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#105. The Substandard on Annihilation, Natalie Portman, and Oscar Predictions
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Dudes Chatting — Joss Whedon and Lenten failures: The episode opens on the news that Joss Whedon has exited Batgirl amid Me Too allegations and the Justice League backlash. Vic confesses his Lenten discipline collapsed over the weekend, and he experienced severe motion sickness playing Call of Duty.
Dudes Chatting — Natalie Portman career trajectory: A wide-ranging debate about Portman's filmography. JVL makes the provocative argument that she is "patient zero in the modern Lolita epidemic" in Hollywood, tracing a line from her debut in Léon: The Professional through Beautiful Girls to her being consistently cast in sexualized roles as a minor — and that this shaped cultural expectations in a damaging way. Sonny defends her artistic credibility, particularly her work in Black Swan, and argues her career arc is more complicated than JVL allows. The conversation also touches on George Lucas as a career-destroyer, citing Star Wars prequel performances.
Dudes Chatting — Oscar predictions: With the ceremony days away, the guys go on record: The Shape of Water for Best Picture and Best Director (Guillermo del Toro), Gary Oldman for Best Actor, Frances McDormand for Best Actress, and Roger Deakins for Best Cinematography — a long-overdue win they all agree on.
Box Office: Black Panther remains at #1 (still at a remarkable hold); Annihilation opens at #4 with $11 million, which the guys note is low for a Natalie Portman sci-fi release.
Reviews: Gene (Vic) reviews Annihilation with an extended series of puns on the word "bush," awarding it zero stars. Sonny reviews Annihilation positively as a semi-cerebral sci-fi/body-horror hybrid from Alex Garland — visually inventive, genuinely unsettling, not for everyone, and its CinemaScore C reflects audience bewilderment rather than failure. He recommends it for viewers who want something strange.
Spirit of the Week: not formally named this episode. Corrections segment absent.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hey, Bill Kristol here. I'm joining the podcast today. I have some thoughts on Black Panther. What is Black Panther? And leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what's going on?
JVL00:00:35Great. Great. There's a... Do elaborate. As Catwoman says, The Dark Knight Rises, there's a storm coming.
Vic00:00:45Catgirl, not to be confused with Batgirl, which will never happen.
JVL00:00:48Batgirl, which will never happen because of patriarchy.
Sonny00:00:50Oh, Batgirl will happen. It just won't happen with Joss Whedon. This was... You don't think this is partly a casualty of the Justice League flop? I think... That they're winching back all... All properties. No, no, I'm not... Under the guise of... I think there are two different things going on here. I think one was that Justice League was a giant flop, and that Joss Whedon did not escape from that unscathed. So that's part of it. But I also think that he... The idea of a white male director directing Batgirl in this environment, especially one who was accused of relatively terrible things by his ex-wife recently... Why are those... Excuse me, one moment.
JVL00:01:26Yeah. The things that Joss Whedon has been accused of, why do they need to be accused of? Why did he not fall under the domain of Me Too? Because it's... If his ex-wife's allegations are to be believed, the allegations are that he was messing around with a bunch of much younger actors who worked for him.
Sonny00:01:45Yeah. That's Me Too, right? I would say that he would be in more trouble if the actresses themselves had leveled the complaints.
JVL00:01:55So if one of those women pops off on Twitter tomorrow, if... All of a sudden... And Joss Whedon is from, like, eh, kind of creepy to, eh, Me Too.
Sonny00:02:03If, say, Eliza Dee... I'm sorry, that's too obvious. If E. Dushku was to come out and say, you know, this is something... No, I mean, I'm joking here. I have no idea if that's actually true. But if, like, a name actress was to come out and say, here are things Joss Whedon did to me, and I felt very uncomfortable at the time, but I went with it because I wanted... I wanted a job in Hollywood, et cetera, et cetera. And again, I'm just... I'm very much joking about Eliza Dushku. I don't actually... I'm just using her name because she was... And she suffered enough. And she is... Well, she, like, actually did, like, had something horrible happen to her. Exactly, exactly. She was... She spoke out against the True Lies stunt coordinator. It was, like, a really big story, et cetera. But, like, if that were to happen, then I think that... I think he would be in a lot of trouble and would not get to work for a while. He'd be in movie jail. He'd be in movie jail. Yeah.
JVL00:02:59He would... I think the Batgirl is going to happen. See, I assume that this is part... There are a bunch of different readings of this. The mere minor deep state reading of the cancellation of Batgirl was, this is Disney backing away from all sorts of ancillary properties because they just got their... I'm sorry, Warner Brothers, because they just got their clock cleaned on Justice League. The super duper MAGA deep state view of this is that this was all planned the whole way along. Actually, Zack Snyder had been fired from the project months before, and that the mere suicide of his daughter became just a pretext to go public with the fact that he'd been fired, and that part of the agreement with Whedon the whole time was that he would only do, finish this one thing, and then he would back off from Batgirl. So, I would say the layers of conspiracy theory working on this are...
Sonny00:03:53It's like an onion. I mean, I think... Well, look, I think it is... Again, we may have discussed this previously. I can't remember. But I think it was always pretty clear when Whedon came aboard in the first place that Zack Snyder had been removed from Justice League and would not work on a DC film property again.
JVL00:04:14Well, that's what Marvel fanboys like you would always say. Exactly, yeah.
Sonny00:04:17Somebody like me who loves the Marvel movies and hates Zack Snyder. Who just can't get enough and is always beating up on Zack Snyder. I'm really unfair to... I'm probably the most unfair person to Zack Snyder.
JVL00:04:25What I'm talking about here is there was somebody who attacked Sonny on Twitter for being a Marvel fanboy who hates Zack Snyder.
Sonny00:04:29Which is amazing, given the last Washington Post piece that I wrote, which was explicitly a restatement of the values and virtues of the Zack Snyder era at DC. But I think that was always pretty obvious from the get-go. I don't think... I actually don't believe this idea that Joss Whedon was never going to direct a Batgirl movie. I think that what happened was somebody realized how tone-deaf this was at our current moment when all property was gone. All the movies about women need to be directed by women and all. We can discuss the Annihilation whitewashing controversy later in the show, but there's a similar thing going on there. I think it was going to happen. I think it's not going to happen now. And I think that Joss Whedon's excuse that he couldn't write a script for Batgirl is nonsense. That he had no... I mean, that is transparent BS. Total nonsense. But I think he got fired, too. I think he got fired from Batgirl. I think DC and Warner Brothers... We're like, sorry, we've decided that we can't... We're not looking forward to another six months of angry tweets and whatnot.
