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#16. The Substandard Oscars Episode
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Dudes Chatting — Best Picture winners, losers, and oversights: Pre-Oscar preview (the group expects La La Land to win). The group identifies their best Best Picture winners of the last 50 years: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II top every list; Vic also champions Patton, Schindler's List, and Titanic; Sonny adds Unforgiven and No Country for Old Men. JVL's worst Best Picture winners: Crash (2005), Dances with Wolves (over Goodfellas), Ordinary People (over Raging Bull), American Beauty (in a 1999 field that included The Matrix, Magnolia, The Sixth Sense, and The Insider), and the unanimous worst — Oliver! (1968, beating 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Producers, Rosemary's Baby, Planet of the Apes, and Bullitt). Sonny's overlooked films: The Dark Knight (2008, so egregiously snubbed the Academy expanded Best Picture nominations), The Insider, Goodfellas, Apocalypse Now, and Bonnie and Clyde. JVL's overlooked list includes The Fellowship of the Ring, Gosford Park, Lost in Translation, La Confidential, Heat, Inception, Jurassic Park, and Boogie Nights. JVL's hot take: Jurassic Park > Schindler's List. Episode opens with Sonny's anger at Hollywood fake news over Mel Gibson and Suicide Squad. Corrections included. Spirit of the Week: Booker's Bourbon; JVL again drinks Schöfferhofer grapefruit Hefeweizen.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00And I can't deny the fact that you like me. Right now. You like me. And the winner is a splashing envelope. Gladiator! Mom, Dad, there's no way that I can express to you what I'm feeling right now. My heart is full to bursting, except to say, I'm the king of the world!
Vic00:00:52Hello and welcome back to Substandard. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. I'd like to remind you that you're listening to The Weekly Standard. You can see that The Substandard is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at our podcast and search for Substandard. You will easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, spread the word, and leave a review. We're grateful for all those reviews. Every review keeps us live at least for another week, so thank you very much. In addition, we... Put us out of our misery. In addition, we'd also like to remind you that Substandard show notes, posted by Jonathan Last, are available every Friday at 11am. at weeklystandard.com Gentlemen, how are we? JVL is back in the house. Good to see you. How are you feeling?
JVL00:01:38I'm back. I am great. The sun is shining. It is a great day to be alive. That's how good I am. You just happen to be alive. Everybody has turned a corner in my house. Everybody is basically healthy. Everyone had the flu except for me. I stayed strong. I didn't get the flu. Because of, I'm convinced, my chauffeur, the extra vitamin C. Filled with vitamin C. With the extra vitamins. The extra vitamin C from the chauffeur offer kept me immune. And we then had secondary infections. My wife has bronchitis. Two of the kids had ear infections. But we passed it all. It was only two weeks of hell. And now I'm here with you, gentlemen.
Vic00:02:13Yay. Yes, the chauffeur offer solution is pretty much what the alcoholics say when they drink the screwdrivers and Bloody Marys all the time. I'm drinking it for the tomato juice. Would you say that's the final solution to getting rid of the flu? The end solution. Your favorite solution. It's funny. I was once listening to some talk at AEI. And it was the then leader, I think, of Serbia. I'm not going to get his name right. If I get it wrong, I'll be in a lot of trouble. But an important politician from Serbia was talking about the situation in the Balkans. And this is like 20 years ago. And, of course, his English was not that good. And he kept on talking about the search for a final solution for the Balkans. And everyone got very nervous. Awkward. Sonny, how are you doing? You texted us. You were in a state about something the other day in the news. What is going on?
Sonny00:03:07So, I am all fired up about the reports about Mel Gibson being considered for the next Suicide Squad movie. Considered to fill the director's chair. Here's the thing about this story. It was a big thing. It was on all the nerd blogs. Wait, they can't let him do that. Everybody was talking about it. He's a bad person who thinks the wrong things. We'll get to that. We'll get to that first. First, we need to just... Like, for a second, acknowledge the absurdity of this whole situation. There's a 0.0% chance that DC is going to give the Suicide Squad series to Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson doesn't make PG-13 movies. Mel Gibson hates superhero movies. He is, like, gone on the record as saying that they're stupid and silly and crap. And when it was floated for a little bit that, you know, Robert Downey Jr. was saying the only way he would make another Iron Man movie is if Mel Gibson directed. He was trying to give his boy Mel a hands up because Mel was there for Robert Downey Jr. when Robert Downey Jr. was in some trouble with the police and PC police and others. He was like, "It's all a bit silly, isn't it, mate?" Or, you know, whatever, in his fake Australian. He's not actually Australian. Did you know that? He's an American. He, like, moved to Australia. Yeah, so you mean Bill Gibson. You're talking about Bill Gibson. Yeah, I think he was born in New York. Anyway, so this whole story is ridiculous. It's like a perfect microcosm for the awfulness of the entertainment industry reporting segment of the media. Because you have this headline, "Mel Gibson in talks to direct Suicide Squad." Which then leads to about 50 other blogs just writing up the Hollywood Reporter Report about Mel Gibson being in talks. Which then leads to the second day stories of, "Well, would he? Wouldn't he?" Which leads to the third day stories of, "Well, you know, he's a bad person." It's very problematic that we would give this to Mel Gibson. Aren't there any lady directors out there who could direct the Suicide Squad movie? Or, you know, maybe Justin Lin. I don't know. Oh yes, of course. So, it's this kind of perfect representation of everything that is terrible with the media. A totally fake, bogus story. I don't care if Mel said this week, or at the end of last week, he was like, "Yeah, we're on a first date." There's a 0% chance he's going to direct this movie. He's being used as leverage, and he knows he's being used as leverage, to get a lesser director to sign for a cheaper deal. And, on top of that, maybe he's getting something out of Warners, like they'll take a first look at his next movie or whatever. I don't know. I don't know.
JVL00:05:42He's probably agreeing to do it because the lesser director they're trying to go after and pressure to take less money is a woman.
Sonny00:05:49He's probably agreeing to be part of this. Or possibly a Jewish woman.
JVL00:05:55And so he is happy to be used to drive their price down.
Sonny00:05:59But anyway, this has been driving me bonkers all week. It's like you couldn't come up with a... And the sad thing is, the sad thing is Mel Gibson would be a fantastic director for Suicide Squad. I would see that movie in a heartbeat. Imagine a Mel Gibson-directed, Shane Black-scripted Suicide Squad movie, R-rated, $100 million. It would be fantastic. It would be the best superhero movie of all time. Refreshed by memory, who directed Suicide Squad? David Ayer, who directed Street Kings, End of Watch. He's really great. I like David Ayer a lot. Suicide Squad is an unholding mess. It's one of the worst movies.
