#154. 'Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery'
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Sonny and JVL are joined by guest Thomas Lassi, a Swedish listener taping at 4:30 in the morning his time, to cover Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Thomas delivers a deadpan "big boy review" of the plot before all three dig in: JVL enjoyed the funny, breezy first half (especially the sweatshop/sweatpants joke and the dinner-table scene) but was disappointed by the back half, calling the mystery thin, Benoit Blanc frustratingly one-dimensional, and the all-digital climactic fire an inexcusable choice for a ~$300 million production; Sonny agrees the film is entertaining moment-to-moment but finds it smug, self-satisfied, and structurally broken for retelling the same story twice from a second angle. Both hosts clarify they don't actually hate Rian Johnson (Sonny name-checks Brick, Looper, and most of The Last Jedi as evidence) so much as resent how much money studios keep throwing at him; Thomas, notably less impressed with Blanc's lack of real detective work, closes his review by rating the film "one regular sized person or two Ben Shapiros," referencing Shapiro's viral anti-Glass Onion rant. The episode's first third is dominated by extended Sweden banter with Thomas — Ikea jokes, the myth of the Swedish bikini team, and Scandinavian daylight-hours trivia — plus JVL's anxiety over his first flight in years (masks, Xanax, and germ paranoia for an upcoming West Coast trip), Sonny's ongoing saga bathing fleas off his dog, a bit about backyard fireworks injuries, and a quick box-office roundup covering Avatar: The Way of Water, M3GAN, and A Man Called Otto.
From the show notes
JVL and Sonny are joined noted Finn Thomas Lassi on this week's episode.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00I've invited you all to my island because tonight a murder will be committed. My murder. Once you're dead, will we still be able to talk to you? Yeah. I'm not playing dead the whole weekend, dude. This is truly delightful. Across the island, I've hidden clues. You will have to closely observe each other. If anyone can name the killer, that person wins our game. Any questions?
Sonny00:00:26Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Sonny Bunch along with Jonathan V. Last and joining us today, a very special guest from from the the wastelands of the nor Norway, Finland. Sweden, Sweden. Thomas Lassie. Is that a good pronunciation? Am I close? I am used to quite a few. You get a pass. Okay. Okay. What? No, I the last name there. Am I doing? Am I at
Guest00:01:14least close? Is it is it? Say it again. Lassie? Lassie? Yeah, I mean, that's it. It's better than most Americans who go with Lassie, which is...
Sonny00:01:25incorrect and wrong. Lassie. Tom Lassie here. I'm in Texas. And everybody else is. Thomas,
Guest00:01:34where are you now? Are you in Malmo? I am. Are you in Utgert? It's a town north of Malmo. It's about 50 minutes from Copenhagen, which is a much nicer place than Malmo. Are you in the Bailey? No, I'm just naming random pieces of Ikea furniture. Are you in the Malmo? JVL, you will be happy. Are you in the Billy? Last time we talked, JVL, you were criticizing me for having a living room that looked like an Ikea showroom. I am happy to report that there isn't a single piece of Ikea furniture in this room. I don't know how you how you're
JVL00:02:24doing it. I should say so we are taping quite late in the evening on the East Coast. I assume that means it's morning in your time. It is morning time. Is it for you? It is about well, it is almost exactly 4:30. And you are in a Hugh Hefner like, it's like a robe slash
Guest00:02:46smoking jacket. I mean, what do you expect me to be dressed in at 4:30? And there's a
JVL00:02:51lip. Well, what I expect is I expect to see a scantily clad blonde walking across the background of the shot basically picking up her clothes her her unmentionables after a wild night of working with with cams and some Allen wrenches
Guest00:03:12and maybe some dowels together doing whatever depraved things you guys do up there. I liked it. This sounds this sounds like a business idea. I like it.
Sonny00:03:23No, it's a sexy Ikea strip club. I think the Ikea Thomas, you're gonna get real you're gonna get real tired of this in like 20 minutes. It's gonna be great by that time. We'll maybe have moved on to the movie. No, I'm excited to have Thomas on because I I I've actually been to Sweden. It's one of it's one of the places I've been when I lived in England. My my folks bought a Volvo that they took off. They took a ferry to Sweden. They got to go to Gothenburg, I guess. Yeah, I don't I don't that that doesn't really mean anything to me. But I do I do remember going to Sweden and we went to an amusement park. That's the thing that I there was a roller coaster park. Right. And that's the thing I actually remember the most about Sweden. I was I mean, I was like six at five, six
JVL00:04:12at the time. The roller coaster was made entirely of MDF particle board. It was it was it was
Sonny00:04:18a it was I remember the roller coaster. I remember the fact that everybody was like six foot tall and blonde everywhere, just like everywhere walking. It was it was really it was like something out of a movie. It was like just walk. I would walk into we would walk into, you know, the the local Swedish McDonald's or whatever. And it was like it was like walking into I don't know, like the the. Did you see the Swedish bikini team? That's what that's what I was trying to I was trying to figure out if that's a real thing or not. I wanted to ask Thomas. The Swedish I was thinking about this the other day. That seems to have kind of disappeared. But is the Swedish bikini team a real and or was that just like an invention of America?
Guest00:05:01It's an invention of some PR firm as a commercial for some product. And I can't remember which now I investigated this beer Budweiser or something. Yeah, I was, of course, interested in whether it was real or not. And no, it turns out turns out it isn't turns out. But you know, so when when I when I first came to the US, so what's this? It was in 2009 or something. Everyone like in movies and pop culture, you always hear about oh, Swedes are so blonde, and they're so tall and blah, blah, blah, or Scandinavians in general. And I had never really considered I was like, well, what's abnormal about it? It's like this everywhere. And then I went to the States. And I remember so clearly when I was supposed to fly back to Sweden, and I was walking through either the airport in Atlanta or in Chicago. And I was approaching the gate. And I was like, I could clearly see that that is the Scandinavian Airlines gate because it was just a sea of blonde heads in front of it. And that's when I hit that.
Sonny00:06:00It's wild. It's wild. It's something else. Thank you for being on the show today. You were getting up early and coming out. What is the weather like there now? Is it very
Guest00:06:14cold? So here's what I don't think a lot of people realize is that Sweden is a very, very long country. It is the second, fourth?
JVL00:06:27It's just average.
Guest00:06:30So it would take, I don't know, for me to drive to where my parents live, it would probably take 20 hours. And so it's quite long. So when I visited my parents and family over Christmas and I was like, I'm going to make up temperatures in Fahrenheit because I don't know them. It was like zero degrees Fahrenheit. Back at my parents place. And when I stepped out of the plane down here, it was like 50. So here it's just rainy. There's no snow, a little bit of sleet. It's actually really depressing.
Sonny00:07:08So it's like, so negative like 10 degrees Celsius, basically?
Guest00:07:13Where I am right now?
Sonny00:07:14Well, I'm just trying to think of like, what is zero degrees Fahrenheit? That's like negative 10 or 12 Celsius, right?
Guest00:07:22Yeah, or yeah, something like that.
Sonny00:07:23Something like that. Okay. All right. I'm trying to make it trying to make you
JVL00:07:26Roughly when does the sun rise and when does the sun set where you are right now? Are you getting four hours of daylight?
