#105. 'All the Old Knives,' Eventually
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Vic is out this week (Sonny jokes he's "resting comfortably" at a sanitarium, still shell-shocked by Everything Everywhere All at Once), so it's just Sonny and JVL, who spend the back stretch on All the Old Knives, a Prime Video spy thriller with Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton that Sonny pitches as "dumbed-down John le Carré" and clearly loves, praising its adult, dialogue-driven plotting and its accidental pandemic-era aesthetic (rarely more than two to four people on screen, since it shot during COVID restrictions); JVL, drawing comparisons to le Carré's Smiley's People and the Philip Seymour Hoffman film A Most Wanted Man, agrees it's a satisfying piece of tradecraft even if the "whodunit" is obvious early and the ending's CGI flourish is a bit much, and Sonny hands out quadrant-style grades of A for length, A for sex/nudity, B-minus for violence, and A for plot, both settling on "two thumbs up" (with a spirit-of-Vic third). Most of the episode is devoted to Sonny's marathon recap of a Disney World trip gone sideways: a mechanical delay strands the family at DFW, they scramble to book last-minute $2,000 one-way Southwest tickets to Orlando, arrive at their Coronado Springs hotel at 1am, and still open the parks the next morning, followed by a blow-by-blow of rides (Peter Pan, Haunted Mansion, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Rise of the Resistance, Smugglers Run, a build-a-droid meltdown) and a splurge dinner inside Cinderella Castle, while JVL teases a "big life change" he can't reveal yet (buying a house). Box office chat covers Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore's soft $32.2 million debut, with both hosts agreeing the spinoff series never had a real audience separate from Harry Potter himself, plus a tangent on JK Rowling outing Dumbledore (and, per JVL, Voldemort) as gay and Sonny's ranking of Chris Pine as "the most movie star" of all the screen Chrises.
From the show notes
On this week's episode, Sonny talks about his visit to the Magic Kingdom (and Hollywood Studios). For a long time. And then he and JVL discuss All the Old Knives a bit. Vic has the week off to recharge his batteries. Make sure to tune in for Monday's bonus episode, when Sonny and JVL discuss the new Thor trailer, dance on Netflix's grave, and try to decide if Severance is a puzzle show or a philosophy show.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00Henry Celia spent a long time they've opened the books on flight 127 the hijackers had help from inside our station here in Vienna we need to find out if we had a mole Vic has me looking into flight 127 so this is an interview I thought you were here to see if we still had that old spark it's old friends no you can do better than that toward lovers
Sonny00:00:48hello and welcome to another edition of the sub beacon I am Sonny Bunch along with Jonathan V Last Vic Mattis is out this week if you listen last week he needs a break he needs he needs a week off he's resting comfortably he's resting at the home Mary sanitarium the sanitarium Mary Catherine Hamm is working on him on the everything everywhere all at once front she loved that movie too she's totally baffled as to what happened with our good friend Vic but uh you know again it's an ontological thing you can't really you can't really get around those all right so just as a reminder the sub beacon it's available on the patreon go to sub beacon calm you'll easily find us please subscribe tell your friends and don't forget about the sub beacon merchandise store at T public comm I haven't sent you guys payments in a few months because uh you know should we even mention the merchandise store anymore I
JVL00:01:40feel like I should just mention during Christmas or something we should we
Sonny00:01:43should we what we need is a new shirt we need it we need a new shirt we need to figure out how to monetize the quadrants that's what we need to do we need to figure out how to monetize the quadrants to keep Vic happy in the in the sub again but anyway what is going on in
JVL00:02:00your life JVL how are you Santino I am this close to my big life change but I don't want to talk about it cuz we're out there yet can't talk about it yet next week I believe if we tape a show on Thursday of next week I'll be able to talk about it
Sonny00:02:21I think we should we should be taping Thursday of next week so if we're taping
JVL00:02:24Thursday night then we can talk about it because my thing is Thursday afternoon uh good luck with your surgery but uh how are you tell me all about Disney because when you texted me to say I can't talk about this right now I'm at the airport and then 15 hours later texted me to say I'm still at the house Fort Worth Airport yeah to myself oh my god it wasn't no this was bad
Sonny00:02:55it wasn't it wasn't quite that bad but it was like it was a solid I think it was like 10 hours later it was 10 hours later but I wasn't at Dallas Fort Worth Airport I was that love field started the day and so for people who don't know Dallas has two major airports right field is the Southwest Airport and there's love field so Dallas DFW is where most everybody flies out of we had a flight on united we were flying from we're flying from Dallas to Houston and then Houston to Orlando and love field is basically just Southwest I think they have some Alaska flights as well but basically just Southwest so we are we're at DFW and we get there and everything's look everything's copacetic and then like basically as soon as we park the car get a text message from United says hey your flights taking off your flights 30 minutes delayed just not great because you know I've got an hour we've got an hour in between flights and we get there and we check in and we we check our bags because we you know we're taking taking big bags of stuff we check our bags we get to the gate we get another text message it says oh hey your flights gonna be an hour late we're like oh that's no good and then immediately got another text message from United that says oh sorry your flights only gonna be ten minutes late so we're like what is going on what is going on with this it turns out it was a mechanical issue and the plane never came plane just never came plane just never came from wherever it was flying from to
JVL00:04:24Dallas crash in midair to Houston just never took off just never it's just
Sonny00:04:29stayed on the it's probably still there they bury they've cemented it to the
JVL00:04:33ground it's a monument to the failure interesting interesting that they I the games they play with delays where they're always lying to you yes right the minute they say there's a delay you just assume they are now you have entered
Sonny00:04:47a world of bullshit if you've if you if you have if you get an announcement that there's a delay on your flight you have a connecting flight you need to start immediately looking for replacements which is what we did so we got on the phone with the United and we're talking to the United people again this is Thursday this is Thursday morning flight was flight was scheduled for like 12:30 p.m. Thursday so Thursday morning we're on the phone with the United and they're like yeah there's no there's no flights to get you we can get you to Houston but there's no flights from Houston to Orlando I was like okay well what if we flew somewhere else in theory you should have
