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#148. The Substandard on Venom, Texas, and Watches
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Dudes Chatting — Watches, Texas, and Venom: JVL opens by unveiling his new Seiko SARX055 "baby snowflake" titanium watch, purchased after a chance visit to the Omega boutique at Tysons Corner with friends from the second listener meetup (which included a priest, Father Harrison Eyre). Sonny is debating which vintage soundtrack LPs to pair with his five framed Kubrick albums in his new basement (2001, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange). Vic returned from Dallas, where he ate ten fried foods at the Texas State Fair — including fried butter and fried pizza — before dinner at Del Frisco's involving a 16-ounce New York strip, lobster mac and cheese, and multiple cocktails, concluding with a quart of Blue Bell ice cream. The group calculates his total day's calorie intake at comfortably five figures. The second half of the episode is devoted to Venom: all three saw it. Sonny and JVL agree on a split verdict — the first hour (origin mechanics, plot setup) is stultifying and generic, but the final 30–40 minutes, in which Tom Hardy does a one-man buddy comedy with himself playing both Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote, is genuinely entertaining and makes them want a sequel. Vic enjoyed it more straightforwardly and appreciates Tom Hardy's ability to make unlikable characters watchable. The group ranks Tom Hardy performances and discusses why he so rarely gets proper leading-man billing despite being a near-perfect film star. A sidebar discusses the fractured Sony/Marvel relationship and what it means for the Spider-Man IP.
Reviews: Venom — mixed. Terrible first hour, entertaining final act. Hardy's performance alone justifies a ticket; everything surrounding him does not.
Box Office: Venom opened at #1 with $80 million. A Star is Born debuted at #2 with $43 million. Smallfoot fell to #3 with $14.4 million.
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00We will eat both your arms, and then both of your legs, and then we will eat your face right off your head. You will be this armless, legless, faceless thing, won't you?
Vic00:00:11Rolling down the street, like a turd, in the wind. Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Substandard, sponsored by Quip Electric Toothbrush and 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 a 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? Lots going on with you, please. Happy, happy watch day. Oh! Happy watch day! Is that your new watch? Wow! This is my new watch. Let's take a look at that. It is the, would you like to hold it? Sure.
JVL00:01:06The Seiko, S-A-R-X-O-5-5, commonly known as the baby snowflake. It has an undecorated 6R15D movement, which is an evolutionary, not a revolutionary step above the 6R15C movement. It has a great number of rams, very, very many rams, made of titanium. It's very light. Made of titanium. And the best part is, Shannon has just learned about it, just now.
Sonny00:01:37Question. Yes. Why aren't there any numbers? How am I supposed to know what the time is? There's just little lines. Is it like a sundial? Do I hold it up to the sun, and then the lines show where the time is?
Vic00:01:52You know, Sonny, if you talk to Seiko, you might help them out here with that, like an innovation. They haven't discovered it yet.
Sonny00:01:58I mean, there's not even Roman numerals. It's just little dashes. There's a nine here. Is it nine o'clock? There's a nine. They are indices. What's the nine? There's a nine.
JVL00:02:07Is that what time it is? So what you are referring to is the Arabic numerals, which is what I take it you like, which is a more common feature of field watches, aviation watches, and train watches. What's a train watch? Do you know that the advent of modern timekeeping was actually brought about because of the railroads?
Sonny00:02:26Well, because the trains had to run on time. Ah. No, no, no.
Vic00:02:29Not because they had to run on time. That was a great answer.
JVL00:02:30I thought that was it. So prior to the railroad, places kept intensely local time based on the position of the sun at noon, which meant that for every 200 miles you went, noon was slightly different than it was 200 miles east or west. Once you had trains, this became very important because if everybody was using 9-15, but not on the same standard of when 9-15 was, the trains would run into each other. Oh. Well, you don't want that. Gosh. And so standardized timekeeping is a function of the railroad. And so the train watches were actually very important. And so there was an actual standard for the watches. They had to have a white dial. They had to have Arabic numerals. They couldn't have indices or something like that. And they had to be certified every year, annually, as chronometers. Who did the certifying?
Sonny00:03:21Was there like a certification guy who just like went from town to town and was like, give me your train watch?
JVL00:03:27No. I think they would come. It was a company that did it. I think it might have been Ball. Our friend of the show, Jason, will correct me on this. Anyway.
Vic00:03:37That's amazing. That is interesting. It puts 310 to Yuma in a whole different light.
Sonny00:03:43We're three minutes into the show, and I've already learned more than I have on literally every other show of this podcast combined.
JVL00:03:48Well, you know who else learned something? A man by the name of Kenny. I went out on Wednesday night with myself and some of the friends of the show. You had visitors.
Vic00:03:59That's the second meetup, Sonny. Second meetup already. It's like a whole little universe over there. Some members of the Substandard Expanded Universe.
JVL00:04:05It's like an expanded universe. And we went out to dinner at Maggiano's at Tyson's Corner, and by total chance, there was an Omega boutique not 20 yards away from the Maggiano's. And so I went in there with my buddy Steve White, and we looked around, and there was a gentleman named Kenny who worked at the Omega boutique, and I would say that I dazzled him. With my knowledge, as I was explaining the coaxial movement and the history of the coaxial movement to Steven and explaining to him about what made the meteorite dial of the gray side of the moon so special and the incredibly complicated process of manufacturing this all-ceramic case of the planet ocean big blue. And Kenny, I think, was a little bit afraid for his job because he had nothing to add to all the knowledge I was dropping. So all I would just say that I now have a backup plan for when all this stuff stops. For when all this goes away. When all this goes away. You know what? I'm marching over to the Tyson's Corner Amiga boutique and putting in my application.
Vic00:05:04And I'll be down the road at the Tyson's Ritz as the concierge because that's what I'm going to be when this ends. I want to be a concierge and help people get reservations and things like that.
JVL00:05:14You'd be very good at that. I know. I do it all the time. So I have a real question that arose. Where's Sonny going to be when this ends? I don't know. I was just trying to think of that.
Sonny00:05:22What am I going to do? I'm going to be a blogger. I'll be in a ditch.
Vic00:05:25No, he'll be working at the theater. He'll be working at the theater, taking tickets. Taking tickets. Scanning, scanning. Sorry.
JVL00:05:32So we had a group of six people at Magianos. And the option they tried pushing on us. Were they all? Were they all?
Vic00:05:38By the way, I'm sorry. Were they all Substanda?
JVL00:05:40All of them were Substanda listeners? Oh my goodness. Yes. One of them was a priest. Oh, yes. Of course. Father Harrison Eyre, who is still smarting over the way you mispronounced his name. What is it? Eyre. A-Y-R-E. Oh, I thought it was Ayres. No. Oh. Now you've done it twice. There's an extra decade. Eight in purgatory.
Vic00:05:58Bless me, Father Harrison.
JVL00:05:59Okay, go ahead. So six people. The Magianos staff wanted us to do the family-style meal. And the family-style meal. I mean, first of all, I don't like the idea of family-style meals. I know. Because I don't want other people touching. You know what I want is my own plate. But I was intrigued. Because what the family-style meal entitles you to is a selection of two starters, two entrees, and two desserts. And so I proposed that we hold a. A draft for our dinner. Six people. Each person gets to select. One off the board.
Sonny00:06:33Well, that's not really a draft. I mean, it's not like you're competing against each other. Well, sure you are. The draft is competitive.
JVL00:06:39Because you've got to make sure that it's things that you want to eat that wind up on the menu that is served to your table.
Sonny00:06:44But it's not like you can influence what the other people are drafting.
JVL00:06:47No, you can't. That's what I'm saying.
