:12Speaker 05

  I am experiencing the, I kind of don't remember what I have in there. That's what I'm...

• 53:18Sean Fennessey?

  You want to take it out and look at it?

• 53:19Speaker 05

  Holy shit, Tracy.

• 53:20Speaker 06

  I'm gonna start at the top here.

• 53:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 53:23Speaker 06

  Lifeguard. Fun City additions.

• 53:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 53:29Speaker 06

  Fun City additions, they, they don't put out a lot of content, one, one a month.

• 53:37Speaker 06

  Did you know this movie before?

• 53:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'd heard of it and never seen it.

• 53:40Speaker 06

  I was exactly the same.

• 53:43Sean Fennessey?

  I think it played the new Beverly in the last 10 years.

• 53:46Speaker 06

  It's so good.

• 53:47Sean Fennessey?

  Incredibly good.

• 53:49Speaker 06

  It's a really good movie. And Sam Elliott is so fucking good.

• 53:55Sean Fennessey?

  Based on, so just take a good look at this, the, the cover art, which is the original poster for the film. This is not what this movie is. Where it's like a beefcake lifeguard. Yes. Just. This looks like an update of like an Annette Funicello movie or something.

• 54:10Speaker 06

  And that's supposed to be Sam Elliott?

• 54:11Sean Fennessey?

  It is Sam Elliott. And honestly, it's not, it's not the worst rendering of what he looks like in the film, which is magnificent. I don't know if a man has ever looked as good as Sam Elliott looks in this movie. But he plays a, a former athlete star who's a kind of a wayward guy in his early 30s who's a lifeguard. And meets a woman and that woman that he meets challenges his expectations of who he's gonna be, right?

• 54:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. And there's just a sense that he's kind of at a crossroads in his life. He's at a place in his life where he has to make some decisions about the guy he's gonna be moving forward. And it's, it's just, it's great. Just a great movie.

• 54:52Sean Fennessey?

  You're a big Sam Elliott guy because of Taylor Sheridan.

• 54:54Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 54:55Sean Fennessey?

  The first time you've ever seen him was in, uh, 18, what's the name of that show? 23? 18, 19, 11. Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 05

  I thought about, I thought about bringing the possession.

• 55:04Speaker 06

  This is the 4K possession put out by Umbrella, which is an Australian company. We'll be talking some about the Australian companies today. This is a real upgrade. If you have the Blu-ray of possession, the 4K of possession is a real upgrade. I don't know how you feel about this movie. I think it's.

• 55:22Sean Fennessey?

  Huge favorite. Um, but so it has become in the last 10 years, I feel like more people have become hip to it. The Jenna Ortega's of the world have said, yes, exactly.

• 55:33Speaker 06

  The who's of the world?

• 55:34Sean Fennessey?

  Jenna Ortega, Star of Wednesday. She's a big horror fan and she's, when she says possession is one of my favorite movies, the millions of fans that she have has, will then flock to a movie like this, which was, I would say up until 20 years ago, pretty obscure.

• 55:50Speaker 05

  I would say collectively, we are all one.

• 55:55Speaker 05

  Fifth, a Jenna Ortega.

• 55:58Sean Fennessey?

  In terms of audience reach?

• 55:59Speaker 05

  In, in terms of like if we all like. That's so much less than that.

• 56:03Sean Fennessey?

  You're carrying four fifths of that one fifth as Hitmaker.

• 56:08Speaker 05

  No, that was actually, that was an exaggeration, but I feel like if the four of us really pushed.

• 56:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 56:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:14Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have any titles that you're gonna try to elevate to possession level hysteria today?

• 56:18Speaker 05

  Hmm, maybe, maybe.

• 56:21Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think this is an accurate portrayal of marriage?

• 56:24Speaker 06

  Yes, I, I also think there's, I've seen a thing happen with actresses, uh, where there becomes a kind of shorthand with actresses as they're coming up. And the older actresses pass on to the younger actresses, kind of secret texts, like, you might not know about this, maybe you should take a look at this. Woman Under the Influence being the chief example, but possession is up there too. And because I think what it shows to young actresses is there is a world where you get to do what normally i- is the province of the boys.

• 56:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:58Speaker 06

  There is a world where you get to just fucking go crazy.

• 57:02Sean Fennessey?

  Take the safety off, yes, totally. That's Isabelle Johnny in that movie for sure. Good one. You're gonna try to proselytize for a title?

• 57:09Speaker 05

  I might proselytize for this because it was a, it was a new one for me. And it was part of like that little Tuesday night gang that I have, and I got this 4K of Wake and Fright.

• 57:19Speaker 06

  Ah.

• 57:19Speaker 05

  Which I had.

• 57:20Speaker 06

  I've touted that on this show before.

• 57:22Speaker 05

  Is this Umbrella? This is, yeah, this is Umbrella.

• 57:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Is it a 4K?

• 57:27Speaker 05

  It is.

• 57:27Sean Fennessey?

  This is a good example of something where there is a really nice Eureka edition Blu-ray of this that I have, that I've had for a while. And I really would like to buy that.

• 57:35Speaker 06

  Worth the upgrade.

• 57:36Speaker 05

  I think it's, it's worth it.

• 57:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 57:39Speaker 05

  I, eh, eh, on top of it being like a really incredible movie, there is, it has now spawned a really wonderful inside joke with me and my neighbor who I do this Tuesday night film night with, um. Is it daddy's pick or who picks?

• 57:59Speaker 04

  Is it Papa's pick or is it?

• 58:00Speaker 05

  This is, yeah, when I showed wake and fright to my children. It was, it has spawned this joke of, because you know, like, we met through our kids being in kindergarten. We've been friends for a long time, spawned this inside joke of now, whenever we are going to like a neighborhood parent hangout, we're always talking about how we're gonna go fucking yaba. And which is that we are going to get out of our minds, fucking blitzed and start smashing our friends' windows with a chair that we pick up. Just the idea of a yaba generally is just so, getting so degeneratively fucking drunk that we destroy every human relationship we have.

• 58:43Speaker 05

  And we think that it would be the funniest version to do that at like our very nice parent friends' homes, who have like, you know, ordered in some tacos.

• 58:53Sean Fennessey?

  Will you also murder a kangaroo in front of these people or?

• 58:56Speaker 05

  I think that might be like the greatest example of the thing that we're shooting for on Tuesday nights is that there has to be a title card with some sort of apology for something that happens in the movie.

• 59:06Speaker 04

  Or assuring you that nobody was harmed in the making of the film, yeah.

• 59:10Speaker 05

  Yes, we, okay, so we just wanted to let you know that those kangaroos that were definitely shot, were shot in a actual hunt that had been, you know, signed off on by the Australian government. And yes, it was awful, but it was for these reasons. Like if an apology has to be made, that is perfect for Tuesday nights. And I think this wake and fright was a good version of that.

• 59:32Sean Fennessey?

  Quick question, because I see that the title, the first title that you brought, that title and what you're about to lift up, they all have slipcovers. Is a slipcover a must?

• 59:41Speaker 05

  It's not a must, but I prefer it.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  I think it's pretty cool.

• 59:45Speaker 05

  I think it's pretty cool.

• 59:46Speaker 04

  It's not, it's not a deal breaker.

• 59:47Sean Fennessey?

  Just curious.

• 59:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:49Speaker 04

  Uh, I'll go for my first one. It's just to piggyback off of Tracy's love for Fun City as a label. This is one of the first things I bought when I started getting into the physical media. And it is my most beloved disc still, I think, in terms of like. I watch this more than any other thing. It's called Welcome to Fun City. And it is from the Fun City label and it's basically a series of trailers from the 1960s and then a ton from the 1970s and the 70s you can go through by year. And it is now kind of replaced Ambient Turn the Television On for me. So like, you know, when I was younger, I used to just put on ESPN, just let it play in the background.

• 1:00:31Speaker 04

  No idea what was on SportsCenter, it can just run five times. I'm just like walking around my apartment doing stuff. This is now like, if I don't know what I'm watching, I'll just throw this on. And it's both like, very cool to see the trailer for Coogan's Bluff. And see all the ways in which she calls Coogan's bluff. She lost Coogan's bluff. And it's like him slapping, you know, women in Central Park. But there's also-

• 1:00:56Sean Fennessey?

  Some of your favorite, that's one of your favorite sub-shottings.

• 1:00:59Speaker 04

  It actually is. This also has like tons of movies I'd never heard of. And you'll just be watching and you're like, I guess I have to check out the sidelong glances of Pigeon Kickers.

• 1:01:12Speaker 04

  This early Milos Forman American film that I'd never heard of, Buck Henry. And it's so fucking fun just to have this on.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  That is just trailers?

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:01:20Speaker 05

  And it's like five hours long?

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:01:23Speaker 05

  Does it provide context or it's just trailer to trailer?

• 1:01:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's several consecutive of the same title. So it'll be like three consecutive trailers for Taxi Driver and then two TV spots from Taxi Driver. From, from the time. It's an, it's an amazing collect, like artifact of movie history.

• 1:01:39Speaker 05

  I am, I'm not kidding. I'm going to buy that immediately.

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  Everybody should get this. It's just so much fun to have. And it's like, exactly like Sean's saying, like, every version of the Rosemary's Baby trailer. And you're just like, damn, I would have seen that movie.

• 1:01:55Sean Fennessey?

  And we know you love marketing. That's one of your passions.

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  It really is.

• 1:01:58Speaker 05

  Do you want to go next?