JVL00:05:21you should have in theory taken off from Dallas at 12:30 and landed in Orlando at
Sonny00:05:28what 3:00 3:30 yeah like that 3:30 so they're like no what we could do is fly
JVL00:05:36you to Denver and then you can take a to see all the direction is you you could
Sonny00:05:42take and then you can take an early morning flight the next day you'll get into Orlando like 11:00 a.m. or something like that and they were gonna
JVL00:05:49call Disney to refund exactly price for you right they were gonna make that call they said it will write you a doctor's note exactly get your money back from
Sonny00:05:57Disney don't worry you got to understand I've got we've got reservations at the the hotel we're staying at the hotel Coronado the Coronado Springs resorts I didn't remember last time Coronado Springs resorts very nice but the we have we have reservations for Thursday through Sunday nights there I guess yeah Thursday through Sunday nights we have tickets for the parks for Friday Saturday Sunday so like we we have we're on it we're on a pretty rigid schedule here this is not like a you can maybe show up maybe you don't know this so we I immediately got on the Southwest app and I was like what are the options out of out of love and found a flight found a direct flight from Love Field I mean are you at love or you know we're at DFW we're at DFW found a direct light from love to Orlando that left at like 7:30 at night 7:30 at night oh boy which puts us into Orlando at like 10:50 and you know then you got to get from the hotel to the anyway but anyway we were like whatever we'll book that I don't I don't like to talk money on this show as you know
JVL00:07:07last-minute airfare from last minute to Orlando last minute airfare from I'll
Sonny00:07:13put it this way we so we the reason we booked United was because my wife has we have miles we have miles through my wife's credit card they got us there for
JVL00:07:24free free flight free flight so it was did that transfer did you also get free
Sonny00:07:29Southwest flights oh no Southwest does not Southwest does not put people on other airlines as the person on the other end of the line helpfully explained to me we don't transfer we don't we don't put people on Southwest flights and Southwest doesn't put people on other flights we don't we don't partner with Southwest nobody partners with Southwest they're there that's because there's a good airline so we so we we ended up what ended up happening and this is like the one reasonable thing I think that happened through this whole situation is that United refunded us the entire flight we got all the mile all the miles back all the points you know whatever so in theory we could use them
JVL00:08:08to not fly United again next time so we so we can use them
Sonny00:08:12so we I'm just gonna use them to get cash back on the $2,000 one-way set of tickets that we bought to get to Orlando on time for the vacation to start that's that's that's what happened that is so that that was that was again the way it
JVL00:08:32works out the way oh god I'm sorry that hurts that way the way so now here's the
Sonny00:08:37thing though the way it works out we actually it's it's basically break-even the the the points that we used for United come out to about $2,000 cash back it's it's slightly less as like 1900 cash back something like that and we're put we're instead we got we got a $2,000 one-way flight so it all worked out we flew home for free you could look at it that way we flew home for free but it was it was one of these just panic like you know what we're doing it we're doing it we're booking this one way memories children we're making this happen so anyway long story short very well very long story short on a Wally world we're going we went to Wally world we we got we got to Orlando we got to Orlando instead of getting to Orlando at like four like we were supposed to and instead of getting to our hotel at like five like we were supposed to we got to our hotel at one in the morning so we could wake up at like 6:30 in the morning so we could get to the park 30 minutes before it opens to the rabble so we could get on the rides early because I don't know if you know this but if you stay at a Disney Resort you get 30 minutes early entry you get you get to anyway how were the kids through
JVL00:09:51all this million times were you asked as a reminder I have a three-year-old boy
Sonny00:09:58I have a six-year-old girl they were actually I gotta say I gotta I'll give them credit on the way out they were pretty good they they kept that they held it together right up until right up until we got to Orlando and we had to wait in a line to get on the shuttle to the Mears to the we took the Mears we took the Mears shuttle to get to our the Coronado Springs Tower and the three-year-old lost it at that point he just had a full like I've never seen him have he's generally a pretty pretty even keeled guy and he just was like laying on the ground doing the kicking in arms and screaming and like never seen it never seen him do that before but he had had enough I don't blame them it's hard to blame him so he fell asleep join him at that point he fell asleep he fell asleep on the bus ride which is like 45 minutes it's like 50 45 50 minutes it's not a short ride which meant that by the time we got to the hotel he was wide awake again he was wide awake and happy he's like we're at the hotel daddy it's like yeah let's go explore let's run around and so they just were so they didn't get sleep to like 1:30 like I said and then as I said we had to get to we had to get to the park by 8:30 I believe was when our like you know you get again if you stay if you stay on a resort property you get 30 minutes early and you got to take
JVL00:11:16advantage of that give me some hashtag real talk here sure what was the mood as you and your lovely wife Beth tucked into bed at 1:30 having finally gotten the children to sleep what was the mood like between the two of you was it a sort of like well honey we're having our this is the vacation of our dreams our children always remember this you know did you guys want to like blow up the world we were I mean I want to
Sonny00:11:44speak for her but I do think I I think we were actually pretty much just like holy we did it we made it here we beat the system by throwing cash at the problem we beat the system we beat the system by throwing our credit card at the problem and taking care of it so anyway again like I said it all basically actually works out more or less even Steven but it was it was it's definitely one of these things where it's like don't want to have to deal with this so uh so anyway about the magic so we get to that we get so we get to the park we get to the park with
JVL00:12:15their minds blown when they saw like the the way took the boat over or the monorail and they saw the castle were there little minds just like I think
Sonny00:12:28they were this is real they were pretty they were pretty impressed they were like wow that's the castle from the cartoon at the start I was like yes that is the castle from the cartoon at the start and then we you know we the crazy thing so here's the thing once we got to the parks it was we absolutely crushed I sent you the first day itinerary can I just should I just read it please just read it to the people so we get that we get to the park we we do we do the part we do the line drop that's what they call it when you get there early and we went straight to hold on I'm pulling it up right here hold on I'm pulling up right now we went straight to all right so we went to Peter the Peter Pan ride which is insanely popular for some reason despite