Guest00:07:35No, here it's quite a lot. It's from like nine to four or something like that. Back at my parents place, north of the Arctic Circle, it was like 10 to two. So like four hours. And that's not too late. And you don't see the sun. You just it just gets brighter. You don't actually see the thing because it's below the horizon.
Sonny00:07:56Do they in India in the in the summer is the sun up all day? Is it like insomnia? Yes. Oh, my God. I mean, it's great. I would rather it be dark all day. No, it's I would rather I would rather live 30 days of night lifestyle than insomnia lifestyle. That's those are like my two
Guest00:08:14That does fit you. I can see that.
Sonny00:08:16Those are my two. That's the only way I know how to how to approach this is by via movies and 30 days of night fighting vampires in the month of darkness superior to having the sun out all the time because I'm the sort of person who like I need blackout shades to sleep. I need it to be like dark to sleep. Whenever my phone like somebody sends me a DM or something, my phone lights up. I literally will like reach over and flip it over some fucking I'm trying to sleep here. This light is killing me. So I'm a I'm a I'm pro I'm pro dark. I live in the dark.
Guest00:08:53It was one of the most asked questions after like, when they heard it, I was from Sweden. And they would first they would ask someone Swedish bikini team. Yeah, no, number one was something about the Alps or chocolate or watches. Oh, yeah, from Basel, Sweden. Yeah, right. And and then they would ask, Oh, so it's bright all the time. How do you sleep? And I would always I would pause and I would look at them and I'm only like, Well, we do have curtains, like, like, it's not that if you want it to be dark in your room where you sleep, you can do that. It's not it's not that hard.
Sonny00:09:29Oh, goodness. Um, yeah, well, again, thank you for being on show. JBL. How was your How was your weekend? What have you been up to?
JVL00:09:39Look, my weekend is fine. But the problem is the week I have coming up, because I have to travel next week for the first time in four years.
Guest00:09:52Oh, this is your California, Seattle thing?
Sonny00:09:56Yeah, I get your first Is this your first flight post pandemic?
JVL00:10:01I mean, I hadn't traveled for a long time pre pandemic. And for definitely first flight post Panda, I gotta fly to San Francisco from San Francisco to LA from LA to Seattle from Seattle back to Newark. And not only do I have to fly and be stuck in these metal tubes 35,000 feet in the air surrounded by strangers. Am I going to be wearing KN 95? You're damn right I am. I went and got my latest COVID booster yesterday and I don't feel enough nanobots in my body in my body to make me feel safe. So I'm just I'm not going to get there. Disgusting germy diseases.
Sonny00:10:43Airplanes are like the safest place you can be though they recirculate that
JVL00:10:47air every like seven seconds from the person sitting one inch to either side of you will
Sonny00:10:53never How is that possible? Oh, I don't know, man. I'm not a scientist. I don't understand
JVL00:10:58how the magic of science works. But you have a filthy human being expectorating and aerosolizing their shit. Because again, you guys are touching touching. And then you're gonna wear the mask
Sonny00:11:11you're gonna wear that you're gonna wear it not not the input. Remember the giant face?
JVL00:11:16Remember? No, do you remember the giant airplane gimp hood? I sent you guys it was like the head pillow, the pillow you wear it on your head and the ostrich pillow question Are you flying Southwest? One of the legs is Southwest? Yes. Good airline. I like Southwest. Yeah, problems. Problems notwithstanding. And then I have to be around people. I like to be with
Sonny00:11:40people. And you're worried about the germs. But the odds of you catching a disease, much lower than the odds of you snapping and murdering like five people in a in a very short order.
JVL00:11:52I mean, I've been joking about how I'm going to be bringing all of my Xanax with me. But also not really joking. Like it's gonna be I'm gonna need to. You're much more personable than you than you you're good at good yourself. Yeah, but I haven't done this in years. Yeah,
Sonny00:12:12years. Yeah, here's I so first off, I assume you're bringing your Xanax bringing your noise canceling headphones, you're going to bring your Sony noise canceler. I wasn't going to. Why would you not bring your noise canceling headphones to cocoon
JVL00:12:24yourself off from the world? Oh, on the airplane? Yeah. Yeah, you know, that's a good idea.
Sonny00:12:30And that's also good for your ears. airplanes very loud. You know, you could be next to an engine. Okay, you want to you want to you want to or a person who wants to talk to me
JVL00:12:37and I gotta make that's the problem of the earbuds. The person might think that they can break through to talk to me. But if I if I put the noise canceling and I say I'm sorry, I can't hear you. The algorithm is matching the wavelengths of your words. I don't know. I can't I can't hear you. I can't hear you do that, then then it'll be fine.
Sonny00:13:00I have found that had that I found that big cans on your head are a very good way to stop people from talking to you in public in general, but on airplanes in particular, I've not been bothered by a person on an airplane in years now.
JVL00:13:15No, God, I don't. Anyway, then I got, again, I just I don't have the the muscles where you get to work up into this, you know, be around people, you got to get a I mean, Thomas, you don't have this problem because you are well, JVL, infuriatingly, you're gregarious.
Guest00:13:32I just checked my app JVL. And it says that since October 10 2020, what's that a little more than two years, I've done 24 trips on an airplane. How many miles that I have? No, it's not Sweden. It's not that the farthest one is to Brussels. So it's it's not that long.
Sonny00:13:52Oh, do you do you? Do you have like a standard Swedish airline? Do you is there like a Air
Guest00:13:58Sweden Scandinavian Air Bikini Scandinavian Airlines? Do they say yes, right? Right? Is
Sonny00:14:03that for is that for all of Scandinavia? Is that like, Norway, Finland, it is it is Denmark.
Guest00:14:10It's jointly owned owned by the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian governments. Yes. And then there's finnair for Finland.
Sonny00:14:18I bet the fins don't want any part of that. No, for for a while we had we had a bit where I was I was referring to you as a Finnish person, which I which I found deeply amusing, but I feel like is like actually incredibly offensive to both Finns and Swedes. I feel like that would be the sort of thing that would get me get me punched out in a moment
JVL00:14:37to each other. They're like a little Prince Albert. They're fine.
Guest00:14:40I mean, I grew up in a Finnish speaking region of Sweden. So I'm not offended. It's also like half an hour from the border, so I don't really care. But JVL, do you remember back in 1617 when you packed your house full of strangers that you had never seen for a party? Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. Or you were in
JVL00:15:03my house. I was you were in my house and I had to work up to that. It took me months
Sonny00:15:09of working up to it. And you really did. Well, you also had Shannon there holding your hand through the whole thing, which was good. But I assume you were you were making this trip solo. This is you. You are not bringing a comfort human.
JVL00:15:22No, no. I thought about bringing favorite and then decided not to. And you know, I'm going by myself like a big boy, like I'm all grossed up. Are you are you and Sarah and
Sonny00:15:38Tim flying on the same legs of the flights up and down California or are you all going
JVL00:15:43separately? No, we're all going separately at different times. I think the only flights I'm flying on the same as I think Catherine Lowe and I are flying the same San Francisco to L.A. flight. But otherwise we're all going. And, you know, like I, I would put my noise canceling headphones on next to Catherine. I'm kidding, Catherine. I wouldn't do that if you were sitting next to me, Catherine. I might not even wear the mask or I certainly wouldn't double mask. I might double mask.