JVL00:06:39Will, I actually want, really, a Grantland... I guess we don't have Grantland anymore. The Ringer? A Ringer-style oral history of Suicide Squad. Because that movie is such a mess that there must be a very interesting story as to what happened, right? I mean, you can't... Look, that was made by a bunch of competent, smart people who vaguely knew what they were doing and clearly had an idea about what they were doing, and it looks incompetently made, which it can't be. Yeah. So something happened, and I would like to know what that is, and I hope we get that story and oral history of it done sometime in the next couple of years.
Vic00:07:14And you're talking about juggling all these various egos, you know, on set. I mean, you had all the huge cast of characters, lots of, you know, A-list stars. And trying to deal with them. I'm sure there's great stories about that.
JVL00:07:25Only one A-list star, though, right? Only Will Smith. Only Will Smith.
Sonny00:07:29Yeah, Will Smith. Margot Robbie is not... Didn't Jared Leto win an Oscar? Jared Leto did. Jared Leto's not an A-list star.
JVL00:07:34This is...
Sonny00:07:35Well, it's a good question. Is Jared Leto A-list? No, he's not an A-list star. All right. So anyway, the... You're right, though. This movie is... This movie is bad in interesting ways. It's so incompetently made with so many scenes repeating themselves over and over, like introducing the concept of the Suicide Squad. They do it three times. They do it three times. There's the guy who's... There's not... Rope Man. There's Rope Not Man, who is, like, introduced... Slipknot. ...and then 30 seconds later, blown up, because they were... It's almost like somebody in post-production was like, "Oh, crap. We need to remind these guys that anybody can die at any time." Get off the stake. So let's just... Let's introduce this guy and then immediately murder him, and everyone will be like, "Oh, yeah. This is totally legit. Anything could happen." It's... It's bad in... And, of course, there is the whole, like, missing Joker plot. Like, there's reportedly 15 minutes of Joker footage somewhere. Like, he was supposedly the big villain. The real problem with this movie, and I know this is a pet peeve of yours, is that they introduced magic. Yes. I mean, like, the Enchantress makes no sense as a villain, just because she can do anything. Her powers have no limits, and so when she is defeated, it feels totally arbitrary.
JVL00:08:46Yes. Yes. Yeah. Not enough Biola Davis. She's great.
Sonny00:08:51She's fabulous. She should be in more of it. Give me more.
JVL00:08:54You know what? Truth be told, I want a Suicide Squad movie, half of which is her. Sure.
Sonny00:08:59I could do that. Wow. You know who would be great at directing this strong black woman? Biola Davis? Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson.
Vic00:09:07I was going to say Brett Ratner. Oh, boy. So, your big complaint, Sonny, ultimately, is Hollywood fake news. Fake news!
Sonny00:09:17Fake news out of Hollywood. There's a fake news ecosystem that perpetrates. This is why one of my favorite Twitter accounts is the movie clickbait account, where they just take all of the awful slash film, film rocks, up rocks, film drunk, blah, blah, blah, and they just tell you what the actual answer to their dumb headlines. Yeah. Thanks.
JVL00:09:43You should really insult all those websites. That's great.
Sonny00:09:45They don't listen to us.
Vic00:09:46Who cares? Not yet. I was thinking, geez, Mel Gibson has a lot on his plate this week, I'm sure, because he's got his movie and himself as nominees for Oscar, and speaking of which- I bet he wins.
Guest00:10:04The Oscar is this Sunday. That would be something, wouldn't it?
Vic00:10:06Yeah. That would be- That would be something. That would be an upset. This is our Oscars episode. Did you have any thoughts about the current Oscar situation? Or are we all assuming it's- Who could possibly win? It's La La Land because Hollywood loves Hollywood, right? Isn't that the-
JVL00:10:22The Upshot Blog's statistical model says that there's a 99.5% chance that La La Land wins, and we know how that's worked out so far this year. Yeah. So what you're saying is Hacksaw Ridge. Yes.
Sonny00:10:34No, I would say that La La Land will win. I mean, La La Land has won all of the major Guild Awards. It's won- As an indicator.
Vic00:10:42Yeah.
JVL00:10:43And musicals always win at this stage. That's the other rule of thumb here, is when a musical gets to this stage of the voting, they always win.
Vic00:10:50Yeah. I think Chicago won. Chicago won. They always- Mamma Mia we joke about, but I don't-
JVL00:10:55Wasn't nominated. It was not.
Vic00:10:57Wasn't nominated. No, no, no. Although, Stellan Skarsgård in Mamma Mia, that alone was worth something.
Sonny00:11:01I mean, I would say the biggest chance for an Upshot is in Best Actor. It has been assumed for a long time that Casey Affleck is definitely going to win, but I think Denzel Washington winning Best Actor at the SAGs is a strong indicator. That Casey Affleck might be in some trouble.
Vic00:11:16I'm a fan of Denzel Washington.
Sonny00:11:18Everyone in Hollywood is a fan of Denzel Washington, and nobody really likes Casey Affleck. I heard something about this in the news, but I didn't know if that was fake news or
Vic00:11:26not. Well, it's probably fake news, but nobody seems to like it. Allegations of harassment, right? This is the thing that's been in the news. And Denzel Washington loves the troops. We all know that.
Sonny00:11:35Denzel Washington loves the troops, loves the kids, loves the actors, just everyone. That guy is such a movie star. He really is. He's such a movie star. And he's also extremely good in Fences. He's doing a lot of acting. There's a lot of real monologue-y, oh, look at me making faces sort of stuff.
Vic00:11:58I'm looking at your face. That was good.
JVL00:12:00I'm going to give you an Oscar.
Vic00:12:02There was that Hollywood Reporter, those videos that they did where they get various nominees together in a room and discuss, and the really interesting one I thought was where they had all the directors, interesting directors in one room to discuss anything they wanted to talk about. And it was Mel Gibson, Oliver Stone, Denzel Washington was there. He directed. Yeah, and Damien Chazelle. And maybe I'm missing a couple others. But it was interesting to see the dynamic. If you're just watching, you know, Mel Gibson and Denzel Washington, they seem to get along very well. I mean, it's just interesting, you know? And he just seems like a very likable guy, Denzel Washington. Anyway.
JVL00:12:41Does Mel Gibson call any of the people there sugar tits?
?00:12:45No.
Vic00:12:46He was very, I think some people were scared. I think Damien Chazelle might have been scared or intimidated. I mean, you know. Well, Mel Gibson is like full-on crazy beard right now. Yeah, he's got the Saddam beard.
Sonny00:12:55I mean, he's got like, he just, he looks like an insane person, so.
JVL00:12:58Well, we now know that Martin Riggs is him, right? I mean, he's essentially Martin Riggs, right?
Guest00:13:04Love Martin Riggs.
Vic00:13:06So we were thinking, at The Substandard here, we were going to talk, instead of the current Oscars, about, let's just say the last 50 years. 50 years. Of Oscars. Movies made in 1967 or so. Right.
JVL00:13:19And we're going to go year by year. So brace yourself. Spending 10 minutes on each year.
