#207. 'Gran Turismo'
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The main event is Gran Turismo, which the hosts agree is really a generic sports movie wearing a video-game-movie costume — Sonny compares its beat-for-beat structure to Rudy or Hoosiers, JVL says it's so formulaic it's practically a self-parody of the genre (à la Walk Hard), and Mike, despite finding the opening cheesy, admits he got swept up once David Harbour's gruff mentor starts believing in the hero, calling out strong performances from Harbour and Djimon Hounsou as the doubting dad; his and Sonny's audiences (Sonny's on inflated National Cinema Day $4-ticket numbers) reportedly clapped and cheered, while JVL's IMAX crowd was visibly on their phones and he found the racing scenes weightless, arguing the film has nothing to say about how sim racing actually changed the sport and unfavorably comparing it to Ford v Ferrari. Sonny also flags the movie's real box-office chicanery (padding the "weekend" gross with days of promo-screening revenue to fraudulently claim number one over Barbie) and its shameless lifting of the Heat end-title needle-drop, and notes historical liberties from the true story, including that Jann Mardenborough wasn't the first GT Academy grad to race and that his fatal crash actually happened well after the Le Mans finish depicted as the climax. The episode opens with a long stretch of banter: JVL's year-long obsession with a giant vinyl poster for the late Chadwick Boseman's 21 Bridges still hanging on his AMC's exterior, which the trio deduce is explained by distributor STX going into limbo with no replacement ad to put up; Sonny's rant about Amazon's search function tricking him into buying knockoff "Field Books" instead of his preferred Field Notes notebooks; a shared gripe about Google search and ad-tier streaming getting worse; and Mike's saga of an HVAC condensate line mysteriously draining into his home's sewer stack. They close with some old-school arcade and console racing-game nostalgia (Cruising USA, Daytona, Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Off Road, Mario Kart).
From the show notes
A very generic sports movie. Plus: an AMC mystery asked and answered, we think.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00I think you're going to play a stupid video game about cars and you're going to become a race car driver.
Mike00:00:05All I ever wanted to do is be a racer. I'm doing it.
Guest00:00:10The ten of you are the best Gran Turismo players in the world. Now is your chance to race real cars. This isn't safe. It's not gonna work. The guys who race are elite athletes. Your kids are scrawny little gamer kids. That's where you come in.
Mike00:00:30Welcome to the Sub-Beacon podcast. I'm your co-host Mike Warren and joining me as always are my two co-hosts who know that champagne is for the podium. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at subbeacon.com. You can become a patron there. Get our episodes. The moment that they. Post on Friday mornings, get access to those bonus episodes that we occasionally post. You can comment, be a part of the greater Sub-Beacon community. We have a lot of fun over there and sometimes we even jump into the comments. That's subbeacon.com. Join us over there. We're going to be talking about Gran Turismo later in the show. But first, let's see what's going on in everybody's world. JVL. Well, what's happening, brother?
JVL00:01:32So I, I, uh, you know, I have something that's been bugging me for a while and I finally, I'm just going to bring it to you too. And we can talk about it. Uh, yeah, work it out. Work. My AMC is a standalone building on the ring road surrounding a shopping mall. So I'm trying to give you guys like a sense of the, you know, unlike the, in Woodbridge, the, the AMC of the
?00:01:59potential.
JVL00:02:00Atomic mills mall, which is built into the mall, right? This is, this is its own thing. You know, it does. It's a standalone building and it has on the building five. I don't know what to call these sunny. I'm sure there is an industry term for them. Very, very large vinyl, uh, one sheets, but a one sheet poster that is made of vinyl for the exterior of a building. And that is approximately like 25 by 50. So you, you get, I'm saying like very, very large, almost like a billboard, but they're like one sheets. Okay. And I have been trying for the last year to understand the rhyme and or reason for which movies are displayed. Uh, one of them is almost always a low budget horror movie. Fine. One of them for a long while was the avatar movie. Fine. I saw them put up an ad for the, the put up one of these things. I actually saw them swapping out one and putting another one up. They use a big cherry picker to do it. Uh, and they put it up for guardians of the galaxy volume two, two weeks after guardians of the galaxy volume two came out. But one of these, one of these, again, there's only five spaces for them on the building. Right. And since I moved here a year ago, one of them has been for Chad. When? Uh, both Chad, Chad, Chad Bozeman's 21 bridges.
Sonny00:03:34Sure.
JVL00:03:35Which I believe came out like four years ago, maybe five years ago.
Sonny00:03:39Come out before the pandemic came out before the pandemic. Yeah. So that was a nine 2019, I think. Yeah.
JVL00:03:45So this is a gigantic ad taking up 20% of the available ad space on the building for a movie. That's been gone for so long that the star of it is no longer with us. All right. Peace. And the way in which these things sort of come and go with, again, absolutely no regard to the schedule of movies as they come out. Can I? It mystifies me and bothers me. And part of me is going to like buttonhole the general manager of this theater at some point and just say, hey, hey, Joey, you explain to me what's going on. And I'm sure the answer is going to be that he's being paid. He's being given some sort of consideration.
Sonny00:04:25Well, I would I would assume so. But can can I ask you to explain once again exactly what? So they're they're like they're big, giant one sheet posters that are like kind of like banners almost that hang from the side of the building. Is that?
JVL00:04:42Yeah, they are. They are. You know, they have like grommets, very large grommets on them, you know, built because they're made of vinyl. And those grommets have like permanent anchors on the building. And so, you know, again, it's like it's like a billboard, but a billboard that, you know, goes vertically in in portrait mode. Because, again, it's it's basically the one sheet poster. Yeah, they're they're modified outside of the exterior of the building and are the size of the building.
Mike00:05:09They're enormous to draw people in who want to see the latest low budget horror movie. Oh, this AMC has it.
JVL00:05:15This AMC, if you wanted to see the whatever the the horror movie that had like a rosary as the one sheet. Now we've got that. If you wanted to see they still got one for Quantumania on the side of the building.
Sonny00:05:28I would assume. So I would. I would assume it just has to do with the ad. I would assume that somebody paid AMC some. So Disney or whoever paid AMC some amount of money to have these things posted on the side of the building that that is almost certainly what it was.
JVL00:05:48I assume so. Correct.
Sonny00:05:50The 21 bridges thing is interesting. Part of me wonders if they're just leaving it up as a tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who has unexpectedly passed, if they think that like there will be a backlash. If they take down the the long what's the statute of limitations? How long do you have to keep that up there after his untimely? He just we just celebrate or well, you know, marked the third anniversary of his passing. I think was like this this week, which is like again, that that is one of the most shocking actor deaths I can remember and not because it would be it would have been one thing if he had died in like a car wreck or something to be like, oh, OK, you know, but like the fact that he died of cancer. Like, basically in the midst of making all of these other movies, I like it was shocking.
JVL00:06:35Twenty One Bridges was released in 2019.
Sonny00:06:37Yeah. So that's four years ago that came out. I the only the only reason I could believe I could the I mean, I guess the other thing is maybe the studio that paid for that space. I would assume it's what was that released by? I don't know who released that. I know it was made by Abgo. I'll look. But maybe maybe the studio that paid. For that space, that like quadrant of the front of the building has not produced another one of those giant vinyl posters.
JVL00:07:06In the meantime, like, I would assume they and that's their one of them is Paramount. One is Disney.
Sonny00:07:13See, but but if it was Paramount, I would assume that, like, you would put like, oh, wait, I'm saying are you? Yeah, yeah.
JVL00:07:20Like, yeah, yeah. You're saying each of these is to one of the Sony has one, right? So I would assume that might be it.
