The Flop House: Episode #147 - Devil's Pass AND Awards Floptacular

Dan McCoy

[0:00] It's a Flophouse twofer as we discuss Rini Harlan's Devil's Pass

[0:04] and have our annual awards floptacular.

[0:30] Hey everyone and welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[0:37] Hey Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:40] And I am Elliot Kalin, the third in the trio.

[0:42] All for one and one for all.

[0:44] The three Flopsketeers. Three coins and a Flopton.

[0:48] Hooray!

Dan McCoy

[0:50] Is it weird that of the three, there's the three Musketeers but the most important one is not included in that number?

Elliott Kalan

[0:57] Well, because it's about him joining the three Musketeers, right?

[1:00] Yeah.

[1:01] So well, mystery solved.

[1:03] I guess Encyclopedia Brown concludes the case of the missing Miss Cusketeer.

[1:08] It was all about the puddle of water on the floor.

[1:12] That's where the Musketeer...

[1:13] It was a block of ice.

[1:14] It turned out mules can't have children.

[1:19] That's how you know Bugs Meany's plot was fake.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22] Wait, like mules from AD&D's Dark Sun setting?

Elliott Kalan

[1:25] No, no, mules like in the Mule and the Foundation series.

Dan McCoy

[1:28] Okay.

[1:28] Yeah.

[1:29] He wouldn't have called it the first Battle of Bull Run because at the time he wouldn't have known there would have been a second Battle of Bull Run.

[1:34] Yeah, thanks.

[1:37] Battle of Manassas.

Elliott Kalan

[1:39] Close the case.

[1:40] So are we doing something here or what's going on?

Dan McCoy

[1:44] This is not an Encyclopedia Brown cast.

[1:47] This is a podcast where we talk about bad movies.

[1:49] We're called the Flophouse podcast.

[1:51] Yeah, we watch a bad movie, then we discuss it.

[1:53] And a little note, a little programming note.

[1:57] Sure.

[1:57] Normally at this time we would be doing our awards floptacular.

[2:01] But nobody likes those.

[2:02] No one likes those.

[2:03] But what we're going to do, we're going to roll that into this episode.

[2:06] So that you can not like part of this episode.

[2:08] Sure.

[2:09] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[2:09] I think our listeners are going to revolt Dan and burn a Dan-shaped thing, an effigy.

[2:16] Yeah, we're selling an effigy then.

[2:17] Or something.

[2:18] Burn its knee right off.

Dan McCoy

[2:20] We're going to find that, oh no, the awards floptacular is our favorite episode.

[2:24] We wait all year for that.

[2:26] Yeah.

[2:26] Is what they're going to say.

[2:26] And we'll be like, then how come the download number is still a different story?

[2:30] So we're watching, in this case, we'll watch the movie.

[2:33] We're going to talk about that for the first half.

[2:35] And then we're going to do an abbreviated awards floptacular.

[2:38] So we're not going to have any movie recommendations.

[2:42] Or letters.

Elliott Kalan

[2:44] No.

[2:45] No letters.

Dan McCoy

[2:46] But that means no letter songs.

[2:47] I'm sure you'll figure out some way around that loophole.

[2:50] We'll record a special episode.

[2:52] Did someone say loophole?

Elliott Kalan

[2:54] Hey, everybody.

[2:56] Let's make the hole of a loop.

[2:58] Let's loop in a hole.

[3:00] Let's get it a roll.

[3:01] Let's something that's...

[3:03] I can't do it.

[3:03] It doesn't work.

[3:04] It doesn't.

[3:04] It's got to be about letters.

[3:05] Letters are the only things you can sing about.

[3:07] That's what Beatles find out.

[3:09] It's his muse, yeah.

[3:10] Yeah, that's why all the Beatles songs are about letters.

Dan McCoy

[3:14] Eleanor Letters.

[3:16] Letters on the Hill.

Elliott Kalan

[3:17] Yeah, we all live on a yellow letter.

[3:19] Revolution Number Letters.

[3:20] Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

[3:22] I should have said...

[3:22] Wait a minute.

[3:23] I didn't even change any of it.

[3:25] I was going to say Lucy in the Sky with Letters.

[3:27] Then say...

[3:28] You expect me to say letter in the Sky with Diamonds.

[3:29] Instead, I so totally screwed it up that I didn't even put the word letter in there.

Dan McCoy

[3:35] Ellie's been spending too much time with me and becoming an incomprehensible mumble mouth.

Elliott Kalan

[3:40] Now I can't talk and my tongue is trying to leap out of my mouth and escape.

Stuart Wellington

[3:44] Yeah, it's not as much fun when I'm the only one who speaks properly around here.

[3:48] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[3:49] So Dan...

[3:49] The Queen's English.

[3:51] Like they speak in Queens.

[3:53] Yep.

[3:53] So Dan.

Dan McCoy

[3:54] Sorry.

[3:55] Yeah, we watched a movie tonight called The Devil's Pass.

[3:59] It's actually just called Devil's Pass.

Elliott Kalan

[4:01] The Devil's Pass.

[4:02] There is no the.

[4:04] It's the difference between The Invisible Man and Invisible Man.

[4:07] They're two very different books.

[4:08] Directed by Renfield Harlan.

[4:10] Renfield Harlan.

Dan McCoy

[4:12] Descended from the Dracula Renfield.

[4:14] No, it's Rennie Harlan.

[4:15] You may know him from previous Flophouse movie, 12 Rounds.

[4:20] You may know him from previous Flophouse bad movie recommendation.

[4:24] Mindhunter.

[4:26] You may know him.

[4:27] Long Kiss Goodnight probably.

[4:28] Sure.

[4:28] Elliot probably recommended that.

Elliott Kalan

[4:29] Cliffhanger.

[4:31] Cliffhanger?

[4:32] Cliffhanger.

[4:33] Cliffhanger.

[4:35] That Exorcist prequel.

[4:37] Cutthroat Island too, right?

[4:38] Cutthroat Island.

[4:39] Yeah, that was the biggest bomb of all time according to somebody.

Dan McCoy

[4:43] So yeah.

[4:44] He's a guy who knows how to make a big blockbuster film.

[4:48] Nightmare on Elm Street 4.

Elliott Kalan

[4:49] He was going to make a sound of a thunder, but he didn't.

[4:52] Okay.

[4:52] Somebody else made that.

Dan McCoy

[4:53] Probably would have been more entertaining.

[4:55] Although, based on this movie, maybe not.

[4:56] Based on this movie?

Elliott Kalan

[4:57] No.

[4:57] It wouldn't have.

[4:59] Now, 12 Rounds, let's all remember, was really fun.

[5:01] It is a fun, stupid movie.

[5:03] Uh-huh.

[5:03] Devil's Pass is a...

Stuart Wellington

[5:04] Two stars like some kind of mud man.

[5:07] John Santa.

[5:07] Cast in the shape of a human being.

[5:09] John Santa.

[5:10] Bashing his way through Nolens.

Elliott Kalan

[5:11] And also, uh, Carchetti from The Wire.

[5:14] Yeah.

[5:15] But we didn't watch that movie this time.

[5:17] No.

[5:17] We watched Devil's Pass, which is Stuart's favorite type of horror movie, a found footage

[5:23] horror movie.

[5:23] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[5:23] I can't get enough of that sweet found footage.

[5:26] Everything is...

[5:26] Where do you find it?

[5:27] In the fucking garbage, I hope.

Elliott Kalan

[5:29] Because it's trash.

[5:31] Everything in it is as if it was recorded by a group of...

[5:36] They're like college students who go on a quest.

[5:39] Yeah.

[5:40] They're going to find a magic whistle.

[5:42] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[5:42] They went to an inn, and the innkeeper gave them shots of some kind of strange liqueur.

Elliott Kalan

[5:48] Well, let's get into the movie before we get to that scene.

[5:51] Okay, so two college students are putting together a movie about the...

Stuart Wellington

[5:55] But well, did they know that innkeeper was actually a wizard?

[5:58] Because he produced flame.

[6:00] We haven't even...

Elliott Kalan

[6:01] He just used like a torch.

[6:03] It would not even...

[6:04] It's called lighter, Elliot.

[6:05] Yes.

[6:07] So there are two college students who hire three other college students to go with them

[6:13] to investigate a real-life incident, according to Wikipedia, called the Dyatlov Pass Incident,

[6:20] in which at a mountain pass in Russia, a party of nine climbers was found dead with some strange

[6:27] circumstances about them.

[6:28] They didn't have shoes and were in various states of undress.

[6:31] Some of them were found to be slightly radioactive, and they had horrible wounds that were on the

[6:36] inside but not the outside, a few of them.

[6:39] And it's never been explained.

[6:40] And it is very clear Rennie Harlan read a book about it and decided to make a crappy movie about it.

Dan McCoy

[6:45] Sounds like a fascinating thing to make a movie about it.

