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#136. The Substandard on Skyscraper, Disaster Flicks, and Baseball Cards
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Dudes Chatting — Skyscraper, disaster films, and baseball cards: Vic does his "Gene" impression reviewing Skyscraper: four stars, Rock puns throughout (he's "hopping mad," must "go out on a limb"), and a polygamy joke about Neve Campbell. Sonny's real take: a perfectly acceptable generic action film, fun in Dolby Atmos, but utterly disposable — essentially a video game with timed jumps, escort missions, and puzzle-solving. The film's most interesting angle is how much Hollywood has changed in 30 years: compare Die Hard (Japanese corporate villain, American cop hero, duct tape) to Skyscraper (Scandinavian mercenary muscle for faceless Chinese syndicates, militarized FBI hero, also duct tape) — the shift maps directly to where Hollywood's box-office money now comes from. The best villain, underused, is Hannah Quinlivan. The mirror-room finale is an Enter the Dragon callback that doesn't quite work spatially. Neve Campbell's return from a seven-year hiatus is appreciated. Broader disaster-movie conversation: JVL loves the Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin brand of siege-meets-disaster (mousetrap narrative mechanics); Sonny is indifferent to the genre but rates Armageddon over Deep Impact; Vic's favorite is The Poseidon Adventure and keeps track of the entire Airport series (owns Airport '77 on VHS). Dark Knight III: The Master Race sidebar: Sonny read it and found it a hundred times better than Frank Miller's dismal second Dark Knight series — Andy Kubert's pencils recapture the original's look. JVL reveals that Bill Kristol makes a cameo (as himself, favorably) in Dark Knight II. Weekend chat: JVL bought an extensive haul of baseball cards at FanFest (recap from Prime Day episode); Vic hosted friends and ate every leftover cheeseburger at his cookout; the family watched The Illusionist vs. The Prestige — the son correctly preferred The Prestige, in which JVL notes Christian Bale's character commits suicide every night by proxy.
Box Office: Hotel Transylvania 3 opened #1 at $44M; Ant-Man and the Wasp $28.8M; Skyscraper $25.5M. Rob Reiner's Shock and Awe made $41,000 across 100 screens — roughly six people per screening — which the group notes was likely contractually mandated as part of a production subsidy deal.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00- Mr. Sawyer, is your family enjoying their stay? - Very much so. They're shocked you gave us the entire floor. - After your security assessment, what do you think of the building? - With all due respect, he's a glorified security guard. Please. - The Pearl is the tallest, most advanced building in the world. - You've built a vertical city, but you've brought with it every single safety and security challenge that I could think of. - We thought this floor was empty. - So did I. - Not only have you brought them all indoors, but you've trapped them 240 floors in the air. - No one really knows what would happen if things go wrong.
Vic00:00:43- Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Substandard, sponsored by Casper Mattress. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you 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 a review. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what's going on? - Victorino. - Have you guys recovered from Prime Day?
JVL00:01:08- God, yes. - I bought so much. - I wonder which of the things I bought my wife will hate the most. - We have some reorganization happening at the company.
Sonny00:01:19- Ooh, did you buy... - Elaborate. - Did you buy a new plastic cover for the stainless steel... - Washing appliance?
Vic00:01:28- Do they make those? - I'm investigating.
JVL00:01:30They actually have... - It's kind of like a tarp. - It's a thing which magnetizes on, if you're stainless steel is the type, which can actually hold a magnet, which is like clipping a blackboard onto the front of your dishwasher, so you could write, for instance, loading instructions on it for family members who are unable to keep this in the... Anyway, I received notice, the CEO is bringing in some consultants, just do some streamlining, going to interview the staff at the company, talk about maybe ways we can be more efficient. I'm sure it's going to be fine. - Elaborate the Bobs. - I'm meeting with Bob and this other guy Bob, and they just want to know what it is
Vic00:02:09I do at the company, and we'll see how that works. - Specifically, what is the issue here?
JVL00:02:18- I would say our latest round of technology acquisition. - The machine. - The board is not happy. That plus the new electric toothbrushes, I would say the board is unhappy about that. - Okay. - The board is unhappy.
Vic00:02:33- All right. - It'll be fine. - Good luck.
JVL00:02:36- Yeah. No, but my prime day was, I wanted to tell you, I took Flash over the weekend to the Major League All-Star game, Futures game, courtesy of your friend and mine, Mr. Aaron Harrison.
Sonny00:02:48- Oh, very nice.
JVL00:02:49- Who very, very kindly, listener of the show, gave me tickets to take Flash. And so we went to FanFest, we went to the Futures game, and the most interesting part, I think the part, 'cause my son, Flash, loves baseball, but he also loves commerce. - Did he have a good prime day? - This is like baseball card nirvana, FanFest.
Sonny00:03:16Just baseball card mania. - Do like all of the big, just like, all right, question, question, sorry. Is it like Topps shows up with a big, or is it like the baseball card comic book store people come up-- - Both. - Oh, okay. - Both. - Okay, so it's like a new, it's like an exhibition for the new stuff, and also you can buy the old stuff.
JVL00:03:39- Yes, and so they have made evolutions from the time you did baseball cards. I never did it, because I didn't do baseball cards, really.
Sonny00:03:47- Are Fleer and Donruss still really around, or is it just Topps? I seem to remember MLB signing with just Topps. - Just Topps. - Okay.
JVL00:03:55- Just Topps, and Topps now has Bowman, and I find it impossible to keep track of all the different Topps lines, but so the Topp level now is they have what are called relic cards, and it is just like from the Catholic Church with relics, where they, so Topps goes and buys a game-used jersey or a broken bat from a player. - You mean like the cross, like the piece of the cross?
Vic00:04:19- Or like, cuts up a little patch--
JVL00:04:21- Or like Lou Gehrig's fingers.
Sonny00:04:23- Lou Gehrig's finger.
JVL00:04:24- It's so, you get like, this is a piece of the jersey that Aaron Judge won, wore when he won the home run derby in 2017, and it's embedded into a card with a little hologram sticker over top of it, and if you think back to the way you felt about baseball cards at age 10, the relic is essentially the greatest thing in the universe.
Sonny00:04:46- This is the nail that was hammered into Yankee Stadium before they tore it down.
Vic00:04:52- It's like when they bulldoze a stadium and you get a piece of the turf, right? And things like that, or a piece of bench or something. - That sort of thing, yes.
Sonny00:05:00- It really is, so I'm aware of this phenomenon and it's totally fascinating because it is actually a desecration of the relic. You are taking the relic, like something that is actually kind of cool, like... - So a whole shirt is now chopped up for lots of money. - And then you chop it into tiny little pieces, and it's like not really the shirt anymore, it's just a piece of fabric.
JVL00:05:22- The desecration comes from selling it. - No, no. - In the real world of relics, it's verboten to sell the relics. - Oh, no. - Oh, yeah. You would never do that, right?
Vic00:05:31- You can't sell the relics. - The problem with the shirt relic is that... - St. Teresa's finger bone can't ever be sold. - Which I've seen, but the problem with a baseball, like a cloth, like a jersey, that you can't actually... You can claim how old it is, but you're not going to carbon date the baseball shirt because you don't want to affect the shirt because part of it would be destroyed in the process.
Sonny00:05:55- You would destroy 50% of the relic.