Sonny00:07:27Maybe maybe like the studio just has not produced. Another one. So like the space that goes to whatever, whoever owns that space again, I can't even remember who released that that film, but I'm looking on IMDb to try to figure this out. I know it's produced by the Russo brothers.
JVL00:07:44Would it be crazy for me to the next time I'm in the theater without a time crunch, ask to see the manager for the sole purpose of saying, Hey, I'm just really that doesn't work.
Sonny00:07:55In fact, you as a weirdo, yes, but it's still interesting enough to find out. It's it's fine.
Mike00:08:00You're a journalist JVL, you ask questions and don't tell them you're a journalist though,
Sonny00:08:05because then they'll don't tell them that then they'll have to, they'll have to be like, oh, you gotta call AMC corporate and we gotta, we'll figure out somebody you can talk to. But no, I, I would assume if I, again, just from the description, from what you are describing, I would assume that that is owned. That space is owned, you know, in air quotes here by a studio that has yet to produce another
Mike00:08:24giant vinyl poster to replace the one, which would make sense because what happened after 2019 pandemic they're not, yeah, it's yeah. Um, this puts me in mind of actually an, an article that, uh, one of my colleagues, uh, at the dispatch sent around this morning, uh, which is a, some guy. I don't know who he is. I don't know if he's why, how he has all this time on his hands. I don't think he's a journalist, uh, but he has a sort of journalistic, uh, uh, impulse clearly. Um, and it's about a pedestrian bridge.
JVL00:08:56Oh my gosh. That's so funny. I just wrote about that. Yeah. Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah. It's about the interstate bridge. And well, for our listeners, this guy, this guy went insane.
Mike00:09:05It went insane about, but it's, it is, the question is he's there's a pedestrian bridge over the interstate in, in, uh, in Minneapolis that he doesn't understand why it's there or why it was put there. And he goes down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what, for what purpose does
JVL00:09:21this, was this put up? He writes like 7,000 words on his detective. It's amazing.
Mike00:09:27It's insane. And, and I love it. And, uh, it's, it's terrific. And, and you know, that's all I'm saying is if whatever you do to find this out, you won't be as crazy as that guy.
JVL00:09:38It won't be as great. So here's, so, uh, the us distribution on it was STX.
Sonny00:09:43Did they go out? That, that would have 100% explain it because STX basically, uh, STX got, I think absorbed by somebody, but they were in receivership for a while. Uh, so like STX has, I think not really released any movies in the last. Like STX. So STX, uh, this is what happened where the operation fortune ruse to Gare, the Guy Ritchie movie. That was an STX film that it, it wound up in limbo because there were, there was a distribution issue because STX basically ceased to exist. Not exactly, but like, and then eventually it got picked up by somebody that got a token distribution and then it got put on VOD, but that actually 100% explains it. That that is a space that STX has purchased and they have, they've got nothing else to replace it there. So now, now AMC is probably half-heartedly, I'm sure trying to find somebody else to take that spot.
JVL00:10:34To buy that spot.
Sonny00:10:35Right. We should buy it for the Sub-Beacon. JVL's flagship theater, home of the Sub-Beacon. We should ask how much it would cost. That's what you should ask the, that's what you should ask the, the general manager. So GM, uh, how much would it cost to buy, to buy this? We could get a celebrity endorser.
JVL00:10:58Expenses. I wonder if we could cover our expenses. Brilliant.
Sonny00:11:01We could, uh, we could get, we could get, we could hire, uh, you know, like, uh, I don't even know who would we, we would hire to some kind of agent or something.
Mike00:11:12So I, I love how, I love how you took this mystery Sonny and found a way to, we solved
JVL00:11:16it right here. I don't even need to speak to another human being that perfect. The best kind of journalism.
Mike00:11:21All right. Um, all right. Well, Sonny, what's, uh, what's going on with you?
Sonny00:11:24Um, can I complain about Amazon for a little bit?
JVL00:11:28Because I.
Sonny00:11:28I like, I like Amazon a lot. I use Amazon for everything. Um, and there, the, the, the search function on Amazon has gotten very, very bad, um, uh, to the extent that when I am looking for a specific thing, I will frequently Google the thing I am looking for with like, I'll look for like equalizer, 4k Amazon on Google and, and then click the shopping link that comes up. Um, and I, I bring this up. Cause I was just, you guys may have noticed, I was just opening, uh, up some, some field notes. I, I like these little, these little, uh, notebooks, so I can jot down notes during the show, um, to, you know, mark where we, where we have a pause or a delay or whatever. Um, and, uh, I go through them pretty quickly. I go through, I go through like one, every, every three or four weeks. Um, so, uh, but, uh, the, the reason this comes up is because I, I buy field notes specifically the brand. I buy field notes for a very explicit reason. They're made in America. I, I like the, yeah, I like to support American jobs and manufacturing, whatever. Um, uh, and, and I do this because my wife works for the Alliance for American Manufacturing. This is a, it's a, it's a, it's a family thing. So one day she, uh, like sees me writing in one of my little notebooks and comes up to me and, and starts, she's like, stop buying those. It's like, stop, stop buying these. These are made in America. I'm only buying them because you.
Mike00:12:54Stop buying from America.
Sonny00:12:55I only buy these because you, you, because, because you. Why do you hate America?
JVL00:12:59Call me back.
Sonny00:13:00Why did you, why did you, why I, why do I have to stop buying these now? She's like, no, no, those aren't field notes. Those that's a field book. And I looked at the cover and yes, it sure enough, it was a, it was called a field book. And what has happened is a Chinese manufacturer has created an identical product called field books instead of field notes.
Mike00:13:19It's the lepon of.
Sonny00:13:20It's the lepon of notebooks. And, and as, and, and so when I searched, when I searched field notes on Amazon field books was the first thing that came up. I didn't realize it was a sponsored result. So for like months I was buying these things, not, not realizing, you know, what I had, what I had done. Uh, and it's just, it's, it's, it's very indicative of the, the overall decline of the search function on Amazon, which again has just like cratered in usability. Uh, like I think there, there are just, you know, rafts, oceans of, of knockoff merchandise. Like crap. Question.
JVL00:14:00Yeah. Up until the lovely Beth said this to you, were you happy with your
Sonny00:14:05They're, they're identical. They're identical. They're, they're exactly the same.
JVL00:14:08And are the field notes more expensive than the field of the book? Yes, of course. Of course. So really what Lord Bezos was doing was trying to look out for your family.
Sonny00:14:15Trying to save me money. And I appreciate it. And protect you. While I appreciate that, that's not what I was not trying to save money. I was trying, I was purchasing something very explicitly that was slightly more expensive for ideological. Reasons.
Mike00:14:28There's more than just monetary value.
Sonny00:14:31Yes. When you're talking about value. So I like, again, it's just like, it's, it's a little thing. It's a anyway, long story short, uh, uh, the lovely Beth bought me a, like a box of field notes that is like, there's like 50 notebooks in there. So I'm not gonna run out for a long time. I'm not gonna be tricked into buying any more field books.
JVL00:14:51You know, I, another field books. I wonder if you also saw this piece. Michael, uh, I think it was Charlie Wartzel wrote about how wire cutter has basically become unusable. And this is another, and I have been noticing that wire cutter is not as good as it used
Mike00:15:10to be. But you know what? I think Google is not as good as it used to be. And it, uh, my wife and I were talking about how Google is, unless you know exactly what you're looking for, it is essentially, uh, useless in terms of. Of actually searching through a different way, like as a discovery mechanism, as a discovery that that's right. In terms of surfacing new things that you haven't seen before that are not ads that are not somehow being, you know, SEO out the was it like, it's just, I think just lost
JVL00:15:45the fight against the SEO optimizer, like spam content farms.