Sonny00:06:48But it's not competitive. You're just saying, like, this is what I want. It's just like ordering. But you only get one thing that you want.
JVL00:06:53And so you've got to think about, well, wait a minute. If I really want the chicken parm, what are the other things that I want? What are the chances that somebody else will take the chicken parm for me so that I don't need to take it and I can spend my pick on the tiramisu?
Sonny00:07:03Why don't you see? But here's the problem with this is you could just do it collaboratively. And then you could actually get all the things you want. But that's no different. Don't rain on his parade, Sonny. That is no different than everybody just talking through what they want.
JVL00:07:14That defeats the whole purpose of it being an actual draft. So how did it work out? How did it work out? It worked out that they were down with the idea of the draft, but we couldn't figure out the draft order without doing a pick numbers. You got to pick. You got to pick. And we didn't have the paper to do this.
Sonny00:07:29I'm sure you can get like a random number generator on your phone. Probably a random number generator app. Probably, but we abandoned that. We didn't do it. So what happened? Did you all just end up ordering individually?
JVL00:07:44Everybody and I went full carb.
Sonny00:07:47What'd you get?
JVL00:07:47Oh my gosh. I was going to say.
Sonny00:07:49Is there anything without carbs? Probably. You probably could get like grilled fish or something. But I figured, you know.
JVL00:07:55Garden salad. I went. Carb. Crazy. It was amazing. I had lasagna. I had the bread. I had bread. That bread is so good.
Vic00:08:03On top of the pasta, you had the bread. Then I had dessert.
JVL00:08:08I had tiramisu for dessert. It was just like ladyfingers soaked in alcohol. It was delicious. Tiramisu.
Vic00:08:14Love it. Passe. As you can say, it's passe.
Sonny00:08:16It's not as good as like cheesecake. Cheesecake is the king of. But you can get cheesecake anywhere.
Vic00:08:20You can get tiramisu anywhere. Following your pesto parm and it's $19.92. Go. Okay. Anyway.
JVL00:08:28That sounds lovely.
Vic00:08:29It was great. I hope we do a meetup again. Maybe we could do a meetup here in close to the office, Sonny. What do you think about that? We can show up. We can go to.
Sonny00:08:38JBL could take everyone to like the, what's it? The Heavy Seas Ale House. Heavy Seas Ale House. Everybody could have. And then we could hear about it next week on the show.
JVL00:08:48I'm sorry. I was just a little nervous about bringing you out with a priest, Sonny. I thought it might be uncomfortable.
Sonny00:08:53I burst into flames before, JBL. It's not a big deal. It's not the end of the world.
JVL00:08:59It burns.
Sonny00:09:00It was great, though. Father Harrison came over to our house.
JVL00:09:03He said mass for our house. He blessed our house. Did confession at my house, which was lovely. And he even blessed the dishwasher.
Sonny00:09:09Wait, he blessed the house. Is this like the Amityville Horror? Isn't that exorcism? Isn't that a house blessing?
Vic00:09:17House blessings, when you get a new house, you get a house blessing. Or you probably didn't have a house blessing when you moved in.
JVL00:09:22We did not. No, we did not.
Vic00:09:24Sonny, how are you? Sonny's still pretty. He's still processing. He's still processing.
Sonny00:09:28I'm fine. What's going on?
Vic00:09:29Do you want us to talk about? Yeah, what's going on, Sonny?
Sonny00:09:32Question. Yeah. So, in my basement, where I'm currently decorating, this is what consumes all of my free time at this point. I have a series of vintage soundtrack records, LPs. Oh. Vinyl. Vinyl. That I have framed, because I don't have a record player. I'm not a hipster. But I do like the art. I do like the art of them. So, it's basically what I do. What I have is, I have five, I think, Stanley Kubrick LPs. I'm sorry. You have framed the actual vinyl? No, no. I framed the cover. The cover. Like, I put the cover. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is the vinyl inside those? Yes, the vinyls. I mean, the records are all there. Like, I could play all of these in theory if I wanted to. Which ones? Let's see. What do I have? I've got 2001. Of course. Barry Lyndon. The Shining, which was actually the hardest one to track down. Oh, my gosh. The Shining LP that I have is actually a German issue. So, if you look at the actual track listings on the back, they're all in German. I was like, oh, wow. But that one was actually kind of tough to get. Full Metal Jacket and I'm missing one. A Clockwork Orange. So, anyway.
Vic00:10:43Clockwork Orange has a lot of good music on there.
Sonny00:10:45It does. It does. So, anyway. Again, this is all for decorative purposes. It adds a little bit of vintage flair to the proceedings. But I have a lot of space left on the wall. And I'm trying to figure out who I want to pair the Kubrick with. And I wanted to ask you guys what you thought. Should I go with Spielberg and get, like, say, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, Indiana Jones. More LP art. Not, like, one sheets or anything. Well, I have one sheets, too. I mean, this is just one portion of the room. I'll show you a picture next week. But basically, what I have is a space that is literally 13 inches high. So, it's, like, the perfect space to match LPs. Understood. But I'm trying to figure out. So, should I do Spielberg? Maybe I could do a composer instead. I could do, like, Vangelis or John Williams or Tangerine Dream. A lot of good Tangerine Dream soundtracks out there. From back in the day, yes, that's true. Thoughts? I'm asking for advice here.
Vic00:11:53You could do Hans Zimmer. Hans Zimmer's great.
Sonny00:11:56You could do A.I. The problem with this, see, the problem with this is that it is hard to track down more, basically, anything from after 1988 or so. They just didn't do it anymore.
JVL00:12:08They don't really make, but you can get some.
Sonny00:12:11They have, like, you can get, like, the Inception album. So, if I wanted to do Zimmer, I'm pretty sure I could get, like, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The problem is I already have a Nolan wall. I don't want to, like, double up there.
Vic00:12:23Ennio Morricone is another one.
Sonny00:12:25Oh, that's not a bad choice, actually. Yeah, it's good. It's got a lot of good stuff. That's an interesting idea. I'll have to look into that. Don't forget Ennio. The fascinating thing about the Internet is that you can find basically anything. So, if there is an Ennio Morricone LP for, you know, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly or whatever, it's probably out there. Sucker Punch LP. It's here. I'm showing it to you right now. See, that's just, that's too, that's too, but that's $80. It's too expensive. Oh. You know, Christmas is coming.
JVL00:12:57I don't, this is, if instead of, if instead of the pillow, the Luma Lux, I would, I would
Sonny00:13:04consider getting this for you as my gift to you. No, no, don't give me that. That's too expensive. The problem, and like.
JVL00:13:09How much do you think your jeans were?
Sonny00:13:14No, I'm serious.
Vic00:13:15Don't, if, if the price is the only thing here.
JVL00:13:17No, no, but it's, it's not just the price, though. It's also. As a favela warming present.
Sonny00:13:20It's, it's also, it's also, the problem is that also, the problem with new LPs is that they have, they don't have any of the vintage. The vintage flair. I like the vintage flair, JVL. I want it, I want, you know. Yeah, you want it from that. I want, like a, I want a, I want a lived-in feel to this room, not, you know. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So. Exactly. Anyway, this is what I'm thinking about. If people have suggestions, they should shoot me, they should shoot me tweets. What else? On Twitter.
Vic00:13:42Yeah. But you just want consistency, is what you want.
Sonny00:13:44But I want, I want, I like, I want, I want a theme. So, I mean, like, again, so, like, the first five are Kubrick, so I'm thinking I should stick with director, but, you know. Directors, but what do you do? I don't know. Terrence Malick.
JVL00:13:55That's not a terrible, I don't know.
