The Summer Movie Mailbag

Sean and Amanda open the show by reacting to the quite disappointing official lineup for this year’s Venice Film Festival, the news that Sony and Alamo Drafthouse are reviving the iconic Cinerama Dome, and some exciting new movies that have officially been green-lit. Then, they open up the mailbag to answer all of your summer movie questions. They explore what the future of IMAX will look like (especially with an impending sale on the table), wonder where Christopher Nolan could possibly go from here, debate what the best movie of the summer will be, and much more. (0:00) Intro (0:59) The Venice Film Festival lineup (15:56) The Cinerama Dome is reopening (23:52) Lou Gehrig biopic in the works with Richard Linklater and Glen Powell (27:50) ‘Days of Thunder 2’ with Tom Cruise green-lit at Paramount (31:42) The summer movie mailbag Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh It’s on Prime. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  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 carried 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.

• 0:25Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

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• 1:24Speaker 02

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• 1:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 1:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:47Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture at Conversation Show about your questions answered. Today on the show, we are opening up the mailbag to hear from you. We'll discuss The Odyssey, Chris Nolan's great men, Spider-Man, Anthony Bourdain, Venice.

• 2:00Amanda Dobbins?

  No women, though.

• 2:01Sean Fennessey?

  No, no women, not in Venice.

• 2:02Amanda Dobbins?

  In that lineup or at Venice.

• 2:03Sean Fennessey?

  Tough one.

• 2:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Alberto.

• 2:05Sean Fennessey?

  We'll be talking about it more right after this.

• 2:09Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is presented by Amazon Prime. One of the best things about streaming is that you never just pick a title, you pick a feeling. And Prime makes that easy. With great entertainment and fast shipping that brings the moment to life, Prime helps you experience the feeling you're craving, shows you can't wait for, and deliveries you don't wait for, one click away. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

• 2:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Amanda.

• 2:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:31Sean Fennessey?

  Your beloved Venice Film Festival lineup has been announced.

• 2:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Let me set the scene for you. I woke up this morning. We had a lovely dinner with friends last night.

• 2:38Sean Fennessey?

  We did.

• 2:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was Wine Wednesday, so that was great. So I woke up with like two very urgent ideas in my head.

• 2:50Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Number one was like, I think it's time to get my ears pierced. And more on that. And number two was, I need to check the Venice lineup right now. So before I put my glasses on, phone straight to the nose. And maybe the lack of prescription lenses exacerbated my feeling of like, wait, where are the actual movies that are showing up at this festival? But Alberto, what happened?

• 3:14Sean Fennessey?

  What happened? I'm kind of relieved that you're not super defensive about this because this is not a great lineup.

• 3:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I'm going to Europe like on the company dime for a week. I'm doing great, but it is, it's confusing. I mean, it's like, and especially the absence of the Netflix films.

• 3:29Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do a little autopsy here. Because, and we can talk about the positives, and there are definitely some cool movies playing, so it's not like it's an absolute nightmare. But it is not what you've come to expect over the last few years, at least in terms of glitzy, big-ticket movies. There's not really, I would say there's not really any big-ticket movies here. There are a few awards contenders that are interesting. We've already talked about Ink, the new Danny Boyle film, which is very exciting. And it sounds like that film is going to end up playing Venice, TIFF, Telluride, and New York.

• 3:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 3:59Sean Fennessey?

  It sounds like that's the only big movie this year that's going to hit all four. That's what I've heard. So that one's good. Wild Horse 9, which has been expected to go there, the new Martin McDonagh film, which, you know, I think in any other year is like, oh, that's a great like third or fourth best movie at a film festival. It's kind of the big movie at this festival. Obviously stars John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi. It's about, I'm not sure if they're hitmen or CIA agents, some combination of both.

• 4:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Could be both, yeah.

• 4:24Sean Fennessey?

  Could be both. Looking forward to that movie very much. I hope it goes to Telluride personally.

• 4:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I would assume that it will, but they didn't tell me.

• 4:32Sean Fennessey?

  We shall see. The other big one is Primetime.

• 4:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm pleased about this.

• 4:36Sean Fennessey?

  This is probably the best news of your morning, right? This is the new 824 film directed by Lance Oppenheimer, starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen from How to Catch a Predator.

• 4:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:46Sean Fennessey?

  That film opens very shortly after this festival. It was just dated for September 25th. I don't know what that means, but I thought it was interesting.

• 4:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited to have Pattinson there. The summer/fall year of Robert Pattinson continues.

• 5:00Sean Fennessey?

  He's going crazy right now.

• 5:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm excited to see that film. We've both been anticipating it. I'm excited because 824 throws the best parties. So I'm glad they're going to be in the mix. Yeah, I mean, it is, it's thin.

• 5:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's thin. I mean, there are a few other notable things that I'm certainly interested in.

• 5:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, sure, I'm going to see all of these films.

• 5:19Sean Fennessey?

  Bunker, the new Florian Zeller film, which stars Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, Werner Herzog's Bucking Faster, which we talked about, which stars the Mara sisters. Cori Aida's Look Back. I wanted to recommend you check out the 60-minute animated version of Look Back that I think is still available on Prime Video that I think you would enjoy. It's a short anime, but it's very beautiful. And as you are having a Studio Ghibli moment with your family.

• 5:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 5:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think you might, and this is effectively a remake of that animated film, so I'm just going to suggest that to you.

• 5:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Put that on the, great, thank you. We'll do that.

• 5:51Sean Fennessey?

  The only, the only major Hollywood studio movie at this entire film festival is Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger, which is a concert documentary of their recent reunion tour, which you attended.

• 6:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 6:05Sean Fennessey?

  Are you excited?

• 6:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you not go?

• 6:06Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't go.

• 6:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, really?

• 6:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, you weren't in the husbands section?

• 6:10Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 6:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Sorry, I thought I'd forgotten. I went with my friends and then the husbands went somewhere else and I thought you were just there.

• 6:15Sean Fennessey?

  I would have loved to have gone.

• 6:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I was there at the Rose Bowl and it was, it was very fun. And I'll also watch, I'll do as much Oasis content as will be offered to me.

• 6:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we've just come off of a summer full of Wonderwall coming at us from the English national team.

• 6:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And Liam Gallagher on Twitter, which just, you know, gives and gives.

• 6:35Sean Fennessey?

  A legend.

• 6:36Amanda Dobbins?

  So this, I will seek this out. I will enjoy it. Do I, maybe it'll be in the Oscar conversation, though probably not.

• 6:44Sean Fennessey?

  Probably not.

• 6:45Amanda Dobbins?

  So, you know, in terms of Oscars, this is interesting. And in terms of big fall movies, and you know, we're in the afterglow and the continuing glow of The Odyssey in a lot of ways. And real, movies are back. It's all happening. And so this, I think this lineup feels like a little extra flat because it does signal like what's missing from the fall? Like what else is there to look forward to?

• 7:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I completely agree with you and it's a really good point. I think it shows that there's like kind of an unevenness in the year, whereas last year you were like, oh, new Coogler movie, new Paul Thomas Anderson movie. We were kind of like looking forward to things over periods of time. Some of those films went to festivals, some of them didn't. But in this particular case, you've got the big heavyweight filmmakers of this year, I think it's fair to say, are Chris Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, and Alejandro Gonzales in a rete. Those are like probably the three biggest names, you know, Steven Spielberg. Yes, but you know, in terms of like awards contention.

• 7:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 7:43Sean Fennessey?

  But those are also three blockbuster movies that are not historically festival movies.

• 7:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Aspiring blockbuster.

• 7:48Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see about Digger, but it's a big-scale movie.

• 7:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Sean Fennessey?

  So that changes, I think, the dynamic of what to expect at festivals. Plus, there's this thing going on, we've been talking about, where it's like some big filmmakers are shooing festivals. They feel like they don't, maybe they don't need that or they don't want that, or even the studios are thinking the same way. There's other stuff here that I'm interested in. Casey Affleck directed a movie. I had no idea about that, starring Ben Mendelsohn. Paul Schrader's The Basics of Philosophy. Will you attend?

• 8:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course I will.

• 8:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 8:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Just to take selfies like at the screen before, and send them to you before I get kicked out. I would never do that. I respect cinema. You know what, Venice, they have the, do they have this Telluride? They have like the little laser. And so the ushers just have like laser pointers. And if you're on your phone, they just go like this, like this, like this.

• 8:29Sean Fennessey?

  I think you've told me that before. They don't do that at Telluride. Yeah, that's nice.

• 8:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I've never been lasered because I would never look at my phone during a Venice Film Festival screening.

• 8:38Sean Fennessey?

  Will you sit through Alex Gibney's four-hour Elon Musk documentary?

• 8:42Amanda Dobbins?

  If the timing works out.

• 8:43Sean Fennessey?

  This is the, I would love to watch this on my couch.

• 8:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure if this is what I want to be doing at a film festival, but I love Alex Gibney's docs. This movie's been in the works for a long time. It's been reportedly very controversial. Musk not happy at all about what's inside this movie.

• 8:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, if I don't get, if this is the only opportunity to see it, then maybe I should.

• 9:03Sean Fennessey?

  I think it has, I think maybe Greenwich is distributing, or Bleecker Street might be distributing it.

• 9:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 9:08Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe Bleecker Street.

• 9:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't back down in fear.

• 9:10Sean Fennessey?

  Speaking of, there isn't even longer documentary. I'm not sure if you saw this, but Luca Guadagnino will have a film at the festival, but it is not artificial.

• 9:20Amanda Dobbins?

  That write-up in paragraph form, when I did not have my glasses on yet, was, that was a real roller coaster emotional moment. They got me and then I lost it.

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  He has a seven-and-a-half-hour documentary about the great Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertrici.

• 9:34Amanda Dobbins?

  That's cool.

• 9:35Sean Fennessey?

  Seven-and-a-half hours?

• 9:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm definitely not taking a boat at 7:00 AM to go spend my whole day doing that, with respect to Luca. I'll watch it at home.

• 9:44Sean Fennessey?

  You've also got to consider adding on some time because maybe the delays in preparing the film to be seen.

• 9:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Like the exact, the line outside the door in the thunderstorm with the umbrellas that are literal lightning rods? Never forget.

• 9:57Sean Fennessey?

  Could be challenging.

• 9:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:58Sean Fennessey?

  So No Digger at Venice, which is something that people had been speculating for a year.

• 10:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Sean Fennessey?

  No Social Reckoning. We've talked about the reshoots last week.

• 10:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Do you, how are you feeling about if that's coming out in '26?

• 10:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think it will.

• 10:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:12Sean Fennessey?

  But.

• 10:13Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 10:13Sean Fennessey?

  And I have a little bit more information about it now than I did yesterday, but I don't know if I think it's going to be good.

• 10:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean, I think we know what I think about that.

• 10:21Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, No Behemoth?

• 10:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Exclamation point.

• 10:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think this means going, we're going to Telluride.

• 10:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:29Sean Fennessey?

  So that would be nice. Um, no artificial.

• 10:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think, I think this is cowardly.

• 10:33Sean Fennessey?

  No Cliff Booth.

• 10:35Amanda Dobbins?

  So is Dan Lynch just hosting his own festival in the Netflix cafeteria now? Like, what's going on? Like, what? This is, so they have Inc.

• 10:44Sean Fennessey?

  They have Inc.

• 10:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is opening the festival, but it was announced as the opening festival before Netflix acquired it.

• 10:49Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. I suspected that that was done before that, though.

• 10:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm sure, but it's, but still, that's it. And they normally have a big presence at this festival. And it's notable that they're just skipping it completely this year.

• 11:04Sean Fennessey?

  I think they're in a different era. I don't think they're in the same Oscar race era that they once were, you know?

• 11:09Amanda Dobbins?

  We were just talking about how we think the lineup is pretty good.

• 11:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they have some cool movies coming out. Maybe those movies are not Oscar, you know? A movie like Here Comes the Flood, it's possible that's a completely commercial play. There is not, there is not a scintilla of prestige about it. And if there's not, then it wouldn't go to a place like that. It may be true for the other movies that I mentioned with you and Chris earlier this week. I don't know. It's interesting. It's interesting. You know, like Le Bola Negra is going to TIFF. That was an acquisition. Inc. is an acquisition.

• 11:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Sean Fennessey?

  It's a different time at the studio, I think. And how that impacts Venice long-term is fascinating because Alberto has been relying for the last five years on Netflix.

• 11:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, to bring the glitz. Yeah.

• 11:48Sean Fennessey?

  And so this is not a very starry addition of this festival.

• 11:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, Venice is also where the great Joker 2 folia debacle happened.

• 11:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 11:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I do think has-

• 12:01Sean Fennessey?

  That was the one year you missed, right?

• 12:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, since I've been going, because I think Si was born like that weekend. And that's why we did not name Si Arthur. And it was on the list. It's a lovely name.

• 12:14Sean Fennessey?

  We discussed that, yeah. My uncle and grandfather were named Arthur. It's a beautiful name.

• 12:17Amanda Dobbins?

  But that was so roundly panned and then just sunk at the box office. That I think that that has been, not for the awards contenders, but for all the big studio movies. That plus the Indiana Jones Cannes situation was just kind of why, for a studio blockbuster, unless you really have the goods, there's no point in doing this. So-

• 12:42Sean Fennessey?

  It really changes the dynamic of what the draw is for those festivals.

• 12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree.

• 12:45Sean Fennessey?

  And it makes it really interesting to look at. Um, there is going to be some star power there. George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn will be honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards. Do you attend that stuff? How does that work?

• 12:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I went the first year when Wes Anderson got one.

• 12:58Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was like a Cartier Award or something. He was like a Cartier Global Ambassador. I mean, I hope so.

• 13:04Sean Fennessey?

  I suspect he has a few watches.

• 13:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I think maybe he got a collector edition. And that was very nice. But I think that was also, that was the year, was it Henry Sugar? What were the short films? Yeah, I think that was the Henry Sugar year. So it worked together. So that was maybe the premiere of that as well.

• 13:21Sean Fennessey?

  Maggie Gyllenhaal is heading up the jury. A bit ironic, you know, Maggie, a very outspoken female filmmaker. There is only one woman with a film in competition at Venice this year out of 20. You say what?

• 13:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I say, once again, Alberto, what happened?

• 13:35Sean Fennessey?

  What, this is a, Thierry Frummo from Cannes has come under fire over the years for this very same issue.

• 13:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:42Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Nate Jones in Vulture this week published a 100 most powerful directors list.

• 13:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 13:48Sean Fennessey?

  And there were only eight women on that list. And I would say that that wasn't necessarily inaccurate.

• 13:52Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I mean, you asked me about it and I said, like, I don't think it's the list that's sexist. I think it's reflecting when Hollywood, how Hollywood movies get made right now. There were subcategories, great lists.

• 14:05Sean Fennessey?

  Great, great lists, yeah.

• 14:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Like New York Magazine, My All Amater, Still the Best to Do It, in my opinion. Nate Jones did a great list. So there were subheads. And I noticed that, like, basically all the women directors were put under the subhead of, like, film festival favorites. Which is ironic, given that now they can't even get to the film festivals because they were, it was light at Cannes and even lighter here.