JVL00:05:37And I gotta say, makes me a little sad, because I would have paid happy money to go see Joss Whedon Batgirl.
Sonny00:05:43Well, he really saved Justice League. So Lord knows he has a good sense on these characters and this universe.
JVL00:05:48No, I think he should be doing smaller movies. I would like to see him doing a $40 million movie.
Sonny00:05:52The Lena Dunham Batgirl will be amazing. Oh, the Lena Dunham... Directing and starring. Directing and starring. Directing and starring. Well, obviously directing and starring. I mean, why would you... Why would you bring Lena Dunham aboard? No, it would be Greta Gerwig directing and starring. If you can't... No, Greta Gerwig... No, no, no. No? Why not? No. Greta Gerwig needs to do, like, a Black Canary or something. I want... I want... Why? Batgirl needs to... Why?
JVL00:06:12Why is she doing Black Canary? Isn't it time we right-ethnicized the Black Canary?
Sonny00:06:16Why is the Black Canary a blonde woman? I don't know. I actually just picked Black Canary, because it's literally the only other female DC Super Nero that I know.
Vic00:06:25No, Wonder Girl. Black Canary was yellow.
Sonny00:06:26Super Girl. Greta Gerwig's Super Girl. She'll be, like, dancing at her prom in her Super Girl outfit. She'll, like, twirl.
Vic00:06:32And then you could have a cameo with Debra Winger.
Sonny00:06:34I actually like Lady Bird. Spider Girl.
Vic00:06:36Spider Girl.
JVL00:06:37Spider Girl. Wasn't Debra Winger Spider Girl? No, she was with Wonder Woman. Oh, Wonder Girl. Yes. Yes.
Sonny00:06:42Wonder Girl. I'm sorry. God, we've really gone off the rails already. That would have been a great micro, by the way.
Vic00:06:46That would have been a great micro. Weekends. We're still doing weekends. We're doing weekends. That's right. Sonny, how was your weekend?
Sonny00:06:54My weekend was great. I spent most of it editing and writing and reading and watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarves with my daughter.
Vic00:07:06What did she think? Two Dimensions sucks, that's what she said.
JVL00:07:11No, she's two and a half, so she doesn't actually have any idea what's going on in the movie.
Sonny00:07:15And she just said, the mirror was scary. Yes. That mirror is scary. The mirror is scary. And she liked it when a turtle fell down the stairs. I mean, what are you going to do? My takeaway from it, though, was... The Seven Dwarves, their mineral holdings are so impressive that the fact that they're living in squalor in one house on the outskirts of the kingdom strikes me as some sort of horrible prejudice. There's something weird going on there. Capitalism could fix that. That the movie never gets into. Well, here's a question, though. Is the problem that there are just so many diamonds in that mine? I mean, they're practically falling out of the ceiling. They're just everywhere. That the supply and demand curve is all messed up? That there's too much supply?
Vic00:07:57Nobody wants diamonds.
Sonny00:07:58Not enough demand?
Vic00:07:59No, no, no.
JVL00:07:59Well, without a robust middle class. They need more zirconium. Without a robust middle class to be able to afford diamonds? The truth is, your potential pool of consumers is limited to the nobility. That's a good point. And that clearly is the problem here.
Sonny00:08:11So we need to raise middle class living standards so they can afford to buy the diamonds from the dwarves. And then they'll be able to pay for a maid to come instead of just kidnapping some attractive young woman and stashing her in the house and saying, do all our chores.
Vic00:08:25Do you remember Disney World? Disneyland? Had a Snow White ride. Do you remember this? Did you ever go on it? I did, because I was there, but that was when I was seven or eight. And that was like the first ride we did when we arrived at Disney World. And it is a scary ride.
JVL00:08:44Scarier than Mr. Toad?
Vic00:08:45Yes. Because Mr. Toad was terrifying? Yes, because Mr. Toad has the thing about I'm going to be hit by a train. That's true. And then you go to hell. Yes. Thank you for reminding me. I forgot about that part. But Snow White has the witch and the queen. And it was very scary. And things are not secure in those rides. There's a bar, and then you're sliding around in this thing. And the ride goes inside, and it's complete darkness. And then you see the queen. You think it's the queen. It turns around. It's actually the witch. And I cried at that. That was like the first ride. And I was so upset. After some poltergeist? Well, I was like second grade.
JVL00:09:19The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Vic00:09:21I was first grade. I was like first grade. And so that was a little intense for me, because it was like up close. And that was my memory of the stuff, which no longer exists, the Snow White Rides. Yeah, they've taken out all of those old school rides. Mr. Toad is gone, too. Mr. Toad is gone, as well. I heard there's a Mr. Toad headstone at the Haunted Mansion. Really? That's what I heard. God, that's wild.
JVL00:09:40I hope the Haunted Mansion never goes away. I love that thing.
Vic00:09:42That is, I think, the best of all the rides at Disney World. It's amazing. The Haunted Mansion. You know what's the scary part? This is totally wheels off that we're talking about this. When we went several years ago with the kids, in the Haunted Mansion ride, it's all hokey. It's silly, except for one. One thing, which is, you finally get to the attic, and there is a ghost bride.
JVL00:10:03Oh, I remember the ghost bride.
Vic00:10:04And that is freaky. Ghost bride, and you see her glowing in blue, and she says, like, you know, here comes the bride, all dressed in white, and she's holding a hatchet, and you see the images and the pictures of her, like, dead husbands, and she says, till death do us part, and giggles. That is frightening. That's frightening. Did you cry at that, too? No. I was older. Michael was like, Dad, stop embarrassing me. Oh, I spilled some water on my pants. God. Okay. No, okay, so there was that. Well, that was lovely, so I'm glad. I don't think I've ever actually seen it from beginning to end. I don't remember seeing the whole cartoon.
Sonny00:10:38Seeing the whole cartoon.
Vic00:10:39Snow White from beginning to end. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember, because I think we've all seen it when we were kids, like your daughter. I had a rough weekend in terms of the impact on my gluttony. Oh, no. Only because-
JVL00:10:51Well, you had Sunday to be gluttonous.
Vic00:10:52So, we don't count Sunday, but, you know, I had- So, it was a really rough weekend. I had a liquidy lunch on Friday, and then- What does that mean? I was at a lunch, and there was some drinking going on. So, you know, I mean, and then I had fried shrimp, you know, and that- No, it was not really carbs, except for apparently the breading might be- That counts for the breading. And it comes with fries. And get this, though. I said, this is actually seafood, and I said, can I substitute a salad for the fries? And he goes, oh, sure, sure. There's just a slight upcharge. I said, upcharge? I'm not going to pay for the upcharge. So, just give me the fries.
