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#57. The Substandard on Logan Lucky, Soderbergh Ranked, and Dudes Chattin’!

2017-08-24 · 01:00:45

Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now

(JVL out; Mike Warren guest-hosts.)

Dudes Chatting — podcasting and "dudes chatting": The episode opens with Vic, Sonny, and guest Mike Warren riffing on a tweet by Washington Examiner colleague Tim Carney dismissing podcasts that are just "dudes chatting" — a description the hosts cheerfully embrace as their own aesthetic. Conversation sprawls through a weekend trip to the National Archives and the Smithsonian (Vic), mulch-hauling with neighborly help (Mike), and an extended digression on D.C. museums including the defunct Crime and Punishment Museum and the traveling Bodies exhibit. Sonny ties the free-museum culture of the Smithsonian to habits around piracy, while Mike holds down the everyman suburban-American corner throughout.

Box Office: The Hitman's Bodyguard led with $21.6M, followed by Annabelle: Creation at $15.5M and Logan Lucky at a disappointing $8M opening. Sonny is visibly unhappy that a film he likes was beaten by a mid-tier action flick; Dunkirk still cracked the top four at $6.7M in week four.

Reviews: Sonny reviews Logan Lucky warmly — Soderbergh's West Virginia heist comedy starring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and Riley Keough, with Daniel Craig as the drawling explosives man Joe Bang. He praises Keough's lived-in performance and the film's empathy for its redneck characters but criticizes the Seth MacFarlane subplot as Soderbergh's heavy-handed stand-in for everything wrong with modernity, and finds the film about 10–15 minutes too long at the end. Vic agrees the MacFarlane character feels dropped in from another movie. Mike, seeing his first Soderbergh beyond Ocean's Eleven, loved the film's Rube Goldberg caper pleasures and compares it to The Great Muppet Caper. Gene Shalit (Vic's impression) makes an appearance with a pun-laden review awarding two stars. The hosts then rank Soderbergh's filmography: all three agree on Ocean's Eleven, and Sonny particularly champions The Informant!, The Girlfriend Experience, Contagion, and Haywire as an underappreciated 2009–2011 run; Vic adds Out of Sight and Behind the Candelabra; Mike notes Magic Mike surprised him on Netflix.

The episode closes with Spirit of the Week: Singani 63 Old Fashioneds, mixed by Sonny using turbinado syrup — the Bolivian brandy being Steven Soderbergh's own promotional venture.

Full transcript
Guest00:00:00the only guy who knows anything about blowing up real bank vaults is joe bang
Vic00:00:10i am incarcerated yeah we got a plan to get you hello and welcome back to the substandard brought to you by dollar shave club stop spending a fortune on gimmicky shave tech you don't need make the smarter choice by joining dollar shave club get your first month for only five bucks with free shipping by going to dollarshaveclub.com slash substandard i'm victor mattis along with sunny bunch and mike warren i'd like to remind you that the substandard is available on itunes google play and stitcher just look at our podcast and search for substandard you'll easily find us please subscribe tell your friends and leave her a view not only is this our 40th episode i believe but also something like that i don't
Sonny00:01:06we is it is it 40 39 or 40 40 is it does that include the minis no no the minis were up to 200 now we didn't have a mini this week for various scheduling and yes and other another reason such
Vic00:01:16i can't really remember now because time flies uh but the other thing of course is um to uh again uh leave a review because we are on the verge of 300 reviews i think we may have actually passed it already did you check did you check i didn't check today last i checked was 297 you didn't
Sonny00:01:32check today thursday morning thursday morning thursday morning which is today you're right i
Vic00:01:37think i did absolutely thursday oh i can't believe what happened in the news today but we'll get to that later um i hope you all had a nice weekend my parents and uh my niece came to visit weekend and like other days other days since the many days but i'm gonna go way back i'm gonna go way back to the weekend all right yeah i can barely remember and uh my parents and my niece emma came down to visit uh and and spent the weekend uh with us and that was lovely we uh uh got up early enough on saturday and went into the city and found parking right on constitution and uh
Sonny00:02:11it's a big win it's a big win that's like you know when you know that you know that seinfeld episode where george talks about how he goes in the concentric circles to find a parking spot when you just pull up boom to the main avenue and you're like whoa directly huge win directly
Vic00:02:26across from the national archives and uh so i we the plan was to go to the national gallery of art That was Kate's plan to get a little culture for the kids. But I said, you know what? We're right here. I don't see a line. Usually they have it snaking down, you know, that part of the archives. I didn't see anybody. So sure enough, we walked in, went straight through the metal detectors and went right up to the founding documents.
Sonny00:02:49And you stole them so you could just find the treasure.
Vic00:02:52I'm on my way to the old North Church in Boston. Is that where it is? Many floors down.
Sonny00:02:58I've actually never seen any of the National Treasure movies. Oh, no, I take that back. I saw the first one. I saw the first one.
Vic00:03:06Isn't Ned Stark in the first one? Sean Bean, yes. Yeah, he is. What about you, Mike? The second one, I love the National Treasure movies, actually, because it is sort of this pure, unadulterated silliness mixed with patriotism and a little history. You learn a little bit. Exactly. Like, for instance, I did not know until National Treasure 2 that there is an entire vault of treasure behind Mount Rushmore.
Sonny00:03:35And I learned that from that movie. It's good when movies are both entertaining and educational. Exactly. That's what I like in a good movie.
Vic00:03:43Much like the Da Vinci Code. Yes, exactly.
Sonny00:03:45I learned so much about Jesus from the Da Vinci Code. His divinity.
Vic00:03:49Same thing with the dollar. I'll never look at a dollar the same way now with the symbols and things like that. The Masons. Exactly. So we did that. We went across to the National Gallery of Art and saw some wonderful works of art. They let you take pictures, which I forget that. So I took a great picture of- Of the paintings? Yes. And so I took a picture of Michael in front of the famous Van Gogh self-portrait, the one that you only see one ear. And I told him the story about the ear. It was great. My father, I swear, I think he touched the oil painting. He's like, oh, this is because my dad likes to paint when he's- Did the alarms go off? I know, but there was a secret. I said, you can't do it because I didn't really touch it. He said, I didn't really touch it. It looked like he touched it. Anyway, it's just the feel. That's the Washington Smithsonian way. They're not like real museums. They're like museums for the people. Right. And like the grubby masses. The first thing my mother said was, how much is this? How much do we, how much do we, I said, your taxpayers pay. You could walk right in. He said, you just walk right in.
Sonny00:04:50I am actually always kind of shocked and annoyed when I go to New York City or some other city and I have to pay to go into museums. I'm like, no, museums are free. The Smithsonian has taught me that museums are free. This is how you could get people stealing music, by the way. This is like, music should be free because I get it from, you know.