JVL00:13:11the fact that it's the dumbest ride it's adorable you like fine car you go you go
Sonny00:13:17through the sky instead of on the ground whatever it's it's fine so we did Peter Pan and then we did it's a small world which is right across from there then we went to the Haunted Mansion which is like again just just a few feet down the road and then we did Pirates of the Caribbean we did we did those four rides in the first like 50 minutes we were there Wow we just boom when the kids think of each of them they were they loved it they were a little bit freaked out by Haunted Mansion when the doors shut cuz it goes down right cuz it goes down yeah cuz it gets it gets dark and it goes down and then there's like the scary guy who like shows he could shows a guy who's committed suicide up in the ceiling he's like you could take my way out and it's like a guy who's hung himself in the ceiling it's like okay that's that's a little intense then we did the Aladdin carpet ride which was fun which was fun and then we walked up the Swiss family treehouse which Charlie my three-year-old was just like it was the most excited he's ever been just running up and down this tree house he wanted to live there did he just he was like this is the greatest this is our house sucks daddy you live in a tree house he loved that more than anything else then we went to go see Cinderella and Elena I don't know who Elena is Elena of Avalor yes Elena exactly yeah I don't know how you know that but Elena of Avalor and then we did right before lunch we did the seven dwarves mine train which that is the thing that blew my three-year-old my he just had a he had this he had a stupid grin on his face the whole ride
JVL00:14:40just if I've ever been on that one oh it's great it's like it's just a little
Sonny00:14:44roller coaster it's a little roller coaster that seven dwarves themed you go through the mines and they're all singing hi-ho hi-ho and it's like it's like it's slow roller coaster a little nice little roller coaster room and he just this is like I won't you won't be able to see this listening at home guys but his face was like this all right the whole time so he loved that then we did lunch and then we just kept doing we just kept doing rides we did the Tomorrowland Speedway we did the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger spin which is like a little shooting game I hate that
JVL00:15:14I'm coming to your hand hurting by the end no I hate it cuz I don't think it's really keeping score I think those scores are all randomized no it's I
Sonny00:15:22crushed it it's real crushed let me - 200 I was in I was in the 300s I was I was I was nailing it but shooting things right in the right in the middle there was a there was a show with Elsa then there was pretty there was a little bit of a weather delay then we did a live show with Elsa it was a your was there
JVL00:15:40with Elsa or you see what it all right and then we did then we did the
Sonny00:15:48barnstormer is with us in spirit we did the barnstormer ride we did the Winnie the Pooh adventure we did the Mad Hatter tea party we need a carousel we did the aerial ride we did we didn't you have teacups in your we did the teacups Matt Mad Hatter tea party the Mad Hatter tea party so anyway the first day was the first day was an unadulterated triumph we get there and we we got we got to the park at 8:30 we left at like 5:30 because we were just exhausted but even with that vaguely truncated schedule like a nine-hour we did we did 15 rides and attractions it was crazy it was crazy so we were using I don't know have you used the lightning lanes it's kind of like fast pass time I was there
JVL00:16:27they had just started fast passes and fast passes were available to basically anyone right you didn't pay in advance to get them well so the way it works now
Sonny00:16:36it is my honor this is my understanding again Beth is the one who set all this up and the way it works now is it's basically it's $15 per day per ticket so it was a basically an extra $60 per per day for the family and the way it works is every hour so you get to read you can redeem a fast pass and you go and you basically you hit that you hit the little button on your app and you get an hour window that you you can go to the ride between and the wait for the fast passes that are the wait for the Lightning Lane is like five minutes it's like you go you go to the ride and it's like five minutes that's what we did for Pirates of the Caribbean I mean that first day we did that for Pirates of the Caribbean the seven dwarves mine train I think the Buzz Lightyear one the Winnie the Pooh one and the aerial one and we just it I don't understand how people do the park without without the Lightning Lane it makes everything easier so that was great so so the second day we did Hollywood Studios now Hollywood Studios is where the Star Wars galaxies edges right so that was pretty cool but even better than that I think for the kids was the Toy Story area oh so they have they have like a Toy Story area where they where the the the best ride at the park is or the best ride at this park I think might be the slinky dog roller coaster ride again it's just like a little roller coaster for kids it's it's it's it's better than like a kid roller coaster but it's you know still still pretty small second best ride the best ride is Star Wars rise of the resistance at the in the in the galaxies area which we did did you take the kids on that was it doing so for them so three-year-old was too short couldn't do it so they we did this other so again Disney has really got this down to a science shockingly they've really really
JVL00:18:26figured it out how to their grooming their grooming children left and right
Sonny00:18:30so they've gotten very good at it they've gotten very good at so the the the way rise of the resistance worked because the three are three-year-old was too short but our six-year-old was appropriate to a nice man in an
JVL00:18:42ice-cream van and he took care of your three-year-old while you enjoyed the
Sonny00:18:46ride exactly no we so Beth went on with my six-year-old for a ride and then they came out and we ride swapped so I took the six-year-old on again she got to do it twice my six-year-old got to do this right twice now she didn't like it it was terrifying honey you have to go again I'm sorry the way so everybody at Disneyland is exceptionally nice all the time right like this is the thing about Disney World is that it's just people being nice to little kids all the time but on rise of the resistance there's a section where you have basically been taken prisoner by the Imperial forces and they are like stand here move over here shut your mouth
JVL00:19:25you're not with that group you're with this group and is and they're like doing