Sonny00:16:15I mean, there's it's not her that you have to worry about. It's the person behind. Airplanes are super safe. You're all facing the same direction. You're not talking to each other because you've got the noise canceling headphones on. The air recirculates every point seven two seconds. Fresh air every it's coming in from the outside. All the diseased air gets jetted out into the air stream. Is that how my understanding?
Guest00:16:38No, it's very safe. Or at least they said so during the.
JVL00:16:42Height of the pandemic, everybody I know has been sick for the last seven months. Like what are the odds that I'm going to get through this trip not being sick?
Sonny00:16:50No, you're definitely going to get sick, but you're just going to have you got it. You're just going to have to do it. It's not you're not going to get sick on the airplane, though. You're not going to get sick on the airplane. You're going to get sick. You're going to
JVL00:16:58get sick at one of the events shaking hands and to me. Yeah, no, I mean, like I like and
Sonny00:17:02I don't I'm not even talking about covid. You're just going to get like, oh, yeah, they they used to. So I had a guy on the board goes Hollywood, the guy who runs the F and F account, Aaron Reynolds. And he he he I wanted to have him on to talk about conventions and stuff because convention the business of convention is very interesting to me, like five other people. But the but one of the things he mentioned was that like during, you know, before covid, there was a thing called convention cough or whatever convention convention crud. And basically every year when you're making the convention circuit, you pick up whatever cold or flu or strep or whatever that's going around. It's like having a kid. Except, you know, conventions. And he said that during covid, obviously, like when everything was locked down and there were no conventions, no convention crud. But right after that started, when everybody was coming back and everybody was masking and there was like a dispensers of, you know, goop for your hands every 30 feet, no convention crud. Everybody was still very fine. But once you know, once the mask came off and once people stopped washing their hands every 30 seconds and were, you know, shaking hands, taking pictures and stuff again, it came back. Because humans are just disgusting creatures like we're just full of disease all the time.
JVL00:18:15Like that is what we need is masking forever and social prohibitions against physical contact.
Sonny00:18:22No, what we what we all need. We just need to live in our pods and the machine will bring us our meals and we can conference with people on Zoom. That's it. Like we're using horizons on Meta. What's the what's the what's the short story? The machine breaks down, something like that. That's that's our future.
JVL00:18:40That sounds great. Sounds really nice.
Guest00:18:43I don't really know who actually goes to these conventions, but I used to go to the conventions. My mental image is that I was a kid. Oh, so a bunch of nerds, essentially. Yes. A social nerds who mostly just sit at home, do nothing. I mean, their immune system has to be shit to begin with. Like they've never been exposed to anything.
Sonny00:19:04Just shut it. Again, they don't have children, so they're not because they couldn't possibly procreate.
JVL00:19:11I wonder if that has changed in the way that like sexually active bandies is now like really a thing. Like, you know, you go into a high school, those, those marching bands. Yeah. Those marching band kids, those band kids are like banging it out every which way, like Caligula. I think the same may be true with the nerds now too. No, but I mean, new compared to like the 1980s. Well, I think the real, what is actually convention world, the nerds are all doing it now.
Sonny00:19:47No, no, no. But what is, what has actually happened is that convention culture has been co-opted by the mainstream. It's just regular people now go into these things. It's just like, it's like everybody, you know, everybody loves Marvel. Everybody loves DC. You know, this is just the culture anime, like anime cosplayers anime is like the biggest selling or the biggest selling books in the country. It's crazy. Manga, manga, manga. I should say manga, manga comics are like you go into a Barnes and Noble now. It's like one third manga comics. It's crazy manga than traditional like graphic novel. Totally. Well, I, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm exaggerating, but it is like, if you go to the graphic novel section, it is like, I mean, it really is like 80% manga. Yeah. And, and you know, if you're lucky, you get like a, there's a copy of the dark night. Yeah. Returns and the, and Watchmen. That's it.
JVL00:20:42Yeah. Anyway, uh, Sonny, what have you been up to, man? Did you get the fleas under control or did you have to send the dog out to live in the countryside?
Sonny00:20:51More or less, I would say we, we've more or less gotten it under control. She still has the, uh, the occasional flea on her. I'm still giving her, uh, lots of baths, lots of baths still, but it, it seems to have mostly been, uh, it's mostly under control. At this point. Um, I will be, I will be glad when I go like four straight days, uh, with a bath and zero fleas. We're not quite there yet, but we're, we're, we're getting there.
JVL00:21:19Um, so do you have them in your hair to the fleas go into your hair?
Sonny00:21:22No, please don't. This is your beard. This is what is like both nice and kind of frustrating about fleas is that they don't actually bother humans very much. Uh, they don't, they don't bite humans. Um, they don't, they still get on you though. Or like, well, I mean, they will jump on you, but they don't live on you. Like they live on a dog, right?
JVL00:21:41They wouldn't. I mean, you have a lot of hair right now. It's not like it's very thick and
Sonny00:21:45lush and you may have lustrous. I have a lustrous head. Hold it. Let me see. You can get the full match. We go, you know, look at that, but the, but like, uh, but the, but they don't, the fleas don't, fleas don't really live on people. I mean, I guess they could, I don't, they're not, but they're not like ticks. It's not like ticks where, you know, a tickle jump on you and bite you and give you a Lyme disease forever. Uh, or that, that meat disease.
JVL00:22:07I guess I just find it difficult to believe that the guy who doesn't like touching sand is basically as a philosophical proposition. All right. With fleas living in his home with
Sonny00:22:21him. Well, I'm not all right with fleas living in my home. That's why this is a real fucking nightmare for me. I've been, I've been like, literally we like have washed the sheets on our bed 20 times over the last month. Uh, the, the dog. Our water bill is going to be like as high as it is when, when we have the sprinklers running in the summer. Like it's, it's, uh, you know, I, I, again, I'm like, I, I'm giving the dog a bath every single day, which is not something we have ever done. And this, the dog is as clean as she's ever been. And she's fucking miserable. Cause you know, she can't, she doesn't have any of her smells. Dogs like to smell like shit. They like to smell like shit and dirt and grass. And so my dog doesn't smell like that anymore. Uh, and she's miserable. She just wants to go out there and roll around in the grass.
JVL00:23:06Make her live outdoors.
Sonny00:23:08No, she's not an outdoor, she's not an outdoor dog. She's an indoor. She's never lived outdoors. Plus we have coyotes out there. We've got armadillos. Like I, she would end up getting in a fight with a raccoon and losing. Then I have to take her to the, I have to take her to the hospital, the dog hospital and then get her stitches and shit. I don't want to have to deal with any of that. So I like, um, the real, the next step is teaching her how to go to the bathroom inside like a cat or like a person. If she can, if she can sit on the toilet, then she won't go outside and she won't bring any more fleas back in. That'll be, that'll be a, that'll be a big win. Um, no, but it's, it's, it's fine. It's, it's better. It's, it's certainly better than it, than it had been. Uh, we're, we're getting, we're winning the war. It's a, it's a war of attrition, but we're wiping, we're wiping
JVL00:23:51them out. One by the time Ukraine gets the Russians, who's going to lose first, the fleas
Sonny00:23:58or the Russians? Hopefully the fleas, the Russians, I feel like the Russians could dig in for a while. Uh, but we'll, we'll see. Uh, but anyway, I dunno, things are, things are fine here. I'm, uh, I'm, I'm just, you know, trying not to try not to go crazy.