Vic00:05:07Because like art's free. Right, exactly. The art's free. So they love that. There was actually one picture.
Sonny00:05:12The Smithsonian's definitely have destroyed the music industry. That's my next think piece. How the Smithsonian's killed the record industry.
Vic00:05:19We should be more like the spy museum, spend a lot of money for a little exhibit.
Sonny00:05:27The worst museum I ever went to in DC, and it's not there anymore, was the Crime and Punishment Museum. Yes! Which I was like, my wife and I, Beth, we were very bored one weekend. We were like, what should we do? And we were thinking about things, and we were like, well, what about that Crime and Punishment Museum? Right. It was creepy, first of all. They had the Bonnie and Clyde death car, for instance. But the really weird part of it was they had old punishment implements, like manacles and racks and stuff. I was like, this is... And it was like a peon to punishing criminals. It was like, this is how we should treat all people.
Vic00:06:09And it's closed now?
Sonny00:06:10I love that, but it is closed now.
Vic00:06:12I always wanted to go in there. This is like in Prague, they have the Museum of Mental Torture. Yes, I saw a similar one in the town of Rothenburg in Germany. Oh, there we go. Yeah, let me tell you something. They gave a whole new meaning to ball busting. Well, I was going to mention the Wurst Museum, of course, which we've written about here. The Wurst Museum is the museum because, for many reasons, but one of the big reasons is the old museum was, I think, a little more reflective of the way sort of journalism. Do you remember the old museum? Oh, the one in Roslyn. In Roslyn. The one across from where the Free Beacon is. That's right. That's right. I think it's-
Sonny00:06:53The Arlington Free Beacon.
Vic00:06:55Yes. Yeah, exactly. But it was, you know, it was like grubby. It was sort of like, it felt like it was like in a basement. I remember coming, when I was a kid, visiting D.C. before I lived here. You know, you have to like walk down and it's kind of a miserable thing, which is, I think, reflective of journalism as a career. And now it's this gaudy monstrosity on, what is it, Constitution?
Sonny00:07:21Has Ferguson written a takedown?
Vic00:07:23Many times. He must have. Many times, many times. But the slippers, the wonkhead slippers and all that. That's really it. I remember I went to the museum in Roslyn once because they had an exhibit for bodies. Remember bodies? Oh, bodies, yes.
Sonny00:07:39That was horrifying. I mean, really.
Vic00:07:42It was horrifying. And there were two competing exhibits, right? There was the German wood. I forget what it is. It's all about where they put the plasticine into the wax. And there was two competing woods. There was a German wood. And a Chinese one. Well, yes. It was all about where the bodies came from. And supposedly, the one that was run by the Germans, they would find donated cadavers with bullet holes in the head. Donated. Donated. And broken neck skeletons and things. But I remember our tour guide, because we did a press thing on this. And the guy who was giving the tour said that our museum is definitely, our exhibit is not that. We treat our bodies with respect and dignity. And behind me is a man dancing with his own skin. And he was dancing with his own skin. Oh, my God. Yes.
Sonny00:08:28I don't understand. That whole phenomenon, which I guess still is a thing. I assume it's still like travel. It's so weird and creepy and macabre. It's right up macabre.
Vic00:08:41It's right up there with the anatomical museums, but I'm all into that. I'm fascinated by that sort of stuff.
Sonny00:08:46No surprise. We know what you're into.
Vic00:08:48Sonny, how about you?
Sonny00:08:52I've had a pretty good week, I guess. I was amused to see the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney tweet that he likes podcasts the more produced they are. Should have only one host. Worst is dudes chatting, and we did some internet research. Now, I Googled podcasts just before this show, and it's true that 72.3% of all podcasts are just dudes chatting. But I wouldn't know because I don't actually listen to any other podcasts. The whole concept of podcasts is very weird to me, and this is, I think, one of the reasons why our show is so bad. It's because the idea of actual production quality and that sort of thing is totally foreign to me. Like, the idea of, like, telling a story or, like, discovering a murderer or whatever, like, that sounds really neat, but also, like, a lot of work.
Vic00:09:43Yeah. Or I remember when I was on the set of...
Sonny00:09:47Right. Yeah, if we had actually interesting stories about our life experiences instead of just, like, talking for, like, seven minutes about museums in Washington, D.C., like, then, you know, maybe the show would be better. I don't know. I can't say for sure.
Vic00:10:01I stopped listening to this podcast six minutes ago, so... I mean, it is. Yeah. I mean, this is getting very meta, by the way. This is like talking about the current podcast as we're podcasting. I don't know. I mean, podcasting has replaced talk radio, you know, for the millennials and for the older set as well.
Sonny00:10:23Did you find this out by looking for it on Google? Did you find this factoid?
Vic00:10:26No, Sonny, I found this out through my own life experience, and I think we can extrapolate from my own life experience broadly to make a general statement. That's what I do.
Sonny00:10:38I remember somebody gave us a one-star or two-star review that was like, if you like the morning zoo with no actual research or expertise about the topic.
Vic00:10:48I was like, wait, how is this a two-star review?
Sonny00:10:50That's literally the aesthetic we're going for.
Vic00:10:52The only thing we don't have is Mike was just showing us. We need a sound board. Actually, Mike is going to provide the sound effects. I'm like, what's the guy from Police Academy and all those movies? Michael Winslow. Michael Winslow. Michael Winslow.
Sonny00:11:05Oh, God. Stop. Everyone stop.
Vic00:11:07That microphone is very wet now. You know what? It's so funny because speaking of internet research, I did some, and I learned that apparently podcasts that change host lineup to boost ratings end up doing more harm than good. Wow. That's interesting. No. That is good.
Sonny00:11:20That's a woof. That's a thing we should probably keep in mind. I don't know.
Vic00:11:23Going forward to no. Interesting. How about you, Mike? How was your week, weekend? Yeah, so I spent my weekend with about elbows deep in a giant brown pile of mulch. Oh, hmm. Woo. Yeah. I'm getting scared there. I got to my house on Friday night, and about six cubic yards of mulch had been dumped on my driveway. They dump it. Yes, and I had to write a check for it. Okay, now first of all, for most of our listeners, the first question, what is mulch? Mulch is, I don't quite know. No, it, you know, so it's this, you know. Is it fertilizer? It is not fertilizer. It's not. Loam? No, it is essentially. It's like bark and stuff. It is essentially what I think these people did. So I bought mulch in bags from Home Depot, but this was a big, I wanted a big load of it. I think they essentially take trees, chop them up, and mix it with dirt. And that's what mulch is.
Sonny00:12:22You know the scene at the end of Fargo? Yeah. Yeah, the chipper?
