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#23. The Substandard Takes on Power Rangers, CHiPs, and the Best/Worst Hollywood Reboots
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Dudes Chatting — best and worst TV-to-movie reboots: The episode opens with a brief obituary for Chuck Barris, creator of The Gong Show, before moving to the main segment. JVL presents his ranked list of TV-to-film reboots: The Fugitive at #1 (the gold standard for how to honor source material while making a great standalone film), Miami Vice at #2 (a genuinely stylish film that most people underrate), and 21 Jump Street at #3 for successfully reinventing the premise as self-aware comedy. Vic argues the failure side, running through a list of reboots he considers offensive or pointless: the Ghostbusters remake, Footloose, Ben-Hur, Arthur, and The In-Laws. Sonny mostly agrees with JVL's top picks but pushes back on the middling cases. The segment also includes an extended and good-natured argument about the correct pronunciation of actors' names.
Reviews: JVL reviewed Power Rangers solo and called it not terrible — competent enough for nostalgic millennials who grew up with the property, though not a film anyone else needs to see. CHiPs opened to only $7.6 million and is declared a box-office bomb.
Box Office: CHiPs flopped; Power Rangers outperformed it considerably.
The episode closes with the Spirit of the Week: Maker's Mark.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hi, this is Bill Kristol. Welcome to The Substandard Podcast. The only other people listening to this? Russian agents and the FBI.
Guest00:00:30It's gonna get weird. Two dragons.
Vic00:00:43Hello and welcome back to The Substandard. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. I'd like to remind you that The Substandard is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look on a podcast and search for Substandard. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, leave a review. Speaking of which, congratulations to us. We reached 100 starred reviews. Woo! Woo! Thank you. Yay. A recent reviewer, Kardia22, who gave us five stars in review, she says... He. Oh, he? Okay. A hill worth dying on. And goes on to say, I'm fairly certain that I will forfeit treasures in heaven by giving any kind of support or accolade to this nonsense, but it's the sweet, sweet, uncut Columbus. I'm a Colombian that I can't help but come back to week after week.
JVL00:01:35Kardia22, if that's your real name, would you, like, direct message or tweet or email or something, like me or Vic or Sonny, because I have a little something for you.
Vic00:01:45There you go. Yeah, you're going to get a lot of weird DMs or tweets. Kardia is like Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface. That's how good it is. It's laminated. Pelican, pelican, pelican. Okay. Thank you. Also, one other comment I'd like to throw out there for Pablo7i27. 61736, who says, Genuinely great, the humor and chemistry among the hosts is excellent. Always a fun listen, but I'd like to especially note that Sonny Bunch has great opinions and everyone needs to stop kidding around and admit it. People may think of me as one of those people in love with a convicted felon, but I'm not the crazy one. All of you are. Is that a real review? Yes, it's just a...
Sonny00:02:24That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said.
Vic00:02:26I was going to say, I didn't know your mother goes by the name Pablo.
Sonny00:02:30No, it's 79261736. No, that's actually your mom, Vic.
Vic00:02:3424601.
JVL00:02:35Sonny's opinions, to be honest, very strong.
Sonny00:02:38Very. I got a lot of spicy takes.
Vic00:02:41Also about the humor and chemistry part, I think if readers are interested, it helps that we don't actually hang out much outside of the studio. I think one hour in the studio a week is enough.
JVL00:02:52We don't even talk outside of the studio.
Vic00:02:53We hate each other. We're like Siskel and Ebert, off camera. We hate each other. Oh, sorry. Okay, 224. Even Sonny and I work together at the Free Beacon, and I try to avoid him, even at the office. He's two doors down, so if I see him getting coffee, I won't get coffee. If I see him in the men's room, I just wait outside. You don't share a wall?
Sonny00:03:12No, we have... There's no way to do that without seeing him. My office door is shut all the time.
Vic00:03:19I wouldn't know it's Sonny. He's got the beards, JVL. Okay. Also, in addition...
Sonny00:03:26I'm kind of lost already. I don't know what's happening.
JVL00:03:29This is an old joke. This is from when Vic and I shared a wall. That was back in the day. Yes. Back in the day.
Vic00:03:33Just like a truck stop. That's right. We'd also like to... Wow. We'd also like to remind you that Substandard show notes posted by Jonathan Last are available every Friday at 11 a.m. at weeklystandard.com. In addition to that, this was inspired by Kristen Soltis Anderson coming up with a bingo card. The Weekly Standard is now coming out with their own Substandard bingo cards. I don't know if that means we've jumped the shark, or not. Yes. But it does. Okay. And where can they get this?
Sonny00:04:04It's good that this is our last episode. You can use them to, when you're listening to old episodes, you can play bingo. This is the show's 21st episode. We're allowed to drink now.
Vic00:04:12Woo! Hey! And JVL, is it out now? The cards are out now?
JVL00:04:18When you listen, if you can be listening to this podcast now, then you can hop onto any one of our Twitter accounts, and you'll see a link to be able to download it. I'm not promoting this. Fantastic. Gentlemen. How are we? Play along at home. Yes. Instagram your bingo cards at the end of the show, or Snapchat it, because social engagement is everything. Hope that somebody cares. How are we? JVL, how are you doing? On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is Booster Gold and 10 is Batman, I am the Flash. I was going to say I'm the Jay Garrick Flash, but actually I think I'm the Barry Allen Flash. It's been a pretty good weekend. I went out on a date with my little four-year-old daughter yesterday. She's this little tiny bit of nothing, blonde curly hair, big blue eyes. We're sitting at Wegmans, and she's munching on a chocolate chip muffin. She says to me, Daddy, friends have to stick together no matter what. I said, yeah, that's right, sweetheart, they do. She said, this way if they meet a monster, and the monster's mean, they can get bats, and then they can kill it. It's good that she's prepared. She's thinking ahead. Anyway, that sort of made my weekend.
Vic00:05:28There is a bat shortage. Have you read about this? There's not enough bats out there. That's the problem. No. Baseball bat shortage. Louisville Slugger, there's a bat shortage.
JVL00:05:36If there's bats out there, she said. No bats. If there's a monster, you can get a bat and kill it. My four-year-old daughter is basically bats with leather wings. No, she's preparing to be Negan. She's going to be the Negan of her little Montessori class. I'm sorry, I don't watch the stupid show. I only read the awesome comic books. Wow, we are on today.
Sonny00:05:58Sonny, how are you? I'm really good, you know. I had a nice little weekend, did a lot of laundry, did some cooking, cooked some salmon. It was always fun. No, I'm sorry. We didn't need Vic's weekend. We needed Sonny's weekend.
Vic00:06:13Yeah, how dare you? But no, fish is one of your specialties. You are Aquaman, in a way.
Sonny00:06:17Yes, that's right. So, my weekend was good. That's good. I have been very active on the reading front. I just finished Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, because I'm 20 years behind. I'm 20 years behind everyone else on everything. And it was, without getting into too many details, it was shockingly reactionary. I recommend it to all of our crazy right-wing friends. But it's not good because of the politics. It's good because of the world-building, but also the politics.