• 1:01:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I'll go. Um, this is very new and very exciting, I think, for huge, huge fans of a certain kind of movie. This is the first film in the Hong Kong Classics Edition from Shout Factory, which is City on Fire, Ringo Lamb's incredible Hong Kong crime movie, starring a very young Chow Yun Fat. This movie is- A huge and maybe bigger than you ever realized influence on Reservoir Dogs. And it's really exciting because there's a lot planned for these films, these Hong Kong films, especially the John Woo all time classics like Hard Boiled, which is coming very soon. Because these are movies that were very hard to find for a very long time.

• 1:02:43Sean Fennessey?

  And Shout has acquired the rights to a whole gang of these movies, a Better Tomorrow trilogy, a whole bunch of other stuff that's coming in the future. But I just popped this in last night for the first time. It looks amazing. It sounds great. And these are like, um, these are the eighties versions of these seventies Italian films that you're talking about. These like very gritty, violent, operatic, beautifully composed movies that like kind of changed crime cinema. And they were hard to find, you know, like post VHS era. You could buy now hundred dollar Japanese editions of some of the Woo films, but it's, it's kind of a huge watershed thing where we've been asking for these movies for 20 years.

• 1:03:25Speaker 06

  It's been an amazing time for Hong Kong cinema on disc in the last few years. Arrow has put out these enormous Shaw Brothers boxes.

• 1:03:35Sean Fennessey?

  Got some of those in the bag too.

• 1:03:37Speaker 06

  Shout Factory has put out, I think, eight boxes of Shaw Brothers. There's very little crossover between those.

• 1:03:45Sean Fennessey?

  Where do you start? I don't even, that's those sets, those eight sets of the Shout Factory ones. I don't even, again, to your point about how you could watch 300 movies. Lose yourself into it. There's not, it doesn't have the same organizing principle as like, okay, here are all the Sidney Lumet movies. I'm gonna start at the beginning, you know? It is such a, it's a, it's such an unconquerable world, but the additions are so beautiful now that it's very enticing.

• 1:04:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. We're gonna show, show something else?

• 1:04:10Speaker 05

  I mean, these are, these are a little bit older now, but they're quite nice.

• 1:04:19Sean Fennessey?

  So here's volume three of Shawscope.

• 1:04:21Speaker 06

  Nice.

• 1:04:22Sean Fennessey?

  Which is, this is primarily, which one is this? This isn't, this is not the, just the, um, the martial arts films, right? These are like more Samurai oriented. Um, in part three, parts one and part two are your typical like, uh, Shaolin warrior, Wu-Tang Clan style.

• 1:04:44Speaker 06

  I have all these, but I didn't realize there was that kind of organizing principle.

• 1:04:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this is much more Samurai based.

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  It looks like a gorgeous package.

• 1:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a really, really nice.

• 1:04:53Speaker 04

  Can you show people the illustrations on the inside?

• 1:04:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was very, very beautiful. Um, and retailing for under $100 right now. There's like 14 movies in here.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  It's almost Christmas, don't worry about it.

• 1:05:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, don't worry about it.

• 1:05:06Speaker 06

  Since he mentioned it, since Chris mentioned, uh, Milos Forman.

• 1:05:10Speaker 04

  This is the movie I was talking about.

• 1:05:11Speaker 06

  Taking off, uh, this is, uh, uh, released by Carlotta. And the reason I'm holding this up is because you, you might have to go outside of your comfort zone to find some, some more obscure titles. I got this off of, uh, French Amazon. You always have to make sure that, this is a French disc. You always have to make sure that, uh, subtitles aren't burned in, right? So you can watch the movie in its, uh, original English language.

• 1:05:40Sean Fennessey?

  What do you recommend for looking into confirming some of that information? Where do you go?

• 1:05:45Speaker 06

  I go to DVD Beaver.

• 1:05:47Sean Fennessey?

  Waiting for you to say those words.

• 1:05:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, DVD Beaver is a very good, uh, resource.

• 1:05:52Speaker 04

  That's, that is the clip from the show. It's just, I go to DVD Beaver, uh, looped 50 times.

• 1:06:00Sean Fennessey?

  Just recreationally visit that place.

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  Award-winning playwright.

• 1:06:06Speaker 06

  Carrie and I had never seen this before and we watched it this year. And I have to say, it's probably our favorite movie that we've watched this year.

• 1:06:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's very good.

• 1:06:12Speaker 06

  This is a great.

• 1:06:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, Buck Henry's in that, right?

• 1:06:15Speaker 06

  He is, he's hilarious in it.

• 1:06:17Sean Fennessey?

  Remind me, it's about a young woman who is becoming, wants to become a songwriter?

• 1:06:20Speaker 06

  And she's.

• 1:06:21Sean Fennessey?

  And she enters a contest?

• 1:06:22Speaker 06

  And she's leaving home, she goes to a big audition.

• 1:06:24Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:06:25Speaker 06

  And she's leaving home and so it cuts between. The parents who are at home looking for her and having kind of a weird dinner party and her

• 1:06:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:06:32Speaker 06

  Adventures, misadventures on the streets and it's just, it's really laugh out loud funny.

• 1:06:37Sean Fennessey?

  I have, I think it's either a Spanish or Italian version of that movie, which I got a long time ago when I was on a Milos Forman kick. And for whatever reason, it's still not been issued by any American company. I don't know why that is. It's very strange. Okay, Tim, what do you got next?

• 1:06:50Speaker 05

  I'm gonna throw this one out. This one kind of is just because I thought it was funny. This is that third man. And I think I kind of got it because, you know, like the Blu-ray criterion is out of print. I'm sure there will be a 4K eventually. But I didn't want to spend $200 on a, like, you know, an eBay, but I just love that this pops up and you have the little thing. I'm gonna get it close to the mic here.

• 1:07:15Sean Fennessey?

  Is that the zither?

• 1:07:18Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, are we getting that? The most iconic film score?

• 1:07:22Speaker 05

  I mean, this is so ridiculous. This is so ridiculous and it makes me so happy. I just, I had no idea it was going to do that. When I bought it, I bought it so that I could have it.

• 1:07:36Speaker 06

  I have it and I love it.

• 1:07:38Speaker 05

  The joy that that brings me.

• 1:07:40Speaker 06

  I know.

• 1:07:41Speaker 05

  Is unbelievable.

• 1:07:42Speaker 06

  And it's a gorgeous addition. They do amazing work. Those four, my, the, the 4K of The Servant on, that Studio Canal has is one of my favorite discs. It's just startling to look at. The Joseph Losey movie, The Servant with Dirk Bogart.

• 1:07:59Speaker 05

  Now, obviously Orson Welles is a writer as well. I'm gonna ask you this question. How do you feel as a writer when everybody talks about how amazing it is that Orson Welles, like, improvised or whatever that, like, you know, the cuckoo clock speech in that movie? How do you feel about that?

• 1:08:15Speaker 06

  I would feel great if Orson Welles was improvising.

• 1:08:22Sean Fennessey?

  What do you got next?

• 1:08:22Speaker 04

  Well, I'll grab one kind of in the same vein of Tim's package here. Tim's package.

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  But I kind of want to hear. Edit those two things together. Uh, I want to hear Tracy Cook on this. So this is Arrows, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

• 1:08:41Speaker 06

  You know, they're gorgeous editions. You know, Eastwood is a, is often a driver of new technologies. And anytime you see, oh, we're starting to move from DVD to Blu-ray. We're moving from Blu-ray to 4K. Some of the first editions you will always see is Eastwood. The reason being because men tend to buy this stuff more than women. And men like Clint Eastwood.

• 1:09:11Sean Fennessey?

  He sells. He moves units.

• 1:09:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's true. And they're gorgeous editions.

• 1:09:19Speaker 06

  They've released all of that trilogy.

• 1:09:21Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:09:21Speaker 06

  On 4K and it's, it's a must own.

• 1:09:24Speaker 04

  This was a.

• 1:09:25Speaker 06

  I can't believe you don't own.

• 1:09:26Sean Fennessey?

  I'll get it. I'm not worried about it. Well, you're, see what you're holding in your hand is the UK edition.

• 1:09:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:09:31Sean Fennessey?

  I, it's the US edition that is now sold out everywhere.

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  This took the entire summer to arrive. This had multiple delays. I don't know whether it was a tariff thing or a supply thing. So yeah, this had, uh, comes with a poster, pretty cool poster. And it has the, the international cut and the extended cut. And then a second disc of supplementary documentaries and making ups and stuff like that. So, and the booklet, the essays in the booklet are quite good. It was kind of awesome to watch it on Saturday night and just kind of like read along about like, oh, I didn't really know about a lot about this.

• 1:10:12Sean Fennessey?

  You know what's a little bit of a hang up for me with this? This is really geeky, but maybe you will at least know what I'm talking about. For years, my Leonie set was the Dollars trilogy and Ducky Sucker all in one Blu-ray set, which is probably fairly early on in my Blu-ray collecting, something that I picked up. I love those movies. I just saw the Dollars trilogy in theaters at the Vista last year. Like wonderful movies. But Ducky Sucker has not been upgraded. Now, Once Upon a Time in the West has been upgraded. Those three movies have not been upgraded. So now there's a part of me that is like, are they gonna? Combine these films again into a big massive set that I'm going to want to own.

• 1:10:45Speaker 05

  Oh, I see.

• 1:10:46Sean Fennessey?

  Then, and that is something, if they put all those movies together, I would preorder that in five seconds. But maybe I'm overthinking it. It's entirely possible.