JVL00:11:28And you ate the fries.
Vic00:11:29Not all of them. Not all of them. And then, on Saturday night- This would be less funny and more tragic if you weren't already in very good shape. You're very kind. I can barely breathe. I have sort of an external- It's hard to describe. All your problems are internal. It's like, yeah, but it's- I have like a lap band. I mean, it's the liver. It's a lap band surgery. The liver is what's scary. Oh, the liver. Yeah, well, the liver- The liver is what worries me. It took a toll. And I have such a penchant for martinis, real martinis, gin martinis these days. I just really love them. Was this before? Or after you went to work at your job? Hard to tell. And then on Saturday, a dinner party was very nice. And then on Sunday, also- Was it in Georgetown? No, no. We just went to the McCormick's. The McCormick's. Oh. And then on Sunday, neighbors wanted to have us over, and they'd been trying to schedule us for months, so we finally go over there. And he's like, listen, I got some scotches you need to taste, and I don't want to be rude. So, I had the scotches. There's no carbs in that, right? No, I don't think so. No, no. And then here we are today, whatever today is, Thursday. So, just a lot is going on. My doctor's appointment is at March 6th. I need to lose 15 pounds. No. Any advice? Sonny Bunch?
Sonny00:12:41Have you tried vomiting? JVL.
JVL00:12:48They want you to lose 15 pounds?
Vic00:12:50I know what she wants me to weigh. I don't see you care.
JVL00:12:54You don't look like you're carrying 15 pounds.
Vic00:12:56I am like 181.
JVL00:12:59That does surprise me.
Vic00:13:00That's mostly in my head.
JVL00:13:01Yeah, but you can't lose head weight. That's just there. That's all cranial capacity.
Vic00:13:06You know, as Rodney Dayfield said it back to school, you wear large clothes, so it makes you look smaller. But do you have any advice?
JVL00:13:14I have no advice for you. Skinless chicken, low weight, high reps. Right? Thank you.
Vic00:13:20And I'm going to go around wearing a garbage bag. That might help as well. You're cutting weight for wrestling in high school. Really quickly, I'd like to also provide an Xbox update, which is everything is installed correctly. I was wrong. I didn't know what I was talking about. It is, in fact, HDMI 2, it says on the screen, the whole thing. So it's fine. Do you have anything attached by component cables? Do you have anything attached by HDMI? That's my answer to you.
Sonny00:13:50HDMI. His eyes were just vibrating like he was a robot in an AI movie. Like you give him a logic loop, and he's trying to figure out his way out of it.
Vic00:14:00Could God make a sandwich so big that even God couldn't eat it? Right. It was like that. So I tried playing. I started playing Call of Duty, Modern Warfare. What's crazy about these games is there's no- Are you doing it online so you can make friends? No. I'm doing it alone, and there's no instructions. That makes it much less sad. Yes. So there's no instructions in these games. You just go at it. It's like, how do I use it? Where are the controls? So what happens is- Instructions are online.
JVL00:14:28Wait, wait. In the game. Give me the thing. I couldn't find it. So what you're saying is- They're selling you this $70 game, and they want to save the 15 cents. 23.
Vic00:14:36It was 23 bucks, the game.
JVL00:14:37But I'll tell you-
Vic00:14:38Yes, Sonny.
Sonny00:14:38So what you're saying is you needed, like with the Super Mario Brothers, the B button is for jump. The A button is for run fast.
Vic00:14:44I need the arrow to tell me for what these things are for.
Sonny00:14:46Right. Okay.
Vic00:14:46But I learned the hard way. You know what turned into the Call of Duty? It turned into Edge of Tomorrow, where I just kept on repeating the same scenes over and over until I got it right. Oh, this is, and that's the-
Sonny00:14:56Well, Edge of Tomorrow is a video game movie. Yes. Edge of Tomorrow is like the best video game movie that has ever been made, even though it wasn't really based on a video game. I was going to ask.
Vic00:15:05So it's not, but it's so very obvious because it's the same thing, and you're just like, oh, that's what I have to do this time. And then something else happens, and you work on it, work on it. So I now have- How many hours? Achievement locked one. I didn't count the hours. There's a lot of Kevin Spacey, and I'll do my own self-correction, which is I said president. Okay. He plays a dad who happens to preside over a very powerful defense company, and he has a bone to pick. And I have a feeling what he's going to do is have us go up against the president or something very, something is off about it.
JVL00:15:38So, you know.
Vic00:15:39Give me a ballpark in number of hours that you spent on this. Maybe- More than two? Maybe two and a half, three, maybe. Counting the whole weekend, right? Counting the whole weekend. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why, Jason. Taking care of your children while you were playing Call of Duty. Sonny was- Sonny. Michael was watching and asking if he could play. I said no. So, I said no, because you can't just jump on and go back. I don't want to lose. I don't want to, you know, because I don't want to save it. I don't want to have to repeat. Father of the year. Thank you. But I'll tell you why I don't play as much as I thought I'd play, because those kind of games, playing on like a big screen, actually made me feel queasy. Like I felt like-
JVL00:16:13Because you're so old. I know. I felt like carsick. I felt carsick.
Sonny00:16:17This whole anecdote is just translation.
JVL00:16:19I'm old and scared.
Sonny00:16:21I'm scared. There are wolves after me. I will say, I will- I will say that I'm kind of with Vic on the motion sickness thing insofar as anytime I pick up a first person shooter after not having played one for a while, which is like, I basically go six to 12 months between games at this point. But like when I start playing for the first hour or so, I feel like a little nauseous because until I like have mastered like how the head looks and you know-
Vic00:16:46It'll tell you, press LR. What is LR? I don't know what that is. You know, I'm holding this thing around. It took me forever to figure out what that thing was. It's like, press LR. I don't know. So I kept on repeating and dying over and over. What I much prefer, I still much prefer Civilization where I can sort of truly crush the competition. Speaking of crushing the competition, over the weekend, Black Panther took in $108 million at the box office, followed in a far distance away by Game Night with $16.6 million. Then Peter Rabbit at $12.5 million. And in fourth place, Annihilation with $11 million. Before we get into Annihilation. What is Game Night?
Sonny00:17:26Game Night is a movie starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams about a couple who has, they have game nights. They go to like friends' houses and they have, they play board games or whatever. Do they have children? Yes, I believe they do. I haven't actually seen it, so I'm just telling you what I've seen from the ads. And they, one night they try to do, they go to their, to Jason Bateman's brother's house and he's doing like a real life. Like extreme game, like a murder mystery type game. But then it turns out there's an actual kidnapping or something. I don't know. The point is it's like.