Vic00:06:46I've always wanted to read Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the autobiography by Chuck Barris. Speaking of which, Chuck Barris died now two weekends ago. Sonny, were you a Chuck Barris fan? Did you know of Chuck Barris when you heard he died?
Sonny00:07:05Yes, but only because of the film adaptation of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Frankly, I'm not familiar at all with the gong show or whatever other nonsense.
Vic00:07:15That was no longer in syndication by the time I think you might have even been born, perhaps. Before my time. Now it's, again, all available on YouTube. JVL, you probably didn't. I'm probably the only one. You're the only one who watched the gong show?
JVL00:07:30Are you kidding?
Vic00:07:31Oh, really?
JVL00:07:31Are you kidding? Of course. If you want to understand the 1970s in America, and you only have 90 seconds to figure out everything about the decade, just pull up any 90-second clip of the gong show, and that tells you exactly what this country was for a decade.
Vic00:07:50What surprised me, actually, when I heard the news was that Chuck Barris was still alive. I thought he died 30 years ago, like of an overdose. Overdosed and in an alley. Very strange. I saw an interview with him on YouTube recently where he was reminiscing on the show, and even in his 80s, he looked the same. So that's how he looked in 1979, and then in 2009, he looked the same. He died, shockingly, at the age of 87. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. That means he was like 50 when the gong show was out. He was born in 1929.
JVL00:08:27Can you, for 30 seconds ... Describe for anybody listening who might not understand it what the gong show was, because it is like, you imagine like, hey, this was on television in America, on a broadcast network.
Vic00:08:36First of all, again, and I did a little bit of an obit for him in The Free Beacon, he started off, he was always kind of connected to show business. He was like an NBC page, then he was a songwriter. He created The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, which is famous for all those double entendres. You can see how it's right up my alley. But he didn't host? No, no. He was behind the scenes. Bobby Eubanks, right? Yes, that's correct. Or was he The Newlywed? Yes.
JVL00:09:02And he, no, he was a producer. Another totally creep-tastic guy. Yes, exactly. Boy, Bobby Eubanks was creepy.
Vic00:09:07They were always using the phrases, making whoopee, that was the big deal. Yes. That's how they can get away with it. But then again, as you mentioned, he came up with The Gong Show, which was ostensibly a talent show. If you can believe this was NBC Daytime, that's when it ran. And think of it sort of as a bizarro The Voice, which is where, what is The Voice on NBC as well, maybe? And you know how The Voice works, where you have the three judges, and they sit with their backs to the performer, and then at, you know, midway through the song, somebody slaps one of the judges, slaps down this buzzer, they turn around to say, hey, I like your singing and I want you to be a part of my team. And it happens every song, I think. I don't think, I don't remember the last time, not that I'm an avid watcher of The Voice, but I don't remember any time where all three just sat with their backs like crickets and then the person leaves, and the crowd goes crazy and they're singing because by that time, the people that they have performing are, you know, what they consider to be top notch talent, and then there's a battle of I want you on my team, though I want you on my team, says Adam Levine. I'm sorry, don't talk about The Voice, talk about The Gong Show. So that is The Voice, and I want you to, and The Gong Show is the exact opposite of that. The Gong Show is how long can you stay up before somebody hits the gong to say you're awful, and so if The Voice has all the beautiful people on singing beautifully, The Gong Show is people who are really not beautiful, they look, I mean, obviously it took place in the 70s, I mean, they looked like they were just picked up off the street, and the judges were terrible, they were crazy, and I mean, they were B plus at best, like Jamie Farr from M.A.S.H., he was a judge. All the time. You know, Mabel King from What's Happening, she was a judge, and of course the famous J.P. Morgan, Sonny.
Sonny00:10:52So this is like white people's live at the Apollo. Kind of, but it was a mix. But coked up.
Vic00:10:57Yeah, but I mean- Everybody's coked up. But it was a mix. Jimmy Walker was a judge, you know what I mean?
JVL00:11:01Gene, Gene the Dancing Machine was an African-American gentleman who was very popular.
Vic00:11:05A very heavyset fellow, and in fact, the Gene, Gene Dancing Machine segment, it would always happen in the middle, and Barris would pretend like he didn't know it was happening, and they would interrupt the actual talent show for a singing and a dancing routine. A dance-off? No, Gene, Gene the Dancing Machine is a guy, he was like a prop guy, he would come out and just start dancing.
JVL00:11:28He was the suit boss from 30 Rock.
Vic00:11:29And people would, yes, and people would start throwing, you gotta watch, well, if you read my obit in the Beacon, Sonny, click on the link to the video.
Sonny00:11:38I would never read anything in the Washington Free Beacon. That is a garbage website. He says this because he knows the boss is not listening to this. My question about this show, so how did they decide when to hit the gong?
JVL00:11:51Whenever they wanted to. Could any of the judges hit the gong?
Vic00:11:55It was literally a big metal gong. They walked up with a mallet. That's the best part. And then, but then somebody would say, no, I think this guy's pretty good. And then the judges will start fighting over the mallet. You know, I mean, it was part, it was all, you know, show. And then when Gene Gene would come on, he would do his dancing thing. People, they would throw all these inflatable things at him and balloons. And then the judges would dance and the host would dance. And it was like, let's break out. Everybody, let's break into dancing.
JVL00:12:21Culminating in the famous, who's the actress who like takes her shirt off in the middle? It was the judge.
Vic00:12:25It was the judge, J.P. Morgan. She got so carried away in the middle of a Gene Gene moment that she just flashed the audience in the middle. And that got seen. J.P. Morgan? J.P. Morgan. J-A-Y-E. Her name was J-A-Y-E?
Sonny00:12:40Not James Pierpont Morgan. No, not the financier.
Vic00:12:42They didn't have the corpse of James Pierpont Morgan. No, it was a problem. I realized it was a problem when I put all of my savings with J.P. Morgan and it turned out to be the judge from The Gong Show. That was not a good idea. And she would flash. The other controversial moment was when Chuck Barris. Yeah. Led in an act that initially passed the censors. They were called the Popsicle Twins. And they were, I'm going to say 20-something girls, but dressed up to look like they were teenagers. And their only act was to sit on stage eating a popsicle. In what manner? Very suggestively, JVL. And they got away with it. And they do the entire act. It was unbelievable. Of course, the NBC switchboard starts lighting up like a Christmas tree. They pulled the plug so that people knew. West Coast did not see this, but people on the East Coast did. And you could see it on YouTube. Phyllis Diller was one of the judges. I'm going to put a link to the Popsicle Twins. And she was disgusted, Phyllis Diller. She gave it a zero, because you have to give your card for zero to 10. She gave a zero. Jamie Farr. Did she hit the gong? No, nobody hit the gong. That was the crazy thing. They let them finish and then gave them a poor rating. That surprised me, too.
Sonny00:13:52So it was the substandard of its time. Yes, it was. They didn't pull the plug.
Vic00:13:57They just let it get down and dirty. Jamie Farr gave it a two, and he looked embarrassed. And J.P. Morgan. Oh, my.
JVL00:14:06Yes, they really did a subjective job.