• 1:10:54Speaker 05

  This points out that I have a very, I'm gonna be texting you a lot if this is gonna be, this is one of the three genres that you mentioned. Spaghetti Westerns, Italian, 26-year-old police chiefs slapping women in Central Park and having sex with everyone in Rome. These are your, I have large gaps in spaghetti westerns. For whatever reason, that was like a thing that I, growing up, I never found my way into. So I'm gonna text you a lot for recommendations in that world.

• 1:11:21Sean Fennessey?

  I can't wait. Okay. This is, speaking of the Australians.

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 1:11:28Sean Fennessey?

  Something that I'm very excited to have gotten. Gene Hackman died earlier this year, obviously an actor that we all love. You already mentioned French Connection today. And this is a collection of three titles from Imprint, the Australian company, in their film-focused series. So they have this, these box set series that are often random assortments of titles that they can license that are usually somewhat rare from either directors or actors. In this case, it's four Hackman movies, actually. I Never Sang For My Father, for which he was nominated for his first Academy Award, second Academy Award after Bonnie and Clyde, Bite The Bullet, The Domino Principle, and March Or Die.

• 1:12:11Sean Fennessey?

  Two of these movies are not available on Blu-ray in America. The other two are in really shitty editions. And these are beautiful.

• 1:12:20Speaker 05

  Bite The Bullet is a shitty edition?

• 1:12:22Sean Fennessey?

  It is, yeah. No, Bite The Bullet is, has a nice, has a, is it Olive? Or maybe an Olive?

• 1:12:27Speaker 05

  I don't remember.

• 1:12:30Sean Fennessey?

  But March Or Die is in a shitty edition. I Never Sang For My Father is not available. Domino Principle, I think maybe was just reissued. But Australia, which you've already invoked, has two amazing, Imprint and Umbrella are both amazing Blu-ray companies. Now, it is more expensive.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  And I was gonna ask, are those distro'd by? Diabolic, or like, can you get, is there American distribution for those? Or do you have to?

• 1:12:58Sean Fennessey?

  You can, at any of the best of the Blu-ray stores online, you can usually find these titles, or you can buy directly from their websites.

• 1:13:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:13:07Speaker 06

  And depending on, some places have better interface on the internet than others. Imprint is one I tend to buy directly from, from them. Pretty good.

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  Tracy, can I just ask a question? Yeah. Was this Carry On or Checked?

• 1:13:24Speaker 06

  I carried this on.

• 1:13:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Sean Fennessey?

  This is like traveling with.

• 1:13:28Speaker 06

  This is, this is both a recommendation and a giveaway. I have a, I have, this is a double. I have a double.

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  That's what it's all about right here.

• 1:13:35Speaker 06

  I have two of these.

• 1:13:38Speaker 04

  This is the real DVD Beaver right here.

• 1:13:42Speaker 06

  Al Pacino cruising on 4K from Arrow. Do you own this?

• 1:13:46Speaker 04

  I don't.

• 1:13:47Speaker 06

  You do now, baby. Hell, yeah.

• 1:13:51Sean Fennessey?

  The act of giving is so beautiful.

• 1:13:53Speaker 04

  Know what I'm doing tonight?

• 1:13:56Speaker 06

  It's a gorgeous addition.

• 1:13:57Sean Fennessey?

  True story, Bill Simmons yesterday texted me and he said, how are you feeling about the Jets' offense? And I just sent back a still from the film Cruising of the man tied up with the knife at his neck at the very beginning, first kill of the film.

• 1:14:09Speaker 04

  And Bill just wrote back, ha, ha, ha.

• 1:14:11Sean Fennessey?

  Which is indeed how I felt. That's, that's beautiful. Arrow having a very nice year.

• 1:14:16Speaker 04

  Thank you so much, Tracy. That's very nice of you.

• 1:14:20Speaker 05

  I'm gonna pull this one out, and this one, like, it's a little bit on the basic side, but I think I just find this beautiful, like, all these Mizaki steel books, I think are beautiful. This is My Neighbor Totoro. Obviously, this was like, sort of like, something that we watched with my kids quite a bit. But really, the reason I think that I brought this in was just to bring up the thing that's been in my head so many times since last year when you were on this podcast, and you said, "My house looks like a GameStop."

• 1:14:47Speaker 05

  Which I think is a is a reasonable thing to say in that I like it when there is an attempt to make something beautiful. And I think that these are not only great movies, but these they these look beautiful when they're in your home.

• 1:15:03Speaker 06

  Is that a Shout! Factory? Are they the ones who put out the steel books?

• 1:15:07Sean Fennessey?

  They are, yeah.

• 1:15:08Speaker 05

  They are. I actually, I did not know that.

• 1:15:11Speaker 06

  Because I have a Miyazaki box set of Blu-rays. I don't know where I got them from. They're all perfectly good and serviceable, though I am envious of these.

• 1:15:19Sean Fennessey?

  That was an Amazon exclusive, the box set, which is no longer, which is out of print now. But all of those steel books are gorgeous. I think there's only one Miyazaki movie that is not available, and that's still books, like Lupin the Third is the one.

• 1:15:31Speaker 06

  Why would there be all but one?

• 1:15:33Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's because that film was made with a slightly different Studio Ghibli relationship.

• 1:15:38Speaker 05

  And I feel like there you these are all available. You could like get all of them right now if you wanted, except for one, which is out of print. And everywhere you look for that one.

• 1:15:47Sean Fennessey?

  What is it? Castle in the Sky?

• 1:15:49Speaker 05

  Is it Howl's Moving Castle? I can't remember which one it is. But like, if you would like to buy this steel version of that, it's like $300.

• 1:15:56Speaker 06

  By the way, I saw the live stage version of My Neighbor Totoro onstage in London. I took my kids to see it. They've done or they've made a remarkable.

• 1:16:08Sean Fennessey?

  Did your kids like it?

• 1:16:09Speaker 06

  Oh, they loved it. They were transported by it. And I think it's going to come to Broadway.

• 1:16:13Sean Fennessey?

  That's cool.

• 1:16:13Speaker 06

  In the near future. It's really gorgeous.

• 1:16:15Sean Fennessey?

  I have three tickets to see My Neighbor Totoro at the new Beverly on Saturday. True story. Yeah, with my family. Chris has never seen a Miyazaki film.

• 1:16:22Speaker 04

  I I've seen Poco Rosso.

• 1:16:25Sean Fennessey?

  Poco Rosso. Okay.

• 1:16:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, Poco. I called Poco.

• 1:16:28Sean Fennessey?

  Poco the Band's cover of the Poco Rosso soundtrack. What's what's you got anything else for us?

• 1:16:35Speaker 05

  Chris, wow, he's like, Chris hates Joy. That's one thing that is like a, is a constant. It's funny because he brings a lot of whimsy to the table. He does.

• 1:16:44Speaker 04

  I'll do, I'll do my two international crime joints. This is, I want to shout out Paul from Radiance, who has been kind of my rabbi when it comes to Radiance, curating Radiance's curation of international noir, international crime. So Sympathy for the Underdog is a Kenji Fukasaku, early 70s Yakuza movie. This is the movie that, like your, the way you described the mealish foreman with, watching with Carrie. When I got 20 minutes into this movie, I was like, I think I'm watching one of my favorite movies of all time. And that is such a sick feeling, like to feel that almost childlike passion and enjoyment for something. This has got, the setup for this movie is very straightforward.

• 1:17:27Speaker 04

  Guy comes home from prison to Yokohama and it turns out his old rival has taken over his territory. So he and his ragtag gang move to Okinawa and start like taking over the underworld around the US Army Base in Okinawa. And it is basically shot like a French New Wave movie meets a spaghetti western. Lot of handheld, a lot of incredibly staged, multi-man combat scenes of dudes just running up to another dude and shooting him. And it is fucking incredible. Like I, I can't believe I went this long in my life without seeing it. So Sympathy for the Underdog, I would definitely start here if you were looking for these kinds.

• 1:18:07Speaker 04

  And then another Radiance set, this is the Hard Boiled set, which is three pulp thrillers by the French director, Alan Cornot. And my favorite is like mid 70s to early 80s is the set. My favorite's a Choice of Arms, which is this great white knuckle, kind of like two fugitives and a guy holed up in a country house, you know, kind of very, very like solid thriller setup. But Yves Montan is in a bunch of these departures in Choice of Arms. But these are just all fantastic and I feel like, feel like Michael Mann, you'd really like these.

• 1:18:44Speaker 05

  Dope.

• 1:18:45Speaker 04

  This was on your list as well?

• 1:18:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was on my list too. Yeah.

• 1:18:48Speaker 04

  Okay, where to go next?

• 1:18:57Sean Fennessey?

  I know that this was on your list as well, so let's talk about these.

• 1:18:59Speaker 06

  Oh, you've got volume. I don't have volume two yet.

• 1:19:02Sean Fennessey?

  This is also in the category of movies that we have wanted on, not just, I mean Blu-ray for some of these titles, were not available for years and years. So, Shaw Factory, which is getting a lot of love on this podcast right now, just released in the last six months, two different sets of blaxploitation movies. And while this isn't the complete history of blaxploitation, it's an amazing start for this films, these films. I actually had never seen Cotton Comes to Harlem, and I watched it for the first time.

• 1:19:28Speaker 06

  Oh, so good.

• 1:19:29Sean Fennessey?

  Which is an amazing movie, Ozzy Davis's first film as a director, that is, I didn't realize, but clearly the blueprint for all of these films. It's the first one that comes from 1970, but then you've got four Pam Grier movies, Coffee, Sheba Baby, Friday Foster, and Foxy Brown are in these two. You've got the Jim Brown films, Slaughter and Slaughter's Big Ripoff. You've got Hell Up in Harlem, Black Caesar, Across 110th Street, which was on the Criterion Channel for the last year or so, and Truck Turner, which is probably my favorite movie in this set, from the late great Jonathan Caplan, starring Isaac Hayes. These movies are in fucking 4K.

