#32. 'Infinite'
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This week the trio tackles Infinite (Paramount+), the Mark Wahlberg reincarnated-warriors action film that JVL lobbied hard for after seeing the trailer and pitching it as "James Bond meets the Matrix meets Highlander" — a pick he preemptively apologizes for before Sonny even opens his review. Sonny is the most forgiving, calling it dumb-but-watchable with a Fast and Furious vibe, praising Chiwetel Ejiofor's scenery-chewing villain performance and Wahlberg's naturally bewildered face, but complaining the movie is far too talky for something built around a motorcycle-to-samurai-sword-into-an-airplane stunt. JVL, having rewatched Highlander to prep and finding it holds up worse than he remembered, decides Infinite is "what would happen if Fate of the Furious roofied Highlander" — a genuinely bad, structurally broken film whose villain's nihilistic motivation never coheres. Vic scores it Quadrant Plot B, Duration A (though it felt like an F), Violence/Action B, and Sex/Nudity D, gripes about CGI-heavy action versus real stunt work, and admits he dozed off partway through, later having to ask his son whether Wahlberg's character had died. The episode opens with a long stretch of banter: Vic's basement and garage flooded ankle-deep in a storm and he suffered a gout flare-up that forced him onto gin (sparking a running debate over who's "rude" for not drinking at lunch), JVL is home alone chasing inbox zero and logging extra Peloton workouts, and Sonny is shuttling his daughter to a "twilight" Girl Scout camp forty minutes away in Plano. JVL also relays the wild true story of a Provincetown lobster diver briefly swallowed by a feeding humpback whale — his second near-death brush after surviving a Costa Rica plane crash — which spirals into a Jaws 3D tangent, before the group runs through box office numbers (A Quiet Place 2 topping a soft weekend over In the Heights) and debates the shaky future of the Paramount+ streaming platform, closing on JVL's story about a handsy Peloton instructor and the platform's mysteriously vanishing "Peloton after dark" instructors.
From the show notes
This week on the show the guys talk Infinite . JVL issues an apology! Vic's gout is something to be watched. Sonny's driving all over Plano! All this and more on the latest episode of The Sub-Beacon.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00This isn't your first life, Bevan. You are an infinite. You've lived and died a thousand times.
Sonny00:00:21You're talking about reincarnation.
Guest00:00:24If you can remember
?00:00:26who you were
Guest00:00:30you will understand who you can become.
Vic00:00:48Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and don't forget about the Sub-Beacon merchandise store at tpublic.com. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, you're in a very illuminated room with a different perspective. I see more of the house and that you're not wearing a tank top, you're wearing a t-shirt. What is happening?
JVL00:01:20- True, true. Shannon took the kids down to the beach this morning. - Oh, nice. - I have the run of the house and so I am down in my office, I have an office. It's also a bedroom. So it's an office slash G-Money's . Oh gosh, you're gonna have to bleep that, Sonny, sorry. Office slash G-Money's bedroom. - You just said it again. - G-Money. - G-Money. - G-Money, G-Money is okay. And so I can do whatever I want. - Frankly, I'm surprised you're even closed. - Which is amazing. And so of the things I have done so far, I am closing in on inbox zero before I sleep tonight. - Oh, that's good. - My email. - My email inbox will be at zero.
Sonny00:02:00- So you're just hitting mark all as read on Gmail?
JVL00:02:03- I, no, I went on two Peloton workouts today. Two of them, two a days. - Well, wait a minute.
Vic00:02:10Aren't you supposed to give your body a rest? How could you do two or what are you doing?
JVL00:02:13- I'm gonna save the deets of that. As you once said, the deets. - The deets. - Do you remember that? Do you remember that episode? I'm gonna save the deets for outtakes because I have some Peloton stories. - My gosh. - For you boys and what I would like to spend my time talking about is the whale stuff. - Oh yeah. - But we could do that after you guys tell me how you are. Victorino, how are you?
Vic00:02:39- I'm doing fine. I'm a little tired. We had a little flooding situation when, two nights ago, when that torrential rainstorm, I know you get them a lot down in Texas, Sonny, but it was one of these horrendous, we were like gaining whatever it is, an inch, two inches, an hour, you know, hail the size of golf balls out in Fairfax, that kind of a thing. So, Kate went to check in the basement, as she always does. And, whereas usually I'm like, I'm sure it's fine. And she goes in and it was getting a little wet. And then I tried to soak it- - In the basement? - In the basement on the unfinished part. - Sorry. - Wow. And the unfinished part of the basement and, where I normally don't like to tread anyway. And I then tried to, move things around and realize that it's just, it's not going to soak everything up because it's just, you could see where it's coming in through the door. And so then I told Kate, we need to get the shop vac for this action. And she disagreed, but I said, what are you going to do? You can't sponge it all. So we got the shop vac out and I must've emptied it about 10 times into the sink. - Wow. - Like it filled up. And it's heavy because you got to lift that gigantic thing full of water, storm water. Into the drain, you know, in the unfinished part.
Sonny00:04:01- Which is much heavier than regular water. - Oh yes. - Storm water. - Storm water. - Storm water is like, - Debris. - The density level on that is through the roof.
Vic00:04:07- It's thick, it's murky. And I thought, I said, look. - Victorino?
JVL00:04:12- Yes, JVL. - Are you sure it was storm water and not heavy water for the mass device? - Heavy water. Yes, for the mass device.
Vic00:04:18That stuff is very heavy. I had to travel all the way to the bottom and I had to fight giant eels. Sorry, I just broke the sound with that one. Anyway. And I said, you know, it's probably coming in like through the side of the garage and I can just open the garage door and then mop out the garage to, you know, change the course of the stream, wherever it's coming in. No, the answer is the entire garage was ankle deep in water.
JVL00:04:45- Oh. - Yeah, I mean, it was a lot of water. - Has this happened to you before?
Vic00:04:48- Not to this extent. This was nuts. This was really nuts. - Sounds like a grade problem, maybe? - I, it's weird. And you know, we used to have, where I am recording right now in the finished part of the basement, we used to have all sorts of problems and no longer. My theory, I mean, there's all sorts of, we made all sorts of fixes to the house, but my other overarching theory is the house shifts, the house moves and things happen. And suddenly water's coming in on the other side. That's my theory. Anyway, around 1:00 AM it finally stopped and subsided.
JVL00:05:18- It's like the hollow earth in Godzilla versus King Kong. - Yes. - Over time, the gravity well at the house has shifted.
Vic00:05:26- Yes, 180 degrees. - The house is moving, man. The house is moving.
Sonny00:05:30- Your house just like stands up and moves an inch to the left every day.
Vic00:05:34- No, we don't notice it.
Sonny00:05:34- Every day. - Houses move, man.
Vic00:05:36- Just to mess with you. - Houses move a little bit. So I had that. And on top of that, because now that the pandemic is over, I was out and about, had a couple of beers, and then I had a gout flare up and it was the full deal. I can't believe it. And so I had to drink a lot of water. - Heel or toe? - Oh, always the, well, okay, that's a good question. I was gonna say, it's not true. It's not always the same place. This was the toe, the same toe as usual. It was sore. At first, I'm like, gee, why I feel so sore? And then sure enough, then it gets red. And then I'm drinking a lot of water. In fact, I'm drinking a lot of water now. So I'll probably have to relieve myself every five or 10 minutes, if you don't mind. - Sure. - I'm just kidding. I have a Motormans friend. And so anyway, that happened. So my advice to my fellow gout sufferer listeners is again, lay off the beer, stick to gin. That's what I did the next day, the next night. It really did, I had to drink something. I was at a party, gin and tonic.