• 14:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 14:28Sean Fennessey?

  This is a problem.

• 14:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not good.

• 14:30Sean Fennessey?

  And it's something that people who work in Hollywood have been working on. There are a lot of different foundations and, and, and think tanks and groups that like focus on this and try to figure out how to build developmental systems to get more women making movies. I noted to you that half of the women who are on Nate's list are former actresses or are current working actresses. It's a bit of an epidemic.

• 14:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:51Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, and I'm not going to white knight because I've got the real knight right here. You can, you can say everything you need to say about it, but it keeps popping up in these festival circumstances. So I hope you have a great time at the festival. I think this bodes pretty well for Telluride.

• 15:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's, I'm happy.

• 15:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's my gut.

• 15:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm happy for you. Then, then we'll both be happy. Because you'll be in the mountains with Pedro Pascal and I will be at Venice with Robert Pattinson and a really good after-party. And that's what I want.

• 15:17Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think Pedro has a lot to say to me?

• 15:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I, you know.

• 15:20Sean Fennessey?

  Do I have a lot to say to him?

• 15:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you? Well, Andor.

• 15:24Sean Fennessey?

  I like his work.

• 15:24Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he's not on Andor. He was, he's Mandalorian, which is related, but different. Yeah. Do you think he knows what happened on Andor?

• 15:31Sean Fennessey?

  Uh-

• 15:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you think that was a prerequisite for working with Tony Gilroy?

• 15:34Sean Fennessey?

  No, but I'm sure he's seen it and enjoys it.

• 15:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 15:39Sean Fennessey?

  One can assume. I think-

• 15:42Amanda Dobbins?

  What do you do in a situation like that? Do you just walk up and say like, hey, man, thank you for your work?

• 15:46Sean Fennessey?

  I never do that. I never do that. No. I, I, I'm always more than happy to be introduced to someone and to chat with someone in that situation. But I am never the person who says, hey, I just want to tell you, your work means the world to me in the Mandalorian and Grogu. Like, I just wouldn't do that. That's just not my thing.

• 16:03Sean Fennessey?

  Even though I have those feelings about people that I'm proximate to.

• 16:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:06Sean Fennessey?

  Like Grogu. If it was Grogu, I would do it. If Grogu was at Telluride, should Grogu go to Telluride this year?

• 16:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I, you know, he went to the Oscars.

• 16:15Sean Fennessey?

  He did.

• 16:15Amanda Dobbins?

  But he was stationary. I don't know whether-

• 16:19Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not talking about the puppet. I'm talking about the real Grogu. Like, I want to get the real Grogu. None of this fake shit, okay?

• 16:23Amanda Dobbins?

  The puppet is welcome in a little gondola at Venice. Imagine Grogu on the, that's such a good idea.

• 16:29Sean Fennessey?

  He wouldn't have to weave a line. He could zip around.

• 16:31Amanda Dobbins?

  You know? Yeah.

• 16:33Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Would you roll with Grogu?

• 16:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely. Are you kidding?

• 16:36Sean Fennessey?

  Do you, you don't have a scene partner this year at Venice?

• 16:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, well, that's not true, but I'm parcelling it together because now I have festival friends and people. So there are going to be some people there at the beginning. I have a friend coming from, like, Europe for a few days. So, yeah, it's, it's going to work out. We're going to be great. I'm going to go to the Drees Foundation. Do you know about that? Drees Van Noten has a-

• 16:56Sean Fennessey?

  I know what Drees Van Noten is. I don't know what the foundation is.

• 16:58Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like a museum, you know?

• 17:00Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. And what are they working on?

• 17:02Amanda Dobbins?

  What are they working on?

• 17:03Sean Fennessey?

  Are they solving the world's problems?

• 17:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I'm going to do, the, the art Biennale was this year, so I'm going to go to some of the pavilions.

• 17:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 17:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And see, you know, that all the art that the world has to offer us.

• 17:15Sean Fennessey?

  What do they have to say about AI?

• 17:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And recreate the, the brutalist, the ending of it, which went over so well the first time.

• 17:22Sean Fennessey?

  I loved it. Uh, let's pivot away from Europe. The ArcLight.

• 17:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm, that's-

• 17:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Pivoting from Europe to the Alamo Drafthouse is really, and within the movie realm, is as hard as you can pivot.

• 17:36Sean Fennessey?

  This is America. This is America. The ArcLight is, for those listening at home who don't know, a historic movie cineplex here in Los Angeles, smack dab in the middle of Hollywood. If you've seen the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, you have seen the sequence where Cliff Booth drives past the Cinerama Dome, which is the primary movie theater and one of the most historic movie theaters in America. And it has been closed since COVID began in 2020. It has not reopened. For me, I moved here in 2012. It was the number one movie theater that I attended in 2007 when I came to visit Los Angeles. Kind of like my scouting trip for Eileen and I to figure out if we want to live here. We went to the ArcLight twice. It is one of my absolute favorite places in the universe.

• 18:15Sean Fennessey?

  And it was announced yesterday that the space, which has been sitting dormant, has been acquired by Alamo Drafthouse and will reopen in 2028. Now-

• 18:24Amanda Dobbins?

  By Sony and, well, Sony owns Alamo Drafthouse. And so they are buying, they've bought the entire complex, which in addition to the Cinerama Dome, was a 14-screen theater run by the ArcLight chain, which had several other-

• 18:41Sean Fennessey?

  Sherman Oaks, Pasadena.

• 18:43Amanda Dobbins?

  And was a wonderful, wonderful movie theater chain. And managed to bridge something that no other chains or movie theaters, like in Los Angeles or anywhere, but specifically Los Angeles, because it's such a movie town, have managed, which is like, it is both, it was like very like art house, cinephile vibes, but showed everything. You know, no fear of the commercial. And it was the perfect experience for, like, people who just want to go see a movie comfortably and well-projected.

• 19:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 19:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And the staff would introduce every movie and it, it was the best. And I miss it dearly.

• 19:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 19:25Amanda Dobbins?

  So they're turning the 14 screens into an Alamo and then they're restoring the Cinerama Dome.

• 19:33Amanda Dobbins?

  So the Cinerama Dome, they say, will be as it was. And they'll preserve like the, the, the architecture and the, the retro vibe of it. Upgrading, I think, the projection, which is great.

• 19:48Sean Fennessey?

  I think the both the projection, and I imagine the seating will be upgraded.

• 19:51Amanda Dobbins?

  That, I mean, that would be nice. But they will not be implementing the Alamo dine-in. And hopefully not so much of the branding.

• 20:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, we'll see. You know, Alamo has been going through this fascinating reputational transition over the last year. And when it was first acquired, I think our reaction to it was, well, we'll see. I mean, Sony's never owned a movie theater chain. You couldn't legally own a movie theater chain as a studio until fairly recently, when the Paramount law was overturned. So I think the response has generally been not good because of the introduction of the QR codes in the ordering system, which goes against the entire premise of Alamo Drafthouse, which was no phones, no disturbances, even though-

• 20:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And let us lecture you about that at really, really great length, even as we allow people to run up and down the aisles through the climactic parts of dramatic movies to bring you your unlimited popcorn.

• 20:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's a, it's a-

• 20:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I've, I've never been a fan.

• 20:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's a flawed system. I have always enjoyed my time in the Austin additions. I haven't spent a lot of time at the New York edition, but that one is also pretty popular. The one in LA has always been, I would say, a little snake bit structurally. It's in a, it's a very, in a very odd building. I do see movies still there. I still like to go see movies there, but it isn't ideal. I don't, I hope that that energy is not completely transported to the ArcLight. Because the ArcLight, you know, for me, it's church, but for a lot of people, it is like at least sanctuary. It's a place to go at this time of year in LA, when it's 95 degrees. It's like one of the best places to go. It's very big. It's got a big, open-air kind of atrium in the, in the lobby area that people are always hanging out in and talking in. It's got a great cafe inside. Like, I want them to replicate all those things that I liked about it.

• 21:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And it, it did also, which is very rare for Los Angeles, have walkable, like dining-esque options nearby, like in the same complex where you could park, you know? I don't believe that Stella Barra is there anymore.

• 21:44Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think it's there anymore, yeah. But there were a lot of restaurants, a lot of like takeout places.

• 21:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And now that's all filled with condos that people don't seem to live in.

• 21:51Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's an interesting thing for us to talk about here, even though it's a very local concern for us, because it's an, it's an unusual situation where a big historic movie theater is being restored and is being made mass. You know, it's being made like available to the public in a way that is not, there's not, this is not like Vidiot's opening as a movie theater, or the American Cinematech restorations of like The Egyptian, or Les Feels 3. It, this is like a place where like everybody goes. And you really have to get it right. And as this movie moment is happening, and there are questions about this around IMAX with The Odyssey that we'll get to very shortly. I think there's this question of kind of like, how can the industry meet the moment of people realizing like, oh, I do like to go to the movies?

• 22:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 22:35Sean Fennessey?

  And I do think these formats are interesting to me. I noted that, um, the Burbank 16 here in Los Angeles is building a second Dolby room to accommodate-

• 22:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, cool.

• 22:43Sean Fennessey?

  -additional interest in PLFs and, you know, that kind of like elevated seating experience that people want in movie theaters. So there's something, it's not quite transformational, but I think everybody who owns movie theaters knows like, shoot, if we don't make this work, like this moment might go away. Because if people are going to spend their time here, like, we have to make it comfortable for them. And so I'll be keeping a very close eye on this experience as they upgrade this movie theater.

• 23:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. This, it is also, it underlines how much of this specific movie theaters issues, but also movie theaters more broadly, are like a real estate issue, you know, which is, because this was, the, the theater was closed because of the pandemic, but also as we understood it and the reporting around it, because the owners didn't really feel like reopening it after the pandemic. And they felt that this location could ultimately be more valuable. As, as real estate, as being sold off probably for condos. This is an area of Hollywood that has its own issues right now, for sure, as all of Los Angeles does. We, um, it's a wonderful city, and also we live in hell.

• 23:46Amanda Dobbins?

  But so, and I, and I would love the behind the scenes of like how Sony prevailed upon them to sell it and, and how much it is worth and, and what's going on with all the rest of those condos. Yeah, no, I'm sure. I'm really looking forward to it. I love a price tag, as you know, like show, you know, follow the money. But that does seem to be a larger issue for all movie theaters is that they've got the, they've got interest back, but do they have like the actual space and capital to be able to rebuild and to, to make these,

• 24:28Amanda Dobbins?

  like make what they own valuable? Or to hang on in the new thing set? And I don't know.

• 24:35Sean Fennessey?

  I think viable is really the question, is like, can you justify the expense of a place like this? The Foreman family, which owned the movie theater in that, in that space. What I had read, what I've read, and I can't confirm this, but what I've read is that keeping the doors closed on the, on the venue was largely like a tax choice, that, that, you know, they would not have to pay. Not only would they not have to pay employees or, or insurance liabilities, but it allowed for them to effectively make it a write, write down for a long stretch of time. So I think you're right, that they probably paid a pretty penny to get the rights to this place, which, as I said, here, it is an iconic space. There's not a single movie fan in LA that doesn't know what the Cinerama Dome is, that doesn't want it to reopen. So in that respect, I have to celebrate this. Well, I think we also have to be cautious about what it's going to end up becoming.

• 25:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:21Sean Fennessey?

  Um, okay. You want to talk about the Lou Gehrig biopic really quickly?

• 25:26Amanda Dobbins?

  You know.

• 25:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's sick. Is this-

• 25:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I don't know.

• 25:28Sean Fennessey?

  I'm really, I'm so interested.

• 25:30Amanda Dobbins?

  What do we know about?

• 25:32Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Richard Linklater is directing a biopic of the legendary New York Yankee slugger Lou Gehrig, starring Glenn Powell. The screenplay is written by Simon Rich. This is for Universal. It's a studio movie. This was announced yesterday.

• 25:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:45Sean Fennessey?

  All, all people I like. I, I'm a Mets fan, not a Yankees fan, but Lou Gehrig's life is completely fascinating. He's, you know, the iron horse, one of the, one of the best baseball players of all time, someone who played a massive consecutive game streak, slugger who came in behind Babe Ruth, an absolutely beloved iconic figure who died very young because, he, he's probably the first public person who was identified as being diagnosed with ALS. And it was called, and it's called Lou Gehrig's Sisies. And there is a movie about his life called, I think Pride of the Yankees. Is it Pride of the Yankees?

• 26:19Speaker 05

  I believe that's correct.

• 26:20Sean Fennessey?

  Pride of the Yankees, starring Garrett Cooper. And it's a good movie. I saw it probably when I was a teenager. It's a bit of a stiff 1940s, you know, sincere portrait of this man. But Rick Linklater and Simon Rich making this movie kind of fascinates me because they never come at anything head on. So like, is there like some sort of like side door entrance to a sports movie, like a period piece sports biopic about a person who is generally revered? I, I, you know, if you were like, they're making Babe Ruth, I'd be like, oh, I see. They're going to do like an irreverent take on Babe Ruth. Because Babe Ruth was kind of a, he was kind of a transgressive figure, you know? He liked, he liked women and wine, you know?

• 27:05Sean Fennessey?

  He was, he was, Lou Gehrig is, he's the stuff dreams are made of, you know? He's like, he's all American.

• 27:11Amanda Dobbins?

  But what this movie presupposes is, maybe he's not.

• 27:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know.

• 27:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. Listen, Glenn Powell playing a baseball player.

• 27:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 27:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Great. Glenn Powell, back with Richard Linklater, great. Richard Linklater working with Simon Rich, great by me. Universal has good taste in this stuff and handles movies well.

• 27:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 27:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, I'm fine. I'm fine. Try it.

• 27:32Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's more like-

• 27:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Let people try.

• 27:34Sean Fennessey?

  Nine out of 10 times, if you, if you give me this much information about a movie, I'm like, I think I know what this is going to be.

• 27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Sean Fennessey?

  This one, I don't know. I'm not, I don't know. And that's exciting.

• 27:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Is it? I mean, you are not expressing it as excitement. You like to know everything at all times.

• 27:47Sean Fennessey?

  I do.

• 27:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's what you're-

• 27:48Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I love baseball. I just love baseball.

• 27:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Even now.

• 27:51Sean Fennessey?

  And in fact, even, well, yeah, of course. I have a lot to think about now with the Mets. I've got these young outfielders who I adore, you know? We've got Zach Thornton on the rise. Things are happening. Jack, right? Things are happening?

• 28:01Speaker 05

  Things are happening.

• 28:01Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you.

• 28:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 28:02Sean Fennessey?

  Um, we're doing a baseball movie draft later this year. You know that, right?

• 28:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I do.

• 28:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. How do you feel about that?

• 28:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I love baseball movies.

• 28:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, baseball movies are the best.

• 28:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I love, I like baseball. We've had to turn it off after the World Cup. We were kind of like-

• 28:15Sean Fennessey?

  Too much sports.