JVL00:05:57- In the process of carbon dating it. - So these are great. And we went, and this... We're taping on Thursday morning, so I've already passed this on, but Flash...
Sonny00:06:06- Great game by the winning team in the baseball all-star game. - Amazing. That home run derby was something else.
JVL00:06:13- Flash was so moved by the generosity of Mr. Aaron Harrison that he used his savings to purchase a signed relic card of Harrison's favorite player to give to Aaron Harrison as thanks. - Who's Harrison's favorite player? - Anthony Rendon. - Rendon. - And so Flash was very excited to find a signed Anthony Rendon relic card to give to Aaron. Anyway, this is our Prime Day conversation about all the top-loading baseball cards. We came home with 300 cards. We bought a lot of baseball cards. It was great. - And then, of course, to the authentic game all-star jersey for Flash that he desperately
Sonny00:06:58wanted. - Who was the player? - Mike Trout. Superman. From South Jersey. Collingswood. Flash loves him, the Trout. - He's going to be playing for the Phillies in a couple years, right? Isn't that the rumor? - Probably never. - Isn't that the rumor?
JVL00:07:11- No, I don't think so. - Wasn't there that he was going to be... - Can I... I saw the greatest sports troll of all time. There were three guys who showed up to this game with the custom-made all-star jersey. So, you can get your all-star jerseys customized. And they were the American League variant with number 34 Bryce Harper on it. - With the Yankees. - And the Yankees patch... - Oh, no. Oh, come on. - ...on the left shoulder.
Sonny00:07:35- Wow. - That's an expensive troll. - That is. - Just an expensive troll. - Just to, like, mess with people for a couple days. - It's the greatest troll. - It's fantastic, obviously.
JVL00:07:42- If I was coming down from New York to D.C. for the all-star game, it would have been 100% worth the 150 bucks to make one of these things.
Sonny00:07:48- I mean, I guess if you're spending, you know, four grand on...
JVL00:07:50- Right, at that point, why not just give a finger to every single person in the home ballpark? And, of course, you can do that in D.C., because D.C., these people wouldn't try that sort of thing in Philly. - Oh, my gosh. - You get knifed for doing that sort of thing in Philly. - But in D.C., it's like, "Ooh, they're making fun of our hometown hero."
Vic00:08:08- In Philly, they'd force you to eat horse poop.
Sonny00:08:10That's what they would do. - And, also, nobody in D.C. actually thinks Bryce Harper will be around in a year. I think people in D.C. have, like, kind of accepted the fact that Bryce Harper will not sign a long-term deal with the Nationals. I might be wrong. I might be wrong, because he's having such a terrible season.
JVL00:08:26- The most D.C. thing in the world is they'll overpay for him while he's, it turns out, he really is, like, a .228 hitter, and he'll spend the rest of his career batting below Max Scherzer's average.
Sonny00:08:37- They'll pull a real Chris Davis.
JVL00:08:40- How are you guys? - Sonny, how are you? - How was your weekend, Sonny?
Sonny00:08:44- Mine was good. I read "Dark Knight III: The Master Race." - Ooh, how good is it? - A million times better than the second "Dark Knight" series. - Really? That surprised us.
JVL00:08:55- It's actually-- - The second "Dark Knight" series is trash.
Sonny00:08:57- I mean, it's the worst, it's not just, like, poorly written and, like, kind of boring, but it's also terribly, terribly drawn. It's like, Frank Miller's skills, and I don't think that I'm really, like, saying anything terribly provocative here, but Frank Miller has, like, declined greatly as an artist since the run of those Batman books and those Daredevil books. I mean, he just, like, the second "Dark Knight" series was lazily drawn, with, like, no backgrounds. It was just, like, these kind of--
JVL00:09:28- He's been focusing on film direction.
Sonny00:09:30- Yeah. But this one was actually penciled by Andy Kubert, I believe, and it kind of mimics the look of the original series very well. I thought it was--and Klaus Johnson does the inks, and it was--so it's a much better-looking book. - Ooh, Klaus Johnson. - It's a much better-looking book than the second. - Come on, Vic. I'm trying. I'm trying. - Yeah. Is it racist? - No. "The Master Race" is the Kandorians. - Wasn't that the knock against it when it came out?
JVL00:09:56- Well-- - Wasn't that the knock against it when it came out?
Sonny00:09:58Or was that just because of Frank Miller? - Well, Frank Miller is, of course, a notorious reactionary, at least in the world of comic books, which means he, like, isn't a communist. And he called--they called the book "The Master Race," and everyone was like, "Oh, my God. This is gonna be super--" But it's about--it's about a group of Kryptonians who break out of the prison--or break out of the miniature city of Kandor. - Ooh, the bottle city. - If we want to get into-- - The bottle city. - --the lore of Superman. - Are they tiny-sized? - Well, they are, and then Adam increases their size. - The Adam. - The Adam. - Why would he do that? - Dr. Ray Palmer? Is that his name? - Ray Palmer, yeah. Why would he do that? - Well, because they ask--they ask him to free, and he's like, "Okay, well, a bunch of, you know, Kryptonians. They seem all right." That was a big mistake. Big mistake by Dr. Ray Palmer. And then they-- - So what happens then? - Well, then they--they try to take over the world, and they blow us up, and our leaders, including Barack Hussein Obama, are about to capitulate, and they're in, like, the war room, and the Kandorians break in, and they're like, "Give up and swear fealty to us," and the world leaders are all about to do it, and then Batman takes over all the screens, and he's like, "Go to hell."
JVL00:11:07- "Play. Alleged fealty to me."
Sonny00:11:09- Yeah. - That's good. - And then it's--and then it's a bunch of--a bunch of Batman kicking Kryptonians--it's basically the last--it's basically the issue of the darkness. Dark Knight Returns, where Batman fights Superman, except for, like-- - Oh, yeah, book four. - Except for, like--I think it's book four. - Book four. - Except for, like, nine issues of this.
JVL00:11:29- Okay, so this sounds like the greatest comic book ever.
Sonny00:11:32- It was much, much better than I thought it would be. It was--I'm not gonna lie, I was actually far more enter--I kind of picked this up out of a sense of obligation to Frank Miller, one of the greats, and--but it was a hundred times better than I thought it would be.
JVL00:11:46- One thing I would say in defense of the second Dark Knight. Dark Knight series, it includes a cameo by Bill Kristol. - How so?
Sonny00:11:54- As one of, like, the talking heads in the--yeah, yeah, yeah.
JVL00:11:57- Bill is in the second one. When I saw it, I was intensely pleased, I, like, went running to his office, I was like, "Bill, Bill, Bill, look!" And he was like, "I don't understand. What is this?" He's like, "You're in Frank Miller! It's a--!" - What does he say in it? Does he--? - I don't remember. Actually, you know, no, but Frank Miller is kind to him. In most of these, the talking heads are always portrayed as fools, but I think Bill is not portrayed that way. - Yeah. - Is it his name or his resemblance?
Sonny00:12:20- No, no, it's Bill Kristol. - It's just Bill.
JVL00:12:23- In the same way that, like, you know, Reagan is Reagan and David Letterman is David Letterman and Dr. Ruth is Dr. Ruth.
Sonny00:12:29- None of them are actually called these things, I don't think, or maybe they are. Anyway, this has some of the same sort of thing. Anyway, it's-- - Can I borrow? - No, I don't lend people things. - He doesn't lend. Trust me. - I'm not a lender.