Vic00:12:25Except with the tree. Right. Interesting. And dirt. And so the task was to take these six cubic yards, which is a lot of mulch, and move it from my driveway in my front yard to my backyard.
Sonny00:12:39How many pounds of mulch is that? I have no idea. Is it like 1,000 pounds of mulch? No. Like 2,000 pounds of mulch?
Vic00:12:46Honestly, I have no idea. I don't know how dense it was. it's hard it's i'm trying to think of it it's probably about the the pile that was that my son was playing on before was probably not fertilizer was probably four no it's all dirt uh four feet by six feet um by uh four and a half feet if that gives you an idea it was kind of in a mountain shape so the task was to take it from the front yard from the driveway to the backyard so we could make the do you have a wheelbarrow so i so so the story the story of my weekend was a heartwarming one you know one that that i think you beltway insiders can't quite grasp you know those of us living like like i do a mile and a half outside the beltway uh in real america outside the beltway
Sonny00:13:35or is it oh is it technically outside the beltway you take the beltway to get there uh well yeah
Vic00:13:41How do you get outside the beltway if you don't take the beltway? He's technically in the outer rim. That's right. That's right. What I discovered, so I have a wheelbarrow.
Sonny00:13:50Did you buy this from Jabba the Hutt? Did you buy your mulch from Jabba? Possibly.
Vic00:13:55Possibly. That must be why. Jabba's Depot. That must be why I have bounty hunters knocking on my door. No, it's a story of neighborliness because I had a wheelbarrow of my own. I have a toddler and a wife who is mostly occupied with trying to keep the toddler out of the pile of mulch. And so I'm taking my shovel and I'm piling it in my wheelbarrow and, you know, I'm getting about one load every five, 10 minutes is not going to do the trick. And lo and behold, my neighbor from across the street comes across the street on Saturday morning, brings his wheelbarrow and a pitchfork and starts. And so he's loading while I take it down and we get this nice little rhythm going. And then my, my other neighbor is shouting at me and saying, uh, can we bring, let's bring our wheel. I'm going to go, but now I have too many wheelbarrows. So she brings her wheelbarrow over and her pitchfork. And it turns out to, I basically, I didn't finish the job on Saturday, but it got pretty darn close. And, uh, my neighbor brought the tarp over and we, and we sat afterward after in the hot zone with beers and chatted with all the neighbors. It was everything that America is about, and it was beautiful. That sounds terrible. I know, because it was outside. That sounds like the worst. If I lived on that cul-de-sac, I think I would have just brought over a cobbler. Yeah, exactly.
Sonny00:15:18Just a cobbler that you got from a grocery store. From a bakery. No, you would have looked out your window and been like, close the curtains.
Vic00:15:25I'm not home. I'm not home. No, thanks. I see those piles of mulch up and down the street from time to time. I just think, oh, man, I hope that never happens to my house. It just gets dumped in there. People pay for that luxury. Yeah, and that's not peat moss, right? That's something completely different. No, mulch is what you put down in the flowerbeds so the weeds don't come up and it looks nice. Doesn't it smell? Doesn't it smell? It smells. It actually smells very good, I think. Okay. Did you guys go on vacation or anything like that? have you been going uh yeah well we went on vacation so everybody in washington goes on vacation in august no not everybody well not everybody most people the the privileged classes in washington certainly go to nantucket or wherever the hell they go um but no we went we went to florida back in june um with with the family with my parents and um it was very nice that must have been very exciting it was very exciting you know what gets burglars excited what's that knowing that you're going to do all those things summer is prime time for burglary So now is the time to protect your home. For a limited time, you can take a whopping $100 off SimpliSafe's special summer package. This is SimpliSafe's biggest ever summer sale. It has everything you need to protect your home, an arsenal of security sensors to secure each door and window. Your SimpliSafe system comes with a panic button, a blaring extra siren, and a wireless connection to authorities and police dispatch. Your family, your home, and everything in it stays safe around the clock. With SimpliSafe, there are no long-term contracts, no installation costs, no hidden fees, and 24-7 professional monitoring is just $14.99 a month. This summer, see what SimpliSafe can do for your home. Get $100 off your summer security package at simplisafe.com slash standard. Hurry, that's simplisafe.com slash standard to get your $100 off. That's S-I-M-P-L-I-S-A-F-E dot com, simplisafe.com slash standard for $100 off your purchase. That was a well-read read, Victorino. Thank you, it just rolls off the tongue. Can I just, something that's been bothering me about reads like this, which is you don't hear the keyword anymore. Remember, that used to be sort of like early in the internet. It was like, go to a website and type in a keyword. Keyword. That is like one of these vestiges of the internet that no longer exists. Well, that was an AOL thing, right? Was that AOL? You're right, you're right. You're like typing keywords.
Sonny00:17:53It was like, I want to read about comic books, so I'm going to type in comics. Yes. Right.
Vic00:17:58It was like the internet was, AOL really, it's interesting. It sort of held your hand for you in this. And it was sort of, I think sort of culturally we thought of the internet as like being this vast sort of undiscovered land that we needed, you know, so we needed like keywords, we needed to like sort of unlock what was in the internet. And now it's just like, there's just a bunch of crap on there. You know what, actually, I think WTOP, they still do search for keyword and they'll tell you, they'll give you a story.
Sonny00:18:27It's probably because it's old people listening. Yes. Because it's old people listening. I listen to Traffic on the 8th, so I don't know what you mean. I mean, yeah. And when it breaks.
Vic00:18:33Oh, I'm Phil Augustine.
Sonny00:18:34It's people who still actually pay for AOL. Those people. The little discs that come in. Well, you get 100 free hours. I mean, that's so much.
Vic00:18:44Cha-ching. Now, over the weekend, the Hitman's Bodyguard did $21.6 million, followed by Annabelle the Creation at $15.5 million, and then Logan Lucky at $8 million in its first week. But Dunkirk came in fourth with $6.7 million. Sonny, you have this very unpleasant look on your face. Have we hit rock bottom?
Sonny00:19:11He always has an unpleasant look on his face. Yeah, I don't have an especially unpleasant look on my face. That's your natural demeanor. When you're sleeping, that's the look. That's my resting Sonny face. No, I mean, look, this was a weird weekend. I wish Logan Luckey had done better. I quite liked it. We'll talk about that in a minute. But I don't see any particular... The Hitman's Bodyguard is just kind of a high-concept action flick with two well-known stars. Did you see it? I actually didn't see it. I actually didn't see it because I couldn't make the press screening for some reason.
Vic00:19:48And you're not going to see it with the masses?
Sonny00:19:49And I'm probably not going to... I'll wait for it to come out on... I'll wait for my awards season screener of The Hitman's Bodyguard. Oh, good. You think I could borrow that? No, absolutely not. Have we talked about this before? No, we haven't.