JVL00:06:37- Yes, you had to drink something at the party. - Yes.
Vic00:06:40- It would have been weird to have water. - No, you can't do that. That's very rude. Sonny, rude. Yes, Sonny.
Sonny00:06:47- Yes, I didn't realize you were asking me a question. You had sounded like a command.
Vic00:06:51It was like, Sonny, rude. - Right, wouldn't you say you have to have a cocktail?
JVL00:06:54- Rude, next question.
Sonny00:06:56- No, I can't drink. - Tom McLaughlin combat.
JVL00:06:57- Wait, so all the times I've come to parties where you guys have been and I've just had like tonic water or water or diet coke. - That's rude. - It was rude. - You guys have been judging me as being rude?
Vic00:07:07- Yes.
Sonny00:07:08- Yeah. - That's rude.
Vic00:07:12- So that's what is happening in my, but now it is subsiding, enough so that I ran.
Sonny00:07:16- It's less the parties than the lunches. The lunches where we're- - Yeah, no, if we're all drinking at lunch, you can't have a diet coke. - Where we're at the Palm and we're funneling beers, you know, like beer bongs. - Three martini. - From John. - Three martinis. - Just pouring them down there. He's like, ah.
Vic00:07:33- Four martinis.
Sonny00:07:34- Who wanted the pitcher of Manhattans? Like me, you know? And then you're sitting there with your iced tea. That's when we're judging you.
JVL00:07:41- I have literally never had a drink at lunch on a school day when we've been out to.
Sonny00:07:49- It's a- - Out to lunch.
JVL00:07:51- It's probably- - And I just thought I was being the responsible one. - No. - And it turns out you were judging me.
Vic00:07:56- I was responsible. - Right? That's irresponsible for you as a writer.
Sonny00:08:00- Yeah. I mean, that's just not- - As a journalist. - That's not how journalists operate, man.
Vic00:08:04- You know what they say about the martinis, right? - No. - They're like ladies' breasts. One is too few and three is too many. But you know, my addendum to that is of course, three is just right if you live in the Total Recall Mars.
Sonny00:08:18- Yeah, I was gonna say, have you seen Total Recall? That's Christopher Hitchens.
Vic00:08:22- That's clearly where I live. Okay. - You know, I think it's possible
JVL00:08:26that I've never had a martini. - Ah, well, I think that's very possible too.
Vic00:08:30- You wouldn't like them. - Sadly. No, too strong. Too strong. - You would not.
Sonny00:08:34- I mean, it's just gin and vermouth.
Vic00:08:37- It's alcohol plus alcohol plus alcohol. There's, bitters is alcohol too. It's just all alcohol. - Sounds gross. - It's delicious.
Sonny00:08:45- Do you want a drink that's just 50% alcohol? 'Cause that's a drink that's just by ABV. - No, I am drinking right now some hardy wood. - Is that a peach shuffer huffer?
JVL00:08:58- A peach triple. So it is a Belgian triple ale that is, you know, got some peaches. - And they put fruit in there. - Those people like hardy wood, they are all right. I love me some hardy wood.
Vic00:09:10- I bet you do. Sonny, what's going on?
Sonny00:09:14- Not a whole lot. Not a whole lot. One of my kids has two camps this week. One right after the other. There's like a day camp. Where she goes to the Spanish world school. It's, you know, Spanish immersion. She's not learning any Spanish. I was like, what Spanish immersion did you learn today?
JVL00:09:35- Is it all critical race theory?
Sonny00:09:36- We're all, it's not, we're not learning words, dad. We're doing things and they speak in English too. Like, okay, fine. Well, what's the point then? Why are we sending you to this? And then she also has a Girl Scouts camp that is like, it's a twilight camp. I'm putting twilight in quotes here.
Vic00:09:55- Not like the theme, like the, like the.
Sonny00:09:57- No, no, not like the, not like the book. - Like the vampire books? - Not like the book, just like that's the time. So she, the camp runs from like 5:30 to 9:30. So basically either, either Beth or I have to spend like four hours in, God, I can't, Plano, which is where this is. - Oh, I know Plano.
Vic00:10:17I've been to Plano.
Sonny00:10:18- It's like 40, it's like 40 minutes from our house. So it's like, it's, it's long enough that it's annoying to come back for a couple of hours.
Vic00:10:25- To answer, to answer Jonathan's question.
JVL00:10:27Night, how much are they paying you?
Sonny00:10:31- 5:30 to 9:30.
JVL00:10:32- To schlep your, your kid back and forth to this?
Sonny00:10:34- 9:30 is late. - It's fine. It's the thing about it is it's actually kind of nice because then you get like, you know, three or four hours, you know, to yourself kind of. - Like dinner. - But, but then, but then we just ended up spending all the time like running errands and stuff anyway. And like on tomorrow, so tomorrow is my day and I'm going to have to go see the hit man's "Bodyguard 2". So I have something to write about this week in my newsletter, which makes me want to just die. The idea, cause I haven't seen the first one. I'm not going to be able to follow it. Not going to be able, I'm not going to have any idea what's going on. - It's one of those movies. - Ryan Reynolds and Sam Jackson. What? Anyway, that's, that's what my week has been like. I'm just kind of tired. That's all.
Vic00:11:17- JVL, JVL, go for it.
JVL00:11:20- New story, up off of P-Town. Provincetown. The very, very tip of the Cape. - Right on the tip. - Right, right, just the tip. - Just the tip. - Just the tip of the Cape. - Just the tip of the Cape. - A gentleman who is a lobster diver, was down, was, there's a lot, not a lobster men. The lobster men's pick up the, pick up-
Vic00:11:42- I think lobster is more Long Island. It's lobster.
JVL00:11:46- The lo, the lobster men pick up the, the, the cages, right? But the, the, the lobster divers, they, they go all the way down to the floor of the ocean. And just pick, pick them up with their hands. They scuba dive down. They pick up the lobsters with their hands.
Vic00:12:00- Hold on one second. I thought they were diving down to the cages. But wait a minute. No, no, they are, they're the ones with snorkeling. The scuba gear.
Sonny00:12:08- Yeah, these are scuba gear guys. You go down and- - Why would you go get a lobster that way? That sounds a million times more difficult than putting traps.
Vic00:12:16- Free range.
JVL00:12:16It's free range. - If I was going to bet, I would bet it has something to do with not owning the permits to put down lobster cages.
Sonny00:12:26- Oh, do you need, is that a- - That is interesting. I think so. - Do you have permission from the state? - Probably. - The fascist state in which we live?
Vic00:12:33- You probably don't. - I assume America. - You probably don't just, can just put a cage anywhere you want and other, it's probably that, that industry is probably very territorial. - Hmm.
JVL00:12:45Yeah, but also because you got to protect against like overfishing and there's a whole, I, boy, I could tell you chapter and verse about like permitted fishing stuff 'cause I wrote a piece about this once. Anyway, unimportant. What's important is that this guy is down there and he's picking up lobsters and all of a sudden a whale comes along and the whale is feeding and he's got his mouth open to get him some krill. And it turns out that when whales open their mouths to get the krill, the, the giant orifice kind of like makes it so they can't see where they're going. And, and it swallows the guy.