Sonny00:13:56I mean, it's, if, the problem, again, the problem, though, is that there's, like, he has two movies. Yes. Before 1999. And those are probably the only ones that there would be LPs for him. LPs for him. Right. So, I mean, but I need four. I've got space for four.
JVL00:14:11Well, I'm sorry, but we can split it, right? These next don't have to be a full, so you could pick one Terrence Malick. So, I could do, like. One Hans Zimmer.
Sonny00:14:18I could do, like, two Terrence Malicks and two Michael Manns. I could do, like. Three. Thief and Manhunter.
Vic00:14:23You could probably find some old Coppolas.
Sonny00:14:27Probably. You know. Godfathers. Apocalypse Now. Scorsese. I bet that's a good one. Scorsese.
Vic00:14:32Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Sonny00:14:34Cool. Anyway, things to think about. Excellent. Keep me in your thoughts. JBL. While I work through this difficult time.
Vic00:14:40In my life. I wore my piranhas on my trip to Texas. Because, you know. You're alive. I just knew. I am alive. And I knew it would be very comfortable in those jeans. With the gusseted crotch. Sitting in Alaskan Airlines. Which, by the way. It was. I saw at another gate. The Virgin America plane was there. But ours was an actual Alaskan Airlines. There's no TVs. I mean, they want you to use your. You could watch on your. I guess your iPhones or your iPads. And go to GoGoNet or something like that. And then they have access to all their movies. But we didn't do that anyway. It was less than. It's less than three hours to get down to Texas.
JVL00:15:20And went down to visit the Lowe family. How long was it?
Vic00:15:22It was amazing. It's great to get out there. You know, it's just. Real America. Real America. And you know what? There's a general friendliness out there for everybody working. Whether it is, you know, the woman behind the counter. Or if it's the parking attendant. Whoever. There's no northern surliness, if you will. Everybody's just very friendly to do any job that they're doing. You know, and, you know, customer satisfaction is everywhere you went. Everyone was. Everyone was very friendly. So we went to the Texas State Fair.
JVL00:15:55Okay, enough of this. What did you eat? Yes. This is what we have to know. Well, that is coming up. Everybody's dying to know. Can you tell us? Or do we have to wait for the piece to come out? You have to.
Vic00:16:01I think you should wait for the piece to come out. There was some scary stuff. Killing me. There was some scary. And there's stuff that I didn't get to. But let's ask. What's one of the things you didn't eat? Some sort of fried guacamole avocado thing. That sounds amazing. Yes. It does. Why did you not eat that? I ran out of it. I ran out of tickets. It was the end of the day. And I had reached my 10. I said, I want to get the 10. And by the way, the ticket thing, you know, when you're not thinking, Sonny, we had this discussion before. You know, when you're there, you know, you're like, oh, this only cost eight tickets. Or this cost, wow, that cost 14 tickets. How much is that? I don't know. But I'm out of tickets. And I got to get more tickets. And here's $100 for, I'm not sure how many tickets that just got me. Just give me all the tickets. No. And so when you, you know, there's, if you actually did a currency comparison.
JVL00:16:52It would be like, what do you say? It's like itchy and scratchy dollars. Yeah, it's like itchy and scratchy dollars. How many tickets do you get for $100?
Vic00:16:57I think it's two to one, in my mind. Tickets per dollar? I think it's $2 per ticket. I think that's how it works. Okay. So each ticket is $2. Or the other way around. The other way around. So it's two tickets for $1. That's right.
JVL00:17:09So I know there's something that was 16 tickets is basically $8. And so how much was like the fried guacamole?
Vic00:17:18It was probably like, you know, 14 tickets. How do you even? It was like seven bucks for that.
Sonny00:17:23How do you even fry guacamole? Do you get like a little guacamole ball and then you put it in panko crumbs or something and then you dip it in the fryer?
Vic00:17:32Yes, there's something else that I. That sounds amazing. I'll give one thing. I'll say one thing that I did have and I tried to figure it out. Basically, it was. I had fried butter.
Sonny00:17:41Well, that's, I mean, that's a reasonable thing to do. Why would you go to the Texas State Fair and not have fried butter?
Vic00:17:47Just a little bit. But the question was how? Because, you know, you would think that you put butter in a, you know, it melts. The whole thing would just, you know, but so I think what you do is you take a stick or you take a ball of butter and then you roll it around in a heavy batter and you dip it, but you got to be quick and, you know, and then and then take flash fry, flash fry. You got to flash fry that thing.
JVL00:18:06Give me the give me the worst thing you had.
Vic00:18:08Yeah, that butter was up there. You know, pizza, fried pizza. Yeah, not necessary. Pizza is already good, but you have to find out. Yeah, but anyway, there were so many things that I didn't get to in the end and it's sort of like, OK, I'm done. We got to go. And then you walk by the stand. Oh, where is this? Because I've been searching everywhere for everything. And then, you know, so whatever. I'm giving it all away and I shouldn't. But the fact is, I made it through alive and a lot of friendly folk.
JVL00:18:33How did you feel at hour plus one and hour plus twenty four?
Vic00:18:40I was actually I was actually OK until it was the next day that I was. Question.
JVL00:18:46How did you feel the next day?
Vic00:18:48There was a moment where, I mean, I was drinking a beer. And we had just gotten back from Dim Sum and the night before. So I went to the fair. Then we went to Del Frisco's and I had a 16 ounce New York strip.
Sonny00:19:00Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on. You've really buried the lead here. Because what you're saying is you went to you went to the Texas fair and you gorged for hours on the 10 fried items. And then you went to Del Frisco's and you ate a pound of steak. No, no, no. Just a 16 ounce. A 16 ounce. New York strip. One pound of steak. So 16 ounces is much different. So here's. Don't call it that. So basically you were like you were. I didn't eat all of it. There was like a little gristle at the end. You are. If we're going to go with Simpsons references again, which I think we should, you're basically Homer Simpson from the episode where he goes to the all you can eat seafood place. The frying dutchman is not a man. And you ate.
JVL00:19:43He's a remorseless eating machine.
Sonny00:19:46You ate all the stuff and then you drove around and you ate more afterwards because you didn't
Vic00:19:52have enough. And I was determined. I had been to Del Frisco's in Dallas a year ago. Did you have an appetizer? No, just some shrimp. It was a shrimp. It was called a shrimp sampler. So you had a question. What was your side? There were two. We shared it for the four of us. So it was Brussels sprouts, which is healthy.
Sonny00:20:09Yeah. You know how they prepare it too. They prepare. No butter or oil.
Vic00:20:12Maybe just a little bit. No bacon. And a lobster mac and cheese. So there's seafood in there. I didn't have. And then we skipped dessert. After dinner drinks. And so by then I had already like a couple martinis and red wine. Go back. And then I just went to their fridge. And they have a lovely home. The Lowe family, who we stayed with. They have a lovely home. And we stayed in the cottage in their backyard. That's how nice their house is. And I went into their giant fridge. And they have that Blue Bell ice cream that you can only get in the South. And I just basically. I filled up like a giant bowl of vanilla cherry. So you had a quart. Maybe. And then. So the next day we got up. And then. Went to church. And then dim sum. And then I was sitting there. We were watching football. And I had a beer. And then I was like feeling weird in my chest. A little bubbly. I was feeling a little bubbly. In your chest? Yeah. You know. I mean. In the olden days they would say. You know. That's basically a fib. Oh, I had the flutters. You know. Oh, I had the flutters. It was like Kate's grandmother. Oh, I had the flutters. Yeah. I don't know. Anyway. So I just said. You know what. And so the next morning I went for a run. A 20 minute run. And now we're back. Did you take any nitroglycerin? No, you're even. I left my nitroglycerin back home. In my little case. My little container with the days.
