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#21. The Substandard does Beauty and the Beast
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Dudes Chatting — Disney rankings: The episode opens with cold-open banter and a digression about Axis & Allies board games, then pivots into an extended ranking and defense of the Disney animated canon. Sonny identifies the early-'90s Renaissance as the studio's peak, championing Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and The Nightmare Before Christmas as a generation-defining run. JVL is more contrarian: he singles out Robin Hood (1976) and The Sword in the Stone as the studio's low points, expresses inexplicable hostility toward The Little Mermaid, and spends time on Fantasia as an anomalous prestige experiment. The group also debates the LeFou gay subplot in the live-action remake and what it actually signals about Disney's creative priorities, with all three largely agreeing it amounts to nothing.
Reviews: Sonny reviewed the live-action Beauty and the Beast and found it unnecessary and overlong — the new songs are awful, and the film adds nothing that justifies its existence. Negative verdict.
Box Office: Beauty and the Beast pulled $170 million domestically in its opening weekend.
The episode includes a Corrections segment and closes with the Spirit of the Week: Dubliner Irish Whiskey.
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00Hi, this is Bill Kristol. You think the Republican healthcare plan is bad? Wait till you hear this podcast.
Guest00:00:30You think the Republican healthcare plan is bad? Wait till you hear this podcast. Hello and welcome back to The Substandard. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last
Vic00:01:19and Sonny Bunch. I'd like to remind you The Substandard is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at our podcast and search for Substandard. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe. Tell your friends. Leave a review. We are fast on our way to 100 customer reviews. I don't know what we're going to do when that moment happens. Pizza party. Could be a pizza party. Could be something big. We're at 92 or 93 now, so this is very exciting. 94. 94? 94? Yeah. Six away. This is going to be big. And in addition- Not that we're counting or anything. No, no, no. That this is actually episode 20 of our full episode. That we are counting. So that is kind of exciting of full episodes. I didn't think we'd make it this far. We'd also like to remind you that- Well, this episode isn't up yet. No, that's true. The Substandard show notes posted by Jonathan V. Last are available every Friday at 11 a.m. at weeklystandard.com. Gentlemen, it's good to see you. Jonathan, how are you feeling? What's happening? I'm great.
JVL00:02:18Great. Just awesome.
Vic00:02:20You sounded like- When I spoke to you on the phone this morning, I thought I was on the phone with Harvey Fierstein.
JVL00:02:26The love child of Harvey Fierstein. And Ethel Merman, as they were. No, it's great. It's great. I have been feeling not quite perfect over the weekend, and then my son and his best friend decided that they were going to go shark tooth hunting, which means walking around on a beach on the Potomac River in 30-degree weather with it raining, hunting for fossilized shark teeth for three hours. Did they find any? I went and did that. And standing out, I'm sure that made all this much better. Standing out.
Vic00:03:01Where specifically?
JVL00:03:03Westmoreland State Park, which is a... So you will be unsurprised to learn this is a thing. Did you wear your Prada thing?
Vic00:03:09Yes. This sounds like Prada weather. Sorry.
Sonny00:03:14You guys should see his face right now. It's just, his lips are pursed.
JVL00:03:17If you guys ever went outside, you would know that wearing denim... A pass. Hard pass. Outside in the rain when you are hiking through the woods. Is a terrible idea. You never wear denim hiking.
Vic00:03:30What? I don't know.
JVL00:03:32Well, I mean...
Sonny00:03:33Even with the special stitches on the inseam? What about the leather Prada jeans that you wear? I assumed you wouldn't be wearing denim, but you know.
JVL00:03:42Kristen, if you had Prana on the bingo card this morning, ding, ding, ding. Put a chip down there. Put a chip down there.
Vic00:03:51Okay, so you were saying.
JVL00:03:53All I'm saying is my kid found a bunch of shark teeth and his friends found a bunch of shark teeth. And for some reason, this is like the new E.T. trading cards or baseball cards. He's finding fossilized shark teeth. This is like a thing they do at school now, is they bring in their shark teeth and trade them.
Vic00:04:08How successful are kids in doing that? I have a Megadon. What?
JVL00:04:12I have a Megalodon. Do they actually?
Vic00:04:13And I have a Sand Tiger.
Sonny00:04:14Do they actually, like, say what kind of tooth they have? I don't understand this at all.
JVL00:04:19They've got, like, big things showing you, you know, what the genus and species of the different shark teeth. How deep do you have to dig to find that? They're all lying right on top. What? Of the sand. They're just lying there for you to pick over and find them. See, you should go outside sometime, Vic. Wow. Nature is full of wonders.
Vic00:04:37I wouldn't even go to my backyard. Are you kidding me?
Sonny00:04:40Sonny, how are you doing? I'm great. I spent the weekend painting windows. We painted the, like, you know, the frame. I don't know if those are really the window seals or, like, you know, but, like, around the edge of the windows. The interior part, which was fun insofar as you do, like, 30 minutes of prep work, laying down tape and whatever, for about, literally about 10 minutes of painting. I mean, it's just, you know, actually, it was probably closer to, like, 35 or 40 minutes of prep work for about 30 minutes of painting, which is really, like, I guess it is true that, like, the cleanup is so much easier when you actually do the prep work, but it's still so annoying.
Vic00:05:19So you were out painting and drawing. I was in painting. I don't go outside. So you were painting from the inhaling, inhaling all those fumes.
Sonny00:05:27Yeah, I was wearing my prep. Prada jeans inside while painting.
Vic00:05:30Inhaling the fumes, and you were looking for fossils of shark teeth, and I cooked a delicious chicken stir fry last night with broccoli. The key is not just having it sit in the soy sauce and lemon, but adding the oyster sauce at the end. You've got to have the oyster sauce. That gives it this texture that you wonder when you go to Chinese restaurants, I believe it's called MSG, like, ooh, what is this particular umami? Umami. I think the oyster sauce adds the umami. Hey, Vic, I've got a question. Yes.
JVL00:06:00Who does the yard work at your house? Do you mow the lawn? Whoever is at home.
Vic00:06:06If I were at home, like my beloved wife working, on the weekends, I'm catching up on so many things. It's winter. There's not much to do outside.
JVL00:06:16If you needed to, say, plant a tree, transplant a tree. First off, why would anybody do that?
Vic00:06:22Oh, like a plant, like a small tree.
JVL00:06:24Right, or a pair of fence or something like that.
Vic00:06:28Do you do those sorts of tasks in your house? Yes, yes, I would, JVL. What I do is I pick up the phone and I call my father-in-law, Bob Dwyer, because he is down in Roslyn. And I said, hey, Bob, we've got some work here and maybe you can help your daughter out.
JVL00:06:42Okay. But you do cook.
Vic00:06:43Oh, I cook. And I cook Saturday night, too. I had linguine with Italian sausage. Ooh. Yeah, it was nice. Sounds good.
JVL00:06:51Sausage in the mouth, as you guys say here in the States. It's an arrested development joke, Sonny. Oh, what? Okay. But I can't do that. We Britain. Is that We Britain?
Vic00:06:59Now, let me just say, you were talking about, you mentioned Kristen Soltis Anderson earlier.
Sonny00:07:05The Substandard's favorite listener.
Vic00:07:07Last week, I was going to say, we probably got the best fan mail ever from her on Twitter when she showed us, she made a bingo chart with recurring Substandard themes in the squares. I thought it was brilliant. Yeah. It was great, wasn't it?
JVL00:07:23It was. It is better than anything that's ever actually been on the show. Yeah. Frankly.
Vic00:07:27Yeah. Yeah. There was The Prodigines. There was My Big Head. There was Sonny as a Millennial. I mean, you could go on and on. And we actually, I mean, it's all there. Larry Miller, that's an obscure one, but every now and then he comes up too. I mean, it was just very good.
Sonny00:07:42For those playing at home today, you can't use any of these to fill the square. It's too meta.
Vic00:07:46We're talking about the bingo. So anyway, thank you, Kristen. And do check out her podcast, The Polsters. And regarding that bingo chart, I think she's... She said the only things that were missing were Vic in Germany and New Jersey. I think that's pretty good. And you throw in Emma Watson, you got yourself the whole deal. Dark Knight Rises.