[6:48] About now, let's see how he ruins it by not really focusing on the actual incident.

Elliott Kalan

[6:53] Allow me to explain that the most interesting thing in the movie to me is that there's a character, briefly, that you see named Dr. Kittles, which sounds like a horror movie for kids about an evil veterinarian who kills kittens, I guess?

[7:07] Was it like the prequel to Dr. Giggles?

[7:10] It's the cat version of Dr. Giggles.

[7:12] You know how sometimes there's a porn version of some movies, other movies that make cat versions, Catman and Robin and so forth.

[7:18] Sure.

Dan McCoy

[7:18] I just thought that if you were in a movie like, say you're watching a movie like An American Tail where there are cat characters, there would be...

[7:27] All villains, of course.

[7:28] In the background.

[7:29] Except for Dom Dela Leeds.

[7:29] There would be a marquee on one of the movie theaters that would say Dr. Kittles.

[7:33] Yeah, because there's a Dr. Giggles joke in An American Tail.

Elliott Kalan

[7:37] A children's movie made before Dr. Giggles.

[7:43] Great, Dan.

[7:43] Great.

[7:44] Yeah.

[7:45] Sorry.

[7:45] I apologize to you and everyone.

[7:47] Thank you.

[7:48] Apology accepted.

[7:49] And much needed.

[7:51] So there's five kids.

[7:53] One is the conspiracy nut.

[7:55] One is the earnest, clear Danes looking woman who does do stuff.

[8:00] Another is a woman who is their sound expert and two mountain climbing experts.

[8:05] You've got all kinds of women in this movie.

[8:07] You've got blondes and brunettes.

[8:09] There's two.

[8:10] And Dr. Kittles who is a woman.

[8:12] And there's an old woman too.

[8:14] But anyway...

[8:14] Not a sentient cat.

[8:16] No.

Stuart Wellington

[8:16] It's not a Totoro type situation.

[8:21] Why do you look at me when you said that?

Elliott Kalan

[8:24] Oh, because you're half Totoro.

[8:25] Sure.

[8:27] So anyway, they...

[8:28] But it turns out...

[8:29] So we watched their footage and then we cut to news stories saying that a bunch of American

[8:35] teens were found dead and disappeared.

[8:37] Went missing.

[8:38] What?

[8:38] Disappeared in Russia.

[8:39] We see a really fake looking American fake newscast.

[8:43] Then a pretty realistic looking Russian newscast.

[8:46] And then there's something that's like...

[8:48] By the way, they never released any footage from the cameras that were found.

[8:52] But some hackers found some of it.

[8:54] And here it is.

[8:55] And so the rest of the movie...

Dan McCoy

[8:57] So I guess we're watching like a front line or something?

[8:59] Because this goes on for a while.

[9:00] They show all of the footage.

Elliott Kalan

[9:01] We're watching like a movie within a movie within a movie.

[9:04] And they show the entirety of the recovered footage of this group.

[9:08] And to make a long story short, they're a bunch of young jerks.

[9:11] They go to Russia.

[9:12] They ride a train forever.

[9:13] A lot of joking and a lot of flirting.

[9:15] They go to a little town.

[9:18] There they go to a bar.

[9:19] And they drink the same drink that the original Dyatlov party drank 50 years ago.

[9:27] Yeah, it's like Saturnian wine or some bullshit.

[9:29] It's treated as if it's like a weird coincidence.

[9:31] But the bartender's like, oh, what are you doing here?

[9:34] Oh, we're going to go up there and investigate what happened to the Dyatlov party.

[9:37] Okay, well, here's a drink that they had.

[9:39] Yeah.

[9:39] You know, you should try it too.

[9:41] Spooky.

Stuart Wellington

[9:42] Yeah, I mean, how long do you think this fucking guy's been waiting to serve somebody this drink?

[9:46] Because clearly no one else is going up there.

[9:48] Yeah, I assume it's just a theme restaurant.

Elliott Kalan

[9:49] Yeah, it's just...

[9:50] It gives everybody.

[9:51] It's just party after party goes through looking for these missing...

[9:54] The answers behind this mysteriously dead climbing group.

[9:58] And he's like, oh, another one.

[10:00] All right, haul out the spooky sounds.

Dan McCoy

[10:02] Yeah, it's like going down to Salem and having the witch martini.

[10:06] Yeah, having a witch burger.

Elliott Kalan

[10:08] Wait, witch burger?

[10:09] Yeah, down at Broomhilda's.

[10:11] The witch-themed fast food restaurant?

[10:15] Yeah, going to Loch Ness and having like a Nessie steak.

[10:19] Yep.

[10:20] It's just a regular beef steak and they Dyatblue.

Stuart Wellington

[10:22] Like a Sasquatch taco.

[10:24] And where would that be?

[10:26] It's got like Sasquatch meat or something.

[10:28] You really didn't explain where is the Sasquatch-themed restaurant?

[10:34] I don't know, like Pacific Northwest or something.

[10:37] I don't know why you're acting as if I'm investigating a crime.

[10:40] It's got some like yellow fur in it or something.

[10:43] It doesn't.

[10:44] Why would it be?

[10:44] It's a Sasquatch-themed.

[10:46] It's being a cryo.

[10:47] You're eating fur?

[10:51] That's like a terrible appetizer.

[10:53] Yeah, and instead of like a tortilla, it's like salami or something.

[10:57] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[10:57] Like a huge piece of salami?

[11:00] I guess it's Sasquatch-themed.

[11:02] Salami wrapped around fur?

[11:04] That sounds...

[11:05] Yeah.

[11:05] Is Salad or Dolly serving you this?

[11:09] Down at Sally's Place.

[11:11] The Surrealist restaurant.

[11:14] All the waitresses are nude, but they have telephones for heads.

Dan McCoy

[11:19] Here, have our cocktail.

[11:22] One perfect hard-boiled egg suspended in a pitcher of orange juice.

Elliott Kalan

[11:28] Oh, and it's served on the back of a moving cat, so go for it.

[11:32] Try to find it.

Stuart Wellington

[11:35] You don't have to worry about what time it is because the clocks are all melting.

[11:39] This is a fully formed idea, guys.

[11:42] I'd like to invest in this idea.

Elliott Kalan

[11:44] No, you shouldn't.

[11:45] Where can anybody check out, too?

[11:46] Write it to Salvador Dali, courtesy of Guy Who Died 30 Years Ago.

[11:51] I guess more like 20 years ago.

[11:52] Care of Almost Played the Emperor in the Dune movie.

Dan McCoy

[11:57] This is a weird...

Elliott Kalan

[11:58] I don't know if the post office is going to deliver this.

[12:02] Oh, well, no.

[12:02] I'm just going to steal the money.

[12:03] Okay.

[12:05] Anyway, so these kids are going up to Russia.

[12:07] There's a lot of ominous signs.

[12:09] They go...

[12:10] I'm just going to say it as quickly as possible.

[12:12] They go camping out in the mountains.

[12:15] It's snowy and cold.

[12:15] Everything you'd expect to happen happens.

[12:17] They find...

[12:17] Spooky noises.

[12:18] There are spooky noises.

[12:19] There are mysterious footprints.

[12:21] They find a disembodied tongue just lying in a weather station.

Dan McCoy

[12:24] It's like some sort of Blair Witch is hunting them or something.

Elliott Kalan

[12:27] Yeah, some kind of Blair Russian Witch.

[12:29] I don't know what you'd call it.

[12:30] Like Blair-o-vitch.

[12:31] That's what it is.

[12:32] Some sort of Blair-o-vitch.

[12:33] Yep.

[12:34] Anyway, and eventually they find a hidden door that leads deep within the mountain.

[12:40] Yep.

[12:40] Where I guess Smog is keeping his treasure.

Stuart Wellington

[12:42] Pass their fucking observation roll or whatever.

Elliott Kalan

[12:45] They're on a quest.

[12:46] It's a role-playing game, right?

[12:47] It's a role-playing game called Bore the Audience.

[12:50] Everyone's arguing.

[12:51] There's the hunky athletic mountain climber expert.

Stuart Wellington

[12:56] You're using hunky super loosely, by the way.

Elliott Kalan

[12:59] Well, he's supposed to be the hunky guy.

[13:01] It bristles with the nerdy conspiracy guy, who is also not that nerdy.

[13:06] And there's an avalanche.

[13:08] Uh-oh.

[13:10] And one of the women is killed in the avalanche.

[13:13] The one who's the audio expert, not the one who looks like Claire Haines.

Stuart Wellington

[13:16] The one that's most likely to get topless.

[13:18] The one who almost does.

[13:18] And she doesn't because it's a PG-13 movie.

Elliott Kalan

[13:20] Well, she sleeps with the mountain climber, but you don't see anything because it's a PG-13 movie.

[13:24] Yeah.

[13:25] Anyway, there's an avalanche.

[13:27] She's killed in that.