Sonny00:21:24No, I'm just kidding. Can I ask a favor? I'm fine. Everybody don't get scared. When you file this piece on all of your exploits. Yeah, yeah.
JVL00:21:30I'm hoping to file tomorrow.
Sonny00:21:31Could you please include an estimated calorie count? For the whole day.
Vic00:21:39For the whole day's activities. It was probably at least, you know, 2,000, which is what you should have.
JVL00:21:44At least. You should have. Yeah. The lower back. The lower bound. 16,000 is what I'm thinking. The lower bound is 2,000.
Vic00:21:50Oh, you're going at the five figures. You're going at the five figures. Boy, clearly. You absolutely cleared five figures. At least 10. What's the steak? Like 400, 500 calories for a New York strip, 16,000 probably. Sure. Yeah, okay. Lobster, mac and cheese, 300. Oh, yeah.
Sonny00:22:02Okay, so we're at 800. Seafood, sure.
Vic00:22:05300. Yeah.
JVL00:22:05For lobster, mac and cheese. You know what? You guys keep vamping. I'm going to go.
Vic00:22:09So. We had, it was a lovely time.
Sonny00:22:13The kids. This is before the alcohol. Of course, there's no, there are no calories in.
Vic00:22:17Martini.
Sonny00:22:17There are no calories in alcohol because it's clear.
Vic00:22:20Sonny, as you know, the clear alcohol.
JVL00:22:22Right. 680 calories from lobster, mac and cheese. Oh, we shared it. We shared it. Are you looking at the actual Del Frisco's? I'm just looking at generic.
Vic00:22:33I bet the Del Frisco.
JVL00:22:341,227 calories from a 16-ounce steak. What? Yeah, 1,000. So you're at 2,000 calories now with just the lobster, mac and cheese and the steak. Do you want to tell me you think you're not in the five? I'm fanning.
Vic00:22:48If only they had the Facebook Live, I'm fanning myself. I'm only feeling ill now because you're telling me how much it is. I was feeling fine before this.
Sonny00:22:56Your dinner alone was probably about 3,000 calories, I would guess, including alcohol. Because there's no chance that Del Frisco's lobster, mac and cheese is 680 calories.
Vic00:23:06Fried pizza, 850 calories. Oh, that's ridiculous. They're making that up. They're making it up. It was pepperoni, too.
JVL00:23:13They're making it up anyway. Fried butter, 450.
Vic00:23:17Oh, you see that? See, that feels low. That's on the low end. That's nothing. That's like a... I mean, that's health food. That's health food by all standards. Why am I so... My palate... I'm parched right now. I have a dry mouth. Okay, so we had a... Do you smell oranges? Yeah, why do I smell bird's hair? Okay, so it was...
JVL00:23:36Why is your right arm just hanging at your side? What right arm? Oh, I didn't even know it. I didn't even know it was down on the ground. Kind of drooping.
Vic00:23:42Your face is drooping. I didn't know what's happening. It's always good. You know what, Stroke? Stroke jokes, always good. Anyway. Also, cardiac jokes. Cardiac jokes. Always, always works. Always works. You're going to die. On air. That's what's going to happen.
Sonny00:24:02We're going to actually talk you into it. Like, you remember Hannibal Lecter talked that guy into swallowing his tongue in Silence of the Lambs? We're going to talk you into a heart attack. Migs? Migs? Right now, yeah, Migs.
Vic00:24:11He did something else also. He did something else also.
JVL00:24:13We'll talk about Stroke jokes. Oh! Oh! Thank you for flicking that at me. Go ahead. When you signed up for your life insurance policy, and the adjuster was asking you questions about this sort of thing, what did you tell them? Careful.
Vic00:24:32You don't want to admit to any sort of fraud. No, no, no, no, no. I work out. I work out, and I don't smoke. So that's really the important thing. And drink. Drinking is occasional. Drink moderately. They say you drink moderately. Once or twice a week. And that's all I'm answering. No more questions about life insurance. No more questions. Goodbye.
JVL00:24:46I'm dying to know. Goodbye. How much a month your premium is.
Vic00:24:49Goodbye. So anyway, the kids had a lovely time. They want to come back, and so maybe we'll come back. It's nice when you have the cottage in the backyard, because it's like an in-law suite. Then you're not constantly in their face and bothering. You don't feel like you're bothering. You know what I mean? You can do your own thing, and when all your kids are ready to go, boom. We'll all get together and hang out. And otherwise, everybody has their space, which is great. So maybe we'll come back. Go to Texas. What is it? Six Flags Over Texas. Six Flags Over Texas. Kids love that. There's Dinosaur Park. The one thing, Dealey Plaza, there's a museum at the School Book Depository, which is also very cool. The only thing I won't do is Water Park, because that was in the news recently, where a guy had got one of those flesh-eating amoebas from a water park. Yeah, you don't want to go in there.
JVL00:25:36I thought there was so much chlorine in there that nothing could live.
Vic00:25:39Oh, it turned out it was like a freshwater thing. Like, they do freshwater. Don't do freshwater, because the last thing you need is to deal with some death. Speaking of Deadly Parasite, but speaking of Deadly Parasites, over the weekend, I have to turn the page. Almost a good chance. No, almost a good chance. That is a piece behind the curtain. What are you talking about? No, no, no. Excuse me. Venom took the top spot at the box office with $80 million, followed by A Star is Born at $43 million, and in third place, Smallfoot with $14.4 million. Question, is that a good number for A Star is Born, $43 million? Yeah.
Sonny00:26:17Yeah, I mean, that's way ahead of tracking. I mean, like 40% ahead of tracking, 30%, 40% ahead of tracking, something like that. Yeah. People were a little bit worried it might be soft because it is pitched to the older set, and old people tend to come out slightly. They don't always come out on the first weekend, so they thought it would be kind of a slower burn, but a $40 million opening is huge for an R-rated musical. I mean, that's what this is. It's an R-rated musical.
JVL00:26:44It's going to make $200 million. It's Lady Gaga.
Sonny00:26:47I would say it's a safe bet that this will get to $200 million, which I texted you guys and you didn't respond. Bradley Cooper is almost inarguably the biggest star in the world. So crazy. I think you could make the argument that... JVL is thinking. I think you could make that argument insofar as, or at least the biggest star in American domestic cinema, because I mean, if you look at his track record, it is very, very good. It is very, very good with R-rated films, which is unusual. He's one of the few people who can open an R-rated adult feature.
Vic00:27:23I remember in my mind when he made that jump from having seen him in Wedding Crashers and then, and obviously he'd done T, he'd done Alias and stuff, but he had done Wedding Crashers and suddenly he's in The Hangover. Yeah. Boom. I think that was it. It was like instant. Wasn't it almost instant?
Sonny00:27:38Oh yeah, pretty much. Kind of. Yeah. I mean, it was The Hangover, of course, and then you have the David O. Russell films, The Silver Linings Playbook and American. Yeah. Hustle and even Joy. It was kind of, you know. So, you know, there are some questions about, you know, who is the actual star in those movies. You could make a case for Jennifer Lawrence over Bradley Cooper, but then Bradley Cooper also, you know, opens American Sniper to huge, huge numbers. That movie goes on to do 350, 360. Again, an R-rated biopic, you know, doing $360 million is unheard of. You've got this movie. I mean, I just think that there's something to be said about Bradley Cooper, JVL. You're skeptical.
JVL00:28:26I am skeptical of the proposition that he is the biggest movie star right now. Yes.
Sonny00:28:33Well, I mean, I think he should be in the conversation. I wouldn't. I don't. The problem with this, of course, is that movie stars aren't really a thing anymore. It's hard for. Right.