Vic00:13:23Yes. This would be great for your cross-country trip. And what we were going to do is. For the record, we're not going to do that. Please don't turn us off. I was going to talk about sort of the more basic, sort of, which Best Picture films did I think deserved to win Best Picture? Happy ending, they got it, I have no issue with it. And this is why I thought they should get these Best Picture.
JVL00:13:43I thought you were doing the Best Best Picture winners. Best Best Picture.
Guest00:13:46That's right.
JVL00:13:47Best Best Picture. Okay.
Sonny00:13:49And it's a ranking. Right. You have a definitive ranking. Well, we'll see. Are you doing a ranking? Because I just have mine by chronological. Mine is chronological.
JVL00:13:56I told you people to rank these definitively. Mine is chronological. I want a definitive Sagarin ranking.
Vic00:14:01Sort of. Okay. Where's the upshot? Can we get the upshot the way on this? And. Hey, Nate, we need your help. We need your help. And then we'll move on from there to movies we believe did not deserve, and then the movies that were overlooked. So we're doing Best Best Picture winners. I'm going to talk about Best Best Picture. We're doing Worst Best Picture winners, and then we're doing the films that should have won Best Picture. Not just films, Sonny, I think you'll agree with this. Not just films that were nominated and didn't win, but some films that weren't nominated at all and should have won that year, I think, right? Or were you just selecting from the list of nominees? Yes. Everything. Everything. I mean, certain films that were not in retrospect. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. We'll get there. That's right. Okay. So again, my thoughts on Best Best Picture winners of the last 50 years, I would say number one and number two, no surprise, no surprise, would be The Godfather in 1972 and The Godfather Part II, 1974. The parameter I used for Best Best Picture winner was the first thing that came to my mind, what deserves a Best Picture? Is it sweeping? It doesn't have to be the most expensive film. Certainly, we know some of the greatest, most expensive films of all time are also the greatest flops, and so that's not the ultimate decider in this. But is it sweeping, like Lawrence of Arabia is sweeping, and Gone with the Wind from 1939 is sweeping, and Godfather and Godfather Part II, that's sweeping. It's great, and it's generational, and it's also all over the map. If you take, you combine the two of them, right, Godfather and Godfather Part II, and Part II, you begin in early 1900s Sicily, and all the way up to Batistas Cuba in the late 1950s, and it's everything, and it's a terrific cast. It's great writing, which is important, and it's visually beautiful.
Sonny00:15:56I don't really think you need to make a case for Godfather and Godfather Part II.
Vic00:15:59No, this is why I'm sort of going to end right there. Okay, so for that. All right, next on my list, Patton, 1970. That's a big film. It takes a lot of time. I believe Patton is about three hours. I could be wrong. It feels hard.
JVL00:16:13Oh, we're just ranking them by length.
Vic00:16:14Yeah. I mean, you really do.
JVL00:16:16Is that what we're doing?
Vic00:16:17No. Let me continue.
JVL00:16:19Did it take 12 years to film?
Vic00:16:21Because I have a ... I know you have ... Yes, yes, no. And I thought Patton was great. George C. Scott gives a terrific performance. Karl Malden, I believe, as Omar Bradley, is wonderful. It was directed by Frank Schaffner, and I was going to say, "Well, I don't know how many people know who Frank Schaffner is today." And you look back, though, and he had a considerable amount of impressive work. He did Patton in 1970, and then he did Planet of the Apes in '68. He did Papillon with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, and he did several other great films through that time, forgetting some of the big ones. But more importantly, Patton not only ... It swept that year for the Oscars, right? It took everything, including George C. Scott, deservedly. But it also won for Best Screenplay, and who took the award for that?
JVL00:17:11Francis Ford Coppola. Thank you.
Vic00:17:13Francis Ford Coppola. And two years later, of course, he came into his own. All right. Next on my list is Schindler's List from 1993. It is hard to do a film like this with the pressures of doing something that's Holocaust, but not every ... It's not that every Holocaust ... There's been a ton of Holocaust films that have been done that haven't done well, obviously. The Boy in Straight Pajamas, the Robin Williams one, right? Everybody had- Jacob the Liar. Jacob the Liar, yeah.
Sonny00:17:44Everybody had to get in on that, and ... What's the Jerry Lewis one? The one where he's the clown? Oh my gosh. In Auschwitz or whatever?
Vic00:17:53Oh my gosh. Jerry Lewis?
Sonny00:17:55Yeah. Have you guys never heard this story? Oh my gosh. What? There's ... Just keep going. I'll go to IMDB. I'm about to get depressed. It's a lost movie. It's never been released, and I believe the only person ... I think there was a reason why it got lost. They sent it to the Library of Congress or somewhere. It will be released 50 years after Jerry Lewis is dead.
JVL00:18:15The Day the Clown Cried?
Sonny00:18:16The Day the Clown Cried. Wow. It's a movie where Jerry Lewis plays a clown in a concentration camp who has to make the children happy as they're being led into gas chambers.
JVL00:18:25That's the movie. That's the movie. Unreleased 1972 American drama film- 1972. Directed by and starring Jerry Lewis. And starring.
?00:18:35Oh my gosh.
JVL00:18:36You know what? Show notes.
Vic00:18:38Show notes. I'm sorry.
JVL00:18:40I got to chill up my spine. Guys, we'll see you at 11 o'clock on Friday for show notes.
Vic00:18:44What was amazing about Schindler's List is you can't just show an entire movie about, let's say, the liquidation of the ghetto in Krakow, and that's it. There is a large chunk of that movie that is, in fact, that. It starts with the speech by Ralph Fiennes about today is history and it's going to be ... The whole thing is going to be 300 years of history will be a rumor. Horrific. It's intense. You're sweating. I watched this movie in Vienna, Austria, at the time, and you could hear a pin drop because of obvious Austrian guilt, even though a lot of Austrians say, "Well, we were invaded," but they felt it. I'll tell you what. They were the first victim. They weren't the second.
Sonny00:19:26Really? Really.
Vic00:19:28In many ways, the greatest victims. There is a line ... The two great actors in this movie, in my opinion, are Ben Kingsley, as in Zack Stern, and Ralph Fiennes, who I'd never seen him before. I guess he did a lot of stage, obviously, Shakespearean actor, but I had never seen him on movies in film until Schindler's List, and he plays Amon Gut, the camp director, the Untersturmführer. There's a line at the end where things are falling apart, and everyone's got to make a run for it because the war is going to end, and Schindler says to Liam Neeson, who plays Oskar Schindler, who's trying to convince him, "Give me your maid, the Jewish maid. Just how much is she worth? I'll take her with me." And he wanted to keep her and probably kill her ultimately, but he had this weird love-hate relationship with her, Ralph Fiennes. It was very complex characters, and he says to her, he says to Oskar Schindler, "I want to take her back home with me to Vienna."