[13:27] Everyone else is running around.

[13:29] Oh, no.

[13:30] The experienced mountain climber breaks his leg or something, right?

Stuart Wellington

[13:34] Yep.

[13:35] Chalk that up to a new experience.

Elliott Kalan

[13:38] And, well, you learn something no matter what happens.

[13:44] And a bunch of soldiers, I guess, fire at them.

[13:48] And the three remaining members.

[13:49] Wait, a bunch of soldiers?

Dan McCoy

[13:50] Yeah.

[13:50] It was like two dudes showed up, right?

[13:52] Yeah, Russians.

[13:53] Russian soldiers show up.

[13:54] And basically the.

[13:56] But they're off in the distance.

[13:57] We don't know they're soldiers.

[13:58] They're Russians.

[13:58] And they start firing at them.

[13:59] But they have guns.

[14:00] And they seem pretty well trained.

[14:02] But before the firing happens, one of the leaders of our intrepid band is like, this avalanche was caused by the Russian government.

[14:11] They want to hide something.

[14:12] They set charges off.

[14:13] Yeah.

[14:14] And the Russian soldiers can sort of confirm this by showing up and shooting at them.

Elliott Kalan

[14:20] And there was a heart-to-heart moment before this where of the two people who instigated this trip, the guy says he once had a bad acid trip where he imagined they were in this place years before they went there.

[14:33] And the girl says years ago when she was young she had a dream where she found a door that led into darkness.

[14:38] And she went into the darkness.

[14:40] So spooky, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

[14:42] Anyway.

[14:42] There's tons of weird dreams, dude.

[14:44] Foreshadowing.

Elliott Kalan

[14:44] Anyway, the other mountain climber, this one has a goatee, gets shot.

[14:47] And the three of them escape into the door in the mountain.

[14:50] But the doors all lock on the outside.

[14:52] So they pull it shut.

[14:54] And then the soldiers lock them in.

[14:56] And they wander through dark hallways.

[14:58] Now, I've just skipped about 40 minutes of the movie.

[15:00] Which is mostly them walking around in the snow just kind of doing a bunch of nothing.

[15:05] Yeah, like making a camp, making camp snacks.

[15:09] There's a lot.

[15:10] Basically, there's a lot of the kind of.

[15:11] Measuring footprints.

[15:12] There's a lot of the kind of details that are supposed to.

[15:15] Jabbering.

[15:15] They go over the details of the original disappearance over and over again.

[15:21] And a lot of these are like real-world details that I think are supposed to make you feel more like this is lost footage.

[15:26] These were real people.

[15:27] We care about them now.

[15:28] But instead it's just really.

Stuart Wellington

[15:29] Like using the term A.T. instead of saying Appalachian Trail.

Elliott Kalan

[15:33] Yeah, but instead you're just like, come on.

[15:36] One, I know this is fake.

[15:38] Two, this is supposed to be a horror movie.

[15:39] It's like, let's get with the spooks.

[15:41] Let's get with the scares.

[15:42] But also.

[15:43] Where's the jumping nuts?

Stuart Wellington

[15:44] Throw more fucking monsters in the background of the shots.

Dan McCoy

[15:46] But three, for all the time that is spent.

[15:49] Don't use my numbering.

[15:50] Start your own numbering, please.

[15:53] A.

[15:54] Okay, that's better.

[15:55] For all the time that is spent not doing anything.

[15:59] You expect there to be character development.

[16:02] But these are the most interchangeable group of nothing people that you've ever seen in a movie.

Elliott Kalan

[16:07] They're really cardboard.

[16:07] But their characteristics are one guy is slightly nerdier than the others.

[16:14] One guy has a terrible goatee.

[16:15] One guy has a terrible goatee and he's the nicer of the two mountain climbers.

[16:19] He's got like a weird hat.

[16:21] Yeah.

[16:21] And of the women, one is blonde and the other is not blonde.

[16:26] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[16:27] And I guess one lady is slightly sassier.

[16:31] The other is a little more restrained.

Stuart Wellington

[16:32] I don't even know if that's the case.

[16:34] Well, like the one is like the no nonsense.

[16:38] She's here on a mission.

[16:38] The other is just, you know, like a long, it's just a job to her, you know?

[16:42] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[16:43] Yeah.

[16:44] And so anyway, they escape into the mountain.

Stuart Wellington

[16:46] She's a renegade sound girl.

[16:48] I'm only in it for the sound.

[16:50] Yeah, there's one last job and then she can retire.

[16:53] Yeah.

[16:53] Down in Key West.

[16:54] At the age of like 23.

[16:56] Yeah, down in Key West, open up a beach bar.

Dan McCoy

[17:00] Where she can record all the sounds she wants to record.

Elliott Kalan

[17:03] Yeah, just stick a microphone in a shell and record the sea.

[17:07] Anyway.

Stuart Wellington

[17:07] She can serve this specialty cocktail that's a pitcher of orange juice with an egg in it.

Elliott Kalan

[17:11] Yeah, I call it the ADR because I'm a sound person.

[17:15] So they escape into the mountain and there are dark hallways.

[17:18] And it basically feels like they ran into a Resident Evil game.

[17:21] It's just dark hallways and like things skittering about.

[17:24] They find an abandoned old Russian army base that has a bunch of records about the Philadelphia

[17:30] experiment.

[17:31] The fabled, not real American Navy experiment from World War II where a ship supposedly traveled

[17:36] in time.

Dan McCoy

[17:37] This is an experiment where Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart merged together in Catherine Hepburn,

[17:43] right?

[17:43] Whoa.

[17:44] Whoa.

[17:44] Hold on a second.

[17:46] What?

[17:46] So it's just some kind of threesome is what you're saying.

[17:48] Kind of crazy chimera.

[17:49] They merged together thrusting inside Catherine Hepburn.

Elliott Kalan

[17:54] It'd be amazing if there was an early cut of the Philadelphia story that included...

[17:58] Where Catherine Hepburn's like, hold on boys, I don't need to make a choice.

[18:02] That included just a long, very graphic double penetration scene and the studio bosses were

[18:08] like, George Cukor, what are you doing?

[18:09] Are you crazy?

[18:11] We can't release this.

[18:12] This is way ahead of its time.

Dan McCoy

[18:14] This is so cutting edge.

[18:15] I mean, I can look into the future and imagine a time where this is commonplace, but not

Elliott Kalan

[18:19] now.

[18:20] Not now.

[18:21] We're locking it up in the vault.

Dan McCoy

[18:23] Yeah.

[18:24] And that still exists, guys.

[18:26] And we gotta find it.

[18:27] Let's rob that vault.

Elliott Kalan

[18:29] Let's rob that vault and finally get that Catherine Hepburn score footage.

Dan McCoy

[18:32] Okay.

[18:33] What am I?

[18:34] You're the brains.

[18:35] I'm the wheel man.

Stuart Wellington

[18:36] Okay.

[18:37] Okay.

[18:37] So we have a car, a smart guy, and bombs.

[18:41] And bombs.

Elliott Kalan

[18:42] Now all we gotta do is find where the film is, figure out how to steal it, and we're home

[18:46] free.

[18:46] And then what we're gonna do with it afterwards, because I think maybe once I can watch the novelty

[18:50] value of a threesome with Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and Catherine Hepburn, but I don't

[18:54] know how many times after that.

Stuart Wellington

[18:55] Yeah, after the first time or three times, it's hard to enjoy anymore.

Elliott Kalan

[18:59] I also like how in Dan's mind, experiment means threesome.

[19:03] Whereas I would think like something science-y.

Stuart Wellington

[19:06] Sure.

[19:06] The only-

[19:07] Yeah, like they start researching something and then they all have sex.

[19:11] Yes.

[19:13] I mean-

[19:13] It's an experiment.

[19:14] Science-y.

Dan McCoy

[19:15] Yeah.

[19:16] Well, the scientific method implies that they just gotta try everything.

Elliott Kalan

[19:19] Our hypothesis is that three people will make it extra hot.

[19:23] Let's test it.

[19:25] So-

[19:26] But we need to replicate these results.

[19:28] So they find this down in this place, right?

[19:30] So they're in this place.

[19:32] There's a lot of old documents and they find some dead bodies.

[19:36] Some of whom-

[19:37] With like weird gross teeth.

[19:38] Are monstrously misshapen in their teeth and whatnot.

[19:42] Sharp teeth.

[19:43] Eventually, it turns out there's a bunch-

Stuart Wellington

[19:44] The guy who's been hurt, they kind of leave behind for some reason.

[19:47] Yeah, they say they'll come back and get him.

[19:48] But he's sleepy.

[19:49] But he's-

[19:49] We were shot and he's lost a lot of blood.

Elliott Kalan

[19:52] He's like, oh, yawn.

[19:54] Let me just catch a couple of Z's and I'll be okay.

Dan McCoy

[19:57] Don't worry about me, guys.