Sonny00:15:50But they, but they're also, they're also totally focused on advertising, right? Like one of the reasons Google is not as useful now is because they prioritize. Advertising. You gotta go through, like, you have to be paying very specific attention to what is an ad and what is not one example on this one example on this. I Googled my kids, uh, dentist the other day, I needed to call them about a billing question. Um, and, uh, I knew the name, I knew the name, I knew, you know, uh, where it's located. So I like Google it and I just hit, I, I, I called the first number that came up on Google. Right. Just called it. Mm-hmm and I start talking to people. And, and, you know, they say, uh, children's dentistry, blah, blah. I'm like, Hey, I, I have a question about, uh, my kids billing, you know, what's, what's going on here. Um, and they're like, okay, what's the name? I gave him the name. What's the birth birthday to give him the birthday. They're like, your child isn't, uh, isn't, uh, patient here and I'm like, oh, have they
JVL00:16:42bought the search results to advertise their practice. I'm like, what are you talking about?
Sonny00:16:46I, I, I have a bill from you right here. And she's like, what's the name on the bill? I said, I said the name of my kid's dentist. They're like, oh no, we're inst inst I, I, these aren't the actual names, but instead of children's dentistry of north Dallas, we're north Dallas children's dentistry. And I went back. I was like, oh, okay. Oh, sorry. Sorry to bother you. I didn't mean to bother you. I hung up and I went back and I looked at the webpage again. And sure enough, the first result was an ad was an ad that I had clicked on cuz I wasn't paying explicit attention to the order of the, the words that create the dental.
Mike00:17:17And I was just like, people's front of Judea or Judy and it's just, it's just very, very
Sonny00:17:21frustrating. Everything is getting worse.
JVL00:17:23Everything's getting, everything is getting worse. If Google offered you the ability to pay some monthly fee and let's pretend that you get to name what the monthly fee is. Maybe it's 99 cents. Maybe it's 1999. I don't know. Mm-hmm but for them to take out all the contextual ads and just give you their best search results only, would you pay it? And if so, what is the dollar level that you would say? Yeah, that's worth it to me.
Sonny00:17:52Boy, I don't know. I don't know that. I don't know that I would.
JVL00:17:55Um, you could call it Google plus, oh, wait, I already tried that one.
Sonny00:18:00Uh, I don't, you know, that's a good question. I don't know that I would, because I just, I just have stopped using asking to use their
JVL00:18:07search function for free.
Sonny00:18:08I have stopped using Google for lots of things. Now I, I do pay, I pay Google for other stuff. Like I pay for more Gmail space. I finally broke down and like, so did I just did that like last week I had to, I, I finally had to like get the a hundred gigabyte plan or whatever, because I was, I was tired of every three months.
JVL00:18:24Having to like, and I pay for YouTube because I fucking hate YouTube ads.
Sonny00:18:27Do you? All right. So do you pay for YouTube premium or just YouTube premium?
JVL00:18:32The YouTube premium YouTube red is what they used to call it. Yeah. And I never watch an ad on YouTube.
Sonny00:18:37Yeah. I, I, if you get YouTube TV, does that include YouTube premium?
JVL00:18:41No, I don't know. YouTube TV is very expensive. YouTube TV.
Sonny00:18:45YouTube TV is basically cable.
JVL00:18:46Yes.
Sonny00:18:47Correct. Basically. Yes. I'm actually, I'm very, I'm very strongly considering, uh, getting rid of my cable and getting YouTube TV, uh, in part because they've got, you know, the Sunday ticket. Um, but also because I feel like in the next year or so, CNN is going to come to max. Um, and at that point, at that point I am simply not going to need, uh, uh, cable anymore. I just, I just won't need it. Um, I'll get it. I'll get an antenna for, uh, you know, the three football games a week.
JVL00:19:17Right. You might be able to save a dollar 50 a month getting rid of cable.
Sonny00:19:23Well, nobody you like, if, if I got, if I got rid of cable and YouTube TV, if it was just like the various streamers that I already pay for, I mean, that's, that's like, you know, that's like, that's like $80 a month right there because I'm paying for everything right now. I'm just, I like, I, I do when I do my taxes, uh, you know, three weeks before they're due in April every year, I do, I like sit down and I, I, I, because these are legitimate business expenses, I total up how much money I'm spending on cable and streaming and everything else. And it's, it's an astronomical sum. It is a ridiculous amount of money.
JVL00:19:58As you said on an episode of the Bulwark goes to Hollywood recently, uh, the future is just like the old cable, but with less content, less choice and more expensive.
Sonny00:20:10Yeah.
JVL00:20:11And as you can't skip on the ads are all coming, right? The ads are at least when you had DVR at the late stages of, of cable, you could skip through the ads, but we are rapidly approaching a point where. The mature streaming businesses are all going to realize that they've got to herd the cattle into ad tiers, no matter what. And they will make the, the neon ad tiers so prohibitively expensive that you'd have to be Jeff Bezos to afford them.
Mike00:20:36By the way, have you noticed, and I've noticed this chiefly on Hulu, which is what we have without, we have with ads, we don't pay for the ad free, um, that it is the, the ads are louder than, than the program.
JVL00:20:50I pay for just like a nickel, just like.
Sonny00:20:52Exactly. Exactly. I pay for no ads. I, I don't.
Mike00:20:56We probably should.
Sonny00:20:57I like, I watch so much Hulu is the one channel that I, I pay for no ads and it's worth it because I watch a lot of stuff on Hulu.
Mike00:21:03I like the FX hub on Hulu is all the FX stuff, the Bayer, the, uh, only murders in the only
Sonny00:21:08murders in the building is great. Uh, anyway. Uh, but no, that's, that's, I mean, like, again, it's, it's, you know, what the, the absolute golden age of TV was basically like 2006 to 2010 or so. The T the pressure from TiVo forced all the DV, uh, the cable companies to offer DVR packages. Then you could record everything fast forward through the commercials, uh, watch it either later that night or the next day, don't have to sit through any commercials, but now we're gonna be in a situation where you're, you end up paying probably more for less stuff. You're gonna get commercials. You can't skip. It's a, it's like, again, everything is getting worse. Every everything is getting worse. Things were better when I was younger.
JVL00:21:51Do you remember? Do you remember when TVs started offering a feature set that would normalize the volume of commercials and we were like, Ooh, this is like 1998 maybe the old like Sony Trinitrons and things like that. You can now, they, those broadcast networks think they're putting one over on us and by making the commercials louder, but our Sony Trinitron will now make them the same volume. That's where we're headed back to. That's great. Worse. It's all great. Yeah.
Mike00:22:24Michael, how are you buddy? Me? Oh, just grand. Um, just paid an HVAC guy to come fix my issue that I was talking about last week.
JVL00:22:35We mentioned this last week. And how did it, uh, and does he able to find where the condenser line came out or?