JVL00:20:24And I was in Vienna when he makes that line, and everyone sort of groves and grumbles and
Vic00:20:28looks down. You could feel the embarrassment. Of course he's from Vienna, because a lot of these SS officers were Austrian. Anyway, so there was that. But here's the other thing. It's hard filming in black and white. It just is, as you know. As I know. As you know. You're a film expert, Sonny.
JVL00:20:45From all the black and white movies that I've shot ...
Vic00:20:47Which is about five. I agree.
Sonny00:20:49The five black and white movies you've seen. Chromatic. It's hard. The five black and white movies you've seen. With the light. It is. And ...
JVL00:20:56A lot of these old black and white movies ...
Vic00:20:57Film speeds. Yes. A lot of these black and white movies I've seen, the old ones, they put me to sleep. The color, and a lot of this obviously is that it's now.
JVL00:21:06You'd never watch black and white with me. With subtitles.
Vic00:21:08Have you? No. Yes. And I haven't ... I mean, obviously, maybe it looked different at the time, but over the weekend I saw the movie Laura, from 1944, Otto Preminger. And the colors, it's just, everything is gray. I fell asleep three times in this movie. And when you watch Schindler's List, even though it's black and white, you forget that it's black and white. It's that good because ... Is it Janusz Kaminski? Yes. Janusz Kaminski. Kaminski. Kaminski. Kaminski. stark and for example spielberg like a lot of great directors knew you're not supposed to have you can't have green in black and white because green throws everything off so there's like no green on set uh but he knew all these things so the lights the contrasts between light and dark are um it's very rich and the other thing is this spielberg actually i mean again everybody is complicated in in schindler's list but he also intersperses these heavy dark scenes with levity and there's a scene and i'll send it uh to you for show notes jvl of oscar schindler having to hire a typist and it's fantastic and it's funny and it's lighted because you just can't go through
JVL00:22:15two and a half hours yeah when that italian guy comes in and starts like talking funny to make the kids laugh is that a different holocaust movie what is that roberto benigni the tragic
Vic00:22:24clown i left that out did that not win i can't remember anymore the pope liked it the pope liked
JVL00:22:30it your pope like which one your pope jp2 okay and last
Vic00:22:34here's my controversial pick best picture that i thought really deserved best picture and i'll just throw it out there okay i know it's crazy titanic crazy i know but if you take it oh i see not crazy at all okay that's not crazy at all if you take out the ridiculous story dialogue um danny nucci as the italian friend of uh of jack remember his name i think is fabio yeah bastardo you know i mean it's just way over the top and the irishman who is way over the top that's how they talk that's how that's right that's how they talk that's how they talk attention to detail was it sweeping yes the last seat well you know all the china was i mean he had everything there was and remember there was a time jvl when you and i are in office and titanic had not come out yet and all the buzz was about how it's way over budget and there's no way
JVL00:23:25it's going this is news there was variety ran daily variety ran a titanic watch where it was uh helping on a magazine top of the page above the above the the the name of the thing right whatever that bar is called we've called a slash yeah yeah yeah so they had a titanic watch slash running on top of daily variety i forget what is every day or just sort of a regular whenever there and it was everyone was assuming that this was going to be the next ishtar the next heaven's
Vic00:23:57gate yes exactly and all if you think back on it and you want to talk about sweeping the scene where the ship goes down and everybody's in the water and it pans out like it's the atlanta train station and gone with the wind it's very impressive they had to digitally as you know add the breaths uh to everybody that was a new thing at the time which was what 1997 it was kind of new to see that weird breath effect and it looks kind of fake now if you look at it because it's overdone yeah but remember all these people were floating around for hours in the gulf of mexico i think while they
JVL00:24:28were filming this it was a tank right i mean they had a tank down in there yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Vic00:24:34the other question is does a film hold up and i'll tell you which film holds up uh silence of the lambs but that's already number six for me so that's honorable mention the scene of lector's escape and everything that follows is still uh to me um still shocking so uh it really works it's amazing how much things would have been different now had uh uh clarice starling had
JVL00:25:00a cell phone that movie would have ended sure much differently
Vic00:25:04but um uh it's all movies yeah they would text it get out you know that's what scott glenn would have said uh so that's my thought i would also what almost made honorable mention was um the last emperor and i really liked it it's yes against sweeping but um i didn't realize that year was also empire of the sun and i think it should have gone there but that's an entirely different subject so i'm going to pass it on now to jonathan v last you know i want to talk about
JVL00:25:34one of the things that i find remarkable is how hard it is to cobble together a list of even 10 legitimately great movies from the last 50 best picture winners yeah i skipped many years right now i mean there are lots of years i mean just looking you say really that was was best picture so what do you and what is for me my criteria i have a slightly different criteria from you and mine would mine would be is the movie still vibrant today yeah so is this a movie that you would take and sit down and watch and enjoy and find things that are interesting in today uh the godfather movies obviously uh but so so let's try to get even 10 right so godfather one and two unforgiven yeah i would say silence of the lambs yes gladiator yes yeah the departed which is a legitimately great movie i think uh annie hall french connection titanic and then also like what you have patten i guess schindler's list i mean but like we're
Sonny00:26:29now stretching to get well i mean schindler's list isn't uh like a crowd pleasing schindler's list is art and yes not really it is an important movie it's an important it is an important it's an important shot beautifully also also it's a great movie and everything yes but
JVL00:26:43it's an important movie and not it's almost weird it's almost weird to consider it by the same terms
Vic00:26:48of everything else it's also weak because it's not like you're flipping through channels and you come across schindler's list hey tnt is airing the way we do brave the way we do brave heart
JVL00:26:56so i i think it is hard to to find even 10 legitimately you find a bunch of good movies but 10 legitimately great movies from this list which just shows how flawed the oscars are i couldn't
Sonny00:27:08find i couldn't find 10 i couldn't find 10 sonny your thoughts uh i uh i have some thoughts but i i want to do my list first before i really all right fine all right so i'm going to talk about the the worst ever wait wait no are we i i thought you were going to give your you're not going to give you i i do have a list of five best yeah yeah oh do your five best yeah yeah sorry no this is i thought it was give me your so my my my list overlaps greatly with both of yours frankly you you have uh Patton the Godfather and the Godfather part two like i just like there there is a strong case to be made that Francis Ford Coppola had the best decade of any director ever in the 1970s um uh certainly like in the like post 1960 like end of Hitchcock type era uh i mean in in the 1970s he won an oscar for Patton he won an oscar for uh the Godfather and the Godfather part two he was nominated for an oscar uh in the same year as the Godfather part two for the conversation conversation which
JVL00:28:08is for two in the same year two best pictures two best pictures in one year uh and of course
Sonny00:28:13apocalypse now yeah uh which was not which was nominated i i don't think it won no that's picture um but that's in the 1970s that's in one decade he made five four-star movies that are legitimately great that legitimately hold up today still that are you know and then if you
Vic00:28:29want to throw on top of that uh jack with robin williams but that was right well that's a few