[19:58] I just-

[19:58] I'm just too tired.

[20:00] I'm too tired to go on.

[20:02] He's had a rough day.

[20:04] I'm just gonna snuggle down here.

[20:06] My feeties are so sore.

[20:08] I'll just lie here.

[20:09] Get up my energy.

Elliott Kalan

[20:11] So they're attacked by a bunch of monster people who have that like elongated arms, you know, pot belly, you know-

Stuart Wellington

[20:19] You've seen them in like a million movies.

[20:21] They're like the Legion demons.

[20:23] Yeah, they're like a Legion.

[20:24] And all sorts of stuff.

[20:25] They don't die as easy as those demons do.

Elliott Kalan

[20:27] No, because they can teleport.

[20:29] Okay.

[20:29] And they're bamfing around like Nightcrawler in the beginning of X-Men 2.

[20:32] X2, X-Men United.

[20:33] Mm-hmm.

Stuart Wellington

[20:34] We got-

[20:35] And there's plenty of shots of these monsters like screaming at the camera or like grabbing somebody and moving all jittery.

[20:43] I gotta say-

[20:45] Doing a jitterbug.

[20:45] I gotta tell you-

[20:45] I've seen this before.

[20:47] I've seen this type of monster.

[20:48] You saw this movie already?

[20:49] No.

[20:49] Why did you make us watch it?

Dan McCoy

[20:51] I've seen this type of monster before.

[20:53] Like as we've been saying-

[20:54] What, in the zoo?

[20:55] It's a real Legion type of monster.

[20:58] Yeah, it's a pretty rote by the numbers.

[21:00] But that said, I feel like it was actually done better than I normally see it in this movie.

[21:06] Like it was genuinely kind of freaky when they finally showed up.

Elliott Kalan

[21:10] Yeah, well the fact that they're half in shadow a lot of the time is good.

Dan McCoy

[21:14] Well, and that they keep shifting around like they have this thing where they're like phasing in and out of reality somehow.

[21:20] Yeah.

[21:21] That made it a little creepier.

Stuart Wellington

[21:22] Well, I like that description more than what they ended up saying is that they're just teleporting around.

[21:27] They can just teleport.

[21:28] Like the idea of them being unstuck in time is more interesting to me.

Elliott Kalan

[21:31] Or like the monsters in From Beyond where they're kind of existing on a different plane of reality and they're, yeah, they're like popping in and out of our reality in their own.

[21:42] That's not what it is.

[21:42] They're just teleporting.

[21:43] But Dan's reading is better, so let's just take it that way.

[21:46] Yeah, and From Beyond's great.

[21:47] And From Beyond's fantastic.

[21:48] It's all goopy and gross.

[21:50] The guy gets killed by a swarm of bees and they eat his skin somehow.

Dan McCoy

[21:53] But I gotta say, like, we haven't gotten to, like, the full craziness of where this ending goes.

[21:59] But this movie unloads so much crazy at the end.

[22:02] Right at the end.

[22:02] Instead of doing a...

[22:03] In like the last 10 minutes.

Elliott Kalan

[22:04] Instead of doing a slow drip, you have a lot of these characters wandering around in the snow, not doing very much.

[22:09] And then suddenly in the last 10, 15 minutes, it's underground Soviet base, monster men who can teleport.

[22:15] Okay, we're gonna open up this cave door.

[22:17] Oh, there's some kind of time portal that goes to Lord knows where.

[22:22] And we're gonna leap through it holding hands...

[22:25] It's a fucking Stargate.

[22:26] Yeah.

[22:27] Yeah.

[22:27] Except when they go through it, they don't end up in an Egyptian-based alien world run by the She-Man from The Crying Game.

[22:33] The Gwa-Uld.

Stuart Wellington

[22:34] Is that what it's called?

[22:35] They're the Gwa-Uld.

[22:36] Yeah, that's the alien race.

[22:37] It's a title name.

[22:38] Gwa-Uld.

[22:38] Yeah, yeah.

[22:39] Wait, what?

[22:40] Guardians of the Owl?

[22:41] Gwa-Uld?

[22:41] The Owls of Jeff Gaw-Uld.

Elliott Kalan

[22:45] So they think, well, maybe we'll walk through it and we'll think about where we want to be.

[22:51] And then we'll escape.

[22:52] And they walk through this portal and the camera goes with them.

[22:54] And this is one of my problems that I have with this kind of like Cloverfield Blair Witch movie.

[22:59] Something scary is chasing you.

[23:00] You can just drop the camera.

[23:01] Like, the camera is not gonna go with you.

[23:04] Because you have to...

[23:04] It's every now and then they'll do something to show it's a found footage movie.

[23:07] Like, they'll put the camera down and you'll be like, wait a minute.

[23:10] So you were running around with your hand in front of your face with a camera attached to it when you thought you were being shot at?

[23:16] Or that there were monsters coming at you?

[23:18] Like, nobody in the world would just keep shooting.

[23:21] I mean, maybe if you're a professional news photographer or something like that.

[23:25] But worse than that, like, as...

[23:26] That was my problem with Cloverfield, though.

[23:27] It was like, seriously?

[23:29] The guy won't put down the damn camera?

[23:31] I know what you're saying, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[23:31] Well, no.

[23:32] Like, well, we haven't gotten there yet.

[23:34] But you're about to say that they leap back into the past.

Elliott Kalan

[23:37] When they go through, suddenly they're dead.

[23:40] And we see through the camera that some people are trying to reach them.

[23:46] But Soviet troops stop them.

[23:48] And these people are...

[23:49] One of them is a woman who's a young version of an old woman they interview earlier in the movie who said,

[23:54] even though there were nine people in the mountain climbing group that disappeared, I saw 11 bodies.

[23:59] And it's the two...

[24:00] He's closing the circle.

[24:01] Our two last main characters.

[24:03] And a Soviet troop picks up the camera, doesn't know what it is.

[24:06] He's baffled by it because it's future technology.

Dan McCoy

[24:09] Yeah, but with the found footage thing, that's where I was going, like,

[24:12] how did the fucking hackers get their hands on this camera that teleported back into the past?

[24:16] Because at some point the Soviet government...

[24:19] Hackers can do a lot of shit, Dan.

[24:20] And also...

[24:20] They can skateboard.

[24:22] They've got dreadlocks, even though they're white guys.

[24:25] Fisher Stevens skateboarded into the past, took it and plugged it into a computer,

Elliott Kalan

[24:29] and there was just a bunch of code falling around.

[24:31] You know, in a haze.

[24:32] Okay.

[24:33] Fair enough.

[24:33] They hacked the world.

[24:34] Yeah, Angelina Jolie did some...

[24:35] When they hacked the world at the end, it involved this.

Dan McCoy

[24:37] Exactly.

[24:38] DJ Qualls figured it out.

Elliott Kalan

[24:39] Also the net.

[24:40] Let's not forget that.

[24:42] Anyway.

[24:43] Yep.

[24:44] And Tron.

[24:45] Everyone was Troning about with their Johnny mnemonics.

[24:47] Yep.

[24:48] Yeah.

[24:49] Neuromancing up and down, dancing on the ceiling, kung fu fighting,

[24:52] walk the dinosaur, all that stuff.

[24:55] You know, war games, weird science, Colossus the Forbun Project.

[25:00] 2001 A Space Odyssey, and so forth.

[25:02] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[25:03] You've convinced me.

[25:04] Yeah, thank you.

[25:06] Anyway, they've gone...

[25:07] Do you want to play a game?

[25:09] No.

[25:09] The only winning move is not to play, Elliot.

[25:11] Oh, good point.

Elliott Kalan

[25:12] Well, the game was...

[25:13] Hit yourself in the head with this, so you're right.

Stuart Wellington

[25:17] What?

[25:17] Lawnmower Man's.

[25:19] Yeah, there you go.

[25:19] Lawnmower Man's.

[25:20] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[25:20] I can play the game, too.

Stuart Wellington

[25:22] Dee Snider's Strange Land.

Elliott Kalan

[25:23] Sure.

[25:24] Well, that was a little different.

[25:25] That was not really about computers so much.

[25:27] Or beer.net.

[25:28] There you go.

[25:29] Untraceable.

[25:30] Brain scan.

[25:32] Yeah.

[25:33] Yeah, there you go.

[25:34] Perfect.

[25:34] A lot of stuff with computers in it.

[25:37] Virtuosity.

[25:37] So here we go.

[25:38] So, and we see as their...

[25:41] It's my favorite Russell Crow performance, by the way.

[25:43] Russell Crow?

[25:44] Yeah.

[25:45] Russell Crow.

Stuart Wellington

[25:46] The WWE wrestler?

[25:47] Yeah.

[25:48] He's a member of, what, the Legion of Doom?

Elliott Kalan

[25:51] Yeah, he's a Russell Crow slash the Crow themed wrestler.