• 1:20:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know. It's amazing.

• 1:20:03Sean Fennessey?

  Which is, I never would have guessed that, just the idea that there's like a market for this is very exciting, but these are super cool movies that, again, I'm sure was switched on to by Tarantino movies very early on in my fandom, but um, this is, this is fancy stuff, you know, for what was long considered like low rent. And when a lot of the corpsman or exploitation movies were getting issued on disc, they would come on discs that had like six movies on them, and the transfers sucked. They looked really shitty, and there was not a lot of care put into them, and they were just kind of pumped out really quickly. So, it's exciting to see such care being put into these, even though I wish these box covers were a little cooler, but otherwise, they're very nice.

• 1:20:43Speaker 04

  Can you buy those at all individually for Shaw?

• 1:20:44Sean Fennessey?

  They're not selling them individually yet, but I would imagine that they'll be available soon. Like, you'll be able to get Foxy Brown individually on 4K soon.

• 1:20:50Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 1:20:53Speaker 06

  More gifts. Oh. Before I get to that, we were talking about Eastwood.

• 1:20:58Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:00Speaker 06

  These beautiful steel books of Dirty Harry, Outlaw Josie Wales. They also have one for Pale Rider.

• 1:21:06Sean Fennessey?

  Pale Rider.

• 1:21:07Speaker 06

  And was it just three or were there four? I don't remember.

• 1:21:09Sean Fennessey?

  I think it was just the three.

• 1:21:10Speaker 06

  Uh. The disc for Dirty Harry, Dirty Harry's never looked better than this. I won't, I won't say it's reference quality, it's very good. This Outlaw Josie Wales is absolutely reference quality. 4K disc, beautiful, beautiful steel, steel books and uh, yeah. Get Outlaw Josie Wales. Get it. I don't know why you don't have it, it's so good.

• 1:21:34Sean Fennessey?

  I'll get it. This is, this is a, this is a bank account drain podcast, yeah. Why are you such a weak man?

• 1:21:44Speaker 05

  I'm gonna do a little gift. This is my little stack of doubles for uh, for Chris, just in case. Got a Master and Commander, No Country, Inside Blue and Davis, Double Indemnity, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Wrath of Man and the Conversation like the Blue.

• 1:21:56Speaker 04

  Wrath of Man?

• 1:21:57Speaker 05

  Wrath of Man. Here's the thing, I actually, so you know I'm like a Wrath of Man.

• 1:22:02Speaker 04

  You know I want a Guy Ritchie movie that he directed via iPad.

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:08Speaker 05

  And it's somehow, I, is fucking brilliant, I love it so much. I, true, like you see, you've heard me like proselytize for it before. I think it's like LA, it should be like considered LA noir canon. I fucking love that.

• 1:22:20Sean Fennessey?

  You don't own Wrath of Man?

• 1:22:21Speaker 05

  I don't, no.

• 1:22:22Speaker 06

  I haven't seen it, you're, you're not as high on it as him.

• 1:22:25Sean Fennessey?

  I like it and I have a lot of, I'm a Guy Ritchie defender.

• 1:22:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:30Sean Fennessey?

  But, um.

• 1:22:32Speaker 05

  I think one of the.

• 1:22:33Speaker 06

  Does Guy Ritchie need a defender?

• 1:22:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think so.

• 1:22:36Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:22:36Sean Fennessey?

  I think.

• 1:22:37Speaker 05

  Does the devil need an advocate, Chris?

• 1:22:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think he um,

• 1:22:42Sean Fennessey?

  he has an alarming amount of style right now that is not the style you think it is. Like his movies no longer feel like snatch at all to me.

• 1:22:51Speaker 05

  I think that's one of the reasons that I thought Wrath of Man ruled so hard is because I went in expecting fast Guy Ritchie and it's like deliberately slow Guy Ritchie and I just fucking loved it.

• 1:23:03Sean Fennessey?

  Did you end up seeing, was it The Covenant, Chris?

• 1:23:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:07Speaker 06

  The, the, the.

• 1:23:08Speaker 04

  Didn't we see that together?

• 1:23:09Speaker 06

  The Jake Gyllenhaal movie?

• 1:23:09Sean Fennessey?

  About the translator?

• 1:23:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:23:11Speaker 06

  Oh, yes, I did.

• 1:23:13Sean Fennessey?

  Which is actually.

• 1:23:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, same deal.

• 1:23:14Sean Fennessey?

  Very good. Very well made. This is an enormous stack.

• 1:23:17Speaker 06

  I'm, cause I'm jumping the line here to get in on the, uh.

• 1:23:20Speaker 05

  The gift giving?

• 1:23:21Speaker 06

  The gift giving.

• 1:23:21Speaker 04

  Are you serious?

• 1:23:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, this is all for you. This is Narc. This is, uh, uh, yourself and yours, some Hong Sang Su, which I double ordered. Uh, this is, uh, Viscounte. Uh, I, I, I don't know anything about this movie.

• 1:23:36Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:23:37Speaker 06

  The last stop in Yuma County. I don't know why I have two copies of it. But one of them is now Chris's.

• 1:23:41Sean Fennessey?

  It was released last year. It's a very nifty little all in one location crime movie about, uh, like a diner invasion.

• 1:23:48Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, this is, uh, Jim Cummings.

• 1:23:49Sean Fennessey?

  Jim Cummings is in it, yes. Our buddy Jim Cummings.

• 1:23:51Speaker 06

  Uh, Carrie went to the Criterion Closet and got some stuff out of the Criterion Closet that we already had. So there's the 4K Happiness.

• 1:24:00Sean Fennessey?

  Chris's favorite movie of all time.

• 1:24:01Speaker 04

  This is definitely going on today.

• 1:24:02Speaker 06

  There's the Blu-ray of Wanda. There's the Blu-ray of Mandabi. There's the Blu-ray of Unmarried Woman.

• 1:24:08Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:24:08Speaker 06

  Uh.

• 1:24:11Speaker 06

  Here we go with some Eureka. Eureka's put out a lot of Hong Kong material, Shaolin boxers, daredevils.

• 1:24:18Speaker 04

  Do you have all of this? Are you just, are you just absentmindedly passing this to me?

• 1:24:21Speaker 05

  I'm passing these to you. I don't, I'm just, I'm admiring.

• 1:24:25Speaker 06

  The spider, uh, uh, I don't know what the hell that is. Uh, lilies of the field. I doubled up on the Kino Lilies of the Field. This is, uh, imprint, uh, Juju's Train.

• 1:24:36Speaker 04

  What am I supposed to do?

• 1:24:37Speaker 05

  Did you know? Did you know that there is a version of Lilies of the Field of the play written for the main character to be played by a white person?

• 1:24:45Speaker 06

  I didn't know that.

• 1:24:46Sean Fennessey?

  Did you write it?

• 1:24:47Speaker 05

  Uh, did you know that I was once in a production of Lilies of the Field? In the version in which it is played by a white person.

• 1:24:55Speaker 06

  I can't believe you've just told the world that. Uh, this is a, a, a new Three Musketeers movie, uh, uh, which I actually haven't seen, but I have two copies of it. And here's the 4K King Kong.

• 1:25:09Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:25:09Speaker 06

  Uh, the 1970s Jeff Bridges.

• 1:25:11Sean Fennessey?

  I don't have that.

• 1:25:12Speaker 04

  You should go through this with me and be like, I need it, I need it, I need it.

• 1:25:15Speaker 06

  Well, well, hold on a second. Do you, do you want that?

• 1:25:17Sean Fennessey?

  I, I don't have that.

• 1:25:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can have King Kong.

• 1:25:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's a, that's a Jessica Lange artifact that I need. Thank you. All right. Is this, is this new?

• 1:25:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:25Speaker 06

  Uh, newish.

• 1:25:26Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think this guy, this one got past me. Good stuff.

• 1:25:29Speaker 06

  Um. It's Christmas, everybody.

• 1:25:32Speaker 05

  This is great.

• 1:25:33Sean Fennessey?

  He did giveaways. You want to bust something else out?

• 1:25:35Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 1:25:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's not from the giant stack that was just handed to you?

• 1:25:38Speaker 04

  Steelbook, Kingdom of Heaven director's cut, as good as I thought it was gonna be. I waited a very long time.

• 1:25:44Speaker 06

  I don't know anything about this. What? I don't.

• 1:25:47Sean Fennessey?

  This is like one of the grails right now.

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  One of my favorite movies of the 21st century. Ridley Scott, um, his depiction of the 14th century crusades and, uh, stars Orlando Bloom, who I think is actually pretty decent in this movie, but who is much more decent is David Thewlis, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, like all the supporting actors. Michael Sheen is incredible in this. This fucking slaps. It's, it's everything I wanted it to be from the booming overture, you know, like 190 minute runtime and the extras. Ridley Scott's director's commentary is priceless for this because both he's hilarious and seems to have like instant recall of every setup

• 1:26:29Speaker 04

  that he made, but also just talks really beautifully about the experience of making this movie, which was essentially like more or less DOA because like everybody was like, that wasn't very good in the theaters and like immediately was like, but there's a longer version we're gonna get. Like it's kind of haunted him going forward where like a lot of his movies now are like, well, here's the two hour version that I arrived at, but there will be a four hour version that I eventually put out. Um, this is the one that makes all that stuff worth it. This is just an astonishing movie.