Sonny00:28:33years a few years down the road that's the sad i mean at this point i mean and and now he is sorry and now he is the the greatest uh uh winemaker the greatest vintner in california which is i the merlot was fantastic he makes a great run uh uh and then unforgiven which i think is i think is legitimately great it's clint eastwood's best movie uh as a director which i think is it's saying something given his career i'm not a huge clint eastwood fan as we've discussed before as a director but this is him at the height of all of his powers he's just nailing it uh and then no country for old men how do how have we not mentioned i thought about it for old i thought about it i i would be my number five just just chronologically but also probably actually i'd say it's number four actually i would put unforgiven slightly below that uh no country for old men is just a it's a fantastic really really great movie uh and it uh we'll come back to this a little bit later i have more thoughts on that year and no country for old men's win thank you jbl do you want to do five words so we're going to do the worst best picture
JVL00:29:38winners ever and i preface this all by uh reminding you of a line from the great william goldman screenwriter he used to write an oscar predictions column for premiere magazine every year and every year he began his column by saying this was the worst year in the history of hollywood and next year will be even worse and he's basically right i mean not to nobody hates like the boom or auteur 70s worship more than i do but if you look at for instance 1974 1975 and 1976 here is a list of movies which were nominated for best picture godfather part two chinatown the conversation the towering inferno one flew over the cuckoo's nest barry lyndon dog to afternoon jaws nashville all the president's men network taxi driver and rocky okay those are a lot of very very very good movies in just three years yeah things are not like that today no uh so when i was looking through uh movies that were just utter travesties as winners i separated them into a few basic buckets uh i had sort of slavery holocaust magical retard movies uh i had important movies uh i had dilettante directors so movies directed by actors essentially uh we're getting lots and lots of credit because you know look look that bear is dancing can you believe how great that dancing bear is does that call back to
Sonny00:31:02a previous episode of the substandard and the substandard faithful listeners yes and
JVL00:31:07then movies that are just crap like uh like i don't know like return of the return of the king in 2003 which gets a makeup call of an oscar right so so the fellowship of the ring is one of the 10 best movies of the last 50 years probably of the 2000s certainly
Sonny00:31:21certainly of the 2000s of the last half century it's really i mean comparable to lawrence of arabia some people on this podcast have criticized me for making broad sweeping judgments
JVL00:31:32about the greatness of art you're going to talk about great epics in the history of cinema
Sonny00:31:38you would have it's an extremely good movie that doesn't have an end do you remember what
Vic00:31:43it has three of them do you remember what john potthorne said to you when he was teasing you about your love for lord of the rings he said oh yeah and cute talking trees that's
JVL00:31:54enough out of you mattis the follow the rest of this episode will be discussed in entish chicago which wins over the two towers catch me if you can born identity minority report about a boy all sorts of other great books maybe so i wanted to boil it down to the five worst best picture winners and you have what i would say i was i gave a pass to movies which were not good movies but against whom the competition was terrible because like some years you know like it is what it is you got to pick a winner um so let's start with 2005 in 2005 this is essentially the trump vs clinton version of the oscars where versus brokeback mountain versus good night and good luck which are three important liberal movies uh who essentially split the votes that nobody really likes any of them and crash winds up sneaking in uh has anybody watched crash since 2005 no no since yeah no no no no this is a movie which won best picture which so far as i can tell has never been seen since um that's about right uh number four dances what were the other two nominees
Sonny00:33:01that year
JVL00:33:02uh good night and good luck crash brokeback mountain hold on i will effort that capote and munich munich okay yeah okay go ahead i'm sorry number four dances with wolves in 1990 absolutely which wins over goodfellas as the kids say are you kidding me and look i you know my feelings about martin martin scorsese and i think he's they're bad entirely overrated but goodfellas is a great movie certainly the best movie of that year uh but it wasn't just that so here's some other movies that were released in 1990 the hunt for red october pretty woman misery mel gibson's hamlet which our buddy paul canter referred to as lethal bodkin that's good cinema paradiso and reversal of fortune which is a great movie great movie with alan dershowitz the great alan dershowitz rendered as a character and maybe my favorite jeremy irons performance outside
Vic00:34:02of the bbc brides had revisited i was gonna say the late ron silver yes alan dershowitz he did play and glenn close was um yeah and you look at dances of wolves over that it's
JVL00:34:12just preposterous uh number three is another dilettante award for robert redford and ordinary people over raging bull again ayfkm uh but also you know empire strikes back the shining the elephant man the blue lagoon victorino was released in 1980 that movie i always thought
Vic00:34:32ended when she got pregnant i didn't i didn't realize they got rescued because i tended to stop the movie i didn't know until decades later that that they got rescued i always there was a remake with mia jovovich why don't you just why don't you just stop i always got sleepy at the end of that movie why didn't i always felt like i needed to take a nap maybe you should just stop talking for a minute just let's move on don't get pregnant that
JVL00:34:55was the lesson of don't get pregnant it ends everything okay number two american beauty which is just another piece of crap movie what year was that jvl 1999 and let me give you some other movies from 1999 the talented mr ripley any given sunday the thomas crown affair the insider payback magnolia go the matrix galaxy quest and the sixth sense every one of those movies as flawed as some of them even are is 15 times better than american beauty the way hollywood rallied to that film has always been an utter mystery to me because that movie's a piece of crap wasn't it it's just an utterly utterly unfair that was wasn't it our understanding at the
Vic00:35:37time that this was hollywood's view of oh this is what suburban suburban life if you're
JVL00:35:42a heterosexual married person in suburbia you are unhappy and stupid and a phony yeah and the only good people so wait i'm sorry suburbia yeah the gay couple how those people are living their authentic selves but everybody else out there in suburbia wait i'm sorry
Sonny00:35:56how how is hollywood wrong i don't understand i don't what's what's your point here but
JVL00:36:01the truth is all of these are just prologue to the worst because the worst the worst miscarriage of justice ever is is so unthinkable reach it back the year is 1968 there are a number of amazing still vital vibrant movies that are released that year 2001 a space odyssey by a director named stanley kubrick you've heard of him sonny uh refresh me the odd couple of producers has anybody ever heard of the producers pretty funny thing right still has a long shelf life in the culture people's you know like it's a thing bullet maybe the greatest of the steve mcqueen movies planet of the apes which winds up you know it's like a i mean yes it's schlock sci-fi but it's schlock sci-fi with something to say rosemary's baby night of the living dead lion in winter the original thomas crown affair and the best picture oscar goes to oliver exclamation point
Sonny00:37:01okay i'm sorry could you just run through your list one more time it was the five worst
JVL00:37:07crash dances with wolves ordinary people american beauty and oliver and these are definitively ranked the five worst best picture winners ever yes uh vic would i've dropped my microphone