Vic00:13:20- That happens to me, by the way. That happens to me when I-
JVL00:13:23- Swallows the guy, the guy, it's totally like Jonah, just inside the whale. And the whale is like, "Oh, something, something's wrong. Oh, this is bad." And so the whale swims up and spits him out. Just throws him out. The guy goes flying. The people on his watch boat are like, "What the fuck?" So what, what is amazing about this story in the Providence, Cape Times or whatever, or the local paper, as I saw it. - Cape Cod Times. - Is that this is only the second craziest thing to happen to this dude in his life. The first craziest is that he was, he was on one of these little like chartered flights through like Guatemala or something. - Costa Rica. - Costa Rica. And the plane crashed and the pilot was killed and it was him and I don't know, five other passengers. And they had to survive in the jungle for like three days until the rescue car came, like full on six days and seven nights, right? The Harrison Ford and Hayes thing. And I just thought this guy, it's like Final Destination. - Death is coming. - Death is coming. - Death is coming for him no matter what he does. - He fooled him twice. - What a crazy ass thing. Sonny, you look like you're not at all.
Vic00:14:48- I know, he's not. The most important thing by the way here is that there were witnesses to this. There were eyewitnesses. So if he had come back to shore and went to the crow's nest, remember the crow's nest from The Perfect Storm, right? The crow's nest and said, "You won't believe what happened to me. "I got swallowed up by a lobster." No, in fact, people saw this happen. Sonny, you look completely unimpressed.
Sonny00:15:08- Well, this just goes back to my theory that no one should ever go outdoors 'cause that's where danger is. That's where planes crash into jungles and whales swallow you up while you're trying to poach some lobsters from the hardworking-- - The hardworking lobstermen.
Vic00:15:24- It's also very interesting because it was a humpback, right? It was a humpback that swallowed. And those are the ones you see, like if you go out to the Jersey Shore, you go down to Cape May, if you see any whales, chances are they're humpbacks.
JVL00:15:38- Yeah, you see 'em all over these coasts. - Fascinating, fascinating. - They go back and forth. And evidently the oceanographer or marine biologist profiled in the Cape Cod Times piece was like, "Yeah, you know, what's funny, of course, the whale's esophagus is like, you know, six inches wide." - Thank God. - Couldn't swallow the guy. The guy just like trapped in his mouth. And as soon as he started kicking the whale, he was like, "Whoa, this is not right. Don't like it."
Vic00:16:03- That's right. And spit it out as a human would. The other thing is, you remember what he said?
Sonny00:16:09- That's the human would if they swallowed a man and the man started kicking the inside of their mouth. - Wait, wait, hold on. Phrasing.
Vic00:16:17- The interesting thing is the guy said, and the people who had seen it had thought the same thing, and the guy who got swallowed thought he was swallowed by a great white. Could there have been great white sightings in that area? And had that happened, it would have been an entirely different story.
Sonny00:16:36- Well, he probably wouldn't have been swallowed by the great white, right? The great white would have like bit his leg and then like thrown him up in the air.
Vic00:16:43- Depends on the size. There was a guy who was complete with scuba gear who was killed and he was swallowed entirely by a giant, giant, great white. And the guy was still left holding a grenade. Oh, wait a minute. That was Jaws 3D. I got confused. That was starring Simon. Simon, what's his name from Manimal? Jon Podoritz is yelling at us 'cause I'm sure he knows the guy's last name, Simon. - Manimal. - Manimal. And he had the scuba gear and he was swallowed up by the great white in Jaws 3D, but he couldn't be swallowed because of the gear. And then that's what he, when the shark opens its mouth later in the movie, he's still in the mouth holding the grenade and Dennis Quaid was able to reach in with a rod and pull the pin. - Wow, that's pretty nifty. - Entirely believable. Yeah, that's it.
Sonny00:17:33- Wait, I don't understand. The guy was still in the mouth? - Yes. - Of the shark?
Vic00:17:41- Yes, the shark could not swallow. - Couldn't get him all the way down. - He couldn't get him all the way down. So you could see what's going on.
Sonny00:17:48- So it was like halfway down and his arms like up.
Vic00:17:51- His arm was sticking out of the mouth and then Dennis Quaid was able to pull the pin.
Sonny00:17:54- I have never seen Jaws 3D. A terrible dereliction of critical duty. - No, you really should.
Vic00:17:59I saw it in 3D and the older woman with Dennis Quaid, and I say older, she was probably 30s, was I think Bess Armstrong, but the younger one at the time was Lea Thompson. Just throwing that out there. JVL, what else? - Yeah, that's all. I just found this story utterly fascinating. It is an amazing story and I believe he said that when he noticed the change was when all of a sudden, he got enveloped by the shark, what he realized it had become suddenly a very quiet place. Speaking of which.
JVL00:18:37- Oh!
Vic00:18:38- Thank you. - Oh, nice transit, A plus. - Over the weekend, A Quiet Place 2 regained, regained the top spot at the box office with 11.6 million, followed by, In the Heights with 11.4 million and in third place, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway with 10.4 million. Box office thoughts, In the Heights is supposed to be the big feel-good blockbuster movie of the summer. Sonny, what's happening here?
Sonny00:19:05- Well, it's a musical that has no real stars that is also playing for free on HBO Max. So I mean, the deck was stacked against it. The deck would have been stacked against it anyway because this is not, the musical is a moribund genre as it is. You know, your outliers like La La Land and--
JVL00:19:29- Tell that to the greatest showman.
Sonny00:19:31- And the greatest showman notwithstanding. But you know, those are the exceptions to the rule. I don't know, man. I'm glad that people are still going out to see A Quiet Place. That movie was not quite as front-loaded maybe as some of the other stuff that has come out has been. What we're seeing with the HBO movies in particular is you have people who want to go see it in the theater and they all go the first weekend and everything has been super front-loaded with those movies. But again, that's because it's out on HBO Max right now anyway, so people are kind of inclined to stay home. I mean, you know, the problem with that, the problem with In the Heights is that it just, it's, nobody knows what it is. It's just a musical, like nobody, nobody knows what it is.
JVL00:20:26- I see, the title, the worst title ever for you. - It's a terrible title. - If you have a musical with no stars, at least your title has to tell people kind of what it's about, no?
Sonny00:20:37- Well, they're in the Heights. I mean, this is, but the problem with movies is that it's also just-- - Which is very New York centric
Vic00:20:40because if you were in New York, you'd know what we're talking about. I thought they were talking about seaside heights.
Sonny00:20:44- The problem with the movie is that it's just boring. It's just, it's just a boring movie with boring songs and boring dancing.
JVL00:20:50I mean, like I could, I could not,
Sonny00:20:53I could barely, you know, pay attention to it. You guys have fun talking about it with J-Pod next week. - It's going to be amazing. Best show ever. - It was legitimately like, I mean, I just, I w I was like, I hate this. I, why am I, but I like, it's not for me. Cause I'm not a, I'm not, I don't like musicals. Cause musicals are without exception, a terrible, terrible genre.
Vic00:21:14So anyway, go ahead.
Sonny00:21:17Bad movie that performed, performed appropriately at the box office, which is to say poorly. I hope it, I hope nobody goes to see it.
Vic00:21:25- J-VL, do you have thoughts on, on box office?
JVL00:21:29- My thoughts are that we're in a world of trouble. Like this is a Richard Rushfield had a great, great newsletter out this week saying, how is this all supposed to work when we are down to five studios doing 10 movies a year? And of those 10 movies a year, maybe two of them for each studio, maybe with the exception of Disney and Marvel are theoretically tentpole movies. Like what, how are theater owners supposed to have enough mass audience product to remain viable? And this, this is the other half of why I had said to you guys, the beginning of the pandemic, I said, we may have seen the last movie in a theater that we're ever going to see. And part of it was because, the theater owners were in incredibly precarious positions financially. Now that has been solved by Robin hood because AMC, despite everything is now like the fifth most expensive, the fifth biggest market cap in the world because of stonks, I guess.
Sonny00:22:36- Stonks. - Stonks. - Diamond hands.