JVL00:28:40I mean, the story is the star. Right. But. Kevin Feige is the biggest movie star. Right. He's.
Sonny00:28:47Yeah. I mean, like the Marvel logo is the biggest movie, which is which probably plays into why Venom made 80 million dollars this weekend. I mean, even though it's not technically a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, it is still has the Marvel. In association.
JVL00:28:59Logo in association with Marvel.
Vic00:29:01Question. What do you think? Both you guys. What do you think the decline is going to be from last week into this coming up weekend
JVL00:29:07for Star is Born?
Vic00:29:09No. For Venom. Normal. Excellent question. Or is it going to be.
Sonny00:29:14I would guess probably 60 percent. I don't think it'll be like. Lower. I don't think it'll be a disastrous like 70 percent drop, but I think a solid like 55 to 60 percent drop.
Vic00:29:24So do you saw it in the screening?
Sonny00:29:26I know. Or with other people. I saw it. I saw it with with regular people.
Vic00:29:30I saw it. Did we all see it? All three of us saw it. And I. Oh. There's nothing to squeeze out of Venom, so to speak. But when I went to see it on Tuesday night, it was crowded. It was packed when I went to see it. Did you see it over the weekend? It's on Monday. Yeah.
JVL00:29:47I saw a Monday afternoon show.
Sonny00:29:49I mean, I went to I went to a Friday. The Friday it opened. I went to see it at the IMAX here at Georgetown. There were only like five people in the theater. So, I mean, I like it, you know. All right. But I do think it's it's it. I'm a little bit surprised it did this well. Me too. Because Venom is a Venom is a bad character. And Venom as a character makes no sense. Stripped from the Spider-Man universe.
Vic00:30:10Well, how about a little for our listeners?
Sonny00:30:13So Venom Venom is the story of Eddie Brock. And his alien symbiote, who is called Venom, the the evil life foundation has brought back a bunch of alien beings from outer space, crash lands on Earth. And they they they bring the alien symbiotes, which is what they are called back to San Francisco, where they try to where the evil Riz Ahmed, who's playing kind of, I don't know, like an Elon Musk crossed with Steve Jobs. Uh, is trying to pair the alien beings with human hosts, and it is leading to a lot of deaths, a lot of deaths. Eddie Brock wants to reveal that he is evil. Eddie Brock is a, uh, I guess I could call him a left wing new journalist. He does his video shows and he wants to bring down.
JVL00:31:05Is he left wing, though, if what he wants to do is bring down environmentalists?
Sonny00:31:09Well, that's a good question. It's a good question. But as many of them are in it. So anyway, he's he's. He's all about he's all about the truth. And when he discovers that the evil Riz Ahmed is Ahmed Ahmed Ahmed Ahmed Ahmed Ahmed Ahmed is is killing people, which he discovers. He discovers this by peeking into his girlfriend's email. Big mistake. Michelle Michelle Williams plays the girlfriend. She dumps him. He's very sad. He meets up with the alien symbiote venom. And then there's there's. There's action and adventure.
JVL00:31:48Here's the problem with this movie is that it via Melora Walters, who I have not seen on screen a long time. I was very excited to see Melora Walters. I have some thoughts on this.
Sonny00:31:56So so here's here's the problem. All that all that kind of gibberish that I just said is the problem with this movie. Getting getting Eddie Brock together with the alien is the worst part of this movie. And it takes like an hour of the hour and 40 minute running time because I don't care about any of these things. And venom, as I said, doesn't really make sense as a character stripped from the Spider-Man universe. Spider-Man. Venom makes sense as a Spider-Man villain because the alien symbiote was rejected by Spider-Man. Eddie Brock's career and life was ruined by Peter Parker. They come together. They've got reasons for revenge. They've got kind of cool Spider-Man like powers. They can negate Spider-Man's own powers. And like that makes sense. He makes sense as a even the name makes sense. Venom, because like spiders have venom and Eddie Brock has venom for Peter Parker. Like the like the name makes sense. And so in this movie. It's just like I'm a symbiote. My name is Venom. And it's like. And why is his name?
JVL00:32:51That's his alien name. Why is his alien name is literally an English word.
Sonny00:32:54Do aliens. Why do aliens have English words for names? It's being translated in his brain into English. I assume there's some sort. You're right. Exactly. I assume there's some sort of movie magic.
Vic00:33:04All right.
Sonny00:33:05But we call. Thank you. That was good. That was a real name. We call ourselves Venom. But like it is the whole. All of that is bad and terrible. The last 30 or 40 minutes of the movie is actually pretty entertaining because it's Tom Hardy. This is what I wrote. In a Marvel movie. It's Tom Hardy basically doing a one man buddy comedy with himself. And I liked all of that stuff a lot. I mean, like Tom Hardy playing a loser journalist who teams up with a loser alien symbiote, which makes them more powerful than they could ever possibly be on their own. And they're and the alien symbiote wants to go around biting people's heads off. And it has to be like, no, you can't do that. You can only bite off bad people's heads. I mean, it's like funny and silly. And like it worked for me. Because Tom Hardy is great. The problem is everything up to that is just is so stultifying and generic and boring that I was kind of taken out. Now, that being said, the end of the film was enough to make me actually kind of want to see a sequel. Wow. Because I would watch I would watch again. I would watch 100 minutes of Eddie Brock of Tom Hardy being Eddie Brock and Venom, you know, doing doing stick with himself.
Vic00:34:11I think one of the great challenges is if you're not fully up on this. Stuff and you're watching a movie like, oh, this looks like a good Marvel movie. And the villain looks kind of like Spider-Man. You know, he bears an uncared. But there's no explanation to it of it in this movie. He just happens to look like I mean, they don't explain it. Spider-Man.
Sonny00:34:32And they all look like it's the same thing. If I'm if I'm not mistaken, they don't have the giant white spider on his chest. Right. They took it off, which is the hallmark of the Venom, the comic book character.
JVL00:34:43There's a mark on his chest. But there is like something.
Vic00:34:46It's like it. It just it. So are you telling me that they like Sony went out of its way to make it less Spidey like and more just. Yeah.
JVL00:34:53He's like, because it looks like they want this to be to be able to stand on its own if necessary.
Vic00:34:58But they own Spider-Man. So I don't understand. They do.
Sonny00:35:00They do own Spider-Man. I have these young Spider-Man. I have a I have a feeling my sense, my guess of between kind of what was going on behind the scenes and also our friend Richard Rushfield's newsletter is that the MCU, the team behind the MCU, put a lot of pressure on Sony not to have Tom Holland and Spider-Man in this movie because they feared that it was going to be terrible.
Vic00:35:27Well, it made me want to go back almost to watch Spider-Man 2 with Topher Grace in the role as Eddie Brock. Spider-Man 3. Spider-Man 3 in the role of Eddie Brock, just to brush up on the whole Venom lore. But speaking of brushing up, Sonny Bunch, one of the most important
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Vic00:36:06I did not know that.
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Vic00:37:56Thank you, Sonny. That was your first read. You know, you want to do all the reads from now on. Oh, I agree. In fact, I think you will.
Sonny00:38:03I think I only messed up once or twice there.
Vic00:38:05Oh, well, you know, it was your first time. How did it feel? Were you nervous? I'm just glad it was over in 60 seconds.
JVL00:38:14Just a few stumbles along the way, but it's your first time.
Sonny00:38:16Oh, no.
JVL00:38:17OK.
Vic00:38:18Venom thoughts. JVL, what did you think about the movie?