• 28:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Too much sports. Well, just too much plopping our children in front of the TV. And also, we got to save the rest of that for the plane flights later this summer.

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  Understood.

• 28:23Amanda Dobbins?

  So we have like had to resist the urge to put the Phillies on at 4:30 every day. How are the Phillies doing? Good, bad? I know you guys don't care.

• 28:31Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe 12 games over 100, something like that.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  They're doing a whole lot better than the Mets, who also fired their manager in the season. Now they are very thickly in the wild card race, whereas we will be trading all of our best players.

• 28:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so it's that time of the summer where you, so we've gone through, this is catastrophe, my life is over. I can never believe in anything again. And then we're getting to the point in the summer where it's like, oh, there's a glimmer of hope. Maybe playoffs, maybe they're going to happen. And then you're rearranging your New York Film Festival trip and all-

• 28:58Speaker 05

  No, not for the Mets, not for the Mets.

• 29:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, the Phillies?

• 29:01Sean Fennessey?

  The Phillies are good.

• 29:02Speaker 05

  Yes, I forgot the Phillies, yeah.

• 29:03Sean Fennessey?

  The Phillies are in good shape.

• 29:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 29:05Sean Fennessey?

  They're almost certainly going to make the playoffs.

• 29:06Speaker 05

  The Mets are completely fucked up.

• 29:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure. And then they'll forget how to hit, like they do every October.

• 29:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, their lineup is deeply flawed.

• 29:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, their lineup is deeply flawed. But they're an intriguing team with three very strong frontline starting pitchers. So they'll, they're, they're going to the playoffs. Uh, Days of Thunder 2. It's happening at Paramount with Tom Cruise, maybe. Directed by Jonathan Levine, unusual choice, not a bad choice. Jonathan Levine, who I think most people came to see with the wackness, who I had on the show for, gosh, what was the Amy Schumer-Goldi-Hawn comedy?

• 29:38Speaker 05

  Snatched?

• 29:39Sean Fennessey?

  Snatched, thank you very much. Lovely guy. He directed Mr. Irrelevant, the forthcoming John Tuggle story for Paramount.

• 29:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that, okay.

• 29:47Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds like maybe that's how he got in the mix here. Days of Thunder 2, uh, do we need that?

• 29:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So you assume-

• 29:54Sean Fennessey?

  We just had F1.

• 29:55Amanda Dobbins?

  You assume that Nicole Kidman, the 23-year-old neurologist from the original Days of Thunder, will have moved on?

• 30:02Sean Fennessey?

  Now she's a 68-year-old neurologist.

• 30:04Amanda Dobbins?

  She's a neurologist, right? Is she a psychiatrist? I'm still recovering from, I would like to formally apologize, most of all to myself, but to everyone else who listened all the way through the Diane Keaton Hall of Fame. Thank you, number one.

• 30:18Sean Fennessey?

  Who the fuck apologizes to themselves?

• 30:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And number two, for misidentifying Sam Shepard's character in Baby Boom as a pediatrician when he is, in fact, a veterinarian. I was wrong. I'm correcting it now. And I'm going to do better in the future.

• 30:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, thanks for that.

• 30:39Amanda Dobbins?

  But so is she a neurologist? I don't want to have to do that again.

• 30:42Sean Fennessey?

  Do you know where Cole Trickle is from? Do you know where he was born and raised? Do you have any idea?

• 30:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Neurosurgeon.

• 30:48Sean Fennessey?

  Neurosurgeon, sure.

• 30:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, sure.

• 30:50Sean Fennessey?

  I believe that. Do you know where Cole Trickle is from?

• 30:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Long Island?

• 30:54Sean Fennessey?

  No, Eagle Rock, California.

• 30:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that doesn't make any sense at all.

• 30:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's just a fact. Watch the film. Any other movie news come across your transom?

• 31:04Amanda Dobbins?

  So he's just doing F1? Is this what he's doing?

• 31:06Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 31:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not done talking about this.

• 31:08Sean Fennessey?

  Who do you want to be the young buck coming up behind him?

• 31:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Glenn Powell.

• 31:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 31:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 31:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I mean, we saw that movie.

• 31:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, and I loved it.

• 31:15Sean Fennessey?

  But do you think Cruise goes into the Robert Duvall role? Where he's the old coach?

• 31:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I have to be honest, all I remember about Days of Thunder is driving and that Nicole Kidman is an absurdly young neuro doctor who I've now confirmed is a neurosurgeon.

• 31:30Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do some math right now, okay? So Robert Duvall.

• 31:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:34Sean Fennessey?

  Who played the inspirational coach in that film? Which came out in 1990. Duvall was born in 1931, which means he was 59 when that movie came out. Is that correct? Am I doing my math right? I think I am.

• 31:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I wasn't listening to the numbers.

• 31:50Sean Fennessey?

  And how old is Tom Cruise?

• 31:51Amanda Dobbins?

  64?

• 31:52Sean Fennessey?

  So Tom Cruise is five years older than Robert Duvall was when he was the coach in Days of Thunder. And in the film, when I was 12 and I saw Days of Thunder, and you were like, how old is the coach? I would have been like 87. He's probably the oldest man who's ever lived. And Cruise is five years older than him. And Cruise is almost certainly not going to be the coach. He's going to be in the car.

• 32:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's going to have the love interest.

• 32:16Speaker 05

  No, no way.

• 32:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course he is. Excuse me. Have you not lived through the 20 most recent years of Tom Cruise's work?

• 32:26Speaker 05

  We're getting, but Digger, though, he's playing old.

• 32:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but, but Digger.

• 32:30Sean Fennessey?

  But Digger, though.

• 32:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 32:31Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, anything else you want to say about Days of Thunder 2?

• 32:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Why is this one? Why this one? Is just because of F1, I guess? Because people, yeah, people like cars going fast.

• 32:44Sean Fennessey?

  And Days of Thunder is Bruckheimer? And I'm sure that that's part of The Machine, right?

• 32:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was never my, it was never my Cruise movie, but sure, whatever.

• 32:52Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it's not mine either. It is Tony Scott who I love, but it's not my favorite Tony Scott. I think it's kind of a bad script. All right, any other thoughts before we get to this mailbag? No? Do you want to say anything about Leo season before we do it?

• 33:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I was trying to think, I was honestly, that silence was me trying to remember whether we've done Leo season yet. We'll get to it in the mailbag.

• 33:13Sean Fennessey?

  All right, Jack Sanders. You and Lucas Cavanagh have scoured these emails. What, any general takeaways from the emails before you ask these questions?

• 33:23Speaker 05

  Honestly, a strong batch.

• 33:24Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, nice.

• 33:25Speaker 05

  Major thank you to Lucas Cavanagh, who sifted through 600 emails in a day. These questions were good. I honestly think it like, the strength of these questions kind of represents the we're so back vibes that are going on right now.

• 33:38Sean Fennessey?

  Nice.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  That's how I feel. So the first question, and there's a couple of these, is basically a combination of 100 people's different questions is, people are asking about IMAX. Many listeners commented on the online discourse surrounding the format differences, the difficulty to secure IMAX 70mm tickets, and the lack of true IMAX projectors. One listener even noted that their friends chose not to see the film because they couldn't get IMAX 70mm tickets because the marketing told them that they needed to see it on the biggest screen possible. Now that audiences have become aware of this new kind of moviegoing experience, what do you think the future of IMAX looks like?

• 34:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, the company's up for sale. So I feel like this matters.

• 34:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:21Sean Fennessey?

  You know, there's only 1,000 screens in America that support this format. There's only 41 that support 70mm in this format. I think it represented something like, was it 40% of ticket sales over the opening weekend? So it's obviously pretty critical to the future of the industry. And yet, anytime you talk to someone, they say that building new projectors for IMAX 70 or building more screens is incredibly pricey and hard to come by. And I think for people like me and you, we're like, well, what do you mean? There's demand. Why can't you just make more? But you also made that salient point about real estate.

• 35:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and movie theaters don't exactly have a tremendous amount of cash on hand right now. And so, having the money to build it, plus then renegotiating, you know, in Los Angeles and in New York and places with very vibrant movie cultures, it's probably easier to justify, like, the extra space and also, you know, finding the space. But, you know, malls are, are malls dead or malls coming back? I can't really tell these days, you know?

• 35:32Sean Fennessey?

  LA is an illusion because everything is still normal. It's like, it's not normal, but like, there are a lot of malls here.

• 35:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's like malls are dead, but also addicted is the only, you know, clothing store in the world for anyone under 30. That's coming for you. Good luck.

• 35:43Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know what that is, okay?

• 35:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's literally right next to the Americana movie theater. It's like the new, well, it's the new Brandy Melville, which also still exists, but it's the new, like, wet seal, you know, type situation. You don't know what wet seal was?

• 35:59Sean Fennessey?

  No idea what you're talking about.

• 36:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It's where teenagers buy cheap, trashy clothing.

• 36:03Sean Fennessey?

  They sell Blu-rays there? Okay. I, I don't know what the answer to this is.

• 36:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think that they, they gotta build more screens. But I also think if you live in, I don't know, like, I don't want to disrespect any kind of smaller city or, or larger town in America, but let's just say Boise, Idaho, for example. I'm sure there's a wonderful moviegoing culture there. But if it's February 2029 and there's not a big movie on the slate, and you're trying to force a dumpuary title onto IMAX, and that's a space that could be very valuable, but you're not getting the most bang for your buck out of that real estate investment. It does, it throws into question, like, what is the purpose of it? It's easy to say at the time of, you know, The Odyssey or Dune Part III, like, every movie theater should have five IMAX screens. But that's not the reality. Like, you and I go to Regal Paseo all the time. Whenever I go there, it's empty.

• 36:54Sean Fennessey?

  So, you know, and I love Regal Paseo, and I'm very grateful to have a movie theater like that, but it's a tough business. And it's only at times of great success and great desire when we get questions like this. And I understand them. If you want these things to get built, go to the movies more. Go to the movies in the downtime. Don't just go to the three movies a year that you hear you have to see.

• 37:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Why isn't there a culture of rep IMAX screenings?

• 37:18Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting, maybe just because there's not enough to support. I saw someone, I'm not sure if this is actually true, but I think that there is an IMAX in Chattanooga that is, was built in a museum for like planetarium and nature documentary purposes.

• 37:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Was it in the aquarium? The Chattanooga Aquarium?

• 37:34Sean Fennessey?

  Must be at the aquarium.

• 37:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Sean Fennessey?

  So that aquarium is just screening The Odyssey. They just turned that movie theater into, and you know, we have, at the Natural History Museum here in Los Angeles, there's an IMAX screen, and it only screens these shorter films. You could start moving, turning those over if you can get those aquariums to agree to, because I'm sure financially, it's the better move to be selling out the entire population of the greater Chattanooga area who wants to see The Odyssey in its proper format. But it's going to take a little bit of cleverness, I think, to expand the palette. I told you that, I already told you the Dolby thing with Burbank, and I think that will keep happening, too. We're like, we'll see what Infinity Vision does.

• 38:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, yeah, Disney's trying it as well.

• 38:13Sean Fennessey?

  My, my understanding is, is that Infinity Vision is effectively just Dolby. That, and that those rooms will be all allocated to Avengers Doomsday.

• 38:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And so that's an example of premium formats that are not, like, IMAX is, you know, one company and it's branded, and Christopher Nolan has developed a real relationship with them and developed entire technologies to be able to use his particular cameras. But this is, The Odyssey is a pretty specific example.

• 38:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 38:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think the larger point is about more premium format, like nicer places to see movies, which also costs a lot of money.

• 38:49Sean Fennessey?

  It does. It makes it more expensive to go to the movies, so. I don't know, what is the future of IMAX? I hope, if they get sold, I hope it's to a good company, not a bad company. You know, I don't know if I can be more direct than that. Okay, what's next, Jack?

• 39:02Speaker 05

  Where are you guys at on aquariums, real quick?

• 39:04Sean Fennessey?

  Love.

• 39:05Speaker 05

  Agreed.

• 39:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Chattanooga Aquarium was a big field trip. That, that's a big southern, like, locale, you know? An attraction that we would go to. And also, my family lived near Chattanooga. So listen, Ruby Falls, if you know, you know.

• 39:19Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm going on vacation to see my family on Long Island, and we will be going to the aquarium when we go back to Long Island. So, yeah, I'm very, very pro aquarium. The Long Beach, the aquarium in Long Beach here is wonderful. It's a great way to spend time. Okay, what's next?

• 39:31Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Kathy. Why do you think there's so much negativity around Avengers Doomsday, but still so much excitement about Spider-Man: Brand New Day? If Marvel is cooked in Sean's words, wouldn't that affect Spider-Man? Do you think it's the fact that the Spider-Man movies are narrowly focused on one protagonist, while Doomsday seems to include every character from the past 15 years?

• 39:53Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's a variety of ways to attack this question.

• 39:57Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think, you know, sort of a leading question there, though it was phrased in the form of a question. Thank you, Kathy. But yes.

• 40:05Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Spider-Man is like Batman.

• 40:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And also Spider-Man. Yeah.

• 40:07Sean Fennessey?

  Spider-Man is like Batman. Every time you make a Spider-Man movie, people are going to be interested. And, and the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies are pretty good. I like them a lot.

• 40:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's good as Spider-Man. Also, Spider-Man as a kid. Not, not anymore in this movie, which is a little bit tricky.

• 40:19Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see how that goes.

• 40:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but there is just an inherent interest for children in, oh, look, it's another kid.

• 40:25Sean Fennessey?

  He does bridge a gap. He's an introductory character in a lot of ways. So he's kind of eternal. And Batman is kind of the, the same, I think, for like angsty boys, you know, as you're getting into your teenage years, or your young adult, you know, adolescent years. Batman is also like, he's the flip side of the coin of the Spider-Man hero archetype. So I think of them as very similar, and I think those kinds of movies are always going to work. Doomsday is one of those things where it's being eventized in a way that it's not a common comic book movie. It's an event style movie. Look, there's also a lot of positivity about Doomsday. There are a lot of people who are very excited about Doomsday. When I said that Marvel is cooked, I meant creatively. I meant, the movie doesn't look very good, and it feels creatively bankrupt, which is what we discussed on the show. It's gonna sell a lot of tickets.

• 41:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:09Sean Fennessey?

  Whether or not it's gonna have-

• 41:10Amanda Dobbins?

  In infinity vision.

• 41:12Sean Fennessey?

  But will it have any cultural capital? Like, will it get beyond the hardcore, the serious fandom? That's what we're gonna find out.

• 41:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll see it.

• 41:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm gonna see it, for sure. Not only that, I look forward to seeing it.

• 41:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I might, can we, can we make this? Oh, this would be so fun. So you know how every year around the holidays, I propose doing, you know, like, what's a title that we can have the big picture holiday party, AKA, go to the movies with lots of booths?

• 41:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 41:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Can it be Avengers Doomsday? I know you have to pay attention.

• 41:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we have to do a podcast about it. We have to do like two podcasts about it.

• 41:52Amanda Dobbins?

  We have to do two. I guess we do have to do two.

• 41:54Sean Fennessey?