JVL00:22:39- Apes. The apes together are strong. And that's why AMC is, is, you know, America's preeminent meme stock so that, you know, the Reddit, Reddit solved the AMC capitalization, the capitalization problem.
Vic00:22:50- Reddit saved AMC.
JVL00:22:51- But there's nothing that can save the problem of losing out on product to get people in.
Sonny00:23:00- Yeah. It's going to be a real, right now the audiences are very heavily tilted towards IP product that they know and recognize and want to see in a big screen on a big screen theater. Right? Like, so you, you, if you, if you look at in the Heights there, there's an argument to be made that in the Heights did not underperform that this is a normal performance for a, you know, a musical and there's 40% capacity reductions and blah, blah, blah. But if you look at, if you look at other, there are three other movies that HBO has released that, or Warner brothers has released that have also been on HBO max that are, that have opened much bigger Godzilla versus Kong, Mortal Kombat. And what's the third one. What am I thinking? The conjuring, the conjuring, part three, those movies all did better. They all did better because people know about them. They wanted to go see them in the theaters, even if they could see them at home. And that, that is why that is, that is why they did okay at the box office. The what's the, what is the worst movie that HBO has released in theaters in terms of box office performance, at least since, you know, since the pandemic has been more or less over is those who wish me dead, which is a movie that had no, had no IP attachments. It was, it was star driven high concept is the sort of thing that died out in the nineties for a reason. Cause people kind of stopped going to that sort of thing. And, you know, I don't know. I, I, the real question is once, once you start getting a real flow of things that are in theaters that are not available on, on demand or streaming channels and won't be available on, on demand or streaming channels, streaming channels for 45 days or 60 days or whatever the window is going to be that then we'll, then we'll get a better sense of like how the box office is actually going to wind up doing. I mean like when fast nine comes out in, in a couple of weeks here, I bet that that movie does, I bet that movie does $75 million opening weekend. Wow. I bet it, it may, it may, it may go higher than that. It could get up to a hundred million, honestly. I mean like this is the thing about the capacity restrictions is that they're not actually that huge of a deal. Yes. You miss out on those Friday, you know, you, you miss out on a big portion of the Friday night, Saturday night audiences. But at the same time, most people, most theaters aren't full 40%.
JVL00:25:39Yeah. People will just shift to other showings.
Sonny00:25:41This is people shift to other showings, people shift to other showings. So, and here's another little piece of anecdote and I'll, I'll stop talking about it. Cause it's boring to everybody except me is that I bought, I bought tickets for black widow. I bought them ahead of there. There are they're on sale now. And I will say that from the, the seating charts I was looking at on my phone on Fandango, as I'm buying the tickets, those screenings are already pretty much sold out there. They are getting to the point of being sold.
Vic00:26:13There's no capacity limit though in theaters in Texas anymore. Are there?
Sonny00:26:17They're, they're still a, they're still a, they're still doing distance. I don't know what, I don't know if there's like a 30% cap or 40% cap or 20% cap or whatever, but they're still doing the distancing between seats.
Vic00:26:28When does, when does Black Widow come out?
Sonny00:26:32That comes out July 7th I want to say is when that is when that's going to drop.
Vic00:26:39And it's not, is there any deal with it to come out and stream?
Sonny00:26:44It will also be, it's also going to be on Disney Plus's premiere access tier so you can pay $30 to watch it at home or you can pay $20 for an IMAX ticket, one IMAX ticket.
Vic00:26:54So you're saying if I have Disney Plus, it's not enough?
Sonny00:26:59If you have Disney Plus, you will still have to pay another $30 to get to watch it on, at home. Wow. Or you can go see it in theaters.
Vic00:27:07Yeah. So. The cost of whatever it was. Yeah.
Sonny00:27:11If I, as long as I react to it, my stubs. So, but just again, again, my, my Anik, my Anik data here is that that movie is going to do really well. I bet that movie does a 70 or $80 million opening weekend. And that's, that's a big number, even for a Marvel movie, for one of the standalone you know, individual character movies. That's not iron man. You know, those are, those are solid Thor or Doctor Strange, Ant-Man numbers. Yeah. I mean, I like, but, but the question, the big question is, is anything else going to make it? Because other than F nine black widow, uh, et cetera, et cetera, are going to make it.
JVL00:27:50Disney will have to make 30 Marvel movies a year in order to save.
Sonny00:27:54Well, they've got a huge back load. They've got a huge back load right now. Right. They've got like 10 of these movies coming out in the next two years. Yeah. There's, there's, there's this right. And then there's Shang Chi and then there's the eternals all coming out in like a five month stretch. And then there's Spider-Man the, you know, the new Spider-Man movie is supposed to come out in December. That's technically Sony. Marvel. Disney. I mean, is that still Tom Holland?
Vic00:28:19The revenue split is like, yeah. Okay. All right.
Sonny00:28:22Well that should be, that should do. So I don't know. I mean, I like the, the, the, the, the question is, will there be enough blockbusters to keep everybody afloat for now? I think the answer is yes. Do audiences come back to the mid budget movie when they have tons of competition from, uh, from streaming channels and the like? I don't know. That's that has been, that has always been the big question coming out of this. I was less skeptical than JBL of whether or not. Yeah. Theaters would survive. Um, but I do think there is a, there's a real chance that the actual landscape of what you go to see at a theater is radically diminished after this, which is unfortunate.
Vic00:28:56When you go see in the theater, like you have Sonny, are there coming attractions and stuff?
Sonny00:29:01Oh yeah. There's still 25 minutes previews. I went to go see spiral the, the, from the book of saw, uh, this, I don't know, last month and it, there were 25 minutes of previews of movies that are like, I'm like, I'm like done with my popcorn by the time the previews are over because I get the popcorn so I can take the mask off.
Vic00:29:21Despite the pandemic movies had been being, they're not just, they've been, they were being made during the pandemic. Are these movies that many movies sitting in the can, some of them, some of them were
Sonny00:29:32sitting in the can. Some people, they, there had been some movies made since the pandemic, but not a ton. Most of what's going to be in theaters is stuff that was done and ready to come out in like March or May of last year.
JVL00:29:43Question.
Sonny00:29:44Yeah.
JVL00:29:45Were they still able to make new new V. Oh, was Maria Menounos. Hi, I'm Brie Menounos from newbie today. You've seen how NBC entertainment's new bionic woman is coming to theaters. Right.
Sonny00:30:04No, thank God. Thank God. I, now that now, I mean, now that I, you know, uh, can reserve my seats in every auditorium beforehand. I get to the, I get to the movie, like when the previews are supposed to start, I do not, I do not. I have to sit through newbie or the 20. What is it? The, you know, do you, the 15? I can't remember. What was that block of entertainment called?
Vic00:30:25Do you remember before all that, if you got to the movie theater early, it was just trivia
JVL00:30:31slides, slides, slides, slides, literally a slide projector up in the, up in the booth and projector booth.
Sonny00:30:37Somebody had a family dentistry, right?
JVL00:30:39And the pawn shops local.
Vic00:30:42Yeah. That's exactly right. It was like dentistry and pawn shop. Commerce, uh, ads.
JVL00:30:46And they had you because if you cared about having a good seat, then you had to be there
Vic00:30:5030 minutes early and it would subject you to really fuzzy grainy images. Um, uh, last question on this, uh, quiet place too. So they chose not to come out streaming when they came out and clearly that they're making a lot of money on this are, I'm very happy for John Krasinski and his wife cause they're racking, they're raking it in. Um, at what point does it, uh, uh, go streaming?