• 1:26:57Speaker 05

  I went, I, I have never seen it. Truly blind bought that one.

• 1:27:02Speaker 04

  Did you check it out since you blind bought it?

• 1:27:04Speaker 05

  No, because it just arrived a couple of weeks ago. I made this promise to myself at the beginning of this year that I wasn't gonna buy any more new ones until I watched all the ones that I own. Guess what did not happen in any way?

• 1:27:15Sean Fennessey?

  Unachievable.

• 1:27:16Speaker 05

  In any way to an embarrassing level.

• 1:27:18Sean Fennessey?

  But you also, you are a married person with a thriving career and children. Like the idea of being able to knock all the titles off your list.

• 1:27:25Speaker 04

  Is the blind viewing of.

• 1:27:28Speaker 06

  You have to understand, I view my writing and acting in film and TV and theater. That's, that's my hobby. This is my day job.

• 1:27:42Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I wanted to shout out.

• 1:27:44Speaker 06

  Do just shout out August OC County in between, in between alphabetizing Blu-rays.

• 1:27:52Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it certainly could be a job if you wanted it to be.

• 1:27:55Speaker 04

  You write bugs so that you can pay for three copies of King Kong.

• 1:28:03Sean Fennessey?

  Criteria, I would say Criterion is going to the next level with certain things right now, where they are now finally have got their arms around titles that it sounds like they had been wanting to distribute for a really long time. And they also, you know, internally, they like have the rights to some films and they're kind of like meeting them out over time. So you mentioned the Sorcerer 4K earlier, which I was very.

• 1:28:26Speaker 04

  You're compromised.

• 1:28:27Sean Fennessey?

  Lucky to be asked to participate in this, which was very exciting. But as I would imagine for the hardcore collectors, this is, was one of the most desired upgrades on the market for years and years. Everything on this disc is beautiful and the film is amazing. Another one recently reissued on 4K that is like, it's an astonishing upgrade is Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick's movie. And then just this month, I don't even know if this is street legal yet, is this is Final Tap, because there's a sequel to this movie that is out right now.

• 1:28:55Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:28:56Sean Fennessey?

  But I received it in the mail yesterday.

• 1:28:57Speaker 04

  Breaking the embargo.

• 1:28:58Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm breaking it out here. But you know, I think with the, the rise of all of these other labels, I think Criterion sees that they kind of have to, they have to rise to the occasion too. And they're putting out a lot of really cool stuff.

• 1:29:13Speaker 06

  They are still the gold standard. They really are. I mean, there are a lot of great labels doing a lot of great stuff. I think largely inspired by Criterion, oh, look, this is what a company like this.

• 1:29:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:29:24Speaker 06

  Can be. And so a lot of these companies are doing yeoman's work to try to get up to that level, but they are still the gold standard.

• 1:29:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:31Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:29:32Sean Fennessey?

  Radiance is staffed by, you know, former Criterion Samurai, you know, people who have learned under the, under the wing of what they do.

• 1:29:40Speaker 06

  Do you know how big the staff is at Criterion?

• 1:29:43Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't even venture a guess. I mean, I think with the channel, there's more people there working there now, but I think a relatively modest number of people do an incredible amount of work.

• 1:29:52Speaker 06

  They told me, I was just there and they told me 120 people and I was like, wow, that's bigger than the staff of Stepwell Theater, it's bigger than I thought.

• 1:29:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's bigger than I would have thought. I would have guessed around 100.

• 1:30:01Speaker 05

  It is really fun to see, like, you know, you mentioned it like sort of off mic before we started, like the clamor for the Criterion truck, like, they seem to have capitalized very well off of, like, you know, it's a niche thing, but people seem incredibly excited about it. Like, just, I mean, like, the fact that I was so excited to be able to go and, like, get my picture taken, holding up four discs, like, it was a really great, like, a really great day for me, like, to be able to capitalize off and get people excited about not only just, like, the idea of Criterion movies, but, like, exploring old movies as well is really cool what they're doing.

• 1:30:41Speaker 06

  There's something going on, there's something generationally going on, right?

• 1:30:45Speaker 05

  Yes, yes.

• 1:30:46Speaker 06

  There's a new generation that is embracing some of this stuff, whereas the previous generation didn't. I don't underst-, do you know, you were, you're nodding your head, like, you've got a handle on this.

• 1:30:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we've been talking about it over the years. I mean, I think it's in tandem with what's happening with at least the rep scene, which you know about too, out here. And I think it's going on in New York and Chicago and a handful of other places that are fortunate to have a robust movie going experience. And I think there's a lot of theories for it, but I think COVID activated a cinephilia amongst younger people because there was not much for them to do, but to go seek and discover. I think that even though in some cases it feels like the streaming services are these villains in the story, that they did provide a modicum of access to an exposure to films that, that we didn't have when we were kids. We had to hunt, and I liked hunting.

• 1:31:36Speaker 04

  Or you had to, like, wait for Turner Classic Movies to show it.

• 1:31:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and I cherish that experience and that, that, like, That kind of fire that it put in me to find stuff, but just getting exposed to Barry Lyndon on a streaming service at 15 years old, that's just very powerful. And then on top of that, I do think that the act of being somewhere tactile with your friends, that's something that's happening with the Criterion Closet, where they're actually building community with those trucks, where people are waiting in line for hours together, they're making friends. It's a day out. It is as close to a dork party as you can have doing that. I mean, we visited it when they were out of idiots and everybody that we talked to on the line, we talked to dozens of people on the line, sweet people who just love movies, who just want to have the experience. I want the photo, too.

• 1:32:23Speaker 04

  I think that there's an organizing principle where Criterion isn't aesthetic. It isn't like the common genre. And so that actually, honestly, is fine. Like, you could say, like, oh, you're like, you're basically like making this movie, but not this movie, like, has the cool art and the cool addition. So one movie gets lost. It's, these films that they have in their library are almost to a title, really worth watching and worth preserving and worth celebrating. So it's kind of like, there's really not a bad guy in this one.

• 1:32:58Sean Fennessey?

  They also haven't abandoned their mission to distribute hard to discover international cinema. Like, if you look at the lineups every month of what they put out, like, just today, it was announced that Pee Wee's Big Adventure is coming to the collection, which is very cool. I love that movie. I love Tim Burton. I love Pee Wee. It's great that a movie like that will get the full-scale treatment. But at the same time, they're also announcing plenty of titles that you've, you know, Abyss Kierstami, short film collections that you otherwise would just not have access to if they weren't doing that work.

• 1:33:26Speaker 06

  But do you think there's also something going on with the generations? Is there, does Gen Y like something that millennials don't?

• 1:33:35Speaker 04

  Well, this is, this is the argument that, like, there would be a rejection of, like, algorithmic, social media, phone-based culture, and that people still have an interest in having these kind of more tactile experiences. But, I mean, I feel like you can't watch Paris, Texas and be like, I'm on my phone and I'm doing 100 other things and I'm second screening it. There's no point in watching it that way. You know, like, so I do wonder whether or not it's creating really good habits for some people, you know?

• 1:34:05Sean Fennessey?

  I think that they're, go ahead, Tim.

• 1:34:07Speaker 06

  Well, no, I was just gonna say, like, I think there is also, like,

• 1:34:10Speaker 05

  This like younger generations now are actually seeing the value and communal experience of going of like going to movies and not just like, yeah, like we're in LA, it's a movie town, there are gonna be a lot of movie fans here who want to go to rep screenings and are excited to go to those things. But at the same time, like I went to a Monday night 8:30 showing of Weapons on like the second after the second weekend and it was a packed theater, full of a lot of people who were just like, I'm going to see a movie I heard was fun. And it was an packed, incredible experience. And I think people are enjoying and and sort of like finding that again to be like, yeah, that was a really fun movie

• 1:34:55Speaker 05

  to sit through, but it was also really fun to sit there and have that reaction with another group of people that I don't know. And I think that that is kind of like a generational thing.

• 1:35:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:35:05Speaker 05

  That they are kind of finding that again.

• 1:35:07Speaker 06

  By the way, did you notice last night at the Emmys, the number of speeches that referenced, "Thank you to my parents for showing me things that weren't appropriate for kids," or "Thank you for taking me to the video store when I was a kid," you know, really interesting.

• 1:35:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, Steven Graham was talking about like they, I got exposed to art in like a really important way when I was a kid. Yeah.

• 1:35:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:35:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's all part of the plan. It's all coming up us. The one, the one additional thing is that while, again, you can point fingers at social media being a negative and and fast-moving content being a negative, I think that there is something about representing your taste online, that film fandom is is really like a boon for. And that one of the reasons why Letterboxd has become so popular in the last five or six years is because it is like, it is a display. It is like getting a tattoo, your four favorites and showing like what you're about or what is interesting to you. It's a, it's an advertisement for a personality that might seem frivolous, but I think is actually quite powerful. And people connecting over things that they'd like and just saying, here's what I enjoy. And sometimes things that they don't like and dunking on things. But for the most part,

• 1:36:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's about sharing what you have an emotional reaction to, which at at this very weird time in the world, I think means a lot to people. I think it means a lot to be like, have you seen Sorcerer? It changed me as a man, as Chris once said to me while looking deeply into my eyes. You know, that that has power.

• 1:36:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:36:28Sean Fennessey?

  Who's up?

• 1:36:29Speaker 06

  I don't know. I'll go.