JVL00:08:08Bingo! Oh, right.
Vic00:08:09There you go. It was pretty spot on. Bingo was always great. I think that's like one of the first games you could teach a kid because it's just understanding about calling out numbers and then finding it on a chart. And it works out that way.
JVL00:08:21Or pictures, which you can start even pre-numbered. It's like, I have an apple. I have the kitten. Oh, right. Yes. You didn't play...
Vic00:08:28That's right. That's right.
JVL00:08:30You and your high-achieving doctor's family, you guys went straight to the number.
Vic00:08:33I remember playing War as a card game, for starters. That's pretty good. You can understand that one. But what about other card games? What about other board games? When you were growing up, Sonny, what did you like to play?
Sonny00:08:51I was always... I've always been a big fan of Scrabble. I love Scrabble. It's fun. It's fun with words, which I... I'm obviously good at... I'm good at words, so...
Vic00:09:01Would you use words... The way you speak now, would that count on Scrabble? The stuff that you talk about? What do you mean? You know, the terms that you throw out? Like what? Especially on Twitter, you know, all the...
Sonny00:09:12Well, no, because abbreviations don't count, Vic. I couldn't put S-M-D-H down. How about OBS? I couldn't put OBS down. That's an abbreviation.
Vic00:09:18I think you would try to get away with it. I would not try to get away with OBS.
Sonny00:09:21It might be in the dictionary now because of decline, because of societal decline. That's what I'm saying. So if it's in the dictionary, then I would. Then I would definitely try. I mean, OBS, if you put OBS down on like a triple word score, that's like 45 points, probably, between the B and the V, you know? Anyway. I hate Scrabble. Scrabble was the best. Really?
JVL00:09:42I love Scrabble. I love Scrabble.
Vic00:09:43Why did you hate Scrabble?
JVL00:09:45So, you know, like I write for a living, and so people always assume, family members and friends, oh, I bet you're a great Scrabble player. And this is the equivalent of being seven foot two and not playing basketball, because I am a terrorist. Terrible. How can you be terrible at Scrabble?
Vic00:10:01You use words all day long. I can't even tell you how bad I am. Your mind doesn't work. In other words, your mind doesn't work that way, where you're able to arrange the tiles to find a word. Is that what you're saying?
JVL00:10:09My mind is a black box, and it is better that nobody probes at how it actually works. All I can do is say that it does not work in terms of Scrabble. And so we'll play, like, for instance, every once in a while at my in-law's house, and my father-in-law is, I love my father-in-law a ton. He is not a reader. I would say euphemistically. You could take that as you will. Or a listener. Certainly he's not a listener. Certainly he's not a listener. But is not a reader, but has mastered the, essentially, all of the two-letter words that possibly exist for Scrabble. And so we'll just play, well, ip, ip. And so what he does is he will just play, like, two- and three-letter words constantly, and I will sit there and think to myself, well, that just can't be a word. And his response is, well, then, Jeff. Challenge it. And I get the sense that half the time, he actually is just, you know, BSing. He's just putting a letter down, but he operates under the challenge theory of Scrabble. You know, you just do it or not, people stop challenging, because nobody wants to be caught. And I find this, as a pastime, maddening. I would sooner... Well, if you're dealing with that, I would sooner drive a Scrabble stick through my eye.
Vic00:11:21The challenging thing, that is very time-consuming, so I can imagine that is annoying. I was going to say... When I was a kid, we loved to play the game of life. You ever play that game? Yes. You know what? And you know what was such trash? That had one of the best spinners. Spinners, right. Oh, my God. It was so satisfying. It was training you to get into gambling, basically. Oh, my God.
JVL00:11:42Because of the name, the feel of the spinner. Wheel of Fortune. It was a Wheel of Fortune style spinner.
Vic00:11:45Oh, it was a Wheel of Fortune, yeah, because it has that ticking noise. And I was going to say, what is the message? The message of the game of life is... Cisgender heteronormativity and patriarchy. Oh, wow. Yes. I was going to say, the message is, don't be a teacher. Because they make no money in the game. Do you remember that? You had to, like, oh, I want to be a doctor. I hope I land on doctor, because they make a lot.
JVL00:12:04Don't we all? Hopefully. Is there a space for landing on child of doctor?
Vic00:12:10I don't even... I would have journalist. A journalist would be lower. That would be lower than teacher. But then... And, you know, like, your goal was to be tycoon. If you could hit tycoon, you know, and you're adding kids, it's just, you know...
JVL00:12:19The game of life did not have divorce in it, did it? That's an interesting question.
Vic00:12:24I don't think so. I don't think it predates the widespread divorce. You could have a lot of kids where you... You need two cars because you have so many kids. So it was like Irish Catholic life. And alimony. Yes. You'll be paying alimony and child support. That's right. That's right.
Sonny00:12:37Refresh my memory. The game of life was basically all luck-based, right? It was just like you spun it and then whatever. You were spinning. That was it. It's a garbage game. It's a trash game based on luck that nobody would play for fun unless they're idiots.
Vic00:12:51I'm not saying... But you know what? There was great topography on the board game. Yeah. No, you know. Look, it was an exception.
JVL00:12:56There was little valleys and things. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It's an exceptionally detailed candy land, which is to say there's no skill involved, but it is enjoyable to ride. It's trash. The spinner is exciting. Garbage. The props with cars and the different colored pegs.
Vic00:13:07Yeah, you put the little pegs into them because you have a wife. Yeah, the pig peg. You've got a wife and you have children. Okay. Oh, my God. So when you were a kid, Sonny, you probably played Monopoly or no? Were you a Monopoly player?
Sonny00:13:16I did play some Monopoly, but again, Monopoly runs into the same problem where it's based on rolling dice and you just, wherever you land... It's the start of my life. No. No. Wherever you land is like... Monopoly is all based on the...
Vic00:13:26You have to make...
Sonny00:13:27All the deals.
Vic00:13:28Yeah. Deals and judgment calls. Do I buy it or do I not buy it? You always buy it. At first.
Sonny00:13:32You always buy it. Always buy it. Just always buy everything. I'm playing against Sonny next time we do Substanda Monopoly. You buy everything. But also, the problem is, I have a Monopoly problem like you have a Scrabble problem. I would always play with people who didn't want to make deals. So it would just be like, you keep going around the board and... Yeah. I'm going to keep Park Place until the end of the game. Yeah. I mean, like... So, that's a problem.
Vic00:13:53Yeah. No. I love... My strategy when I was a kid, I always won. I wanted to own a whole block, right? But it was specifically the Purple Orange block, the St. Charles Place, Squares, and then St. James New York Avenue. That whole stretch. That's a pretty good stretch. That was my stretch. That was my goal. And it always drove me crazy when people would say, like, I have two. And they'll be like, oh, I'll just buy this one if they landed on it. But the key, I think, the real key...
Sonny00:14:13Of course you would buy it, though. You've got to buy it to block your Monopoly.
Vic00:14:16To leverage.
Sonny00:14:17No. Not even to leverage. If I bought that, I would never trade it to you for anything.
Vic00:14:22I have Boardwalk.
Sonny00:14:23Don't you want it for your Park Place? Maybe I'm actually the one who's bad at making deals. Possibly.
Vic00:14:27I think, though, looking back, I think the key, really, to the ideal situation for you in Monopoly is if you own a corner. So forget about a stretch. Some people can stretch that out. But if you owned, like, Marvin Gardens and then Pacific Avenue on that side, the green and yellow, that would be a great...
JVL00:14:45No, but there's a sabermetric analysis of Monopoly. Certain Monopolies are actually worth more relative to their value than others. And the ones you just talked about are worth a lot. Because... Because you wind up in jail statistically more often than any other space. Because you land in the corner. Is that what you're saying? You land in the corner, or you roll three times in a row, or there are chance community chess cards, which send you directly to jail. So the spaces that are between five and ten spaces away, especially because those are the numbers. So the green ones. No, no, no, no. From jail, no. This is the reds, the orange, and the purple are statistically worth a little bit more than some of the others. I knew.