Sonny00:31:15Uh, I think I, I, I might be wrong on this. I'm I'll effort it while you guys, uh, it's a 45 day window, but it's a 45 day window and then it's going to be on paramount plus, Oh, Hey, you know what else is on paramount plus speaking of paramount plus this week, we're talking about infinite over on paramount
Vic00:31:32blue Sonny. How about a big boy review?
JVL00:31:36Okay. I'm sorry. Before you, before you start Sonny, I'm sorry guys. This one was my call.
Vic00:31:44I, I, it was, I'm not even going to say anything yet, but this is on me so much. So that you had your percent on me preempt the, you have to preempt Sonny's review with an apology.
JVL00:31:57This is my bad. Okay.
Sonny00:32:00Sonny got infinite. The best movie I've seen so far this year. That's it. That's the review.
Vic00:32:09No. Uh, it's like it's vital taps. Shark sandwich. Shit sandwich.
Sonny00:32:13Okay. So infinite stars, Mark Wahlberg as a man who gets reincarnated and can remember all of his past lives, but everybody thinks he's having a psychotic break. So he's full of crazy pills and he's got a plate in his head, which stops him from fully remembering everything. Turns out he's, uh, he's, uh, something called an infinite and there are two kinds of infinites. There's the believers and then there's the nihilists and the believers want to use their powers to help humanity and the nihilists want to use their powers to destroy humanity because they're tired. They're tired of being reborn into our crappy world. Um, I, I didn't hate this movie, honestly. It's so, it's so like off the wall dumb, um, and kind of bonkers that it, it almost has a fast and furious vibe to it. Um, and there are things about it that I actively liked. For instance, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the villain in this and he is like clearly having a very good time treating the material with no respect at all. Um, you know, he's got this giant bushy beard. He's wearing three piece suits and he's just like hamming it up, uh, as, as hard as he can. Um, Mark Wahlberg, his natural look of confusion really aids him well in this film, um, which I, which I enjoyed and appreciated the, the, again, the movie is like a big dumb action movie and it is big and dumb and the action is fine. It's perfectly fine. I, Antoine Fuqua directed this, it's hard to believe because he's a great director. I like Antoine Fuqua a lot. I don't think this is his best work, but I do think it kind of falls into. The realm there's, there's, there's a continuity of vision here with this and shooter and, um, magnificent seven remake that he did, or I'm sorry, the, yeah, the magnificent seven remake that he had, he did, uh, the equalizer movies and tears of the sun, which is probably my favorite of his films, which is like, it is, it is a movie about, uh, the use of, of, uh, the morally justified use of violence to save people. I am always in favor of that because I believe that every, every problem can be solved with a bullet. There's no problem on this planet that cannot be solved with a well-placed bullet. So, uh, on, on, on a purely ideological level, I, I approve of this film, um, as far as everything else goes, it's, it's very talky. For a movie that in, for a movie that involves, uh, a brand of like semi immortal warriors, fighting battle throughout the ages, and at one point sees, uh, Mark Wahlberg ride a motorcycle off a cliff while pulling a samurai sword out and stabbing an airplane with it. For a movie that has something that really kind of visually spectacular, there's just a lot of like, let's talk about what it means to be an infant. Okay. Let's talk about that some more. Let's talk about your regression into past lives. Well, let's talk about this. Just talk. You talk to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Just shut up and fight each other with your swords and your guns and your bombs and drive into each other and, and kill people. It's fine. Just do that. Instead of talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk,
Vic00:35:27talk, talk. You know, sometimes the worst movies make for the best review, Sonny.
Sonny00:35:30All right, I'm done. Victorino.
Vic00:35:34Yeah. Wow. What did you think? Wow. Uh, okay. Well, I mean, it does get it. There's a technical quadrant score on it, but it does not reflect how I felt about this movie. Uh, the, uh, uh, quadrant wise, it's pretty good. Yeah. That's right. Okay. A plot plot is a B it's, it's straightforward, but it's not the most exciting plot. Is that Mark Wahlberg narrating? Is he the voiceover?
Sonny00:35:55It's not, it's not plot.
Vic00:35:57It's understandability, but that's for me, for me, that's what we're talking about. When I say plot, uh, duration is an a, even though it felt like an F, but it is like an hour 46 and it was, it's short, but man, it, okay. Violence. It's a loose hundred six violence action, uh, is a B. Okay. So there's a lot of fighting. It's great. But again, this is one of my running things now.
JVL00:36:25I am so sick and tired of the boobs.
Vic00:36:28Well, that's, that's, that's the next one that got D for that. Although look, it's a PG 13, so I can't, you know, there's only so much you could do. Although there are a lot of great PG 13 movies out there in certain categories. Back to the violence and the action though, uh, I'm just so sick and tired of the CGI violence and action. Even the car chase in the beginning, I suspect the one in Mexico city.
Sonny00:36:48I suspect that CGI some of it, at least there's a lot of, and then of course, and it just
Vic00:36:54visually looks bad. Whereas, you know, having recently watched say lethal weapon or lethal weapon to, um, those are great car chase scenes because, or, or, or William freekins to live and die in LA or the French connection, which I saw, uh, like a month ago. Um, it's great. It's not just because it's gritty, but because it's real. We pick up on that. I think our eyes pick up on that. We realize this thing. And, and so by the time you reach the end where he gets on that motorcycle with the samurai sword on the wing of the plane, I mean, it was just sort of, it's, it's just too much. It's too much. I, I thought about how, how much better it was if this was a Christopher Nolan, uh, stunt. And if he actually did that, it would be really impressive if he actually did that. Uh, so CGI overload, uh, and again, I guess because they're picking up. Um, you know, skills throughout previous lives. So they're like what? Like the matrix. Is that like a kind of a thing where they get better and better? Is that it? Uh, kind of. Yeah. Okay. There's a lot of matrix. And honest to goodness, Sonny, you talk about the talking. I dozed off, I dozed off in the movie and I was watching with my son and I actually had to ask him later, did Mark Wahlberg die? I lost track. Because really I dozed off JVL your thoughts.
JVL00:38:18So I originally was going to say that this is what would happen if the fate of the furious went out to a club and roofied Highlander and then took it back to its apartment to just roar. But I, uh, I, in an attempt to, by the way, I actually watched Highlander. And, uh, again, for the first time in a very long time, I think it is not as good a movie as we may remember it as being. I'm Ron Burgundy.
Sonny00:38:57I mean, I, yeah, I mean, Highland Highlander is a very, very goofy movie and like also like weirdly drawn out in places.
JVL00:39:05Yeah. And it, to the extent that it succeeds, it succeeds purely on the height of the concept. It is incredibly high concept and the weirdness of Clancy Brown and, uh, Christopher Lambert has leads because the two of them are really weird cinematic presence and they're very off kilter.
Sonny00:39:32And Sean Connery also very weird in this movie as the Spanish Egyptian with the Scottish brogue.
JVL00:39:40Yeah. But it really, I mean, you know, it is, it is in many ways, you know, I, this may sound crazy. I think a huge part of the appeal of that movie is just the weird voices that Lambert and Clancy Brown have because their voices are just out of left field and interesting to listen to. Uh, but, but the point is it's actually not as good. I don't know about you guys, but when I saw that movie in like 1990, I was like, this is awesome, you know, and I do not feel that way this, this time through it. So I didn't want to romanticize how good Highlander is, but infinite is, is it's bad. It's a bad movie and it's a bad movie for all sorts of structural reasons. As if they shot the second draft, like you, this is one of those films where you can see the good movie that was there. Had they had the director been able to continue the. Provision process and get to something interesting. And instead it's just kind of a mess. And I, yeah, Ooh, it's not good.
Sonny00:40:58Yeah. You demanded that we review this because you saw the trailer and you were like, this looks awesome.