Vic00:18:02That's a pretty good synopsis for something that you actually haven't seen.
Sonny00:18:05I've seen the ads a bunch of times. Well, I've seen, I keep seeing the trailer for this movie. It's playing in front of like every movie I've seen. Okay. Anyway, but that is, and so they have to figure out whether, what's real, what's fake.
Vic00:18:15And you know, it sounds insane. Annihilation. I know Sonny, you saw it because you reviewed it at thefreebeacon.com.
JVL00:18:22Oh, I didn't read that.
Vic00:18:24JVL, did you see Annihilation? I did not. I actually got up and went to a 9.45 a.m. showing of Annihilation on Sunday. Did anybody else see it? I thought that Gene didn't see it. And I'm going to give you a pause here. So when, after the review, you can always delete the review. Okay, yeah, Gene saw it.
?00:18:49Yes!
Sonny00:18:51Yes!
JVL00:18:51But again, this is all I have to live for anymore. If it doesn't work out. My whole weekend I spend thinking. I think he's going away. Gene's getting tired. I understand Gene's getting tired. Yeah, he's getting tired. Johnny Ivey cannot pick up all the slack of Gene. We're not going to do Johnny Ivey movie reviews. I love Johnny Ivey.
Vic00:19:03He was brilliant. Okay, I think Gene's coming in. Annihilation stars Natalie Portman as an ex-Army medical professional who leads a team of women into the bush because there's something wrong in the bush. Something smells fishy. It doesn't look right. It's growing out of control. There are all sorts of creatures living in it. It drove her husband, played by Oscar Isaac, crazy. He spent a whole year inside the bush. Talk about a most violent year. This movie has some truly stomach-turning scenes. Literally. But I thought this movie was a mess. Who are the aliens? Why are they here? I haven't been this confused about a movie editing since Time Bandits. So let me stop beating around the bush. This movie stunk. I gave it zero stars. Goodbye.
?00:20:01Wow.
JVL00:20:02Gene doesn't pull out the zero stars very often. He must have been really cheesed off about that thing.
Vic00:20:09Knotson's hostile.
JVL00:20:10Yes, exactly.
Vic00:20:11Was he this upset about a movie? I don't think he saw the point. Sonny, how about a big boy review?
Sonny00:20:21Annihilation is a movie that will be confusing and frustrating to the dumber people among us. Don't talk about Gene like that. They'll watch it and they won't. No, so it is what I would call semi-cerebral sci-fi. It is the sort of movie that doesn't really care about plot so much, and it doesn't really care about resolving the questions that it raises. It is a movie that is very interested in visuals and kind of ideas. It stars Natalie. Natalie Portman as a biologist who joins a team of female scientists going into a mysterious Area X. This Area X is covered by a kind of, it's called the Shimmer. The Shimmer. It's basically a permeable wall that you can walk through and it takes you to an area that has been transformed by something. We don't know what. The first shot of the movie is a flash of light or a meteor or something crashing into a lighthouse. And it is from there, that the Shimmer has grown. And every day it expands a little bit further. The theory is if it keeps growing, it will eventually encompass the whole world. They have to go in there to discover what the Shimmer is hiding and what has occurred. This is not the first expedition. Previous expeditions have included Oscar Isaac, who plays Natalie Portman's husband. And he's a special forces operative. But they were all men. But they were all men. A group of men they went in. And they went a little bit crazy. But they also endured some transformations. And this is like the secret of Area X, that it changes you. It changes you from the inside out. It makes you monstrous or turns you into something else. Look, it's a strange movie. It is a weird movie. It is one that is very, very much more interested in visuals and... And the sound design. The soundtrack is very good. But it is not the sort of movie that offers you easy answers or, you know, kind of...
JVL00:22:36Resolution. It doesn't offer resolution, really. And neither did your review. Yeah, I would say I was... Just having read it just now, I was stunned by you don't often beat around the bush, so to speak, in a review as often as you did this. You seemed almost... I'm befuddled by it. I'm disinserted by it.
Sonny00:22:54I'm a little bit... I'm off-put by it. I would say that I liked the film insofar as it is a really interesting kind of mishmash of tropes, of, like, kind of sci-fi, what are we, why are we here? But also, like, body horror. Like, straight-up body transformation horror. And I... It's definitely a movie that's not for everyone. It is extremely violent in certain places. It is kind of, you know... It is languidly paced, I would say, even though it's relatively short at an hour and 55 minutes. I don't know. I liked it, but I don't blame... I'm not surprised that CinemaScore audiences gave it a C and that it is going to die at the box office.
Vic00:23:51I am going to do a... Murphy-style non-transition and just say, thank you, Sonny, for that review. We're going to talk more about the movie and Natalie Portman and the Oscars in just a moment, but first, a word from our sponsor. Everyone wants to look as great as their date at a wedding or special event. Trouble is, there's no way you want to spend the amount of time or money she did shopping for her outfit. TheBlackTux.com is your answer with high-quality rental suits and tuxedos delivered to your doorstep. The Black Tux is the easy way for guys to rent suits and tuxedos online. The Black Tux lets you create your look or choose from tons of stylist-selected outfits. Suits usually retail for $1,200, but at The Black Tux, they start at just $95. Expert customer care has your back every step of the way, completely done online. With The Black Tux free home try-on, you can see the fit and feel the quality of your suit months before your event. After ordering, your suit will arrive 14 days before your event. If anything is less than perfect, The Black Tux will send you a free replacement right away. When your event is over, just drop your rental box in the mail. Shipping is free both ways. I did this, and it was a piece of cake. I tried out the Wrigley Gray Merino Wool suit, and of course it came with free socks, and I still wear those socks. I've actually, well, they were washed, and then I wore them again. Anyway, it's a great suit. I joked around about looking like Tom Cruise from Collateral, but in fact, it's more like Robert De Niro in Heat. It's kind of the same thing, so people thought it was more Asian Robert De Niro. Thank you. To get $20 off your purchase, visit theblacktux.com slash substandard. That's theblacktux.com slash substandard for $20 off your purchase. The Black Tux. Premium rental suits and tuxedos delivered. So, spoiler alert, right?
JVL00:25:44That's such a good read, by the way. Thank you. I just had to do a read for the Daily Standard podcast a half hour before we walked in. Another valued sponsor, and I gacked it so bad that I literally had to just stop the podcast. And then do it over again? Redo it and cut it in post. And it's moments like that when I appreciate just how damn good you are at your job.