Vic00:15:23No wonder I was doing so well.
JVL00:15:24You were doing...
Vic00:15:25Without even knowing it. Without even buying them all.
JVL00:15:26You had already hacked the game, Vic. Yes, I had. Just buy them all.
Vic00:15:29And all I needed was my peanut butter granola bar and Minute Maid fruit punch. Capri Sun. Capri Sun. And sitting... They don't say Indian style anymore, but that's how it's... What were they called? Now they call it... Cross-legged.
Sonny00:15:41Cross-legged.
Vic00:15:42Criss-cross applesauce. They say criss-cross. They don't worry.
JVL00:15:45Criss-cross applesauce.
Sonny00:15:45You are a troglodyte.
JVL00:15:48Why, Vic, knowing that we were going to talk about this, I brought a prop. Oh, my goodness. JVL, what is that?
Vic00:15:56It's huge.
JVL00:15:59Careful. We were actually warned before going on air today about... Our producer told us. Yeah. He said, careful, boys.
Vic00:16:05A little bit blue. I'm just saying that you're holding something that's big and it's stiff, so please explain.
JVL00:16:09So this is Vic's and my, I believe, both of our favorite games, right? Yes. Axis and Allies, the king of board games.
Vic00:16:17The greatest board game ever. Sonny, that's gross. It's the greatest board game ever.
JVL00:16:23Ever. Ever. Go ahead, explain it. Explain JVL. John Bradley, what was that series? I forget. It's like the master series. They made, I think there were five or six games. One of them was broadsides and boarding parties. The most successful, which is Axis and Allies, which has... There was a Roman Empire version. Yes. And a Civil War one as well. And a Fortress America, which is...
Vic00:16:42Yeah. You know. That's like, actually, that would be like Man in the High Castle.
JVL00:16:47Yes. Yes. So you are replaying World War II. You have five countries. You can play it with anywhere from two to five players. If you play as... Two players. One player plays as the Axis. The other plays as the Allies. It is full of little plastic army men and tanks. Bombers. Fighters.
Vic00:17:05Aircraft carriers.
JVL00:17:06It is. So, Vic, here's a question. Yes. Yes, JVL. Did you prefer to play as the Allies or the Axis?
Vic00:17:14You know, it's so interesting you should say that, because the Axis, of course, is only two powers, right? It's Germany. Italy is not a power in this game. No. Italy is not a power. Italy is a vassal. Which, it seems to tell me it's like 19... 1943, 1944 at that point. But, no, in fact, it's spring 1942. That's the opening of the game. And I don't know, for some strange reason, I always ended up picking the Axis. I don't know why. Which side is the Soviet Union on? Oh, it's the Allies. Allies. Sonny. Sonny. Oh, this is post-Soviet. First off, this is a real question. Yeah. On the board, Operation Barbarossa has already commenced. So, you can see he's already... He. The... The Axis. Germany has already taken over the Ukraine and Eastern Europe. That is all under... Including, you can see there, the Crimea. That's all under Axis control in Scandinavia. So, it's the height of the Axis power and, of course, North Africa. So, I would say the worst power to be is probably Russia. Would you agree, Sonny? JVL.
JVL00:18:16No. Russia can be a fun power to play. Because with Russia, you can pull back, pull back, pull back and mount a counteroffensive. This is... The play is Russia. The play of Russia is to not be... Because you were tempted early in the game as Russia to try to push the Germans back. But you don't want to do that. What you actually want to do is withdraw, much like the Russians did. I always thought the worst power to play was America. Oh, because you're so far away. Because you're so far away and it takes... You spend all of your time worrying about logistics and how do you actually get things from here to there. I found them very, very difficult to play.
Vic00:18:47The only action you get early on, if you're in the United States, is in China, right? Yes. In Chongqing and that area because that's, of course...
JVL00:18:55Do you really defend it? Yeah, you try to be aggressive and push the Japanese out. Can I tell you about my greatest triumph in Axis Analyze? Go ahead, please. So, you and I were talking about this before the show. One of the features of Axis Analyze is they have advanced technology. Oh, yeah. I love that. You can purchase... The way it would work is you would spend your money instead of buying extra armies with your money. You could buy a chance to develop advanced technology. So, you would roll it. You'd pay like five bucks and you get to roll a die. And if you get a six, then you get one of the six advanced technologies. And so, I was playing as the Axis. Because I actually agreed. The Axis is always more fun to play as. It's more fun. And things were going very badly for me. The war was... I was in the bunker with the generals. And, how can you tell me if we have lost these? And on a last...
Vic00:19:41Your downfall moment.
JVL00:19:42It was a total downfall moment. Thank you. Thank you, Sonny. Total last-ditch effort. I spent all of my money on one turn. I did not buy any armies whatsoever. Which is very hard to resist. I spent all of it on research and development. And you rolled. And I rolled a Yahtzee. Sixes everywhere, right? All sixes. So, I got all of the advanced technologies. And, as God is my witness, the game turned around and I won.
Vic00:20:09Exactly.
JVL00:20:10The advanced technologies were enough to fully swing the tide of the war.
Sonny00:20:13Just like war.
JVL00:20:14Just like war. This is the great... You know, the great Neil Ferguson? Yes. Writer, huge Axis and Allies devotee. Is that right?
Vic00:20:20Oh, I'd love to play with him. Yeah. Gosh, I wonder... The interesting thing is, when you're in Japan, you have big choices to make, too. Do you focus on the Pacific, because you have... Yes. You have the Japanese fleet. The Imperial fleet is still a pretty formidable vet. Or do you focus on the continent, meaning India, China, or the Soviet Far East? And don't waste your time on Australia, I always say. Yeah, no, don't. Leave those little up-posts. And then, if you're Germany, do you focus on UK, or do you focus on Russia? And the answer is Russia. It's very difficult to stage an invasion, like Operation Sea Line was supposed to be, an invasion of... That requires everything. You need to set... It's just too many resources, and I guess... You have to kill Russia.
JVL00:21:04In order to have a chance to satisfy one of the victory conditions in the game, you simply must kill Russia early on. And if you don't, then the weight of the war drives... Again, this is such a beautifully designed game, and it is eerie to the extent to which it mimics history, even if you're trying to avoid it. If you decide, I'm going to do a counter-historical scenario, the game... You can see why people made it. The choices they did. Yeah. Risk was better. Oh, Sonny. Terrible. I like Risk. Mic drop. Don't get me wrong. I like Risk. Risk was for the slow kids, Sonny. This is... Look, the honors kids played Risk. The AP kids played Axis and Allies. And the normal kids had girlfriends. Yeah, right. Yeah. We're excluding a whole class.
Vic00:21:44None of the above, by the way. There's nobody in the studio. Okay.
JVL00:21:47Or at least that's what I'm told the normal kids did.
Vic00:21:48That's right. That's right. Okay. Well, that was great.
Sonny00:21:50I don't quite understand how this board... So I'm looking at the board right now of Axis and Allies for the first time. The listeners who don't... Yeah. I took a photo of it. Maybe we can put it in show notes. That's great. I just put it on Twitter. It's hard to... I don't think we have the technology to put pictures on the internet. That's a good point. But so does it... Do you start owning all of the... You have units everywhere. So if you're Germany, do you own all of the silver territories at the start of the game?
Vic00:22:17Yes.
Sonny00:22:17Uh-huh. Yes. So it's not totally random. No.
Vic00:22:20And note the British Empire, Sonny. It's all over the place. Yeah.
Sonny00:22:22The British Empire is kind of all over. Yeah. I imagine that's hard. I imagine that's hard to defend. Exactly. Blessing and a curse. Yeah. You're going to give up basically... And then do you get armies based on how many territories you control? Yes. You can see their value numbers.
JVL00:22:33See the value numbers?
Sonny00:22:34Uh-huh.
JVL00:22:34That's how many dollars you get for controlling each territory. Gotcha. At the end of every turn, you... No, I'm sorry. At the beginning of every turn, you buy your units. And at the end of the turn, you place them.
Vic00:22:44So buy wisely. But every now and then, the roll of the dice plays a role, too. I mean, you could luck out and totally...