Vic00:12:43Not a lender. - I've been trying to get more movies from him since the--
JVL00:12:46- It's okay, I would probably have just licked the pages. - I would have licked the pages before giving it back anyway.
Sonny00:12:50- See? See what I'm talking about?
JVL00:12:52- Well, if only I had a chance to still order it on Prime Day. - Yeah. - But it's Thursday.
Sonny00:12:57- You've missed it. - So it's passed. - You've missed--now you'll never be able to experience the joys. Anyway, so that was--that's basically how I spent the last seven days.
JVL00:13:05- Great. Who's taking care of your child? - I don't know.
Sonny00:13:09The dog. Jub Jub.
Vic00:13:11- I like the killing joke. That was a really interesting one. - The killing joke? - You're not allowed to like that anymore. - Yeah, we're not allowed to like that anymore.
Sonny00:13:17- No, you are not. You are not allowed to like that anymore. - It's actually deeply, deeply problematic.
JVL00:13:22- That's a real...
Sonny00:13:23- The best thing about the killing joke is they did an animated version of it a couple years back. - Oh, they did? - And they killed all of them. - The animated version, right? - No, no. Oh, no. It came out. It came out, but they actually made it more problematic, because they added a subplot at the beginning where Batgirl sleeps with Batman, because she's so into him. - Oh, I forgot about that. - And then she gets shot, and crippled, and, like, sexually assaulted. Really... - Why are we laughing? - Really...
JVL00:13:50- I'm sorry. Why are you laughing? I'm not laughing.
Vic00:13:53All that laughing was Vic. It was Vic. - That was...
JVL00:13:56No, that was something wrong with the microphone.
Vic00:13:57- Vic, how was your weekend? - My weekend... My weekend is fine. And now that we're... - Did you go back to RG? - No, I... You know, I was doing pretty good until yesterday. I had dropped, like, three pounds or something like that, down to, it was, like, 178, and then I put on, like, two and a half pounds overnight. - Just overnight? - Overnight. I had our friends Brian and Miriam Fotnan and their kids... - Hey! - ...over. We had been a long time since we'd seen them, and so I had a lot of burgers, and I hate to see food go to waste, as you know, so I just went around and anything that was left
Sonny00:14:29over I ate on the spot. - Did you just... Did you unhinge your jaw, like in V? And like...
Vic00:14:35- Like in V, to eat the rodents? Or the... - What are you pointing at?
JVL00:14:40- What's the matter? - Is that your lapel pin is new? I have not seen this before.
Vic00:14:43- Well, I can't tell...
Sonny00:14:44- It's not that new. - Oh, okay.
JVL00:14:46- Well, it's Killmonger.
Vic00:14:47- Oh. - Yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:14:49- The real hero. The real hero of Black Panther.
Vic00:14:51- In fact, we were at a restaurant, Sonny, and the bartender looked, and he said, "What is that?" He asked you the same question. He said, "Killmonger." And he nodded like, "All right." - Weirdo. - Weirdo. Or he thought that. I don't know.
JVL00:15:02But anyway... - So you were eating all of the... Like at the Loaves and the Fishes... - Yes, but it was... - The Lord said, "Gather up all of the leftover bits so they do not go to waste." - That's what he said. - And when you gathered up all of the things from your cookout, you could fill 12 baskets worth of food. Something like that. And I ate... - And you then ate all of the 12 baskets worth of food.
Vic00:15:20- It was all beef, though. So, I mean, it was just all mostly protein.
JVL00:15:23- Did you eat any bun with that? - A couple. - So you did add carbohydrates, too, because if you put cheese on it...
Vic00:15:30- A little bit. A little bit. - ...that's when the problems happen. - Yes. And cheese is important, too, because dairy is so important for a growing cheese.
Sonny00:15:35- Cheese is fine. No carbs and cheese. - Thank you. Thank you, JBL.
JVL00:15:39- So you just ate like 10 cheeseburgers. No carbs and cheese. - Something like that.
Vic00:15:42Something like that. - It's the buns that are the killer. - Didn't you get Jason's... - I did, but again, I only had like four or five buns. Okay. Not a big deal. But also, because it's summer...
JVL00:15:53- But that activates the insulin in your blood. Ketosis.
Vic00:15:56- I don't know what you're saying, because I'm fainting right now. I'm getting very lightheaded and I'm getting slurry. Movie in the summer, we've been doing a lot of... - Speaking of slurry... - Speaking of slurry...
JVL00:16:06- Okay.
Vic00:16:07Hold on. - Not quite yet. We've been doing a lot of movie day, movie night things at our house. My son is really big on that, wanting to watch a family movie all together. Like a whole family can sit down and watch a movie.
JVL00:16:20- So you guys did The Green Inferno. - We did.
Vic00:16:23That's a very good movie. Interesting. It's provocative. It's provocative. - Makes you think. - I don't know why that went straight to video. No, so we had this discussion and we saw two movies in two days in a row. The Illusionist and The Prestige, because they came out at the same time and they were... Hold on. You're looking at each other, because they were like magic, right? They both had to come out at the same time. Why The Illusionist? And The Illusionist is because there was a dispute over which movie, believe it or not, there was a dispute over which movie was better. Someone, no names, someone, she thought that The Illusionist was sweeter, more romantic, happier ending, and that The Prestige is way too dark. And of course- - She said, "Well, let's show the kids and ask them." - Well, let's find out. My daughter was out playing with her friends, so this was during the late afternoon. And so we watch it. And of course my son preferred The Prestige. There's no question about it. I mean, The Illusionist is not a terrible movie.
Sonny00:17:22It's sweet.
Vic00:17:23It's fine. It's fine. Have we had discussions about Ed Norton being very difficult to work with? I got that sense. I don't know if that's true. Paul Giamatti, I like him, and the guy who plays the Crown Prince is pretty good. I like his accent, and then Jessica Biel is the woman. But The Prestige is ... And it came out ... I have a question. The Prestige come out before Dark Knight then, or Batman Begins. Yes. Well, it came out between Batman Begins and Dark Knight. Between him and Batman Begins. Okay. And I think my son enjoyed it, because he's watched all those Dark Knight movies, and he said, "Oh, there's Alfred Pennyworth, and there's Batman himself, Christian Bale, and there's ... By the way, there's Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson, and Andy Serkis, who's great." And Wolverine. And Wolverine, and he loves Wolverine too. So it was great. I used to think, having seen the movie only a couple times in the past, that Hugh Jackman's character was the one ... He was the one who was clearly the worst, and more obsessed, but you forget, because he kills ... Every time he duplicates, he kills himself. But Christian Bale's character ... Well, Hugh ... Go ahead.
Sonny00:18:30Hugh Jackman's character's clearly the more obsessed, because he commits suicide every night. Which is weird. He negates himself every single night.
Vic00:18:37Does it count as murder? Does it count as murder? And here's the other thing, though. But Christian Bale's character in his ... They couldn't tell his wife? He kept that a secret?
Sonny00:18:44You have to live it. You have to live the trick.
Vic00:18:47Until she kills herself. So that's pretty bad. But it's so great when you have ... Michael Caine is always giving some sort of voiceover explaining the three parts of the trick. It was really good. So I really liked that. And in comparison to The Illusionist ... Do you remember the three?
JVL00:19:02Hm? Do you remember the three stages?