JVL00:41:02Yeah. I said, this looks like Sean. This looks like James Bond meets the matrix meets Highlander in, and you have two great
Vic00:41:11leads that, you know, a, a, a. You're edgy for, and, and Mark Wahlberg, and then you have Antoine Fuqua directing and you know, and I don't know, it kind of felt like the, it had a weird, like it had a very cool vibe to it. And then you get into it and you're like, man, when is this thing going to pick up? Or also you just didn't feel a sort of any connection with any, any of the characters, especially because they inhabit different bodies.
JVL00:41:36I guess. I mean, a big, a big problem in the movie really starts in the set with the second act. The first act isn't bad, honestly. Um, but once we move to the stakes, which in the second act, which are revealed as that, uh, Benthurst, Broadhurst, Bathurst, whatever, whatever, whatever Chew et al, OJFOR's character's name is, um, which is a pretty cool name, actually Bathurst, uh, that his, you know, what he wants is to eliminate all life. And that just, like, doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Right?
Sonny00:42:18I know. I think it, I mean, I.
JVL00:42:20It fails completely.
Sonny00:42:21No, I see. I disagree with this because I think this is one of the rare occasions where it actually makes sense that somebody would want to end all life on Earth because they, because he, he is tired of living. It's, it's very. He cannot, he cannot end his own existence without ending everybody else's existence.
Vic00:42:37That's a very, that's a very, that's a very Tenet-like motivation.
JVL00:42:39Well, except, except that, uh. He has the means to achieve this without the egg. Right? I mean, he, he has his super special gun with the special bullets that he could just shoot himself with. Right? This is, that would stop him from living. I guess that's true. There are.
Vic00:42:57He doesn't want anyone else to live either though.
JVL00:42:59There are all sorts of other, uh, other things that he could do. Like for instance, since you would assume that the Infinites, uh, since they are able to play the long game financially could control like half of the world's money supply. Okay. He could start a global nuclear Holocaust, right? I mean, this is, there are ways to end all of life on earth that don't necessarily involve the magical piece of technology. And uh, and, and also the movie lies to us by telling us the beginning that these are nihilists who don't believe anything when, uh, Bathurst is the only person who seems to really believe in God. Like we get this weird scene where he is.
Sonny00:43:43Oh right.
JVL00:43:44He's looking for the face of God with, with a shroud of Turin like over his face and they're pouring gasoline into his mouth while he is asking for some reason while he asks God in a church while he's asking God to give him a vision. And then at the end, as we like move into the climactic part of the third act, he has this weird offhand moment where there's, he's setting up the bomb and he says to his little hench woman, do you think he'll let us do it? And points. Like up to the sky. Meaning do you think God will actually allow us to end all life, which is very strange moment where it's like, oh, this guy's a real believer. Like he, he's not, it's not that he doesn't believe in God. He's just angry at God. And that's kind of interesting, except that the movie and the voiceover stuff sets it up all wrong.
Sonny00:44:34This is, I, I, I read that as him, him doubting the existence of God, him trying him trying to be proven wrong in a way.
JVL00:44:43No, he's totally, he is team God. I, again, it's just, uh, this is, you know, there are interesting motivations for him. There are all sorts of interesting things that Bathurst could have wanted to do in the world as a bad guy, but none of this stuff makes any sense. And so the stakes wind up being weird and not believable and because they're not believable and they're weird, not really interesting. Wow. I think I slept through that part every minute that, uh, Bathhurst. Bathhurst is off screen. My attention began to wander. Yeah.
Sonny00:45:18Right. I mean, he's the best part. Edgy of four is the best part of this movie.
JVL00:45:21He's the, uh, by a fairly wide margin, he's the best part of every movie. Uh, and in my, I will just bang my drum on this again. He should be the next James Bond.
Sonny00:45:33Daniel Craig is now he's 40 years, like 43 years old. He's not too old. He's older than that. He's no, he's not.
JVL00:45:38I just looked it up. Oh yeah. It was still too old. He's my age. He's he'd be fantastic. Gosh. It'd be so good as James Bond.
Vic00:45:46The problem is Jamie's bonds are always, they end up always getting an actor who is just on the very edge of being too old. And then they could do a couple of movies and then they're just old, you know? And I remember the same thing. They were talking about Idris Elba, Idris Elba is, you know, he's too old, but you can't have somebody who's too young either, because that would be like, uh, Alex Ryder or something. Some of those movies are instant team secret agent, you know, that's just not believable because you have banks. That's right. That was the guy from Malcolm in the middle, right? Cody banks. You have to sort of earn your way into a double Oh seven British secret service status. Uh, I don't know. I don't know. Uh, in terms of the messaging and the, the idea of reincarnation, uh, it's funny. I still maintain that, uh, the best, uh, reference to reincarnation is in pineapple express. Do you remember this? And um, Danny McBride plays this sort of, uh, he was sort of. The Zen drug dealer and uh, Seth Rogan is trying to convince him to do the right thing. And in the process he says, you know, you have to do the right thing because if you don't, you may come back in the next life as something terrible, like an anal bead. You don't want to be that. Do you? And Danny McBride goes, ah, kind of depends on who owns it.
?00:47:03Sorry.
Sonny00:47:04This is, I mean, if I need to digression, I scribbled some notes here.
JVL00:47:10Um, so when I say it's just not wealthy. It's all constructed, uh, like to start with the introductory voiceover, totally unnecessary.
Vic00:47:20And that was him, right? That's that's Mark Wahlberg.
JVL00:47:22That's Mark Wahlberg. And he's just spelling out for us things that the movie is going to show us in short order
Sonny00:47:27that the movie will literally just say later, like the exact speech that he gives is repeated by the woman, uh, infinite, like 20 minutes later.
Vic00:47:36I mean, it's helpful for me, but at the same time I didn't find it interesting. It was like, oh, I see where we're going.
JVL00:47:42There's a drone sequence. We, when the, the good infinite girl goes to Bathurst to state, which is, I mean, it's not long, it's like two and a half minutes, but it's totally unnecessary, right? It's easy. It's like just there so that Bathurst can like put on his special gloves and control drones like he's Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's meaningless. And then this weird coda to the movie with again, Mark Wahlberg giving us. Yeah. But what are the, what are the real lessons? What have you all learned here? Which are all totally, totally disconnected from the plot of the movie, right? They're all about, you know, the, the, the real, the real incarnation reincarnation is just the friends you make along the way. You could do anything. We just gotta teach each other and connect. It's like, what is this fucking EM Forrester or something?
Sonny00:48:33It's a very, you know, what was also very weird about the, the ending of this movie is that, all right, you've got this, you've got this movie that should be a franchise for you, right? Yeah. You've got this movie that should be a Paramount franchise. Like this is the first movie in the infinite series. It could go on forever in theory infinite. And then how does it end? It ends with Mark Wahlberg dying and some no name person being reborn as him. Like how you can't have a franchise if you don't have a franchise actor in it. And like, is Jason Moustakas supposed to be the every, the, the character who's in all of these movies? Oh, right. I don't think so. He was great in this. I love him.
Vic00:49:13He plays the same character every time.
Sonny00:49:15Sure. But I, you know, some characters, some people can get away with that. Like Danny McBride, the, the just mentioned Danny McBride. Yeah. I mean like Moustakas, he's kind of goofy and like wide eyed and crazy, but like that works for him and, and you, he works in this movie. Um, but yeah, I, uh, that's, that's the, that is the structural thing I found most weird and, and like kind of baffling about it is like, if you have, you have this thing that you really want to be a big franchise with a star and you know, big action sequences and everything. And then you kill the star and it's not like you can bring him back because he's been reincarnated as this little Asian boy.