Sonny00:19:29like the whole Imperial officer thing right with like the kind of British accent and one of you the Higley menacing I was like I'm here I'm with I'm one I'm with you guys he's rebel scum get rid of him so she did not she did not like this it was a little too intense for her and I again I think it was just because it was like real people being like yeah slightly mean she was not she was not super into it they're also like they also aren't into Star Wars it's they're not Star Wars nobody isn't young they're too young they haven't watched any of the movies so anyway on the second day we did we did the Toy Story land we did we went to a cars thing was your bonds
JVL00:20:08racing Academy how was your bot building don't skip that we haven't I we haven't
Sonny00:20:13gotten to that yet when we did then we did rise of the resistance then we had lunch and then we did build a droid so we got two spots for the build a droid thing on the assumption that both kids would want to do it way too complicated the three-year-old to do he would have had no idea so we I took him out of the line he said he had to go to the bathroom I was like alright we're gonna go to the bathroom and go do something else and then he had a meltdown because
JVL00:20:34he was like I want to do it I want to build robot and I was like you just said
Sonny00:20:40you had to go poop like I don't want to go poop I want to build robot I was like all right you can't we we're out of the line now you can't do it and so he's having a meltdown I was like look we'll go buy you something else we'll buy you something else and that is throwing money at the problem that is when went that is when he got his paper Poe Dameron helmet he got a he got a he got a he got a toy helmet that he can wear proudly for the next six months so his
JVL00:21:07head gets too big for it doing cranky anchors with it so that was so that was
Sonny00:21:13that was fun the droid is exceptionally cool actually it's like a little it's just like it's like a little miniature thing it's like got a gyroscope I don't actually I'm not a hundred percent sure how it works but it's got like a little gyroscope inside and it's like BB-8 it rolls around the head like kind of swerves back and forth you can do it like makes noises whenever in the park when it would come near another droid it would it would start like vibrating and making noises they talk to each other it's pretty cool it is it was pretty
JVL00:21:42cool pretty cool it's pretty cool Wow any regrets about not doing lightsabers no you must have seen other people with their lightsabers way more people
Sonny00:21:54had lightsabers and had droids lot like tons and tons of people had the lightsabers we didn't I didn't I didn't want to do it for me because I just like I was too much self-respect to do that but I took tons and they have a they have like a full full-size scale replica of the Millennium Falcon yeah they're awesome I mean it's all like the whole thing is awesome so here so there are three Star Wars rides I'm just rambling about Star Wars there are three Star Wars rides at the park there's rise of the resistance and smugglers run which are in Galaxy's Edge and there's also a Star Tours which is older one yeah which is older right but it's but it's been redone so it's all sequel shit it's all like it takes you to the salt battle the salt world battle on in last Jedi oh does it and like you to the old plan it with emphasis nest yeah yeah and like land old Lando is there it's it's it's all it's all new sequel stuff which is you know whatever it is what it is so but my ranking my official ranking would be Star Wars rise of the resistance which again is more of an experience than a ride you like walk through certain things and like members of the resistance take you to one area then you get captured and then the Empire is like trying to take you prisoner and then what's-his-name Finn breaks you out and you John Boyega's got a bunch of things Oscar Isaac has a bunch of like little scenes and vignettes I can I can just imagine Oscar Isaac like sitting there counting the money in his head that he's making doing this because he's so he's so disgusted with it all so rise of the resistance number one by a by a wide margin I would say Star Tours is the second best ride the problem with Smuggler's Run is that it's interactive in in ways that make it almost like a game like the way so six people get on the ride six people have to ride it it has to be six people because you have two people in the front who are steering and one person is steering up and down in an inverted axis and if you're not a gamer plane yeah or like a video game right it's it's just it's an inverted axis and if you're not a gamer and that is not intuitive to you as the person flying our simulator is not a gamer and it was not intuitive to her it could be a bit of a mess so I hope you corrected her and explained to her what she should do no no no no no would never I wouldn't even I wouldn't even begin to imagine doing that so but it was uh it was it's it's it's a hard it's a hard ride because there's too much interactivity which I understand what they're going for they want to be like here you get to pilot the Falcon this is just but it doesn't work alright if you were with a group of
JVL00:24:42all six who were your party so you weren't like thrown in with some randos yeah would it have been awesome maybe
Sonny00:24:52but there's still just a lot there's still just a lot going on there's too much they they tried too hard with that one they they out thought themselves I think all right so but then we went to like more shows in this park there's more shows to go to we didn't get to do Tower of Terror because neither of the kids I think is tall enough we just didn't want to also you shouldn't take a
JVL00:25:12three-year-old on a ride called the Tower of Terror you did the Haunted
Sonny00:25:16Mansion it's the same basic no right no it is not don't that's what the Mattis family would do so that we didn't we didn't do Tower of Terror and we didn't do the Aerosmith ride there's like an Aerosmith roller coaster it's a
JVL00:25:28giant roller coaster you can't take it's just on the rock and roller coaster it's
Sonny00:25:32just a giant roller coaster you can't we couldn't we couldn't take the kids on that so but we did everything else there's this great Mickey ride where you go like into a cartoon it's really well designed it's really well imagineered they did it they did a fantastic job with that one that one's the what's
JVL00:25:46that that's the said imagineered yeah what is
Sonny00:25:51that called that's the Mickey doesn't matter it doesn't matter so anyway that was that was day two day three we went back to the Magic Kingdom and we did we did everything again we did the we hit some of the things we didn't do the first day Splash Mountain
JVL00:26:09Thunder Mountain Railroad did you do Thunder Mountain Railroad we did Thunder Mountain what did they think of that did the kids well so again Charlie
Sonny00:26:16too small he couldn't do it so I just it was just me me and me and Katie on that one did she love it it was she she did she loved it it was it was great it's it's great right and we got through that line we didn't even have a lightning pass for that one that was probably the longest wait of the day and it was only about 45 minutes so like everyone everyone was like you know oh this is the most crowded weekend of the year and it was definitely more crowded Sunday than it had been Friday but I have to say like compared to compare it is not crowded compared to say the Texas State Fair it is not that kind of crowded it was like it was it was busy but it was definitely not it was not it was not absurd or obscene tell me something did