  This is a fucking huge movie.

• 41:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but it's the same day as Dune.

• 41:57Sean Fennessey?

  I know. And I don't, I really don't know what we're gonna do about that, just from a pure programming perspective.

• 42:02Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's also December 18th.

• 42:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:04Amanda Dobbins?

  That is like, school is out.

• 42:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 42:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So that's a real issue.

• 42:09Sean Fennessey?

  They're coming with us.

• 42:12Sean Fennessey?

  Our kids are invited to the big picture holiday party at the Regal Paseo. I, I, Jack, what are we gonna do with that? Are we gonna do two separate episodes?

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Four hour mega episode.

• 42:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's gonna require-

• 42:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, then I really-

• 42:26Speaker 05

  Not actually. I do, I do think-

• 42:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Then I am drinking.

• 42:27Speaker 05

  I do think the thing that makes sense is split it into two episodes.

• 42:30Sean Fennessey?

  So when Barbenheimer happened, we did a Barbenheimer episode, where we talked about both movies and the experience of both movies. And that was fun. And then the next week, we did a standalone Oppenheimer episode and a standalone Barbie episode.

• 42:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think that makes sense, but it also feels unsatisfying. Because I think what people want when they come out of a movie-

• 42:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, here's what it's-

• 42:47Sean Fennessey?

  Not to program the show live on the show or whatever.

• 42:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, here's, I think that is probably the right strategy in terms of episodes. I think we gotta tinker with the release schedule.

• 42:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think we just gotta do everything as soon as possible and put it up.

• 42:59Sean Fennessey?

  Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

• 43:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and then, and then it's Christmas. Because that's the other thing about this that is sort of weird, is that then people, like, disappear, while we hope to disappear off the face of the earth.

• 43:10Sean Fennessey?

  We'll be working that Monday and Tuesday. There's so many movies.

• 43:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm always working.

• 43:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 43:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 43:15Sean Fennessey?

  We will be working that following Monday and Tuesday. But it is an insanely busy time. Yeah, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. It'll all work out fine. Everything's gonna go great. The show will definitely exist.

• 43:23Amanda Dobbins?

  This is such a great plan. Thank you so much to the Disney and Warner Brothers Corporations for everything that you do for us and the movie-going community. It's very positive.

• 43:32Sean Fennessey?

  Tell you what, jacked up about Dune Part III.

• 43:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 43:35Sean Fennessey?

  Show it to me now. Very, very much want to see it.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  Injected into my veins. The next question is also a combination of many questions. People like this Chris Nolan guy. Many listeners are comparing him to Kubrick, and they're asking-

• 43:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I bet they are.

• 43:49Speaker 05

  Can we expect him to complete his Great Man trilogy in his next film? Will he adapt another famous unadaptable text? Can he go any bigger? Will he make a horror movie? What is next for him?

• 44:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Doc, Great Man trilogy? We have, what, what is 13egy? You know? That's what we have.

• 44:06Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah. 14egy? I don't know. I don't know what he's gonna do.

• 44:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you feel angst about it?

• 44:15Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 44:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you, did you get the impression that these people are worried for Christopher Nolan? That they feel stress about what he's gonna do next?

• 44:23Speaker 05

  I didn't sense anxiety, but I think just people are like, what is it? What is next?

• 44:28Sean Fennessey?

  Anticipation.

• 44:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, not, not like worried.

• 44:30Sean Fennessey?

  He's on the, he's on the generational heater.

• 44:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Sean Fennessey?

  He's doing, he's now doing the thing. I mean, he's about to enter a six-month Oscar campaign for this movie. It has, I think, a very strong chance to do pretty much what Oppenheimer did. And that will interrupt some of his creative process. He usually takes about three years between movies, and Universal has already dated July 20th, 2029. They haven't said this is untitled Christopher Nolan event film, but you can rest assured that's what that will be if the movie's ready. And, so yeah, we'll see. What should he do? I would love if he did a standard issue horror movie. I don't mean like a slasher, something with a little bit of elevation to it, but I think it'd be cool to see him just the same way he's trying on classical biopic, swords and sandals epic, space exploration,

• 45:17Sean Fennessey?

  a movie about magic. Like, there's all these kind of like micro genres.

• 45:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Spy movie, yeah.

• 45:20Sean Fennessey?

  Spy movie. He keeps dipping his toes in all of these really fun subgenres that we love to watch, uh, watch and talk about on the show. So horror movie would be a good one, and it would certainly be, as he talked about going to see Obsession with his kids, like, resonant with the times. You know, then it's like, horror really made it when the biggest director in the universe is like, time for my horror movie. There's some downside to that. There's some like, I knew, I liked this band before they were famous energy to that.

• 45:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but you guys are already in that space. That's the, the horror fan reaction to Obsession was, was I had this on vinyl, you know?

• 45:53Sean Fennessey?

  It, it was. Not for me, but it was.

• 45:55Amanda Dobbins?

  But, but it was.

• 45:55Sean Fennessey?

  I really liked it. But, but yeah, I get what you're saying. Um, I don't know, is there something you'd want him to take a, take a try at? Sense and Sensibility Remake?

• 46:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, from the, from the perspective of Mr. Willoughby, that would be, that would be great. You don't get that reference because you don't remember.

• 46:11Sean Fennessey?

  I've only seen it one time. Yeah.

• 46:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:13Sean Fennessey?

  But I like that, a retelling from a man's perspective. That's what we need.

• 46:16Amanda Dobbins?

  That's what we're missing.

• 46:19Sean Fennessey?

  Can I just say, the Kubrick comparison, I get what people are going for. I know that he makes these kind of big scale movies that really make you feel and think about the world or whatever, but there's, they could not be more different.

• 46:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:31Sean Fennessey?

  They really could not be. Stanley Kubrick was obsessed with sexuality and power and psychology. And he was really interested in what's on the outskirts of society and the human mind. Christopher Nolan is like, a nice British guy with a good family.

• 46:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:51Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he's not, he doesn't, he didn't show-

• 46:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And he believes civilization will rise again.

• 46:56Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe, yeah, maybe. Like, we didn't get to see Calypso fuck Odysseus, you know what I mean? Like, that was not on the menu for The Odyssey. They're not the same. Like, go watch Eyes Wide Shut.

• 47:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Can we go to the, can we go to the dicks question now?

• 47:08Speaker 05

  Yes, give me two seconds. Vamp for me.

• 47:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, thank you. There, this, this is related. I think it's the very last question.

• 47:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good question.

• 47:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm sorry if you were saving it for the kicker of this.

• 47:17Speaker 05

  No, I, I got it right here. So this question comes from, I believe it's pronounced Strati. There's a lot of people complaining about the historical accuracy of The Odyssey. And while I don't really care for that discourse as a Greek American, the one complaint I do have on historical accuracy is the lack of penises. There were two scenes specifically that could have featured a penis or multiple penises, the naked cyclops scene, or when Circe turns the pigs back into men. So my question is, why didn't I see a penis? This question was definitely written in from Mallory Rubin.

• 47:46Sean Fennessey?

  Strati would like to see the Cyclops hang dong.

• 47:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah. Listen, I'm with Strati. I appreciate the historical context and the, and the interest. And I think I broadly agree, though those are not the dicks I would want to see, you know?

• 48:04Sean Fennessey?

  Tell us more.

• 48:05Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, I mean, sure, maybe the Cyclops doesn't have a traditional human dick, you know? We don't know. We don't know what's up with the Cyclops.

• 48:13Sean Fennessey?

  You think that's where the other eye is?

• 48:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's, I mean, it's, it's unspecified in the text, at least in the Emily Wilson translation.

• 48:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 48:21Amanda Dobbins?

  And so I don't know what's up with Cyclops anatomy.

• 48:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 48:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I would imagine that the Greek soldier's anatomy is, is doing pretty well. And I would have been open to that. I think she makes some good points.

• 48:34Sean Fennessey?

  What if Menelaus just dropped Traum mid-story?

• 48:38Sean Fennessey?

  Good work.

• 48:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you know, Agamemnon is bathed, but you're not in the bath. It's all from behind, which I thought actually was like excellent.

• 48:46Sean Fennessey?

  He's also, he's nude on a bed and is, you know, he's, he's failed by Clytemnestra.

• 48:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:53Sean Fennessey?

  Nude, I think.

• 48:54Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, as, as previously noted, pants and skirts, pretty short, swinging in the breeze. There's some opportunity. I mean,

• 49:02Sean Fennessey?

  Well, but let's, let's just say that, that Nolan was like, we're gonna do it. We're gonna show it all. And just Matt Damon, IMAX 70, verticalized, unsheathes his sword for the whole world to see. Are we like, well, this film is great. Like, that's exactly what we needed in this movie.

• 49:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you know, in most cases, the

• 49:24Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe they are.

• 49:25Amanda Dobbins?

  The missing dick is more integral to the text of the film, you know, like,

• 49:30Sean Fennessey?

  Right. It's all about missing that dick.

• 49:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And there's also about, there's an imbalance between the nudity, like female nudity and male nudity in a movie. There's not really that much female nudity either in this movie. Well, there's a shot of Charlize Theron with mesh from behind. She looks amazing.

• 49:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think she has something under the mesh.

• 49:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it's

• 49:50Speaker 05

  The women on the island during the siren song are nude, but it's a very far away shot.

• 49:54Sean Fennessey?

  Hair is covering.

• 49:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It's tasteful.

• 49:56Speaker 05

  It's very tasteful.

• 49:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Only they're, they're seated, you know, so it's more of a

• 50:01Sean Fennessey?

  Have you ever sat like that nude, like, like upon a rock?

• 50:04Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's way too like, paint me like one of your French girls, you know, type thing.

• 50:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Have you ever been painted?

• 50:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Why? There, yeah, there's a childhood portrait of me. You don't know about this? This is the most, I can't believe that.

• 50:17Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible lore drop.

• 50:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, I had to sit for a portrait.

• 50:21Sean Fennessey?

  Is it like in the style of Caravaggio? Like, what happened?

• 50:24Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but it's in the style of like a weird portrait hall and it's in my dad's home. I'll try to get a picture.

• 50:31Sean Fennessey?

  You and I were raised very differently.

• 50:32Amanda Dobbins?

  We were raised very differently. Um, and I, my memory of this was just my mother being like, Amanda, sit still. Amanda, what's wrong with you? And I was like, I'm five. This sucks. Anyway,

• 50:45Sean Fennessey?

  I'm trying to imagine my parents saying, we want you to be painted.

• 50:51Sean Fennessey?

  That never came up. I guarantee you.

• 50:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not saying it was a great choice, but you asked the question and I had an answer. And I had to do portrait hands. Like my hands had to be like this, one hand over the other.

• 51:05Sean Fennessey?

  It all makes sense now.

• 51:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, it doesn't make any sense at all, but here I am. Listen, let's just get back to dicks for a second.

• 51:12Sean Fennessey?

  Let's get back to dicks.

• 51:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Did the Trojan horse have a dick? I don't think so.

• 51:16Speaker 05

  No, I don't think so.

• 51:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's rearing up.

• 51:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 51:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's not there. It's sort of a Barbie situation.

• 51:23Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know that anatomical correctness was an issue for that construction, right? That was, that was, that was a gift.

• 51:32Amanda Dobbins?

  But so you're saying that it's not the erasure, it's not Nolan's erasure. It's historically accurate that there is no dick on the wooden horse.

• 51:40Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 51:42Amanda Dobbins?

  They put dicks on all their other art.

• 51:43Sean Fennessey?

  Emily Wilson is on Derek Thompson's Plain English this week. Do you think that Derek asked that searing question?

• 51:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 51:49Sean Fennessey?

  Where was the Trojan horse's dick?

• 51:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Did it have a dick?

• 51:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, did it? I don't know.

• 51:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 51:56Sean Fennessey?

  These are life's great mysteries. I gotta say, wonderful question. That's T-wall for Amanda, what you just did. Okay, next question.

• 52:06Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Nick. In honor of counter-programming, do you think The Invite will be a major player at the Academy Awards? It has stellar reviews, an awards-friendly cast, and the minor 34% drop in its second weekend of wide release indicates strong word of mouth. Could we see a quartet of acting nominations or Wild in the director race? Or is it more likely to just be in contention for screenplay, if even that?

• 52:28Sean Fennessey?

  We did a whole episode about this movie. We didn't talk about this. We did not talk about whether or not this film has awards chances, even though

• 52:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Why not? Because you forgot to ask.

• 52:37Sean Fennessey?

  I just forgot. I didn't

• 52:38Speaker 05

  Because it's a movie directed by a woman?

• 52:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:41Sean Fennessey?

  Could be. It's a movie I like quite a bit. Um,

• 52:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I think the answer is yes to all of this. Why did you text me on Tuesday being like, what's up with? You just sent me a screenshot

• 52:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 52:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Of a letterbox list.

• 52:54Sean Fennessey?

  Someone online posted a screenshot, um, of 10 films that they are predicting are gonna be the Best Picture nominees.

• 53:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 53:01Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously, we're not gonna start doing the Best Picture Power Rankings in July, but we'll do it in September. But

• 53:08Amanda Dobbins?

  From the Lido.

• 53:09Sean Fennessey?

  The 10 movies that were shared, I thought were interesting because it was some very obvious ones, right? It's like The Odyssey and Project Tell Mary are almost certainly gonna be nominated for Best Picture. I'll be stunned if neither of those movies are nominated for Best Picture. And then we talked about Wild Horse 9, Digger, you know, there's a lot of, those are filmmakers whose films have been nominated for Best Picture before. It's reasonable to assume that. Dune Part III, there's a lot of assumption that that's a movie that it's the conclusion of a big trilogy. The first two are nominated. Fjord, won the Palme d'Or. Reasonable to assume that. And then look at the other movies that I, that were on the list that I sent you. And it was Behemoth, which seems possible, though not necessarily likely, depending on the reception. Obsession, which is a big box office hit, it's kind of more like in the weapons mold. And The Invite.

• 53:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:54Sean Fennessey?

  The Invite is a movie that could very easily be nudged out if there's a bunch of international films that we haven't heard about coming in the festivals this year, some surprises that emerge late breaking, like The Brutalist or something like that might come along that we didn't know was gonna be released. But The Invite seems like a very obvious, like screenplay in one performance kind of thing, you know? Like you could see like, you know, maybe Olivia or Norton get nominated.

• 54:20Sean Fennessey?

  Adapted screenplay gets nominated and that's it. Or there's a world where, you know, actors love it.

• 54:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:28Sean Fennessey?

  Olivia Wilde is like a great ambassador for the film, so you could see her doing F Y C stuff for eight months and really selling it. And, you know, she's, she was so great when she came on the show to talk about, you know, how she made the movie. And there, you know, it's a movie that gets six or seven nominations. And then it's like, well, you know, Woody Allen style, you know, thoughtful, fun, entertaining, adult movies are back this year too. And so the, so I don't, I, if you had to guess which direction it goes, like which one do you think it will take?