Vic00:20:01And I'm still waiting for Sully.
Sonny00:20:05You're still waiting for Sully. So just behind the scenes here, folks, the way film criticism works is that studios will often send members of prestigious societies like the Washington Area Film Critics Association award season screeners so they can put together their top 10 list. And what this means for the average critic is you have a lot of vultures coming into their office trying to take the free movies that they get so they don't have to go out and pay to see them. And one such vulture was one Victorino Mattis who came into my office and was like, oh, hey, my parents are in town. I need to borrow. Can I borrow Sully? And he took it and he didn't bring it back for like a month.
Vic00:20:50Oh, that's not true at all. It was a couple weeks.
Sonny00:20:53A couple weeks. I was nervous the whole time because every once in a while you hear stories about these screeners winding up on video upload download sites and it's really bad news. Critics get in a lot of trouble. You can like...
Vic00:21:06Even with the thing that... Not that I've ever taken a screener. The watermarks. The watermarks and the flashing.
Sonny00:21:12This is for... Yeah, right. So people put those on the internet because goddamn animals. Savages in this town. So anyway, I was worried that the careless person who works next door to me was going to lose it or something. I don't think Vic would himself upload it, but, you know.
Vic00:21:29Listen, you are ridiculous.
Sonny00:21:30All I did, I lent it to my parents,
Vic00:21:32who gave it to my cousins from the Philippines, and then they did something on the internet, but I don't know what happened.
Sonny00:21:36I know. So, anyway, I used to have a very strict rule about not lending these out, and I'm going to reinstate that this year. Because I ruined it. It was because of me. You ruined it. You ruined it. And, frankly, for the record, studios, if you happen to listen to this, I never, never, never lend them out. And the only reason I did was because my boss said he would fire me if I didn't let him watch it. But it's not going to happen anymore.
Vic00:22:00I had no idea that blending with Sonny is like Blockbuster at its height. You have 24 hours to watch this movie. Look, no offense.
Sonny00:22:09I don't think that it's too much to ask when you're getting something that's in theaters right now to watch it and bring it back. I gave you very simple instructions. Watch it, bring it back. I didn't get here to bring it back for 24 hours. Six months, seven months. I had no idea he was bothered by it. I'm X-ing off squares on the calendar like I'm in prison waiting to get out. Anyway. Because I will be in prison soon whenever it shows up on. Critic prison is really not the same. The critic prison is different? Yeah. It's white collar. It's like white collar. It's white collar. It's not blue collar. We play golf. We play tennis.
Vic00:22:44So who here saw Logan Lucky? We all saw Logan Lucky. Yeah, we all saw him. I saw him. Good. Sonny, did you want to give a review?
Sonny00:22:54Yes, because I don't want to have to follow Gene Shalit's review. I believe there's a Gene Shalit review coming, right? Is he in? Possibly. Am I teasing something that exists? Hard to tell. I don't want to have to follow that, so I'll go first. So, Logan Lucky is the story of the Logan family. It's two brothers. One is Channing Tatum, one is Adam Driver, and a sister, Riley Keough, who-
Vic00:23:15Is that how you pronounce her last name? Riley Keough?
Sonny00:23:17I think it's Keough. These Irish names are so hard. I honestly don't. Mike, you wouldn't know. You're Irish. I think it's Riley Keough. Kiyo? Kiyo. Riley Kiyo, who is actually Elvis Presley's granddaughter, interestingly. That's right.
Vic00:23:29I see a resemblance with Lisa Murray.
Sonny00:23:31She does look a little bit like Lisa Murray.
Vic00:23:32And Michael Jackson. Oh, sorry.
Sonny00:23:38Anyway, so it's about this family of kind of southern good old boys, Adam Driver's character. No, rednecks. Rednecks, rednecks, yeah, rednecks. Channing Tatum's character was a high school football star whose knee got blown out. Adam Driver was in the army, and the lower half of his arm got blown off. And Riley Keough just kind of works in a hairdresser. She seems to have it more or less together. And after Channing Tatum gets fired from his job for not properly disclosing that he has a long-term injury, insurance, god damn insurance company. Pre-existing condition. They decide to rip off the Charlotte Motor Speedway. And the movie involves the various plans on how to do that. They have to break Daniel Craig's character, Joe Bang, who has a delightful accent, who has probably my favorite movie accent of the year. Kind of this ridiculous Southern high-pitched drawl to go along with his bleach bond, you know, buzz cut is their explosives guy. They have to break him out of prison and then break him back into prison. so you know there's like a little little clever uh subplot there uh i i quite liked it i liked it uh enough the one weird part of this movie was the seth mcfarland character so seth mcfarland plays a energy drink mogul who sponsors a car in the race at the charlotte motor speedway and he seems to be mostly functioning as a vehicle for steven soderbergh's resentments about modernity um he is he is like uh he he's very crass and vulgar and is uh this this sort of guy who like doesn't care about art he's he's the he so in the in the movie he plays uh this energy drink guy who is sponsoring the race car driver and the race car driver is like this artisan who's like you know he talks about his body as an operating system and he has to put in all the right inputs and outputs and he's doing yoga and you know weird weird stuff and he's like this kind of airy intellectual philosophical warrior athlete type jeff gordon-esque yeah kind of jeff gordon he's like he's like jeff gordon elevated but like he's like jeff gordon combined with like a director's conception of what a uh like pretentious athlete would be like yeah he's like he's jeff
Vic00:25:57gordon and um and david beckham like kind of mixed together a bit okay well you know what my body's
Sonny00:26:02operating system is a commodore 64 yeah i mean i'm pouring just all sorts of awful things into viruses trojans so but but the the but the the uh seth mcfarland character who is australian i think he has the either the worst australian accent or the worst british accent of all time um uh is can't appreciate any of this and just wants him to you know guzzle the energy drink for photos and you know lots of instagram and there's lots of instagramming his his cronies his entourage always have their cameras up taking pictures you know and it really it becomes like clear as the movie goes along that like this is a character who Soderbergh hates and wants to kind of represent everything that's wrong with the world and it really just a lot of it doesn't work for me it really slows the movie down and at two hours there are probably 10 to 15 minutes that could have been trimmed a lot of them at the end the coda of this movie just drags on and on and on it goes for it really runs out of gas at the end yeah so did you oh no did I steal that line does that I actually tweeted that with an apology earlier last week I mean your point about
Vic00:27:16the Seth MacFarlane character I think is right I think he's he really only has like three moments in the entire movie and in every moment feels he's literally sort of been picked up and dropped and where he doesn't belong.
Sonny00:27:28From a totally different movie.