Vic00:14:10I'm not kidding. And I can't believe this happened on NBC during the day. That's why kids could watch it.
JVL00:14:19And these girls really do look like they're 14 years old. I'm glad to say, but they're not. No, no, they're just dressed up.
Vic00:14:25It's ridiculous.
JVL00:14:25I'll put the link.
Sonny00:14:26I'll put a video in the show notes. I don't understand. I thought this was an act outside of the gong show. Did they tour doing this? No, it was all set up.
JVL00:14:35Did they go to nightclubs? This was America in the 70s. Thank you, J.P. See, I guess my mistake— No matter how bad you think things are now, they're not like they were in 1975.
Sonny00:14:43I guess my mistake is reading David Frum's The 1970s and thinking, like, wow, this is what America was like. It was serious, and there were real problems. But no, it was just popsicle twins sucking popsicles.
Vic00:14:54This was the gut reaction to all the horribleness of that time. Think about what was going on. When the popsicle twins were performing. And J.P. Morgan, incidentally, she gave the act a 10. And I believe her line was, girls, this is how I started, too. That's what she said. What was J.P. Morgan's deal?
Sonny00:15:12What was her thing?
JVL00:15:14You know what? I'm embarrassed. Is that Madeline Kahn, who's in the giving a— No, she can't have been. From Clue? Clue's Madeline Kahn? I believe Clue's Madeline— By the way, these popsicle girls look like they're 100% high, and now Madeline Kahn is, like, fileting a popsicle on the— Jesus Christ. I'm going to put the— This was on daytime television in America.
Vic00:15:33Again, this is— No, no, that's J.P. Morgan with the popsicle. JVL. Wow. Not Madeline Kahn's J.P. Morgan. Yeah, that was— Vic has studied this intensely. He knows. In a nutshell, shall we say. But a lot of the game shows were like that. You know, the Hollywood Squares, you know, they would ask, you know, the questions that— ethnic jokes, racial jokes, molestation jokes, and they were all in on it. And the women would make jokes about it, you know. Rosemary, you know, formerly of the Dick Van Dyke Show, she would be asked a question about, you know, somebody's getting molested in a park, what do you say? And she says, I say, why not me? I mean, that was the joke in the 70s. It was like things that you could not get away with today, and I guess vice versa. It was very unpolitically correct.
Sonny00:16:22Humor has become more conservative, really. If you like— No, more puritan. Yeah, more puritanical. Yeah, yeah. Not conservative, more puritanical.
Vic00:16:30And it's sort of, you know, then the gong show eventually, in Chuck Barris' mind, he wanted to turn that into a movie, and he actually wrote the script for the gong show, which I believe was in 1980. It was so bad that it did not survive the opening weekend.
Sonny00:16:50Can I ask a question? When you say he wrote a gong show movie, was it like one of these jacks? You remember the jackass movies where, like, Johnny Knoxville was going around, and they were doing their stunts or whatever? It was like a scripted gong show?
JVL00:17:05Yeah, I mean— He scripted the week of, so it was a week in his life getting the gong show on air, but scripted?
Vic00:17:11Kind of like—I mean, I always imagine it's like what he would have loved is the Howard Stern movie, you know, that kind of a thing. Oh, like private parts. Yeah, like private parts. I think that's what he would have loved to have had. Yeah, exactly. Surprising.
JVL00:17:25It's surprisingly good. And not only pulled from theaters. But for decades did not exist on home video. That's right. You could not get a VHS or DVD of it.
Vic00:17:34If you go back to watch any of the Chuck Barris—when you see him doing his monologue at Schtick, he's also a compulsive clapper for somebody. He can't stop clapping. In between every line, he's clapping.
JVL00:17:44It's a very weird thing. Can you explain Chuck Barris's— Probably not the cocaine.
Sonny00:17:48Yeah, no. No, no, no.
Vic00:17:50I don't know about that.
Sonny00:17:51Vic, can you explain Chuck Barris's deal? Like, he thought he was a CIA agent or something. Can he just talk about that?
Vic00:17:57In his Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which is the unauthorized autobiography, as he called it, he was only a part-time TV celebrity, and the rest of the time he was an assassin working for the CIA. And he insisted on this. And I'm going to say probably not, and that was all in his head, considering the subtitle was the unauthorized autobiography. It was kind of wacky, though, buddy, but he insisted on it. And then George Clooney, of course, directed a movie starring— Sam Rockwell and Julia Roberts and Drew Barrymore and George Clooney as well. And so it's fantastical. I don't know if Barris ever recanted that at any point in time, saying, yeah, you know, I made the whole thing up. I actually don't know, and I will look into that. But that was sort of the weird world or the weird mind of Chuck Barris. It's hard to sneak up on people to kill them when you're clapping every five seconds. Yes, exactly. But anyway, the Gog Show was obviously a— a terrible movie version of a TV show. And we are actually talking about other reboots, TV shows and movies that have been rebooted and why. JVL, you saw a reboot of a TV show over the weekend. What a twist!
JVL00:19:18So there were two reboots this weekend. The two big new movies this weekend were reboots of Chips and The Power Rangers. Not the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, just The Power Rangers. And Sonny chose not to see these movies.
Sonny00:19:34Yeah, I went to go see a classy film by the name of Trainspotting 2, a totally necessary sequel by the great Danny Boyle. Necessary or unnecessary? We're not going to talk about that today, because we really have important things to discuss, like Power Rangers. Which JVL saw, and Sonny did not.
JVL00:19:51I jumped on the grenade, and I will now review a movie. I'm Sonny Bunch. Yes, do it. It's so easy. It's not terrible. I'm Ron Burgundy.
Sonny00:20:08Oh, boy. Go for it.
JVL00:20:09So, look. Did you see this alone? No, I saw this in a reasonably crowded, lowly, at-lost theater.
Sonny00:20:15Did you go by yourself?
JVL00:20:17Yes. I'm not going to let anybody whom I know catch me dead going to see The Power Rangers. What was the crowd like in the theater?
Vic00:20:24Kids or older people who remember it when they were kids?
JVL00:20:26I don't know. I don't look or talk to. I literally, because I can now pick my seat on my phone four hours ahead of time, I skip all the trailers and I show up as they're doing the seven-minute, this is Dolby Atmos promo reel, and I don't look at who's sitting next to me or near me. I try to pretend I'm alone. It's not terrible. It might even be the Dark Knight of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers universe. Look, take it as this. This movie is not terrible. It is not for us. This movie is not made for us. It is made, in fact, for people who fall in the narrow band of having been five or six years old, between five and six and probably 11 years old, during the height of the Power Ranger madness, which begins in 1993.
Vic00:21:16So did you watch that in 1993, JVL? You can tell us. You know what?
JVL00:21:23What's the time mark? 2052. Go f*** yourself. I did not watch Power Rangers. But here's the thing. So Mighty Morphin Power Rangers ran for three seasons. The original. The original. And yet has left an enormous cultural footprint. It is a little bit, not quite as much like Star Trek, but a little bit like Star Trek in that. There's no giant legacy the way Star Trek has, but there's a legacy that everybody in America knows who or what the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are, whether or not they ever saw them. I watched probably half an episode with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. My kid brother once, and that's it. And so you get this movie, which is going to be a piece of nostalgia for a bunch of, I would say, low, low band millennials is probably right. Young millennials.