Mike00:22:43Yes. Where was it? So, so interestingly, a commenter@subbeacon.com sign up@subbeacon.com, uh, actually hit the nail on the head, or maybe it was on Twitter. I think somebody may have replied to me on Twitter about this, who suggested that maybe the condensate line was draining into the main sewer stack in my house. And I thought, I think I replied, I said, I can't beat up, up to code turns out it is doing that. I don't know if it's up to code, but it is. That is exactly what's going on. So to, to paint the picture, I think as I explained last week, the condensate line sort of, uh, it comes. It comes out of the unit. It, uh, it is, uh, there's an access point, you know, in the PVC that I can access and then it goes down. And then there's actually another PVC pipe that comes down from the drainage of our humidifier that we run in the winter, the whole house humidifier. And that is where the wa the, the, the, the water was coming out of and dripping down the PVC and getting out of the floor. Um, and so. But the clog was somewhere that, and then, and then it kind of circles around, it banks around the side and then it just goes straight down into the slab. And so I was like, I don't know where this thing drains. Um, my guess was that it kind of go, went in the direction of my backyard and was somehow buried under mulch turns out not to be the case. Um, and he confirmed this because once he flushed it and cleaned it out, he could see he like poured five gallons of water down at the access point to, you know, to make sure it was all. Uh, going through and he could go from my, where the HVAC system is into the laundry room, which is on kind of the other side of the, of the, uh, basement, which is where our hot water heater is, which is where our floor drain is. And he could see and hear the water going from the, in the floor drain. He could like see it, uh, flowing. And then that went directly to our, to our stack. So that's the answer he, he says it's very unusual, but that seems to be. What's going on. Um, his suggestion was to essentially, uh, use bleach. I think you could also use vinegar, but his suggestion was bleach. And that's what he did, um, twice a year and just pour it down there, pour some hot water down there. And that will clear it, you know, do it at the beginning of the hot season before you turn on the AC. And then at the end of the hot season, you know, in a couple of weeks when we turn off the AC, so not very exciting cost me. Um, too much money for him to tell me that that's actually, that that's actually really
Sonny00:25:23interesting. And now it, it is calling to my, so when I got my basement remodeled in Virginia before we left Virginia, uh, and when, when the, when the guy who was doing the, you know, when the, when the plumber is out there doing, installing new lines, because we were putting a shower down there, um, he found, he found a pipe that was connected to nothing and ran, ran out of the house and he was like, what is this? I was like, I don't know. Don't mess with it. But I bet it was exactly that I bet it was exactly that there was, it was connected to
Mike00:25:55that. Where was your HVAC unit Sonny?
Sonny00:25:57Well, the HVAC unit, I mean, the HVAC unit was, I mean, it was in the basement, uh, down like, so, you know, it was in the, I, I don't know exactly how far that was probably 50 feet, something like that.
Mike00:26:10Yeah. So it probably ran the PVC all the way out there and just stuck it out of the house. And then it, cause you, I remember you have like a, you had like a hill. Yep. From the backyard. So they would just pour out there. Yeah. Perfect.
JVL00:26:22Yeah. That's what they should do. Mike, if you had known that this was the setup, could you have fixed it on your own or would you still have needed to call in the professionals?
Mike00:26:31I was this close to doing exactly what he did, except what he did, which I don't think I could have done was he used nitrogen to blow it out. So I was using my shop vac and you know, I really do think I needed a professional. But now I don't think I do to do the regular cleaning, you know, um, of course he, he pointed out all of these additional things. He's like, oh, you're going to want to consider getting your fan cleaned and, um, the outdoor, uh, uh, unit, uh, chemically cleaned, and that's going to cost, you know, probably around $800. Um, but it's going to keep your condenser alive for longer. Oh, and by the way, this unit is from 2002 and the refrigerant that it uses, they don't make anymore. So it's running really well, but if your refrigerant ever leaks out of it, or if there's some kind of mechanical failure, you're going to have to replace the whole thing. So that's great. But it's a 21 year old system, so what do you think of that JVL?
JVL00:27:34I just think that this, uh, this house talk, this old house version of the sub beacon is really, I don't know. I don't know what the people think of it.
Mike00:27:44It has people pining for the days of Vic. I think that's what. That's what people are more mulch talk, uh, but other than that, no, things are fine. I think we should just move on to talking about the movie of the week, which is quick box office.
JVL00:28:00Talk the number one movie of the past week, not of the past three days, the past five days. Sorry.
Mike00:28:08No. Gran Turismo. Yeah. Right.
Sonny00:28:12Should we talk about Gran Turismo? Gran Turismo is number one at the box office. On the box office mojo charts, because what has happened with this movie is remember you folks may remember that they push Gran Turismo back a couple of weeks and that part partly that was strike related, but the other thing they were doing is running a bunch of promo screenings. They were running promo screenings, like basically paid for paid previews, um, that people could go to, uh, for, for a couple of weeks and they rolled all that money into Friday. What? They rolled all that money into Friday and then counted that five weeks worth of these. So they, they rolled an extra three or four. It's hard to say exactly how much my understanding is that's between three and $5 million into that. Uh, which then allowed them to say they were the number one movie at the box office. And the people at Warner brothers were furious about this. The people at Warner brothers were like, Barbie should be number one again. Nobody should be putting up with us. And it was, it was very interesting to see which, uh, which of the various trade out, uh, outlets reported on this, which way. So like. The headline, it kind of explained it, uh, and said, you know, this is what's going on. Um, but you know, still, still put Gran Turismo at number one, uh, Sean McNulty at the ankler. Uh, I like their, I read their, I read his morning newsletter, his morning roundup newsletter every day. Cause it's great. Uh, but he, uh, he put Gran Turismo number two after, after Barbie, because he did not, he did not count those, uh, previous training. So it was, it was kind of interesting to see how that all worked out. I mean, it was, it's, it's look. We have gotten to a point where we, we describe the weekend grosses and include like an entire day's worth of Thursday screenings. And it's right. It's vaguely ridiculous. Um, I find this to be much more, I find this to be much more absurd than like the, you know, the constant calls for, oh, you, well, you gotta take inflation into account. Like, okay. Yeah. Kind of, but like this is adding a whole extra day is, is cheating and everybody does it. So like, it's, it's kind of normalized cheating, but, but this is also kind of pathetic.
Mike00:30:14Cause this is a number one week for grand Turismo at $17 million. Yeah.
Sonny00:30:20Well, we're in the doldrums of summer. I mean, this is, this is what happens every year, right? Like it's, it's, it's, it was also a little bit weird because Sunday was national cinema day. I don't know if you guys took advantage of the $4 movie tickets all over, all over the
JVL00:30:33country. See, I went on Sunday, but I used my a list and so I didn't realize that it was going to be a $4 ticket.
Sonny00:30:40Well, I mean, it doesn't matter because you have a list, so it does explain what does
JVL00:30:44explain why my theater was packed and ice. So I saw this Sunday night packed theater, the whole, the whole, the, the parking lot was packed. The, the lobby was hopping when I came in and I thought, geez, I guess grant Turismo has become a surprise hit. And then when on Monday, when I saw the $17 million gross, I thought, wait, this does not compute. And then I, I learned about the Sunday price thing. I was like, oh, right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Sonny00:31:17So when you, when you lower the prices, more people come out when you charge less for something, demand goes up.
Mike00:31:22It's weird. Bingo. Well, what they should have done. They, they need to get that, that a big poster that has the Owen Gleiberman review in front of as many people as possible.
Sonny00:31:31They should put that on the side of the AM side of the building. They should put, they should put the 50 foot tall Owen Gleiberman review of grant Turismo on the side of Sony needs to buy that.
JVL00:31:4150 words per line.
Mike00:31:42And then, and then one of those. One of those like telescopes they use at like, you know, mountain, you know, like get a little
JVL00:31:47extra money and put a quarter in the quarter in so you can read the, you know, exactly.
Mike00:31:50Uh, I saw that at my Alamo by the way, and I actually stopped and read it for an extended period of time. Did you read the whole review?
JVL00:31:57Did it hurt your eyes with that many words per line?
Mike00:31:59I literally stood there and read it for like, like about halfway down. And then I realized a, this was ridiculous, even though it was kind of doing it, like to say that I did it. And then I was like, I'm actually tired of reading this. I can't stand to stand here and read this review anymore. So, uh, so it's so, okay. So anything else, any other box office thoughts before we get into the movie itself? All right, Sonny, Gran Turismo, let's hear a big boy review.