Vic00:26:06Well, you're very kind. My family appreciates, too, because I always read the ads over the dinner table. I just keep on, The Black Tux, okay. I do have a question, then, spoiler alert. Sonny, how do you interpret the ending of Annihilation?
JVL00:26:20Oh, since we did a spoiler alert, tell me what is the ending, because there was no spoiler alert. There's no way in hell I'm going to see this movie anyway, and I'm curious. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
Sonny00:26:26but less overt. So what has happened is this alien presence has created a double of Oscar Isaacs' person, and that is what has come home to Natalie Portman at the beginning of the movie. The double has. And it tries to make a double of Natalie Portman, and she kills it. She kills her own double? She kills her own double, which brings down the shimmer. How did she kill her own? I watched it.
Vic00:26:57It's mimicking her moves. Right. How did it convince her double with the pin on the grenade? Well, it seems pretty stupid.
Sonny00:27:06It seems like a pretty stupid double. Yeah. I mean, it's like growing into her, kind of. And when she gets back, she... So she kills it, and the shimmer goes away. She kills it, the shimmer goes away. She goes back to the hospital where her husband is being cast. But it's really the double of her husband? But it's the double of her husband. The husband killed himself. And she hugs him, and they are... But at the end of the film, she has clearly been infected by whatever it is that is, you know, making everything mutate in Area X.
Vic00:27:40Right. Basically. The good news is, she never cheated on the alien. I don't understand. She was unfaithful to Oscar Isaac. So at the end, it's not Oscar Isaac. Oh, that's true. That's true. So she's never been...
Sonny00:27:53I've never been faithful to the alien. It's a very weird movie. Again, it feels like there are two movies in one here. There's, like, a relationship drama and, like, a sci-fi horror movie, and they're kind of fighting against each other for dominance. It's actually, like... It is a metaphor for what the film is about, which is, like, two competing strands of DNA trying to merge and overtake one another.
Vic00:28:16And unlike The Arrival, we don't know... Arrival. Unlike Arrival, we don't... I still don't know. That movie was always confusing to me, too. But we... At least I knew why they were there. We don't know. There's no explanation for the aliens. They don't communicate with anybody in the movie about why they came there to do what? To mess around with our environment? Take over?
JVL00:28:37Are these just the engineers? Is that what they are? Unclear. Do they have the blue spores? No.
Vic00:28:44No. The blue... It's kind of like that. Okay. In the grand scheme of things, though, I would say not my favorite Natalie Portman movie. I didn't like it.
JVL00:28:53I was hoping to... The graphic violence shocked me. Yeah. I'll say that. Question, JVO? Yes, JVO. Oh, I was just going to ask you to rank your favorite Natalie Portman performances. Vic?
Vic00:29:02No, because I... I've been waiting for this for like 72 hours. I know what you want, and it's not like that at all, and we're always joking. I know what you want me to say, which is... Joking. In order of like third, second, and first, I would say Heat, Beautiful Girls, and The Professionals. You want me to say that? I don't want you to say anything. I just know you. 1997 is what you want me to say? No, that's not true at all. I think she's a wonderful...
JVL00:29:26You really like Black Swan as well. There's a scene in Black Swan that you really love.
Vic00:29:30I love... Yes, yes. She's dancing. She's a great dancer. By the way, and I, you know, I talked with a... I did a piece for The Weekly Standard a long time ago on the Spider-Man musical, Turn Off the Dark. And I interviewed a guy who was the trainer, but not... Not that trainer. He helped with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis on Black Swan. The one who wound up marrying her? No. Okay. No, another choreographer. This choreographer would... I don't think he was interested in them. Why not? He doesn't like brunettes? He was busy. Okay, so that's my sense, but he had... Come on, Sonny. A little something for the effort there. Inappropriate. The interesting thing... I'm not mentioning his name. That's fine. I think he didn't want to... Off the record, let's say deep background. Deep background. He had two descriptions. Was he quoted by name in the piece? Yes. No, wait a minute. Let me think about this. I think he was quoted by name, but not for this. He was strictly talking about other shows. Just keep him on deep background here.
?00:30:37I'll keep him on here.
Vic00:30:38Okay.
Sonny00:30:38So with like 30 seconds, somebody could probably figure out who this guy is. Okay, but I'll keep it to the safe stuff, which is...
JVL00:30:44Probably some... Actually, Sonny, there was probably some other choreography that Vic talked to who said this stuff.
Vic00:30:50There was a dozen of them. I'm sure there was a dozen. I'm sure there was a dozen of them. He said the differences between training Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis or dealing with them. Mila Kunis was very much just cool, very nice, very approachable. Like, hey, normal. Hey, what's going on? Like, she's not thinking of herself as one of the hottest women ever. You know, she's just, hey, what's going on? Okay, this is cool. Let's do it. Let's try. And he said Natalie Portman exuded stardom, like where she walks in and you're sort of like... Her whole, you know, her, not posture, but the way she, help me out here. Bearing. Her bearing, her disposition, it's very much star. Very different, he said, from Mila Kunis. It's funny.
JVL00:31:36Maybe she should be in a movie someday that makes more than $100 million. Ooh.
Sonny00:31:40Oh, do I feel an anti-Natalie Portman rant coming?
JVL00:31:43Wait, don't forget, she was in Heat.
Vic00:31:43Didn't Heat do well? Heat did well.
JVL00:31:45You recall, if you go back and listen to one of the commentaries, I think it was a commentary on Heat. It says, contemporaneously, that girl, Natalie Portman, someday we're all going to work for her.
?00:31:59Oh. Oh, really?
JVL00:32:00Yeah. Yep. It was obvious at a very, very young age what a gifted actress she was.
Vic00:32:06Oh, there you go. Sonny, are you a Natalie Portman fan? Yeah.
Sonny00:32:11She's, she...
JVL00:32:12You just like her for the SodaStream stuff.
Sonny00:32:14I like her, well, I like her for the SodaStream stuff, certainly. SodaStream, explain SodaStream. Well, she was like a, she was like a spokesman for SodaStream, which is a... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people wanted to boycott because it was... She was like, F that. And she was like, I mean, Natalie Portman, who was born in Jerusalem. Natalie Hirschlach. Yeah. And like, is, is, you know, not, not like casually Jewish, I don't think. Is like, it was like, yeah, you could... Casually Jewish. I mean, I, you know what I mean? Is that a designation on the census? I don't, I don't understand, like, how to say, like, she, she's like into it. She's not, you know, like... Is Orthodox Jewish? I mean...