[25:56] So it's like Russell Crow with the Crow's makeup on.

[26:00] And his finishing move is he plays a song from 30-Odd Foot of Grunts.

Dan McCoy

[26:04] I'm imagining this is like an alternate, like when he made Cinderella Man, this was the companion

[26:09] piece.

[26:10] He was like an old time wrestler.

[26:12] But for some reason he was under his actor's name.

[26:16] Oh, Russell Crow is going to wrestle his way out of the Great Depression.

Elliott Kalan

[26:18] I wish Cinderella Man had been just the story of Cinderella, but Russell Crow played Cinderella.

[26:23] Yeah, where it's Cinderella Man.

[26:27] And Russell Crow's just like on his hands and feet scrubbing his wicked stepsisters' shoes

[26:32] or whatever.

[26:33] And then a little mouse helps him make a dress.

[26:36] That would be adorable.

[26:38] Anyway, so the Russian troops take...

[26:40] They've gone into the past, clearly, through this portal.

[26:44] The Russian troops take their bodies and remove their modern, weird-looking clothes.

[26:47] Is it a portal?

[26:47] It's a portal of time.

[26:49] It is a portal of time.

[26:50] Not a porthole of time.

[26:51] It's way too big for that.

[26:52] If anything, what it looks like is more of a sphincter of time.

[26:55] It really does.

[26:55] Like they walked into the Earth's anus.

[26:56] It's a colon of time.

[26:57] And they just got spat backwards in time.

[27:00] And their bodies are hung up on a whack.

[27:02] They walked into a time sarlacc.

[27:04] And their bodies, through some weird transformation through the portal, are now half-monstery.

[27:10] Yeah, they're like ghouls.

[27:11] And they start shaking a little, and it's clear that they are now...

[27:14] They have become the monsters that attack them in the future.

[27:17] And they have kind of badass haircuts now, too.

[27:19] Yeah, yeah.

[27:19] They look like the girl with the dragon tattoo.

Dan McCoy

[27:21] And it's sort of vaguely implied that maybe the thing that killed the original people in the past is the shockwave or whatever of them going back in time.

Elliott Kalan

[27:31] Of our heroes, yeah, emerging into the 1950s.

Dan McCoy

[27:34] I mean, one problem with this movie is...

[27:35] It's not only one problem?

[27:37] This is the single soldier problem.

[27:40] Is that how boring it is?

[27:41] I'm saying that one of the many problems is that it both...

[27:45] Soothes and relaxes.

[27:49] It either spends way too much time explaining something or...

[27:54] Or it doesn't like what we were doing.

[27:55] ...losses over something and assumes that you understand it.

[27:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[27:59] We are told that this...

[28:01] And it also...

[28:02] The movie throws out a lot of possible theories early on.

[28:04] Was it UFOs?

[28:05] Was it Sasquatch Yetis?

[28:07] Was it...

[28:08] Who knows?

[28:08] Was it local tribesmen?

[28:10] And at the end, it's like...

[28:11] Was it a ghost chupacabra?

[28:13] It's almost like at the end, they were like, uh...

[28:15] Oh, man.

[28:16] Why can't we just...

Stuart Wellington

[28:16] Yeah, it's a poor fucking chupacabra that died and is now haunting a fucking village.

Elliott Kalan

[28:20] Yeah, well, he's got to make up for his cowardice in his living life by inspiring someone else to be brave.

[28:26] It's the Canterville Chupacabra.

[28:29] Starring Chupacabra Loughton.

[28:32] But it's like the movie throws out all these possible explanations and then it finally hits someone at the end that is way less interesting than any of the others.

[28:40] Stuart, you put it best.

[28:41] I think that you said this movie was like the...

[28:43] I think it was you.

[28:43] Maybe it was Dan.

[28:44] I think it was you who said this movie is like The Descent if The Descent was really bad.

Stuart Wellington

[28:47] Well, yeah.

[28:49] I mean, they use all the...

[28:51] At least leading up to the moment where we're introduced to the weird fucking laboratory.

[28:56] They use every cliche of like, oh, we went to sleep.

[28:59] Oh, we woke up and there's markings in the fucking snow.

[29:02] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[29:03] The snow's all yellow.

[29:04] And it's probably full of nutrients.

[29:06] Let's eat it.

Stuart Wellington

[29:06] We heard a weird sound.

[29:07] Let's investigate.

[29:08] There's a tongue for some reason.

Elliott Kalan

[29:10] Yeah, they never really explained why that tongue was there either.

Stuart Wellington

[29:12] A monster ripped it out of a dude's head.

Elliott Kalan

[29:14] But then why did he leave it in a weather station?

Dan McCoy

[29:16] Yeah, they...

[29:16] To totally spookify people, dude.

[29:19] Yeah, I don't know why it was in the weather station.

[29:21] They do like try and explain it.

[29:22] Like there's like a...

[29:23] They show the person's tongue it was removed.

[29:24] They show a soldier ahead and their explanation was like, oh, you know, if you're gonna like

[29:30] try and keep this secret, wouldn't you send someone ahead first to make sure that there's

[29:35] still a secret worth keeping?

[29:37] And I'm just like, okay, I guess.

[29:38] But then like the people who ripped this guy's tongue out, then were they killed too?

[29:45] Or I guess those were maybe killed, but they were killed by the spook-em-ups.

Stuart Wellington

[29:48] Yeah, it doesn't really...

[29:49] It's not very clear.

[29:50] So that guy...

[29:51] But then who took the tongue out and left it?

[29:53] They've been trying to fire that guy, but that guy's part of the union.

[29:56] So they had to send them on.

[29:59] That's why...

[30:00] They don't call it Soviet Union for nothing.

[30:01] Yeah.

[30:02] So they sent them on ahead to make sure the monsters are still killing dudes.

Elliott Kalan

[30:06] Okay, you got it.

[30:07] Reminds me of that.

[30:08] A talk I saw Evan Dorkin give once where he talked about how in every monster movie,

[30:12] there's the idiot who just runs up to the monster so that the monster can show you what his

[30:15] power is.

[30:19] Instead of keeping a distance and like shooting the monster, someone runs...

[30:22] Oh, what is it?

[30:22] Halloween?

[30:23] And runs up and gets electrified or something.

Stuart Wellington

[30:25] Yeah, I gotta say my favorite moment in the movie is when they're exploring the weather

[30:28] station for some reason.

[30:30] She opens the door to the weather station, sees the tongue, shouts, what the?

[30:35] And then basically does a fucking flip take.

Elliott Kalan

[30:37] Just what the?

[30:38] And then falls over into the snow and you're like, nobody has ever done that.

Stuart Wellington

[30:42] She is struck dumb by this thing.

Elliott Kalan

[30:44] The only way it could have been less realistic is if all you saw was her feet flying out of

[30:48] the panel as she reacted to the punchline.

[30:50] She just heard from that tongue.

[30:53] Tongue, anyone?

[30:54] What?

Dan McCoy

[30:56] I think my favorite goofy moment was when the avalanche came and that lady died by like...

[31:03] She like snow surfed into a camera where we like see like the lens of the camera shatter.

[31:07] Her face like go flows into it.

Stuart Wellington

[31:10] Her face slams into the camera, beat, and then crack appears.

[31:13] Yeah, it looks like the fucking splat from that paintball Nintendo game.

Elliott Kalan

[31:20] Scarifying.

[31:21] But to get to...

[31:22] I mean, I like a good walking around the dark tunnels and there's creepy monsters skittering

[31:26] around and like I like stories that involve conspiracy...

[31:29] Time loops.

[31:30] Time loops and conspiracies and hidden military bases with monsters in them and stuff.

[31:34] But I felt like this movie did not set up or earn any of that.

[31:38] It just suddenly was like, are you bored of seeing the characters not having any idea

[31:42] what's going on?

[31:43] Well, here's a whole lot of shit.

[31:44] Let's dump it on you.

[31:44] Okay, gotta go.

[31:45] Run.

[31:46] Like the movie was trying to...

[31:47] The movie realized it had nowhere to go so it just threw a bunch of mud in your face

[31:50] so it could run away before you could catch it.

[31:52] And it's like...

[31:53] Smoke bomb.

[31:55] The whole last ten minutes of this movie was a smoke bomb.

[31:58] A cinematic smoke bomb.

[32:00] But, I mean...

[32:01] You can't catch what you don't see.

Dan McCoy

[32:04] And yet those last ten minutes were the best ten minutes.

[32:08] They were.

[32:08] It's not saying a lot.

Stuart Wellington

[32:09] Yeah, they're like, oh, you didn't think those monsters were realistic?

[32:12] Well, we're not going to show them to you anymore.

[32:14] Well, it's almost like...

Elliott Kalan

[32:15] There's no reason why they couldn't have gotten to that underground tunnel like 30 minutes

[32:19] in the movie, 25 minutes in, after maybe 15 minutes of them wandering around the snow

[32:24] instead of like 40 minutes of it.