Sonny00:32:28So the thing that's important to understand about Gran Turismo before we start any of this is that it's not a video game movie, despite being named after a video game, despite being produced by Sony brand movie, nah, kind of despite being produced by Sony, despite being, you know, uh, again, It's like, there's, there's a lot of things that suggest to you that this should be a video game movie, not a video game movie. It's a sports movie. This is a sports movie from, from start to finish, just beat to beat 100% of sports movie. It's about, it's about, uh, an outsider underdog who is trained by a disbelieving manager who overcomes all of his obstacles. Then has a setback, then has a triumphant victory at the end where the triumphant victory is a third place finish. We can talk about that in a second, but the, uh, but the, but it's a sports movie. This is just, this is a very beat by beat, generic sports movie. That's all that's happening here. Like JBL says, it is also kind of a brand movie. So it's very funny. Orlando, Orlando Bloom plays, uh, uh, executive at NIS, NIS, NIS, NIS, NIS, NIS, NIS, NIS, NIS, very funny, funny, very funny to hear the correct pronunciation of Nissan and nobody ever once acknowledges that it's Nissan. We all call it Nissan.
JVL00:33:42That's what, that's, that's what everybody calls in America. I just assume this means in America, we call it Nissan.
Sonny00:33:48I don't care. I don't, I don't care.
JVL00:33:50I call it Datsun. Datsun. No, but Nissan calls itself Nissan here. Nissan.
Sonny00:33:55This is Nissan. It's Nissan sales to remember or whatever, uh, or Nissan what's, what's the Nissan tagline at the holidays?
Mike00:34:02Nissan. Uh, I can't remember cause there's the, the December to remember, but I don't think that's Nissan.
JVL00:34:07No, I don't think that's Lexus. Give your wife the ultimate of her dreams.
Sonny00:34:11Uh, all right, I'll offer this while you're, while you're reviewing. All right. So anyway, so, uh, Orlando Bloom plays an executive at Nissan who, uh, convinces his skeptical Japanese board that what they need to do is team up with grand Turismo to do a competition where kids who play the video game can join the Nissan, uh, sports team. Uh, they can become racers for real life instead of just, uh, on the, on the computer. And it really is a, uh, it, it. It, the movie dances very carefully around making any of the Nissan people look villainous. The, the closest we come is that moment where there's a moment where the, the kid who wins the, you know, the, the ultimate race to become the, the racing team, uh, champion Yon, uh, he, he edges out the other kid who's more TV ready, you know, he's better at giving interviews and stuff. And Orlando Bloom's like, maybe we let this other kid win. And David Harbour's like, no, and then they, it just goes on from there. Um, David Harbour plays the, uh, of course. The, uh, the vet who does not believe these kids have what it takes and it's gonna, you're gonna make 'em run until they throw up and he's gonna, you know, the JK Simmons character
JVL00:35:21from whiplash.
Sonny00:35:22Yeah. Kind of. Well, but I, I say more like, but with a heart of gold, yeah. Like Denzel Washington from, you know, remember the training day. Yes. And the equalizer, uh, the, uh, um, no, you know what he is.
JVL00:35:37He's he's he's. I don't know where you're gonna go with this. You started laughing. He's, uh, dodgeball. The, he just passed away. Oh, he's ripped torn. He's ripped torn. Rip torn's character from dodgeball.
Sonny00:35:48Exactly. No, that's basically it. You can dodge a wrench. You can dodge a ball. So anyway, uh, again, I like the, the, the comp, the comp points here are not the super Mario brothers movie or street fighter, right? The comp point is Rudy or Hoosiers or remember the Titans or, or blade. Sure. Well, you described this as a parody of sports parodies.
JVL00:36:09So this is. Yeah. If I could just say this is like watching, uh, any musical biopic after watching walk hard because it is so on, there is, when you say formulaic, Sonny, I think you're underselling how unbelievably mind numbingly formulaic this is because it is, if you were set out to write a parody of these types of movies, you couldn't be more on point than this.
Mike00:36:36Yeah. But it's very earnest. Um, yeah.
Sonny00:36:40I killed somebody. Did it? Did it? Oh, all right. Here's, you know, now I'm over it. So here's, here's my, here's my question for you guys. Did it kill with your audiences? Because with my audience, they were clapping and cheering. They were into it. They were like totally into it and it got an a from cinema score, which I was a little surprised by. I thought it might, you know, be B B plus sort of movie, but it absolutely slayed with my audience. They loved it.
JVL00:37:07Hmm. Not me. This was the, so I saw it on IMAX, so a very large auditorium, mostly full. And this is the first time I can really remember when I saw a whole lot of people on their phones throughout the course of the movie. And my own feelings about this are such that people being on their phones didn't even bother me. Wow. I was just like, kind of like, yeah, no, I get it. I'd be texting somebody to, uh, wow.
Mike00:37:37Okay. Uh, by the way, I'm going to go on a little diversion here, but since somebody brought it up and I said I would effort it, uh, Nissan does not have a Christmas, a November to remember it. No. So there's, this is, uh, there's happy Honda days. There's Toyota thon there's Lexus December to remember there's a, uh, a Mercedes winter event and Chevy red tag sales event, but there is no, I think this is the reason why Nissan is struggling and, uh, in the, and that sort of mid tier Japanese import market is because they don't have a, uh, a Christmas sales tagline. Anyway. Uh, just, uh, just wanting to go there. So, uh, JBL, so you were not a fan of this. I would say that my audience, which consisted of three other people, um, we're not into it. Um, I kind of was though, like I found myself getting swept up in the thing. Give us the bull case for it.
Sonny00:38:35Gran Turismo fever, Mike's got it.
Mike00:38:38Well, okay. So the beginning of the movie, I was so, I couldn't believe how cheesy it was. Like how, as you say, JBL, like on the nose, like hitting all the, the, the beats of that, you know, underdog, uh, you know, sports movie type of thing. Um, and the movie actually father who doesn't believe in him, right?
JVL00:39:03Like all those around like Zoolander's dad does in the, I mean, yeah.
Mike00:39:08Uh, you know, the, the, well, the brother, you know, who has the, you know, who is, who is the real athlete, the real athlete, you know, the favorite of, uh, of the two gets
Sonny00:39:17to sit up front cause he's good at sports.
Mike00:39:20Exactly. Um, and, and I just thought it was also cheesy. Um, and then it wasn't even when they get to the grand Turismo Academy, it was when the moment when David Harper stops being an asshole. And, and starts like seeing, you know, the potential in our, in our hero that I kind of was like, you know what, I'm just going to let it wash all over me because after he
JVL00:39:48sees the brakes really were glazed.
Mike00:39:50Yes.
JVL00:39:50And at that moment, really, you know, he knows what he's doing.
Sonny00:39:53He knew, he knew what he was video game has taught him skills that David Harper could only imagine. That's right. Years of practice.
JVL00:40:00That's right. So was that where you bought in or was it when he was being boxed in on the track and he did the Tom Cruise from Tom Cruise? Top gun, throwing out the wings so that he stops the other two cars slide together and he just puts on the afterburners and zooms past them, you know, put on the brakes goose and they're going to fly right by JVL.
Mike00:40:22That's those are instincts. You can't teach that. You can't teach instincts. No. So like it was stupid. It was ridiculous. But I also just, I loved it. And maybe it was the caliber of acting. Like I thought David Harper was terrific. I thought, um, I thought Jim on Honsu as the dad, like did way better than he needed to for this, for this role. Like, uh, the end where he, I mean, it was again, ridiculous, but I totally bought in at this point, like the end where he's like crying and he's like, you know, so proud of his son. I thought, uh, like totally Jim on Honsu totally sold it. Um, I actually liked the kid who played the kid. Like I thought he was a compelling actor. Um, so by the end I was not. How about Ginger?