Vic00:37:21first you go first you raise a you raise a very good point which is uh the year of american beauty if you were to ask me now looking at that selection and looking back for the year 2017 i would say thomas crown that is a beautifully shot movie that is uh directed by uh our good friend uh who did die hard i'm blanking you know how are we just blanking on this john mctiernan john mctiernan yeah john mctiernan uh terrific uh terrific uh performances delivered by pierce brosnan renee russo and the sunny bunch of film
Sonny00:38:01dennis leary i don't i've never understood this he's been saying this since i interned at the weekly standard in 2002 it is i've never looked at anything like dennis leary
JVL00:38:11jimmy simpson are you just jimmy simpson i'm angry yes yes that's right what about the insider the insider is actually on my like my sneaky what did you say that was 1999 same year 1999 my sneaky michael mann favorite movie ever actually is not heat it's the insider but well that's that's like well it may be wrong because it's counterintuitive i think but it is a that is a great effing movie and you know who's great in that movie
Vic00:38:35also is bruce mcgill but he's good in everything he's good in everything you've got rights and you've got left wipe that smirk off your face he's fantastic um the oliver you're sick i see where you're going with this which is uh it's a musical you think it won because
JVL00:38:56it's a musical yes because all musicals which are nominated for best picture win one
Vic00:39:01my favorite i'm not gonna say my favorite because that i don't want to be accused of
JVL00:39:05having watched all over that may not by the way excuse me warning that may not technically be true i have not gone through like all 87 oscars but okay for our purposes it's mostly true can
Sonny00:39:15one fact check can sort of true can one of our listeners please uh tweet all of the ways in
Vic00:39:19which jbl is wrong to him right now thank you oliver reed is great in oliver but he's not oliver obviously this kid um but i agree 1906 i would have i would have gone with planet of the
Sonny00:39:31that's mind-blowing okay sonny uh okay uh no one denies this that is the worst best picture that is no crash right at the top of my list is oliver exclamation point i mean it just it it's
Vic00:39:44not just that is an offense to god and nature i'd say one more thing sonny before uh i had my thought which was you're one of the things that you mentioned jvl is you discount certain films where the the choices were pretty slim that year the year you mentioned with crash the other nominees that's pretty slim i don't know who i would have picked there they seem to be all the same in a liberal way per se but anyway munich's not that click no that's true i would
Sonny00:40:13have gone with munich is great i would have gone with munich almost made my list of uh uh oversights okay but it didn't quite just because uh okay so oliver exclamation point uh i'm gonna throw this
JVL00:40:24out there gandhi totally true gandhi you know what a dilettante dilettante dilettante richard directs oh my god he's an actor and he's directing this sweeping epic that nobody has ever ever
Sonny00:40:35watched and also since then also that year et also that year tootsie i mean it's great and
Vic00:40:42those and those are just those are just movies that made my short that made my short list those are just movies that were nominated the problem with richard attenborough sonny is that he later on went on to uh clone dinosaurs yes well that's true he did he did have people are dying he did
JVL00:40:57by the way at that moment in the movie laura dern has no idea that anybody has died any world's in the park but that's fine yeah yeah it's the only that is literally the only
Sonny00:41:04miscontinuity in the entire thing okay uh next up driving miss daisy a quote i mean really in the biggest scare quotes i could possibly imagine right just imagine me with like my whole hand doing i'm literally doing it in this i thought you were grabbing something uh important movie here are other movies that came out that year born on the 4th of july dead poet society which is a bit schlocky still pretty great uh field of dreams which as we know uh is is the greatest movie uh ever made about sports and my left foot the daniel day lewis uh so this is another one where just the competition was so much better i couldn't i i couldn't get in that point i couldn't believe it uh shakespeare in
JVL00:41:52love except that shakespeare in love is a pretty good movie doesn't does not deserve to have won agree it does not deserve to have won but it's still a pretty good movie it is still a movie
Vic00:42:04that people reach to watch because it is it is enjoyable i don't understand why joe fines did not flourish after that movie because that movie because that movie because he decided to do a
JVL00:42:14bunch of bondage flicks with heather graham and that was its own well i mean he didn't he didn't
Sonny00:42:19choose poorly uh and then and then crash of course crash is just a travesty uh i mean munich should have munich is easily the best of that group of movies that was that was nominated and uh the fact that crash one remains a stain on hollywood soul you mentioned uh dead poet society
Vic00:42:36uh sonny and again along with mctiernan one of my other favorite directors is peter weir and i think he's just very dynamic and almost all the different movies he's done he had uh done um uh witness and he really helped transform it's not an original thought but he helped transform harris ford into that kind of a star that you know he can not just action spot science fiction and then he did dead poets and he made robin williams look like a mature sort of serious actor and he did the truman show yeah and he did the same thing for jim carrey and then he did um master and commander right and same thing with russell crowe he's a great director and i love
JVL00:43:17he doesn't get credit for making russell crowe mainstream i know no no no i'm just throwing it
Sonny00:43:21out there as part of the oeuvre well he was he was i mean russell crowe was one of the great comic actors of our time as we saw a nice in the nice guys um all right
JVL00:43:30all right all right let's move on so go ahead so shawnee give us the biggest travesties of the
Sonny00:43:34last 50 years the movies that deserved just let me just let me read them you can just i'm just
JVL00:43:41going to read them no don't read them rank them i'm just going to read them right now i will not
Sonny00:43:46have you read a list without every numbers in front of them the oversights of the last 50 years taxi driver 1976 losing to rocky raging bull 1980 losing to ordinary people goodfellas 1990 losing to dances with wolves gangs of new york 2002 listen losing to chicago and of course uh wolf of wall street 2013 losing to 12 years a slave honorable mention silence losing in 2017 to whatever it is it loses to this year no i'm just kidding that's a joke list joke list those
JVL00:44:20movies were all directed by the greatest man to ever put images on celluloid now to be fair
Sonny00:44:25all of those movies are better than the movies that won that year i would i would have no i would have no problem i mean taxi driver is better than rocky raging bull is better than ordinary people agree fellas is better than dances with wolves don't disagree with new york better with chicago uh wolf of wall street better than 12 years a slave uh that that doesn't go let's not
JVL00:44:44careful i'm gonna lose our sponge careful all right five overs it might be just as good as 12 years a slave no it's better it's wolf of wall street is better that was sonny bunch Sonny Bunch who said that said that i and i i remember
Sonny00:45:00this is a very uh minor point that i'm making and i just want to really stick it because i oh that was a great movie that should have won that should have been true as well that wanted in my mind i'm sorry uh i was gonna go someplace else with that but i'm glad you used mine that's good that's good uh okay anyway five oversights uh i think it's not it's not and the little golden man goes to it's not it's not just that the movie itself was oh my god once you guys get your missy peregrine fixation out of the way we can get back to the podcast
Vic00:45:36all right okay it's so hot in here okay please please sonny continue i'm sorry i didn't mean