Vic00:49:55And we're now in the future.
?00:49:56Yeah.
Sonny00:49:57Yeah. Yeah.
JVL00:49:59It's like, yeah. Anyway, I, I put together some questions, some questions that occurred to me if we could go through this. Please. Sure. Yeah. So we're told that Bathurst can't possibly make another egg and that the egg is lost. Why are the believers trying to find it? Right. Why, why not? Why not just let it stay lost because they don't want Bathurst to find it because then there won't, but he can't find it unless like he's, he's out of ammo. He's got nothing.
Sonny00:50:27Well, he's been, he says, in fact, he's trying to, he's trying to find the reincarnated guy, whatever his name was, the Mark Wahlberg, right.
JVL00:50:37To make him tell him where it is, make him tell him where it is. Right. And so why, what the believers then are like, yeah, we got Mark Wahlberg. So we gotta, we gotta find it first.
Sonny00:50:44No, no, you don't. Well, they gotta find it first because otherwise, if Ejiofor gets him, he'll torture him into giving up.
Vic00:50:51Yeah. He'll put him in the trance and then he'll realize, look inside.
Sonny00:50:54So he'll pour the gasoline on him.
JVL00:50:56So, uh, so the, the believers have been doing this for a couple thousand years and they haven't figured out some way to commit suicide quickly so that you can't be either tortured or bullet box. Like they, they don't automatically install the cyanide in the tooth. Yeah.
Sonny00:51:13Or something. Well, I, I thought about that myself. I think the problem here is that it's not like they just die and then they show up again. It's like a, you know, 13, 15 year process, right? At least. Like they, they get reborn and then they're, you know, they gotta grow up and then they have to realize who they are.
JVL00:51:30The Viking dude literally says to Mark Wahlberg, look, if you see one of those bad, you know, special guns, then you should probably just kill yourself the old, the old fashioned way.
Sonny00:51:39You know, so it's clearly something they've thought about.
JVL00:51:41Yeah. That's the weird stuff. When, when they're in the artisans layer and Bathurst comes in and then the Chinese lady who clearly was at some point a minor character or a secondary character in one of the scripts and has been basically written all the way out so that she has almost no lines, in fact.
Vic00:51:57She's a trainer.
JVL00:51:58Right. Right. She gets killed and then they're all sad and it's like, well, why are you sad? Because everybody's getting reincarnated. Right. And the Viking dude decides to stay and fight.
Vic00:52:05Yeah, but he'd be a pain in the ass to find her.
JVL00:52:07And why, why is he staying to fight now? Right? Like it's, it's just not clear. There is again, all of these are just basic blocking and tackling of making a movie.
Vic00:52:19Would this, would this have been different had there not been a pandemic? Do you think, is this just another casualty like bad movie making because of this thing?
JVL00:52:28I think this is just one of those movies. We've seen a lot of bad movies comes out, you know, I, I thought a lot about, um, suspect zero. Do you guys remember suspect zero, no assessment, no idea. Suspect zero was a. At one point in time was the hottest, the hottest script script in Hollywood, and it got bought up and turned into a movie and then went into development hell for like eight years. And then finally a film version of it got pushed out. I forget who the director was, but it had like Aaron Eckert and Ben Kingsley in it. And the finished product bore almost no relationship to the specs. Script and was just an incompetently made movie in the answer to these, you know, how does something like that happen with, with real talent attached to it with interesting source material and interesting ideas. And the answer is that there are like bureaucratic things that happen in the making of a movie, which sometimes are tied up with the artistic nature of the endeavor. And sometimes they're just tied up with the, the actual bureaucracy. Involved. Right. Cause it involves hundreds of people, you know, somebody in accounting, somebody production, you have people in marketing who are waging, you know, years long fights against people, uh, in the C-suite. Right. And, you know, and this stuff happens in a lot of times movies that should be better. Just come out like this and it's, it's like, you've got these forces acting on the artistic process.
Vic00:54:09It's sometimes miraculous when it doesn't, when it actually works.
JVL00:54:11Yeah. And you know, honestly, a lot of me looks at a movie like this, which I think is again,
Vic00:54:17a very bad movie.
JVL00:54:19And the lesson I take from it is that it's amazing that any good movie comes out of the big corporate studio system. It's amazing that any of these artistic endeavors turns out okay.
Vic00:54:31It's like, it's like reading about the making of the Godfather, you know, and so many things could have gone wrong in particular that they, the studio did not want Marlon Brando. They wanted Ernest Borgnine or Danny Thomas.
JVL00:54:41Oh my God. I forgot about that.
Vic00:54:43That would have been something because the insurance, the insurance, there is some might cost so much money for Marlon Brando because he was so unpredictable, but he really kept it together. And, uh, you know, everybody was against him. Everybody was against Al Pacino. I mean, it's, you know, these things, you're right. It's miraculous.
Sonny00:54:57Did you, did you guys play around with paramount plus at all? Hey, so you've been a subscriber, right?
JVL00:55:04JBL. Yeah. I just subscribed right off the bat for, I forget why, but I had a reason that I needed to subscribe to it. And, uh, Picard, no, I think it might've been to watch like a football game. I want to watch the Eagles lose to somebody and you know, it's, it's wrapped up with CBS all access and that's where you would get NFC games maybe. Maybe that's why I have a subscription. But this strikes me as like the most paramount plus it's a perfect movie for paramount plus because paramount plus is a third tier streaming service, which has been assembled. For no reason other than you have a corporation, which has been basically caught up in the mental decline of an old person, right? This is, you know, all of paramount has been held hostage by the fact that Sumner Redstone held onto this thing until he was a drooling nobody. And then he died and it went into a huge legal fight with his, his widow and, uh, widow or daughter.
Vic00:56:06I, you're right. It was way me as well.
JVL00:56:08Yeah. But, but the point is the whole corporation. It was just like frozen and couldn't do anything because there was this thing happening on top of it. And then they were like, yeah, everybody, so the future is streaming paramount plus, you know, and they just push this thing out. It has no reason to exist. It has nothing to draw people to it. Uh, it is still, unless you're very into star Trek, I was gonna say strictly paramount paramount
Vic00:56:33productions. That's it. Right?
Sonny00:56:36Nothing. I mean, think about HBO. It's interesting. I, so I, I did, I poked around a little bit in paramount plus. Yeah. And I, I, I wouldn't say that it's, I'll put it this way. I'm, I'm, I'm probably gonna cancel my subscription when I get to the end of my 30 free days. Um, but I will say that, uh, like I, the library of movies is pretty good library movies is pretty good. Uh, the, the w they have a pretty wide range of TV shows and I'm interested by the fact I'm, I'm interested about the integration of CBS into the streaming platform. So you can watch live CBS on it from whatever your local broadcast affiliate is, which is, which is interesting. And it's, it's an interesting kind of innovation that I think, you know, none of these other, none of these other streamers really have HBO max. Are they like, there's no Fox streamer, there's no NBC stream. I guess there's no, that's not true.
JVL00:57:27So there's so Hulu lets you do this. YouTube TV lets you do this.
Sonny00:57:32Yeah. Yeah. But that's like, you have to, you bought, you essentially are buying a cable package with them.
JVL00:57:37Sling. Sling lets you do this. Caramel plus is not cheap.
Sonny00:57:41Yeah.
JVL00:57:42It's 10 bucks a month, 10 bucks a month, which is more for the ad free version. I think Disney gives you for 13 bucks a month. It's Disney plus ESPN plus, plus Hulu. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just, as a value proposition, as a value proposition, it doesn't work.
Sonny00:57:58And there's nothing you have to go there again, unless you're a big Star Trek fan. There's just nothing.