Vic00:27:29Exactly. And I mean, the first time he's on screen when he comes in the bar, I'm thinking, what am I watching? And it just takes you out of the moment. And then as soon as he's gone, you're right back in the movie again.
Sonny00:27:40And this is a movie that is deeply empathetic with all of its characters, I think. I mean, like Channing Tatum is divorced and his wife is played by Katie Holmes and her new husband is the guy from The Office.
Vic00:27:56Yeah, he's Roy from The Office. Roy from The Office, thank you. Brian, I don't remember his name. Ooh, I almost had it.
Sonny00:28:02Den, Den, Den.
Vic00:28:04David Demmon, David Demmon.
Sonny00:28:05And they're kind of like figures of fun in the butts of jokes, but also like there's clearly a lot of love in this family and that sort of, and the Seth MacFarlane character is just clearly so meant to be despised that it feels wrong for the movie. And I would, Steven Soderbergh is a guy who's, He's one of our most interesting filmmakers, and he does some experiments with editing. For instance, he edited 2001 A Space Odyssey down to an hour and 50 minutes or something like that and put it on the internet. And it was kind of interesting to see the choices he... I would love to see a version of this movie that simply cuts out all of the Seth MacFarlane stuff. I think it would be a stronger film. Absolutely. And even if you keep that moment at the beginning, the bar scene that you mentioned, Mike, actually serves at least a narrative purpose where we can see the brothers and how they kind of stand up for each other and, you know, how they're very, very tight and they don't like interlopers and that sort of like that. That actually kind of works and serves a narrative purpose.
Vic00:29:08everything else I mean like they do can go to be a Steven Soderbergh for a second I would do that scene with you know some weekend warrior rafters who are you know coming in to to go rafting or camping or something yeah stumble into a bar there you know they're outsiders yuppies outsiders who pick a fight and then and then and then they're dispensed with and that does serve a narrative
Sonny00:29:30purpose yeah I agree so but I and I would also trim about 10 minutes at the end of the movie um i don't need to see everybody get their happy ending their you know various piles of cash and stuff it just i would have gotten rid of all that but uh but i again i i really liked it everyone i i really think people should go see it people should go see it because it's a smart adult oriented you know uh drama comedy dramedy heist flick and we don't really get a lot of those and we're probably not going to get many more since this made you know seven and a half million dollars this weekend that's right well i i guess uh is gene is gene coming into the studio the question is do you can we get a door creaking open sound effect okay there we go oh that was gene having
Vic00:30:12too much baked beans okay um you asked for it i said we did and you're like a master of impressions mike warren i wonder what other impressions you do um the question is do we prefer you know is bad gene better than no gene is really the question i think there wasn't much for g to worked with on this. Really? There was a lot of... He was not inspired, but here he comes anyway. Oh, Vic, get out of your chair. Logan Lucky is a poor man's Ocean's Eleven. Don't get me wrong. I love Channing Tatum, who has to wrestle with his conscience. And Adam Driver plays his brother, an amputee who carries himself with reserve and dignity. Let's give this guy a hand. I'm joking. He really is an actor of the first order. Daniel Craig plays safecracker Joe Bang, and he gives a breakout performance that will leave you shaken, not stirred. Shifting gears, Logan Lucky doesn't fire on all pistons. The plot was hairy and confusing, much like my mustache. I give Logan Lucky two stars. Take me home to a place where I belong, my living room. And that's the Critics' Corner.
Sonny00:31:35That was good. Bravo, Gene.
Vic00:31:36I mean, Gene, I don't know what you were worried about. I was so distracted by the eclipse the other day. I was thinking about reviewing that. You might as well be staring at the sun. It was so hot, it was like you were walking on the sun. Here comes the sun. All right. Thank you, Gene. Get out of here. Thanks, Gene. well now mike do you like the movie i i did like the movie and welcome back thank you i yeah yeah wow word came in quickly uh and i agree i agree generally it pains me to say i agree generally with sunny on his criticisms of it but um i i did enjoy it and it got me thinking about why i enjoy this and the other steven soderbergh movie that i really love which is oceans 11 which maybe talk about later but um and in general caper movies it's something about a caper that is a caper a caper you know i mean my so you were game for this i was i was game for this and i like what i like to watch it's almost like like watching um say a christopher nolan movie in a way sort of like how the pieces all work together and sort of use movie magic to um make me believe it could work because when you think about the heist in logan there's so many holes in in the plan how could they possibly have timed this all right but i loved i love what i love there's something comforting about seeing all these sort of disparate characters and situations sort of working together in kind of a rube goldberg is sort of in the way a rube goldberg device you sort of i don't know maybe a little weird maybe i'm revealing a little too much it's just like comforting to see it all sort of uh working and going exactly as planned or even you know as they say when when the shit goes down it's still you know they figure out a way uh to uh to make it work that's what i loved about oceans 11 it's what i loved about my favorite muppet movie the uh great muppet caper which is totally underrated everybody talks about the muppet movie and uh what muppets take manhattan but the great muppet caper is a terrific movie and it's a caper and we don't have enough capers not to get off track here because i do want to talk a little bit more about um logan lucky but uh the great muppet caper was not manhattan it wasn't the muppet movie they were in london they were oh yes of course i mean if you really want me to give you a deep synopsis no no we don't want that okay great i was just checking on that um my my thought was i would have cut at least like i thought the the beginning was really slow really you thought the beginning was slow i felt like it picked up later there were parts where i it was so slow i thought i was watching solaris thank you um and uh anyway but but there are oceans 11 elements
Sonny00:34:15i mean they literally make a joke about yeah well there's a meta joke at the end right called it
Vic00:34:19ocean 7-11 right yeah and the uh spoiler alert the uh there was also the two guys who helped them out right joe bang's brothers yes right and that's basically casey affleck and scott conn you know i mean they're the in the in oceans they're the bash brothers right and they're the
Sonny00:34:34And they're the ones who are also like changing costumes and stuff, which is what they do in this movie.
Vic00:34:38And then they do a thing where at the end, then they go back and then they explain how things worked out. I love that. I'll tell you. Go ahead, Sonny.