Sonny00:22:50So you can't place your armies until after your turn? Yes. That's dumb. This game is dumb.
Vic00:22:55You're terrible.
Sonny00:22:57That is a garbage opinion, Sonny.
Vic00:22:59What do you like? Well, this is a garbage game. Well, what do you like? Risk. Do you like... How about Candyland? Do you like Candyland?
Sonny00:23:04No, we just discussed how Candyland is good. I much prefer... I do... What was the super advanced version of Axis and Allies? Oh, yeah.
Vic00:23:15Well, you know what? There were more serious board games than that for grown-up nerds. Avalon Hill. Thank you. What about Settlers of Catan?
Sonny00:23:25Thank you. Settlers of Catan.
JVL00:23:25Have you guys ever played Settlers of Catan? No. Never have, but I can tell that if Settlers of Catan had been out when I was in high school, my friends and I would have played it.
Vic00:23:33Or Diplomacy. I'm sure somebody's going to say, what about Diplomacy?
JVL00:23:36Gross. There's a cult of Diplomacy.
Vic00:23:38You know, when I interviewed my good friend Sid Meier, the creator of Civilization... The Sid Meier. The Sid Meier, JVL. I said to him, you know, did you play Diplomacy when you were a kid? And he goes, no, because you needed to have friends. That's great.
JVL00:23:52It's the best. That's the best. By the way, listeners, this is absolutely true that Vic Mattis is friends with Sid Meier. I've spoken to him in years. 100%.
Sonny00:24:00But I do remember... Why hasn't he sent you a copy of the latest Siv so we can talk about it?
Vic00:24:05Because everyone says it's bad. Because he loves Vic and doesn't want Vic to lose days of his life. I think there were serious bugs. Not bugs, but people have problems with the new one. It's too cartoonish, they say, for starters. I have a Mac. That's a problem. But I remember waiting in the room, in the reception room for Axis. I have to talk to Sid Meier, and my phone goes off just before I meet him, and it's Jonathan. And he's like, okay, have you met with him yet? I go, no, because you've got to ask him if the AI cheats. You've just got to ask him if...
JVL00:24:34One of the great cover stories ever in The Weekly Standard was Vic Mattis on the game Civilization. And what was the cover line? Was it Civilization and its content? Yes. Yes, it was. I believe that's what it was. I will put that piece in show notes. People, if you haven't read this, it's great. That is a great game.
Vic00:24:50I gave it up for Len. It's that good. And you were... That's right. I forgot Sonny.
Sonny00:24:55Go ahead. You were going to say something. What about Dungeons and Dragons? Did you guys ever play Dungeons and Dragons?
Vic00:25:00Role play? Yes. But I went to the next level, which was playing Marvel role playing game. Oh, my God. Which is TSR did that. That's even worse. No. So you're saying neither. You just fooled me into admitting it. No, because I wasn't a dork. You fooled me.
Sonny00:25:12I wasn't a giant dork. I'm literally wearing a Tesla Hydra on my sport coat in homage to Dungeons and Dragons. I thought you meant Hydra. And Stranger Things.
Vic00:25:23No, okay.
Sonny00:25:24But... No. No, you're a big dork. Thank you.
Vic00:25:28There were... Not the first time somebody said that. And there was one call I think called Star Frontiers, which was the sci-fi D&D, which was also hot. And then there was one that was like espionage, like James Bond level, which is...
Sonny00:25:38Did you guys play... Did you guys have Magic the Gathering cards? Did you play Magic the Gathering? Or was that a little after your time? I don't even know what that is. You don't know what... No.
Vic00:25:46You know what Magic is.
?00:25:47No, I don't.
Sonny00:25:47Oh, you're a liar.
Vic00:25:48No, I don't study. Tell me about what you loved about that game.
JVL00:25:51Magic hit when Vic and I were in college.
Sonny00:25:53Yeah. Yeah.
JVL00:25:53It was too late for us.
Sonny00:25:54I was in middle school, I think, when I saw kids starting to play it. I did not play it because I didn't worship Satan.
JVL00:25:59What is it?
Sonny00:26:00I was playing with my pogs when Magic started being a big thing. I had ALF pogs in his back and ALF form.
JVL00:26:08Can I throw something at you, boys? Okay. When Fellowship of the Ring came out... Oh, yes. Yes. My buddy and I went on opening night. We each brought our Dungeon Master manual from AD&D. Oh, man.
Sonny00:26:23And our own set of gem dice.
Guest00:26:26Oh, my gosh.
Sonny00:26:27Why did you... Did you do this so you could sit in line and play the game while you were...
JVL00:26:31No, just as talismans and remembrances of who we are and where we had come from.
Vic00:26:35Where did you keep...
JVL00:26:37You didn't see it with Vic?
Vic00:26:38Yes.
JVL00:26:39You didn't see it with Vic at the Uptown? No, no, no.
Vic00:26:41No, no. By then, I was already after Post Uptown. Stillman and I went. Okay. Did you keep the manual and the dice in the pocket inside your cape? No cape or ears.
JVL00:26:53Look. I mean, I don't know what sort of guy you think I am. Did you have a magical staff? I did not. I was not cosplaying, man. You shall not pass. I don't do cosplay. Those cosplay guys are weird. Those are losers.
Vic00:27:04Yeah. Losers. That's getting too crazy now. It's bordering on fairytale talk. Speaking of fairytales... Oh. Good transition. Beauty and the Beast crushed it, despite various controversies, $170 million domestic and a lot more. It's worldwide. Sonny is the only one to have seen it. I was supposed to see it. I was unable to. My wife thought it was too violent for the kids and other things. Sonny, you saw it some time ago, and you reviewed it. Yes. What did you think?
Sonny00:27:38So, Beauty and the Beast, of course, is the Disney live-action adaptation of the Disney cartoon, which itself was based on a fairytale from long ago, about a girl who is kidnapped by a horrible, monstrous one-percenter, locked away in a tower and is rescued by a brave villager named Gaston, who has to come to her aid and save the day. I was not a big fan of this live-action adaptation of the cartoon for a variety of reasons. I mean, the first of which is that it is so utterly unnecessary as a piece of art, as an object that has artistic ambitions, that even I, who loves capitalism more than anything, who watches They Live and sees a movie about a bright future that we could aspire to, was kind of taken aback by how grotesque this was. It's two hours long, which makes it about 50% longer than the cartoon, and you feel every minute that is additional. It just drags and drags. The additional songs are awful and boring and unmemorable. There's a bunch of backstory with the father, who's played by Kevin Kline that is really just, it's unnecessary, etc., etc. I could go on and on, but I didn't care for it. Did it have some of the music from the original? Yes, it had the, like, you know, Be Our Guest and Beauty and the Beast. Plus new stuff. Yeah, plus new stuff, right.
Vic00:29:07It reminds me of that, when you're talking about motivation for why they made this movie, it reminds me of the great line from Mel Brooks in Spaceballs when he says, Hopefully we'll meet up again in Spaceballs 2, the search for more money.
Sonny00:29:18Right, which is, I mean, no, I mean, and look, Disney, to its credit, has, has basically decided that cannibalizing its own library is a surefire way to make billions of dollars, and they're right. I mean, look at the box office of this movie, which is, I think, 350 million worldwide after the first week, first weekend, first weekend, not even the first week.
Vic00:29:38That's not even counting Malaysia, where it's been banned.
Sonny00:29:41Right, I mean, it's been in, I think Russia was talking about banning it because of the, you know, the exclusively gay moment that director Bill Condon was talking about. Yeah, LeFou, maybe we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that a little bit later. But look, and this is just the latest, one of these types of movies from Disney, right, JBL?
JVL00:30:02There are currently 22 live-action remakes in process. Wow. From Disney, including a bunch of live-action spinoffs. So there's going to be like a Prince Charming movie about one of the princes. There is going to be a Cruella de Vil movie, which is an origin, a live-action origin story for Cruella de Vil. Personally, when watching 101 Dalmatians, I've always thought, I need to know how she got here. Yeah.
Vic00:30:29What motivates her? If Maleficent did so well in an on-Broadway Wicked, this is the whole idea, right? Oh, we got to do this. Right.