JVL00:41:08Spice, the Ginger Spice really, but she, the mom, she sell the mom for you. Was that Ginger Spice? Ginger Spice is now a middle-aged woman. So sorry. Thanks for playing.
Mike00:41:20What? I can't, I, I am in, I am shocked. I am speechless.
JVL00:41:26Uh, because she was so good. Is that why you're speechless?
Mike00:41:30There was, I'll just say there were very few scenes with her in it. Um, for, for a reason.
JVL00:41:35Um, how about Kappa? Nicholas Kappa. You thought that kid played, uh, D bag so well that it was, it couldn't possibly be an act.
Sonny00:41:42Was that the, I thought he was good, but you know, the driver, you know, who was great Nicholas Kappa, you know, who was great is, uh, Thomas Kretschmann who has one scene as the head of Kappa. He has, he's like the, the, the German, the German guy at the, and he has the perfect Thomas Kretschmann sneer. It's like the role he was born to parachute into a movie for like 30 seconds. Every movie that has like a sneering German in it should have. I have Thomas Kretschmann just for one scene.
Mike00:42:10Well, I don't know. I thought, I thought the, the actual car action was great.
JVL00:42:15Did either of you, I enjoyed it. Were either of you familiar with this story? No, zero. Because my level of familiarity was literally zero. So you can tell me that this is a based on a true story. Not only have I never heard of it, I couldn't even begin to guess how closely this, any of this adheres to it. None of this was on my radar at all.
Mike00:42:37I'm going to let the scales are going to fall from your eyes, JVL. Cause I did do some research here. So, you know, the big, the big crash.
JVL00:42:43Yes.
Mike00:42:44Uh, it, where he, he kills a spectator through no fault of his own.
JVL00:42:49Sure.
Mike00:42:50Through no fault of his own. Yeah. He was driving, but there was no, no, no fault of his own. Apparently happened like two years later in real life. So like they, they frame the movie around this as a, as a, as a low moment, right. As a moment where he's got to kind of climb back out from, from the depths in which his, you know, spirit has sunk. Um, and apparently it happened like two years later after he had done the 24 hours at Lamont.
JVL00:43:19Did they win Lamont with three SIM drivers?
Mike00:43:22So the other thing is he was not even the first SIM driver to go through the GT, uh, academy. There was a, yes. So he was not, it was not the, his class was not the first class to GT academy. There was another. There, I think there were at least two or three classes before him, including another, uh, SIM driver who had a similar arc in terms of getting in, became a professional racer, uh, from Spain. And it was that driver who was one of the three who did the Lamont race that, that Jan, the main character, uh, drove in. Um, so it was not like the two other guys from his class who, you know, they all got
JVL00:44:05the main character Jan actually. Drive in or a Lamont race in which they won, which no, they did not win. If you notice, by the way, they don't say he won in the, they don't say he won.
Mike00:44:15He, he came on the, he went on the, but that's why the show him podium passing Kappa like
JVL00:44:21at the third for third place.
Sonny00:44:24But the, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no. This is, this is, you have to, you have to be paying very close attention because remember the whole point is he just needs to get on the podium. So that means for them, third is coming in winning. You know, the meme that's the guy. You're spraying champagne and like biting the metal and then you, you zoom out and he's in third place on the podium. This movie is literally that meme. It is, it is 100% that meme. And it's very funny because I mean, look again, like third place at 24 hours of the month. That's big deal. Especially if you're, you know, a fake driver who becomes a real driver. Like I, like it's a, it's, it's, you know, I, I, I don't mind that, but it was very funny because you definitely had to be paying a lot of attention just to, just to make sure that you had that.
Mike00:45:08They, they have, they end the scene with a wide shot of the podium and that's where I guess they're off to the side and it was like, it was like, cause they're in the white uniforms and I was like, wait a second, shouldn't they be in the middle if they won?
Sonny00:45:23No, no, no.
Mike00:45:24Remember champagne is for the podium.
Sonny00:45:26Again, it's literally that meme brought to life. It's literally the third place guy. Totally.
Mike00:45:32So I don't know. I was, it was an odd thing. The other thing I kind of liked. What they did was the way they on screen kind of pulled you into the game aspect of it, right? Where he's sort of imagining, you know, either the, the tracks visualizing the line, right?
JVL00:45:50I'm showing the line. I thought that was neat. I like that. I liked holding the, the little chyrons above the cars to help.
Mike00:45:58That was useful.
JVL00:45:59Yeah. Yeah. There were, there were okay things in it. Um, I didn't like it and I didn't like it in a bad way. I didn't. I didn't like it in a, I was disinterested by it. Okay. And, uh, ultimately I just, I mean, it's not entirely fair to criticize it for not being the movie that I think it should have been, but I'll do it anyway. Um, I mean, there is, there is a very, very interesting thing here, which is about the internet and the way, I mean, I thought about online poker watching this, right? And how online poker. Has revolutionized the world of professional poker player and Scott moneymaker. Was he the one Chris moneymaker Chris moneymaker was the first online player to win the world series of poker, right? It was like a really big deal and it changed how everybody plays poker and like changed the whole scene. And I guess that there is a story, which I never realized to be told about how a simulation racing has changed the world of whatever this kind of racing is. I don't even know what it's called. This is an F one and it's not NASCAR. Um, but maybe it is democratized and maybe just changed how they all approach racing itself. Maybe it has changed how they practice. I don't know, but this movie has nothing to say about any of that shit, right? It's just a pure hero's journey. It has absolutely nothing to say about the broader and the hero's journey is, is framed as the existing racers are bad and this guy is good for some reason.
Sonny00:47:29You want it, you want it like a money ball.
JVL00:47:31I mean, I'm just saying that that would have been one way to make this an interesting movie and they. They chose not to make that and that's fine, but I don't even think it succeeds as a racing movie because I don't know about you, Michael, but I found the actual racing scenes boring as shit and it's because this presents the active racing as really good drivers when they press their foot down on the gas. Their cars go faster than all the other cars. That's literally how everything goes. Every pass is just, well, he, he, he presses his foot. And so his car goes faster. Like this is, this is not, again, Matt Robarts can, can correct me, but my understanding that that is not how racing works.
Sonny00:48:14Well, he showed, they showed the lines like it's, it's the lines of, you know, show that
JVL00:48:19a little bit, but there's a lot of just like, you know, I'm going to press gas, go fast. And that's not, I mean, a lot, they, they hint to this only once and it's right before the crash, which is the idea of like, Hey, you're on a straightaway. So you got to build as much speed as possible and then begin your deceleration at a certain point, right? This is, and that is a lot of what this is about, right? It's about managing the velocity of your car and understanding where on the track you can go at what speed, right? That's, that's what this is about. It's about managing velocity, which by the way, is a lot of what, um, what dog fighting is in, in air airplanes. This is, you know, we'll talk about this all the time. Uh, and this movie has none of that. It just, it flattens the entire act of racing as to, well, you know, he, he's a good racer. So his car goes faster. Like come the fuck on, man. And the other, the other thing is the glorification of the driver in this and the flattening of everything else on the team as to being absolutely meaningless runs so counter to like the ethos of Ford versus Ferrari. Did you, I don't know, like I just, this is the second best movie about Lamont that I've seen in the last two years. Yes.
Sonny00:49:31Yeah. I mean, Ford first Ferrari, much better, obviously. Totally.
JVL00:49:34Absolutely. But also, I mean, the, because again, like you're just, you're just taking the, you're just, well, the drivers are everything like, you know, the drivers on, and that's, that's simply again, Matt Robarts knows a lot about the stuff, Matt, you can text me and correct me on this. Uh, I, my understanding is that it is not how these things work. Um, like the teams are, you know, really a team. The engineer has a lot to do with it. Uh, the cars matter a very great deal. Yeah. Uh, you know, and the, the drivers help you at the margins.