JVL00:32:50Is conservative Jewish? Reform Jewish? No, casual Jewish.
Sonny00:32:53I mean, do you, but you understand what I'm saying. No. Keep explaining. Anyway, she was, she, she told everyone to go f*** themselves. And, yeah, that's right. You know what? That's right. That's what you get. Mark it down. That's what you get. Because you're deleting it. 33 minutes. That's what you get. That's what you get for, for sending me off my train of thought with your, your... You're going to bleep it yourself. Jew baiting. The, the, the, but the, my point is, my point is, my favorite Natalie Portman performance is... You, of course, are in the prequels. She's, she is the shining light that is, that is the height of cinematic excellence, the
Vic00:33:31Star Wars prequels. I got news for you. You thought you were enjoying Natalie Portman. In fact, it was Keira Knightley that you thought, remember, the double. She was a double. Oh, that's right. She has no lines.
JVL00:33:42She is the Padme double who just sort of stands there. But it is true. This was... And has had a bigger career since Natalie Portman. With the pos... Oh. Keira Knightley has had a bigger career since Natalie Portman.
Vic00:33:53Oh, if you want to count all Pirates of the Caribbean, it'd be because Pirates of the
Sonny00:33:57Caribbean has been made a trillion dollars. Pirates of the Caribbean.
JVL00:34:01Who has turned in more top-tier performances since then?
Sonny00:34:08Since then. You mean strictly box office? So you don't... No, I just mean as acting performances. So since 1999.
JVL00:34:13So not counting... The Professional and Heat. And Beautiful Girls. And Beautiful Girls, which are her... She was wonderful. If we're going to... If this is going to be real talk, it might be her best work.
Sonny00:34:28I mean, I haven't prepared for this question, so I can't go in-depth into it. But I would say... No, but I would say that Natalie Portman in...
JVL00:34:38I'm prepared to alibi her. Go ahead. She got sucked into the black hole that is George Lucas.
Vic00:34:44Well, yeah. I was going to say, look at Hayden Christensen in Shattered Glass is terrific and other movies. Then in that movie is awful. Natalie Portman. I'd say the one exception is probably Jake Lloyd. I don't know if Jake Lloyd would have been different in another movie. He was pretty cute in the Smuckers commercial.
JVL00:35:02Here's a list, a comprehensive list, of actors who have come into George Lucas's orbit and made their way out still as high-quality actors. Harrison Ford. Liam Neeson. That's the list. No, it's not. It's not the list. Jimmy Smits. The people who Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, and Natalie Portman all had their careers basically shipwrecked. And Billy Dee Williams?
Vic00:35:33Are you going to throw Billy Dee Williams in there, too?
JVL00:35:35Basically shipwrecked by their encounter with George Lucas, who is such a black hole. You've heard of actors, directors. Oh, he's a real actor's director. He's whatever the mirror opposite of an actor's director is. He gets inside an actor's head and destroys them.
Vic00:35:51Yeah. Because it's ditch digging. Isn't that what it was said? Something like that. Yeah. No.
JVL00:35:54Samuel Jackson, he survived. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I would put Sam Jackson on that list, yeah.
Sonny00:36:00I would say, going back to the initial question, I mean, I would say that Black Swan and Knight of Cups, which most people haven't really seen. I have not seen that. Are as good as or better than anything Keira Knightley has done, and she did get an Oscar nomination for ... We don't count Oscars. We don't count Oscars. And she got another one for Jackie, which I didn't love, but what I'm saying is it is a closer call than you may think. Yeah, but what would ...
Vic00:36:38I feel like I was on barbiturates watching Jackie. It was very confusing.
Sonny00:36:41Keira Knightley, what would be her best performance? I mean, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies have made money, but they didn't make money because of Keira Knightley. No, the Jane Austen. She's fine in the Jane Austen movies. Which one?
Vic00:36:53The Pride and Prejudice. The Pride and Prejudice. She's very good in it.
JVL00:36:56And it's ... Even though that is bad Jane Austen, she's very good in it. I mean, I have a beef about Natalie Portman. So to speak. But it is not about her. It is about what the culture that spawned out of the way people used her as a young actress.
Sonny00:37:14Oh.
JVL00:37:15And I ... Yeah, sure. I wrote this once upon a time, but it is still true. So we ... I mean, Natalie ... Natalie Portman is, if we just say it out loud, is a sort of patient zero in the modern Lolita epidemic. And so before ... I mean, all the ... People forget, they used to have on the internet like countdown clocks until Britney Spears was legal. Remember that? This is stuff that doesn't happen anymore, I think. Oh, right.
Vic00:37:40Who are the girls from Full House? That was a joke too, right? Right. No, no, right.
JVL00:37:43The Olsen girls. And before all of them was Natalie Portman. Now, she wasn't the first one. This is Stanley Kubrick sort of tiptoed up to this. When he did Lolita, there was Blue Lagoon. Although, did you know, Victorino, that in Blue Lagoon, because Brooke Shields was underage- That they get rescued? No, I don't remember that. Because Brooke Shields was underage, all the nudity is a body double? Did I just destroy your entire adolescence?
Vic00:38:07Oh, no. Sorry. Now it's not the same. Vic is- It's not the same now. Sorry. It's all wasted. What's wasted? My time. I'm saying my time was wasted.
Sonny00:38:15You know that scene ... Oh, what is it? It's in ... There's a movie where a robot ... Starts eating something, and then his face melts. Oh, AI. AI. It was the kid. That is the look that just happened to Vic. His mouth just drooped down. David? Yeah.
JVL00:38:32So, even in those movies, though, Brooke Shields was at least 15. How did they do that? Never mind. The first time that Natalie Portman is sexualized on screen with a grown man is in Leon, and she is 13 years old. That is a very questionable choice. I didn't realize that movie was sexualized. By her parents. Yeah, you didn't realize that? No, I didn't. The scene where she asks Jean Reno to, quote, make love to her?
Vic00:39:05Just speak metaphorically.
JVL00:39:07Okay. In Beautiful Girls, Ted Demme has her at the age of 15 as a middle school student trying to seduce a mid-30s Timothy Hutton. Timothy Hutton.
Vic00:39:15I love Timothy Hutton. What does he say? Does he say something in the end like, wait for me? Or something like that? She says, I'll wait for you.
JVL00:39:22I'll wait for you. This, you forget, I mean, we really have progressed a little bit. I mean, we, by the early 2000s, Vanity Fair did a sort of young Hollywood issue, and the cover it was, It's Totally Reigning Teens.