• 54:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right now, it seems to me like The Invite is a yes, um, in Best Picture. And I think if it gets Best Picture, it's because it has, you know, actor support and people like the writing and people are rooting for Olivia Wilde. And it, and I do think that Nick's point of like, of counter-programming, that it like, it is a smaller movie in, you know, one well-designed location with four people talking, uh, which is very different than most of the other movies that are gonna be on the slate. Certainly The Odyssey and Project Tell Mary. So I think probably, I think it's gonna be on the radar and everyone likes it. I haven't met anyone who's like, this stinks. Uh, and

• 55:36Sean Fennessey?

  The problem is, is not enough people have seen it. It hasn't quite done as well as I expected it to at the box office. Nick's right that it went down a very low number, which bodes well. It added screens and went down a very low number. And I think it's got really good word of mouth, but it's the kind of movie that like, you really don't wanna see show up on VOD in a week. Like, you really want it to like, stay on 2,000 screens for four or five weeks to let it kind of keep getting discovered.

• 55:58Amanda Dobbins?

  But I do also think that it'll play incredibly well on award season, on the screener apps.

• 56:04Sean Fennessey?

  You're right.

• 56:05Amanda Dobbins?

  All of those people are great campaigners and so the people who don't see it now will check it out around voting. I just think it, it can stay. So

• 56:15Sean Fennessey?

  There's one other thing that I think helps it, which is that Olivia Wilde's in Behemoth, Penelope Cruz is in La Bola Negra. Like, they're also just gonna be around a bunch with other movies throughout the season, so that benefits it as well. We'll see. I would love it because it's

• 56:29Speaker 06

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• 56:58Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what, you're gonna want WeatherTech in your vehicle, whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season, whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're gonna want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat, and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard-fought place, they're all jammed inside every can.

• 57:33Sean Fennessey?

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• 57:48Sean Fennessey?

  What's the next question, Jack?

• 57:50Speaker 05

  Next question is also a combination of multiple questions, and this was by far the most asked question. What is your interpretation of Zendaya's role as Athena in The Odyssey? Apologies to the listeners for not including all of your wonderful theories.

• 58:02Sean Fennessey?

  Good question, and I don't know if we actually specifically dove into this, but there are obviously multiple ways to read what that character represents.

• 58:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:12Sean Fennessey?

  One being, is she just a manifestation of Odysseus' guilt, regret, his, you know, kind of angst about the decision that he's made, both to leave his family and then also to kind of leave Agamemnon and take this other route, and also his decision to participate in war and lead a war.

• 58:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 58:30Sean Fennessey?

  The other is a more literal interpretation, which is that she's Athena. She's the goddess Athena, and she appears to him the way that the goddesses and gods appear to the people who lived at this time in Greece and around the world, if they believe. Because there are no other gods or goddesses in the movie, the former theory is the one that I think most people are accepting as, this is my interpretation of what this, what Zendaya represents to the movie. Is there another reading that I'm missing, or another way you think about it?

• 59:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so. I mean, I think she's the conscience and responsibility for, for the Odysseus character. And, you know, it is, again, sorry to be like, I reread half of The Odyssey, you know, in translation, but one of Emily Wilson's main criticisms was the lack of representation of the gods in the film, because they are such, they are so present in the, in the poem, but they also, like, they make the decisions. And so it almost becomes, you know, there is a different interpretation of, of free will and, and fate in the, in the poem than in Nolan's movie. I, I enjoy Nolan's interpretation, because,

• 59:45Amanda Dobbins?

  again, this is an interpretation, and also we are modern audiences. But, so, I think that instead of, it's, it's deft to use the god, the goddess character, who is, in the original text, you know, making a lot of things happen, to then be the echo and the, sort of, inner monologue, almost. It's also, you know, it's just, it is a practical way of expressing some of an internal character's thoughts out loud, because he doesn't have anyone else to really talk to, you know, because it's a movie and you gotta say things.

• 1:00:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But, so, I thought it was very smart to adjust the character into the, the person on his shoulder, his running monologue, monologue, I think, his regrets, and also, like, in a lot of ways, she is sort of the personification of Zeus's, of Zeus's law, of the way that you're, or that, the way that Odysseus thinks he's supposed to live his life. And then that is used so dramatically and beautifully, I think, in that final scene where it is her, she's not, we don't actually see her being beheaded, but that it's the, the Athena statue, that you've betrayed this idea, this way of living, this code.

• 1:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  And I think, kind of to continue that point, like, one other additional component that I see with it is that the gods and goddesses are actually just manifest in humanity. And so they're not these figures sitting on mountains, throwing thunderbolts, but that, like, they are the kind of, the stability or the cohesion of society, and that, like, by breaking that law that you're describing, like, you're going against humanity in a profound way. And so, him seeing her as the innocent woman who was beheaded at this time of war, and equating her with Athena, who is, you know, the goddess of multiple things, but wisdom, one of them, also strategic warfare, like, so she is sort of like,

• 1:01:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:01:44Sean Fennessey?

  She is almost literally his conscience in terms of what Odysseus represents to us

• 1:01:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Sean Fennessey?

  as a figure in the world. So, I thought it was a really, really cool and smart way to do it. You know, Richard Brody, the New Yorker critic, also criticized the film for removing the gods

• 1:01:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:01:59Sean Fennessey?

  from the telling of the story. And some people, it reminded me a little bit of something.

• 1:02:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it's, it's very different.

• 1:02:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's very different. It reminded me of our conversation about Wuthering Heights, where I was really hard on that movie, because I was like, this is not Wuthering Heights. And, you know, to me, it's, I think what it ultimately means is, it's not about the adaptation specifically, it's what you do with it. If, if you change it and you make it coherent, and I can understand why you would make those changes, to make it more modern, to your point, or something else. I think Wuthering Heights is trying to do a similar thing. It's trying to create like a more modern template for sexuality, but that one didn't make sense to me. It didn't work. I didn't really understand why the things that were taken out of that story were taken out. Whereas in this one, I feel like I can really see and understand the logic of it, and I like it. Is there a chance to make a cool movie where Zeus is throwing thunderbolts and Poseidon rises from the sea? Sure.

• 1:02:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's hard to do that well with CGI.

• 1:02:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it would turn out like Masters of the Universe, but that's okay.

• 1:02:50Sean Fennessey?

  You might be right.

• 1:02:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  Next question.

• 1:02:54Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Justin. Is The Odyssey in the top five of Best Picture winner follow-ups?

• 1:03:03Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, Coppola did Godfather Part Two in the conversation in the same year,

• 1:03:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Sean Fennessey?

  two years after The Godfather.

• 1:03:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think that will be topped.

• 1:03:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 1:03:12Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 1:03:12Amanda Dobbins?

  But they're asking top five. So, the other ones, the first one that came to my mind was Talented Mr. Ripley, after English Patient.

• 1:03:20Sean Fennessey?

  Good one.

• 1:03:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 1:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  Good one.

• 1:03:22Amanda Dobbins?

  You've got Shutter Island after The Departed. I think neither of those are Martin Scorsese's best films, but that's how the cookie crumbles.

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  Two films I love.

• 1:03:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Lucas pointed out Lawrence of Arabia, Der Bridge on the River Kwai, which is probably, that's, if anyone is gonna upend Coppola.

• 1:03:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and I should correct the record. He is the one time, I believe, I believe the one time this has happened, where a filmmaker went back to back with two films, winning Best Picture and Best Director. It was Lean for Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai.

• 1:03:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:03:54Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. It, it might be.

• 1:03:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think we're like, a little, still a little apprehensive to be like, is this Chris Nolan's best movie? I'd like to see it again, before I

• 1:04:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:04:03Sean Fennessey?

  get, start getting comfortable with that. I've got it at three right now. Well, I'm not going to Chattanooga anytime soon, but if I, if I did, I would happily watch the film. Um.

• 1:04:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I wonder if they, are they doing any, like, programming with it in Chattanooga? I mean, this is a tale of the sea. We are the people, you are the people from the sea. So, like, do the stingrays, like, show up? What else is going on?

• 1:04:24Sean Fennessey?

  This might be complete hearsay. Like, I'm, I'm reflecting off of a tweet.

• 1:04:28Speaker 05

  It's not hearsay. I looked it up.

• 1:04:30Sean Fennessey?

  You looked it up?

• 1:04:30Speaker 05

  It's true. Yes.

• 1:04:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's producing. Um, I love that they did that.

• 1:04:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And it is, it's the, it's the Tennessee Aquarium?

• 1:04:39Speaker 05

  In Chattanooga.

• 1:04:40Amanda Dobbins?

  The Chattanooga. Well, yeah, that's the Tennessee. Oh, yeah, there it is. I mean, the first, I'm looking at their site. They are also showing BBC Earth, Wild Asia, Life at Extremes 3D, and Ocean Dreams 3D, but then you've got The Odyssey in IMAX, and The Coral Sea, from the filmmakers who brought you Turtle Odyssey.

• 1:04:58Sean Fennessey?

  Turtle Odyssey?

• 1:04:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's about turtles going home.

• 1:05:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Maybe they should be showing that right now. I'm not gonna tell the Tennessee Aquarium how to do their job.

• 1:05:06Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like they know what they're doing.

• 1:05:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Sean Fennessey?

  They're getting that Odyssey money. Um, I don't know, there's, we could probably go down the list of every single person that's won Best Director, and say, well, this movie was better than this movie, or that movie was better than that movie.

• 1:05:17Amanda Dobbins?

  This is Best Picture.

• 1:05:18Sean Fennessey?

  Best Picture, yeah. Um, I don't know. I'd probably have to go back to the 1930s and 40s, really give it some thought. I mean, you know, if we'd ever seen the real magnificent Ambersons after Citizen Kane?

• 1:05:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:05:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 1:05:33Amanda Dobbins?

  But we did.

• 1:05:33Sean Fennessey?

  Citizen Kane didn't win Best Picture, though.

• 1:05:35Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 1:05:35Sean Fennessey?

  So that doesn't work. God damn it.

• 1:05:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's, that's what makes it interesting about Best Picture, is that Best Picture.

• 1:05:42Sean Fennessey?

  The wrong movie wins all the time?

• 1:05:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:05:43Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. What was Peter Farrelly's film after Green Book?

• 1:05:48Sean Fennessey?

  What was that called?

• 1:05:51Speaker 05

  Next question, combination of multiple questions.

• 1:05:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Speaker 05

  Tom Holland.

• 1:05:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:57Speaker 05

  Telemachus has been one of the most divisive performances in The Odyssey. Many people wrote and said they really enjoyed the performance. Others found him incredibly miscast.

• 1:06:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Were any of those people his mom?

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  But, performance aside, where does he go from here? How do you see his career playing out over the next decade or so?

• 1:06:16Sean Fennessey?

  Take chances, man. Like, you've already, you made four Spider-Man movies, two Avengers movies, you're in The Odyssey. Just go the, the path of Pattinson, work with someone who seems exciting to you, and isn't a sure thing, and has done a smaller movie that is really interesting. Use your cloud for good. That's the story of every great movie star. Use your cloud for good.

• 1:06:36Speaker 05

  But do you think he's capable?

• 1:06:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Speaker 05

  Like, Pattinson is a tough cop.

• 1:06:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't go the path of Pattinson, because you, that's, you have to find your path.

• 1:06:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, go the path of Tom Cruise.

• 1:06:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:06:46Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and

• 1:06:46Amanda Dobbins?

  That's better.

• 1:06:47Sean Fennessey?

  and work with Cameron Crowe, and, and Paul Thomas Anderson, and, you know, I

• 1:06:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Agree.

• 1:06:52Sean Fennessey?

  you can, and you can balance it, you know, like, you can also still work with Ed Zwick. You can still, you can work with, like, craftspeople who are really good filmmakers, who, but are trying to make commercial enterprises, and make with audacious filmmakers who have really personal stories to tell. I mean, it's not, that's not hard. He's not 14 years old. He's like 30 years old. Like, it's, this isn't, I know he tried to make a couple of serious movies and they didn't go so well, but I think that the filmmakers that he chose to work with are maybe not as elevated as who someone like Pattinson, or frankly, the person he should really talk to, and I'm sure he has at length, is Matt Damon. Matt Damon is the best at this. Matt Damon takes a lot of chances. He makes a lot of movies. He's made 100 movies. Some of them work, some of them don't. He's also made 10 movies that you and I will watch for the rest of our lives. So, I don't know.

• 1:07:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you yelling at me?

• 1:07:36Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I just like

• 1:07:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't do it.

• 1:07:37Sean Fennessey?

  Because everybody is so precious about Tom Holland, because he's their beautiful little Spider-Man. I'm like, guys, get over it. He's gotta make more good movies. It's just a fact. I'm not mad at you. I'm not mad at him.

• 1:07:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Direct it at them. Direct at the camera, straight to camera.

• 1:07:50Sean Fennessey?

  Also, this question doesn't have a name on it. Show yourselves.

• 1:07:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Sean Fennessey?

  Is it Tom Holland's mom who asked this question, asking for advice on the career of this incredibly successful man, who's married to Zendaya? He's gonna be fine. Okay, I'm done.

• 1:08:06Amanda Dobbins?

  He's also really good at golf.

• 1:08:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Sean Fennessey?

  And, and, and I, a tribute to him. A great athlete.

• 1:08:14Speaker 05

  Selling non-alcoholic beer?

• 1:08:16Sean Fennessey?

  Is that a fact?

• 1:08:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:17Speaker 05

  Indeed, it is.

• 1:08:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I read he's sober in Zack's piece. That's great.

• 1:08:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Sean Fennessey?

  I, I applaud that as well. Make a good movie, for fuck's sake.

• 1:08:25Speaker 05

  Surprised I really got to you. His next question is

• 1:08:28Sean Fennessey?

  But, because people who are mad that we criticize the performance, I'm like, he's fine.

• 1:08:32Speaker 05

  Are people mad?

• 1:08:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, because they're like, that's my beautiful spider boy.

• 1:08:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:08:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Put it in the newspaper that they're bad.

• 1:08:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, okay, I will.

• 1:08:45Amanda Dobbins?

  We still didn't get my newspaper prop.

• 1:08:48Sean Fennessey?

  What, what, I'm sorry, when did you ask for this?

• 1:08:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I want a newspaper that I think I says like, I'm mad or Sean's mad, so I can hold up the newspaper, you know, and we have in fact, put it in the newspaper that Sean is mad.

• 1:09:01Sean Fennessey?

  This is an idea you came up with by yourself.

• 1:09:03Speaker 05

  I think so, but I'll have Lucas write it down. We'll get on that.

• 1:09:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I promise that I theorized this once on a, on a podcast. I did also briefly think about getting a gavel for this episode.

• 1:09:14Speaker 05

  I think that's a good idea.

• 1:09:16Amanda Dobbins?

  No, um, but.

• 1:09:18Sean Fennessey?

  No to what?

• 1:09:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, to answer people's questions. Yes or no? No.

• 1:09:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's very you.