Vic00:19:04Okay.
Sonny00:19:05One is the pledge. The turn. The turn.
Vic00:19:08And then the prestige. Yes. And in the prestige, they actually show you how the tricks work. You kill the bird.
JVL00:19:13Whatever it is. Right. Or the transported man.
Sonny00:19:16I've got to think the Alliance is going to frown on that. It's also ... I mean, this is also, of course, the metaphor for filmmaking. This is Christopher Nolan's movie about movies. This is him saying, "Here's what we do." Try to out-top each other. Here's what we do. Too insane.
Vic00:19:30Too insane. Is that what you took from it, Vic? No. I like the magic tricks.
Sonny00:19:35I like how he made the bird come back.
Vic00:19:37I like how he made the bird come back using the string, except for it was sabotaged, because they're constantly sabotaging each other. But it's so well done. I forget how Nolan ... No, you don't forget, but Nolan is so obsessed with going back and forth in time, and so that requires a little bit of explaining, because he likes that. And David Bowie is great in that as well, as Nikola Tesla.
Sonny00:19:55He's really, really good. That's my one big problem in the movie, is the ridiculous Tesla propaganda. Tesla was a fraud. Edison was great. Yeah. Edison is the villain. Edison was great. Edison is the villain. True American hero. Nikola Tesla is a con man and a fraud.
Vic00:20:10Very interesting. The other secrets. The other ... And I'm not quite sure what accent David Bowie is doing in this movie. But it worked. It was like a Hungarian ... Nondescript Eastern European. Nondescript Eastern European, but he did it so well.
JVL00:20:20God bless him. I'm going to use the Spanish accent, Jack.
Vic00:20:22Yes. So that was good. And I would say, because the problem with The Illusionist is they actually don't show you how all the tricks really work. The projection, the ghostly projections, the orange tree. So Michael's asking, "How does this work?" And I'm like, "I don't know. They're not showing you." You're just showing Penn and Teller on YouTube. It's all CGI. You know what I mean? They're not actually doing a thing, whereas in The Prestige, you actually see the bird and everything else. And so in that respect, The Illusionist sucked. Speaking of sucking, over the weekend, Hotel Transylvania III: Summer Vacation took the top spot at the box office with $44 million, followed by Ant-Man and the Wasp at $28.8 million, and in third place was Skyscraper with $25.5.
JVL00:21:03I give that an A, Sonny.
Sonny00:21:05Solid transition work.
Vic00:21:06Solid transition work.
JVL00:21:07Really?
Sonny00:21:08It sucked in both ways. Well done. And you have to follow the various levels. The levels on which it's working. It sucked because it's not good, but also it sucked because it's got Dracula.
Vic00:21:17Dracula. Thank you.
Sonny00:21:19That's really ...
Vic00:21:20That transition was developed at ... You're a professional. Thank you.
Sonny00:21:24That was figured out at 8:07 this morning. You ignored the greatest film released this weekend, though. Shock and awe. The Rob Reiner movie about the investigation ... Oh, right. How much money did that make, Sonny? Yeah, how did that do? Well, it was released on 100 screens, so it's not going to be doing in the tens of millions range. Mm-hmm. But surely ... Surely. It made $41,000.
JVL00:21:47How's that for a per screen average?
Sonny00:21:48$41,000 is about a ... Would you like me to effort that? $410 per screen average, if I'm doing my math right, which ... And tickets are a dollar. Yeah. Tickets ... Which breaks down to ... If you do the math on this, if you break it down by number of showing ... How many tickets? I would say it's something like three people per screening about ... Is that good? Something like maybe six, seven people per screening. It just depends on ... It depends on how many showings there were each day on each of these screens. Do you think it'll still be nominated? Well, it's certainly the winner of Best Picture of my heart. Mm-hmm. It won my heart. Oh. No, it was an atrocious bomb. And I assume ... You didn't see it. No, of course I didn't see it. Nobody saw it. Literally, nobody saw it. And I would assume that the 100 screens is ... The fact that it was playing on 100 screens is because it was written into the contract somewhere to get some sort of subsidy from wherever they were filming that the movie has to show on at least 100 screens around the country.
Vic00:22:53So you don't think next week it's going to expand to 3,000? No, I don't. I don't think this is going to be the same. Okay. Okay.
Sonny00:23:00But ... The talent in this film is staggering. Who is it? Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Redford. It's like a real who's who of like ... Really? Serious liberals trying to re-litigate the 2003 campaign to go to war with Iraq. I mean, it's like, guys, focus on other things. We've got other things to worry about right now.
Vic00:23:21I would say a better version of that kind of a movie was HBO's Path to War about LBJ. Do you remember this one? And Alec Baldwin plays McNamara, and Michael Gambon plays LBJ, and Clark Clifford is Donald Sutherland, and it's fantastic. Trust me on this one. General S. Moreland? Tom Skerritt. It's really, really good. That is on the note.
Guest00:23:45And Bruce McGill.
Vic00:23:47Bruce McGill is in it as Michael Ball. I mean, as George Ball, rather. It is just fantastic.
Sonny00:23:51Wasn't Bruce McGill in The Post, as well?
Vic00:23:54As McNamara? I hadn't ... No. That was Bruce Greenwood.
Sonny00:23:57Oh, Bruce Greenwood. That's right. That's right.
Vic00:24:00That's right. Bruce Greenwood. Wrong Bruce. Yes. But Skyscraper, as I mentioned, came in third place, so that's a little disconcerting. JVL. Skilling the heights. Heights! JVL, did you see it? I did not. That's pretty good, Sonny. I did see it. I think I saw it, too. Did anyone else see it?
Sonny00:24:14No.
Vic00:24:15Maybe. Okay. Somebody did see it. He's here.
JVL00:24:19In his farewell, his swan song, "Gene." Sonny, you are better at the Lucille Bluth "Gene." Can you give it to me?
?00:24:34"Gene!"
Vic00:24:36"Skyscraper" stars The Rock, who plays a security specialist and amputee. Boy, is he hopping mad. His family is stuck at the top of a Hong Kong skyscraper when criminals turn it into a towering inferno. To save them, he has to go out on a limp. But save them, he does. His family is so grateful to him, and what can he say except, "You're welcome." Also, I loved his wife, played by Nev Campbell. She's a scream. If polygamy were legal, I'd marry her too, but then we'd be a party of five. I'd give Skyscraper four stars. Bye-bye. Wait.
Sonny00:25:24Who were the other three? My family. I'm talking about my family. So it would be- Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
JVL00:25:29Gene would put a family of four.
Sonny00:25:30I gotcha. It's four, and then- I have two kids.
JVL00:25:33Another wife, second wife would be a party of five. That would be five. Yes.
?00:25:36Thank you.
Sonny00:25:37I was like, "Is it Nev Campbell and also Jennifer Love Hewitt?"
Vic00:25:41And Hannah Quinn-Livin. Okay. We'll get into that in a second.