JVL00:38:21So it is uncanny and unsettling that my thoughts seemed to mirror Sonny's almost exactly. So I walked out of the movie having, like, really enjoyed it. And then I was thinking to myself, OK, so what was it I liked about Venom? And everything I could think of were things I didn't like because it's a weird story. It's a non-canon Venom, which is fine. I don't they don't need to be. Tom Hardy in the Marvel canon, the the final fight is horrible to watch. Terrible. Terrible. And what I liked about it, the only thing I liked about it was Tom Hardy's Eric. Yeah. Eddie Brock. It was the character is great. He actually. He's really good. He reminds me of Matt Leibash a little bit. You could see if Matt Leibash was a 20 years younger and a video journalist. A little bit of that unshaven look going on there. A little bit of that. But that charm. Yeah. The sort of roguish charm to it. Yeah. That's good. And he was. It's like it's like Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. Yes. Right. I mean, this is the idea that he's playing the imaginary friend all by himself. And it's it's all that shtick is he's really good. Tom Hardy. And so I spend most of my time thinking about that. I'm just thinking about Tom Hardy and how weird it is that he is. He is a perfect leading man, like he can carry a whole movie by himself, and yet he's almost never a leading man. He's almost always part of an ensemble. Right. There's very little. I mean, even in Mad Max, like he's you could argue that actually it's surely there in character who's the actual lead in that. Right. He's just sort of there along for the ride, even though he is carrying the movie. I mean, he is carrying the movie in Dark Knight Rises to a very large degree, even though he's not the lead. And he does this all the time when you look through his filmography. And I find that he's an integral part of Dunkirk. Yeah. Right. And you never even see his mouth. You never.
Vic00:40:16You never see it.
JVL00:40:17But he registers like you really get the idea that he's the stoical, you know, I'm on him.
Sonny00:40:21I mean, just Tom Hardy's eyes should have won an Oscar for Dunkirk. I mean, it's I mean, I'm like, I'm not kidding now. It's totally. I agree.
JVL00:40:30I agree. Yeah. Like he does more with less screen time than maybe any other actor I can think of.
Sonny00:40:37Which makes it all very interesting that the director Ruben Fleischer and Tom Hardy were apparently at loggerheads on on the set because Fleischer wanted a more serious, darker, more dramatic version of the character. And Tom Hardy was like, I want to jump in this lobster tank. I want to jump in this lobster tank in the restaurant. And that's going to be good and funny. And Tom Hardy's totally right. He's absolutely right.
Vic00:40:57I can't believe that he the director didn't didn't realize. I mean, that theater was the people were dying laughing at moments there. I mean, it was very loud and people what people wanted. I mean, I mean, funny, funny.
Sonny00:41:07But what's weird about it is that the studio didn't. I mean, like everyone jokes about how Hollywood has no original ideas. And it's true. They joke about this because it's true. But it's it's amazing to me that nobody looked at Deadpool and was like, Look, we can do dark and funny. We can. It's Deadpool like. We can actually do this. This movie is Deadpool like. It's Deadpool like, except it doesn't have Deadpool's self-referential ******. Light. Right.
JVL00:41:31L-I-T-E. Not Deadpool.
Vic00:41:33Like. Yeah. No, it really. He didn't have to break the fourth wall. Victorino, did you like it? I actually I mean, I was I was prepared to not like it. Right. Because we heard so much about all the problems on the set. It's going to be terrible. Our Tom Hardy's favorite scene. These are the ones that are not in the movie. And so I thought, OK, we'll see how this goes. But it's hard not to like because he's such a likable guy, Tom Hardy in this. And I still can't. You know, and you think of him as Bane. You can't believe it's the same guy because, you know, he's so terrifying and here he's very likable. You talk about the roguish charm. I think once you get it through your in your head to not ask too many questions about the interaction between the symbiote and and and Brock and like, how does it translate? How does he know these words? How does he say these things and talks? If you just roll with it, like much of the audience did, it's a much more enjoyable experience, particularly I think the biggest laugh was when he was going to scale down a building and he chose to take the elevator and then the voices, you know, I mean, that was people love that. And so, you know, it's interesting that it was supposed to it could have been a lot worse. I guess that's the way to think about it.
JVL00:42:41One of the things I came away, I had not expected that they were going to turn Venom into an anti-hero, which happens in the comics eventually. But I had thought they would play him as a straight villain and I'm actually happy. I think it works what they did, but I'm happy that this leaves free the pathway for Marvel to do a straight villain centric movie where the villain is the lead in the way that like the talented Mr. Ripley is the lead of the talented Mr. Ripley and he's not an ant. Tom Ripley is not an anti-hero, you know, he's just a villain that you're watching. And I think there's a whole universe of Marvel. Marvel villains who would be really interesting to watch in that way. Like who? Your idea for the Thanos movie. Oh yeah. Would have been great. Like a Thanos movie would have been fantastic. Kingpin would be great. You could do a Doctor Doom movie very well. A Doctor Doom movie would be. Right. And Emma Frost or a Bullseye movie. Yeah. I think you can do where they're just. Who owns the. It's a movie about the villain. This is. Yeah. I mean this is. And they're not an anti-hero. You're not actually rooting for them.
Vic00:43:41You're just watching because you can't take your eyes off of them. Yeah. Who owns the Doctor Doom property still at the fantastic. Sony. It's also Sony.
JVL00:43:46Oh no, no. So. Doc. Oh no. You're. Okay. So Doctor Doom is a Fantastic Four villain. Yeah. Yeah.
Vic00:43:55And so is owned by Fox. Oh.
JVL00:43:57Okay. Yeah. I believe. All right. So is now owned by. By Disney. Will be. Will be. Will be. Will be. So. So Marvel will have access to Doctor Doom. But it's unclear to me the contours of the Sony relationship with Marvel. No. Same. Because when they. When they agreed to get the rights to Spider-Man to use in the Marvel movies, it is unclear how far that expands into the Spider-Man IP.
Vic00:44:19Right. And this one I thought was. I mean it really was clearly stated in association with. Yeah. So don't get. Which is another way of saying don't get your hopes up. Yeah. Robert Downey Jr.'s not making a cameo in this.
Sonny00:44:30Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It would be. I. My understanding. I'm not. I'm not 100 percent sure on this. My understanding is that there is basically no like real agreement. It's just case by case. Oh. It's case by case. That is my understanding. But I. But I have no. I mean I think that like Sony gets sign off on all the MCU stuff that they do with the Tom Holland Spider-Man. I think. But I. But I also think that Sony understands that Kevin Feige and Disney, they're better at this than Sony is.
JVL00:45:01So they. Well there's. There's a lower risk way for them to make money off of this. Which is essentially to rent the IP to.
Sonny00:45:06To Disney.
JVL00:45:07Yeah. And say. But I assume. We just want. We just want 30 percent. But I would work for me.
Sonny00:45:13You just make whatever Spider-Man Universe movies you want. Yeah.
?00:45:15Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Sonny00:45:16Yeah. Disney is picking up the tab, and Disney is. Getting. Unclear to me. Getting. Yeah.
Vic00:45:22But I don't. I don't. I don't. I mean you can work whatever way you. JVL you were talking earlier. You mentioned Melora Walters. You were excited. You were happy to see her. A Paul Thomas Anderson regular. Melora Walters. And she was there.
JVL00:45:33A Seinfeld girlfriend. She was a Seinfeld girlfriend.
Vic00:45:35On the show. I forgot that. Yeah. Yeah.
JVL00:45:39Not. Not. No. No. Not. IRL.
Vic00:45:45I mean on the show. She was doing everything. Scared like a turtle. I believe she was. The shrinkage episode. That's funny. Okay. Sonny and I were talking about this yesterday. What was going on with Michelle Williams? She seemed a little off. Yeah.