Sonny00:22:11Younger millennials, but not that young. I mean, I was, so I was 11 when it came out. So I was like, I was just probably too old to really like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
JVL00:22:19So there's a decade's worth of people below your age who, for whom this will be totally fun. This will be what the Michael Bay Transformers was. For me and Vic. And you know what? The truth is, this is, for, considering this is a show and a property which began with just a pure IP rights play. So Jaime Saban gets rights to a bunch of clips and stock footage from a, of monster battles from a Japanese TV show called, and I'm going to butcher it, Kairu Sentai Junja, or something
Sonny00:22:50like that. That's the most problematic thing that's ever been done on my show. Gosh, that's so offensive.
JVL00:22:55I'm trying to, like, use, whatever.
Sonny00:22:57That's cultural appropriation right there.
Vic00:23:00Do you have to speak, do you have to say it like that? One thousand cars. That's my impression from Gagahoe. One thousand, congratulations.
Sonny00:23:07What you guys didn't say, Kairu Sentai Junja. Here in the studio, he actually pulled out a samurai sword. It was actually, it was really, it was really offensive. I'm offended and scared.
JVL00:23:18As a Filipino, I found that scary. So here's the thing. So Saban gets the rights to these fights, and he then says, I'm going to build an English TV show around them, and so I'm going to shoot like 12 minutes of content with some fresh faced American kids. Like kind of a Saved by the Bell sort of thing, almost. Saved by the Bell, except then we then, okay, four minutes of Saved by the Bell, cut. Now we drop in the Japanese monster footage. Brilliance. And this works, and people come to it. As I said, so you start with really crap, and you get to this movie where you learn at the beginning that, in fact, the Power Rangers killed the dinosaurs, and that the new Power Rangers basically come from the Breakfast Club. You have a bunch of misfits in Saturday detention who wind up as the Power Rangers. And it sounds terrible, but it's smarter than it has to be, and it's funnier than it has to be, and it kind of earns its emotional beats, and it moves from moment to moment, and only has one or two really bad continuity problems. And so there will be a lot of people who like this, and who don't like it seriously, but like it because it touches something in them, and it's a nostalgia object. And I'm okay with that. I don't have a problem with it. It's not my jam. It's not any of our jams.
Sonny00:24:32You don't begrudge people their nostalgia.
JVL00:24:34I don't begrudge it because it's not a horrible product. This is not something you should look down on, like the young intern in your office who went to see this with their friends over the weekend and is like, yeah, that was totally fun. Don't look down on them for that.
Sonny00:24:48They don't earn that. I'll look down on them anyway. Well, sure, you will. Right, right. Because you're terrible.
Vic00:24:52What is it, PG? PG-13, I think. Is it? PG-13, JVL, you said that Power Ages was 1993? Yeah. So that would be kind of your target, wouldn't it be, Sonny?
Sonny00:25:04Well, so as JVL was saying, the kind of target range of ages for this show when it was on, it came on Fox at like the 3 p.m. hour. It was like where you came home from school and you watched it, if I remember correctly. That's early Fox.
JVL00:25:18No, you're exactly right.
Sonny00:25:19But that is like, I was just slightly too old for it. I mean, I was- Well, you were already into Truffaut. Right, right. Well, no. I was already, I mean, look, Truffaut was a little bit below 11-year-old. A little on the nose. Sonny, frankly. I was more of a- Bergman. Ingmar Bergman. You know, it was, Truffaut was all right, if you're into that sort of juvenile French stuff. But no, I, it was a little, it was a little, I was more, see, I was more Batman animated series, X-Men animated series, like that, that, I stuck with my comic book stuff and I didn't quite get the whole Mighty Morphin Power Rangers thing. It wasn't, it just didn't, I didn't, I was like, wait, why are we going from Saved by the Bell to Godzilla? I don't understand this. I don't like it. It's weird and strange and all of the effects are terrible and I hate it. I want it to go away.
JVL00:26:09Yeah, no, it's a perfect moment of like globalization plus, plus remix culture.
Sonny00:26:15It is like the original remix culture, like an actual-
JVL00:26:19Thing of its moment.
Sonny00:26:20It is, I hate, I hate the remix culture people who are like, Star Wars is just a remix of Samurai. I hate those people because it's not a remix, it's a different thing that has some kind of, you know- This is literally- But this is literal, this is an actual remix. It's actually like we're taking things and changing it. And that may be one of the reasons why it doesn't appeal to me because I think remixes are terrible. Girl talk is the worst thing of all time. The musician, girl talk, does anybody, are you guys familiar with? You're old, so you don't know what girl talk is, but girl talk is this guy who like- Do they do that on Snapchat? Just mashed together pop songs and like made new things.
Vic00:26:57Is it like Bananarama?
Sonny00:26:59Jesus. Sorry. Oh my God.
JVL00:27:01Could I find them on Yik Yak?
Sonny00:27:04Yes, probably. I don't know, is Yik Yak still a thing? I thought they shut Yik Yak down because it was leading to-
JVL00:27:10So the kids at my Montessori school are all over Yik Yak.
Sonny00:27:14Do you monitor the Yik Yak? Do you just have Yik Yak open? Always. Do you want to see what- Like the Matrix.
JVL00:27:20Like the Matrix, the Yik Yak's just always streaming down past my face.
Sonny00:27:23So you were saying, Sonny. I don't- I don't know what I was saying. The point is, I was never a Power Rangers guy. I was more of a superhero cartoon. And the early 90s was like this kind of weird golden age of superhero cartoons where you had the Bruce Timm and-
JVL00:27:41Because you couldn't do them in movies yet. Right, right. And there's a lot of these people out there, they're writers, their training ground was in those shows. You know, what interests me about this more is the entire idea of, not remaking, but porting things off of television. Into a movie theater for, like, much removed. I mean, there's one thing. So there's a thing, which is a long-standing tradition going back to like the 50s. You have a popular television show, and so you just take a supersized episode of it and put it into a movie theater. They did this actually with the Adam West Batman. Yeah. But to wait 10 or 15 years for a generation to go by- Or the X-Files. And then try to reinvent a property is an interesting thing. And people do it for both good reasons and bad reasons. What are the good reasons that they do it? Well, the good reason is because you have an idea for a piece of art, a piece of cinema art, that you understand you cannot get greenlit unless you tie it to some pre-aware property. So 21 Jump Street, I would say, is the perfect example of this. 21 Jump Street does not need to be labeled 21 Jump Street. It is a fish-out-of-water, buddy-cop-slash-high-school-comedy-slash-adventure-action-movie. That nobody in Hollywood would have dared sign off on if it hadn't been attached to, hey, it's 21 Jump Street. And so there are some things like that. But we have this mania for what they call in the industry pre-aware properties. And I find it, I mean, sequels fall into this. So anything that has a sequel is this. And the other thing are remakes. And I don't know, what do you guys think of it, Victorino? Are you in favor? Are you anti?