Sonny00:25:44Oh, yeah. Sonny- Who? We'll get to that in a second. We'll get to that. You've got to see a movie just for that. Skyscraper. Let's talk about Skyscraper. You know what's interesting about Skyscraper is that it comes out almost exactly 30 years to the day after Die Hard. Almost exactly 30 years to the day, and you can see how much Hollywood has changed over the last 30 years. I mean, Die Hard is a movie about a police- -type official who has to rescue his family from a band of criminals who have taken over a giant high-rise. That's Japanese, too. It's Japanese. Yeah. A tower that is run by an Asian conglomerate. And then in Skyscraper, you have a police-type character who has to rescue his family from a band of criminals who have taken over a giant- That's exactly right. Asian conglomerate- That's exactly right. Run and owned. Skyscraper. It's really amazing how far we've come in the last 30 years.
Vic00:26:49You know what else? The only difference is, one of the important things in Die Hard was the importance of duct tape. Yeah.
Sonny00:26:58Yeah. Oh, wait a minute. No. The duct tape plays a very key role in Die Hard and also in Skyscraper. So Skyscraper is about a FBI hostage negotiator ... I guess, not really a hostage negotiator. He's more of a- Security specialist. Well, at the beginning of the film, he is a cop who is SWAT style, but except it's FBI. It wasn't really clear to me why the FBI was-
Vic00:27:21He looked like he was in military gear, too. He looked like an army guy.
Sonny00:27:23Well, no. It's actually- Was the FBI's HRT team hostage rescue task force? That sounds exact. That sounds right. But it's actually kind of fascinating to think about the real differences in this, where you have John McClane, who's just like a beat cop. He's just like, he's out there, he's taking criminals down, he's doing detective work, and in this movie, The Rock is basically like SEAL Team Six, armed to the gills, bursting into the house and taking out a guy who's got his family held hostage. In the beginning, yes. It's very much kind of fascinating to think about the militarization of cops and how this kind of plays out in the real world and on the big screen. But anyway, after that mission goes wrong, he kind of retires to a life as a security specialist. He's in Hong Kong to sign off on the opening of the biggest skyscraper in the world. It's 220 stories and the bottom 110 are shops and the top 110 are living residents. I mean, honestly, 110 stories of shops, what are on all these floors? Sounds like heaven, doesn't it, Sonny? I mean, it's like Amazon brought to life. You could just go from department to department, but the tower is very big and at the top of the tower they have the Pearl, which is you walk into it and it's ... I imagine it looked very good in 3D or whatever, which I didn't see it in. I saw it at Dolby Atmos, which I'll get into that in a second, but it goes transparent basically and you can see all of Hong Kong and it's like you're standing out in the middle of the air.
JVL00:28:56Ooh, very fancy.
Sonny00:28:59Anyway, terrorists attack and they set fire to the building and they set it up so it looks like The Rock is in on it, but he's not in. He's not in on it. He just wants to save his family who's trapped in the tower.
JVL00:29:13Why are the terrorists attacking the tower, Sonny?
Sonny00:29:15Well, I mean we could get in ... It's actually like it's kind of a slow burn to ... It's very much like Die Hard in which their motivations are ... Same motivation, really. Very similar, it turns out, but you're kind of hidden throughout. I don't want to spoil too much, but it's ...
JVL00:29:33Nobody saw this movie and nobody is going to see this movie, so you can spoil it.
Sonny00:29:36Spoil it. Yeah. So it's a gang of terrorists who are kind of headed ... Headed up by a Finn. Is he Finnish? Was he a Finnish terrorist? Bota is like ... Bota?
Vic00:29:45Bota? That makes me think of PW Bota, so South African perhaps.
Sonny00:29:48But no, but no. He's definitely Scandinavian. He has like ... The actor. Yeah. He has like a Scandinavian accent.
Vic00:29:53Roland Moeller is Danish.
Sonny00:29:54Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. So anyway, the villain is a ... He's a Finn or a Dane or something, or a Norwegian maybe. Mm-hmm. Scandinavian accent is what? Who is working ... Right. Exactly. Who is working with ... Working with, I guess, the Hong Kong criminal syndicates who are trying to extort the owner of the business. They're trying to get a hard drive back. Anyway, all of this is beside the point, because the best villain in the film is an Asian woman by the name of ... What was her name?
Vic00:30:32Hannah Quinlivan.
Sonny00:30:33Hannah Quinlivan, who is basically doing kind of Jackie Chan kind of ... Cheese, cheese, cheese. Jet Li. She's like a Jet Li character.
Vic00:30:41Yes. She is half white, half Chinese, and 100% hot.
Sonny00:30:45She is very, very attractive, and she does martial arts, and shoots people, and just a pretty hot ... Please shoot me. I was like, "I don't mind dying." Yeah. Anyway, she should have been the main villain. She needed more screen time.
Vic00:30:58She lived, and I think maybe she escapes for Skyscraper 2, direct to video.
Sonny00:31:03No, she doesn't escape. She gets arrested. Yeah. Remember, Neve Campbell kicks her in the face. No, no. She escapes in the future, in the sequel. Yeah. There will be no Skyscraper 2, because Skyscraper 1 is- That's why I said direct to video. ... is not going to make any money. Anyway, back to the movie. I actually ... I'll be honest, this is a perfectly acceptable generic action film. I had a good time. It was actually pretty impressive, and the Dolby Atmos sound waves are crashing into my head. It felt like I was there. It felt like a giant big screen, very nice projection. I have no problem whatsoever with this film, except for the fact that it's totally not totally generic and disposable. If you're looking to waste an hour and 50 minutes in the theater, this is a thing that you should go see. It's not high art. It's not going to change your life, but it was fun. I like The Rock. The Rock's pretty great. The Rock's pretty great.
Vic00:31:55He doesn't stop working, does he? That man is in a million movies. He's one of these people who, you know, he's the kind of person when you say, "Do you ever rest?" and they say, "You can rest when you're dead."
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Vic00:33:38Thank you, JVL. Do you have any other skyscraper rock thoughts? I feel like we did an episode on The Rock, and it was probably another movie that I did or did not see, and I can't remember. It was probably-
Sonny00:33:52Rampage.
Vic00:33:53Was it Rampage? Rampage. Or Jumanji. You might have skipped Jumanji, and it made a lot of money.
Sonny00:33:58We did skip Jumanji, and it was one of the five highest grossing films for three months in a row. No, I think it was Rampage. Rampage that you skipped, maybe? Yeah. I don't remember. He was also in, what else was he in? It was Jumanji, Rampage- Journey to the Center of the Earth, but that was a few years back. You guys keep talking.
Vic00:34:17And I noticed on IMDB that he has on tap, supposedly, a reboot of Big Trouble in Little
Sonny00:34:25China. He's got about a hundred things on tap right now.
Vic00:34:27And Doc Savage. No, he's- Supposedly. I don't know if that's actually going to happen. It's interesting because- Baywatch. Baywatch. Baywatch, that's right. Thank you. That's what it was. Now it's like 17 years after 9/11. I was thinking there were a lot of movies that you could not do, or a lot of movies that had to be fixed and redone after 9/11. This is a kind of movie that would have been very, very problematic in the year or two or three, or maybe even five years after 9/11. But now I don't think it ... It doesn't have that same sort of resonating effect when you're watching it. A little bit. I mean, you do a lot of it, but so many kids who are seeing this movie now don't have any
Sonny00:35:03memory of it. The movie is most interesting to me, again. I was kind of joking about this earlier, but the movie is most interesting to me as a kind of lens to look through to see how Hollywood has changed over the last 30 years. I mean, the ridiculousness of having the Finnish gangster playing muscle for nameless and faceless mob bosses who could be Russian or Chinese or American or Italian. Or Chinese syndicates, as they used to say. Chinese syndicates. Or the kind of refusal to have an actual villain, somebody who is Russian or Chinese. A chief mastermind. But you're seeing the mercenaries. They're not even terrorists. They're mercenaries. Mercenaries. No terrorism. It's all about trying to steal money. It is kind of fascinating from that perspective. And also, again, Die Hard was kind of premised on this kind of Japanese scare, like Japan is taking over. That's right. The world. Nakatomi Plaza is like the beachhead of the Japanese real estate invasion.