• 1:36:32Speaker 06

  Second Run, I mentioned them last time I was here on the show. The Barnabas Cost case and Who Wants to Kill Jesse? They put out a lot of work, especially from Eastern European filmmakers. Some pretty obscure stuff. It's a guy in the UK who runs this company and he does a great job of curation. They've now been around a long time. They're a regular. For me, I'm essentially a subscriber to this as well. I buy all of their new titles and I've seen some great stuff that I otherwise never would have heard of, like these movies. So, big recommendation for Second Run.

• 1:37:10Speaker 05

  Those are great. You got any more in the bag? I've got one more here and I brought it just because this was sort of, I think this is, this is Arrow, but I think it's UK. It's, um, it's To Live and Die in L.A. And I think the reason I brought this in in my sort of hungover state is I was like looking at the thing and I was like, alright, well, what's bringing me, what's brought me a lot of joy? And I think like being able to buy a good version of this when it wasn't available in the States, this was like a very early on purchase and I was like, I've only been able to find like bad streaming versions or there's a DVD and I feel like this one was very early on. And just generally, I give this five William Peterson erect penises on a scale of five

• 1:37:52Speaker 05

  William Peterson erect penises, uh, because, uh, there is definitely. Is that the DVD baby rating scale? Erect penis in this movie. And a lot of Chicago connections there, which I want to ask you about. Uh, you know, did you have any, did you audition for that one?

• 1:38:09Speaker 06

  To Live and Die in L.A.? No, I'm, I'm a little too young for that, actually.

• 1:38:13Speaker 05

  We talked about it a little bit when we were in Chicago, though. Why, what were we saying about it, do you remember?

• 1:38:16Speaker 06

  Well, just that, you know, for Bill Peterson, it was his big break. Yeah. To Live and Die, I mean, uh, Billy Friedkin had seen, uh, Billy Peterson onstage at Stratford. He was doing, maybe doing a streetcar at Stratford. And just on the basis of that, Billy Friedkin offered him that movie and it was just like, oh my God, out of the blue. But even. Like Billy Peterson told me a story about Friedkin saying, hey, uh, we're gonna go out to the airport and do some location scouting and we want you to come with us. And so Billy said, of course, you know, it's his first movie. He doesn't know. They go out and Billy Friedkin has a cameraman with him who's got a camera. He's like, yeah, we're just gonna take some shots of you here in the airport, just so we can get a sense of the... Before you know it,

• 1:39:02Speaker 06

  Friedkin has put a gun in Billy Peterson's hands, like, okay, now I want you to run down this, run down this hallway here. And they're shooting the movie. I mean, they're just stealing footage in LAX. Billy's like, I'm running through the airport with a gun in my hand, being chased by a guy.

• 1:39:21Speaker 04

  Fucking legends walked among us. That was the story that you told me.

• 1:39:25Speaker 05

  And he's like, and we just like, watched it again recently. Like, he's like, jumping up on like, the moving walkways in between the things. Like, he's, they're not being subtle about this.

• 1:39:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, a lot of it is stolen footage.

• 1:39:38Speaker 05

  Stolen footage, full of, holy shit.

• 1:39:42Speaker 04

  Got anything else in the bag? Yeah. Um, this one is an interesting one, because this is called Warucker. It's the Warucker trilogy. Uh, it's a series of spy films that were written and directed by the English playwright David Hare. Uh, this was, I think, in 2010s, one of the kind of streaming libraries are trying to populate their catalogs, so they're just buying stuff from England. And like, I saw these, I don't know, 2015, 16, 17, and was just blown away by them. I think I have not really seen much David Hare stuff. Um... What are they called individually? Uh, it's Page Eight, Trucks and Caicos, Insulting the Battlefields. Three films.

• 1:40:23Speaker 04

  They star Bill Nighy as this aging spy. Uh, and this is a really good example of like, if you like something relatively obscure, buy it. Because this is not, no longer on streaming, even though it's got Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, uh, Christopher Walken and Rachel Weisz in it. Love it. I've never seen those. Uh, and they're excellent. They're very, really, like, they're very mannered, they're very charming, like... You may have to open the lending library. I know, but this is fantastic. I'm so glad I own this, because you cannot find this on streaming anymore.

• 1:40:55Speaker 06

  Right. I think I have Page Eight.

• 1:40:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40:57Speaker 06

  By itself on, on disc. I didn't know about the others.

• 1:41:00Speaker 04

  Very, very cool. And, um, yeah. And then my last one... I got in Chicago when we were doing our Chicago show at the Terror Vision pop-up, which is a small horror label. End of the Line, which is a Canadian 2007 movie, I think, about a woman on a subway. And it's a normal subway ride and then a fucking crazy cult takes over the subway and are like, it's judgment day. And we're gonna chase you into the subway tunnels, you and your subway mates here. And it is just like a really solid horror film, but more so like, never heard of it. Great to have a label that's just like, we've gone through

• 1:41:42Speaker 04

  the racks and the stacks and we have found like some titles for you to check out. And this one's really sick.

• 1:41:49Sean Fennessey?

  I will stack your Terror Vision note with this one. So the fine folks from Terror Vision reached out after our podcast, because I shouted it out when we were discussing buying stuff. And they sent me a care package that is full of a lot of really interesting and obscure stuff. But the thing that jumped out to me the most is this movie, Gushing Prayer, which is a 1970s underground Japanese film about a 15-year-old prostitute. You may be thinking to yourself, this is illicit material, you should not be showing this on a podcast. That may be true, but it's actually like an amazing rendition of art made in secret about ideas that in a contemporary society are not accepted, but is an exploration by Masao Adichi, who's this Japanese filmmaker who made films basically about

• 1:42:34Sean Fennessey?

  serial murderers, prostitutes, and violence in society. And pushed the envelope in Japan as far as it could possibly go in terms of what could be portrayed on screen. And then disappeared and went underground in the late 1970s and has not been heard from again. And this is a very bracing movie. It's kind of funny, it's very heartbreaking. I'd never heard of it until they sent it to me.

• 1:42:56Speaker 04

  I've never heard of it.

• 1:42:56Sean Fennessey?

  They just dropped it in the mail for me and are just selling this on their website from their Graveface sub-label. And it's just a bracing piece of work, so I wanted to shout it out. I brought one for you and I brought one for me. These are both from Vinegar Syndrome, one from the Cinematograph label, which is Bang the Drum Slowly, and I also brought Let's Scare Jessica to Death, because they're directed by the same filmmaker, even though these movies could not be more different, John D. Hancock. If you've not seen Let's Scare Jessica to Death, It is probably the most important unknown key to American horror. It is a like trailblazing portrait of a slasher that is pretty under recognized,

• 1:43:41Sean Fennessey?

  I would say, generally speaking, and it's amazing that he, this filmmaker is able to do that and also able to do that.

• 1:43:47Speaker 06

  Bang the drum slowly, Michael Moriarty and Robert De Niro, early De Niro performance. For my money, it's the best baseball movie ever made. It's based on Mark Harris, not the Mark Harris who writes about film and culture these days, but an earlier Mark Harris, books he wrote in the 1950s. It's an important text in my life. I've done a stage adaptation of this. I did a radio play adaptation of this. Before it was a movie, it was a 1950s, 1960s, like Texaco star theater version with Paul Newman and Albert Salmy.

• 1:44:25Speaker 06

  And just to have it on 4K is just, it's a marvelous, marvelous edition of this, of this great movie.

• 1:44:36Sean Fennessey?

  We're winding down. I wanted to talk about one particular pickle that happens from time to time. So I have an ongoing discussion with you guys, as well as the other text chain that we are on with our buddies from Blank Check, among other friends, about, and one of the topics of conversation this year was Mike Nichols. Why is Mike Nichols the least represented great film, American film artist on physical media? When you look at his catalog of movies, like The Graduate is in the Criterion Collection, but a lot of his movies, especially his movies in the 80s and 90s, don't have nice editions, if any at all. But probably the single biggest outlier for years and years was Colonel Knowledge.

• 1:45:17Sean Fennessey?

  So this is an edition of Colonel Knowledge that was issued this year from Indicator. And when it came out, I think I probably texted you guys, or maybe you texted me.

• 1:45:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, I got it immediately.

• 1:45:25Sean Fennessey?

  And we were like, we had to preorder that. It's very important that we get this. This is a movie that we love, you know, written by Jules Feifer, the great playwright, and...

• 1:45:37Sean Fennessey?

  An amazing portrayal of the male psyche, right? What men do to each other and what they do to women. And pre-ordered it and then two weeks later, Criterion said, guess what? We're also doing one and they have completely different features. I haven't looked at that, so I don't know how it compares visually, but I suspect you have both. Do you have both?

• 1:45:57Speaker 06

  I do have both. This is one of the rare times when I, I would urge one to double dip. If you're a fan of the movie, because they are very, the extras are not only very different, but the, uh, the, the visual representation is very different as well.

• 1:46:13Sean Fennessey?

  How, in, in what, any particular ways?

• 1:46:16Speaker 06

  What seemed to me like random ways. They both look great.

• 1:46:19Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. You like this movie?

• 1:46:22Speaker 06

  It's my favorite Mike Nichols movie. It's number one on my Mike Nichols list.

• 1:46:26Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. You seen this?

• 1:46:27Speaker 04

  Yes, but not for a long time.

• 1:46:30Sean Fennessey?

  Is this your favorite Art Garfunkel performance?

• 1:46:33Speaker 04

  No, I prefer the Central Park reunion concert.

• 1:46:37Speaker 06

  What about bad timing?

• 1:46:38Speaker 05

  Can I just?

• 1:46:39Speaker 06

  Essential obsession.

• 1:46:40Sean Fennessey?

  Nick Rugg.