Sonny00:50:05My.
JVL00:50:06But the margins.
Sonny00:50:07So I, the reason I thought it worked as a racing movie was because I thought the, the, it was actually pretty well shot for a racing movie. Uh, the combination of the, on, on the track stuff and helicopter shots and also drone work, um, kept it.
JVL00:50:21How much of that was practical? Cause a lot of that felt super weightless and CGI to me.
Sonny00:50:25Well, the stuff that probably felt weightless and CGI was the drone stuff. The stuff that comes like out of the stands down, like over, and then like reverses on a dime and comes up like that's all drone stuff. It's really again. Between this and ambulance and the gray man, um, we are actually at a very kind of interesting inflection point in how drones are being used. I don't think anybody has quite cracked the language. I don't think there's a standard of how, how the language of cinema should use this precisely. But it, they're interesting. Things are happening. I feel like this is like, it's not like with steady cam where like the shining comes out and steady cam is like, oh, this is how steady cam should work. Right. Knows how drone nobody quite understands how to make this work.
JVL00:51:09On Chris McQuarrie does that. The, the, the motorcycle jump in mission impossible. Dead reckoning is only possible because of drones.
Mike00:51:16Yeah. But you know, what they did was they had like a gazillion cameras and it was all there, you know, they, they sort of, but he also did that camera.
Sonny00:51:23He also did that in a way to kind of mimic how standard camera work looks like. They, they were trying to go for a very standard, like if you were shooting this with a helicopter, how would it look right or a crane like, uh, these, these, the three movies I just mentioned again, ambulance, the gray man and, um, uh, grand tourism, they're, they're, they're, they're doing something different. It's like a different look and feel of film, which I find kind of interesting to just to think about what the implications of all that are and how it's going to, what, what things will look like 10 years from now.
JVL00:51:59But what was this stuff done? Practically, I think a lot of, I mean, I think a lot of it was, they were, they were certainly racing. I don't think the crowds and stadiums felt fake.
Sonny00:52:08Well, the crowds, the crowds probably were CGI painted in. I mean, though you don't, you don't hire, you don't hire a million extras for stuff like this.
JVL00:52:16It's, you know, that's just saying it looked really bad. I thought, uh, the movie didn't look great and I thought the racing scenes were weightless and not filled with much tension or drama. Because again, the answer in every case is how is he going to pass that guy? Oh, well, he'll just make his car go faster. Like that's just how they.
Mike00:52:35I don't know. I, I thought they, I thought they did a good job of sort of. Demonstrating how it, it was up to, uh, a sort of, uh, a feel right. A touch and an, uh, an, uh, an ability to see opportunities.
JVL00:52:49He's Ray Yon is a Mary Sue, right? I guess so. Yes, I guess.
Mike00:52:53But I just, I guess I think you were, as you noted JVL, you're wanting a different movie. You're wanting like the mechanics of, yeah, I would prefer to different movie.
JVL00:53:04I can understand that. But even this movie as it is, it wasn't, it's not bad, but it left me very, very cold and not in a new, like cold, not cold, neutral or cold, positive, but like cold, negative. If that makes sense, not, not, I hated it. Not, I didn't like it, but just like, yeah, totally.
Sonny00:53:22I mean, this, for me, this is an almost definitional 2.5 star movie, like 2.5 out of four stars. Like it's, it could tip good or bad depending on how I feel when I see it, but it's, it's competent and it's better than it needs to be in a lot of different ways. I will say coming out of the movie, I almost, I was very tempted to go thumbs down on my Rotten Tomatoes score because G did you guys catch the song that they used at the end of the movie? Uh, that played over like the whole triumphant.
JVL00:53:52Oh, what was that? I, I recognize it from another movie. Oh, you know what it was?
Sonny00:53:56It was the closing. I meant to look at closing track from heat.
JVL00:54:00Yes. Thank you.
Sonny00:54:01It's it's the movie song God's moving over the face of the water or whatever. Moving across the water.
JVL00:54:06I meant to look that up as I was leaving.
Sonny00:54:08And I, I'm like sitting here listening to it. I'm like, this is, this is stolen score Valor. They can't do this. You can't do this in a movie to make you like our theater movie.
JVL00:54:19As you leave the theater by playing a song, you remember from a better movie.
Sonny00:54:22Yeah, it was funny. And it's funny because I was, I was listening, I was watching, uh, I was watching the equalizer last night, the first equalizer, uh, to get ready for the equalizer three, which is coming out on Friday and, um, At the end of that movie, they play a track from heat as well, but it's a different Moby track and they play a different part of the song. So like, you know, they it's the, it's the moment in heat when, uh, Vincent Hannah's in the helicopter and he's like, like do do do do like that part. Except they play, like they play in the equalizer. They play that part a little bit, but then they play like the actual lyrics that Moby say. So I was like, okay, that's not as bad. It's still kind of bad. You shouldn't stop stealing from heat movies, other movies. We've all seen that movie a million times. We know what you're doing. You have to stop stealing from heat.
Mike00:55:08So no movie can use Layla anymore. For instance, uh, absolutely not.
Sonny00:55:13You cannot use the instrumental from Layla to do anything in your movies anymore because Martin Scorsese has done that perfectly. You, you will never top the, the deceased body montage from Goodfellas.
Mike00:55:25It's the, it's the, it's the coda. Actually, it's not the instrumental version. It's the coda.
Sonny00:55:30It's the instrumental part of the end of the, at the end of the song.
JVL00:55:33It's all, you, you cut. I kind of liked it. You were, so what were you, where you were sort of mixed, mixed, positive.
Sonny00:55:40I like, I thought it was, I thought it was, I thought it was perfectly fine. It did it. The acting was all better than it needed to be. And I, that's, that is what tipped me over. David Harbour is very good in this and it's funny.
JVL00:55:52He's good in everything.
Sonny00:55:53Speaking of equalizer, speaking of the equalizer, David Harbour is in that movie as a Irish cop, who's on the payroll of the Russians. Um, and it, there was, it's very interesting to look at his career because there was a moment. Um, right before stranger things popped and was huge where he, he pops up in a lot of little things like this. He was also in suicide squad. He was like a goon and suicide squad. Um, and it's just like, there's, he has gotten better in the last 10 years. I guess is what I'm saying. Like he is a much better actor now than he was at that point in his career. Well, I don't know. I don't know what flip switch of it.
Mike00:56:25Well, you do wonder if like, if like a success, like stranger things, like buoys you as an actor, you kind of feel like, oh, like I've got my, I've got my groove back and you're back on top of your game.
JVL00:56:34I have. the answer to this. Steroids certain act. No, certain actors are born to be perfect in a certain age range. And they're no good too early. Right. Or like the truth is 20, well, 24 year old George Clooney, the world has no use for 24 year old George Clooney. We needed George Clooney starting at like age 35. And even that was a little young for George Clooney to 60, George Clooney, 40 to like 55, that's his bread and butter. Right. I think David Harbor needs to be middle-aged. Yeah. In order to, to really be where he's meant to be as an actor.
Mike00:57:09So since we're speaking about actors in this movie, I was not prepared for doughy old Orlando bloom. Boy, he looks like Jason Bateman almost slightly more Jack, Jason Bateman
JVL00:57:25in middle-aged Orlando bloom is a little sad.
Sonny00:57:27His career is, he looks great.
JVL00:57:29He looks great. His career is for us, not for him. Sad for us.