JVL00:27:00you see any people walking around eating the turkey drumsticks yeah saw a few
Sonny00:27:05people doing that I don't know where they got it from I really I didn't even
JVL00:27:09see the stand what sort of body mass index do you think they going on those
Sonny00:27:15were the big people's those were the big big people she was she a big fat girl we I would say are we the our dining experience the second day was the best day so we had we had an early lunch because we had an early dinner but we had an early lunch and we went we sat in the Pinocchio restaurant that's like right next to it's a small world between I don't I don't remember what it's it's like Pinocchio Village town time I don't know something but the but we went there for lunch at like 11 we got it we got a big table all to ourselves and there was it wasn't super crowded because again it was 11 it was a little early for lunch and then we had dinner at the castle with dinner at the castle on that Sunday night it was amazing it was we were inside the castle I can't believe we
JVL00:28:00spent time talking about the Peter Pan ride when you went inside the castle for
Sonny00:28:04we were inside the castle for tell me everything about that because I've
JVL00:28:07always wanted to you know that's new they didn't used to have anything inside
Sonny00:28:10the castle you could never get in there it was uh it's it's prefix dinner the guy is very much in character our waiter he was you know treating treating treating the little lords and ladies to their their their foods and uh it was nice it was nice they no they had uh god what did I can't even remember what they had I had the pork tenderloin uh Beth had the steak um we had we had it's a prefix thing it's it's you know uh where in the castle is it is it up it's up it's up floor it's up it's up two or three floors we uh the dining room size you could probably fit 25 tables in there at a time the guy said that they serve 800 people a night something like that are there yeah 800 or maybe it was more than that maybe was a thousand I can't remember he he gave us a number it was it was a very large number because they just had people coming in and out all day they're like again we we we had to we booked like months in advance and we got a 4:00 p.m. dinner on one of the two days we were there so do you know
JVL00:29:24about the secret club no there is no there is gosh father Harrison's the one who told me all about this there is a silica speakeasy in Club 33 oh I've heard about I've heard of us yeah and it's it's like members only it's hidden there's one in Disneyland and one in Disney World and I think it's a hundred thousand dollars initiation fee and then thirty thousand a year and it's
Sonny00:30:02supposed to be unbelievable I don't doubt it everything at Disney World was exceptionally nice and well done like I have to say I was I was really impressed I get it now I'm not a Disney person I'm not like I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a I still think that the the like childless folks who go there for their weekend vacations you know their week-long vacations are a little bit weird but like with kids you shut your it is I can't I look I know you're I know I know that was I know that's your thing I know that you but like I I I can't imagine taking the kids anywhere else on that that scale of a vacation again it's brightly it's one thing it's one thing to go to like San Antonio for the weekend it's one thing to go to like Houston for the weekend but like on like a vacation where we're taking the whole family on like a we're getting away for four or five days sort of thing I can't really see doing anything other than Disney World or Disneyland again I if I was gonna do it again I would I would the if we were doing it again I would book two more days one of which would just be a total down-off day yes at the resort that we could just like we could go to the pool recharge and have dinner and I would do one one day at Animal Kingdom yeah and go down to Main Street
JVL00:31:22USA or whatever the the sort of slightly off-property places which is also a ton of fun and there's like the adult place down there Pleasure Island you know is Beth having grown up in Southern California was she at Disneyland girl
Sonny00:31:37growing up yeah she went to Disneyland all the time yeah so for her what was
JVL00:31:42her reaction comparing Disney the land and the world I don't know it's hard
Sonny00:31:47it's hard to compare them because Disneyland is just so much smaller
JVL00:31:51Disneyland famously can fit inside the parking lot of Disney World yeah I mean
Sonny00:31:56Disneyland is Disneyland is so much smaller I mean like it is it is an enormous amount just of land just of like yeah pure area that that Disney encompasses in Orlando it is crazy I mean like we took so again we were staying at the Coronado Springs Resort and that was probably 20 minutes by bus from Magic Kingdom yeah it was like three it's like three or four minutes from Hollywood Studios it's very close to Hollywood Studios which by the way Hollywood Studios perfect place to do in a day also great for adults like so in Magic Kingdom I don't think I saw a single stand like you know just like a stand that served alcohol right didn't see that anywhere in the restaurants they had alcohol but like in there just like the stands around the you know the park no alcohol at Hollywood Studios it
JVL00:32:50was like every 200 feet there was a cart with like no there their audience it was
Sonny00:32:55like here's here's where you come if you want to get blitzed on Star Wars that's what Epcot is like Epcot's the same yeah so we didn't we didn't do Epcot I do do is Epcot a thing that we need to do at some point I don't get Epcot is not Epcot
JVL00:33:10is more for like tween kids yeah maybe not even tween maybe like you know 10 yeah no I guess that's tween right 10 11 12 yeah yeah no what you need to do when you go back supposedly is Animal Kingdom people love Animal Kingdom they think it's
Sonny00:33:26great I mean Animal Kingdom is just one of these things where we were looking at like all right we have three days we have three park days what three things do we want to do and we figured we could we figured we needed two days for Magic Kingdom which is probably about right if you want to do everything you you we figured we could do Hollywood Studios in one day and that worked out pretty pretty much spot-on we were pretty how was Hotel Coronado has that been renovated uh I mean it was really nice it was super nice when it was built
JVL00:33:58it was that in the Grand Floridian were the two super nice one yeah I think so