Vic00:39:42You clearly have kept the issue because-
JVL00:39:45No, this is, again, I wrote a piece about this back in like 2003. Sure, it's ostensibly for the piece. And all of this- Patient zero in this outbreak is Natalie Portman. I do not blame her. She's a 13-year-old actress. And now look where we've come. I blame the people who are handling her careers. And now look where it's come. And I think the cultural runoff from that has probably been not great. Did she have a Weinstein experience too, or no? I sure hope not. But, you know, I don't know, like bouncing around Hollywood at the time she was, looking like she did, I would say the odds are probably that something terrible did happen to her at some point. And I would just say- I would say the overall runoff effects from Natalie Portman's career have not been great. Her performances, if you looked at her early work, whatever you think of her as an actress now, I don't think she is what she projected as a draft pick then. I mean, this is like, you know, picking somebody with the number one, number one pick in the NBA, and instead you get a power forward who- We had this conversation before. When we were talking about Scarlett Johansson.
Sonny00:40:47Who is the opposite. Because you think her work, Scar Jo's work- Scar Jo's work post-teenage years is much better than her- Yes. Than her early work. Yes. Okay.
JVL00:40:56And I would say Natalie Portman has had the opposite career trajectory. She is not the actress and movie star that you would have hoped that she would be back then.
Sonny00:41:05But I do think- Sonny. I'm going to disagree with this slightly insofar as I do think that she has done interesting and fulfilling work that has not necessarily been- I deserve to be applauded for that. That has not necessarily- I mean, she's not like the big budget- No, she does weird movies and quirky movies. She does weird, good movies. She has artistic tastes.
JVL00:41:24But that's different from movie stars. You know what I mean? Yeah. She's not Julia Roberts in that way. She's not a- I mean, like, Black Swan- A giant Hawking movie star.
Sonny00:41:33Black Swan is a really fascinating movie that, even at the time, was weird. Insofar as it grossed something like, I want to say it grossed like $120, $130 million or something like that.
JVL00:41:43I wonder what the attraction of that was at the box office.
Sonny00:41:45But it's a movie that opens slowly and- Me too. Me too. If only we had- Facebook.
JVL00:41:51Oh, too bad you didn't. You guys just missed the best Facebook Live ever. I was surprised you went with that, Vic, and not this.
Vic00:41:57Oh. Ooh. Wow. Okay. Because you taught me this. That works, too. You know who I liked also, besides Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman? I'm also a fan of the actor Vincent Cassel, or Cassel. Yeah. The French guy. Yeah, yeah. He's terrific.
JVL00:42:11In the same way?
Vic00:42:12No. Well, he's also great in the movie Eastern Promises. He's just a very good actor. Don't think about it. Don't think about him. Oh, and he was in Oceans 12, but let's not ... Oh, 13. Okay. Go ahead, Sonny. You were saying. No, it doesn't matter. Okay. It doesn't matter. We should probably move on. In three days' time, the Oscars will be on. You like that? Yes. Right, because we're taping on Thursday. Yeah, we're taping on Thursday. So, three days from now, the Oscars will be on, and you had some Oscar thoughts, predictions, or just general analysis and bloviation?
Sonny00:42:49Sonny? Ooh. Bloviation. I can do that. Here's what's going to happen at the Oscars, folks. Take it to the bank. Best picture winner. Black Panther. The Shape of Water. No, this is next year. Next year is Black Panther. Why can't they win at both? Black Panther. Look, like Boyhood, which should have won Best Picture for all 13 years that it was filming, or 12 years. It took 12 years. It took 12 years to make something. That's a lot of Oscars for Ethan Hawke. It should have been, but unfortunately- Why can't Black Panther win this year, too? Black Panther cannot win until next year. Don't they have a write-in?
JVL00:43:20Well, that's not how it works. There's not a write-in option? You know how it works. You know how it works. You know what? If Black Panther doesn't win this year, do you know what it means?
Vic00:43:28Oh, here we go.
Sonny00:43:29See, this goes back to the thing we were discussing last week. This goes back. You're getting angry at the way people are enjoying something. You gotta just let it go, man. I just want people to be able to enjoy this even more. Let it go. Wow.
Vic00:43:45My goodness. I didn't know Idina Menzel was here in the studio. Very exciting.
Sonny00:43:49Okay, finish, please. All right. Your thought. Best picture winner, Shape of Water. Best director, Guillermo del Toro. Best actor, Gary Oldman. Best actress, I don't know. Women? I don't know what to do. And that's it. Those are my predictions. Will she be wearing black? Those are your predictions?
JVL00:44:07Will she be wearing black?
Sonny00:44:08The best actress?
Vic00:44:09She better be, or she's gonna get dragged. What about... She's gonna get dragged on Twitter. How about a best supporting actor win for Derek Chalamet? Call me by your name. Call me by your name. First... Oh, jeez.
Sonny00:44:24That's... 44-26. That's... First off... You're bleeping both of these. Timothy Chalamet.
Vic00:44:31Oh, you know who I'm thinking of?
Sonny00:44:32Derek Chalamet.
JVL00:44:33Sorry.
Sonny00:44:33Timothy Chalamet. Who is a Democratic advisor. Who is nominated in the best actor category. I had another Corby Kummer moment. Not supporting actor. This is just terrible. Oh, it's the other way around. What's his name? You're bad. You're bad. Dunkirk will win zero awards, even in the technical category. Oh, come on. Come on. And I will burn Hollywood to the ground. Roger Deakins will finally win Best Cinematographer. For Blade. For Blade Runner 2049. And that's all I got for you. If Blade Runner wins... Oh, Frances McDormand's obviously going to win Best Actress, by the way. That's by three billboards.
Vic00:45:09If Blade Runner wins anything next week, Spirit of the Week will be the Blade Runner, Johnny Walker. How's that?
Sonny00:45:15Yeah, okay.
Vic00:45:16Why don't we just do it anyway? Okay, yeah. We haven't opened it yet, so...
JVL00:45:20You know what I saw? I saw a long, long anchor post. They were doing an interview with somebody who does sound design, basically explaining how nobody in the academy understands at all the difference between sound mix and sound design, and saying that those awards essentially wind up as meaningless.
Sonny00:45:37Well, they just wind... They go to whoever, like, whichever movie you like the most in that category.
JVL00:45:42Right, no, but I mean, literally, people don't understand what the two categories mean. No. And so they might, like, want to be voting on what they think is best sound, but not understand.
Sonny00:45:50For the record, I've read about a hundred different explainers of the difference between the two, and I still couldn't tell you what the difference is right now.