• 1:46:41Speaker 05

  I'm just going to tell you real quick that my, one of my really good friends from high school convinced me that Garfunkel did not have hands. That he lost his hands in a car accident because he flew through the windshield and it severed his hands and that's why he's always standing behind Paul Simon in every picture. He can't hide his hand. Look, man, I believed it.

• 1:47:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:02Speaker 05

  I've been fucking years, I believe that Art Garfunkel did not.

• 1:47:06Speaker 04

  If he does, maybe they're like Luke Skywalker Empire Strikes Back hands.

• 1:47:10Sean Fennessey?

  Very well, could be.

• 1:47:11Speaker 06

  Do you have more?

• 1:47:12Sean Fennessey?

  I have a few more, but why don't you do something?

• 1:47:14Speaker 06

  Do you want me to, there's going to come a point where I'm going to rip through some stuff.

• 1:47:17Sean Fennessey?

  I have a few that I'll rip through as well, but do you, do you want to talk about Choose Me?

• 1:47:21Speaker 06

  It's just, it's, it's just my favorite movie that hasn't had a good disc for a long time. And so when Criterion finally came out with this movie.

• 1:47:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:47:31Speaker 06

  I felt, I felt like, I felt, uh, I felt like, oh, somebody else gets it. It's not me all by myself. It is Alan Rudolph. And it's a superb movie. It's just a great time. I was just a recommendation. Watch Choose Me.

• 1:47:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very good film. I hope a bunch more Alan Rudolph films come to Criterion. Obviously, they're they're running the Altman series right now, and Rudolph was kind of his apprentice slash.

• 1:47:57Speaker 06

  And listening to you guys talk about Altman, which, by the way, was superb. I really enjoyed the Robert Altman episode. It occurs to me that, you know, he's sometimes he's dismissed, right, as an Altman copier. But the truth is that if you get to the 1980s, I think what Alan Rudolph was doing in the 80s was certainly more interesting than what Robert Altman was doing in the 80s. Not that it wasn't important to Altman as an artist and his development as an artist, but I'd rather watch those Alan Rudolph 80s movies than Robert Altman's 80s output.

• 1:48:32Sean Fennessey?

  I just looked at Remember My Name for the First Time in a Long Time, which is also just an incredible movie, just such a bracing. Have you guys seen that movie before? Geraldine Chaplin, and wild performance from her. Two quick ones from Severance Cemetery Man, which I held out on for the longest time. My friend Alex Rusparry was like, you're a coward. Just buy it. And I did buy it. And then this just came out, and this is this kind of reminded me of what I used to like to buy, and still in some ways do like to buy. So Warner Archives just released a six film collection of Errol Flynn movies. And part of the reason why I wanted to get it is because like four of these films are Michael Curtis' films. And I've gotten really into Michael Curtis in the last few years. I just talked to a very famous filmmaker who's told me that Michael Curtis

• 1:49:16Sean Fennessey?

  is one of his biggest influences.

• 1:49:19Speaker 06

  Trenton would have said the same thing.

• 1:49:21Sean Fennessey?

  And he's an amazing filmmaker. Flynn, of course, like one of the screen icons of the first generation of Hollywood. And there's some damn good movies in here, like Adventures of Robin is probably the most famous, but The Seahawk is also very, very good. Objective Burma. And I do feel like in the early days of DVD collection, you saw a lot of stuff like this. Where you would just get 10 movies and Cary Grant's face would be on the cover and be like, this is how you see Mr. Blandings builds his dream house or whatever. And so like The Adventures of Don Juan, I've never seen. And now I own it and I'll probably pop it in.

• 1:49:51Speaker 06

  I think those are all available individually too, by the way.

• 1:49:54Sean Fennessey?

  Makes sense. But not for $40.

• 1:49:56Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:49:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, fire away. All right.

• 1:49:59Speaker 06

  I'm gonna rip. I'm ready.

• 1:50:03Speaker 05

  You had to go bring this through security.

• 1:50:06Speaker 06

  Fucking love this. Here's, here's another double for Chris. There's some Hong Kong action. Now, I've got two copies of Witness, one which is a beautiful Blu-ray box and one which is a 4K. Who needs, who needs Witness? I actually do need a Witness. What do you need? Which do you need?

• 1:50:23Sean Fennessey?

  Can I get a Witness?

• 1:50:24Speaker 06

  Can I get a Witness? I'm gonna go, I'll go 4K. You've got the 4K. Who wants the?

• 1:50:29Sean Fennessey?

  I have, I have the 4K.

• 1:50:30Speaker 04

  The Blu-ray box, thank you. The box for you. Tracy, I don't know if my car's big enough.

• 1:50:35Speaker 06

  You got more? I do.

• 1:50:37Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I didn't know what this was when you asked me about this. Can you explain what this is?

• 1:50:40Speaker 06

  Well, hold on a sec. First, I want to shout out a couple of things here.

• 1:50:45Speaker 06

  Kino, I mentioned them earlier. They put out a large volume of stuff. Some of them, some of it is Barquero with Lee Van Cleef. But some of it is Diary of a Chambermaid, right? This is, this is great Boonwell film and so Kino really, they, they cover the waterfront. You get a lot of different stuff with Kino and they're really good. The quality control is excellent.

• 1:51:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of odd that they put that out because in the last year and a half or so, Criterion had a Boonwell collection and Radiance had a Boonwell collection, but Diary of a Chambermaid was not in either of those collections.

• 1:51:21Speaker 06

  As far as I know, this is the only Blu-ray of Boonwell's Diary of a Chambermaid and it's excellent. I watched it just the other night.

• 1:51:29Sean Fennessey?

  Great one.

• 1:51:29Speaker 06

  So good. Clean and Sober. Now, I mentioned this because Warner Archive, they're really no-frills. It's a no-frills house. They, they, here's the movie. Here's the movie and, and you're not gonna see the movie any better than this. Nobody's gonna put out a 4K of Clean and Sober anytime soon.

• 1:51:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:51:51Speaker 06

  Right? It, it, I don't know what the reputation is. I can tell you that as a, as a Sober, this is a movie that gets it right. I, I put this movie at the top of the list of Sober films and it's a great Michael Keaton performance in this thing. But Warner Archive, check them out. They're inexpensive. It's inexpensive, no-frills. Here's the movie, no bells and whistles.

• 1:52:13Sean Fennessey?

  They are. pivoting to 4K.

• 1:52:18Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:52:19Sean Fennessey?

  The Searchers is now available on 4K.

• 1:52:21Speaker 06

  High Society on 4K.

• 1:52:23Speaker 05

  But I love that idea when we're talking about money, about just being like, this isn't, this isn't a giant box set for $80. This is the movie presented beautifully and there you go.

• 1:52:33Speaker 06

  This doesn't have a black hat cult following.

• 1:52:36Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:52:37Speaker 06

  This is clean and sober. This was like standard Hollywood.

• 1:52:39Speaker 04

  I gotta say, I, I, you know, not to recommend a giant technology company that I don't work for, but if you put stuff in your Amazon cart, especially just like, okay, I know eventually I want to get Blade Runner and all these things. You will, you can monitor the price, the sales and the price drops and stuff like that. And kind of be like, oh shit, $9.99 now I'm jumping, you know, like.

• 1:53:01Sean Fennessey?

  We haven't really talked about sale hunting. I mean, do you do that at all at this point?

• 1:53:04Speaker 06

  Sure. I still, I, I don't buy Criterion until the, the, what, bi, biannual sale that they had.

• 1:53:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. We, I mean, we've talked about this many times. This, it's a, it's a, it's a life strategy. When it's your life's work. Once your work has become your hobby and your hobby has become your work.

• 1:53:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:53:23Sean Fennessey?

  You have to be attentive. For example, there is a Kino Lorber 50% off sale at Barnes and Noble right now. I'll be buying several 4Ks, including the film Coneheads, which I have no shame about owning.

• 1:53:34Speaker 06

  I think that Chris needs the 4K Warriors.

• 1:53:37Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 1:53:38Sean Fennessey?

  That wasn't on your list? Are you, you're a Warriors fan?

• 1:53:41Speaker 04

  I am a Warriors guy, yes.

• 1:53:43Speaker 05

  That was one of the ones that I brought as well.

• 1:53:44Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, wow. Look at that.

• 1:53:45Speaker 05

  Just because I actually bought that Blu-ray of the director's cut that makes it look like a comic book and ruins the movie. And it was so important to me that that was.

• 1:53:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:54Speaker 06

  I, I throw this up, the Criterion Night moves, just because it's great.

• 1:53:58Speaker 05

  That was, we watched that one on Tuesday night because we went on a Hackman run. They definitely had to issue an apology for like, Melanie Griffith being naked pre-18, but they didn't release it until after she was 18 and they were like, so it's cool, right?

• 1:54:11Sean Fennessey?

  Guys.

• 1:54:11Speaker 05

  So it's cool.

• 1:54:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:54:14Speaker 06

  Uh, match point. Woody Allen.

• 1:54:18Speaker 06

  I throw this up because I got this at a site called Yes Asia. Sometimes on Yes Asia, you can find some stuff that you won't find anywhere else. And you won't find match point on Blu-ray. And even some of the large collections of Woody Allen on Blu-ray, for whatever reason, probably rights issues, don't have match point. I've been going to No Asia, so that's why I keep, I keep missing on match point.

• 1:54:43Sean Fennessey?

  I don't want to have a long Woody Allen conversation, but that's an example of a filmmaker whose work might not get upgraded.

• 1:54:52Speaker 06

  Nobody's gonna put match point out on Blu-ray anytime soon.