Stuart Wellington

[32:26] They could have kept more of the hikers alive to get murdered by...

[32:29] By the monsters.

Dan McCoy

[32:29] Yeah, they could go in there.

[32:30] They could find the monsters.

[32:31] They could be scared by the monsters.

[32:32] They could go back out.

[32:33] They could be chased back into the tunnels by the Russian army.

[32:37] Yeah.

[32:37] And then...

[32:38] When they go back out...

Stuart Wellington

[32:39] There's so many common elements that you could have, like...

[32:42] It's just the, like, the lamest version of this movie.

Elliott Kalan

[32:45] And they did not earn a time portal at the end.

[32:50] I mean, you don't...

[32:51] What do you have to do to earn that?

[32:52] I mean, to just mention the Philadelphia Experiment and then be like, when a time portal shows up

[32:56] in a cave, you're like, by the way, this was always here.

[32:59] This is what we meant to always happen.

[33:00] And there are some cave drawings and they're like, the monsters probably made these.

[33:04] This is their home or something.

[33:06] Or they're aliens.

[33:07] Like, the characters are still spinning theories that are clearly wrong.

[33:12] And maybe there's a movie in that, like, a horror movie where it becomes very clear to the audience

[33:17] what's going on, but the characters cannot seem to figure it out.

[33:20] And keep spinning out theories that we know are totally not correct.

[33:26] I think it would be a really frustrating movie to watch, but still, you know.

Dan McCoy

[33:30] All right.

[33:30] Well, we should...

Elliott Kalan

[33:32] The same way that once you see an alien on the X-Files, every episode when Dana Scully's like,

[33:37] Like, come on.

[33:38] Just...

[33:38] We've seen him.

[33:40] I think...

[33:41] They're those gray guys.

Dan McCoy

[33:42] I think the X-Files plays better if you assume that after a certain point, Scully's just

[33:46] dicking around with them all over.

[33:49] I think the X-Files plays better if you stop watching it at a certain point.

[33:52] That's true.

Elliott Kalan

[33:53] And you just click over and watch Millennium.

[33:55] Yeah.

[33:56] Yeah, the much better Millennium.

[33:57] You watch Harsh Realm instead.

[34:00] You watch Viper.

[34:03] VR5.

[34:04] So, we should just...

[34:06] Millennium.

[34:07] Just Mopey Lance Hendrickson just walking around doing nothing.

[34:09] Yep, looking for Pumpkin Heads.

[34:11] That's what he's doing.

[34:12] Is that what that show was about?

[34:13] Yeah, it was about Pumpkin Heads.

[34:15] Yeah, it was a Pumpkin Heads prequel.

[34:16] So, this was...

[34:17] I wish there was more to talk about in this movie, but it's not...

[34:19] No, that's fine.

[34:19] This was a real nothing of a movie that Dan could not wait to watch.

[34:23] He was chomping at the bit.

[34:25] It was Rene Harland.

[34:26] Rene Harland.

[34:27] It's going to be kweezy.

[34:29] But it was not kweezy.

[34:31] It made me queezy with all the shaky cam.

[34:35] All right, so...

[34:36] Do you think in...

Stuart Wellington

[34:37] Real quick, do you guys think in any way this movie was improved by being a found footage movie?

[34:43] Do you think that if they had made a non-found footage version of this movie, it could have been better?

Elliott Kalan

[34:48] I think there's almost no found footage movie I've seen that I wouldn't have liked more as a non-found footage movie.

[34:53] Dan?

Stuart Wellington

[34:55] What are we talking about?

[34:56] Whether or not it being a found footage movie had any positive impact, and is it possible it could have been improved by being a traditional...

Dan McCoy

[35:03] Definitely been improved by being a traditional movie.

[35:05] We should skip ahead to final judgments.

[35:07] Let me just say one last thing about found footage movies.

[35:10] You can say it in final...

Elliott Kalan

[35:11] Okay, if you're just my final judgment, it was bad, bad.

[35:13] So the first thing I was going to say about found footage movies is that if you were going to make a found footage movie that looked like it...

[35:20] That was told a story through pieced together found things from different sources, I'd be more interested in that.

[35:26] Like kind of...

Stuart Wellington

[35:27] Like what?

[35:27] Like security videos of the monster home?

Elliott Kalan

[35:30] Security videos or news stories or personal home videos.

[35:34] Kind of like what F for Fake does for documentaries.

[35:36] If you did something like that for a horror movie where it's pieced together from different pieces from different sources, that would be more interesting to me than like...

[35:44] We brought a camcorder with us into a spooky house or a cave or some shit.

[35:48] We're just going to hold it all the time, you know.

[35:51] And eventually it's going to drop and you're going to have like an unmoving shot where monsters are running around in the background and we'll have night vision at some point.

[35:58] But to have a...

[35:59] If it was like a story that somehow it was like you were watching a documentary...

Stuart Wellington

[36:03] I feel like getting night vision on your camera is just a bad move because you know there's going to be monsters at some point.

Elliott Kalan

[36:08] There's either going to be monsters or someone's going to see you having sex.

[36:11] And you're going to have glowy weird cat eyes.

[36:13] And that's...

[36:14] Nobody gets turned down by that.

[36:15] The only time that looks good is at the end of the thriller video.

[36:18] But the...

[36:19] If it was...

[36:20] I would rather see like a spooky fake documentary.

[36:23] Yeah.

[36:24] That was pieced together from different sources but is genuinely scary than like...

[36:29] Like The Bay?

Stuart Wellington

[36:30] Did you ever see...

[36:31] I never saw The Bay, no.

[36:33] But even that used some crappy...

[36:35] Like why is this person carrying a camera around?

[36:37] Yeah.

[36:39] So yeah.

[36:41] Not a found footage.

[36:41] Bad, bad movie.

[36:42] We're all bad, bad.

[36:42] Yeah.

[36:43] I think we're all bad, bad.

[36:44] No, they're no surprises.

[36:44] We're all bad, bad.

[36:45] Bad, bad.

Dan McCoy

[36:48] Before we move on to the next bit of the show, the...

[36:54] Oscars Floptacular.

[36:56] The abbreviated Floptacular.

[36:57] Reader's Digest Edition.

[36:59] I just want to spotlight one of our sister podcasts over at All Things Comedy.

[37:07] In this case, I would like to spotlight the Dork Forest, Jackie Cations podcast where she discusses her favorite obsessions with the obsessed.

[37:18] But over and above her podcast, All Things Comedy is starting to release stand-up albums.

Elliott Kalan

[37:27] Original albums.

[37:29] And...

[37:29] For digital download for very competitive prices.

[37:32] Yeah.

[37:32] And it's like, what, $5?

Dan McCoy

[37:33] Yeah, well, that's just $5.

[37:35] I wanted to say Jackie Cation has launched her latest stand-up special.

[37:39] This will make an excellent Horcrux, which is available for a $5 digital download exclusively through All Things Comedy.

[37:49] You can get it at www.allthingscomedy.com forward slash Jackie Cation.

[37:55] And you can get a limited edition tour shirt with the cover art for that same special at www.jackiecation.com slash Horcrux.

Elliott Kalan

[38:10] So, check it out.

[38:11] How do you spell that at the end?

Dan McCoy

[38:13] You spell it in the way that the Harry Potter books spell Horcrux.

Elliott Kalan

[38:18] Oh, I didn't know it was a Harry Potter thing.

[38:20] I thought it was like, this is the place the horrors really come together.

[38:24] The Horcrux.

Stuart Wellington

[38:25] Yep, that's what it is in Harry Potter, too.

Elliott Kalan

[38:27] I remembered one thing I did like in Devil's Pass, so let's leave on a positive note.

[38:31] Okay, which was...

Stuart Wellington

[38:32] When it ended and we got to record the show.

[38:34] And we got to stop watching.

Elliott Kalan

[38:35] When they're in the base, they find a camcorder and they start playing the tape on it.

[38:40] And it's stuff that happened to them.

[38:42] And if they fast forward and get to the point on the tape where it is what they're recording right now.

[38:48] And you realize later they found the camcorder that went back in time with them.

[38:54] But there was something very spooky about that in kind of an H.P. Lovecraft unexplainable mystery way of,

[39:00] I found a camera here that has a videotape on it that shows what we're doing right now.

[39:05] And I almost wish they had not explained it in a time travel science fiction way and it had just been spooky.

[39:10] But that was a genuinely creepy moment for me.

[39:12] Like, oh, okay.

[39:13] That was interesting.

Stuart Wellington

[39:13] Yeah, it played up the whole unexplained phenomena angle that I think Rennie Harlan was obsessed with.

[39:19] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[39:20] Yeah, I agree.

[39:22] He was obsessed with explaining.

[39:24] Overall, though, I think a documentary about the original incident would be more interesting.

[39:29] Would be way more interesting.