Vic00:58:04Which Star Trek are we talking about?
Sonny00:58:06Sunny? Well, they, they have TNG. They, they have a new series Star Trek discovery, but then they also have like a Picard series that is the second season of which is coming out next year. It's not even coming out like, uh, so maybe I'll pick it up again when Picard season two drops, but.
JVL00:58:25Yeah. So this is again, you know, this is a movie which has been done with thoughtless because somebody had, we should have a movie like this and then it's sort of just pushed out without thinking it through or doing it. And that is what paramount plus is as a streaming. Uh, my question is whether paramount plus has gobbled up by somebody else or, or if it just dies, because to be gobbled up, it would have to be attractive. And my guess is that the paramount library will be attractive, but nothing about paramount plus will be attractive. And so if I yellowstone on paramount plus, is that, I think that's discovery now, maybe I don't know, but the point is somebody at some point will, you know, either paramount that will abandon paramount plus and switch to the Sony strategy where they become an arms dealer, just supplying content for all the, the streaming services, uh, or it will fail and be a distressed property and somebody will buy the library and that somebody would be, I assume Disney, um, although because Warner's, you know, is now in a new world where they are cut, cut out of the telephone people and don't really know what they're doing. And now they are. The, the idea that discovery, the hacks who make bullshit reality television are running HBO max, which is sneakily maybe the best or second best, certainly the second best streaming service. It's great. If not the best quality way, way better than Netflix. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it's all bad. It's all very bad.
Vic01:00:00That's all I've got. Okay. Corrections. Shout outs. Anything going on? Uh, all right.
JVL01:00:08To rogue left shark, who, as we were about to hop on, asked a question on the Twitters, which has why she asked this. I don't know, but she asked guys, when you go to the bathroom and you gotta pee, do you do it standing up or sitting down? I don't know why somebody would ask that on Twitter, but what she has opened herself up to, I think she'll never be able to unsee.
Vic01:00:35And so thoughts and prayers to, to shark. Wow. We love you. Shark. All right. I'm very confused here. That is all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, compliments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Victorino Mattis. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on Patrion. Just go to subbeacon.com. We're there. Tell your friends until next time.
Sonny01:01:03You know, the biggest disappointment about paramount plus was, again, I was like kind of just flipping through it. To see what they had. And they have a decent film library, right? They've got all the Indiana Jones. Yeah. They've got. Mission Impossible.
JVL01:01:18Half the Mission Impossible movies.
Vic01:01:19They've got all the Star Trek movies. There's only one good Indiana Jones movie.
Sonny01:01:21Wrong. Incorrect. There's three good Indiana Jones movies. Yes. False.
Vic01:01:26Yes. Number one, The Crystal Skull.
Sonny01:01:28Oh, sorry. There are two perfect movies that are Indiana Jones movies. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade, but Temple of Doom is also good and interesting and weird and dark. Yeah. And I like it. But what I wanted to mention was, so it has The Abyss, which famously has never been released on Blu-ray or outside of there's like a terrible crappy DVD and VHS floating around somewhere. But it has never been released on high def. So it has The Abyss. So I turned on The Abyss. I just wanted to see what the deal was. And it has The Abyss.
JVL01:02:07Is it a pan and scan?
Sonny01:02:08It has The Abyss in four by three.
Vic01:02:11Four by three pan and scan.
Sonny01:02:13Standard definition. I was just like, why even bother? Like James Cameron. You can do this. James Cameron. James Cameron should firebomb Paramount Studios on general principle. But the problem here is James Cameron. James Cameron is the problem. James Cameron won't like stop making his Avatar movies for 30 seconds to look at a print of The Abyss and approve it and say, okay, this can be released on 4K UHD. Go.
Vic01:02:42Yeah. The Abyss starring your friend. Michael Biehn.
Sonny01:02:45Michael Biehn.
Vic01:02:46Can I just also say really quickly, and then I want to Jonathan here, we were thinking about movies in the future besides in the Heights, things that we want to talk about. You know what I want to watch? I want to watch Kid 90. That's what I want to watch. Kid 90. I don't know what that is. Kid 90.
Sonny01:03:01I have no idea what Softcore 4 is talking about right now.
Vic01:03:06Kid 90 is Sully Moon. Sully Moon fries home movies from her time in Hollywood as a kid with all the famous then Hollywood stars, Brian Austin Green, Mario Lopez, and you name it, the folks from 90210. It is less than two hours. No, we're not watching that. That's not a thing we're going to be watching.
Sonny01:03:24I wish I had a mute button to pick right now so I can just mute him.
Vic01:03:27I think there is some good stuff in those home movies. That's what I'm going to say.
JVL01:03:30Were these videotapes that were stolen from her house from being released by Vivid Entertainment? Is that what this is?
Vic01:03:35She took video of everything. And so, man, I'm just thinking it's got to be a lot of good stuff in there.
JVL01:03:42JVL. I'm sure it's fine. You said. Yeah. You want to do Peloton? So I, I, I, this is going to sound weird. Weirder than what we just heard.
Vic01:03:56Kid 90? That's a serious movie.
JVL01:03:58I see commercials for it all the time. So it is. I did this Peloton workout today and it is important to say that I have started a, a, a training program. Where you are following, you know, they pick the classes for you. I did not pick this and, and I logged in this class as taught by a lady who very high energy like her a lot. But she, she had this thing where throughout the entire class, she was constantly basically sucking her boobs back into her sports bra like that. And this was not just King and I mean all she, she was touching herself like she was on Cinemax or something.
Vic01:04:46Okay. Like, like, Oh, it was like a, a, a wardrobe malfunction situation. Or do you think she's like, just, do you think that's her thing?
JVL01:04:54That's her thing. So I, I was curious about exactly that question. And so I went to the Google machine and I learned some things about her. Uh, first of all, I learned that there's an entire universe of like Peloton after dark stuff where Peloton instructors the least surprise disappeared from the platform. So one of the things Peloton does is they keep a library of every single class that's ever gone. But you know, like sometimes you'll wake up one day and, uh, and you will discover that, uh, uh, Oliver Lee, a long time Peloton instructor, not only is he gone, you know, you just wake up on Monday and Oliver Lee, your favorite instructor is no longer there. But every class he ever taught has gone, been erased, deleted, erased because, because why possibly he was sending dick pics to Peloton members. I don't know. I can't say this is just what they say on Reddit. Nobody knows. They just parted ways.
Vic01:05:50Well, I mean, is it, is it, I mean, but, but he's probably driving a lot of traffic with that. You know what I mean?
JVL01:05:56A lot of subscribers. I don't know. Another, another instructor, Jennifer Jacobs left Peloton because evidently she fat shamed somebody in the middle of a ride. Yeah.
Sonny01:06:06Aren't they just berating you the entire time?
JVL01:06:08I, I don't know, but the point is that I, so I was, I became very interested in all of these Peloton instructors, uh, in part, because as I said, a couple of weeks ago, a lot, they are the new American gladiators, the new, you know, they are our, our avatars that we, we love like, uh, nitro and sub-zero and all that from the running man. Anyway, this, this, this gal who, uh, who I like a lot and I thought she was an excellent instructor. Her name is Olivia. Uh, she actually came from wall street and she worked in, uh, derivatives and wall street. And uh, she says in one of her bios that actually what she liked to do, she was always very into fitness is that she would take clients out instead of taking clients out to lunch, she would take them to work out together. And as I thought of watching her just basically feeling herself up throughout this ride. And then I thought, okay, so you're, you're. A hedge fund bro. And she says, Hey, let's go to do a workout together at mint or something. I'm sure it's fine.
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