• 1:09:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:09:26Speaker 05

  Okay, next question comes from Danielle. Hey, Big Pick gang. Every year, my friends and I host a screening of Dunkirk and get absolutely hammered. We're talking, taking shots whenever a plane gets down, famous people come on the screen, and when people actually talk. We also started an annual Conclave screening where we all dress as Cardinals and elect a new Pope. We're looking for inspiration on a new screening to add to the rotation. If you could host an unhinged movie themed watch party or create a movie watching tradition, what would you do?

• 1:09:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Danielle, where is my invitation?

• 1:09:59Sean Fennessey?

  This is a real Pixar didn't happen situation. Like, you're hosting a Conclave party with how many people are there? It's like, are we taking dozens of Cardinals?

• 1:10:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Where the Catholics are voting is still the favorite, my favorite thing that's happened on Big Picture this year. No, that was Charles.

• 1:10:14Sean Fennessey?

  Charles, that's right. That was very funny. Um, I don't know if you can top Conclave Party.

• 1:10:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's really good. That's really funny and elite. And honestly, this is inspiring. This is what our fandom is doing. I, that, I salute to you, Danielle. You're crushing it. Um, you know, I think Babylon is durational and there's a lot of opportunities to get really fucking drunk during it. And imagine the costumes.

• 1:10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

• 1:10:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So I was, my first instinct was that Tar is too solemn a movie in order to suggest, but you guys are taking shots when planes go down in Dunkirk. So, you know, this is.

• 1:10:56Sean Fennessey?

  Not the most respectful way to honor them.

• 1:10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  We've brought levity to the situation. Listen, Dunkirk number one. So I'm with you, Danielle. Um.

• 1:11:03Sean Fennessey?

  Some people sail west to honor fallen soldiers. Some do, some do shots.

• 1:11:08Amanda Dobbins?

  But so Tar, it seems like you guys could sort of do like a Bradley Cooper Maestro decor, you know, conducting competition. Well, no, no, but, but Tar is better outfits, right? Like, everybody comes in their blazers. Everyone does their best Lydia Tar.

• 1:11:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:11:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Petra's father.

• 1:11:24Sean Fennessey?

  I know, but Maestro.

• 1:11:25Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, cucumber salad.

• 1:11:26Sean Fennessey?

  I'm reading it in. You know, you can see that being a moment.

• 1:11:30Amanda Dobbins?

  What, double feature, right?

• 1:11:31Sean Fennessey?

  Double feature. Tar and Maestro.

• 1:11:32Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go.

• 1:11:33Sean Fennessey?

  And Behemoth.

• 1:11:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Is there a lot of conducting in that?

• 1:11:36Sean Fennessey?

  I, I presume.

• 1:11:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I saw some because there were no words in the trailer.

• 1:11:40Sean Fennessey?

  Well, yeah, the, you're really mad about this trailer.

• 1:11:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I did, I did, it made me concerned.

• 1:11:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're just mad because it's not going to Venice. Okay.

• 1:11:48Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:11:48Sean Fennessey?

  Next question.

• 1:11:49Speaker 05

  Well, I would say one, regretting you. Watch that movie. Absolutely blitzed. Amazing time.

• 1:11:53Sean Fennessey?

  Regretting you?

• 1:11:54Speaker 05

  Yes. The 2025 motion picture starring.

• 1:11:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, a Colleen Hoover festival is a really, really good idea.

• 1:12:00Speaker 05

  And then also, you know, I don't know your guys' opinion on this movie, but a classic would obviously be if nobody's ever seen it, The Room. Where do you stand on The Room?

• 1:12:09Sean Fennessey?

  I've done it. I get.

• 1:12:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was, it was, it's nice.

• 1:12:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You know, I, I had the, I threw the spoons. I was a part of that moment.

• 1:12:16Amanda Dobbins?

  What I like is the ingenuity in this, you know, like, The Room was not made for that, but then it has become its own Rocky Horror Picture like thing, which is awesome. Community is important. Um.

• 1:12:28Sean Fennessey?

  I literally agree with that. I don't know if you're being, I don't know if you're being ironic, but I actually agree with what you said.

• 1:12:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know what, I agree with it too, but also I don't think anyone should ever say the word community in that way. So, um, I mean, it's, I mean, it's very like, like, HR email about what's going on at work this week.

• 1:12:48Sean Fennessey?

  I gotta tell you, I do feel that you are in an era of your life where you're really engaged in your community. Like, you're really trying to build your community in a really sincere way.

• 1:12:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you mean that online or in the world?

• 1:13:00Sean Fennessey?

  In the world. I mean, online, sure. Yes, we're always doing that, right? That's kind of the modern condition. But in your life, I feel like you're, you're accumulating new friends and you're, you're like really putting yourself out there.

• 1:13:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm living out loud. I'm done having children. And so I'm going outside. I'm making friends. I'm doing hobbies, you know?

• 1:13:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's great. You can have it all, mama. Nice job.

• 1:13:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much. That's so, that's so beautiful. Um, so that's important, but what I like about this.

• 1:13:25Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda doesn't like being told what she is, which is something that I love to do.

• 1:13:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Unless I'm told that I'm a Leo. And then it's now the time when we read the AI description of Leo season.

• 1:13:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's Leo season.

• 1:13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  This is a Leo podcast. We are both Leos, which is the least surprising news to ever be announced for like the 50th time on this podcast.

• 1:13:45Sean Fennessey?

  We're Leos.

• 1:13:46Amanda Dobbins?

  We're Leos. So are Ben and Sandy, our patron saints over there.

• 1:13:49Sean Fennessey?

  Ben, August birthday? Ben Affleck?

• 1:13:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, he's, he's a later Leo, I think.

• 1:13:54Sean Fennessey?

  What does that mean transitively? Are there other qualities that shift?

• 1:13:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I haven't looked into it because I'm August 1st, so then my interest ends.

• 1:13:59Sean Fennessey?

  Do you want to read the, the?

• 1:14:00Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, you haven't. I'm Googling Ben Affleck's birthday to make sure. Oh, he's the 15th. Interesting.

• 1:14:05Sean Fennessey?

  Of August.

• 1:14:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:06Sean Fennessey?

  Late in the game.

• 1:14:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Sean Fennessey?

  Leos are born between July 23rd, July 22nd and August 22nd, and they are bold, charismatic, and big-hearted fire signs of the Zodiac.

• 1:14:17Amanda Dobbins?

  We sure are.

• 1:14:18Sean Fennessey?

  Ruled by the sun, they are natural born leaders who love the spotlight. They are known for being incredibly generous, loyal, and creative.

• 1:14:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:26Sean Fennessey?

  But can sometimes struggle with being stubborn or attention seeking.

• 1:14:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Also.

• 1:14:33Sean Fennessey?

  Who does that sound like?

• 1:14:35Amanda Dobbins?

  We read this to Jack, because Jack, uh, does not know about the Leos. I think that that, that's good. You shouldn't really, yeah, Jack's a Scorpio. And you shouldn't know too much about Zodiac signs that are not your own. But we did read it to him. And then he said, oh, that does actually sound exactly like you guys. And we were both saying that we have both been told our whole lives that we are deeply Leo. Just like to add in here a little sprinkle of excitement. Not only is it Leo season, but this is the Leo's Emerald Year. And this is, this is for Chris Ryan. This is, he mocked us in the van in Toronto. But now I'm giving him the information. So Jupiter is in one of our houses or something.

• 1:15:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And this means, sorry, Susan Miller's website has a lot of ads. So, uh, it's the good fortune planet, and it entered Leo for the first time in 12 years. So we will increasingly find ourselves at the right place at the right time.

• 1:15:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:15:33Sean Fennessey?

  Is that place the screening of Spider-Man: Brand New Day on Monday? I hope so.

• 1:15:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I forgot about that. Uh, is that at the?

• 1:15:40Sean Fennessey?

  I'll be there.

• 1:15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Which one is it? Which theater?

• 1:15:42Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you off mic.

• 1:15:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great. So the people can come. Whatever. The deck is firmly stacked in our favor, Chris Ryan, who is also a Scorpio like Jack. So make the coming period even more special. Vow not to take a passive role, but an active one fueled by your, my vision of all we hope to accomplish, both personally and professionally. This is my active vow right here in minute 80 million of this podcast. I'm going to make this Leo season and this Emerald Year work for me.

• 1:16:13Sean Fennessey?

  That's inspiring.

• 1:16:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You do whatever you want, but not honestly until August because the moon is somewhere else right now.

• 1:16:21Sean Fennessey?

  It kind of checked out like five minutes ago. Um, Scorpio, how crazy for Scorpios. You, Jack Sanders, my wife, and Chris Ryan, all Scorpios.

• 1:16:30Speaker 05

  Your three favorite people on planet Earth.

• 1:16:31Sean Fennessey?

  Three essential people to my existence. That's fascinating. And then obviously my twin over here. Just, I'm just amazing. Okay, what's next?

• 1:16:38Speaker 05

  Next question comes from James. Because this is the summer movie mailbag, he asks, what will be the best movie of the summer? And he noted, and why will it be Tony?

• 1:16:46Sean Fennessey?

  Man, I love Tony. Um, I know you haven't seen Tony yet. Uh, we'll be talking about Tony on the show. I don't know if it's the best movie of the summer. It's pretty up there for me. The Matt Johnson's new movie, Portrait of Anthony Bourdain at a very young age. It's kind of a, uh, kind of shrunk down a long period of time in his life into a very short summer. Um, so yeah, we'll get into that then. I don't know. I mean, The Invite, The Odyssey.

• 1:17:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's been good.

• 1:17:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's been good. We're going to talk on Monday. We'll talk about a bunch of movies that we missed over the summer. I don't know if many of those movies will make the best movies of the summer list.

• 1:17:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I can't, I'm thinking through, and most of them are poor to quite poor.

• 1:17:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. We'll also go through the summer movie game and figure out, I think we got some stuff wrong.

• 1:17:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:17:33Sean Fennessey?

  You feel good about that?

• 1:17:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Was it us or was it Hollywood?

• 1:17:37Sean Fennessey?

  Good point. Way to turn it back on them.

• 1:17:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you. It's Leo season. It's our Emerald Year.

• 1:17:41Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, what's the best movie of the summer?

• 1:17:42Speaker 05

  Uh, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

• 1:17:45Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, right. That's coming out too. That's also a really great movie. We'll also talk about that movie on this podcast. Yeah, August has got some heaters. I saw another movie that's coming out in August that I'm not allowed to talk about that I also really liked.

• 1:17:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, is it the one that I'm excited about? Yeah. I'd like to see that.

• 1:17:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Amanda Dobbins?

  But I will be on vacation. It's fine. I'll see it at some point.

• 1:18:02Sean Fennessey?

  So yeah, August is, will be sneaky good. Um, I do think Odyssey is going to have to hold down the fort for the next two weeks, though. What's the next question?

• 1:18:09Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Mike. It's been a big year for Mr. Fantasy, and I've got to know, what's his fuck, marry, kill between going to the Cannes Film Festival, interviewing Steven Spielberg, and the New York Knicks winning the NBA championship?

• 1:18:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, we all know he's going to kill Cannes.

• 1:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  He is going to kill Cannes. Now, under different circumstances, I wouldn't kill Cannes.

• 1:18:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:18:31Sean Fennessey?

  Because Cannes, we just had better lineups, you know? We just didn't get a great lineup.

• 1:18:36Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's not about that. It's that between interviewing Spielberg and, yeah, winning the NBA championship, like, you don't care about Cannes. And that's fine.

• 1:18:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's in third place. I wouldn't want, I wouldn't kill any of these things. I'd like to go back to the Cannes Film Festival at some point in my life. I know you'd like to go back in 10 months. Um, I.

• 1:18:59Sean Fennessey?

  I, I don't know. I think, I think it's probably fuck Spielberg and, and marry the Knicks.

• 1:19:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Really?

• 1:19:05Sean Fennessey?

  Cause I'm in a long-term relationship with the Knicks.

• 1:19:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:08Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 1:19:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And you're not in a long-term.

• 1:19:10Sean Fennessey?

  Steven Spielberg.

• 1:19:12Speaker 05

  You're saying, you're saying it's probably fucks behind fucks.

• 1:19:18Sean Fennessey?

  Is there a better way to answer that question?

• 1:19:20Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:19:21Sean Fennessey?

  If there is, you should tell me. What do you think?

• 1:19:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Well,

• 1:19:26Amanda Dobbins?

  in terms of, you know, immediate joy versus lasting, I mean, the Knicks championship, will that euphoria last a lifetime? Can it last a lifetime? That's sort of like the end of romantic comedy. You don't wanna know.

• 1:19:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're describing marriage.

• 1:19:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, no, that's why you should, you should fuck it. And then you can.

• 1:19:48Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, the opposite.

• 1:19:50Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 1:19:50Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 1:19:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:51Sean Fennessey?

  Marriage is wonderful. I love being married, but.

• 1:19:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:54Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it, it's a parabola of experiences.

• 1:19:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:19:57Sean Fennessey?

  It goes up and down. The Knicks will go down, go out, go back up again. I'll never go back to the moment, any of the moments hanging out with Steven Spielberg. That was truly magical. That was very, very special. But you know what? You gotta be careful trying to recreate a one-night-stand. Dangerous stuff.

• 1:20:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:20:13Sean Fennessey?

  Take it from me, the 43-year-old married man.

• 1:20:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I was just like, I'm not coming back. I'm moving on.

• 1:20:21Speaker 05

  I had the same thought. Um, the next question comes from David. Since we just did a Sean FMK, this one's for Amanda.

• 1:20:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:28Speaker 05

  Amanda, if at the beginning of your marriage, you and Zach discuss taking a cruise.

• 1:20:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:20:35Speaker 05

  But then your husband gets lost at sea for 10 years, comes back with an open-air boat with no privacy and says, let's sail west. Are you sailing west with him?

• 1:20:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, these are great questions. So I'm just gonna say right now, for my purposes, the cruise at the beginning is a big red flag. You know, like, that's an issue. I, like, I would like to go on a yacht and can at some point, but then I wanna get back off the yacht. I don't wanna be stuck on, at sea. Even with like the giant yachts or whatever, I, you know, I like the land. I like being able to move around.

• 1:21:12Sean Fennessey?

  You haven't been on a cruise before, right?

• 1:21:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I have been on a cruise. I mean, well, you've heard the story about the ex-boyfriend who,

• 1:21:19Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and I had to go on a cruise with his family and then we were dating for another year and then we missed the boat or almost missed the boat.

• 1:21:25Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do FMK with all your ex-boyfriends.

• 1:21:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so, so the cruise there was aside, but to answer the second part of your question, and I would, I would pose this to you as well. I think this would be an interesting talking off point.

• 1:21:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:21:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Um,

• 1:21:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I would be, I don't know if I would let Zach go to the Trojan War. I would be so fucking pissed.

• 1:21:52Sean Fennessey?

  Well, as, as like a leader in an Odysseus type role or as a grunt, like, does it matter?

• 1:21:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Even as an Odysseus type guy.

• 1:21:59Sean Fennessey?

  You guys have moved to Canada? What would be the move there?

• 1:22:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Basically, I would just be like, no, you can't just go do random shit and like not come back. That's not what I agreed to. That's not how this is.