Vic00:29:25Most of them seem to be bad. Maybe you can help us, JVL, later if there were any that you thought were good. To rank them? Can we rank them? Goodness, ranking them.
Sonny00:29:34Ranking.
Vic00:29:34I was going to say, to go back a little bit about the Power Rangers, it did obviously well enough. It did $40 million at the box office. I mean, it's no Beauty and the Beast.
JVL00:29:42Beauty and the Beast did $88 million on its second week.
Vic00:29:46Okay, that's crazy. $40 million for Power Rangers. But Chips, which is a reboot, of course, of the 70s, 80s TV show, that did $7.6 million. I imagine from there, all the power in Dax Shepard's hands won't be able to save this movie. I think it starts at $7.6 million, and then it's, what, minus 40% of that for the following weekend?
Sonny00:30:09I mean, fortunately, it was cheap. It was a cheap movie to make, I think. The problem with Chips is that it is based on a property that has no real nostalgic value. Are people really into, like, Chips?
JVL00:30:19No, but don't think of it that way. Think of it this way. Had that movie not been tied to Chips, they wouldn't even have heard of it.
Sonny00:30:28And I think the answer is no.
JVL00:30:30The only reason anybody in America even knows that it was a thing was because people were mildly curious. Oh, hey, they're making Chips into a movie. And this is, the truth is, I almost can't blame Hollywood for it. I think it's kind of the media's fault.
Sonny00:30:44The media's fault?
JVL00:30:45Because the media rewards studios who do these remakes and reboots and porting over with lots of attention because they have to write about movies. We have this big entertainment complex, which writes about entertainment weekly, and Empire, and a million different movie websites like Film Drunk and Slash Film, and Act 4, and Culture 11, and all this. Hey. Hey. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Bunch. And so what we do is we reward by writing about these things prospectively because otherwise, what do you know about a project? And the answer is nothing. You know who's writing it, you know who's directing it, you know who's starring in it, but that's basically it. But if the studio has told you, hey, it's a remake of The A-Team, then you know, hey, look, they're remaking The A-Team. And so the studios are not wrong that you can get some baseline level of media interest which translates into free advertising dollars for something that is a pre-aware property.
Sonny00:31:37But what you're talking about is not really a media problem so much as an audience problem, right? Because audiences aren't interested in reading about things that they don't know what they are going to be reading about.
JVL00:31:47Look, Sonny, if you want to say that the problem is that people are garbage, you're not going to get me to disagree.
Sonny00:31:53Well, I mean, that's a baseline problem. Baseline problem. The real problem is that everyone is garbage. I want to get to the root causes here. And the root cause is that all of you people are terrible.
Vic00:32:06Well, you do talk about these TV shows, and I was thinking about three of them, Starsky & Hutch, The A-Team, and Bewitched. Bewitched, obviously, is not from the 70s, it's from the 60s. Why? Right? But you can attach a star to it, you keep the budget under somewhat control, you can gin up some money from that, right?
JVL00:32:27Well, Bewitched and Starsky & Hutch actually have rational reasons for existing. And the rational reasons are, Will Ferrell was at a point in his career where he was just trying to get movies made. He wasn't at his apex yet. Bewitched was his first attempt to do romantic comedy. With Nicole Kidman. Right. And so if you are Will Ferrell, and you're looking to do a romantic comedy, and you want to try to branch out your career that way, then you could say, okay, well, here's this property I can just jump into. And because it's pre-sold, it makes it a little bit easier to... Because otherwise, you're... You're stuck doing movies that have, especially like a romantic comedy, with no hook in it, that's a very hard sell. So, the A-team is a little bit harder. I mean, that's just, hey, we want to try to have another action franchise. Maybe it'll catch fire and be like Fast and the Furious, and maybe it won't. But the truth is, these things are really... If you want the Fast and the Furious, you've got to make the Fast and the Furious.
Sonny00:33:17Yeah. Right? And the A-team actually had a really good director in Joe Carnahan, who made The Grey and Smoking Aces and a bunch of other stuff that is kind of a narc. Narc is probably his best movie with Ray Liotta. He was in Goodfellas, wasn't he?
JVL00:33:33Yes.
Sonny00:33:33That was directed by Martin Scorsese, wasn't it? The greatest director. Sorry, just checking. Except for Zack Snyder, of course. But, you know, the problem with A-team is that it was bad. It was bad. It had kind of a bad cast. You know, I love Bradley Cooper, and I love Liam Neeson, but that movie just didn't work in any sense. It had a bad cast. Yeah.
JVL00:33:58But none of these, like The Flintstones. Yeah. Charlie's Angels. Here's one. I'm going to throw- Josie and the Pussycats.
Vic00:34:05Charlie's Angels worked good enough that they did a sequel, didn't they? Except for they made enough money that they did a sequel.
Sonny00:34:10Yes, but it did not work well enough. They made enough money for it. I'm going to throw one out there that actually worked, and it worked because of the actors involved. It was kind of a sub-movement on its own, Starsky and Hutch.
Vic00:34:22Ooh, I don't think that was-
Sonny00:34:24The Starsky and Hutch remake with Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller, was pretty good.
JVL00:34:31The scene where they're in jail with Will Ferrell. Yes. Yeah, that's actually- That scene alone. Let me see your belly button. Oh, the dragon wants to come out.
Sonny00:34:41No, I mean, it's fantastic.
JVL00:34:42And Vince Vaughn. Vince Vaughn. Evil Vince Vaughn is the put-upon dad slash gangster.
Sonny00:34:47Exactly. That movie worked because it was part of that whole kind of- Yeah, we will watch Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller together in anything. Right, exactly. What was that called? They weren't the- The Brat Pack. They weren't the Brat Pack. They were like the Frat Pack. The Frat Pack. That's what- Was that them? I don't know, but I love it. Yeah, no, I like that. But it was a- It's a movie that would have worked on its own anyway with that core group of talent, and putting the Starsky and Hutch thing on top of it made it sellable. I think you're right. I think that's a good reason to remake it.
Vic00:35:19Isn't it true they're coming up with a Magnum P.I.? Is it for TV, though? A remake of that? I read that somewhere as well. I think that would be a terrible idea. I don't know.
JVL00:35:26The River does run- It runs on both ways. There's a whole giant list of movies that get turned into TV shows, like Fargo and Animal Kingdom. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I mean, so this is- And Fargo is enormously successful. Yeah, the thievery goes in both directions, and it shows how starved we are for original ideas. It makes you appreciate somebody like Christopher Nolan, who only makes original movies all the more.
Sonny00:35:48It is interesting, though. The Fargo TV series is very different from Fargo the movie. It's just kind of set in the same area, and it has some elements from the movie. You have, like, you know, where did the bag of money come from, et cetera. But, like, the show itself is very, very kind of unattached to- or the series is very, very unattached to the film, and it's really good. It's really well acted. It's really well directed. I don't know if you guys have watched it, but I highly recommend it, and I'm very excited that it's coming back in a month or so.
Vic00:36:18That's great. I don't watch TV. Fargo the movie is right up there. Again, I've mentioned this on several occasions. It's really right up there for me. It's one of my favorite movies. If it's on, I'll leave it on.