Sonny00:34:02so this is it is now rated as a mid-tier property I think but it is I mean it was we loved it it was great there there's a there's this room there was a there's a club level up on the 15th floor Club Kronos that has like breakfast in the morning it has kind of a it has like wedding appetizer sort of food for for a dinner service but also like wine and beer and stuff which was we did that one night we did that the first night we went up there and had dinner and it was it was great we just we we savaged the bar we got there with like 20 minutes left in the service and just got like armfuls of plates of food like homeless people just running back to our table with you know dragging bottles of wine and that sort of thing so it was a we liked it a lot I would have liked to again I would have liked to have had a day there just to like go around the actual resort hotel go to the apparently they have a very nice pool we didn't have time to go to it they have like four or five restaurants there we didn't really go to any of the restaurants in the actual resort we just went up to that Kronos Club for breakfast and coffee and and and dinner the one night but it was nice I mean we just didn't spend much time there as a thing it was mostly there for sleeping the room itself was very very nice it was we had a suite so the kids could be in one room and we
JVL00:35:28were in another room it was it was nice this is great man you are live this is the American dream it really is American dream is taking your kids to Disney World and sleeping in an on-property resort yeah in a suite
Sonny00:35:44that's you you've just that's madman you're done yeah we I was again we don't we don't go on a ton of we don't go on a ton of like proper vacations you know we'll take again we'll take like four days to go down to San Antonio we did that last year and now that's fine but this is like the first proper family vacation that we have taken as a as a total family unit and it was worth it was expensive it was worth every penny as a very wise woman
JVL00:36:14said to me many years ago once you have children there are no vacations there are only trips you can take trips with children yeah I don't ever take vacations I'm glad that this turned into like a memorable trip this is something that I don't know about Charlie Katie will remember this her whole life yeah six years old like she'll be she'll be 25 and remember this yeah he's still
Sonny00:36:41pretty he's still pretty young yeah so but then so Monday we flew back we flew back no no incidents there were no delayed delayed or canceled flights we took the again we flew back for free on United so that was a that was nice and actually United was very we we got to the second leg you know from Houston to Dallas it's a short flight it's only 45 minutes 50 minutes and they don't have there's no food service and like as I was sitting down the steward overheard me saying like don't worry guys we're gonna get you some pretzels here in a few minutes they're like sorry we don't have any we don't actually have a food service on this hold on let me see what we got in the back and he just brought one of like the snack boxes he was like here here you go don't tell anybody you got it from me you know you got it on another flight so that was very nice like United was look you your plane has a mechanical problem that sucks but we we we got
JVL00:37:38there we got back everybody was safe the truth is the customer facing people in the airline industry are almost without fail great yeah they were pretty right I mean you're your gate agents and your flight attendants those people are fabulous yeah it's uh it's it's the people you don't see anyway but
Sonny00:38:07it was it was good anyway it was we've talked about Disney for like 35 minutes now so I had a gay old time in Disney it was great speaking of no no no all right box office transition Vic actually sent me a box office transition but it's too blue it's too blue to use I can't do it actually is he told I made Sonny tell me
JVL00:38:28what it was before I came on the show and it's actually too blue I read it to JBL I was
Sonny00:38:33like I can't read this I'll get I'll get canceled I don't want to get canceled so anyway over the weekend Fantastic Beasts Beasts Secrets of Dumbledore made $32.2 million which is very bad that that series again I don't under here's
JVL00:38:47people talk about this that's bad I think that's great for a series that I do not know anybody who's ever seen never thought or talked about any of
Sonny00:38:56those movies well I this is what I don't understand right I did we maybe we discussed this no I think I talked about this with Alyssa so here's the thing about Harry Potter right the books are a genuine phenomenon the books were an enormous huge cultural event the movies made a lot of money but they were basically just telling the stories of the books and people were going to see them because they like those stories the Fantastic Beasts movies have no constituency anywhere as far as I can tell so people talk about the series being cursed and like oh they you know they have to deal with the headaches of JK Rowling's trans stuff and they have to Ezra Miller is out there assaulting people all the time Johnny Depp is in the first two movies for some reason and he's a you know he's a creep and these movies are cursed nobody wants to see I'm just like I don't think I don't think the box office has anything to do with any of that I just don't know anybody who wants who had any interest in these movies or these stories you're telling a Harry Potter stories without Harry Potter who
JVL00:39:58cares this is in a way I have always believed that the this series was conceived purely to try to handle the letdown from the Harry Potter series being over because the people who loved those books so much were just desperate to have more they just didn't want to end right and sounds like well we could we could do some prequels I guess yeah I mean I mean I know a reason for that they don't the corporate the corporate logic for them
Sonny00:40:35right is Warner Brothers needs a big temple franchise aside from DC Comics which they have they don't know what they're doing with so they're like well Harry Potter's huge we've made eight billion dollars on the Harry Potter movies right let's let's try that and I get it kind of but so I I have the
JVL00:40:54answer of what they should have done which is they should have waited for a five-year interval and then began remaking the Harry Potter series just doing the whole series and doing it well because the original Harry Potter series is terrible it's terrible every one of those movies is bad
Sonny00:41:10yeah you've you've said this before I don't I don't and I mean the first on
JVL00:41:15the cheap - they were Warner Brothers nickeled and dimed that series which was always shocking to me because it was always gonna make as you say eight billion dollars so just do it as a real series of movies now and do you know what that buys you another like 16 years worth of content and then you figure out what to do with your world of wizarding after that yeah I mean that that is that
Sonny00:41:40could not possibly have been a worse choice than what they actually did yeah
JVL00:41:44now how explicitly is is Dumbledore gay in Fantastic Beasts I haven't see it no
Sonny00:41:52no it's it's it's gay enough that the that the they had to censor it for China
JVL00:41:58so I this is one of those things where so JK Rowling made news when she after it was over was asked you know in some interview somewhere after she had finished and and she said yeah I always actually thought Dumbledore was gay yeah and I just you know it didn't feel necessary to mention this that meant she said that being a pretty close reader of Harry Potter series it all instantly made sense mm-hmm and it also instantly made sense that Voldemort is also gay mm-hmm and for Dumbledore I mean or not in the same way that Michael Morbius has a slightly younger friend who's obsessed with him and then decides that if he can't fuck him he's gonna kill him I