JVL00:45:56So why are these things, like, open to everybody to vote in, Ben? Maybe we need to, like, de-democratize, like, you know, no more... Technicals. The technical awards, like, get rid of the suffrage. You know, like, you don't... All the idiot actors don't get to vote in this anymore.
Vic00:46:11Or technical people can vote for the technical categories, and then actors vote for the other categories.
Sonny00:46:16Yeah, make it like the, you know, like the MVP awards in sports. Where would your... Where would your cutoff be on this? Would you say, like, should everybody be able to vote on cinematographer? No. Just cinematographers? Yeah. Do you think... Like the Guild, the ASCP, whatever... Yeah, no, I'm not... And I'm not kidding. Do you... Well, but this is how the nominees are chosen. Right. I mean, like, we should explain to people that the nominees are not picked by everybody in the Academy. The way the nominees are chosen is whoever is in the... Whoever... Like, the cinematographers vote on cinematographers for the nominations. The costume designers vote on the costume designers, set designers, set designers.
JVL00:46:49What if we flopped it? The nominations could be made up by everybody, but then the actual experts get to choose who wins.
Sonny00:46:55I think that's a much, much worse way of doing it, because then you would just end up with, like, the five most popular movies being nominated in every category.
JVL00:47:02What? You think actors are just mindless idiots who just nominate their favorite things?
Vic00:47:06Actors are so dumb. And then, you know, when they receive their award at the podium, you're going to have, like, a whole bucket of slime come down on them, like those other award shows.
JVL00:47:12Double dare! Yeah, very good.
Sonny00:47:15Any other... The Kids' Choice Awards. The Kids' Choice Awards. The Nick Teens' Choice Awards.
Vic00:47:18I remember. I remember watching an Actor's Studio episode with James Lipton, and the guest was Mike Myers, a great actor, very talented, but actually, when it comes to reading out the resume...
JVL00:47:32The Murderer from Halloween movies?
Vic00:47:34The other... Oh, the other Mike Myers. Austin Powers. Sorry, sorry, yes. But when it comes to reading the resume of Mike Myers, it's actually very quite... You know, like, as opposed to when they had Paul Newman on, you know? And so, I remember Lipton had to mention the... They made... They make a joke out of this in Saturday Night Live, you know, when they do their own spoof of the Actor's Studio, but I believe they had to give Mike Myers a shout-out for the Blockbuster Award, Blockbuster Videos.
Sonny00:48:03Do you guys have any actual thoughts on the Oscars, or who will win?
Vic00:48:07I'd like to think Dunkirk wins something. Sound? Editing? I hope it doesn't. Really, why?
JVL00:48:14I hope it doesn't, because we'll further underscore the ridiculousness of this entire
Vic00:48:20I agree Shape of Water will win. I don't think there's anything stopping Shape of Water, which I have not seen. Everybody loves it, Vic.
Sonny00:48:26The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, very neck and neck right now.
JVL00:48:31Yes, neck and neck between two movies I haven't seen. Very important movies. They have so much to say about this moment we're in.
Sonny00:48:38It's a good cultural podcast we've got going here. You haven't seen it.
Vic00:48:42Two best movies of the year. It's becoming more and more like this now. I'm beginning to see more and more nominees, and then I'm like, oh, I haven't seen these movies, you know? I go out, and then suddenly there's a silver alert on the highway when I'm driving.
JVL00:48:53In all seriousness, I realized I was going to boycott this when Chav Arthur didn't receive any nominations. Chav Arthur.
Vic00:48:59When Chav Arthur was shut out, that is when I decided to boycott the Oscars.
Sonny00:49:03That's like very early Substandard. That's or Substandard. Let's be honest. The fact that Guy Ritchie isn't nominated in at least two or three categories is a real problem.
JVL00:49:13Travesty. Jude Law, best supporting actor. Jude Law's fantastic in that movie. True.
Sonny00:49:19Charlie Hunnam. Charlie Hunnam. Charlie Hunnam. I would actually be okay with giving him a Thalberg, frankly, for his work on those movies.
JVL00:49:31Lifetime achievement. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Did Gary Oldman do that?
Sonny00:49:35Did Gary Oldman punch the air?
JVL00:49:37And run in place?
Sonny00:49:38And run in place and go, ah!
JVL00:49:40In Darkest Hour? No. No. He didn't. He did not do that. He walked around in a fat suit. Do you know what Chav Arthur, do you know what Charlie Hunnam did? Some crunches. He got down to like .02% body fat. I mean, he was already there.
Sonny00:49:51He was already there. Come on.
JVL00:49:53That's commitment. I wish the Academy would recognize it.
Sonny00:49:57Yeah. All right. Good segment.
Vic00:49:59Yes. Corrections, additions, any other thoughts, shout outs, anything? Everything going well? Everything's fine? No?
JVL00:50:06Nothing. I had two people last week tell me they missed show notes. Yeah. I said, sorry. I miss them, too. I still don't have time to do it.
Vic00:50:15Life is short. Life is short. I think we're good otherwise. Okay. Well. That's all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch. At JBLast. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play, Stitcher. Just type in Substandard under podcasts. We are there. Leave her a view. Tell your friends. Until next time.
Sonny00:50:44I think that's on. I basically. And we're on Instagram.
JVL00:50:50I was on Instagram for like five minutes at one point.
Sonny00:50:52Did you not get any of your endorsement deals? No, I just realized that every picture I took has my kids' faces in it.
Vic00:51:01And I'm not going to put pictures of my kids' faces. That's Facebook. That's not Instagram. It's different.
JVL00:51:04No, it's nothing. I'm not going to put pictures of my kids' faces on the internet. So that like the next time we have a presidential election, somebody can Photoshop my kids like in a gulag or something. No. I'm not going to do that.
Vic00:51:14On Facebook, you can just have your friends be on Facebook. No one else sees those pictures on Facebook. But you limit the filter. Yeah. No, that's right.
JVL00:51:22Because on the internet, you can totally prevent anything from ever getting out into the public.
Vic00:51:26Well, I mean, you know, in that case, people go into your iCloud. It's like, honey, don't worry. These pictures will just be my iCloud account. Nobody will ever see them. That's the price we pay. Like in Blade Runner, we put everything in there, and one day there'll be a blackout, and everything is gone. Let me ask you about that. I'll tell you, the problem with Instagram is you can't just get on and look at other people's pictures. Sometimes you have to be a member and then ask to be invited to look at their photos. The people have told me this. Vic, have you tried looking at people's photos?
JVL00:51:55Is Natalie Portman's Instagram set up like that?
Sonny00:52:00Hmm, interesting.
Vic00:52:01No, I'm sure it's fine.
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