Sonny00:45:58Was it just me or. Really? Did her face look weird?
JVL00:46:01Like. Like not. Like it wasn't moving quite right. Didn't. I didn't pick up any of that. And I've had a week full of Michelle Williams, as we can talk about later, because I really want to talk about The Greatest Showman as well.
Vic00:46:12Oh, she's in that. I wonder if she. Is she different in that? I don't think she was really emoting or anything. She was just sort of very. I thought she was great in this. I thought there was something weird. I thought, you know what? Oh, I liked her in this. I saw better performances in Dawson's Creek. I didn't. I thought she was very stiff. Yeah.
JVL00:46:26It is still amazing to me that she is the serious actor to come out of Dawson's Creek, because I would have said if we had, as we were watching that show, picking one of these people is going to become a real serious. I know you can say. She would have been the last on our list. Okay. Top of your list. Right. The top of you. Everybody would have thought Katie Holmes.
Vic00:46:43Also.
JVL00:46:44Then Josh Jackson. Josh Jackson.
Vic00:46:45James Van Der Beek.
JVL00:46:46Whose name I don't even remember. James Van Der Beek. James Van Der Beek. And then Michelle Williams, who I have to say was terrible in that show. I mean, she was the actor who was sort of out of their depth and who was always over emoting and wasn't quite. And who knows why? I mean, maybe she just grew up as an actor. It's a weird thing. Her learning curve was steeper than everybody else's.
Vic00:47:04Yeah. When you see these. I'm always fascinated when you see these shows, who is going to be the one and what it's like and all of a sudden. And then the worst part is whenever they have, this is going on a tangent here, you ever see these. Who does it? Where they have the get togethers, the reunions of like from from an old TV show and they're all sitting around. And there's one clear star and then the other one who was big time, who is maybe a bigger deal of time is like coming out of rehab just to. Danny Bonaduce type. Yeah.
Sonny00:47:30Terrible. Yeah. No, I thought she was great. So you did. You thought she was. I thought she didn't. I just thought she looked weird. Like, I thought there was something weird about about her whole appearance.
JVL00:47:38I thought she was great. You know who else I thought was great? The guy who played her boyfriend. Oh, yeah.
Vic00:47:44Yeah. The guy from Veep.
JVL00:47:46Who? Yes. Who's the guy from Veep? Also named Dan, by the way. Dan. They kept the same name. Who? So that is a very difficult role to play because you are positioned as wait a minute. We don't like him because we're all rooting for Eddie Brock.
Sonny00:47:59But he's but he's actually a nice guy.
JVL00:48:00But he's a nice guy. And to pull off the trick where the audience does root for Eddie Brock and really wants Eddie Brock to get back together with his girlfriend, but actually then really likes the boyfriend. That's a hard thing to do on screen just as a matter of like screen charisma.
Sonny00:48:15There's a 100% chance that Carnage kills Dan in the sequel, right?
Vic00:48:19Or Dan becomes Carnage right now.
Sonny00:48:21No, no. It's definitely. Did you not stay for the after? No, I didn't. Was there a credit thing? There was a mid-credits scene.
Vic00:48:28Oh, what was the stinger? Tell me.
JVL00:48:30I thought it was Sideshow Bob. I thought that was. Oh my gosh.
Sonny00:48:33Tell me what the Sideshow Bob is about. So you remember how at the end of the movie, Eddie Brock's like, I have an interview with somebody. You're going to have to read it. Yes. The interview is with Cletus Kasady. Who is that? And he's the person that becomes Carnage. He's the serial killer with the red hair who becomes Carnage. Played by? Played by Woody Harrelson, who's at least 20 years too old for that role and 100 percent too bald. I mean, the wig he was wearing. The wig. It looked like. The wig he was wearing. He looked like Raggedy Andy. Yeah.
Vic00:49:03I mean, it was like. Sideshow Bob. It was terrible. It was like I was hoping it would be some sort of other person from the Marvel Universe. Yeah.
Sonny00:49:08But of course, I guess that wasn't possible. And then there was a post-credits stinger that was like basically. Tell me more. It was basically five minutes. Of the Into the Spider-Verse movie, the cartoon, which was pretty great, which actually like that got me excited for it. I don't like that style of animation. That's kind of aping the like 1980s comic book look with like the little circles that look like.
JVL00:49:29But it's also like mixed media. I mean, they have all sorts of different styles happening at the same time.
Sonny00:49:34I don't love it either. I'm not. I'm not a huge fan of it, but it looked great. It looked great on the big screen. So I'm like actually kind of excited for that.
JVL00:49:41Yeah, I totally agree.
Sonny00:49:42I mean, it is. It is kind of fascinating. That they're basically doing a movie with all the PC Spider-Men and like we're going
JVL00:49:49to get them all in one place and including Peter Porker, including Peter Parker.
Vic00:49:55The other thought that I had was the villain played by Riz Ahmed Carlton Drake. He probably wouldn't be in this position had he read your book, Jonathan, because there's a reference to his fears of overpopulation.
JVL00:50:10I am so sick and tired of seeing environmentalists just protruding. Portrayed by Hollywood as a bunch of bloodthirsty nutjobs. When can Hollywood just finally go out and find some new villains? Something that hasn't already been done to death. So it started, the first one of these that we see is, oh, I wrote this down somewhere. Where was it? Where? The Kingsmen. Oh, in Kingsmen. Right. So you have Kingsmen. Then we have... Oh, right, in order to reduce the population. Yes, Samuel Jackson. The Kingsmen. Ways to reduce the population. Thanos. Thanos, right. He's Paul Ehrlich. He's basically Paul Ehrlich. Yeah. Carlton Drake is Elon Musk, essentially. Right.
?00:50:53I mean, it's...
Vic00:50:54It's a little tired. A little played out, isn't it?
Sonny00:50:56Yeah. When is Hollywood gonna lay off these liberal billionaires? Leave them alone.
Vic00:50:59It's terrible. It's terrible. I'll tell you what, though. One thing he... It was kind of a noble effort. He was trying to reduce the homeless problem.
Sonny00:51:08Pretty successful at it, too. Yikes. No poop on the streets in San Francisco anymore.
Vic00:51:12No, they're not doing that anymore. They're disappearing. He's taking care of the homeless problem.
JVL00:51:15I would like to say that, first of all, that you may remember the joke, the Wonder Woman joke, from Twitter, that was, you know, like, DC was like, "We're not sure if it's time yet for a Wonder Woman movie," and Marvel's like, "Hey, we got a talking raccoon and a tree." It did strike me that this is one more case of that. Like, DC is, "Well, we're gonna have to rethink Batman and Superman," and Justice League doesn't quite work as a property and a franchise, and so after Aquaman, we just have to really put our heads together, 'cause this superhero stuff is hard, and Marvel is like, "Yeah, we got this third-tier villain based on a gimmick costume.
Vic00:51:57Let's pay $80 million!
JVL00:51:59All right!"
Vic00:52:00This Venom—
JVL00:52:01Drives them crazy. Venom is going to make more than Justice League. Yeah. Probably.
Vic00:52:06Take it to the bank. Did you get a trailer for Shazam? I got a trailer for Shazam. I did not get a trailer for Shazam. I did not get a trailer for Shazam. What was the reaction from that audience? Really? I don't think they were interested.
JVL00:52:17Not interested at all. It is an astonishing, astonishing thing that this—the Marvel IP bench is so deep. Deep. That you literally—this is just—I mean, the whole idea for the costume was, "It's
?00:52:29easier to draw."