Sonny00:30:36Well, so here's the thing about Maleficent, though, is I actually, I like that much more than most of the rest of these straight-ahead adaptations, because at least Maleficent has an idea behind it, like what is the deal with the evil queen, you know? And plus it also stars Angelina Jolie, who's my favorite. She's the best. And it is very different from, like, say, the Beauty and the Beast remake, which just, like, takes all of the original songs and sticks them in this new grotesque CGI world of awful, uncanny valley monstrosities. And it's different. It's slightly different from, I actually didn't see The Jungle Book. Did you see The Jungle Book? No. The Jon Favreau? No.
JVL00:31:16You could not pay me.
Sonny00:31:17I hated the original. I love the original. Yeah, of course you did. But again, it takes that idea and kind of... I don't like the carbon copies. I don't mind the kind of reimaginings where the, like, taking the side characters and... I mean, a Cruella de Vil origin story does sound kind of terrible and dreadful, but...
JVL00:31:38But the Kenneth Branagh Cinderella was actually kind of wonderful. The one with Lily James and Cate Blanchett. I don't know. Is that her name? Yes. Yeah, no, I really enjoyed that Cinderella. It is more of a grown-up Cinderella. And grown-up... Only in the sense that it is slower, and that it takes some of the cartoonishness of the stepsisters out, and actually fleshes out the wicked stepmother a tiny bit as well, giving her class anxiety.
Sonny00:32:05Maybe...
JVL00:32:05So this is why... You might actually like the new Beauty and the Beast. I doubt it, because I hate the original Beauty and the Beast.
Sonny00:32:10Oh, why do you hate it?
JVL00:32:11It is the most show-toony... It's just a straight Broadway thing. I'm not a Broadway guy. Despite my voice, I feel like I could be... I don't know. Aren't there parts for Harvey Fierstein meets Ethel Merman on Broadway? There's always assembly rooms like this. I'm sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I just don't like Broadway. It is the most show-toony of... More than The Lion King? Yeah, hell yeah, more than The Lion King. It just doesn't do it for me. I would say this about Disney's live-action remake thing, though. In a sense, I very much admire that they have not remade as straight animation the animated classics, because I am sure somebody at some point has remade... Well, I don't know. Let's just redo Snow White. I mean, we have CGI now, and you can just do it as, like, you know, a Pixar-style... And that would be disastrous. That would be a terrible, terrible thing. Those movies are the studio's legacy. The studio was literally built on those films. To say that we can improve upon them, you simply could not put a dollar value on the type of damage that would do. And so to redo them as live-action and not as animated is itself, in a way, a form of capitalist restraint.
Sonny00:33:20I wonder... I do wonder, JBL, about this. Because, you know, Disney has derived so much income from home video over the years, from putting the movies in the vault.
JVL00:33:30The vault.
Sonny00:33:31You know? Disney vault will only be open. Gotta buy it now, or you'll never be able to buy it again for, like, five years. Like, it's actually a fascinating business strategy, and clearly very effective. But I do wonder, in the kind of age of... In the age of people not buying things for home... Home viewing anymore, only renting, only streaming, whether or not the temptation to remake those as cartoons will finally win out.
JVL00:34:04If this is a... So, Disney's in a different business in regards to the home video market than everybody else is in, because they make things for children. Adults can rent a movie because they watch it once. Families have to buy the movie because the kids want to watch it 5,000 times for the And so, in a way, Disney's home video calculations must be entirely different than everybody else's. If you're universal, and the calculus you're doing on your window, and how long you want to be released, exclusive, totally different from Disney. And so, I don't know. I think that Disney's been very smart about their properties. I would not go see this movie if you paid me. I just... Emma Watson is a horrible actress. This is all the...
Sonny00:34:49I think you just killed... JBL, I think you just killed Vic. Vic's dead. He's muttering. He's convulsing.
JVL00:35:00All of the Harry Potter children, terrible. I mean, this is... I mean, even, I would say, even the non-featured players from the kids in those movies. And look, I disagree. You're casting people at age seven. It must be impossible to find somebody at age seven, let alone 15-something.
Vic00:35:17She must be... I don't know what their contracts were. It's the name of the... Daniel Radcliffe's contract was vis-a-vis Rupert Grint or Emma Watson. I'd really like to know about how that breaks down. But in terms of commercial success post-Harry Potter, Emma Watson clearly is doing much better.
Sonny00:35:37I would say that's probably fair, certainly.
Vic00:35:39Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, in terms of how much money she personally has been raking in from whether or not the movie was good, like the Noah's Ark movie with Russell Crowe or this Beauty and the Beast. I bet she didn't make very much money from it.
JVL00:35:51That is not an Emma Watson movie.
Sonny00:35:53Yeah, I mean, she's a bit...
Vic00:35:54But how much was the check? That's what I want to know.
Sonny00:35:56I bet it really wasn't that... Really? I bet it was not very good, actually. I bet it was modest. Her future is not as a top-lining actress.
JVL00:36:03I'm sorry.
Sonny00:36:05I'm sorry. This is just not... It will be after this movie makes a billion dollars worldwide.
JVL00:36:09Emma Watson is incidental to this movie's success.
Sonny00:36:11I agree. I totally agree.
JVL00:36:13Hollywood will learn the wrong lessons from this. But Emma Watson's... I saw The Variety has a piece out today saying the five reasons that Beauty and the Beast dominated. Emma Watson has 24 million Twitter followers, which is more than...
Sonny00:36:27That's how you sell all the tickets, man. And I just thought... Twitter. I have 24,000 Twitter followers. I could easily get 1% of that box.
Vic00:36:36I have 1,100, I think.
JVL00:36:38The people at Disney are not that stupid. And I can't believe that the people at Variety are that stupid, either. This is not what has sold all those tickets. This is a pre-sold property, which has come at a perfect time, which has been an unbelievable marketing campaign. People love those songs. People love those songs, but you could have dropped literally any reasonably halfway competent actress into that role, and the box office returns would be simply indistinguishable from how it is now. So this is not any... Whatever. I don't want to turn this into a beat-up on Emma Watson. I'm sure she's a lovely human being and smart. She's great. She's great.
Sonny00:37:15I do think you're right, and I remember reading stories about how Emma Watson was originally slated for the Emma Stone role in La La Land. Wow. Which I would have been a disaster. Emma Stone has this kind of insouciant, kind of snarky thing about her, sassy thing about her, that Emma Watson simply doesn't have.
JVL00:37:34She also has presence on screen and can change speeds and do a bunch of... I mean, Emma Watson is a real-deal actress. Emma Watson's really good. Emma Stone. Emma Stone. I'm sorry, Emma Stone. Right, yes. I get my Emmas confused. So many Emmas. Emma Thompson is in this movie. Emma Thompson, very good. She plays Miss Potts. Yeah, I don't... Do we want to talk about the LeFou in the...
Sonny00:37:58All I will say about this, and I wrote this in my review last week. My complaint with this is not necessarily that they made LeFou gay or that they... My real complaint is that they made this big stink about how, again, quote, an exclusively gay moment, as if they were like, well, maybe we should make it bi. No, let's make it exclusively gay. My complaint about this is that it... It strips all the subtext out of that character. The whole joke about LeFou in the cartoon is that he's kind of gay. He's really into Gaston, and he's dismissive of all the ladies who want his attention. And to just come out and say, by the way, this guy's gay. It is annoying in a purely artistic sense. And in the movie, it's very funny. The big exclusively gay moment is just they're doing a big communal dance and he switches from having a female partner to a male partner. That's like it. That's the big exclusively gay. And he smiles. He's like, oh. Again, it works so much better as subtext. Not that Josh Gad is a particularly subtle actor in this role. I mean, it's like he might as well be wearing a rainbow cape.
JVL00:39:09You said in your review, minstrel-y, right? Did you say? Yes, minstrel-y.
Sonny00:39:14If I was gay, if I were gay, I would be offended by Josh Gad's performance in this film. A little bit offended by it. Yeah.