Vic00:36:13Because they were buying everything. Do you remember?
Sonny00:36:15They bought Rockefeller Center. Right. And instead, that action has all been transported to Hong Kong, where they're just building massive buildings in Hong Kong, because that's where you can get it done. And that is where Hollywood's business is moving to, is they're making a movie that is set in China that will appeal to Chinese audiences. And it's all very interesting to me.
Vic00:36:38Which is why I thought it was interesting. It didn't do as well in China at the moment as I thought it was going to. There was a story, I think, in Variety about that, how ...
JVL00:36:46It has not opened in China.
Vic00:36:48It has not? Or they're just tracking it? I'm looking at the foreign ... The tracking is low. Is that what they're saying? The tracking is probably low is what they're saying. It's 40 million in foreign grosses so far. Nothing. It has not opened in China. Okay. We'll see. It should do. I don't know why it wouldn't do well. Sonny, question. The sphere. What is happening in the sphere? Because it's not ... Turbines generate. The turbines generate the power for the building. Yes?
Sonny00:37:11Yes. So what's going on ... They have an arc reactor? No.
JVL00:37:15The building is powered by wind turbines.
Sonny00:37:16I don't know where all the wind comes from. Giant. Where?
JVL00:37:20Where are the turbines?
Sonny00:37:21In the tower. 220 floors up. Inside the tower? In the tower, there are turbines. Because 220 floors up, it's a lot of wind. Inside the tower. Yeah. That's where all the wind comes from, is inside the tower.
Vic00:37:30Well, that part is exposed and then ... So that part is ... There's no covering on that part that's turning. It's just a giant ... It's like a windmill. Think of a windmill on a building. It would be like a window on a building.
JVL00:37:39This sounds like a setup for a Prince of Persia-style jump through the turbine. He did.
Sonny00:37:46Well, this movie ... He did.
JVL00:37:48It's funny that you say that, because while I was watching it ...
Sonny00:37:49Very predictable movie. All I could think is, "This movie feels like a video game." Because it was all about The Rock trying to figure out how to get into the building. The first half of the movie is The Rock trying to get back into the building. He's on the outside. There's the fire on the 90th floor or 96th floor or whatever, and then he's got to jump above the fire line. To get into the building. And then you have the timed jumps. There's an escort mission. There's all sorts of different things. He's got to figure out the puzzles. Oh, which piece goes here? Which ... Right. It is about the level of a video game plot.
JVL00:38:21Sounds worse than a generic action movie. It was still dark. So, put this on the other end of the balance scale with Rampage. Which is better? I thought this was better than Rampage. I like this more than Rampage.
Sonny00:38:35And I like Rampage fine. I like both these movies. Again, I'm not expecting anything from them.
Vic00:38:40So, what's going on in the sphere, then? What's that all about? What's with the mirrors?
Sonny00:38:44You know, the guy ... The head of ... The guy who built the building, who's played by Lao ... Chin Han. He's played by Lao from the dark ... Lao left America, and then he went back to ... I'm very good at calculating. ... Hong Kong, and he built this tower.
JVL00:38:57I'm sorry. I'm just whipping out all of my Dark Knight impersonations, and I had nothing for that.
Vic00:39:02That's very good.
Sonny00:39:04Mr. Dent. It's going to be ... He says it's going to be the biggest tourist attraction in Hong Kong, and I guess ... I honestly don't understand what ... You go up there, and you're like, "Oh, I'm above the city."
Vic00:39:16Right, and look over it. But the ending with the mirrors reminded me ... If you've ever seen the Bruce Lee movie, Enter the Dragon, the ending is the final showdown between Bruce Lee and Han in this room of mirrors. So, you can't tell who's who in this whole thing, right up to the end.
Sonny00:39:30And there's also a John Wick 2 kind of throwback, I feel. Goldeneye? Or Goldeneye. No, no.
JVL00:39:38Mammoth Golden Gun. Sorry.
Sonny00:39:40Mammoth Golden Gun. Mammoth Golden Gun. Right. My complaint about this is that there's no actual logic to where the people are showing up. In a mirror, it's like, okay ... I'd be hitting every mirror. There's no question about it. He's just ... If it's a mirror, it's like, okay, there's a reflection, and it's coming from ... You've got to find ... But with these TV panel mirror things, it was like, he could be anywhere. Anyone could be anywhere, and the directions don't make any sense. There was a logical flow to it that didn't work. It didn't work for me.
Vic00:40:07But you know what was great? It was great to see Nev Campbell after a seven-year hiatus. It was self-imposed because, yes, she wanted to spend more time with the family, and now she's back. And you know what? She still looks good. She still looks ... In some respects, kind of better. Question. Better.
JVL00:40:24Yeah. Do you find Nev Campbell, who is a staple of your adolescence ...
Vic00:40:28No. No. I was already in my 20s. Sorry.
Sonny00:40:33Let's pretend she's a staple of your adolescence. Okay.
JVL00:40:36Do you find her now playing middle-aged mom roles to be jarring to your sense of yourself?
Vic00:40:42No. No. No. Because I've already come to grips with my aging. Okay. And so I see her, and I'm like, "Yeah." Sometimes I find it disturbing when I see people and they're older, and it reminds you how old you are. But in Nev Campbell's case, no. And she was really good. She was also very physical. Plus, you've always been of the ...
JVL00:41:01Well, she's a dancer. Her background is dance. There you go. She came to acting through dance.
Sonny00:41:07There you go.
JVL00:41:08So there's no reason she shouldn't have been doing more physical roles her whole
Sonny00:41:10life. Yes. You've always been of the kind of Matthew McConaughey and dazed and confused school of ...
JVL00:41:17We get older, but they stay the same. Exactly. High school girls. Question. Yeah. Yes. I posed this to you over the weekend, and I will recycle it here. If you were to rank movie characters with appendages ... The Rock in Skyscraper, Rose McGowan in Death Machine 3000 or whatever the movie
Vic00:41:42is where she has a Gatling gun, is it Gatling Gun Legs, the Grindhouse movie.
?00:41:47Grindhouse.
Sonny00:41:48Grindhouse. Yeah. Well, The Rock. Certainly. I mean, he's ... The real problem is that neither of these characters are actually amputees. Why are they taking work from ... From people who genuinely are. People who ... Actors who don't have legs and need jobs. It's a real problem, if you think about it.
Vic00:42:07I remember seeing Gary Sinise in Forrest Gump, and this was when CGI was just coming in, and I was so confused. What did they say? I heard they used mirrors and stuff, but still, I go, "That looks like a real stump. Oh, my gosh." Maybe he was an amputee, but he had prosthetics during the other parts of the movie. It was so confusing, and then you find out, "Oh, no. Anybody can do this now."
JVL00:42:31You were a high school senior, weren't you?