JVL00:52:30Mm-hmm. Like, you know, this is back in the heyday of the Todd McFarlane, gotta do more covers, just need more comic books, gotta saturate and flood the market and turn these things out. And, well, you know, it's easier.
Sonny00:52:44We can draw them faster if we just make it all black. Do you—do you have any thoughts on James Gunn? Ah. Possibly doing Suicide Squad 2, speaking of DC, not knowing what they're doing.
JVL00:52:54I don't know. Like, I guess. I mean—
Sonny00:52:57Seems like a—seems like a—seems like a good fit, right? Fine. I mean, Suicide Squad is basically just the ripoff of Guardians of the Galaxy anyway,
Vic00:53:03right? I guess. I don't know. Like, do we—no, there was another movie you found much more compelling, JVL. We have a little bit of time, I think. We have a couple minutes, Sonny. Did we want to— Do you want to get into it? Do you want to talk about the performances? You wanted to do the outtakes. Let's rank Tom Hardy.
JVL00:53:16I don't want to talk about the greatest showman.
?00:53:17You don't want to talk about the greatest showman.
JVL00:53:18I guess that's going to the outtakes.
Sonny00:53:19Absolutely not. He was really moved by it.
JVL00:53:21Absolutely not.
Sonny00:53:22He was—you were really moved. If you want to—if you want to talk about it after we're done with the show, we can do that. I didn't even know there—I didn't know there would be tears.
Vic00:53:26You said there were tears. I got nothing. We'll talk about it. Tom Hardy.
Sonny00:53:30Tom Hardy. All right, Tom Hardy. Go ahead. Best Tom Hardy performances, JVL.
JVL00:53:34Number one, Bane. Yes. Number two, Max.
Sonny00:53:37Mm-hmm. Number three, Eddie Brock. Yeah. I would go—I'm going to go with movies, because I wrote down movies now. Mm-hmm. Performances. Again, this is just—this is just Tom Hardy performances. Right. Not the movie. We're not ranking the movies as we like them. Right. We're ranking his performance in the movies. I would go with the movie Locke, which is literally just Tom Hardy in a car talking. It's on Netflix now, I think.
Vic00:53:58Oh, right.
Sonny00:53:59Yeah. Yeah. It's 90 minutes of Tom Hardy in a car by himself. The fact that you—neither of you have seen this makes me sad.
Vic00:54:04I remember the commercials for it.
Sonny00:54:06All right. Number two, The Dark Knight Rises, which his bane is just—his bane is similar to Heath Ledger's Joker, in that it unbalances the movie. Everything is more compelling when he is on the screen, and he's not on the screen enough. I give it to you, the people. Yeah. So, there's that. Number three, Bronson, which is, again, it's a lot of Tom—just like the camera on Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy doing Tom Hardy things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Number four, Inception.
Vic00:54:35Yeah.
Sonny00:54:36Remember, this was his breakout role, remember? This is where everyone was like, "Who's—?" Layer Cake is his breakout role. "Who is this guy?" Layer Cake is his breakout role. No, Layer Cake is—he's barely in Layer Cake. He's in Layer Cake for like two minutes. He's Clarky. He's barely in Layer Cake. He's Clarky. He is in Layer— He's got a double-fishing chemistry from Oxford. Nobody saw—nobody saw Layer Cake.
JVL00:54:54Nobody remembers him in Layer Cake. Yeah, no, it just got Daniel Craig the role of James Bond.
Sonny00:54:58This movie's launched career. Inception is number one Tom Hardy breakout role. That's just—that's a fact. And then Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy. Where he plays Ricky Tarr as the— He's very good in Tinker Tailor. He's bad. He's very, very good. He's very bad. In that. In Tinker Tailor.
Vic00:55:14So that's my top five. Okay. I think Morin's more similar to Jonathan's, with one and two, but three is probably Inception. I really like that. His breakout role. And also—but, you know, we're not counting television, but if we did count television—Band of Brothers. Oh, was he in that? Yeah. Everyone was in that, yeah. It was almost like there were more British actors— Yeah. —serving in the air—
Sonny00:55:36Was Tom Hardy in Blackhawk Down? Blackhawk Down is another one of these movies where, like, it had, like, literally a hundred.
JVL00:55:44They're all there. Yeah. They're all there. I would say Tom Hardy is one of my favorite GIFs of all time, which is the Fury Road moment when Matt just sort of, like, this—thumbs up. Good job.
Vic00:55:57Yeah. I don't know.
JVL00:55:59Like, something about that moment in the movie. He's such a movie star. He really is.
Vic00:56:03He'll throw away something like that. It's fantastic. You know what's funny? I love the image of him. He looks so tired, like he needs to get some rest. Speaking of getting rest, Casper is a sleep brand that makes expertly designed products to help you get your best rest one night at a time. The experts at Casper work tirelessly to make a quality sleep surface that cradles your natural geometry in all the right places. After all, you spend one-third of your life sleeping, so you should be comfortable. The original Casper mattress combines multiple supportive memory foams for a quality sleep surface with the right amounts of both sink and bounce. Its breathable design helps you sleep cool and regulates your body temperature throughout the night. Casper now offers two other mattresses, the Wave and the Essential. The Wave features a patent-pending premium support system to mirror the natural shape of your body. The Essential has a streamlined design at a price that won't keep you up at night. All Casper products are designed, developed, and assembled in the US. Prices are affordable because Casper cuts out the middleman and sells directly to you. Every Casper mattress is delivered right to your door in a small "how do they do that" size box. Plus, there's free shipping and free returns in the US and Canada. Plus, you can be sure of your purchase with Casper's 100-night risk-free sleep-on-it trial. Here's a special offer to Substandard listeners. Get $50 towards select mattresses by visiting casper.com/substandard and using promo code SUBSTANDARD at checkout. That's casper.com/substandard and use promo code SUBSTANDARD for $50 off select mattresses. Terms and conditions apply. Any other thoughts? Anything else? Corrections? Additions? We're good, Sonny? I think we're good. Wonderful. JVL? Good?
JVL00:57:45Yeah.
Vic00:57:46All right. Yeah. I got some outtake stuff. I'm ready for them. That's all the time, then, we are giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us @VictorinoMattis, @SonnyBunch. @JVLast. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard on podcasts. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
Sonny00:58:09Yes, JVL?
JVL00:58:16You know, people like to say out there on the Twitters that the Substandard moves product. It's true. They do. And just this past weekend, we moved a very large product.
Sonny00:58:28Oh.
JVL00:58:29I went out and had coffee with the lovely and talented Christian Soltis Anderson yesterday, who over the weekend bought a Weber Genesis. Whoa.
Sonny00:58:38Right up my alley.
JVL00:58:39Thanks to the Substandard. Right up my alley.
Vic00:58:41But you know what's weird?
JVL00:58:42It came in a... Her husband, Chris Anderson, actually assembled it himself. Do you know how long it took him? How long? About an hour. Oh, come on. But do you know what else? Do you know how Chris got it home from the store?
Sonny00:58:57Oh. He carried it. What? What, you just throw it up on his back? They got it from a place like ten blocks away from their house.
JVL00:59:05He carried it home because unlike some people, Chris Anderson is a real man. He's all man, baby. What do you mean? He physically carried it. All man. Physically carried it. But that's okay.
Vic00:59:16Are you sure there's no pulling and pushing and dragging? That's okay. Don't worry. There's got to be some drag. There's no... Did he put it on his back like Atlas?
JVL00:59:23Don't worry, Victorino. Walk ten blocks. This is... This doesn't denigrate you and it doesn't reflect badly on you at all. Could you have carried your grill? I mean, that's a heavy grill. I'm just saying.
Vic00:59:36I'm sure it's fine.
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