• 1:22:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's actually the exact style of English that Nolan used in his script, interestingly. No, you can't just go do shit. Um, I don't think you'd have much say. I think honor was, was an incredible, Zeus's law was an incredible component here. You know, if you're sort of fealty to Agamemnon, that might supersede, hey, my wife said I can't.

• 1:22:33Sean Fennessey?

  Right?

• 1:22:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, sure, but.

• 1:22:36Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I wouldn't wanna go to war.

• 1:22:38Amanda Dobbins?

  They didn't say that I was back in ancient Greece.

• 1:22:40Sean Fennessey?

  True.

• 1:22:41Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 1:22:41Sean Fennessey?

  True. What kind of cruise would you consider?

• 1:22:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I was, I was gonna talk about First Man. This is like when in First Man, is, is she Janet Armstrong? Did I just make that up?

• 1:22:52Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds right.

• 1:22:53Amanda Dobbins?

  When Mrs. Armstrong.

• 1:22:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Ms., please.

• 1:22:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Janet.

• 1:22:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Is just really fucking pissed at him. She's just like, why the fuck do you have to go to the moon? What's wrong with you? We have problems down here.

• 1:23:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Which, and like, she's right. And that, that's a great movie.

• 1:23:06Sean Fennessey?

  Her name was Janet.

• 1:23:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Oh, sick pull from me.

• 1:23:09Sean Fennessey?

  Well done.

• 1:23:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, First Man, Lala didn't win Best Picture, but famously, but that's, First Man's the follow-up to that, right?

• 1:23:16Sean Fennessey?

  Neil and Janet got divorced, just FYI.

• 1:23:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but that's because he went to the moon anyway.

• 1:23:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, a bunch of boys.

• 1:23:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause he was like, I'm not gonna, you know, and then they like stared at each other through the glass.

• 1:23:27Sean Fennessey?

  God, we gotta go back to First Man.

• 1:23:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It's great.

• 1:23:30Sean Fennessey?

  What a film.

• 1:23:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyway.

• 1:23:31Sean Fennessey?

  God damn it.

• 1:23:32Amanda Dobbins?

  So the open-air boat with.

• 1:23:34Sean Fennessey?

  First Man at one of our screenings. That would be great.

• 1:23:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they'll never pick it. It's, first it's a bigger splash and then it's First Man, you know?

• 1:23:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, bigger splash. Bigger Splash is a new Moneyball.

• 1:23:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 1:23:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's tough.

• 1:23:45Amanda Dobbins?

  That's what it's.

• 1:23:46Sean Fennessey?

  I know. You were right about that.

• 1:23:48Amanda Dobbins?

  What a great summer movie.

• 1:23:49Sean Fennessey?

  It is. We're talking about something nobody understands.

• 1:23:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, so I, so that, so he, we wouldn't even need to get to the point where it's an open-air boat with no privacy and let's sail west because I would already be pissed about the 10 years away. I agree that I have some questions about where they're sleeping on the open-air boat. Um, but again, I don't really wanna go on a cruise.

• 1:24:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very odd question that someone's asked you. I really like that people are spending their time thinking about what you and your husband would do in the event that you went on a cruise.

• 1:24:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I think it's a question about how the Odyssey is a portrait of a marriage, but not a, a modern marriage.

• 1:24:32Sean Fennessey?

  Fair point. Okay, what's the next question?

• 1:24:34Speaker 05

  This next question is fun. It comes from Dennis from New Zealand. With Dune, Messiah, and Avengers: Doomsday currently slated to open on the same day, is this the closest movies have come to recreating the Kanye West versus 50 Cent graduation Curtis showdown? Back then, the conventional wisdom was that 50 was the bigger commercial force, but Kanye won both the sales battle and the cultural argument making a shift in what mainstream audiences wanted. Could Dune win? Or is Marvel still too much of a cultural juggernaut?

• 1:25:05Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't think Dune can win. They're just, just from a purely box office perspective. The Dune movies are not nearly as big as the Avengers movies. And so I think if that's.

• 1:25:16Amanda Dobbins?

  It will win our hearts.

• 1:25:17Sean Fennessey?

  If that's the way to think about it, I don't think that's gonna work out from a prestige, awards, Metacritic score perspective, almost certainly Dune Part III is gonna do better. And look, I think you can just bank on this. Critics are gonna have their knives out for Doomsday. It's a blood in the water moment. Bunch of Marvel movies haven't worked consecutively. Everybody, nobody has to worry about being like, oh, wow, what an achievement that they told this story over 10 years. All that stuff's over. So in that respect, the movie's almost certainly not gonna be received as well. But I mean, I think the Avengers movie's gonna make a billion dollars. I just think it's gonna be massive. So, but the way, comparing it to the Kanye and 50

• 1:25:59Sean Fennessey?

  experience is really interesting. I mean, I was in the thick of covering this.

• 1:26:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:03Sean Fennessey?

  At Vibe when this was happening. And this was like the biggest deal in the universe if you were covering music. And

• 1:26:10Sean Fennessey?

  we didn't necessarily know it at the time, but right, right before,

• 1:26:16Sean Fennessey?

  Kanye was more critically acclaimed, but 50 was on top commercially at that point. Kanye had only put out two records. And

• 1:26:25Sean Fennessey?

  Herdis was like when it became clear that it was over for 50.

• 1:26:28Amanda Dobbins?

  There's not, I'm looking at the track list right now. There's not a classic.

• 1:26:32Sean Fennessey?

  No jams on, you know, it's, it's not a terrible album, but it like, it is the, it is officially the falloff for 50 as a musician. And so I don't know if you could really compare them in the same, in that way either. Like, is this Denis Villeneuve elevating, you know, is he, has he not yet made My Dark Twisted Fantasy?

• 1:26:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:26:53Sean Fennessey?

  Has he not yet made his A O A's and Heartbreak? You know, like, I don't know. And likewise, is Marvel really like gonna be starring on Power in like a few years on Starz? Like, you know, in terms of just following 50's trajectory? It's a really interesting comparison. There have been other days like this in the movies that I thought of almost immediately when I saw this question, though. Like, the funniest one since the show has been around was when Venom and a Star is Born came out on the same day, which I think was, was it October 5th, 2018?

• 1:27:21Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's what the date was, something like that, which, that was actually when the show, I was like, I know exactly what this podcast is.

• 1:27:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:27Sean Fennessey?

  Like, this is both, these two things, this is everything. You know, like, big glossy, starry Hollywood remake with the actors we love, Gaga, and then Tom Hardy jumping in a tank in a restaurant to play with lobsters. Like, this is, this is cinema to me. But before that, I think we've talked about The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia on the same day, right? Maybe when we talked about Mamma Mia on the pod, did we talk about the fact that they came out on the same day?

• 1:27:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I don't remember.

• 1:27:52Sean Fennessey?

  And two smash hits.

• 1:27:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Have you seen Mamma Mia 2 yet?

• 1:27:55Sean Fennessey?

  Not yet.

• 1:27:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:56Sean Fennessey?

  I do own it on 4K.

• 1:27:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, congratulations.

• 1:27:59Sean Fennessey?

  Figure Alison will watch it at some point. Not yet. Uh, Toy Story and Casino opened on the same day.

• 1:28:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:28:05Sean Fennessey?

  Who's 50 and who's Kanye in the Toy Story Casino Showdown?

• 1:28:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I can't say that Casino is 50 because we, many, many listeners were so mad that we didn't put Casino in the Scorsese Hall of Fame.

• 1:28:20Sean Fennessey?

  Did we not? I don't remember that.

• 1:28:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I think we ultimately didn't. And that was probably me. And then the men were mad. Casino's good.

• 1:28:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's fantastic. I love it.

• 1:28:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:28:29Sean Fennessey?

  Did you, I think this is right. Ghostbusters and Gremlins opened on the same day and they're, this is the closest I could come to figuring out Dune, Dune Avengers. I'm like, these movies are aimed at the exact same audience. They're the exact same kind of movie. Fun, scary comedy.

• 1:28:50Sean Fennessey?

  Just weird that that would happen. I think that's right. And then Scarface in Terms of Endearment also came out on the same day in 1983.

• 1:28:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Moonstruck and Broadcast News came out on the same day, speaking of very specific.

• 1:29:00Sean Fennessey?

  Same audience.

• 1:29:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And also two masterpieces.

• 1:29:03Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm. It's interesting when that happens.

• 1:29:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Same weekend at least?

• 1:29:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this sort of stuff happens more frequently now when you've got a bunch of movies all coming out on like Christmas Day. But the historical comps are interesting. I don't know. I.

• 1:29:16Sean Fennessey?

  You know what? I still like 50 Cent's music, not afraid to say it.

• 1:29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  When Just a Little Bit came on at French Pilates with like five minutes to go.

• 1:29:24Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:29:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I was like, I was like, I have ascended into heaven. This is my life.

• 1:29:29Sean Fennessey?

  That's one of your jams.

• 1:29:30Amanda Dobbins?

  This is your life. I mean, but I, do you expect to hear 50 Cent like at French Pilates? When the woman is like, allez, les filles, you know, one more, one more lunch.

• 1:29:40Sean Fennessey?

  In Paris, this happened?

• 1:29:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:42Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, that's great for you.

• 1:29:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 1:29:43Sean Fennessey?

  That song was produced by Scott Storch.

• 1:29:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I was.

• 1:29:45Sean Fennessey?

  You remember the Scott Storch era?

• 1:29:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty cool. Um, The Massacre by 50 Cent, you own that, Jack?

• 1:29:52Speaker 05

  I do not.

• 1:29:52Sean Fennessey?

  Have you heard it?

• 1:29:53Speaker 05

  I have. I do not, I do not own any physical music.

• 1:29:58Sean Fennessey?

  Because you feel all music should be free?

• 1:30:00Speaker 05

  I bought a couple of record players and net, or I bought a couple of records and never bought a record player. And once that happened, I was like, I need to ban myself from doing this.

• 1:30:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Yeah, we got a Just a Little Bit drop from Amanda. That's incredible. Um, let's do two more questions.

• 1:30:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you to Paris Pilates.

• 1:30:14Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you.

• 1:30:15Speaker 05

  Uh, this next question, I believe, comes from Alastair. Alastair, I apologize if I'm mispronouncing. How would the Odyssey have gone different if Odysseus's crew were minions? Would his journey have gone better or worse?

• 1:30:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it would have been more lighthearted, you know? Which then I don't know whether he would come to the same conclusions about his role in the, you know, moral universe. Uh, though the minions, the arc of the minions universe does bend towards justice. Uh, and they do ultimately.

• 1:30:46Sean Fennessey?

  Does it?

• 1:30:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they learn that they want to be a force for good, not evil. Or they kind of get tricked into being a force for good rather than evil.

• 1:30:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:30:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, usually by various accidents where they go splat and you laugh a lot. Love the minions. Uh, I think honestly, the minions and Cersei would be a very funny sequence that I would enjoy.

• 1:31:10Amanda Dobbins?

  That'd be great.

• 1:31:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's a great idea.

• 1:31:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not like, there's, there's a lot of comedy here. The minions going one by one into Corybdis. You know, just we're both like, wow.

• 1:31:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I'm like, I'm available for ideas for always and forever.

• 1:31:23Sean Fennessey?

  The big picture to go work for Illumination?

• 1:31:26Amanda Dobbins?

  No. Well, in under.

• 1:31:28Sean Fennessey?

  Well.

• 1:31:31Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, oh.

• 1:31:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd listen, I'd love to do some partnerships, you know, no one asks.

• 1:31:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, good to know.

• 1:31:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Me, Dua Lipa and the minions. Magical things can happen.

• 1:31:41Sean Fennessey?

  Why did Dua Lipa get involved in this?

• 1:31:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Because Pierre Cofer did an interview with Reese, guy with the movie camera. And he talks about how he uses Dua Lipa songs, like Dua Lipa is part of Minionies.

• 1:31:55Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:31:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Seek it, seek it out.

• 1:31:57Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 1:31:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:58Sean Fennessey?

  Got it.

• 1:31:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:31:59Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you got your own thing going on. Living in, we have a different algorithm. Um, what's, we can actually do two more now.

• 1:32:11Speaker 05

  Okay. Next question comes from Mahir. Hey, Sean and Amanda, I've been a big fan since 2020. Thanks so much for what you do. Letterboxd going on sale worries me. They have quietly become one of the few independent qualitative data, data sets that can help fill some of the information gap that exists in our post-streaming world. Are either of you worried about what a Letterboxd sale would mean for the industry? Or do you think I put too much importance on what the app has become?

• 1:32:36Sean Fennessey?

  Just want to point something out about Mahir's question that I found interesting because it's not the same concern that I've heard from other people about this.

• 1:32:45Sean Fennessey?

  He's saying it's a qualitative data set and it's an information gap filler.

• 1:32:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:32:50Sean Fennessey?

  And that's how he values it, which is interesting because there was a piece, um, that a person named Stephen Fellows wrote on Substack this week that I shared.

• 1:32:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:32:59Sean Fennessey?

  About the numbers, really, really interesting, um, dive into what's happened to the website, The Numbers, which is a box office tracking website that you and I have both used many times over the years. It has been very helpful to me for coming up with show ideas and organizing stuff for episodes. And it was an independently owned and operated website and it has been scraped aggressively by AI bots over recent years. And it is kind of like threatening to pull the site down from within with all the scraping that it's doing. And so they're rebuilding the site and they hope to relaunch the site. I encourage people to check out this piece. But to me, this question that Mahir is asking kind of recalls that, that it's almost like he thinks of, or she thinks of this Letterboxd as like a utility, you know, like a space full of information

• 1:33:43Sean Fennessey?

  as opposed to the relationship that some other people have to it, which is like, it's a community space. It's a space to get connected, or it's a recommendation engine, or it's a place to get jokes off, or what, however you think of Letterboxd, which of course I love and have been using also since 2020. Um, my reaction to the news about the sale is I just hope that they sell it to somebody who knows how great it is.

• 1:34:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:34:04Sean Fennessey?

  And, and preserves what's special about it and helps to make it even greater. And anybody who has a terrible idea of what it is and wants to ruin it, I hope doesn't participate in the acquisition. That's, I, it's really not more complicated than that. I think, what do you think about the idea of a movie studio trying to buy it?

• 1:34:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't feel great about it because even the most well-intentioned executives at movie studios, many of whom like really love movies and want to do stuff, we give them a hard time on this podcast because we give all executives a hard time, but like, these are a lot of people who like movies. But if you own it and pay a lot of money for it, then you can't not turn it into a financial tool for you, which would then mean that it is a tool at the expense of the other movies. And I think what is wonderful about Letterboxd is that it is like the gathering place, whether you're coming to it for data or whether you're coming to it for reviews or to get like a truly unfiltered, non-Rotten Tomatoes nonsense check

• 1:35:03Amanda Dobbins?

  on what people who care about movies actually think about movies. It's incredibly valuable and if it only speaks to a certain sliver of the movies or if a studio is putting, you know, some sort of pressure on it, even benevolent pressure, I think, um, it, it compromises it.