• 1:54:58Speaker 06

  Russ Meyer, Severin is putting out the Russ Meyers in 4K. This is Russ Meyer's Vixen. Carrie and I watched it a couple of nights ago.

• 1:55:06Sean Fennessey?

  Can I get Carrie's review?

• 1:55:08Speaker 06

  A Vixen?

• 1:55:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:09Speaker 06

  She said, "That's a, that's an aesthetic right there."

• 1:55:12Sean Fennessey?

  That is an aesthetic. That's a word for it. Is Vixen the one with Erica Gavin?

• 1:55:18Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:55:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I like her.

• 1:55:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, I can already tell what this is upside down. And it was 60 minutes long. This is Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Much bought, much purchased in my home, many additions of this, but this is the new 4K from the good people at Shout, Select Shout, getting a lot of attention. You just don't have to wonder what that movie's about.

• 1:55:37Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, it's about retrieval.

• 1:55:40Speaker 06

  There you go. Kino. Oh, wow. Marion Bad. Last year at Marion Bad, 4K.

• 1:55:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:55:47Speaker 06

  Sterling, reference quality.

• 1:55:49Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe Papa's movie night last year, Marion Bad with the teenagers?

• 1:55:52Speaker 06

  Hiroshima, Motomore first.

• 1:55:55Sean Fennessey?

  Renee Night?

• 1:55:56Speaker 06

  So Eureka, which is a UK company, they've gotten more into Hong Kong cinema of late. We've talked about this. A lot of martial arts cinema, they've gotten away from sort of the original mission where they were a kind of UK criterion. But they still put out some pretty mean boxes. Terror in the Fog, the Wallace Crimmy at CCC set, so.

• 1:56:21Speaker 06

  So the lineage is Edgar Wallace, who was a mystery writer, English mystery writer. And then his movies became very popular as the basis for German productions, kind of horror, mystery, hybrid. Kremmy then became, CCC was the company that was producing these, and they produced Bird with the Crystal plumage. So the lineage from Kremmy to Jalloh is, that's very much on the family tree. And then you follow Jalloh to Slashers. So in some ways, these are the proto Slashers.

• 1:57:00Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:57:01Speaker 06

  Really excellent box.

• 1:57:03Speaker 05

  Just drop serious.

• 1:57:04Speaker 06

  Karen.

• 1:57:05Speaker 05

  Now I gotta go home and order.

• 1:57:06Speaker 06

  My God. Mabuse lives. Dr. Mabuse at CCC, right? So the underworld figure, hero slash villain of Fritz Lang's movies from the 30s was brought back in the 1960s in a series of six movies, very stylish, starring Gert Froeb, who we know as Goldfinger, and Peter Icke. And I have a double of this, and that belongs to Chris Ryan.

• 1:57:40Speaker 05

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:57:43Speaker 06

  And finally, I just, this box from Arrow, V Cinema Essentials. V Cinema, at some point, the Japanese started making straight to video movies, like, oh, video stores are popular, we're gonna make movies that are for the video store. And they are super low budget, they are 90 minutes long, they have synth scores and 80s lighting, and they're just really good, sort of down and dirty crime stories, and they just work. And there's an actress in one of these movies who's my favorite actress.

• 1:58:18Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah?

• 1:58:19Speaker 06

  Who's ever lived.

• 1:58:20Speaker 05

  Who's that?

• 1:58:21Speaker 06

  I can't tell you her name. She's my new favorite actress.

• 1:58:25Speaker 05

  There is the Russ Meyer stuff in there, and that idea of like, we're gonna go from this to Gallo to Slashers, or Jalloh to Slashers. That's the kind of shit like I think feel like I was asking recently of like, I really wanna gather more of those like actual like ground grindhousey Russ Meyer bullshit. And I feel like that has led me to like preordering some Ilsa's like just stuff that feels like you should be embarrassed to own it.

• 1:58:54Sean Fennessey?

  She wolf of the SS.

• 1:58:55Speaker 04

  I was where what she was the she wolf of, yeah.

• 1:58:57Sean Fennessey?

  Would you, are you attracted to Ilsa?

• 1:59:01Speaker 04

  I mean, Ilsa's on the upswing right now, I think.

• 1:59:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's true, she would do very well.

• 1:59:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a great time for that. You know, if you are interested in those Severin Russ Meyer discs are look incredible. The thing that I was always hearing from directors who really liked Russ Meyer movies, before I watched those movies, which is true, but is sort of like I read Playboy for the articles of cinephilia is, he was an amazing filmmaker who knew how to where to put the camera and how to cut. And, but his movies are about girls with huge racks killing men. And that's a great genre of movie, but it's very hard to be taken seriously when you're not talking to the tribunal here, you know, the high council.

• 1:59:47Sean Fennessey?

  Like I hear it's safe for me to say in hour three of this podcast, that Vixen matters.

• 1:59:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:55Sean Fennessey?

  Cinematically.

• 1:59:56Speaker 06

  Look, it's not for everybody. Not, not everything is for everybody. Everybody's got their stuff that they like.

• 2:00:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:04Speaker 06

  Great.

• 2:00:06Sean Fennessey?

  Um, do you feel more emboldened right now?

• 2:00:12Speaker 04

  He just did something that I've never really seen anyone do. I mean, he just wrote cinematic history out of thin air by like holding two boxes. I'm just kinda like, this is fucking special to be a part of it. But is also why this is, I think, something I'm gonna do for, for a long time, which is like, the idea of being able to trace from Edgar Wallace to Jason Voorhees is pretty sick. Not everybody gets it. Maybe it doesn't matter to everybody, but it matters to us.

• 2:00:45Sean Fennessey?

  Will you make DVD Beaver your homepage from now on?

• 2:00:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, among over the Beaver homepages.

• 2:00:50Speaker 05

  I feel like between the four of us, like we have provided most of the traffic to DVD Beaver.

• 2:00:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's a, it's a, it's a common look for me.

• 2:01:01Speaker 06

  Yeah. You know, Kerry mentioned it on the Tonight Show. Yeah. You mentioned DVD Beaver on the Tonight Show.

• 2:01:07Sean Fennessey?

  Does DVD Beaver have a message board or a community function, you know?

• 2:01:11Speaker 05

  They barely have a search function.

• 2:01:13Sean Fennessey?

  You can just go straight to 8chan for that. Should I make a Discord for DVD Beaver? That sounds like a really good idea.

• 2:01:18Speaker 06

  I don't even really know what you guys are talking about.

• 2:01:20Sean Fennessey?

  Do you, um, do you feel good about what you're inspiring?

• 2:01:25Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 2:01:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:01:27Speaker 06

  I went to the museum, to the Art Institute with Amanda Dobbins when we were in Chicago.

• 2:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  I've heard.

• 2:01:33Speaker 06

  I had not been there in 10 years. And I've took such solace in seeing people at the museum. The museum itself is extraordinary. The architecture is extraordinary. The work inside it is extraordinary, but to see the people looking at the art gives me hope. And so if people are engaged, as long as people are still engaged in stuff like this, in stories and art and culture and, uh, Russ Meyer and

• 2:02:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:02Speaker 06

  etc., then, then, uh, then we're doing all right. I really feel like that's kind of the final, the final boundary.

• 2:02:10Sean Fennessey?

  This is what Russ Meyer aspired to, was to be mentioned in the same breath as the Chicago Art Institute.

• 2:02:18Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks to Erica Gavin's cleavage.

• 2:02:23Sean Fennessey?

  Any closing thoughts? Tim, you good?

• 2:02:25Speaker 05

  This has been incredible. I really

• 2:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  Is your hangover cured? Is your hangover cured?

• 2:02:29Speaker 05

  A little bit, a little bit. I was definitely like a little sweaty at the beginning, but I'm kind of feeling, I'm feeling better. I got a lot more energy. I'm telling Chris, I feel like I'm still wearing the makeup that I was wearing

• 2:02:41Sean Fennessey?

  But you're gonna go home and you're gonna watch How to Kill a Judge? You literally scheduled, I'm flying to Vegas for Fight Night and that fight started very late.

• 2:02:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:02:54Sean Fennessey?

  Back to LA that night.

• 2:02:56Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:02:56Sean Fennessey?

  Off to the Emmys on Sunday night. Monday morning, big picture, high council of physical media.

• 2:03:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:03:05Sean Fennessey?

  This is like, it's like most, it's like being the president or something. What is, this is an extraordinary run of days.

• 2:03:11Speaker 05

  High level talks in Geneva.

• 2:03:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:13Speaker 05

  Then we got the whole thing going on in Ukraine.

• 2:03:15Sean Fennessey?

  Bruising on your hand.

• 2:03:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:03:17Sean Fennessey?

  Trying to keep covered.

• 2:03:21Speaker 05

  That that's the makeup that I was referencing still wearing to cover the bruising. No, I mean, it was like I was telling Tracy last night, like this was like an incredible weekend. This was kind of the thing that I was looking forward to the most. Talk about Russ Meyer, big titty movies with my friends.

• 2:03:40Sean Fennessey?

  We did it. Thanks to everybody for embracing this moment in history and art. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders. Thanks to CR. Thanks for having me, guys. Thanks for showing me the secret handshake. Beautiful baby boy is now in the family. We've brought you home from the hospital.

• 2:03:54Speaker 05

  We're gonna be alive.

• 2:03:55Sean Fennessey?

  You're growing so fast.

• 2:03:58Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see you soon on The Big Picture, but I highly doubt it'll be as good as this was.

• 2:04:23Speaker 08

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• 2:04:38Speaker 08

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• 2:04:53Speaker 09

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