Sonny00:36:28Wow. I'll leave it on. Way to go out on a limb there. You like Fargo?
?00:36:32Wow.
Sonny00:36:32That's bold.
Vic00:36:33I remember seeing this one. It's a bold pick. Nobody knew what it was. I saw it at the time in the theater. Sonny, you might have been in grade school, so they probably couldn't get it. You couldn't get in. So, was that before? 95. Was that before? Did Fargo win Best Picture? No, it did not. That was the problem.
Sonny00:36:47Did the Coens win Best Director?
Vic00:36:51Francis McDormand won, I think, for Best Supporting Actress, or Best Actress. She should have. The other problem that always drives me crazy, of course, are classic movies from the 70s and the 80s that are fine on its own. Leave them the way they are. Leave it be. They're classics. And still, Hollywood feels compelled to do a reboot of those movies. And so, I have just a short list. A ranking? A ranking. Woo! Yeah. Okay, good. Ranking. Okay. From the bottom. The In-Laws, a great, funny movie from 1979 directed by Arthur Hiller, starring Alan Arkin and Peter Falk. You cannot recreate that. It's like, again, as they say, you know, the cliche of capturing lightning in a bottle. But Alan Arkin is the neurotic dentist. Peter Falk is just nuts. And he works, you know, their children are getting married. Falk secretly works for the CIA. And Arkin is, of course, your Joe Average guy. I mean, this dentist, he's neurotic, as I said. And it's crazy. And Ed Begley plays the CIA, you know, handler. Latin American country. And it's nuts. And they tried to remake it with Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks. And I like both actors. But there's no need for that. And it was just terrible. Okay. Lady Ghostbusters. Obviously. Don't have to get into that. It's just Ghostbusters, Vic. Lady Ghostbusters.
Sonny00:38:16Lady Ghostbusters. Very problematic. I thought that was the name.
Vic00:38:18I thought that was the name. Footloose. You can't beat Kevin Bacon. God, did they remake Footloose? Yes. I forgot about that. What a terrible idea. And John Lithgow, for that matter. And it's of that moment. It's of that era. And taking on these Christian evangelicals. That was the big thing, you know, at the time. Bible Belt. Of course, Ben-Hur. Obviously, one of the biggest flops, maybe of all. Is it up there, Sonny? It's up there. Yeah.
Sonny00:38:46In terms of, like, money spent to money recouped. Yeah. Very, very big.
Vic00:38:50Just a terrible idea. Don't mess with Charlton Heston. You just can't do that. Well, of course, they did that with Ten Commandments as well, but I didn't have that. That's an honorable, dishonorable mention of Godson.
Sonny00:38:59I think that was also a TV series, wasn't it? They didn't, I don't think they did the Ten Commandments in movies, did they?
Vic00:39:03No, you know, Godson Kings, I mean, with Christian Bale.
Sonny00:39:05Oh, oh, oh. No, that was Exodus. Exodus. Or, well, yeah, Godson Kings. Yes. No, that was bad. That was bad. Yeah, that was bad. That was bad, but it was actually not terribly unsuccessful, if I remember correctly.
Vic00:39:17Yes, that's right. And it was Ridley Scott. Ridley Scott. He'll get you. Ridley Scott's it is. He'll get you some miles.
Sonny00:39:22I mean, you say what you will about a Ridley Scott film, but they are very well filmed. They look good.
Vic00:39:27That's true. For me, however, the most upsetting movie of it that was recently rebooted was Arthur. I really liked the original Arthur with Dudley Moore and Sir John Gielgud and Liza Minnelli. Crazy. But it just captured New York in the 80s. For me, people are going to say this is crazy. I'm sure if John Pornhorst is listening, he'll say this is crazy. It's the bookend. You ready for this? It's the bookend to Edith. Wharton's Age of Innocence is Arthur. Thank you. Hold on. Let it sit there. I'm stirring it. I'm stirring it. Okay, let it distill. The point is what you saw-
Sonny00:40:02That reference is too highbrow for me.
Vic00:40:03That was too highbrow. What you saw in the original Arthur was a look into New York old money in the 80s and these families that came down, generations of families. They all live in places like the Sherry Netherland, and they have these beautiful homes in the Hamptons, and they had butlers. That has all changed. There was a piece. A few years ago about the angry penthouse neighbors from the old money and all these hedge fund guys who live an entirely different lifestyle but have clearly more money. Arthur had $700 million, and that was supposed to be a big deal at the time. Yeah.
Sonny00:40:38Today, it's not a big deal at all. $700 million? In New York. I'd pee on that.
Vic00:40:42In New York. You have all these billionaires, and they're not old money. What you saw was the end of that old money. In the movie, Arthur, they're trying to marry Arthur Bach. To Susan, and it's like two old families together, and it's whatever they had left of the old, rich families of New York trying to get together. The remake was with Russell Brand and Helen Mirren. And I like Helen Mirren, but thank you, Sonny.
Sonny00:41:07Russell, I just- When you said Arthur, I was afraid that you were going to be referring to the Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie that's coming out. Guy Ritchie really needs to get over his historical chav period. Let's go back to- His, oh, Sherlock Holmes. We need to get back to him in the modern day, dealing with- Gangsters. Yeah, Jason Statham. Love it. He needs to make a movie with Jason Statham that is set in 2015. That's what I want. Okay, Sherlock Holmes is great, the first one.
JVL00:41:34And The Man from U.N.C.L., which is shot recently, is kind of a mess. Okay, JVL. So, I don't need him.
Vic00:41:40You have your thoughts.
JVL00:41:42No, I don't have thoughts. I have a ranking.
Sonny00:41:44Oh, The Man from U.N.C.L. is set in like the 1960s or 70s.
JVL00:41:48Yeah, that's not like antiquity. Historical chav period. That's a- Okay, well, which is The Man from U.N.C.L. closer to, King Arthur and Sherlock Holmes, or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels of 2000? Because it's only 40 years away from that.
Sonny00:42:05King Arthur and Sherlock Holmes because it's a period picture. I don't want a period picture. I want a contemporary picture.
Vic00:42:10The angry episode of The Substandard.
JVL00:42:13Go ahead, JVL. It's not my fault JVL's garbage. Herewith are the three best TV-to-movie adaptations. What are we even calling them? I'm just making- I'm sure Sonny didn't mute us.
Vic00:42:23At some point, the only thing unmuted will be Sonny, and we're talking on for, like, minutes. Okay, go ahead, JVL.
JVL00:42:28Nah.
Vic00:42:28Just go on.
JVL00:42:29To be honest, that'd be a good show. So, listen, for the purposes of this ranking and this list, I do not count something like Serenity, which I count as just a series finale to Firefly. I'm really only taking things that are long-dropped properties and picked back up in film. Number three for me would be what I said, 21 Jump Street, which I kind of love as a movie. It's a great movie. Number two, Miami Vice, which I would say is a top five Michael Mann movie. And this, again, this could have been made with any set of character names, with any title you want on it. The only reason to stick Miami Vice on it is because Mann has a connection to the series, because he produced, right? He was the executive producer.