Guest00:24:18So my, my parents, uh, they live, I grew up in the middle of nowhere in, in a village of like 50 people. And my parents' strategy to deal with, with their pets, whenever there was some trouble, like let's say that one of them got a little bit sick or I would assume if they got fleas, I don't think it's ever happened. Uh, or something like that. You know what they would do? They would feed them to the reindeer. They, they would. Yeah. I mean, they would just let them, let them go into the woods. Just like, no, I mean, they, they would, my dad would grab a rifle and, uh, then the pet would be no more. Uh, and so I, have you considered it? I have, I have,
Sonny00:25:00but it seems a bit drastic for, uh, for fleas. It'd be one thing. I don't know. It sounds pretty horrible. I'm not one of these people who will like, I'm not, I'm not really, you know, like, all right, we're going to put the dog on chemo cause it's got cancer sort of people. Like I don't, that's not, that's not where my head is on that sort of thing. But for fleas, I feel like fleas should be, you know, we have the technology to deal with this in a non lethal way. Now that said, I will burn the house down at some, I will just, I will just toss a match in this house. And if I win, if I win sure that your house is completely flea free, if I win, if I win the mega millions, uh, on S on Saturday, Thomas, I don't know if you know this, but the, uh, the big lottery here in the United States, uh, the, the total jackpot right now is $1.3 billion. Um, which is a cash equivalent of something like 600 or 700 million. Yeah. You take off 30% for taxes. You're still looking solid, like half billion dollars. Uh, if I win that, you can get by with that. If I win that, I'll burn this house down just out of general principle to take care of the flea problem. And then we'll build a, we'll build a much bigger house on top of the, we'll immediately get infested with fleas because you can't get rid of it. Can't they don't live in the ashes forever. So, uh, anyway, that's, that's where my life is. I don't know. Thomas, how's
Guest00:26:27your weekend? Uh, my week. Oh, right. It's Friday. Uh, oh, it's, it's great. Uh, I actually, I wanted to bring something up that you guys have discussed years ago on the show and elsewhere. Uh, you are both big fans of fireworks, uh, especially residential fireworks that people are just setting off at 10:00 PM in the neighborhood. Love it. Uh, and so, you know what I discovered, uh, off the new year, like new year's day this year, I was scrolling Instagram or whatever it was, it was Facebook. And I realized that people are these days posting all sorts of videos of them actually fi like setting off these fireworks. And I hadn't realized how stupid people are before, like, like theoretically, I understood this, but actually seeing it on video when they are like, I don't know, playing horse with these fireworks and aiming them at each other in parking lots and whatnot. It's, it's amazing. And I don't think we should stop it. Like if, if they lose a finger or a thumb or whatever, uh, it's great. They're like, they're marked for life.
JVL00:27:37Yes. I, I did a new year's Eve in Rome once and the Romans did so many fireworks and they were all like way drunker than even the drunkest rednecks in the States. And the next morning, uh, when I had the Italian TV news on, you know, at like 6:00 AM or whatever, it was like 45 minutes straight of scenes from local emergency rooms with like 18 year old Italian dudes missing a hand. And I, I got pleasure out of seeing that.
Sonny00:28:18Wasn't there an NFL player who blew up his hand playing with fireworks. There was an NFL player who like destroyed his career. It wasn't like it wasn't long ago. It was, it was within the span of the show. And I just remember I remember thinking to myself, like, I understand, look, I understand playing with fire, playing with fire is fun and playing with fireworks, I guess, is fun. It's not really my, my bag, but I, I get, but like, if you, it's like the, it's like the, it's like the, the guys who are, uh, you know, baseball players or whatever, and then like blow out their knee playing, uh, you know, pick up, pick up basketball. What are you, what are you doing with your life, man? Like take care of your body. You have 60 years ahead of
JVL00:29:01you in which you can play pickup basketball without impacting your potential to earn money at all. Just wait and play it then. Why would you do that? Yeah. I'm trying
Sonny00:29:12to teach Katie how to play basketball. I'm trying to teach my daughter how to play basketball.
JVL00:29:16That's it's a lot of fun today. We had a chance to tie a game this weekend. Oh really? See,
Sonny00:29:21you guys are, you guys are doing it. You're getting it together. We trailed 16 to 14 had
JVL00:29:27the ball in our hands with 15 seconds left, took three shots. None further away from five feet from the basket. Did any of them hit the rim? One
Sonny00:29:39of them did. I think I, anyway, today we worked on dribbling without looking at the ball, which was, was that step? It's a big step. Once you get there, you're halfway to being able to dunk. All right. Uh, speaking of dunks, I don't know, uh, the transition and Thomas,
JVL00:29:59you do the transition. Thomas, Thomas does the shouting transition. Do it for us transition. Uh, so at the box
Sonny00:30:06office this weekend, uh, you know what, what is making a lot of money? Avatar Avatar, the way of water, Thomas, how many times have you seen Avatar the way of water in Sweden? Uh, you mean zero. Wow. You haven't watched the, do they not have it over there? I did
Guest00:30:25rewatch the first one, uh, before Christmas. So I'm intending to see it at some point.
Sonny00:30:30You gotta go see it in theaters. It's theatrical experience. There's no point in seeing it.
Guest00:30:35Uh, do you guys have IMAX theaters? Maybe in Stockholm. Uh, that's, uh, that's a rare
Sonny00:30:42thing here. Yeah. I, it's interesting. I, because like most of the IMAX has got built in China. That's where they, they, they spent all of their money and like sent all of their good projectors and everything. So like the rest of the world got kind of screwed for a solid 10 year run.