Sonny00:34:46One thing I do just want to highlight again for praise, Riley Keough, who is very, who is, like I loved every moment she was on screen. And it was little things that she did. Like she really embodies the kind of like Southern. Sassy. Sassy. Like, the simple flick of the wrist that she does at Channing Tatum kind of toward the end of the film, it works perfectly not just because she does it exactly right with her fingers and kind of, like, waving her hand, but also, like, her fingernails are done up in the kind of perfect, like, former beauty queen style. White trash way. yeah i mean it's just like everything about that everything about those moments with her or like when she's when she like kind of walks out into the parking lot and looks at a mustang she's gonna steal it's a mustang right yeah yeah and she and she's just like and it was like i was like yes i could she perfectly embodies this role and she so she her first kind of big role i think was mad max fury road she was one of the furiosos she's one of the minions yeah she was one of the the girls that they they save oh that's right yeah um and uh and she is just i like every time i see her in something i'm like oh she's really who is oh it's riley keogh that she's great so she's a bit of a chameleon too right i mean she's she's an actress that's right she can really act uh the
Vic00:36:05last thing i'll say about logan lucky is um i was struck by it was interesting i had this thought and and i had a feeling that it was the case that the film was filmed in georgia not even though it takes place in west virginia just the the i'm a georgia i'm as a west virginia i'm north carolina i mean that's right that's right um but it had this look of georgia the accents sort of reminded me of kind of northeast georgia they weren't quite west virginian um which is kind of hard to pin down um and and so i was i was struck by that and i was all it did then that was sort of there were little details like the house the both of the houses that um that uh channing tatum's ex-wife katie holmes katie holmes that's right and david edmund live in they sort of of a certain era sort of turn of the 20th turn of the 21st century look to them suburb suburban mcmansion that's that's all rich and then and then and then all the um it just had this um uh this it struck me while watching the movie that i found out of course it was a film there and the last thing i would say is um as you pointed out sunny the characters were all treated with the exception of the seth mcfarlane character uh not even sympathetically sort of suggested there it was just treated them as steven soderbergh often does as just real people as is as is yes i i it was a little creepy that there was kind of a john benet thing going on at the end there with her you know the daughter singing to get all the makeup on me right i just found i found it problematic to look at with all the makeup i thought that was weird you didn't think that sunny don't look at mike that way i didn't think that was weird isn't there a read to be done next is it can we can we just can we just can we move on okay i didn't i'm just gonna say i didn't like it uh i thought it was weird but maybe that's just the way it is with these things sonny you look like you're
Sonny00:37:53looking at me like this is a segment that's gonna be cut no i don't i'm i want i want this i want
Vic00:37:58the fbi to have a record i'm saying it's weird i'm saying it's weird i didn't like it okay i didn't even think of that but okay i thought of little miss sunshine yeah right but that's a play on that which is a play on well i have to go back there now uh you know we're talking about solid
Sonny00:38:15performance our advertisers are really gonna love following this segment it's reminding me to look
Vic00:38:20just why don't we just bleep the name we could just bleep the name okay uh solid performances do you know who i liked in this movie i saw him i said i know that guy where's he's driving me crazy and then mid-movie i realized who it was say it jim o'hare from from uh parks and recreation who's the guy he's good too no he was terrific ready dwight yokum yes dwight yokum yes warden play great and everything playing against type right he's sort of like the the um the guy who's in charge and yeah usually uh i remember him in the panic room he was the cold-blooded killer not forest whitaker it was dwight yokum and also uh he's dwight yokum i believe kills jared leto In the Panic Room. Yes.
Sonny00:38:58And also- It's just Panic Room. It's not The Panic Room. The Panic Room? It's just Facebook. It's not The Panic Room. The Facebook. It's just Panic Room.
Vic00:39:05In the Google. And Sling Blade. That's the first one. That's right. Oh, The Sling Blade. The Sling Blade. I've seen it. And that was one I found most disconcerting. It kept you on edge. Yeah. Dwight Yoakam's great. He is great. And he keeps on going. So you thought this was a good idea for Soderbergh to do this movie?
Sonny00:39:25Yeah, I thought it was a smart choice.
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Sonny00:41:05don't put it that would that's not good i didn't i didn't show you but it is now we're almost at
Vic00:41:11midday so you have to shave again that's right that's right you do too you and daniel helper takes two shapes per suit my picture is right next to it it's coming up from under okay so uh i was thinking about uh where where logan lucky fits into the soderbergh oeuvre and also when did soderbergh become soderbergh you know what i mean he did other things he was a film editor and he still likes to film that he does other things when he was you know rising up through the ranks
Sonny00:41:35what what what did it for him sunny well i mean i don't know how to answer that question is soderbergh is like a he he the thing about him is that he's kind of a polymath and uh you know even even when it comes to things like drinks which we will discuss in a moment uh he has a lot of different uh fingers in a lot of different pots um but i what i like i i actually don't know what makes a soderbergh movie a soderbergh movie like of the of our of the auteurs you know like i'm i'm not entirely sure what it is that makes a Soderbergh flick a Soderbergh flick but I think I think part of it is just his like his his ability to empathize and totally make relatable like kind of vaguely
Vic00:42:19ridiculous people are you ready for this go ahead in the summer of 1990 I saw sex lies and videotape in the movie theater you were probably 1990 I was eight so did you not see it I did not see it in
Sonny00:42:32the theaters it's a great movie i was at nerd summer camp in lawrenceville and uh we just had
Vic00:42:38a day out in princeton and so um just a small handful of us went to see a movie um it was the greatest disappointment of your young life it was weird i do like i i mean i like andy mcdowell but even better was uh i think it's laura san giacomo she's fantastic she still is fantastic and she was
Sonny00:42:54great there's well there's a very funny joke in the simpsons where the kids go to see naked lunch yes and they're walking out of the theaters and they're and and one of them says i can think of two things that are wrong with that title which is i kind of imagine you know well it's also of
Vic00:43:07its time i mean james spader in a camcorder it gets complicated yeah yeah so anyway i but i i
Sonny00:43:12what is interesting about him is that he kind of hops from genre to genre and he does it with total ease and there's just a you know he's i i would say he's i i i would kind of say he's best known for his heist flicks but i don't know that that's true like traffic is is probably his best rewarded movie and he also had Che which is kind of a historical drama that goes over a bunch of years
Vic00:43:36I get confused between Traffic and Crash
Sonny00:43:38well Traffic was good and Crash was bad and Crash won Best Picture that's the difference but my favorite period of Soderbergh for me the moment when you say when Soderbergh became Soderbergh again I don't know exactly what that means but like I really love his stretch from like 2009 to 2011 which is a stretch where you get in order off of IMDB the girlfriend experience which is a low budget kind of indie flick about high class prostitutes which is really I mean just really fantastic and again very empathetic now I'm interested you would actually you would like to see you would like this film except there's no there's not I don't think there's any actual nudity in it sadly but it was it's a great movie about the kind of the nature of the the service industry that we are kind of all crashing into as we go forward and automation replaces so many jobs. Uh, the informant, which is a subversion of really like that. I love the informant is may, may be my favorite Steven Soderbergh movie. And it is, it's this kind of perfect inversion or subversion of the whistleblower movie where you have a guy who, you know, kind of makes himself out to be the hero because he's, you know, ratting on this big corporation. And actually, it turns out he's a lunatic and a psychopath. And everything is going fine, which I actually haven't seen. Contagion, which is a, it's basically like Outbreak, but if Outbreak was like real and kind of cued to science and stuff.