Sonny00:57:33His career is very interesting to me because. He was also in, um, the, the movie, well, yeah, Pirates of the Caribbean. He was in Lord of the Rings, but he was also in the, uh, the, the movie that was based on the Jake Tapper book, uh, uh, about the, the guys in Afghanistan, uh, the outpost he was in, he was in the outpost and he's like, he is playing a Marine in that and like, look pretty, it was, it's like in pretty good shape. He's like kind of jacked in like, and, and looked, looked good in that. Um, in a way. Yeah. You guys are right. I, when I saw him in this, I was like, Ooh, Orlando blue.
JVL00:58:09He looks good, but he looks middle-aged.
Sonny00:58:11He's also, I mean, he's been doing this for 25 years now, right? The Lord of the rings movie starts shooting in 1998 or whatever. Like, you know, it's, it's 2023 now.
JVL00:58:20And he's a total unknown adventure sports guy. Like he's not even an actor when they shoot Lord of the rings. Yeah. Correct. Like a bungee, a bungee jumper and motocross jumper. Um, yeah. But now he looks like somebody who has like a bunch of kids. Right now he looks like somebody who drives a Chrysler. Pacifica like the rest of us. And, uh, it's or Nissan or no, not a Nissan, a Nissan. What was the Nissan minivan that they killed? The quest, the quest, Nissan quest. Yep. Yeah.
Mike00:58:48That was, that was, uh, yeah, no, it just, it was sort of jarring. I was like, Oh, you know, I mean, I, you know, I think back to like, like that post Lord of the rings where he was like popping up in a ton of movies and he was like playing like a young person. And then just like, I, he kind of fell off the map for me. Just, I, he wasn't in it. And all of a sudden it's like, Oh, wait a second. You're a, you're a dad. Um, so yeah. Uh, any other thoughts on grand trees? Did you guys ever play grand Turismo on PlayStation?
Sonny00:59:23I had friends who were very, very into it, like obsessively, you know, building their cars and stuff. I played it for a little bit. It was, it was not fun for me because it is a racing simulator. It's not a correct. Like I want, if I'm playing a racing game. I want to play Mario Kart or something like even cruising USA.
Mike00:59:38It was like, you know, it's time.
JVL00:59:39Yeah, this is, this is the difference between, I don't know if you guys are probably, yeah, probably you're both too young to remember this, but there was a, in the early days of PC gaming, there were a lot of, uh, like flight simulator.
Mike00:59:52Oh, I remember those. Yeah.
JVL00:59:54And the fun ones were like, you're in the F 15 Eagle and you're like shooting down a bunch of migs. And that was super fun because it wasn't a real simulator. The real simulator. The real simulators were like, you're trying to fly a Boeing 737 from Los Angeles to Tokyo. You're just like sitting in, you're sitting in front of your computer for 12 hours, like doing nothing. Like that's the simulation.
Mike01:00:19I need more.
Sonny01:00:21I don't want reality. You're trying to land on an aircraft carrier. Good luck.
Mike01:00:26Yeah. I have, I have a memory of a friend of mine in the neighborhood. Like her dad had a, one of those flight simulators on the PC and it was like the only video game they had in her house, you know? So like go over to play at her house. And it was like, yeah, my dad said you can play, play this. And like sitting up there at like seven years old and being like, Oh, Oh, this is, this is a game.
JVL01:00:51Let's go outside. Somebody made a, wrote a really good essay about this, about how like video games made a turn where they, they started out really trying to get as close to real life as possible and then realize that real life is boring. And so they turned away from it. And the example of this was there was a game which attempted to be like a samurai sword fighting simulator. And the problem with it is like anytime you got cut at all in any way you died. And so like the sword simulator, every, every match took like four seconds and it was just like, whoever you lunge left, if the person lunges left also, and you're like a half second earlier, congrats, you win. It's just boring. Nobody, nobody wants that.
Sonny01:01:39Nobody wants. Right. We want samurai showdown.
JVL01:01:42Yeah, exactly. We want, we want a soul caliber. We want street fighter, street fighter.
Mike01:01:48All right. Well, if that's, if those are all the thoughts, see, we did turn this into a video game movie. Look at that. Yeah. Try to stop us. Give me Ridge Racer.
Sonny01:01:56Give me the Ridge Racer movie. Sports movie. Not a position movie.
JVL01:02:00All right.
Mike01:02:01That's all the time we're going to give to this episode. Check us out. That's sub beacon.com episodes every Friday there. We'll see you next time.
JVL01:02:18Boy, I hadn't even really thought of this, but we were going to rank racing games. Ooh, I don't know how I do that, but I tell you, I'll tell you the two things that I would put at the top, which are real, uh, Ivan Stewart's off road. Which is a standup console where you're sort of 3d, uh, God's eye view. There are three, uh, trucks and you're racing trucks around a dirt path and you just got to beat the gray Ivan Stewart. I'm the fucking master of that game. I could play that game for three hours on a single quarter.
Sonny01:02:52I don't even know what that game is. I don't have any idea what that is, what you're talking about.
JVL01:02:56It's a, it's amazing, but also I love crazy taxi, but I'm not sure that crazy taxi is a racing game. Exactly. It's. But that's sort of, I love that stuff.
Mike01:03:07So you guys like, I feel like when, when we got a PlayStation, a PlayStation one. Ridge racer. Uh, no rally cross too. Um, so what I was going to say is I feel like PlayStation was sort of, I don't know if they pushed it or what, but that's where I feel like racing games really kind of went to the next level. A hundred percent was with the PlayStation and I'm not quite sure why, but rally cross two was, was what we had. Um, you're essentially just driving rally cars around on dirt tracks and, um, doing, you know, bad-ass like, you know, ramp flips and stuff like that. And, uh, it was a great game. We play that constantly in my house, 1998 or whatever.
Sonny01:03:51So there are two, there are two ways to think about this. There's home console and, and arcade, right? So like home console, the, the only, the only racing game that I have played regularly are the various Mario carts. So super Mario cart was probably my number. One seed here. I really liked the switch. Yeah, Mario cart, Mario cart eight is so Mario cart eight is very, very good. Um, that, that's a lot of fun. Uh, I was less into Mario cart 64. I never really liked, I had a Nintendo 64 and I did not care for it. It was not, it was not a system for me. I actually stopped playing video games for like 10 years after getting a Nintendo 64. I was like, I guess I've aged out of it.
Mike01:04:26What did that 64 do to you?
Sonny01:04:28I don't know. I don't know.
JVL01:04:29I'd asked controller. Uh, yeah, it was like the shocker versus double shocker.
Sonny01:04:33It was like, it was, it was. It was a weird controller, but I also, but I also just didn't like the, the aesthetics of the games. I didn't like the blocky. It was too blocky. It was like, I, so I stopped playing anyway. Uh, but then, and then there's, um, arcades and in the arcades, the racing game I have always preferred is cruising USA.
JVL01:04:52Oh yeah.
Sonny01:04:53Which that I prefer cruising world, cruising world, cruising world, either way, whatever
JVL01:04:58better, same engine. They made a fast and furious game using that engine where you could like drive around and Vin Diesel's. Yeah. Car.
Sonny01:05:05I played that with my kids and that's also kind of fun.
JVL01:05:08Good time. Daytona. Do you remember? So you'd go to the Dayton bus first and they would have like eight Daytona cars. So you could be everybody there racing against each other. Daytona.
Mike01:05:17Did cruising USA have the, uh, the lap girls in bikinis or am I just making that up?
Sonny01:05:25I think it, I think it did. I think, I think both that and Daytona.
Mike01:05:28At the start. Maybe at the start.
JVL01:05:29The starting line. Yeah, yeah, at the start. And if you double tapped the, the gas, you would get a turbo boost. And you'd go on the wheels. The wheelie. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh.
Mike01:05:41Sure, it's fine.
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