JVL00:39:23Gay LeFou, my first thought was, they're trying to critic-proof this movie, so that if it, because I would say most critics, like real movie critics, have said, this movie is not all that great. I have seen, I think you pointed this out. Politically palatable. It's very difficult to say, if you believe in this stuff, boy, this movie is lousy, because look, look, we have gay LeFou. It's progress. It's progress. The second thought I have is that what offends me about it. Like, truly offends me, is that they didn't just make LeFou overtly gay. They then had to turn him good.
Sonny00:39:59That's true, yeah. He has like a, he becomes a hero.
JVL00:40:03Well, no, because that's the real, like, you can't just leave the character as what he is, because, I don't know, like, gay people can't be bad guys or something. So, I was, no kidding, and this, but this gets to my actual complaint about this. So, I was in a, this sounds horrible to say, but I'll just say, I was in a green room once upon a time with Martin Landau. Wow. Oh, look at the, oh, look at big media Jonathan Last. I love Martin Landau. Always loved him as an actor. So, after I got finished telling him how much I really liked his daughter as an actress, Juliette Landau, who is a phenomenal actress, star of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I was just talking with him, and I, so I just like, can we talk about North by Northwest? Because I was like, hey, I've got 15 minutes with Martin Landau, I would like to talk about North by Northwest. And I said, you know, so I've always kind of... been curious, I always thought that you were playing Leonard, his character in North by Northwest, there's something definitely going on with him that we don't know fully what it is, and it's really intriguing, and I kind of got the sense that maybe he's gay. And Landau goes, yeah, yeah, that's how I was playing him, actually. And he said, I wanted to give him a life that existed outside the page, and that looked like he had a secret that nobody else in the movie knew. And it, in this very subtle ways, which actually totally adds to the character, even though his screen time is very, so I mean, this is a Cary Grant movie, it's not a Martin Landau movie. So there are ways to do these things that are totally full of artistic integrity that add to the story, that add to the artistic creation.
Sonny00:41:36And it sounds to me like Kayla Fu is- Josh Gad does not have Martin Landau's ability to subtly get across what he's got. I mean, it's literally just mincing and winking, and oh, God, it's the worst.
Vic00:41:47Martin Landau, also a great Bela Lugosi and Ed Wood, Tim Burton's Ed Wood. Yeah. Yes. Martin Landau, that guy is amazing. And of course, Mission Impossible, the series. Yes.
JVL00:41:58God, I love Martin Landau.
Vic00:41:59So yeah, so this is all of my objections to Kayla Fu. I did, of course, as I mentioned, my wife thought it was too violent for the kids. Michael did not want to see Beauty and the Beast, and my daughter had a birthday party anyway that we were going to take her away from, and she wants to spend the whole time there anyway. So I was like, forget about it. I was not about-
Sonny00:42:15You just went by yourself in your trench coat? You just went by yourself to a midnight screening? You sat in the background?
Vic00:42:19I was like the Supreme Court Justice in the Pelican Brief. You know, the one who goes, who gets strangled? Oh, God. By the way, who strangles him? The actor who strangles-
JVL00:42:29I don't-
Vic00:42:30Ready for this? Stanley Tucci. In the Pelican Brief. Crazy. Crazy. He played the assassin. No, so instead I said, you know what? I'm going to watch on Netflix. They had Fantasia, Disney's Fantasia from 1940.
JVL00:42:43So you dropped acid and then watched Fantasia?
Vic00:42:44Well, it would have helped because it's weird, and it was like, how does music translate to images? And that's going to- It's going to be the movie. Yeah. For two, over two hours.
Sonny00:42:56Yeah.
Vic00:42:56The music's great. It's the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Sonny00:42:58They're playing- I still don't understand how that movie- It's weird. That is really Walt Disney's FU moment. Like, I can do anything I want. And he did. He just throws it on the table and is like, this is what we're doing. We're doing Fantasia.
Vic00:43:13The second act, which is Sorcerer's Apprentice, that's the great one. That's the one that everybody remembers. Sure. But the stuff in the beginning and the stuff in the end, there's stuff with centaurs who are half naked. It's like heavy metal. It's weird. It's like a Disney heavy metal.
Sonny00:43:26It's bizarre.
Vic00:43:26It was really, really weird. And the flying angels. And again, it's just really weird stuff. Now, my two thoughts were, one, you would never, for many reasons, this movie would not fly today. One of them is the end scene is this great sort of battle of good versus evil, and it's Mussorgsky and Schubert. And the last song of the triumph of good over evil is Ave Maria. That's not going to happen in Disney today. You're not going to have that. It's the last song. It's the last song in the movie. Number one. Number two, the nutcracker scene, because they're playing scenes for the nutcrackers, the Chinese dance. They have these mushrooms, and the mushroom caps turn into those rice patty hats, and then the inside slits are kind of like the eyes. I was very offended. I don't know. Problematic. I was going to say. Isn't it?
JVL00:44:13No, but I mean, I was joking about it, but didn't Fantasia become, in the 70s, a big piece of stoner culture? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.
Sonny00:44:20I mean, this is like Cheech and Chong. You would have Fantasia. Totally. Totally see that. My understanding, and I may be wrong. Feel free to correct me, listeners. My understanding was always that Walt Disney, this is actually Walt Disney's acid movie, that he was making a movie about ... This is what I've heard. I don't know. I might be wrong. What year is Fantasia? 1940. This is basically ... Do they have psychedelic drugs? I guess probably not. No, I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, this is probably just me absorbing 1970s culture. And not really questioning it. But it was basically him on drugs. This is what he saw on drugs. But I might be wrong. I could be very wrong. I'm sure someone will let us know.
Vic00:45:03What are, since we're not fans of, or you're not fans of, Beauty and the Beast, the live action version, or the old one, we were talking about movies we hate. Jonathan, you were mentioning there are certain Disney movies that drive you insane. There's certain Disney movies you really don't like.
JVL00:45:17I have three worst Disney movies of all time, ranking. List time. Because we have to rank things. Rank it. Third worst ever, 1976, Robin Hood. It's Robin Hood, but they're animals. And half the characters have British accents.
Vic00:45:32Robin Hood is a fox.
JVL00:45:33And the other half have American accents, which are Southern or Western in origin. And every time there's a chase scene, they reuse the backgrounds. They've got like five frames of background drawing for the entire movie. They're mailing it in.
Sonny00:45:44Well, there was actually a story about this, right? Somebody did a comparison of Robin Hood to maybe The Jungle Book or The Aristocats. Were they reusing those? They were reusing the backgrounds over and over again from movie to movie.
JVL00:45:55So in the 1970s, during Vic's and my childhood heyday, this is when the bottom dropped out artistically from the Disney movies. And you have like The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under and all these movies are all garbage. Absolutely.
Vic00:46:09That was my favorite movie growing up was The Rescuers. I memorized it frame by frame. The Great Mouse Detective, Pete's Dragon.
JVL00:46:17Oh, yeah. These are the worst. And Disney was so bad that Don Bluth left the studio. And thinking that they were ripe for a fall, that he was going to start his own production studio and defeat and topple Disney animation. It turns out that he was actually part of the problem. And so his stuff is horrible. What did Don Bluth, did he do American Tail? Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, I was just, oh, yeah. All dogs go to heaven. Oh, yeah. That guy is garbage. Number two, The Sword in the Stone. Can you imagine making a movie about King Arthur? And knights and wizards and having it be boring? Like, hey, what is absolutely the least interesting thing about King Arthur? Well, I don't know. Let's picture him as a 10-year-old. Let's have the wizard be a time-traveling doofus who goes around and then he can do weird challenges with a doofus older. Everything about this is our comedies. You know what? It is earlier than you think. 1967? 63. Oh, my gosh. It has the feel of an early 70s movie, but it's not. So you could see where the rot had begun earlier than we thought. But the worst, and no one denies this, the worst Disney movie of all time is The Little Mermaid. Wow. Isn't that, like, one of the most beloved, Jonathan? Yeah, that's definitely beloved. It is a dystopian nightmare. Why is that? Imagine your daughter comes home one day and she says, Dad, this biker gang just drove through town today, and the guy leading it was amazing. He's so dreamy, and I love him. So they won't let me into the bike park. I'm going to the biker gang until I get a bunch of body piercings and tattoos. And so I'm going to do that, because then, once I modify my body, I'm sure he'll love me back. So I am going to mortgage your house to take out a loan to get all the body piercings and tattoos. Thanks, Dad. I love you. Bye-bye. That's the plot of The Little Mermaid. You mean because she wanted to get the legs. She just sees some guy from, like, a distance of 25 yards and falls in love with him because he's perfect, and then says to Dad, you know, I'm going to put your entire kingdom in his hands. I'm in jeopardy. The kingdom which you rule over and protect from these horrible people, like Sea Witch Ursula, so that I can, like, go get some legs. The real hero of The Little Mermaid.