Vic00:42:32I think I was ... Yeah, I was old. I was old. I was old. Older? No, I was older than that. I was older than that. I went to see it with Buddy Todd.
JVL00:42:39Did they put prosthetics on amputee Gary Sinise so that he could walk through those scenes? I'm thinking. The thought was only for four seconds.
Vic00:42:47The thought was for four seconds, and I was just trying to figure it all out. Did Arnold Schwarzenegger fly a Harrier in True Lies? It looked like it. You know? It's acting. It's acting. They can do all sorts of things. Really, they can do anything. In terms of ... Are you a disaster, JV, are you a disaster flick kind of a guy, like Towering Bruno? Did you watch any of those movies?
JVL00:43:07Or ...
Vic00:43:08Love them.
JVL00:43:09Yeah. Yeah. All of the ... Most of the Dean ... Help me, I'm losing it.
Vic00:43:18Day After Tomorrow type. Oh, that stuff. Yeah, sure. That's whole planet. What are the names?
JVL00:43:23Yeah. Disaster porn? I don't know it. No, the directors. The directors. The Roland Emmerich and Dean ... Yes, Roland Emmerich. Emmerich and Dean Devlin. Dean Devlin. Dean Devlin. Yeah. Love that stuff. I would even take ... I think you could even say that there is a little sliver of overlap in the Venn diagram circles of siege movie with disaster movie, so that something like Olympus Has Fallen is almost ... A little of both. ... a disaster movie. Yeah, a disaster in the White House. Yeah. Because it's all ... The idea, these things should be, when they're working right, like little mouse traps where you spend the first third of the movie setting up so that the audience understands the mechanics of everything. But then, after you fully understand, it's like you pull the pin on it and it's just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, watching everything set up. Right. Right. Yeah. Would you agree?
Sonny00:44:15Do you guys have favorite disaster movies? I don't know. Do you guys like disaster movies? I actually don't even really like disaster movies. I don't like The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure or any of those. They never really did anything for me.
Vic00:44:24Towering Inferno became problematic in the mid-'90s. Towering Inferno was ... You wouldn't see it anywhere because the firefighter who comes to save the day was played by O.J. Simpson. You really didn't see him as much. But Towering Inferno is good. Airport, there's a whole airport series, right? I mean, it was airport 75, 78. I have airport 77 on VHS, and that's where the plane goes underwater, and Jimmy Stewart was in that plane. I think it was like, "Oh, this could be one of his last roles." It was funny because it was supposed to be a fancy plane where they had an Atari version of a video game on the plane. It was a big deal that she's playing this thing, and Kathleen Quinlan was in it, I think. As a kid, you saw that and thought it was weird. "This is the greatest thing in the world." "I've got to get on this plane." But plane underwater is a scary idea.
Sonny00:45:10That's another thing where it's kind of interesting. What was scaring people in the '70s? You know what was scary in the '70s? Getting hijacked. Yeah, yeah. By terrorists. That's right. That's right. All that has changed.
Vic00:45:21Then Poseidon Adventure, of course, ship cruising became a big deal in the '70s. All sorts of cruising became a big deal in the '70s. As one of our listeners pointed out, there's now a Pacino movie called Cruising. Shrainer. Really? Wow, Sonny. That really excited you. Boy, you talk about cruising, and then your ice balls popped out of your cup.
Sonny00:45:44I'm trying to cool ... I've already taken my jacket off. I'm trying to get some ice to chew on here. It's a billion degrees in this room.
Vic00:45:51Put the cubes under your armpits. But Poseidon Adventure. But Poseidon Adventure was when you're on a ship ... Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman. And everything's upside down. Shirley MacLaine? Not only is ... Yes, it's capsized. Shirley Jones? No. The big Shirley. I cannot believe I remember. All effort. I can't remember her name. You talk. All effort. Yeah. And she's there with Ernest Borgnine in Red Buttons or Red Skelton. Oh, yes. I get confused which red it is. And yes, Gene Hackman, as you mentioned. And the captain of the ship was played by Leslie Nielsen. Straight. I mean, not a comedy, obviously. But yes, upside down ship was a terrifying thing. And then there was the remake. Do you remember the remake of Poseidon Adventure? Shelly Winters. Shelly Winters.
JVL00:46:34And Richard Brower was in the remake, right?
Vic00:46:35And Kurt Russell. And Kurt Russell in the Gene Hackman role, I guess. And Richard Dreyfuss playing a gay, I'm sorry I'm going to say a gay cruiser, a gay passenger whose partner had left him. He had been dumped. And he was depressed. But he's not gay.
Sonny00:46:54How could he play a gay ... Awkward.
Vic00:46:58Moving right along.
JVL00:46:59There probably aren't any gay actors, actually, to be able to have done a part like that. So I actually don't fault. You don't fault the filmmakers for that choice, then? Because where are you going to find an actor in Hollywood who is actually gay to be able to play the part of a gay man?
Sonny00:47:11It would be like trying to find a Russian actress to play a Russian-born spy. Why would you do that when you could just get Jennifer Lawrence or Scarlett Johansson?
Vic00:47:21Let me ask you. Well, this goes back to ... I always talk about Scarface with Al Pacino, where there's not a single sort of a Cuban or Hispanic American in any of the main roles. Everybody's Italian. Yeah. Everyone's Italian. Or what's his name? Chris Bauer, I think, is the other guy who's Jewish. He's Jewish, I think, and then Al Pacino, and F. Murray Abraham, really? F. Murray Abraham is such a ... and all these other guys there. Frank Loggia. Come on. What's going on here? And Mary Elizabeth Bastion-Todeo. So why don't ...
JVL00:47:50It doesn't work. Sonny, why don't you like disaster movies?
Vic00:47:54They just have never really done anything for me. I don't know. I just ... Did you like Armageddon, Deep Impact? What did we ... Why do I say we? Why did we like better ... We saw both.
JVL00:48:03Yes, we did. I believe we preferred Armageddon at the time. I've never re-watched either. I think we did. But in my mind ... But just barely.
Sonny00:48:14Yeah, just barely. But just barely. Armageddon is amazing. Armageddon is fantastic. It's fantastic.
Vic00:48:19Deep Impact is fine. It's fantastic unless you suffer a seizure from all the quick four second cuts.
Sonny00:48:23Fine. Look, you gotta be tough ... With the risk. You gotta be tough to survive in this world of ours.
Vic00:48:27There's so much cutting. Deep Impact ... The one I really have strong ...
JVL00:48:30I'll tell you the problem was ... Strong feelings about is Volcano versus ... Dante's peak. Volcano is clearly ... Volcano is a modern masterpiece. Volcano is amazing. Despite the ending ... They're all the same color. The ending is the best part, Vic. Oh, it's the lesson.
Sonny00:48:41The lesson learned. It shows that we're all the same. When we're covered in ash. Right. And all of a sudden ... In disaster. In disaster. We all come together. Come on.
JVL00:48:50The fire chief ... Oh. Oh. Carrying the woman through the lava as he melts and keeps shaking his head and saying the Hail Mary. John Carroll. John Carroll Lynch. Yes. John Carroll Lynch who studied at Catholic University. Come on. Yes. John Carroll.
Vic00:49:02John Carroll.
JVL00:49:03John Carroll. Did you not cry while you were watching that?
Vic00:49:05And he sang the Hail Mary. Yes. That's a little bit ... Right.