Sonny00:45:43to ruin your list go ahead please continue okay uh it's important to note that it's not we're not just talking uh about a great movie that didn't win necessarily it's a great movie that lost to something inferior something unmemorable um uh you know in 1976 right you had taxi driver network and all the president's men up against rocky and rocky won but rocky itself is a totally reasonable winner i think i like rocky i know you don't like it as much uh no i would agree but i but it's original too but i think it's it's wrong but it's not crazy right okay fine but but this is but this is you know the idea the idea here is that it's not necessarily a huge oversight or a huge snub that taxi driver lost to rocky i i think we can all uh another example there will be blood which i think is one of the best movies of the 2000s i think it's just a just a monumental staggering work but it lost to no country for old men which i also think is among the best movie of the 2000 and i also think is a monumental staggering work in its own regard it's not it doesn't have the same sweeping scope as there will be blood which is the movie about america it is should be noted both of those films would have been better had been directed by martin scorsese well of all movies that we have mentioned today would be
JVL00:47:04better if no i just want to make sure that the listeners understand that uh so anyway
Sonny00:47:09i'm going to go here uh in reverse chronological order okay so no no not chronologically this is what i'm doing actually this is what i'm doing i'm not ranking make it up ranking uh this this is this was such this was such a stunning oversight that the even the academy itself recognized that it had done something wrong and changed the rules for the best picture uh number of nominees that they could have in 2008 the dark knight is not even nominated for best picture best it's the best movie of that year by far it's the only good movie about america in the post 9-11 world and not even nominated for best picture this was such a glaring and shocking and stunning oversight that the academy made it so that you could nominate up to well for a while it was 10 pictures and then they changed it to you could nominate up to 10 picture but point is the dark knight in 2008 uh which lost wasn't even nominated but which uh eventually lost to slumdog millionaire which is a fine i actually like slumdog millionaire but it it's it's another one of these movies that nobody has ever watched again after seeing in the theater uh the insider in 1999 losing to american beauty i decided to stay within the confines of what was nominated in 1999 1999 is largely considered to be one of the best movie years of the last 20 or 30 years i mean i think people generally think of it uh you know it's probably not my favorite movie that year it's i i the matrix which won more oscars than anything else that year came out in 1999 uh you have uh they were all technical awards of course but you know um you have the cider house rules
JVL00:48:54god that was a great movie and people keep going back to that over and over again another kind of
Sonny00:48:59role uh good night no politics we don't do politics on this show uh goodfellas 1990 losing to dances with wolves is like probably the most shocking uh snub slash oversight of all time apocalypse now 1979 losing to kramer versus kramer i know there are some kramer versus kramer fans out there like kramer versus no there aren't uh i know john pot hortz is a big
JVL00:49:24kramer versus kramer fan is there singing and dancing i don't know uh but apocalypse
Sonny00:49:29now is apocalypse now is again we were talking about francis ford coppola earlier it's the capstone of the greatest decade any director has ever had and it itself is a fantastic uh amazing movie sweeping scope kind of epic uh whatever and then i'm gonna go i'm gonna this is gonna be maybe a little bit controversial going all the way back to the the earliest edges of our time frame bonnie and clive losing to in the heat of the night yeah you know i didn't i didn't approach
Vic00:49:5967 at all i just skipped it but that's an interesting thought i think that bonnie and
Sonny00:50:03clive is kind of the emblematic movie of that kind of new hollywood it's the pauline kale love fest for the uber violent uh uh era setting movie and it lost to again kind of an important movie but does anybody really go back and watch in the heat of the night now i don't know i mean i honestly don't know important movie very important movie and it's it's great in its own way is uh you know i'll watch i'll watch in the heat of the night the tv series with carol o'connor no this is i would say that more people probably have seen that in the last 20 years on tnt repeats you know so anyway that's my list the dark knight the insider goodfellas apocalypse now and bonnie and clive all good yeah all good i would agree
JVL00:50:50with all those uh i would say my overlooked list is skews very very recent um because those are the movies i feel strongest about um fellowship of the ring which we've already discussed gosford park also from 2001 part
Vic00:51:04is great it's a great movie it it's it's the foundation for everything after like down abbey and everything else upstairs it's the whole thing but it's also a great mystery
JVL00:51:13it's it's fantastic the insider i would say lost in translation one of my favorite movies
Vic00:51:17the last 20 years i would say anything with michael gambon is anything anything michael
JVL00:51:21gambon has appeared in la confidential maybe people forget how great that movie is you
Sonny00:51:28know there's a great sort of homage this film is your actual actual list are you just naming
JVL00:51:32some movies that were overlooked uh i'm naming some movies because you were the one who's supposed to create a sagron ranking i was just here to talk about it's 97 97 so i guess it loses to titanic wow but yeah there's a great there's a great movie uh but the people the things that were not even nominated right there's this movie a british gangster movie called layer cake oh my have i ever mentioned that to you never it's it's also has michael gambon yes please or not um it's fantastic dark night dark brown a brown michael gambon heat do you guys realize heat was not even nominated for best picture i was gonna ask is that 95 uh i think so jurassic park kind of a great movie uh inception jurassic park
Vic00:52:07was also the same year as schindler's list yeah so that was i don't think you get first yeah steven spielberg again one of the great years like i think he was he was in krakow and still editing at night scenes from jurassic park or something that was insane you ready
JVL00:52:22for the hottest take ever all right jurassic park greater sign schindler's list oh wow i
Sonny00:52:28mean i i i think this is a totally reasonable thing to argue frankly boom that just happened jurassic park is a jurassic park is a great pop it's it's among the fun great great it's a yes schindler's list again it's on a different level it's art it's art it's art but anyway
JVL00:52:43inception and then boogie nights and so these are movies so this is like my list of one two three four five six seven eight uh seven movies which i think all of which are total modern classics uh movies that people watch incessantly with the exception of layer cake which is just a me thing um except that every time i get somebody to watch layer cake they then agree that it is a modern classic these things are all modern classics that people come back to over and over again and will be coming back to for 20 years from now when jurassic park was re-released in in theaters a couple years ago it made a ton of money yeah um and they didn't even get nominated and that to me is is it just shows how flawed and i don't even know that i want to blame the academy members for this but just how flawed it is to try to pass judgment on art from that distance like you do need some space to really i don't know why that is do you sonny victorina i mean do you guys have thoughts as to why it is that it can be so hard to even somebody who is
Sonny00:53:38smart and well-intentioned inception was nominated really yeah all right it would have been a great
JVL00:53:44winner so like why is it hard to why is it so hard to come up well because like a real a real appraisal
Sonny00:53:51of a work of art because because the only the only test of of true greatness is time i mean you something that lasts something that sticks with you for more than a month more than two months more than a year more than two years i mean it was important at the moment right i mean there there are times when you can see a movie that is you feel important in the moment uh like a star wars right like a star wars is a kind of a uh a genre busting um almost like new genre creating phenomenon right that you know is both important uh for the business and will stick with you for a long time stick with you uh artistically because of the great advances etc um but i i mean it's it's just it's how many times have we stepped out of a movie theater and thought man that was really great and then literally never thought about a movie again yeah but i don't know i mean maybe