Vic00:45:11Having watched Contagion, do you touch your face a lot less now?
Sonny00:45:15No, but I do think about it. I actually, I mean, I do think, it was very funny. So I saw Contagion, I saw, I watched Contagion at home on On Demand with my wife. And we the next day she had to go to something like a she had to go out of town for something. So I was at home and after we had watched it, I had like started feeling kind of sick, you know, and I thought, oh, this is just, you know, psychosomatic. I just saw this movie about this deadly flu. And actually it turned out I had viral pneumonia. And so like so over the course of like 24 hours, I went from feeling like kind of sick, but like not thinking too much of it to having like one hundred and three degree fever while my wife was out of town. And I'm, like, trying to take my dog outside. And I lived in the city at the time, so I'm, like, walking my dog on the streets of 14th Street Northwest and, like, leaning against my apartment building so I don't just fall over. Coughing at the patient zero in Chinatown. I could not breathe. I just, like, I almost passed out on the streets. It would have been bad. I mean, it would have been bad. So, anyway.
Vic00:46:13There would have been some poeticness to that.
Sonny00:46:15And then, I'm sorry, one more movie in 2011, Haywire, which is his kind of fight movie. It's like a martial arts movie with Gina Carano, who plays a secret agent. I haven't seen it. You're shaking your head. I haven't seen it. Four of these movies are great, and I am often annoyed by how many people simply have never heard of them. Like, Haywire is a great movie. I think it may not be on Netflix anymore, but everyone should see them. And my point here is that he is hopping from genre to genre. He is doing different things with different actors, and all of it works perfectly. It's just great. How about you, Mike?
Vic00:46:56Well, first I was going to say Contagion. That was filmed at the CDC, I think, in part. I think my wife was working there at the time. It was kind of a weird thing to be there filming a movie about an outbreak while you're working at the CDC. uh so i am i'm not a movie guy as much as uh as your music i'm more of a music in tv um so i've only seen um a couple of steven soderbergh movies um i mentioned oceans 11 which i think i i like saw that movie when i was when i was like a young teenager what sort of sort of like hit me at that at that time where i sort of like got interested in sort of like you know grown-up movies and that sort of thing and um i just thought the whole structure of it it was sort of elegant and had this coolness to it i really liked it i don't know if it stands up now it does it really does oh it stands up better than the original oceans 11 with frank yeah like all like them soused um but um yeah i i so i love that movie i just love the pacing of the structure of it and again back to my obsession with with heists and capers it just has this kind of internal fun internal logic to it that i love um i've also seen so when i heard we were going to be talking about steven soderbergh i said i'm gonna uh pull up the netflix machine and see what steven soderbergh movies are streaming oh on netflix and there are two yeah there is chay which i had no
Sonny00:48:24the four hour cut yeah it's like it's like chay part one and part two yeah exactly i had no
Vic00:48:28interest or time in in watching and magic mike uh which i proceeded to watch um on my computer it was it made me at work yeah maybe a little uncomfortable um i wasn't quite sure what i was i wanted to but it was actually a very good movie it's great i thought you were curious about it that's true say so i uh i'm moving on from that uh no but it goes to what we were talking about earlier with steven soderbergh movies which is he takes people who are normal and who have and you know maybe even a little uh on the on the on the aspirational uh side of of life and tells their stories in a way that is realistic i mean so so magic mike for instance what struck me besides all the great acting you know matthew mcconaughey the matthew mcconaughey this was
Sonny00:49:17the mcconaughey this was this was this was not quite ground zero of the mcconaughey but it was probably probably yeah probably lincoln the lincoln lawyer was ground zero of the mcconaughey
Vic00:49:28croissants well and then mud and then mud my mud came before okay uh i think mud came before i'm i'm i might be getting anyway sorry sorry i may be getting a correction sunny um the impossible uh yeah the moment where matthew mcgonaghy says uh i'd say la la break is here i was just like perfect it's perfect it's like exactly what uh uh it's exactly what was needed for that movie um but i was thinking about i always like to think about how could a good movie have been bad and And I look at that and think sort of opportunity cost. This is how you know a great movie is great or a good movie is good because of what they could have done. And in that movie, right, the thing that moves the plot forward is that Matthew McConaughey is trying to move everybody up to the next level. They're in Tampa and they're trying to move. And in a bad movie, a non-Steven Soderbergh version of this movie would have them going to Vegas, you know. We're going to compete with Chippendales and that's going to be the... I think that may actually be what happens in the sequel. Is that what happens? I have not seen XXL.
Sonny00:50:30I actually haven't seen it, but which is... I haven't either. Which is supposedly not as good. Yeah, well, maybe... I mean, there is like a... I believe there is like a competition aspect to it. Right. It would be like they would move to...
Vic00:50:43It would be competing with Chip and Dale's and they'd have the big male stripping competition of the world. And this movie, instead, just... They just want to move to the bigger market, to Miami. And there was like a realness to it. And I just appreciated that. And then I would add Logan Luckey as my number three on that list for the reasons we mentioned. Magic Mike, directed by Jay Roach or something. I don't know.
Sonny00:51:06Was that too mean on Jay Roach?
Vic00:51:07Okay.
Sonny00:51:09What did Jay Roach run over your dog or something? I don't know.
Vic00:51:11I was just trying to think of that kind of ilk. You're right, Sonny, about jumping from genre to genre. Here's something that my wife and I saw on HBO once, Behind the Candelabra.
Sonny00:51:22Oh, yeah. Wow.
Vic00:51:24Yeah. That was something. It was a little too gay for you. No, it was a terrific cast.
Sonny00:51:29It was fascinating. It really is totally fascinating. I figured you would actually be really into it because you were kind of into camp. Yeah, absolutely.