[39:31] And creepier.

Stuart Wellington

[39:32] Yeah, creepier, yeah.

[39:33] Or like a normal movie, but about the original incident.

Elliott Kalan

[39:36] A dramatized movie.

[39:38] But like Rennie Harlan, if you're...

Stuart Wellington

[39:39] People being killed by, I'm guessing, an irradiated wrestler who kills everybody.

Elliott Kalan

[39:43] It must be a radioactive Yeti orangutan, you know, professional wrestler guy.

Stuart Wellington

[39:47] Yeah, it's real murders in the Rue morgue.

[39:50] Yeah.

[39:51] Murders in the Rue mountain.

Elliott Kalan

[39:53] Thanks for putting that in language I couldn't understand.

[39:56] But I do wish Rennie Harlan had just made a straight documentary about the original thing.

[40:00] But anyway, we're done with that.

[40:01] Bad, bad movie.

[40:02] Moving on to...

[40:03] Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

[40:06] Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

[40:09] Live from Hollywood Dan's apartment.

[40:11] It's the Flophouse.

[40:13] Bridged, abbreviated, very short, Floptacular segment.

[40:17] Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

[40:18] Oh, Dan, you look good.

Stuart Wellington

[40:19] What are you wearing?

[40:20] Is that from the Stephen King collection?

Dan McCoy

[40:22] I'm wearing a gray fleece over what I would call a sort of a pullover.

Stuart Wellington

[40:28] And over here, that's Stuart Wellington in a Tuxedo.

[40:30] Who's your Tuxedo by?

[40:32] It's from Dan McCoy Swimwear.

[40:35] You can find it on the Flophouse podcast website.

[40:38] I don't think you can.

Elliott Kalan

[40:39] And here's me wearing nothing special, jeans, shirt, and, you know, another...

[40:42] A Western shirt.

[40:43] Yeah, it was plaid.

[40:44] But no socks or shoes.

[40:45] It's a real beach outfit.

[40:46] Nope, because my hobbit feet need to breathe, even on a red carpet.

[40:50] So, guys, what are we talking about?

[40:51] Which award show?

[40:52] The AK Place Awards?

[40:54] The NAACP Image Awards?

[40:55] The Mary Kay Place Awards?

[40:57] Yeah, the American Girl Place Awards for the best American girl.

[41:02] The award goes to Dan.

[41:04] Wait a minute.

Dan McCoy

[41:05] The Academy Awards.

[41:07] The Oscars.

Elliott Kalan

[41:08] The Police Academy Awards?

[41:10] Best sound effects goes to that guy.

[41:13] The sound effects guy.

Stuart Wellington

[41:14] Not Tackleberry.

[41:15] No.

[41:16] The only sound effect he does is the cocking of the hammer of a pistol.

Elliott Kalan

[41:20] Most craziest goes to Zed.

[41:23] Yeah, I mean...

[41:24] Why can I not remember the sound effects guy's real name?

[41:26] Motorbath Jones?

[41:27] No.

[41:28] Michael Winslow?

[41:28] Michael Winslow.

[41:29] Thank you.

Dan McCoy

[41:30] So, um...

Elliott Kalan

[41:32] Brother to fictional character Carl Winslow.

[41:34] Anyway, you're saying, Dan?

Dan McCoy

[41:35] I watched the Oscars.

Elliott Kalan

[41:37] Also, at least, Oscar.

[41:38] All the way through.

[41:40] I also watched the Oscars all the way through.

Dan McCoy

[41:42] And I have a strange lack of enthusiasm for them.

Elliott Kalan

[41:45] I thought this was...

[41:47] It started out strong.

[41:48] Okay.

[41:49] I thought it was a fine Oscars for a long time.

[41:50] And then Ellen DeGeneres apparently made the decision that she didn't need to write new material

[41:54] for the last two-thirds of the show.

Dan McCoy

[41:56] She could just wander the aisles offering people pizza three times in a row.

Elliott Kalan

[42:01] Riff and banter.

[42:02] I didn't have any major problems with the award winners, you know?

[42:06] It was kind of like, oh, okay.

[42:07] It was a good year for movies.

[42:09] Nobody really shitty got, you know, won any awards that I could think of.

Dan McCoy

[42:12] I mean, I had my problems that I always did with, like, the shitty bits.

[42:17] Like, if she was just going to wander...

[42:19] Or shits.

[42:20] If she was just going to wander the aisles like that.

[42:22] Like, I mean, there's...

[42:24] We've reached a point in Oscars history where...

Stuart Wellington

[42:27] Just thinking about the times when I go to the bathroom and I just leave a bunch of shitty bits in the toilet.

[42:31] All right.

Dan McCoy

[42:33] Terrible cereal, by the way.

[42:36] We've reached a point in Oscar history where...

Elliott Kalan

[42:38] Not kid-tested.

[42:39] Neither is a mother-approved.

[42:41] No.

[42:42] And that's not a toy...

[42:42] It's not FDA-approved, either.

[42:43] And that's not a toy in the bottom of the box.

Dan McCoy

[42:47] It's a part of your balanced breakfast if you want to get hepatitis C.

Elliott Kalan

[42:52] Even the milk turns chocolate.

[42:54] All right.

[42:55] Just part of this unbalanced breakfast.

[42:56] Okay.

Dan McCoy

[42:57] But, um...

[42:58] What the hell is it going to...

[42:59] We've reached a point in Oscar history where, like, you have these honorary Oscars that went out to people like Steve Martin and Angela Lansbury.

[43:07] I would have loved to have seen more about that.

[43:09] But they don't want to show that.

[43:11] But instead of it, that shut it off to a different ceremony and we get...

[43:13] Because today's viewers don't want to watch that.

[43:15] Pizza bullshit.

Elliott Kalan

[43:16] Well, they want to see celebrities hanging out.

[43:19] Yeah.

[43:19] But I understand there's...

[43:20] Taking selfies.

[43:21] You could include those honorary awards if you cut out the unnecessary tribute montages.

[43:27] And I'm talking about not the In Memoriam, my favorite part.

[43:29] Yeah.

[43:30] Where we celebrate Hollywood's dearest to party.

Dan McCoy

[43:32] Although we doubled it up this year for some reason.

[43:34] We had the full In Memoriam, which was tasteful.

[43:37] I mean, I would have liked to have seen a little more actual, like, footage from the movies.

[43:41] But it was well produced.

[43:42] And it was weird that they chose one credit for each person.

Elliott Kalan

[43:44] Yeah.

[43:44] So it was like, all right, I guess that was the only movie that Harold Ramis made.

[43:48] You know.

Dan McCoy

[43:48] But then after that, they're like, and now Bette Midler to sing...

[43:53] Wind Beneath My Wings.

[43:55] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[43:55] And only because the theme of the night was Heroes.

[43:58] And that song has the line...

[44:00] NBC's Heroes?

Dan McCoy

[44:01] No.

[44:01] It's coming back for a miniseries.

Elliott Kalan

[44:03] Great.

[44:04] I don't care.

[44:05] I didn't like it the first time.

[44:07] So they picked a song that said, Did You Ever Know You're My Hero?

[44:11] Oh.

[44:11] Because the theme was Heroes.

[44:12] But they shoehorned that theme into so much weird stuff.

[44:16] And I read something that was saying how the Oscar winners must have been pretty predictable.

[44:21] Because to have had a year where the theme was Heroes and Matthew McConaughey wins for Dallas Buyers Club makes sense.

[44:28] But if, like, Leonardo DiCaprio had won for Wolf of Wall Street, it's like, Heroes.

[44:32] Like this jackass who made millions and did this terrible stuff.

[44:37] Now, wait.

Dan McCoy

[44:38] Where was it said that this was the theme of the...

Elliott Kalan

[44:42] At the very beginning, they said Heroes.

[44:43] Then they had a tribute to animated Heroes, a tribute to superheroes, and a tribute to real-life Heroes,

[44:49] which I think you pointed out to me included Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mocky Bird,

[44:53] because somebody at the Academy thinks that was a real person who existed somewhere and not a novel character.

Dan McCoy

[45:00] Okay.

[45:01] Was that why Matthew McConaughey was talking about how he was his own hero again?

[45:03] Yes, exactly.

Elliott Kalan

[45:05] And now, the weird thing about...

Stuart Wellington

[45:07] All right, all right.

[45:08] These tributes.

[45:09] All right.

Elliott Kalan

[45:10] And I say this as someone who has made an Oscar montage.

[45:13] Oh, we get it.

[45:14] So I'm just saying...

[45:15] You've worked on an Oscar montage.

[45:16] But I'm just saying, I know a lot of hard work and time goes into it.

[45:18] They're not easy to do.

[45:20] You cut them over and over again to try to get them right.

[45:23] And it takes a long time.

[45:25] These were the laziest, I think, Oscar montages I'd ever seen.