Guest00:31:00My, my big business idea is, is to start to, to open dine in movie theaters in Sweden, uh, because we don't pretty much have none. Uh, and I think, I think that would
JVL00:31:08be great. So like you should absolutely start building movie theaters cause theatrical releases
Sonny00:31:16of the future. Yep. That's the, that's, that's the wave of the future. That's how everybody's going to be consuming medias in theaters. Uh, uh, anyway, avatar to had a, another huge weekend dropped 30%. Something like that. It's up to 1.8 by, by the time you were listening to this, uh, we're taping it on Friday. I assume the numbers will be out later this morning. Uh, the, by the time you're listening to this, it'll be over 1.8 billion worldwide probably. Uh, and you know, that's a, that's a lot of money. We're officially getting avatars three and maybe four or five and six fire avatar coming. We got fire avatar. Uh, number two at the box office. I, I predicted as much on the anchor podcast, but, uh, Megan, the killer doll, the Chucky lady, Chucky AI robot horror movie, uh, doll thing that did gross $30 million this weekend. The big, that's a big weekend. You know what open, you know, what plays at theaters, James Cameron movies, shitty horror movies. That's it. That's, that's number one
JVL00:32:23and number two. Uh, is it a shitty horror movie or did you, I mean, it looks, it's,
Sonny00:32:28it's terrifying as hell. No, it's, it's really not. It's not that scary. It's PG. It's a PG 13 horror movie. So it's like basically bloodless. It's really not that scary. It's more, it's actually funnier than it is scary. Um, it's very memeable. There's lots of mean moments in this movie. I think it's deeply mediocre. It's totally predictable. There's nothing in this movie that happens that is like surprising at all. Like it is, it's totally fine and it's not nearly as goofy. I'm sorry. I thought we weren't talking about glass on you until later. It's not. Well, we'll get to, we'll get to that in a minute. We'll get to that in a minute. We'll get to that in a minute. Uh, uh, but Megan, very, very, very good. Uh, and I'm sorry, what was that Thomas? How's the man called auto doing? A man called auto is doing pretty well as well. It is a, it, it did a four or 5 million in like 600 screens this weekend. It's expanding wide this weekend. We'll see how it does. Tom Hanks still a draw. People, people want to go see Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks still a draw. People, people want to go see Tom Hanks. But the movie we're talking about today is not, uh, was released in theaters briefly. It grossed 11, 13 million, something like that. Uh, uh, for Netflix over a six, six day period in the States. But it is, uh, it is now one of their most watched movies for more than two minutes by seven people in a room at one time, uh, ever, uh, over the first 28 days. Uh, that's, that's glass onion, a knives out mystery, that knives out to don't call it that or Ryan Johnson will punch you in the face. He'll come to your house and say, I didn't want to call it anything with knives out. Bam. Uh, no, he's a, he is very insistent. No, not it's glass onion. Do we know the title of the next one? No. Oh, okay. We don't know that yet. We know the title of avatar three avatar three is going to be called the seed bearer, which I don't know. That just sounds disgusting. I fucking get your mind out of the gutter, James Cameron. Uh, but, uh, but no, we don't, we don't know. We don't know glass onion to Thomas. How about a big boy
JVL00:34:37review? Oh, you like that swerve Sonny, since you're playing homes, we'll make Thomas give
Sonny00:34:42you, I don't really want to do a big boy review. So now you have to wing it, Thomas. This is
Guest00:34:47what I do every week. Uh, so, uh, glass onion is the sequel to knives out. It's a Ryan Johnson, uh, who done it, uh, where, uh, you have a group of, a group of friends or a group of associates that are all called out to Greek Island, uh, to go visit, uh, one of their friends, uh, uh, called, called the disruptors. Um, there, there is some sort of mystery to solve. Uh, the billionaire in question is played by Edward Norton, uh, and is named Miles Brown. Uh, and somehow Daniel Craig's character Benoit Blanc also ends up, uh, on this island in order to try to help solve this, I don't know, dinner mystery, uh, seems to be the idea from the beginning of the movie at least. Uh, and then,
Sonny00:35:38uh, the movie just goes on forever. There you go. That's, that's it. That's, that's about it.
Guest00:35:47Uh, yeah. It is two hours and 20 minutes and you can feel it. Is Rian Johnson paid per minute? I don't know, man. Like, like the monks in France when they would transcribe books or whatever.
Sonny00:36:01I don't know, but he's not into the whole brevity thing, man. Uh, he is, he, you know, between the last Jedi, I mean, even the first Knives Out was, uh, 135 minutes or something like that. It was, it was, it, it itself was too long for what it is. Um, but, uh, I don't know, JBL, what'd you make of Knives Out 2? You know, what's, uh, I watched it in two
JVL00:36:25parts and I broke after the first like hour 15, I split it almost, almost exactly in half. And I thought to myself, yeah, this is, this is mildly entertaining as a piece of social commentary. There are moments and bits in it, which are deeply funny. Uh, the, the disruptors, the, this group of people we're following are the most contemptible millennial archetypes types. So we have Dave Bautista as the Jack Murphy style, uh, Twitch streamer, right? Who's from the manosphere, a manosphere Twitch streamer, men's rights activists, right? Uh, we have, um, Kate Hudson as an aging model who has launched her own line of clothing and is transitioning from being a model into a mogul. We have an annoying liberal do gooder, progressive governor from Connecticut who is running for Senate. Uh, and then, uh, I, I, I get Leslie Odom Jr's character. Isn't annoying. He's just a scientist. And the point is these people are all terrible and we, we bring them together and they are terrible in ways which are, which are kind of amusing, right? And it's a COVID movie in, so it is set in March of 2020 and part of the, the, some of the jokes are about the, the various reactions that they take to COVID. And so like the progressive liberal governor is like, you know, has five masks on and like does the elbow bump that everybody did back then. And, uh, you know, of course the manosphere guy refuses to wear a mask and Kate Hudson's character wears like a lace mask or something. And is annoyed by it, but she's hosting, you know, while everybody else is, is in pandemic mode, she's hosting these giant bacchanal parties at her apartment in New York. Anyway, I, I found a piece like that funny. And then I,
Sonny00:38:35the funniest, I'm sorry, sorry to interrupt the funny, the funniest joke here though, was Ethan Hawke showing up for a 32nd role, uh, as the guy who sprays, but NACA in all of their mouths and is like, now you can take your masks off and they're all like, well, now you're clear. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Which, which is once again, it's just like giving, well, I mean, they're doing it for the movie because nobody wants to watch people wear a mask for the whole movie, but they're like, the other thing is there it's like, what here's, here's the like little excuse you need to stop wearing masks. So let's all just stop.
Guest00:39:06Right. Uh, right. Because is that a question? So that, that wasn't, we're not supposed to think that's like real, right. It's just some sort of, I don't know, mist or whatever they spray in their mouth.
JVL00:39:20No, it's a fraud. Like everything else having to do with the Elon Musk character,
Sonny00:39:23right. And, and it's literally just, it's literally just them having an excuse to take the masks off. That's like that. Cause that's all they want to do. They just, they want
JVL00:39:30the thing. And Ed Norton's character is Elon Musk. I think that's reasonably right. I mean, maybe
Guest00:39:35he's just your generic tech billionaire, but he puts a car on, on the roof of his island house that he loves more than anything else. It's, it's a little, almost too on the nose.
JVL00:39:46I think there are, well, but you know, again, there are funny bits. So Kate Hudson's character has an assistant who's basically a full-time crisis PR person. And maybe the funniest bit in the whole movie is that, uh, about sweatshops, right? So, so, uh, Kate Hudson is about to be in a great deal of trouble because her line of sweat pants, she's famous for these sweat pants that she makes sweetie pants, right? And there are about to leak emails of her talking with the person setting up their fat, her factory in Bangladesh. I think it is. And the, the person on the ground says, you understand this is, this place has a reputation as being an enormous sweatshop to which Kate Hudson's character responds something like, you know, Oh my gosh, that is so perfect. Uh, dab emoji, right? And as her, as her crisis PR person is reading this, she looks and she goes, please tell me you didn't think that sweatshops made sweatpants and Kate Hudson gets this. It just, I laughed out loud. And then there were like a handful of moments like that. The promise that as a mystery, it's very, very thin, right? I mean, there's like fun. It's kind of fun, I guess, to watch Daniel Craig's, uh, Benoit Blanc, but this is, you know, what I kept thinking to myself was, uh, Oh, I'd like to read the book version of this, but there is no book version. The, the knives out and the Benoit Blanc character are creations of Rian Johnson. And there isn't enough there, there, there's not enough meat on the bone to, to really sustain a full movie, uh, and to sustain this character, the character doesn't have enough going on for us to really care about him. Uh, and the mystery itself is very, very thin.