• 1:35:23Sean Fennessey?

  And people will be able to tell, right?

• 1:35:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:25Sean Fennessey?

  And, and people are always very skeptical about corporate acquisitions. We've been more witness to a corporate acquisition in our careers. Um, it's a very complicated thing. I think one thing I've always loved about Letterboxd is that it does have a kind of homemade analog feel, even though it's a pretty slick app, it just, it doesn't feel overly complicated and noisy.

• 1:35:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:35:46Sean Fennessey?

  And so that's another thing that, you know, in an effort to escalate whatever it will become over time, you still want it to have that like pop in, open the app, log the movie, bounce out.

• 1:35:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It's intuitive and it feels very separate from the Silicon Valley grow, grow, grow algorithm notification, you know, everything. Because it's, it just is its own world. It's not trying desperately to like create some, you know, conquer all the other universes and it did that very organically. So I think I would also worry about like a giant Silicon Valley purchase for the same reason. I mean, we come to this in all roads of life, in, in capitalism anyway, where it's just like, you're just hoping for the most like benevolent money possible. And most of the times the money isn't benevolent. Um, but I'm, I'm hopeful that there is someone who just has a lot of cash and, and gets it.

• 1:36:38Sean Fennessey?

  Same. The same applies for.

• 1:36:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:41Sean Fennessey?

  The three of us.

• 1:36:44Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, what's next?

• 1:36:46Speaker 05

  This next question comes from Bobby and I don't think Wagner unless he has not kept me posted on some serious life updates.

• 1:36:51Sean Fennessey?

  You know, we heard from Wags this week, so maybe it is Bobby.

• 1:36:54Speaker 05

  My wife is currently pregnant with our first child.

• 1:36:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Bob, if you didn't lead with that.

• 1:36:58Sean Fennessey?

  I, hopefully that's not Wags then, because I need, I would have needed to know that, not on mic.

• 1:37:02Speaker 05

  And we recently learned that it will be a girl. What would you consider to be the classics of girl dad cinema and perhaps some underrated or lesser known films in the genre?

• 1:37:11Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote down a bunch of movies off the top of my head this morning.

• 1:37:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's plug Adam Neiman's book right now before any, Adam Neiman is writing a, um, an entire book centered around this subject and examination of this subject, probably both in a, um, in, in a slightly skeptical, you know, in an academically rigorous way.

• 1:37:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, it's called Daughter Theory, which is really smart. Um, so preorder that when that's available. Adam sent us that preorder link. Um, and also congratulations to Bobby. This Bobby.

• 1:37:40Sean Fennessey?

  Whoever he is.

• 1:37:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And his wife, who I hope is feeling well.

• 1:37:44Sean Fennessey?

  I can't recommend something more than having a daughter. I, you know, it's like, it's, check out Paul Thomas Anderson movies, have a daughter, like that's it. That's, that's the, those are my two recommendations to all people. Um, you know, as I was making a list of movies and, and when Adam's book is published, I'm sure we'll do an entire girl dad movie episode and we can talk about all the things, the films that he sees as fitting the bill. But most, many of the movies I wrote down are your movies, movies that you love.

• 1:38:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because you know what? I've been the daughter of a father my whole life.

• 1:38:13Sean Fennessey?

  There it is. And do you think that's why those, these movies speak to you?

• 1:38:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sure there's part of it. Yeah.

• 1:38:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I mean, I think some of it is also that they don't make that many mom, daughter movies. So in terms of.

• 1:38:25Sean Fennessey?

  And why is that?

• 1:38:26Amanda Dobbins?

  So in terms of parenting movie, like movies about dealing with a parent, this is the, um, this is the relationship that's been explored.

• 1:38:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that is interesting.

• 1:38:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:37Sean Fennessey?

  There is something special about the relationship. I don't know what it is, but I'm living through it.

• 1:38:43Sean Fennessey?

  Off the top of my head.

• 1:38:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, number one is just absolutely stolen valor. You know, first Jimothy, now somewhere by Sofia Coppola. You've been out here, first of all, Ron Mahoney has taken it from me in just the one draft.

• 1:38:56Sean Fennessey?

  Taken from you.

• 1:38:56Amanda Dobbins?

  But also.

• 1:38:57Sean Fennessey?

  This is a collective project.

• 1:39:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Even when he took it from me, you're like, it's fine.

• 1:39:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but it's a, it's a girl dad movie.

• 1:39:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it is, it's a beautiful movie.

• 1:39:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's very, very much in the, in the exact strain is Sofia Coppola, of course, the product of a girl dad relationship. Trap?

• 1:39:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:17Sean Fennessey?

  Trap, what happens?

• 1:39:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, we, there was another question we didn't get to about like, what movies are going to be reclaimed? Trap, but we don't need to reclaim it because we were there.

• 1:39:25Sean Fennessey?

  We were there. Logan?

• 1:39:28Amanda Dobbins?

  The Wolverine movie?

• 1:39:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I've seen that. I saw that at the Regal Paseo when it was in ArcLight with Phoebe Riley.

• 1:39:34Sean Fennessey?

  Wouldn't you say that that's a girl dad movie?

• 1:39:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I honestly don't remember. So he's old. Oh, sure.

• 1:39:42Sean Fennessey?

  The young girl.

• 1:39:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:43Sean Fennessey?

  Daphne Keen.

• 1:39:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think so.

• 1:39:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Great.

• 1:39:46Sean Fennessey?

  Liam Neeson's Taken.

• 1:39:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, canonical text.

• 1:39:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, one battle after another, of course, last year grabbed the belt.

• 1:39:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:51Sean Fennessey?

  I thought of Clueless.

• 1:39:53Amanda Dobbins?

  That's nice. I mean, she has a dad.

• 1:39:55Sean Fennessey?

  I love their relationship in that movie.

• 1:39:57Amanda Dobbins?

  It is very funny, yeah.

• 1:39:58Sean Fennessey?

  And I feel like she really gets what's special about her daughter. He really gets, Dan Hedaya's character really gets, he like, he's, he's yelling at her sometimes, but like, he knows that she's, she's got the juice.

• 1:40:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Everywhere in LA takes 20 minutes.

• 1:40:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. I mean, father of the bride, of course.

• 1:40:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, this is, this is the one forever and ever. This is just, you've seen it recently?

• 1:40:18Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't.

• 1:40:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Just an absolutely magical movie.

• 1:40:21Sean Fennessey?

  Did we do Nancy Meyers before, the Nancy Meyers episode before Alice was born? Because that was the last time I watched it.

• 1:40:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't remember because.

• 1:40:33Speaker 05

  October 9th, 2020.

• 1:40:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, we did.

• 1:40:36Sean Fennessey?

  Before.

• 1:40:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:40:37Sean Fennessey?

  I'll get back to it. To Kill a Mockingbird?

• 1:40:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:40:41Sean Fennessey?

  Atticus and Scout?

• 1:40:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:40:44Sean Fennessey?

  Poor Things?

• 1:40:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Who's, oh, sure, more of like Girl Frankenstein, you know?

• 1:40:50Sean Fennessey?

  Well.

• 1:40:50Amanda Dobbins?

  But that is, that's a, that's a dad thing.

• 1:40:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Willem Dafoe, that's dad.

• 1:40:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:40:55Sean Fennessey?

  Have you seen The Nice Guys recently? Did you see that CR just did a conversation with Shane Black about The Nice Guys?

• 1:41:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I did, I have not, I guess I've watched it in the last 10 years.

• 1:41:08Sean Fennessey?

  Gosling plays a wonderful girl dad in the movie.

• 1:41:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:10Sean Fennessey?

  It's his young daughter, he's, he's trying to find a killer and trying to save her.

• 1:41:16Sean Fennessey?

  You know, After Son is the one that most people will point to. I also thought of We Live in Time.

• 1:41:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:20Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a movie, which is a movie that affected me greatly. After Son, I like but don't love. I think the same for you. But we've been told we are canonical monsters for feeling that way.

• 1:41:31Amanda Dobbins?

  It's okay. We live in time, I just, it's too, it's too raw. And it came out right once I was born and.

• 1:41:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very simple, perhaps sentimental movie that I thought was very effective.

• 1:41:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:44Sean Fennessey?

  And it got me.

• 1:41:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:41:46Sean Fennessey?

  Sensual value?

• 1:41:47Amanda Dobbins?

  An incredible girl dad movie.

• 1:41:50Sean Fennessey?

  Complicated one.

• 1:41:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:51Sean Fennessey?

  How do you feel about The Descendants? I'm sure we've talked about it before. It's been a while since we had reason to discuss Clooney.

• 1:41:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Haven't seen it in several years. I remember liking it at the time.

• 1:42:03Sean Fennessey?

  Me too.

• 1:42:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I probably rewatched it for The Holdovers. I almost said The Hangover.

• 1:42:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:42:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Different experience. Or is it?

• 1:42:11Sean Fennessey?

  Or was it?

• 1:42:13Sean Fennessey?

  Arrested Development as a theme.

• 1:42:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it's traditionally understood to be like the, the best that Clooney's ever been besides Michael Clayton and like actual acting. And it, and he is good.

• 1:42:25Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen it in forever. I didn't rewatch it for any of those episodes. I didn't rewatch it for the Clooney Hall of Fame. I didn't rewatch it for Holdover, for Holdovers. I didn't rewatch it for any of the, I should revisit it. I remember liking it as well. Shailene Woodley, I feel like that was her big breakthrough.

• 1:42:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:38Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 1:42:39Speaker 05

  I'll throw out one. Moneyball?

• 1:42:41Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, of course, of course. I'm sure there's a million more. We're, we're just, we're, we're just.

• 1:42:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Social reckoning, you know, Aaron Sorkin's going to get it in there somewhere.

• 1:42:51Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:42:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know whether Mark Zuckerberg has any daughters.

• 1:42:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know whether he identifies as a girl dad.

• 1:42:59Sean Fennessey?

  Should we get him on the show?

• 1:43:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, from Feed Me to the big picture.

• 1:43:03Sean Fennessey?

  Would you be interested?

• 1:43:04Amanda Dobbins?

  That'll, that'll go really well.

• 1:43:05Sean Fennessey?

  Would you be interested in him doing a live rebuttal to the social reckoning?

• 1:43:11Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:43:14Amanda Dobbins?

  He has, he has an entire platform available.

• 1:43:17Sean Fennessey?

  What is it?

• 1:43:19Sean Fennessey?

  What's it called? Do you use, use meta products?

• 1:43:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:24Sean Fennessey?

  You do?

• 1:43:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I do, yeah. Even though they're like, they, they're breaking a lot more easily these days.

• 1:43:29Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have like the headset?

• 1:43:32Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I just use Instagram. I tried it when it was the Apple whatever.

• 1:43:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the Vision, the Vision Pro.

• 1:43:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Sean Fennessey?

  That didn't really take off.

• 1:43:40Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it was really heavy.

• 1:43:42Sean Fennessey?

  I kind of enjoyed it.

• 1:43:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't like it very much. That was also, I think I was pregnant and nauseous and then it was just like.

• 1:43:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's like a bad idea.

• 1:43:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you know, not as bad as going to 40X while pregnant, which is also a thing that I did.

• 1:43:55Sean Fennessey?

  That was actually a bad idea.

• 1:43:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Sat on the floor.

• 1:43:58Sean Fennessey?

  Should we go to 40X again? My back is healed.

• 1:44:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm curious about 40X, The Odyssey.

• 1:44:04Speaker 05

  I've seen some clips, it looks too intense for me.

• 1:44:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:44:08Sean Fennessey?

  I think I want to do it.

• 1:44:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you want to do a 40X Odyssey? Your actual birthday?

• 1:44:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Like on Hungover? No, I don't think Hungover that you should go, though I'm, I'm looking into some probiotics for the party that you take before drinking.

• 1:44:23Sean Fennessey?

  Probiotics?

• 1:44:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:25Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I know what those are.

• 1:44:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, I think it's called.

• 1:44:27Sean Fennessey?

  Is that something people do now?

• 1:44:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:44:29Sean Fennessey?

  Before consuming alcohol, they take probiotics?

• 1:44:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And a trusted friend, she said that it helps at least with The Hangover. A trusted friend.

• 1:44:36Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like I'm the third man right now.

• 1:44:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know whether she wants to be like, I don't know whether she wants me to like, give away her, you know, pull quotes for free on this.

• 1:44:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:44:44Amanda Dobbins?

  On this podcast. I don't know that she wants to be credited with it, but I was good, yeah, I'm going to try it.

• 1:44:49Sean Fennessey?

  What does a probiotic do?

• 1:44:51Amanda Dobbins?

  A probiotic works with your gut, so.

• 1:44:53Sean Fennessey?

  Right, I get that, but what does it accomplish before drinking? Like, it makes you less hungover?

• 1:44:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, that's the point. I don't know whether it works yet, but I'm willing to think about it.

• 1:45:02Sean Fennessey?

  More about dehydration and not about your stomach?

• 1:45:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, maybe it's affecting how your body absorbs the alcohol.

• 1:45:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:45:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Or how your body processes the alcohol. I don't know.

• 1:45:12Sean Fennessey?

  What if I don't get drunk on my birthday?

• 1:45:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, it's your birthday, you know?

• 1:45:18Sean Fennessey?

  No, I like to be in control.

• 1:45:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I've heard that.

• 1:45:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, this was good. Jack, you feel good about this?

• 1:45:25Speaker 05

  This was honestly one of my favorite mailbags in recent memory.

• 1:45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, good.

• 1:45:28Sean Fennessey?

  Great, me too. Thanks to the listeners.

• 1:45:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Leo season, you know?

• 1:45:31Sean Fennessey?

  Leo season is here. Yeah, thank you for the great questions, 600 questions. That's really kind of everybody. Thanks to Jack Sanders, thanks to Lucas Cavanagh for going through those questions, helping us out. As I mentioned, we're going through 10 movies we missed. Will there be anything else fun happening on Monday in the news? Like, what do you think? So will someone, will someone die? Will someone get married?

• 1:45:50Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fun.

• 1:45:51Sean Fennessey?

  Be born?

• 1:45:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Someone dying?

• 1:45:52Sean Fennessey?

  No, that's not fun.

• 1:45:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:45:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's notable.

• 1:45:55Speaker 05

  I pull strings to get Jimothy on the show.

• 1:45:57Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, Jimothy, third chair?

• 1:46:00Speaker 05

  Could you imagine?

• 1:46:01Amanda Dobbins?

  When was the last time? Well, I guess you don't, you only get a rabies shot if you're bit by wildlife, right? So we should need to have that.

• 1:46:09Sean Fennessey?

  Let's make that happen for you. Yes, let's get you bit this weekend. That sounds perfect. All right, we'll see you next week.

• 1:46:32Speaker 06

  From the studio that brought you WandaVision. I was an Avenger, but I'm not a hero anymore.

• 1:46:40Speaker 06

  The Vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real. You sure about that? I had a father called Vision. How is this possible?

• 1:46:51Speaker 06

  Don't miss the two-episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest. Nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy. Now streaming only on Disney+.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

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