JVL00:54:45the reverse is like i don't know did anybody actually walk out of the cider house rules and think this is a movie people are going to watch in 20 years i don't think so like maybe it isn't as hard as it's like i'm just making it out to be here like now i'm like playing devil's advocate with myself but uh i don't know victorino i was i was gonna say i was surprised you didn't mention
Vic00:55:03the english patient as a winner that should not have been a winner um i mean instead that year i would have gone with fargo oh yeah yeah best picture yeah anyway i one example for
Sonny00:55:16for instance of a movie that grows on repeated viewings is of course heat heat i think is heat is a heat is a movie that you that if the first time you see it you love it the with the shootouts and the kind of choppy noirish dialogue and the bleached colors and the great and the great performances and you know but it's it's second and third time when you're not really trying to piece together the plot uh that they're pulling off as it's happening that you're not really worried about like the ins and outs and the tick tock of the the heists it's where you can just kind of sit back and luxuriate in the um the relationship struggles right like this is a movie about men trying to find their place in the world and i don't think that becomes entirely clear uh at least it didn't for me and granted i was a little bit younger than you guys so like it it is a movie that has i as i have matured and grown and aged it is a movie that has grown with me and i i see you know uh uh dennis haisbert kind of uh it's struggling to get out of the life and realizing that the world is cruel and so there's no reason to play by its rules
Vic00:56:27he would have been better off and that's why i'm making he would have been better off making
Sonny00:56:32pancakes yeah no i mean the lesson is what do you have though but he wouldn't wouldn't he would not have he would not have been better off he'd better off dead no he would have been better standing by
JVL00:56:41his woman this is i mean the lesson of it that the one guy who stands by his woman is chris yeah and he's the one who who survives everybody else who who abandons their woman and breaks faith with
Vic00:56:51with their woman dies yeah okay yeah well we've been at this for about two hours i think we should probably move i had some other thoughts and then i just blanked on it just now i should have wrote it written it down um i think it's time to move on yeah to uh spirit of the week
JVL00:57:09uh jonathan two in a row i i'm look this is medicine i'm drinking my schoffer hofer because i gotta stay strong uh it's german imported half hefeweizen half grapefruit all amazing
Vic00:57:23go go treat yourself just it makes it makes you it gives you the craft it makes you stark okay uh sonny and i are drinking a booker's bourbon courtesy of our friend daniel halper oh the the uh the i believe he's now known as the dean of the white house correspondence yeah the
Sonny00:57:41association the the the new york post's uh white house correspondent i will also give a special if
Vic00:57:47i can shout out to han winery h-a-h-n these people actually sent me some nice bottles of wine oh they did and they're out in monterey why don't you bring them in i thought it would be kind of weird to have wine on this in the studio you don't think so i got a couple other bottles we'll get something next week okay great uh monterey county california um and we had we just had the 2014 chardonnay last night so it was delicious hints of pear pineapple vanilla check it out hanwines.com that's h-a-h-n uh on to corrections um i have one which is our longtime listener and cottonetti uh says that i was right about cedric bullock she is in fact from virginia uh she was born in arlington and actually went to high school at washington and lee down the road for me there you go i have a
JVL00:58:39second note for me and cottonetti uh raising the possibility that patient zero in the frankenfood epidemic could be the mcgriddle yeah yes that is very interesting because i actually was thinking about this does stuffed crust pizza really count as frankenfood and i don't think so i don't think cheese stuffed crust counts because you know what cheese is part of the pizza anyway all you're doing when you do the frank frank and wiener remember the hot dog pizza yeah that's frankenfood yeah but the mcgriddle really does start mixing up things that aren't intended to you're also it's one thing
Vic00:59:09to handle fried chicken but we don't actually handle pancakes with our hands except that they're
JVL00:59:13not even real pancakes right so they're like what are they like half pancake right no they're pancake
Sonny00:59:18flavored bread product i've never i've never had a mcgriddle so i did i just kind of refused to
Vic00:59:25it's sweet uh it's sweet but i don't feel like it's it's right i i stick with the basics the sausage mcmuffin
JVL00:59:32time loop movies my wife says prisoner of azkaban actually yes there is man start because the the character hermione granger who's played by emma watson uh she uses a time turn vic do you remember that film yeah she uses a time turner she's got it sort of i just passed out sorry yeah uh anyway and the other the other great correction is i said the royal gases you know i do have a degree from johns hopkins and molecular biology it's actually the noble gases it's like i never even went to college let me ask you this are there royal gases because i'm just a moron okay by the way this is why i didn't get into medical school and why i'm sitting here with you guys hey congrats yeah oh the big news zima is back
Vic01:00:14i'm looking hoping i'm gonna look for it i'm gonna look for it uh in my supermarket whenever
Sonny01:00:22zima is actually back on shelves we should all we're finishing a six-pack yeah we'll just we'll just chug them we're finishing a six-pack and we're gonna listen so third eye blind do they have do they have 40s of zima can i get a toad the wet sprocket oh toad the wet sprocket yes
Vic01:00:36okay the cranberry for some of us it never left the verve or the verve pipe what's happening those are both those are both things okay uh that is all the time we're giving you for this episode questions comments complaints compliments tweet us at victoria victoria matus at sonny bunch again be sure to subscribe to us on itunes or google play just type in substandard under podcast we are there leave a review and tell your friends spread the word and don't forget substandard show notes will be on friday at 11 a.m at weeklystandard.com until next time was that longer than rogue one that was longer than anything we've ever done
Sonny01:01:23no it's not that long we're only at an hour we're only at an hour right now we're fine we're fine the the i'm expecting i'm expecting john to send me a series of
JVL01:01:33angry tweets about how great oliver actually was can i have some more please oh my god
Sonny01:01:39uh no please sir please sir oh see sonny even knows it better than i do um i lived in england and we had we did we actually did a musical rendition of oliver were you oliver no oh god no no i was like no no no no no i was like so this is like a class of like 200 kids so it was like i was like the kid holding the milk bottle as like the milkmen went around like it was i had i don't
Vic01:02:02think i had a line this is such a touching revelation here you never know what to expect at the substandard here we learned that sonny bunch was in a production of oliver yeah there's a reason i hate that movie it's just uh i always thought you know they have the song food glorious food i always thought it was cheese glorious cheese because i only learned it from the commercials in the 80s that right up there with the incredible edible egg oh boy i saw oliver
JVL01:02:26after having seen the cheese commercials as a kid and so i was utterly confused about this song
Vic01:02:33because i was like why are they using the cheese jingle with different words that's weird and the dining room table suddenly turns into the table at hogwarts you notice this it's just all the food
JVL01:02:44all the food it all comes back to emma watson doesn't it anyway
Sonny01:02:48it went on a pretty long time but you know i think yeah i'm sure it's fine
?01:02:56Thank you.
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