Sonny00:42:50think that's basically the same principle so you've come you've come around to my position on the Morbius yeah I just thought I just thought it
JVL00:42:59needed to be more more more that would have been the most interesting thing in that movie yeah anyway so totally works and makes sense and also fits in with all my gosh this is a series about British public schoolboys of course right of course yeah makes sense so anyway that that's the big hit
Sonny00:43:23we're we are talking about something else we're talking about so I wanted 10 minutes on this I want I wanted to talk about Netflix but I guess we'll save
JVL00:43:31that for the bonus episode Netflix and Thor we'll talk about Thor love and
Sonny00:43:35talk about Netflix Netflix Thor and severance in the bone weights take my victory lap on Netflix we've only got like 15 minutes here to talk about all the old knives so uh all the old knives is trying is streaming on prime video it is one of two Chris Pine movies to drop like in the same weekend which I thought was interesting what was yeah the other one was the other one was the contractor which co-stars Ben Foster and Kiefer Sutherland he plays he plays
JVL00:44:04a contractor like remodeling bathrooms and stuff no like a military contract oh okay yeah I guess that's also exciting yeah but all the
Sonny00:44:14old knives the way I described it to JVL as I was pitching it was it's basically like dumbed-down John le Carre you basically have the the the way it's it's told in a split timeline first timeline is in Vienna I don't ten years ago where the a terrorist attack has taken a place and the folks on the ground in Vienna have totally botched it and they're not sure what happened and then ten years later the guy who mastermind it it has been captured and told the station chief that there is a traitor in their group and then the the the movie splits back and forth between these two timelines between Chris Pine trying to figure out who the traitor is he's investigating the treason so he is interviewing his old flame Thandie Newton as well as another old colleague I was played by Jonathan price and we cut back and forth between seeing what actually happened during that that time period to unravel the mystery I I actually like this movie a lot I liked Chris Pine and Thandie Newton just talking to each other across a dinner table in an empty room I don't know if you realize this JBL but this is what movies look like when they were shooting during kovat restrictions so this is this movie this movie was shot at the end of 2020 beginning of 2021 when everything was still basically shut down it was if you notice if you watch this movie you'll see that there are very rarely more than two people on screen at any time it's basically two to four people on screen at any time the main set is again an empty restaurant in somewhere up in wine country in California and it is it is fascinating to me just as a as a relic of a time when people were trying to figure out how to make movies when you couldn't have more than like 10 people on set at any given at any given moment on that level it's interesting I also just enjoy watching Chris Pine work I think Chris Pine is a is a fascinating screen presence the best of the Chris's he's not the best of the crisis he is
JVL00:46:33the most he is the most movie star
Sonny00:46:37Chris of all the Chris's that is Chris Pratt will be gone in 20 years that is
JVL00:46:41Chris Pine will be Chris Pine is the leading man in movies until he's 75 he's
Sonny00:46:47Harrison Ford I he wishes he was Harrison Ford Chris Pratt is closer to Harrison Ford Chris Pratt Chris Pratt anchors two distinct giant franchises so
JVL00:46:58the Harrison Ford Chris Pine anchors Wonder Woman
Sonny00:47:02Star Trek Star Trek is a disaster Star Trek is a disaster they they have no idea what they're doing with that series he anchors although all three of those he killed the Jack Ryan reboot single-handedly in one movie
JVL00:47:15and that you know actually that movies not as bad as people say it's not good it's not good but it's not as good people say they immediately rebooted it
Sonny00:47:26with John Krasinski and that was a big hit for Amazon a lot better than I mean
JVL00:47:30a big hit for Amazon is a you know anyway unimportant anyway Chris Chris
Sonny00:47:36pine is great I like Chris pine a lot he is very good in this it's just it is a fantastic Danny Newton is fantastic look I here's what I like about this movie it's hundred minutes it is adults doing adult things talking about adult subjects what sort of things sunny adult it well there there's love there's making love there's a sweet love there's betrayal there's vengeance there's all sorts of great stuff all over here
JVL00:48:06what do you think he would make of the fact that we have naked on screen a 49
Sonny00:48:12year old woman she's very she looks good first of all he would be he'd be into it
JVL00:48:18they need Newton the best 49 year old on the planet on the quadrants on this one
Sonny00:48:23would you believe she's 49 no I had no I thought she was a little young and astonished I knew she was she looks good she looks good so anyway quadrants a for length a for nudity and sex probably a b-minus for violence there's a little bit of violence but not much and and I would say an a on plot it's it's a little bit twisty-turvy but you know twisty twisty turny curvy it's good it's a good movie it's uh can we talk
JVL00:48:52with spoilers sure let's talk spoilers so the old knives is like clandestine service Romeo and Juliet and it it doesn't function really well as a whodunit because everybody should know within the first four minutes who did it right I mean this was this was obvious to me the minute Laurence Fishburne says to to Chris Pine and you know we captured what's-his-face yes Charlie not actually you Charlie we captured this this this this bad guy Chechen this Chechen Chris Pine's reaction to that tells anybody who knows anything about spy spy novels oh he's the bad guy he's the he's the mole and the so it's not really a question of whodunit the question is why which you don't understand until the very very end there are some little bits again but it earns everything in that the the twist when you get it is entirely explicable by what we have been shown on screen there you know everything does make sense you have the you know my metaphor for all this is always like the tumblers on a lock falling into place you know as that happens you say oh yes okay all these things make sense and it gets at it gets it gets at a a trope from spy novels which I love um have you read uh smileys people recently I relatively recently
Sonny00:50:35like maybe two years ago right so smileys people is the the end of the
