This week, Glenn and Daniel once again had a busy week as a Marvel film came out for us to review by itself, and we promise that’s a coincidence. Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao tries to tell a tale as old as time and bring a new superhero team to life. Tune in as we give Eternals more credit for ambition than execution, in that good, Chronicles of Riddick sort of way (49:43).
May contain NSFW language.
FilmWonk rating: 6 out of 10
Show notes:
[01:36] Review: Eternals
[25:53] Review: Eternals
Listen above, or download: Eternals (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play)
This week, Glenn and Daniel return to a W.B. Yeats poem with Come Away, a hybrid fairytale from Brave director Brenda Chapman featuring Peter Pan and Alice (in Wonderland) as childhood siblings in London, then venture into the twisted (and uncut) sophomore feature from Brandon Cronenberg, Possessor, a sci-fi horror film that’ll make you never trust anyone again (59:29).
May contain NSFW language.
FilmWonk rating (Come Away): 6 out of 10 FilmWonk rating (Possessor Uncut): 8/10 (Glenn), 5/10 (Daniel)
Show notes:
[02:13] Review: Come Away
[17:47] Review: Possessor Uncut
[34:48] Spoilers: Possessor Uncut
During a brief aside on the limitations of artificially intelligent machine vision as depicted in Possessor, we mentioned AI researcher Janelle Shane‘s reporting on the phenomenon of “giraffing” (a term originally coined by Melissa Elliott)- she discusses it in an interview here, and you can check out her excellent blog and book here.
Listen above, or download: Come Away, Possessor (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play)
Tomorrow, our intrepid podcasters Glenn and Daniel venture to an actual theater to check out The Interview. But we don’t expect we’ll have nearly as much to say as we did about two end-of-the-year awards contenders. First, we experience our first Angelina Jolie-directed film, the WWII survival drama, Unbroken. Then we venture into a refreshingly dark and complex take on the sports genre, Foxcatcher, featuring a terrifying and transformative performance from Steve Carell. Strap in and enjoy this holiday double-header – we certainly did! (57:44)
May contain NSFW language.
FilmWonk rating (Unbroken): 4 out of 10 FilmWonk rating (Foxcatcher): Daniel – 10/10, Glenn – 9/10
Show notes:
[02:27] Review: Unbroken
[13:31] Spoilers: Unbroken
[26:35] Review: Foxcatcher
[39:45] Spoilers: Foxcatcher
[56:09] Holiday blooper. We’re not proud.
Music for tonight’s episode is the track “Miracles” by Coldplay, from the soundtrack to Unbroken, followed by “Fame” by David Bowie, from the Foxcatcher soundtrack.
We referred to Kate Winslet‘s delightful self-parody on Extras. You can watch her scenes in full here, and the part where she talks about her motivation for making an award-worthy film starts at 03:19.
As Daniel noted, the future of wrestling at the Olympics is somewhat in doubt. Under new cost-cutting rules, the IOC has adopted a system where 25 “core sports” would continue indefinitely at future Olympics – but “non-core” sports would be selected on a year-by-year basis. Wrestling was originally a core sport, but after the 2012 Olympics in London, the IOC voted to make wrestling a non-core sport. In September 2013, wrestling won the bid as a non-core sport, so it will appear in the 2020 Summer Olympics.
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