Sonny00:48:31No, she's not the real hero. Even I won't go that far.
JVL00:48:34King Triton is the real hero of The Little Mermaid.
Sonny00:48:36No, the real hero. Ursula is just a businesswoman. Is it a true? Wants people to live up to their contracts. She's just a capitalist. She is really what America is built on. Flotsam and Jetsam are the real heroes of The Little Mermaid.
JVL00:48:51No, so it is a... Terrible, terrible movie with a horrifying message. Every father in America should keep their daughters far, far away from The Little Mermaid. And you know what? First of all, the song's not that good. Oh, I think some of them are. Second of all, next time you watch it...
Vic00:49:08That's good to say.
JVL00:49:08Thank you, Sonny. I feel like drinking a pina colada. Next time you watch this movie, check out Ariel's sisters. Because look at their eyes. Their eyes and faces are drawn just wrong. Ariel gets a ton of attention given to her, but her sisters all look mildly deformed. And this is a... Well, I mean, they are royals. There might have been some... There's a lot of fish and fish going on.
Vic00:49:35Something very fishy about that.
JVL00:49:37Everything about it. And also the happy ending. The happy ending is that when she runs off with the dude who runs a biker gang, she can never see her dad again. Everything about this is wrong. Everything about this movie is wrong.
Sonny00:49:48It's definitely a movie that changes perspective once you have children.
JVL00:49:52Yeah, no kidding.
Sonny00:49:53Especially daughters. Don't let your daughter see A Little Mermaid. Well, I gotta rewatch it now that I have a daughter.
Vic00:49:59Sonny, do you have favorites?
Sonny00:50:01I'm going with favorites. JBL has handled the worst, and I think his list is pretty solid. I would disagree on A Little Mermaid, which I enjoy, but whatever. Here is... My whole thing on this is that... I think that JBL and Vic really got the short end of the stick by growing up in the worst era of Disney animation. I have a theory of Disney animation that it's basically like SNL. Whenever you were of a certain age, that is the best era of Disney animated movies. So, unless you were in the objectively terrible... I mean, you are basically the Michael Anthony Hall years. There are a few good ones, but then a lot of duds. So, my best movies are all from when I was between the ages of 8 and 10, basically. You have Beauty and the Beast in 91, Aladdin in 92, The Nightmare Before Christmas... I don't know if we're counting that since it's stop motion. That's not directed by Tim Burton, produced by Tim Burton. And The Lion King in 94, which is... I would swear by those movies as being like the cream of the artistic crop when it comes to Disney movies. Fantastic animation. Fantastic and also like kind of game-changing animation with the computer graphics in Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. And also great songs, you know, fantastic voice work. His shtick has never been better than in Aladdin. I am like, again, this is the... It has deformed my childhood. It's not your fault, Aladdin. It's not your fault, Aladdin. He's so much better in Aladdin than Good Will Hunting. Yeah, I agree.
Vic00:51:35He does William F. Buckley in Aladdin.
Sonny00:51:37He does do William F. Buckley. He does. It's great. It's really fun to go back and watch and pick up on all the things I miss. And, of course, The Lion King, which is a story of an unfairly maligned uncle who is trying to unite the hyena and lion empires into a... He's trying to... And segregation, basically. And, you know, he's killed for his efforts. So, I love those movies. I will defend... I can't... I don't really... I'm not a big fan of the Snow White, Cinderella stuff. It's too early. And the later stuff is too... Like, Mulan. Somebody was trying to convince me that Mulan is, like, a great animated movie. And maybe it's right. I just... It's out of my... The big question here is, do we count Pixar as Disney? That was my next question. Do we count Pixar as Disney?
Vic00:52:18Disney, Pixar? Because if so, I would say Cars.
?00:52:21Oh, my God.
Vic00:52:22That's literally...
Sonny00:52:22That's literally the worst Pixar movie.
JVL00:52:24That's wrong, Sonny.
Vic00:52:24Cars 2 is... Cars 2 is... You are such a garbage human being.
Sonny00:52:28Which is... There are 15 Pixar movies that are better than Cars.
Vic00:52:33You know what, Sonny? I forgot you hate celebrating America and the old America that once was red America where people didn't drive anymore. It wasn't great. You're an interstate. You're an interstate kind of guy. You are an interstate, get me there, let's not enjoy the actual journey kind of a guy. I forgot about that. God.
JVL00:52:47Can I throw out a controversial opinion? God.
Sonny00:52:51Are you going to say something, Tara? Oh, about Toy Story? Or Up?
JVL00:52:54I'm going to say that as the things stand right now, Disney animation, greater sign, Pixar animation.
Sonny00:53:03I don't think that's terribly controversial. I think that is generally agreed upon, frankly. And it's because of John Lasseter.
JVL00:53:09John Lasseter's quarterbacking both teams, and so he's like the floating QB, and so why wouldn't the Disney thing be better? Well, the problem... Moana is really fantastic. Well, the problem...
Sonny00:53:16Frozen is fantastic. Part of the problem with Pixar is that it's kind of, it has fallen into the sequel-itis rut. They are making a lot of sequels, and they are of middling quality, and the original stuff that they're doing is just, frankly, not that good, like The Good Dinosaur. Inside Out was pretty fantastic. That was good. It was good. But, no, I think you're right, and I don't think that's actually terribly controversial right now. I think that is generally agreed upon.
Vic00:53:41As far as a favorite Disney movie, not animated, one of my favorites was the original Love Bug, Herbie, with Dean Jones and Shelley. No, it's fantastic. You can do Benji, too. No, I'm not going to... Well, you actually like all of them. Was Benji Disney? Was Benji Disney? Yeah, of course, all those movies.
JVL00:53:54Bedknobs and Broomsticks?
Vic00:53:55No, not Bedknobs and Broomsticks, although it did have Nazis. It was really interesting. Yeah, you were. It was a shocker. That was like England. I think it was one of the islands out there.
Sonny00:54:03JBL, are you surprised that Vic is a big fan of the Nazi Disney movie? No, I did not like the Nazi movie. How early did it start for you, Vic?
Vic00:54:09No, I thought the original Herbie was just a lot of fun through the streets of San Francisco, except for now that you could not do that movie today because of the depiction of the Chinese community in San Francisco, which was all... Rice bowls and gongs and things like that. That just wouldn't work, but it's funny stuff. And it had David, I think his name is David Tomlinson, who was one of my favorite Disney cast members. He always played... He was in Mary Poppins, and then he was in Lovebug as Thorndyke, the villain, along with Joe Flynn. And great cars, really great cars. And again, I know you don't like the original Jungle Book from 1967. There's great songs. You're not supposed to like it now, because nobody likes Roger Kipling, but I liked it. And Louis Prima as the orangutan is hard to beat. Yeah. Okay. Problematic. I would say worst Disney movie would be Herbie Goes Bananas. Just stay away from it.
Sonny00:55:10All the Herbie movies are on the worst list. No, not true. Every movie that you just listed, except for Jungle Book, should be on the worst list.
Vic00:55:17Herbie, fully loaded with Lindsay Lohan.
JVL00:55:21Wonderful. You are romanticizing your own childhood.
Sonny00:55:24Yeah. She is great. Yeah, well, like- Your own childhood, and also when you were 40, and watching Herbie and Lindsay Lohan.
Vic00:55:31The kids wanted to watch it, and you know what? I will say that she can act.
Sonny00:55:35Yeah, oh yeah. When she was focused. She can.