Sonny00:43:09He didn't actually direct any of the episodes.
JVL00:43:11I thought he directed one or two of them, no?
Sonny00:43:13He may have directed the pilot, but my understanding, if I remember correctly, he did not. Somebody, I'm sure, will chime in on Twitter and tell me I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure, he did not direct any episodes.
JVL00:43:23Well, I take your word for it. But aside from that, there's just no need for that movie to be called Miami Vice. I mean, it's fine that it is. It doesn't take anything away from it. You didn't have a problem with the audio? You're trying to start a fight between me and my hero, Jon Podhoretz, and I'm not going to take the bait.
Sonny00:43:42But Jon Podhoretz was right that the audio mix is muddy. He's right about that. That's why you have to watch it ten times, which I've done in the last year.
JVL00:43:51Miami Vice is great. Great weapons. Number one, The Fugitive. Oh, yeah. The Fugitive is better than the entire series. It takes the TV concept. It distills it and perfects it. It's not really an action movie. It's not really a thriller. It's actually a love story. And that's because everything in that movie gets anchored by the first five minutes where you get Richard and Helen Kimball together in their house. And if you don't buy that relationship, then the rest of the movie is just generic action product. But because you do, and because it is... It's sold so perfectly by Ceele Award and Harrison Ford and the screenwriter, Jeb Stuart, who wrote Die Hard. No surprise. That's right. He wrote Die Hard and knew how to put together this movie. Because that works, everything, the emotional stakes are high throughout the rest of the movie. And what happens is you are moved through tension, resolution, relaxation, tension, resolution, relaxation, but it gets amped up throughout. You see the entire mystery play. It's a play out through Kimball's eyes so that you're never either in front of him or behind him. You're never playing catch up. You never have the benefit of knowing more than what he's doing. And you get the iconic character of the Marshal, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Tommy Lee Jones, great, but again, the writing is there for him. Tommy Lee Jones did not come out with every outhouse, henhouse, and whorehouse on his own. That was not an ad lib. So you put all that together, and for me, it's basically a perfect movie. It transcends whatever the TV series really was. It's perfect. The best of all time.
Sonny00:45:26I would just chime in and say that the generic action stuff also works really well on its own. Like Tommy Lee Jones being like, I don't care, is such a great tossed-off line. And the fact that that did spawn its own sequel, totally unrelated to Harrison Ford and all that, just shows that—
JVL00:45:44Robert Downey Jr. as a villain, maybe the only time in his career he's been a heel.
Sonny00:45:49Well, not counting the kind of teens. The teen-year stuff. Yeah, less than zero.
JVL00:45:54Oh, less than zero. Less than zero, he was—
Vic00:45:57Yeah, heel Robert Downey Jr. I think he was just playing himself in Less Than Zero, but go ahead. Fugitive is fantastic. I remember being extremely skeptical, like, how are they going to sell this to me? Because, okay, I don't know if I can get into this. And sitting down, and the payoff is so great as well.
JVL00:46:10I mean, it's a terrific payoff. It's fantastic.
Vic00:46:12And with one of my other favorite character actors, Joey Pants. Joe Pantoliano is there. Oh, that's right.
JVL00:46:17No, all those marshals, actually. And this is, again, genius of writing. They sketch out—I think there are four or five marshals. And Tommy Lee Jones is the only one who has, like, real screen time and real lines. But they do little tiny bits of sketching so that you actually feel like you understand his whole team. You know who the kid is, who is, you know, the tall, who kind of looks like Judge Reinhold. Maybe it is Judge Reinhold. Yeah, he dies in the sequel. He dies in the sequel, right. He's killed by Robert Downey Jr. That's right. You actually have a sense as, hey, this is the kid who's the natural, who's going to be the heir apparent to Tommy Lee Jones. I mean, all that does done in such quick, broad— Broad strokes. It's beautiful.
Vic00:46:53I think the challenge for Tommy Lee Jones in the sequel is the guy he was chasing after was a vampire. Oh, sorry. It was Wesley Smith, right? It was Wesley Snipes, right.
Sonny00:47:01Oh, Wesley Snipes. Wesley Smith. Wesley Smith. The bioethicist. Wesley Smith, the EPPC scholar. He was not the bioethicist.
JVL00:47:08Discovery Institute, I believe. Discovery Institute, very good. No, Wesley Snipes. Always been on black. That's right. Different Wesley Snipes movie.
Vic00:47:14That's a different one, but I'll throw it all in together. I can't believe that he didn't make enough money to pay off his taxes. Okay. Great. Corrections, clarifications, additions, JVL.
JVL00:47:27I will reiterate that Cardia 22, you need to email us or text us or tweet at us or something so we can send you your beautiful parting gift.
Sonny00:47:37Part of the exciting adventure of getting this prize is figuring out how to contact us and make us believe that you were the person who left that review. Just FYI.
JVL00:47:47Sonny was wrong. False. No, just Carl says that when Sonny said that they started using CGI in the 90s Disney renaissance, not true. Wrong. It was in the Big Ben sequence in The Great Mouse Detective. Listener Liam Hare, I hope I'm saying your name right, Liam, says that I am way too hard on Don Bluth and then gives like a 900 word essay on the greatness of Don Bluth. I will put it in show notes. You should take his word for it. I'm willing to be wrong. Not a mistake, but a clarification from last week. After we went on air, somebody published the Beauty and the Beast trutherism about how Belle would have been much better off marrying Gaston as opposed to the Beast and how this all ends with her being guillotined within about 36 months of the conclusion of Beauty and the Beast. I'll put that in show notes too. I think it might have been in last week's show notes, but just go read. This is fantastic. It's really good. It's all about placing Beauty and the Beast. It's within the timeline of the French Revolution and understanding that all of a sudden, hey, wait a minute, she's going to go marry the rich one percenter who has no friends and a castle by himself. How's that going to work out?
Vic00:49:02Substandard listener at Steelerslob asks how to say some actors' names. I'm going to give this to Sonny since he is the professional movie critic, and then I want to hear Sonny's pronunciations.
Sonny00:49:12Steve Buscemi, Amanda Seyfried, Kieran Hines, Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Vic00:49:18Do we disagree with any of that? I thought it was Buscemi.
Sonny00:49:22I mean, Buscemi, Buscemi, I don't know. See? Buscemi and Seyfried. I was a Seyfried. Amanda Seyfried, right? Seyfried, yes. What did I say, Seyfried? I think so.
Vic00:49:31And Sonny, I don't know if you remember this, Sonny. You and I used to say Ciara and Hines. Yeah, well, I remember who corrected us. The Celtic linguistic scholar Michael Warren.
Sonny00:49:40Yeah, whatever. That guy doesn't know what he's talking about. That guy's super Irish.
Vic00:49:44Idiot.
Sonny00:49:45He's a drunk.
Vic00:49:46Kieran, whatever. Yes, you know. Yes, okay. I love him, and he's in every movie now. He is. Kieran Hines is in every movie now.