JVL00:49:09That was very powerful. Anne Heche. This is back in ... Anne Heche. If Anne Heche hadn't been crazy, she would have been a giant movie star.
Vic00:49:14She's a great actress. I think the problem I had with Deep Impact was Taylor Leone. I was so glad that she got wiped out with Maximilian Schell on the beach.
JVL00:49:22Tell me about that. But that was one of my favorite, actually, an underrated Morgan Freeman performance. Oh, as president of the United States. Morgan Freeman as president. But not just president, but as sort of a hard ass president. Yes. And he has that great line with her. He says to her, "It may look like we have each other over the same barrel, but I promise you, it only looks like that."
Vic00:49:41Do you remember where she gets rear-ended is like on the Whitehurst Freeway? What? Oh, sorry. Her car. Her car gets ... Anyway, yes.
JVL00:49:50I don't think I remember that. So Victorino, what are your favorite ...
Vic00:49:54I really like ... You love the '70s ones, right? Yeah, I do. I do. And I think Poseidon Adventure is my favorite, because it does ... You do constantly think in your mind, how would I do things differently? You know, would I be with the rest of these people at the bottom of the ballroom? You know, work your way up, which everything is reversed. The best thing to have been is probably in the ship's galley, where you would have been inside. As we know, all those people are on deck one and two, if you work there with no windows. Somebody did ... Or beyond. Could you have been on the deck, like on the balcony, as it tips over and then jumped into the water? Oh, there was a sequel? Beyond the Poseidon Adventure? Beyond the Poseidon Adventure? What? Yeah, yeah. Did you see it? Rogue Waves.
Sonny00:50:37I did not see the Rogue ... Rogue Wave 2. Yes.
?00:50:39Should it flip over again?
JVL00:50:40With Michael Caine. Of course. Sally Field. Yeah. Why Michael ... Telly Savalas. Why Michael Caine? Because it's a paycheck. Wow. Shirley Jones came back, playing the same ... Shirley Jones or Shelley Winters? Oh, I'm sorry. Shirley Jones is there. I'm looking down the list. Okay. It's confusing. I'm looking to see who else. It's very confusing. And Mark Harmon? Mark Harmon. Oh my goodness.
?00:51:04Okay.
Vic00:51:05Wow. Do we have any other ...
JVL00:51:07That's really ... Yes. One other, one other, just a taxonomy question.
Vic00:51:10Just like there's Airport ... I think it was in Airport 79, the Concorde one. I mean, so just, you know, constantly ...
JVL00:51:16Oh, Rollercoaster?
Vic00:51:17We're just going through the movies now.
JVL00:51:19There's a Rollercoaster? I'm done. I'm done. So if, again, on the Venn diagram, where you have siege movies and disaster movies, where would you place something like Jaws? Or, not Jaws, but like the Jaws sequels, which is a animal disaster movie, a predator-prey movie. Is it kind of similar? No? I've seen ...
Vic00:51:45I'm Ron Burgundy. I've seen Jaws 1, 2, and 3. I saw Jaws 3 in 3D in the movie theater, because you had to get the glasses, I think, from Burger King. What? Well, there was some of that, you know? But Lea Thompson was in Jaws 3D with Lou Gossett Jr. and Dennis Clay.
JVL00:52:00Academy Award winner. Academy Award winner. The winner.
Vic00:52:03Louis Gossett Jr. Was it from Iron Eagle? Is that where you got the Academy Award from? I'll answer that. No, I think we know where it was from. Yeah. Okay. So, there you go. I think we're just asking that.
Sonny00:52:12Yeah. I think animal movies count as disaster. Count as disaster. Yeah. Like, Jaws is basically a disaster film.
Vic00:52:17It's a disaster. Plus, it's a water park in Jaws 3. It's a horror film. I don't know. In Jaws 4, it's the shark that has ... It's intelligent, and it stalks Sheriff Brody's wife. It stalks. It's a stalking shark, and that's where Michael Caine was, because they asked him, "Where were you when you found out you were nominated for the Academy Award, or you had won the Academy Award for Hannah and Her Sisters?" He goes, "Well, I was filming in the Bahamas, Jaws 4." Eh, okay. It's another paycheck.
JVL00:52:42How excited are we for The Meg? I saw that trailer. Saw the trailer for that. Yeah?
Sonny00:52:48That looks terrible. It does not look good, does it? It looks like the worst thing I've ever seen.
Vic00:52:51You know what I don't like? I don't like that they switched music to Bobby Dance: Beyond the Sea, because now how are you supposed to feel? Is this funny or not funny?
Sonny00:52:56Yeah. I want to be scared. It looks like they tried to make a real Sharknado. Yes. We want to do a Sharknado, but have it in movie theaters. Megalodon. The Meg. The book was supposed to be very good, but that was like 17 script minutes ago.
Vic00:53:10Okay.
JVL00:53:11With the book.
?00:53:12It's something I would get on Amazon.
JVL00:53:13If you had bought it on Prime Day, it would have been very, very reasonably priced. Okay. Let's pull the plug on this.
Vic00:53:21Really? The whole episode. Corrections, additions, anything? Sonny? No.
JVL00:53:26Sonny Burch, anything? No. Nothing? Oh. Oh. Okay.
Vic00:53:32Moving on. He didn't want ... Okay.
JVL00:53:34Fine. I don't really want to talk about that. Okay. Fine. Sonny Burch. The Meg, by the way, by Steve Alton, while we're doing corrections, is available
Vic00:53:40on Kindle even past the Prime Day window for only $5.99. That's all the time we're giving through this episode. Thank God. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at victorinamanis@sonnybunch. @JBLash. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard under podcasts. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
?00:54:0225 minutes of trailers. That's what it was this time. Yeah. Not 22? No. Because 22 is a standard.
JVL00:54:08This is the one knock on the Alamo Drafthouse, is that you can only skip the first 10 minutes of trailers.
Vic00:54:20What do you mean you can only skip?
JVL00:54:22I mean that after the first 10 minutes of trailers, they close the doors and your ass isn't getting in there.
Vic00:54:26What? Really? Yup.
Sonny00:54:29There's no late entry into Alamo? Nope. Wow. I like that a lot. I don't like people stumbling around trying to find their seats. In the trailers? But it's assigned seating though, isn't it? Yeah. Right? It is assigned seating. Yeah. I'm actually okay with it. I don't like people wandering around, coming in late like bums.
JVL00:54:44Well, I'm happy to sit through the extra trailers because you can get your kale Caesar chicken salad plugged in there.
Sonny00:54:52I'm surprised you didn't make an effort to go see Skyscraper in the great new Alamo Drafthouse theater. Yeah.
JVL00:54:58It was a busy weekend. Just a busy weekend. A busy weekend. You're buying thousands of dollars worth of baseball cards.
Sonny00:55:05When you said 300 cards, I was doing the math in my head. I was like, "That's a lot of cards."
JVL00:55:12Well, as you remember from your youth, I mean, how did you buy your first house? You sold a few of your baseball cards and there it was.
Sonny00:55:19I sold my Cal Ripken rookie card and I was like, "I've got my down payment." I actually just took it into the bank. I took it into the bank and I said, "Look what I've got." You gave it to the mortgage. You just gave it to the mortgage company. "Here's my down payment." Here's the title to your house. And the agent looked back at me and he said, "Oh, I'm sure this is fine."
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