Sonny00:41:50Well, the, the big problem with this movie is that it is the same movie twice. It tells the same, it tells the same story twice. So the way it's structured is you, you, you have everybody meet on this island. They all, they all get a box from Elon Musk. That's a big puzzle box and they all, we watched them all solve it and they go to the island and then he explains that they're there for, you know, a big party before they changed the world with this, you know, energy solution that's actually going to poison everybody. Uh, and and the K there, there's going to be a, there's going to be a, a murder, a dinner murder mystery and they're all going to have fun and it's going to be great in there. And then somebody dies and then, uh, we like flashback to the beginning of the movie and get the whole story again from a different perspective. Now in a, in a typical murder mystery, this happens in the last 10 minutes of the movie, right? Like in a, in your typical Agatha Christie adaptation, you have, uh, you know, Hercule Poirot. Standing there with his crazy mustache and he goes, but you, sir, were in this room because you believe in the fates of humanity and you want, and, and like, that is like that. That's just like, we get that in flashbacks. It's the last 10 minutes and everything kind of comes together there. And instead we get like an hour and did you break like bright, bright before they flash back to the beginning? Literally that's right. So, right. So, so you basically watched the same movie twice just from, from a slight, I could, that would be immensely frustrated. It was immensely frustrating to me watching it. Um, uh, and, and the structure, I mean, like I, I don't like murder mysteries enough to really care about the deconstruction that Ryan Johnson is doing, the subversion of expectations of what you're supposed to wait for. And this sort of thing. I don't give a shit about any of that. Cause I don't really care about murder mysteries. So I'm just watching it as a piece of storytelling and I'm like, wait a second, this is all we're getting the, we're getting the, we're getting the end, but it's, there's still an hour and a half left of this movie. What is happening? And sure enough, it's just literally again, the, the, the whole movie kind of again, and that's a real problem from a structural point of view, because especially when the solution to the murder mystery is spoilers. I mean, if you haven't, you're one of the seven people who haven't watched it for two minutes with, with 16 family members in the room. Um, uh, it just turns out that, uh, Elon Musk character is an idiot. He killed somebody and he's, and he's, and he's, uh, getting caught because he's a dumb dumb. He's a big dumb dumb who stumbled into all of his
Guest00:44:28money. Um, which is how capitalism works. Uh, but, but, but, but here, here's the thing. I got, I got the feeling toward the end when, uh, Benoit Blanc goes on his rant, he declares that he's an idiot. Everything is you peel off the layers and everything is actually, it's so simple and so straightforward and whatever. And what's that line? He has, uh, he's, uh, he's terrible
JVL00:44:52at stupid games or whatever clue, right? Somebody says literally they make it a clue joke in the middle of the movie.
Guest00:45:00And, and, and the thing is that it just felt like real. And I understand his urge. I would do it too. Like he just wanted to really yell at Elon Musk and other billionaires. And he had Daniel Craig do it for him toward the end of the movie for like half an hour.
Sonny00:45:14Yeah. I mean, that's my problem with both of these movies, frankly. Um, uh, what I, both of which I honestly like find kind of entertaining and amusing. Like I actually, I liked the first knives out. Okay. Um, I like this. Okay. Even though I think it is a real mess structurally, I think it doesn't, I don't, I don't think it works as a piece of cinematic storytelling. Um, but it's entertaining moment to moment it's well written in terms of dialogue and, and as, as JBL says, it's very funny. It is, it is like frequently quite funny. I laughed, I laughed out loud on more than one occasion.
JVL00:45:47Um, but both of these movies, the dinner table scene, right? Where the murder mystery thing is about to happen is feels almost like a British comedy in that we are being, the, the scene is being set there. They've all gathered at the dinner table and Ed Norton's character is giving them the ground rules for the mystery and how, you know, how much time they have to solve the murder mystery that he's going to set up for them. And, and he says something, you know, and who, who will win. And Benoit Blanc says, what's the prize? You know, these people are so beyond the idea of there being prize. And he's like, I don't know what, what, what do you want? It's like, I just thought there might be an iPad or is this great little, like that whole scene is great. It sort of crackles. It's got energy. I really wanted to like this more than I did.
Sonny00:46:40I just find these, I find these movies like so smug and full of themselves and like not as clever as they think they are. And certainly not as clever as they need to be to kind of justify the like, just Sonny, let me ask you something. South Park smelling your own farts sort of like level of what was the budget for this movie? Well, it depends on how you
JVL00:47:09want to look at it. Depends on how you want to look at it. They bought two for the price
Sonny00:47:13of one. So, uh, Netflix. So Knives Out was produced by Lions Gate. The first Knives Out was produced by Lions Gate. Um, but Lions Gate did not own the rights to the series. They only paid to produce one of these movies. Ryan Johnson and his, his, uh, production partners held on to the actual rights for the franchise, which ended up being a huge mistake for Lions Gate, uh, because Netflix swooped in and paid Ryan Johnson and his team $450 million for the rights to make two of these movies, not to buy, not to buy the franchise in perpetuity, but for the rights to make two of these movies that did not include the actual production budget, mind you. So it was $450. So it was basically $225 million for the rights to this movie, plus another 40 or $50 million to make it. I think the, I think the production budget
Guest00:48:07was $40 million. Um, and then that makes more sense. I thought the production budget was like 200. No, no, no. Because that's the number I earned.
?00:48:15No, no, no.
Sonny00:48:15That makes more sense. No, the, uh, so I mean the, the $225 million that was literally, they were just paying for the rights and again, not, they were not, they did not pay $450 million for the rights to this series going on forever. After these two movies, Ryan Johnson can go back out onto the market and go to MGM and Amazon and say, Hey, I, I got four to 50 million from Amazon. You want to give me 500 million for the next two or whatever.
JVL00:48:44Here's my question for you. Both for what is essentially a $300 million movie when you total up both the IP cost and the production cost, would it kill them to any film where the entire denouement centers around fire to have at least one of the fires not be digital? No, no, because I gotta say it is one thing to have digital fire. Fire as just, you know, something is happening in the background, but the foreground of the story, you know, like, yeah, just don't fuck this. The entire denouement literally is about fire. Like look, we have fire happening inside the glass onion, the fires everywhere and it looks like such shit.
Sonny00:49:35Yeah.
JVL00:49:36Oh my God.
Sonny00:49:37It looks so bad. Could you imagine if Christopher Nolan was given $260 million and the only effect in his whole movie was blowing up a building, could you imagine how big that explosion would be? Could you imagine how many times, how many, he probably built like five houses and blow them up from 76 different angles.
Guest00:49:56So we got, we'd have cameras inside, but he might be able to buy a really cheap nuclear bomb. Exactly.
Sonny00:50:04Exactly. You can just buy a suitcase nuke on the black market, set it off. You could probably get one of those for $260 million.
JVL00:50:10I don't know. It really bugged me.