Vic00:51:37I'm a big fan of this. I knew about Liberace and Scott Thorson and this whole thing. And he was, of course, a very talented pianist. But the idea, and Soderbergh distills this, idea that Liberace wanted his lover to be his personal personal assistant chauffeur and then
Sonny00:51:58adopt him as his son yeah it's just messed up um yeah you know I thought it was weird when you brought me the adoption papers frankly to be my son I was like I was I I mean look I'm happy to drive your car and do your do your laundry but that was just that was weird that was too far
Vic00:52:14Sonny you need to relax um and also you know and Rob Lowe was the the plastic surgeon and the fixation of a classic surgery it was really really something and uh and of course remember who played um uh liberace's mother debbie reynolds may she rest in peace we mentioned oceans 11 which we all like and um i loved out of sight i really really i mean he had he already had excellent source material obviously because it's elmore leonard but it was so well done i thought it was a terrific
Sonny00:52:44casted you just saw it yesterday i watched sunny yesterday last week i watched her earlier in the week i watched i watched it on monday we're recording this on tuesday in case you can't tell everyone uh pay no attention to the man behind the curtain i uh i watched i did i watched it on monday and uh i will be honest i hadn't seen it since it was out in theaters and i there are things about it that i really liked um it is it is very much an elmore leonard movie and not really a heist movie it's not really a heist movie because it's like the heist is not the central idea of the film it's not like the big concluding moment uh and that i had i guess kind of misremembered it i don't know but it is it is also kind of a it is one of these great george clooney movies where he's actually like he's not mugging for the camera no no and he is he is just kind of exuding that natural movie star charisma that he has and you see that also in the oceans movies and you don't see it anytime he's working with the coen brothers george clooney coen brother performances are like i would say on my top five things that i hate in the world the most it's bad george clooney in a coen brothers movie he just mugs and he's like except for intolerable cruelty right i mean clearly you're leaving that out there's that if but but even like i i can i just cannot watch uh uh oh brother where oh brother where are thou i i i that movie drives me up the wall and the only one the only one of his the only one of their movies that i like that he's in and plays a significant part is hail caesar yeah and he's barely in that movie and it like and it actually kind of works as like the airless they're like the clueless airheaded kind of playing himself yeah like the clueless airheaded you know uh uh movie star who thinks he knows something
Vic00:54:29about communism and ideology something that we don't often see is uh characters repeating themselves in different movies even though they're connected so with like elmore lettered's novel Jackie Brown and then he does of course Out of Sight so I enjoyed seeing Michael Keaton yeah it was funny he had gone from DEA to FBI and he wears the FBI t-shirt and Dennis Farina says do you have another t-shirt that says undercover and Michael Keaton just says no the LCU the Leonard Cinematic Universe there you go very good Mike and I would say also the most terrifying Don Cheadle character I don't think I've seen Don Cheadle more just terrifying He's a scary guy, Snoopy. Okay. Corrections and additions. Sonny, you probably have. Mike, do you have any corrections from last week? No, none. I was perfect last week. I have two thoughts here. Last week we talked, we had follow-up thoughts on the closing of the Chinese restaurant in our building at the Free Beacon. I said it was Hunan Garden, but it's China Garden. China Garden, yeah. Now, Sonny, you tweeted a picture of it. What happened when you took the picture?
Sonny00:55:35Well, the security guards at the mall level of 1000 Wilson Boulevard said, no pictures. And I said, oh, okay. And then I tweeted it immediately. You're not the boss of me. How could they tell you not to take a picture of a building? What a rebel.
Vic00:55:47It's very disturbing, isn't it? I don't know what's happening in this country. We also, you know, Jerry Lewis died and people were wondering that we did in fact talk about Jerry Lewis in an early, early episode. We were having a discussion of Spielberg and Schindler's List and Holocaust movies. That was a real feel-good episode. Remember that one, Mike? Yes, yes. That was one of my favorites that I participated in. You were great in that. Okay, and it was weird because I actually did talk about Jerry Lewis that morning before I heard that he had died with my wife and kids. I was looking at that video. Angel of Death. Yeah, it was the video of Martin Lewis and a young Christopher Walken. Sorry. Poor Christopher Walken. But your Angel of Death status, I mean, Jerry Lewis was old, right? I don't know if this counts. sorry anyway away from that let's go on move on to spirit of the week and boy do we have a special
Sonny00:56:39spirit today son of the week well we're running out of time so i'm going to be quick here we are drinking uh singani 63 uh old fashions so singani 63 of course we've drunk we've actually had this before on the show and we had it straight which was a mistake it's a it's a bolivian brandy And, frankly, drinking it just on its own is not a good idea. I did not like it that time. Thanks, Mike. But what I did was followed one of the recipes on the website. So Singani 63, again, is kind of owned and promoted by Steven Soderbergh. I actually don't know if he owns it, but he's very into selling and promoting it. Oh, this is the tie-in, of course. They have a recipe for an old-fashioned, which uses, I can't remember, it's Turbino syrup or Demerara syrup. It's like Turbinado? Yeah, Turbinado. So it's basically raw sugar, not the processed white sugar. It's like raw kind of brown crystal sugar. And I made my own syrup, which if you- It's delicious. And if you have any interest in making cocktails, you should really make your own syrup. It takes literally five minutes to do. It's very easy and it saves you a ton of money and it will keep for six months. You're like you you'll go through it in no time flat.
Vic00:58:01This this cocktail and subsequent discussion is why Trump won.
Sonny00:58:04But but the anyway, so the the the old fashioned is two ounces of Singani plus two two teaspoons of the turbinado sugar syrup and three dashes of bitters. Now, I made doubles because we had an hour here to fill, and two ounces is not going to get us through that. But it's actually really good. I mean, I am an old-fashioned connoisseur. Yeah, I love old-fashioned.
Vic00:58:37This was delicious.
Sonny00:58:38I don't drink them at restaurants usually because a lot of the times you get a lot of fruit muddled into the drink. Too sweet. But what you do here is you just cut off a little bit of orange rind and a little bit of lemon rind, and you twist it to get the oils.
Vic00:58:51The essence. You've got to get the oils into the drink.
Sonny00:58:54It really works. I highly recommend it. If you can find a bottle of Singani 63, you should follow the instructions on the Singani 63 website and make an Old Fashioned. You'll love it.
Vic00:59:05How good is Sonny Bunch's Old Fashions? I'm on medication right now and shouldn't have alcohol, and I've been drinking this all day. It's delicious.
Sonny00:59:11I didn't realize that I was going to kill you.
Vic00:59:13It's nice knowing you guys. That's all the time we are giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Mattis, at Sonny Bunch. At Michael R. Warren. Again, be sure to subscribe to us. Please follow me on Twitter. I beg of you. He loves the DMs. He loves it. I love it. I love it. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play, Stitcher. Just type in SomeStandard on a podcast and we're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time. so you know it was weird um i was channel surfing the other day can i just say that was a great show i'm just so i'm just so proud our show is with you i've always been you're just you're
Sonny01:00:07really the glue that holds this whole thing together i've always thought that but well you
Vic01:00:11know i was just gonna say um i i forgot to mention i was just channel surfing the other day and i was on TV Land or wherever, and they were showing Bewitched, you know, with Elizabeth Montgomery as the housewife witch. But it was one of the later seasons, and I had forgotten that they replaced Darren, the husband. It used to be Dick York, and then one day, it was the actor Dick Sargent, and it was so weird, because there was like no explanation, they just acted like... It was just unannounced? Unannounced, like everything was normal, and they had replaced him. Isn't that weird? I'm sure it was fine.

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