Sonny00:49:54He's great, and I'm pretty sure he's in Justice League. Doesn't he play the big bad in Justice League? He kind of looks like Darkseid. He kind of looks great. First off, first off, first off, it's Darkseid. Second off, he's not playing Darkseid. He's playing, like, Darkseid's lieutenant. I don't know who that is, because I'm not a DC nerd. You're the DC nerd.
JVL00:50:16Kieran Hines. Kieran Hines kind of looks like a person. A person who is drawn by Jack Kirby. Bam. Wow.
Sonny00:50:24All right, that's a good nerd.
JVL00:50:25Good nerd, right? There you go.
Vic00:50:26I think Kieran Hines would be great for a Douglas MacArthur movie. He just looks the part. Of course, that was where he done with Liam Neeson, wasn't it?
Sonny00:50:32He's still the best Julius Caesar of all time. Oh, great Caesar. Great Caesar. I mean, his turn on Rome. Yes. The first season of Rome is arguably the greatest season of television that HBO has ever produced. It's really good. Which makes it the best season of television of all time, right, JBO? Very possibly.
JVL00:50:48The first season of Rome was amazing. I never watch anything else, actually. The first season was so good that I was like, okay, well, this can't get any better.
Sonny00:50:53You just stopped watching TV after that. Well, I stopped watching Rome. There's no more TV.
Vic00:50:57I stopped watching Rome. Also, Substandard listener Stephen Phillippe sent us an email saying that he's been following us on Twitter for a while now and has only been listening to the podcast for the last two months, but he loves to keep up the great work, and he wanted to direct us to truly awful Disney movies that we did not mention. He said, a couple years ago, a few friends and I, he says, decided to watch all 53 Disney animated movies at the time in chronological order. He says, the five that were made after World War II are fairly unbearable. He mentions Saludos Amigos, Three Caballeros, Melody Time, et cetera. Thank you. But he also says, here's one, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad from 1949. I assume those are two different movies and not The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.
JVL00:51:48Ichabod, The Headless Horseman.
Vic00:51:50Don't cross the bridge, Ichabod. That was my Mr. Toad impression. Okay. And he also suggests, troublingly, not waste, he says, not waste your time on them, as your time would probably be better suited re-watching Sucker Punch. Or maybe not. Don't forget Spirit of the Week, Vic. Yes, of course. Okay. Anyway, he says, better off watching Sucker Punch.
Sonny00:52:12Jesus, are we still talking about this?
Vic00:52:14God. We're not even, we're 20 minutes. My God. We are still 20 minutes less than our record episode. Thank you, Steven Phillips.
JVL00:52:21Obviously, Sucker Punch is the best movie of all time. Hey, did you guys know that Rogue One came out on video last week? Boo. But not on DVD, yes.
Sonny00:52:28That was our most popular podcast, wasn't it? I don't know.
JVL00:52:32You know, I don't keep track of these things, because I'm not here to entertain you. That's a good point.
Vic00:52:35I'm here to speak my truth. Also, I don't know if you caught this last week. Thank you, Tommy. We were talking about board games, and we were talking about Monopoly, and the Wall Street Journal just announced they are removing three tokens. Did you hear this?
Sonny00:52:45This is literally like a month old. I don't understand why we're talking about this.
Vic00:52:49Thimble, Boot, and Wheelbarrow.
Sonny00:52:50This is not last week.
Vic00:52:52T-Rex, Penguin, and Duck are the new ones.
JVL00:52:56Boo. What were you, JVL? Race car forever.
Vic00:52:59I was the battleship. Sonny, if there was a hand with a battleship?
JVL00:53:03Yes. None of my Monopoly sets had a battleship. Really? I had a little tugboat.
Vic00:53:08Not a battleship.
JVL00:53:09Oh, I thought that was a battleship.
Sonny00:53:10Okay, go ahead. I was the car, I think.
Vic00:53:12I thought you were the hand with the middle finger sticking out. Oh, no, they didn't have that token.
Sonny00:53:16Oh, no, that was just me. To everybody at the board. No deals.
JVL00:53:20No deals.
Vic00:53:21Spirit of the week.
JVL00:53:22Sonny, can I trade the Redding Railroad for the B&O Railroad?
Vic00:53:25Never.
JVL00:53:27They're the same thing. They're just railroads, Sonny. Don't care. Our spirit of the week.
Sonny00:53:31Yeah, I'll let you do it if you toss in a $500 bill.
Vic00:53:34The orange bill. Spirit of the week is Maker's Mark from Kentucky. Really good stuff. When I was out there, I actually poured a bottle myself and dipped it in the wax, and Bill Samuels said, it was a pretty good job. If you don't have another job, I'll hire you. So when all this ends, I'm going out to Kentucky. To be a wax bottle. To be a wax dipper. Wax dipper. Wax dipper.
Sonny00:53:53Those are all union jobs, so that's probably like a $50,000 a year job.
Vic00:53:57Yes, easily. And I have to work twice a week. That is all the time we're giving you for this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus, at Sonny Bunch. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard under Podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Don't forget the bingo cards. And also, Substandard. Show notes will be up on Friday at 11 a.m. at WeeklyStandard.com.
Sonny00:54:24Make sure to tweet at JV Last. He loves to hear from you. He is your biggest fan.
Vic00:54:29Until next time.
Sonny00:54:39How did you like being the reviewer this week, JBL?
JVL00:54:43I found it disconcerting. Yeah. You know what? Like The Rock used to say, you've got to shut your mouth. You've got to shut your mouth and know your role.
Sonny00:54:51Know your role. Got to know your role.
JVL00:54:52And I know my role. And my role is not doing movie reviews.
Sonny00:54:56So, but you are going to go see, you're going to try and go see Ghost in the Shell.
JVL00:55:00Well, I assume you're going to see Ghost in the Shell because it looks awesome.
Sonny00:55:02Ghost in the Shell not screening for critics.
JVL00:55:05I'm going to have to go see it. That's a bad sign, isn't it?
Sonny00:55:07I'm going to have to go see it with garbage pleb people on Thursday.
JVL00:55:09Oh, why don't we do it together and we can make fun of them and throw popcorn at them?
Sonny00:55:12If you're going to go Thursday night at 7 p.m. at the AMC in Georgetown, that's where I'm going to be. Listeners who get this six hours from now. You could pay me to go to see a movie in Georgetown. I have to go see it in Georgetown at 7 p.m. so I can write a review of it that will go up like five hours later. It's really, this is really making my life extremely difficult.
Vic00:55:34Hey, Sonny, here's a little tip for you. If you go watch the movie with Jonathan, make sure he's not holding the popcorn bag.
Sonny00:55:40That's a reference to, what was the? Diner. Diner, yeah, that's a diner joke, guys. Have you seen Diner, everyone out there? I hope everyone's seen Diner. With Mickey Rourke. One of the best early Mickey Rourke performances. Steve Guttenberg. Anyway, I'm extremely excited to go see Ghost in the Shell. We can do a joint review next week. I would just like you to review it and I will sit and just sit there and shut my mouth and know my role. You're just going to judge me?
JVL00:56:06Not judging, just learning from, absorbing.
Sonny00:56:10I'm sure it'll be fine.
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