Sonny00:50:12No, it does. I mean, look, it's a, it's, it's, I wouldn't say it's a cheap looking movie because for most, I mean, it's basically all set in one location more or less. I mean, it is mostly in this, this one house and it's a very nice, it's very nice house, but you're right. I mean, look, if you're given, if you're given $260 million to make a movie, the least you can do is blow up a house at the end of the, uh, movie where just in the room, like don't,
JVL00:50:37you know, like digital, digital do the, the house blowing up, but then when they're in that room and everything is on fire. Have an actual room that's on fire. Yeah. Uh, and I don't know, I, I don't know. I like Daniel Craig in this role. I like his, I mean, Benoit Blanc is, I, I don't know if homage or theft is correct, but this is why one of them is like, what if, what if Hercule Poirot was just Kentucky fried? Right. Right. That was basically the idea behind him. Uh, and so, but he's entertaining to watch, uh, but he's not given enough to do. We don't know anything. We don't know anything about the character. I mean, it's, he's incredibly one dimensional, uh, and I, but do you really, I, I, I don't
Sonny00:51:34think that that's necessarily a weakness. I mean, what was the, what was the big knock on the latest poor row movie, right? Is that it, it, the whole thing serves as like the backstory. His mustache. Yeah. And do we need, do we need that for, do we need that for Benoit blog? I actually liked that. We just get little, we get snippets of him being frustrated in lockdown. We get snippets of him, you know, who's, who's Hugh Grant. He's living with Hugh Grant, you know, uh, and, and that, that's kind of funny living
JVL00:52:03with Hugh Grant or is Hugh Grant playing the person he's living with. That's the other thing. All the, the cameo, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is himself. I found smug and tiresome. I did. And I love Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but the, the mixing of like the Jeremy Renner hot sauce, the, the, the placing, everything is so within the recognizable world. I didn't, I didn't like that.
Sonny00:52:30Yeah. What did you, uh, make of, uh, Edward Norton's Magnolia costume? His Magnolia costume when they're in the bar, when they're, they're in the, so they're, they're, it's the, it's the flashback to their first meeting in the bar. Right. And he's wearing the Tom Cruise Magnolia outfit with like the ponytail.
JVL00:52:50Oh, is that what he's, he's, uh, Frank TJ, TJ, TJ, Mackie, TJ Mackie. Wow. Uh, I, I did not catch that.
Sonny00:52:58You didn't catch it. Oh, see, you're a huge Magnolia fan. I'm surprised. I'm shocked. You didn't, you didn't, uh, didn't light upon that.
JVL00:53:06So Thomas, you did not like it. And are you like Sonny and I, a Rian Johnson hater? Cause I hate that guy.
Guest00:53:15I'm a Ryan Kinney, who's also been on here previously. We, uh, we probably have daily arguments about whether he is shit or great. Uh, Ryan, Ryan loves him. Really? Uh, yeah.
Sonny00:53:30I don't hate, I, the thing is I actually don't hate Ryan Johnson is the thing. I, I, I think Brick is very good. I like Brick a lot. Um, and I think Looper is. It's derivative of three better sci-fi movies, but it's done very well. I mean, it's, it is a, it's a, it's a very, it's a successful derivation of what it's working from. And even like a lot of the stuff in the last Jedi, I like, uh, that movie got wrapped up in so much culture war bullshit, um, that it, it was one thing that's good about that
JVL00:54:04movie. You said there were a lot of things you like about, I like, I like all, I like everything
Sonny00:54:09that has to do with. Uh, Luke Ray and, uh, Kylo Ren. I like that. I like that. I like that. I like that whole thing right up until the problem with this movie is that they don't end it where they should have, which is on a cliffhanger in the throne room where Kylo Ren is like, join me and we'll rule together. They should have just cut the black there. Uh, and instead we have like 30 more minutes where there's fighting and you know, whatever. Um, uh, that's, that's all, that's all very dumb and bad. Uh, I, I liked everything up to the, I, I like the idea. I like the vision of Luke Skywalker is this like super depressed hermit Jedi who wants nothing to do with the world, uh, living, living off on his own, drinking his alien cow milk, wanting to be left, left, let be.
JVL00:54:59Boo, boo, boo, boo.
Guest00:55:03So can I, can I return to glass onions for a moment? Yes, please. So JVL, you mentioned, you mentioned that the mystery. Is a thin, uh, that is, I, I didn't find, I think there are a lot of people would argue that the mystery isn't the point of this movie. It's something else, whatever that is, which is a fun point about the murder mystery. Uh, but the thing about the mystery being thin is that Daniel Craig's character, he doesn't, he doesn't have all that much to do. I feel like it's, I mean, he, I would like him to actually have to do some work, put some legwork in to try to solve something. Uh, and whatever. Whatever legwork happens is either in a little bit in the second half of the screen when they searched the rooms and whatever they do, or it's off screen or something. I don't know. I found, I would like to see more, more Benoit Blanc actually doing detective stuff in some
JVL00:55:54way. Yeah.
Sonny00:55:56There's almost none of that. Well, it's all left up to the Janelle Monae character who like, we already know something has happened since she's there. And like, I don't know.
JVL00:56:09But don't worry. Cause we're going to get 18 more of these movies because studios are just going to hand Rian Johnson more money. Oh, you know, that's the thing. Maybe it's not that I dislike Rian Johnson. Maybe it's that I resent him because I don't understand. I do. I resent his success.
Sonny00:56:29You are, you were like, I was reading, I was reading a letterbox review of, uh, Damien Chazelle's Babylon, uh, which is three hour owed to early Hollywood excess. Love letter to the movies. It's also a hate letter to Hollywood, whatever. Um, and the, in the, the last like two lines of this review are, I can't pay my rent and yet Hollywood has opened its checkbook to this fraud. And I'm like, well, that kind of negates like everything else that you've said in the rest of this, this review because it's, it's just pure, pure jealousy and, and, and resent.
JVL00:57:01I'm not saying that that is you necessarily JBL, it just, you know, so my, my resentment is more that Hollywood is handing ungodly sums of money to somebody who hates them. One, two produces mediocre works and three, like, isn't, isn't making them that much money. Well, I mean, this is compared to like, you know, compared to Jason Blum, right? I mean, Hollywood wants to open up its checks book. Jason Blum is worth a thousand, but is it the thing with like Netflix that we, we don't,
Guest00:57:46we don't know their calculation.
Sonny00:57:48That's the thing. That's the thing with Netflix. Is that like, I don't know what success looks like for a movie like this for Netflix because Netflix is Netflix puts out these numbers about hours watch. And that is not actually the most important metric for them. That doesn't, that doesn't actually matter that much. What matters for them is churn rate. What matters for them? What matters for them is keeping the number of subscribers that they have from canceling their subscription for a month. That's the thing that they care about the most. And so if this kept 5 million people on the service, let's just say, um, let's say it led to a net, a net, a net 4 million, you know, uh, number of users kept at a, at a average number of them staying on for an extra three months. You know what? I, that's like, uh, 12 million months of memberships at, you know, $15. Like, I don't know how these, I don't know. I don't know what their calculations are on this sort of thing. At the entertainment strategy guy always says a hit. All that matters is hits, hits, hits matter. And if you, if you have hits that keeps people on the service. So you want to have hits. And I understand that to a certain extent. Um, but I, I simply don't understand the calculus from their point of view when they're spending again, $260 million. On this movie, which would pay for 10 seasons of a TV of TV shows, they could get, they could get a hundred hours of content, uh, for that sort of, that sort of money, and instead they're spending it on two and a half hours, maybe it makes sense because it's big splashy thing. Knives out is the rarest of Hollywood commodities. It is a franchise that hit the open market. That never happens. It never, ever happens. You never have a successful franchise hit. Hit the open market. And in a, in a certain re in a certain respect, it clearly paid off for them. This has done huge hours. Watched people are, people are, they, I was skeptical after the first weekend numbers, which were kind of soft. I think it did like 84 million hours watched or something like that. But because it came out at Christmas time, lots of people were home. It's up to 280 million, whatever. I don't know. So like, if that is the metric that they're going on, it's clearly a hit. If. The metric is something more esoteric that we don't know the answer to, which is retention rates and all that. Well, I, I, who can judge, who can judge.