JVL00:55:37No, this is totally- When she was focused. This is 100%. Peter Brady over here. We can talk about the canyons. Peter Brady. No, this is 100%. Lindsay Lohan is actually, one of the things that will leave me sad and tragic about it is that she isn't Kim Kardashian. No. She's a great actress.
Vic00:55:51Wonderful when she's on.
JVL00:55:52When she's on.
Sonny00:55:53I am grimacing right now, because that's a bad opinion. No, she owns Mean Girls.
Vic00:55:56She does. She totally does. We need to move on. She's like the fifth best part of Mean Girls. I love them all in Mean Girls. Corrections. Sonny. No, of course not. Zero corrections. JVL. I think no corrections. Okay. For the first time. I feel like I should get-
Sonny00:56:13The mega power is over here.
Vic00:56:15I have one correction, one clarification. The correction is, I was talking about the FX series Feud. First of all, it's not a- It's not a movie or a miniseries. Well, it is, but I mean, it's just a one-run-
Sonny00:56:26It's an anthology.
Vic00:56:27Yeah. It's just going to be one season, obviously, like The People vs. O.J. Simpson. And I said it was about Joan Crawford and Bette Midler. Sorry, Bette Davis. You know, when you said that, I wondered. I thought, did they overlap all that much? Yeah, no. You know, I must have been thinking about Beaches. No, I've never seen Beaches. And also, isn't Bette Midler sort of fun? Like, is it? Yeah, I don't know. She's not terrible. Sorry about that. And the other one was, we were talking about Japanese cartoons, anime. And the robot woman that shot the rockets from her breasts. And my brother-in-law, Bill Dwyer, says that was from a show called Transor Z. And she shot Aphrodite missiles. And I thought, Transor Z sounds like a show on Netflix now, but it wouldn't be about. Yeah. Did you find a video of this on YouTube? What would it be about, Sonny?
JVL00:57:14Oh, God. No comment. Did you find video?
Vic00:57:17No, I haven't even gotten to that, but I will. For show notes.
JVL00:57:19Show notes, Transor Z. I was watching the video. I was watching the very first episode of Ultraman this morning. Oh. And it is, I had forgotten how truly phenomenal it is. There's a moment where they cut between having, so you have guys, Japanese pilots, piloting what looks like a rocket ship, but is really like a fighter jet. And so they have an interior shot of the guys in the cockpit, the exterior shot of a toy ship against a blue background with like a firecracker smoking out the background. And then they cut to the man in the suit. The Godzilla, but not Godzilla suit, who is attacking and grabs the toy ship and throws it on the ground and it bursts into flames. But it's actual like, like flame, like one single tongue of flame. It's potentially dangerous on set. It's not flames, it's just flame. And then Ultraman himself, where you can see the zipper on the back of his silver suit comes and does like the giant Eddie Guerrero style frog splash. It's, oh my gosh. I'd love to be on set, I've seen that.
Sonny00:58:20As I was watching this, I thought, why doesn't he do that? Why doesn't Sonny love this?
JVL00:58:24This is so great. Terrible.
Vic00:58:27Our spirit of the week is the Dubliner Irish Whiskey, bourbon cask aged. I had met with the folks at the Dubliner when they had their product launch at the Dubliner Pub. The reason why they did that was they wanted to have the rights to the name Dubliner, but of course, Dubliner Pub had owned the rights to it, so they just struck it in.
Sonny00:58:47The Dubliner is a bar and a hotel in downtown D.C. It's on Capitol Hill. It's connected to the Phoenix Hotel down near Union State. The Dubliner is right next to the Irish Channel. Irish Times. Irish Times. Irish Times, yes. Thank you. The Irish Times. I used to work above both of these at Roll Call. If you wanted a classy drink, you went to the Dubliner. You sit down. You have a nice little Guinness and burger. If you wanted garbage college kids puking on you experience, you went to the Irish Times. I went to the Irish Times. Very different clienteles.
Vic00:59:23I remember going to the Irish Times with our old friend, Ed Walsh. And I remember because his friend and a Substandard listener, Tim Flocka, was a bartender there at Irish Times. And I remember being there at like 1 a.m. and just the aroma of vomit. Yeah.
Sonny00:59:39The Irish Times. And I should clarify that I love the Irish Times. I went to the Irish Times 100 times more often than I did the Dubliner because I'm a garbage throw-up-on-your-shoes person.
Vic00:59:49Wonderful. Okay. That is all the time we're giving you for this week. For this episode, questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus, at Sonny Bunch. And at JV Last. No.
Sonny00:59:59Make sure to send all of your questions and comments to JV Last. No.
Vic01:00:03Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard under Podcasts. We are there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. And don't forget, the Substandard show notes will be up on Friday at 11 a.m. at WeeklyStandard.com. Until next time. I was thinking, you know, it was great that bingo chart that Kristen Soltis Anderson created for Substandard, and maybe we can come up with some other promotional materials for the Substandard, like, you know.
JVL01:00:41Status audio. Status audio.
Vic01:00:43I was going to say, like, Substandard Monopoly. Which I think is actually a space on Kristen's bingo chart. Oh, really? That's good. We could do Substandard Monopoly, you know, and instead of Boy, I was going to say, like, Boardwalk, it would be Emma Watson. You know, something like that. You just want to buy Emma Watson. That's awful. I've landed on... Okay, and bobbleheads. Why don't we do Substandard bobbleheads?
Sonny01:01:03You wouldn't be able to support Vic Mattis' bobblehead. It would just topple right off. It would actually be realistic. It would be, yeah. It would be realistic. It would be to scale.
Vic01:01:11It would be to scale. And it actually would be, in a weird way, for Jonathan, that's actually Jonathan's head size, is if you buy a bobblehead figurine. Actual head size. It's the actual head size.
Guest01:01:20Yeah, that's true.
Vic01:01:23Okay, anything else?
JVL01:01:25This is the shortest worst outtakes. Yeah, these are ever. But I mean... You said you brought something else to the table. I'm not going to bless this. No, we've got to keep going. We've got to keep going.
Sonny01:01:37Can we talk about Axis and Allies and your favorite Axis and Allies victory?
JVL01:01:43Victorino.
Vic01:01:45Yes.
JVL01:01:47Go ahead. Were you a tank guy or an infantry guy?
Vic01:01:50Oh, totally tank. Germans, but I don't think they had like an added... I'm just going to pour myself a Dubliner. It's not like the Germans had an added advantage, like civilization.
JVL01:01:58You will recall that the infantry and the tanks... Three. Attack. Attack at a three. Different. Yes. The infantry attacks at one, tanks attack at a three. Yes. But they both defend at a two. At two. And the cost differential between them.
Vic01:02:13By the way, I'm remembering this without even looking. I just remember it from all those years ago. The cost differential. It's five to three, I think. Something like that. Five to three. Also hot. Bombers. Love the bombers. But bombers defend at a one. Yeah, they do. But if you can get a bomber as an offensive... Think about bomber... Think about super bomber. When you get that technology, you're throwing three dice. Three.
JVL01:02:32The super... Let me tell you what the super bomber will do. Heavy bombers. Each attacking bomber rolls three dice instead of one. Oh, that's the stuff. Oh, boy.
Sonny01:02:42Oh, yeah. That's good. And super subs. That was the other thing.
JVL01:02:46So your submarines get attack capability at three. Yeah, it's just the best. Vic, so what people don't know is that the reason I have this board here is because I have kept an Axis and Allies set in my office for like 15 years. You have. Waiting for the day... Oh, we were going to play? When it just... No, no. Just spontaneously it breaks out. Like we finally are waiting around to close the magazine, and one of us just says, well, screw it. Let's play Axis and Allies in the conference room.
Vic01:03:15It would be like Kramer and Newman with risk. Ukraine is strong. I am not leaving that room. Map on the board unattended. That's definitely true. And it never happened. We got divorced before we ever had time.
JVL01:03:29I like to say, Vic, that this is just one more example. You got to take life as it comes at you. You can't put... Don't put off till tomorrow, because you never know what will be taken from you. I'm sure it's fine.
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