JVL00:50:42Carla trilogy and the the whole setup is that the we we have the Russian spy master Carla and John Smiley who has been put out to pasture is called back in because they finally have a way to get to Carla they have discovered a weakness which is that Carla has a daughter hidden away in asylum in like Switzerland but the entire book is about how having this knowledge and the ability to blackmail Carla is useless unless they are able to communicate with Carla right the the spy craft is simply being able to present the demand to the guy because having this power over him is useless if you can't tell him you have this power over him and that is the tradecraft which goes into the turning of Chris Pine scared right they it isn't enough that like you know hey we know that he has this lover they have to lure him to a place where they can compromise him and and that's where the movie sort of all turns at the end yeah that's great I mean look when you there's also like a before sunset or before sunrise aspect to it where you got like two two really interesting actors just talking and talking about history and their personal history together and you have two really strong and interesting actors and in family Newton and Chris Pine and just enjoyable to watch right I mean it
Sonny00:52:19is it again we talk a lot about there not being enough movies for adults and I like I said to Vic you know I I feel like this is a movie you would like yeah
JVL00:52:30I mean the CGI overload at the end is a little much yeah well when that when
Sonny00:52:34the atom bomb goes off yeah and then it was a real problem one v-universe but then in the multi oh yeah yeah but I but I was I it's it is a movie again it's a movie for adults we talked about how we don't get any movies for adults and it is interesting to me that of the two Chris Pine movies this one is clearly better like of this between this and the contractor which again came out the same weekend this one is clearly better it's clear like it's better on every level just in terms of dialogue plotting acting structure everything it works on it works on every level better than than the contractor which is kind of a dumb action movie that thinks it's smarter than it is which is the worst kind of dumb action movie and of these two the contractors the one that was in theaters the contractor is the one that cost $20 to rent on VOD and this one is the one that went straight to streaming you know Amazon bought it for probably you know a couple million bucks probably didn't ton of money on stunning to me and it's and it it it you know is a I mean I for the record I have no idea how much this movie cost for Amazon to buy maybe maybe they spent 20 million dollars on I don't know but the but but it is it is superior in every way and the fact that it has no no chance to be in theaters no chance to be a like real viable financial property for anyone is super
JVL00:53:58depressing because it's it's good yeah yeah I think that's probably right were you did you feel like the end is a cheat so the the maybe not a cheat maybe what I mean is the the story looking away at the end so so Chris Pine his character has been dispatched to find the mole and told to eliminate the mole and so he is then working with an independent contractor hitman who is going to kill tandy newton's character for him he does not understand until the very end that he himself has been trapped in the agency knew the entire time that he was the mole and that he is basically in a kill house and in tandy newton's he's being poisoned all of which by the way again makes perfect sense it is not a surprise to you know the whole movie you're thinking yourself something's not right here something's not right but the very end his contractor is waiting for the go-no-go to kill tandy newton and at which point Chris Pine who was dying of poison cannot tell him yes or no he's desperately trying to say no and the contractor just decides that means let her live well he didn't war version of this he he can't say it he dies in anguish knowing that he can't make his voice work and the contractor that decides I got
Sonny00:55:32offered to well they the the way it's the way it is set up it didn't feel like a cheap because I think they did a good job of setting this up there are two separate sequences where the the hitman says you have to you give me the yes and I do it so it's it works within the text of the movie but it would be it would be a it would be a nastier piece of work if it becomes a much darker movie you have to you have to give me the no and I will I will pull away if you don't give me the no I'm I can sign I assume I'm good to go that would have been that would have been a nastier way yeah I don't I don't think it blinks exactly but it definitely you know it's it's a different that's a different sort of movie as you say that's more of a noir than a than what this is which this is again I in war
JVL00:56:17like this has a lot of life and it's a love story in a lot of ways right I mean
Sonny00:56:21do you think it's wrong to describe this as dumbed-down lock array I mean that's that's kind of how it's simplified simple I mean it's maybe mean it's simplified lock array it's not
JVL00:56:32but this is a genre where even the middling stuff can be pretty good was that the last movie Philip Seymour Hoffman did was a spy movie in which he's a German yeah German spy master I'm trying to remember something man almost dangerous man the most wanted man something like that most most wanted man I think that might be it yeah anyway you just this feels a little bit like that in that it's a nice piece of again maybe just I'm a sucker for spy novels like they are my candy and more so even than sci-fi and so I really like movies that take that on too and this is this is a nice job with that yeah a most wanted great movie Rachel McAdams and that is right so that movie just got totally lost and it's really quite good and he's fantastic in it yeah also lock our
Sonny00:57:31day or well that yeah you know this was not locker right this is a so it was based
JVL00:57:37on a novel by a spy if you are grown up you should see this movie go see it goes at home the old knives and it it was good I really liked it good good movie thumbs up thumbs up two thumbs up both of us all the old not you know what Vic
Sonny00:57:55would have liked it if he was here would have liked it too well we'll say three we'll say we'll go three three thumbs up on that one all right that's it spirit of the week correction shoutouts anything anything uh nothing
JVL00:58:07I'm just drinking diet coke trying to stay awake do you I got I got a coffee
Sonny00:58:11because I'm gonna edit this after the show so we're just drinking drinking caffeine all right that is all the time we are giving to this episode questions comments compliments tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Victorino - tell Vic you how much you missed him how boring the show was without him I please do we want him back next week I'm sure he will be back next week he as we say he just needed a he needed a weekend he needed a what was the he needed the cure for wellness that's what he needed did you guys did you ever watch that movie no that's a movie that's a movie that would kill on one of the quadrants okay again be sure to subscribe to us on patreon just go to sub beacon calm we are there tell your friends until next time
JVL00:59:00I think I hear G money downstairs yeah you know what he and flash are sharing a room right now for the rest of their lives and and it's a brand new experiment we're gonna see how that's going one of them is very excited about it but I will have to go and check I'm I can
Sonny00:59:27hear him in the background I can hear something going on back there I'm sure
JVL00:59:30it's fine.
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