Guest01:00:16Are you guys, I don't know, JVL, you watched it once. Are you going to watch it again?
JVL01:00:22Are you fucking kidding me? No, no, I will not be watching it again. Will you be?
Guest01:00:32I watched it. I watched it once before Christmas and then when you guys said, oh, we're, we're going to talk about it this week, I was like, oh fuck, I need to watch it again. Uh, and so I, I watched it twice.
JVL01:00:44You know, I, I don't feel bad about it because my, my dislike and resentment of Rian Johnson is making me sound more negative about Glass Onion than I really was, uh, when, what I was was mostly was disappointed in the second half of the film, because I thought the first half was funny and enjoyable in its own breezy way.
Guest01:01:05The character gallery is great. And like, I think the performances are, are quite good.
JVL01:01:10And you know, I, I, I liked much of it. Yeah.
Sonny01:01:14I mean, that's the thing is that like, it is not, it is not an, it's fine. It's fine. I'm sure it's fine. The, it is not an unpleasant watch. I don't regret having watched it. I, I do, I do find it annoying. I find the whole thing annoying. I find it, I find it's again, it's unearned sense of superior already annoying. I find it's, uh, I find the structure of it annoying. I find lots of different, but it is, it's an entertaining, I will say that I, I did rewatch the, uh, the first knives out. Um, because, because my wife had never seen it before. Uh, so we, we watch it and again, I like, I liked it. It's fine. It's, it's, it's, it's funny. It's, you know, again, it's kind of smug and it's, you know, very self-satisfied, but it's entertaining. These movies are entertaining. And I, I don't, I don't begrudge. Ish. Entertaining ish. Yeah.
Guest01:02:14Can I, can I give it a rating? Sure. Uh, I would, uh, I would give it one regular sized person or two Ben Shapiro's.
Sonny01:02:25Ben Shapiro, not a, he was not a fan.
Guest01:02:27Did you guys see his, did you guys see his rant?
Sonny01:02:28No. Ben was not a fan. What was his rant? He, on Twitter, he just, he just went, he went to town on it. He, he, and he, the things he was saying. The things he was saying weren't wrong exact, I mean, they like it, it, it, it, it does not work as a murder mystery as a murder mystery. It is not a, a successful complaint. It's not really a successful movie. Um, but then you get into a whole like, wow, he's deconstructing blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, I remember somebody said once that to really make a good parody of a genre, you have to love the genre. So if you, if you want to make a, if you want to make a movie that's as good as blazing saddles, you actually have to like really love Westerns, right. Or whatever. Um, and I think to really appreciate similarly a good parody or, you know, or critique or breakdown or whatever, you have to really love the thing in question.
JVL01:03:19And I don't, I just don't care enough about, I, I gotta say this about, about Rian Johnson and this idea that deconstruction is not the same as self-satisfied condescension.
Sonny01:03:35Condescension is different from deconstruction.
JVL01:03:40Yeah. And, you know, part of the reason I disliked his Star Wars movie so much was that that was, that was not deconstruction of Star Wars and the Star Wars universe. It was condescension. And that's what this feels like a little bit towards the, the mystery genre. Maybe I'm being too sensitive because I really like mysteries, uh, especially British mysteries, but whatever. Yeah. Show's going along. I don't want to belabor this anymore.
Sonny01:04:06Yeah. You're about to pass out. Uh, all right.
JVL01:04:09Uh, Thomas has to like go to work after, uh, Ingrid gets dressed, go to work. Ingrid's got to get dressed too, right? Yeah. If you tilt the camera, the camera, can we see her in bed behind you or no, no, it, it,
Guest01:04:22it stays like this. Um, uh, I did, I do it. I, I, I will mention this. I hardly, I hardly listened to podcasts anymore. Uh, but then, uh, I do listen to one. Uh, Sonny would love it. It's like a four hour episode each week. It's about soccer. Ooh. Uh, it's great. Uh, but, um, no. And so, so there was this one, one girl who listens to podcasts, uh, and it seems like every woman out there, if they listened to podcasts, they listened to these true crime
JVL01:04:55shows.
Guest01:04:56Yeah. Mm. Uh, and, uh, I, I honestly, I'm not sure, I'm not sure I understand the allure of it, uh, at all. But anyway, so I am, I am plowing through one of these right now, and, uh, it's, uh, a podcast, uh, uh, and I, I still don't get, it's called, uh, the thing about Pam.
Sonny01:05:19Have you, I don't know, I don't understand how they find them.
Guest01:05:27It's like this NBC true crime show about some random murder somewhere in Lincoln County, Missouri. Uh, I, I have no idea, but if it, uh, I mean the, the things that we do for sex, I mean, love, uh, it's great.
Sonny01:05:41Well, I will say, I just, I just did a whole bit on like how you have to love a thing to appreciate a deconstruction of it. And that's not really true at all because I love only murders in the building, which is a deconstruction of the true crime podcast genre, which is very entertaining. Uh, but that's also with Steve Martin and what's Martin short. There we go. Uh, so of course it's good. Uh, that's, that's all the time we're giving to this week's show. If you've got questions, should be line on Twitter. I'm always there.
JVL01:06:11Um, uh, and I hope you more weeks till we get our permanent gas toast with, I'm waving
Sonny01:06:20a little flag. Um, all right. That is, that is, that is it for this week's show. Uh, we'll see you guys next week. Uh, any, any I'll take stuff. I'm drinking a diet Dr. Pepper by the way. That's, that's what I'm doing. Do you have Thomas? Do you have a, do you have a fancy Swedish coffee there, Thomas?
Guest01:06:43Uh, I, I was actually drinking tea. Are you a tea drinker and not a coffee drinker? Uh, I am, I am both, uh, but, uh, I've, I've realized, so I picked up my coffee drink, uh, coffee drinking at, uh, my new job and I've realized that I'm sleeping worse in the evening. So I think that I'm overdoing it. Uh, so I'm gonna try to scale back actually.
Sonny01:07:07Yeah. I had to go from, I had to go from like 12 cups a day to, but down to 10, uh, recently cause I was just, it was, it was bad times.
Guest01:07:15Yeah. I, I don't know what it's like in the US, uh, but, uh, in Sweden, coffee is approaching like the price of gold.
Sonny01:07:23It has gotten, it has gotten more expensive here. Uh, I mean, I just drink like, I just drink shit Folgers coffee, you know?
Guest01:07:33Yeah.
Sonny01:07:34Like I just, I just drank like, I just drank like the micro crystal, you know, uh, whatever asbestos that they've got in the grocery store. Um, and it, it's gone from like, you know, $9 a container to like 12 for the same price. I was like, this is, it's outrageous. We need to conquer some coffee fields.
JVL01:07:58I'm sure.
Guest01:07:59I will, I will, I will mention, uh, before we go. We, we've had a short break, but SSEU podcast returned yesterday with a new episode with my favorite podcast. I'm not on it. I'm not on it, but the other two idiots and, and Ben, uh, are on it.
JVL01:08:16So, uh, you know, while we were in the middle of taping this, Ryan texted me and said, did Thomas wake up on time?
Sonny01:08:21I'm sure it's fine.
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