[45:28] It was rare that you saw a movie from before, like, 1997 in them.

[45:32] There were a few, but they had to...

[45:35] If you were not the most famous movie ever, like Casablanca or To Kill a Mockingbird,

[45:41] you were not making it into this.

[45:42] But if you were Superman Returns, you were all over...

[45:45] Not Superman Returns.

[45:46] If you were Man of Steel, you were all over it.

[45:48] If you were Shrek, you were all over it.

[45:49] Well, also, like...

[45:50] It was like each montage, they would take one recent movie, make that the backbone of

[45:55] it, and then scatter a bunch of other recent movies in, like, one or two old movies.

Dan McCoy

[45:58] And the last montage, I remember, was particularly baffling, because it was, like...

[46:02] It was all, like, basically, like, superhero or action things.

[46:05] And then all of a sudden, like, at the end, it was like, oh, and also Footloose.

Elliott Kalan

[46:08] Yeah.

[46:09] Everyone remembers the hero.

[46:10] He's a fucking hero, dude.

[46:11] He's a movie hero.

[46:12] If anything, he's a more effective hero than Man of Steel.

[46:15] He does bring Dance back to that time.

Stuart Wellington

[46:18] And Footloose is better than Man of Steel, which is terrible.

[46:21] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[46:21] But it was like they had Jim Carrey come out, ad lib a little bit about Brewster.

[46:26] Then he introduced the tribute to animated heroes.

[46:29] And then it was like, okay, so I guess we're doing the animated categories now?

[46:32] Nope, we're not.

[46:34] Somebody else came out to introduce, I think it was the Costume and Production Design Awards.

[46:38] And it was like, wait a minute.

[46:39] We get it.

[46:39] Great Gatsby's awesome.

[46:40] But why did we waste time with that tribute?

[46:42] Just give it to The Hobbit, though, instead.

[46:44] The Hobbit won zero awards.

Stuart Wellington

[46:46] Well, robbed.

[46:48] Yeah, we're robbed.

[46:49] Check its pockets.

Elliott Kalan

[46:50] It's been robbed.

Dan McCoy

[46:51] Pockets.

[46:52] Now, Stuart, you were in Puerto Rico.

[46:55] Puerto Rico, yeah.

[46:56] Puerto Rico.

[46:56] During the Oscars.

[46:57] Like the Trans-Puerto.

[46:58] How was that?

Stuart Wellington

[47:00] Well, I was drinking a lot of beer and not watching the Oscars.

[47:04] Sounds pretty fun.

[47:05] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[47:05] I mean, like I said, every year I have the same experience with the Oscars.

Stuart Wellington

[47:08] Although I check the results the next day.

[47:10] And I disagree with specifically one of them.

Elliott Kalan

[47:13] With that there was no Hobbits?

Stuart Wellington

[47:15] No.

[47:15] Well, yeah, that too.

[47:16] No, I just don't feel Jared Leto should have won for Dallas.

Elliott Kalan

[47:20] I thought he did a good job, but I've seen that performance before from other people.

Stuart Wellington

[47:24] Yeah, and I just like, I'll accept that Matthew McConaughey won instead of Tom Hanks,

[47:30] who should have won for Best Actor.

[47:32] That was not nominated.

[47:33] Well, he still should have won.

[47:35] But, uh...

[47:35] My write-in votes to you.

[47:36] Yeah, I wrote in a couple of votes on the back of fucking cocktail napkins.

[47:42] And just threw them into the ocean in the hopes that they would reach Hollywood.

Elliott Kalan

[47:45] I don't know how the ocean currents work, but I assume...

[47:48] God bless you, little napkin.

[47:49] Godspeed.

Stuart Wellington

[47:49] I just close my eyes and fucking believe they'd get there.

Elliott Kalan

[47:51] I assume this water goes into Jack Valenti's grave.

[47:54] His ghost will make it happen.

Dan McCoy

[47:59] This water goes into his grave.

[48:01] It's a poorly dug grave.

Elliott Kalan

[48:02] You're laughing at the moist grave of Jack Valenti.

[48:09] You're a ghoul.

[48:10] You should be in a mountain cave in Russia, you ghoul.

Stuart Wellington

[48:15] What was I complaining about?

[48:17] Oh, yeah, Jared Leto.

[48:19] It just didn't feel like...

Elliott Kalan

[48:20] Who did you want to win that award?

Stuart Wellington

[48:21] That was actually what I was going to ask you guys.

[48:24] Who else was nominated for Best Supporting Actor?

[48:25] Best Supporting Actor Jonah Hill.

[48:27] Okay, keep going.

Elliott Kalan

[48:28] There was that guy from Kevin Phillips.

[48:30] Oh, yeah, I wanted him to win.

[48:31] The head of the Pirates and Captain Phillips.

[48:34] Yep.

[48:36] Oh, boy.

[48:37] Because Jared Leto wasn't even on screen that much.

[48:39] Jared Leto was on screen a lot.

[48:40] He was the second lead in the movie.

[48:43] There was...

[48:45] I think it was WALL-E nominated this year for Best Supporting Actor.

Stuart Wellington

[48:50] I guess I'm just being a complainer.

[48:52] I just didn't...

[48:52] I didn't feel that...

[48:53] First off, I don't think that movie should have...

[48:55] Because Dallas Buyers Club is a very straightforward...

Elliott Kalan

[48:58] Dallas Buyers Club is a crowd pleaser, kind of classically structured...

[49:03] He's nominated.

[49:04] He shouldn't have won.

[49:04] Well, he shouldn't have won.

[49:05] He shouldn't have been nominated either.

[49:06] And I was so...

[49:07] I have to admit, I feel bad saying this.

[49:09] I was really happy American Hustle won zero awards.

[49:11] Even though I think it probably should have won, like, costume design or hair.

[49:15] But that was a movie that I thought was enjoyable, but, like, so totally overrated.

[49:19] It was a mess, I thought.

[49:20] It was a mess of a movie, and so many of the scenes were just the characters yelling at

[49:24] each other in circles, and you were like, wow, he really let the actors just kind of...

[49:28] There's a reason that actors need a director to rein them in sometimes, and a screenwriter

[49:32] to give them things to say, because often you get scenes where it's just characters yelling

[49:35] at each other, and it was just a weird movie.

[49:39] Like, for a movie about an intricate sting operation, they kind of lost interest in that

[49:43] pretty quick.

[49:44] I don't know why he was bringing his wife, Jennifer Lawrence, to all of these things.

[49:48] It didn't make any sense at all.

Dan McCoy

[49:50] Well, I think that David O. Russell expressly didn't really care about the sting stuff.

[49:55] Like, he's like, oh, app scam's kind of interesting, but I just want to make another character

[50:00] study, like a kind of a screwball character study.

Elliott Kalan

[50:02] But it even failed as a character study.

[50:03] Like, the characters didn't have any dimension to them.

Dan McCoy

[50:06] No, I agree.

[50:06] You know, it was a very entertaining movie to watch that had no substance.

[50:13] It was like a dandelion puff, like, blowing away on the wind.

Stuart Wellington

[50:16] That's beautiful, Dan.

[50:17] Yeah.

[50:18] That's gorgeous.

[50:19] Thanks.

[50:19] And you want to run down the dirt road to catch it, but you just can't.

[50:23] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[50:23] Mm-hmm.

[50:24] Well, now you're making it sound too good.

Elliott Kalan

[50:26] Well, you also feel bad because by blowing the dandelion puff, you've helped it to spread

[50:30] its seed around the world, and you're like, did I get tricked into having sex with a dandelion?

[50:34] Is that what happened?

Dan McCoy

[50:36] You're always getting tricked into having sex with a dandelion?

[50:38] Yeah, seductive bastards.

[50:39] That's what you gotta learn.

Elliott Kalan

[50:40] But overall, like, I kept forgetting, like, what the Best Picture nominees were before the

[50:45] Oscars.

[50:45] Like, they announced them, and they're like, Philomena.

[50:48] And I'm like, oh, yeah, right.

[50:50] That was a movie.

[50:51] But otherwise, I mean, otherwise I agreed with a lot of the winners, you know?

[50:54] Or not even agreed, but, like, didn't have a problem with them, you know?

[50:57] I still haven't seen 12 Years a Slave, so I can't say whether I thought about that.

[51:02] But, like, I was happy Gravity won for directing and cinematography.

[51:05] I was happy that that original song from Her did not win, you know?

Dan McCoy

[51:12] Oh, the...

[51:13] I like that.

[51:14] That moon song.

[51:15] I like that okay, just because I like Karen O, but it's a little bit of...

[51:19] It's a slight song, I would say.

Elliott Kalan

[51:21] It's like they're shoving the whimsy down your throat.

[51:24] Yeah.

[51:24] With a plunger.

Stuart Wellington

[51:24] I mean, I'm assuming next year's Oscars, it's gonna be everything.

[51:27] Everything is awesome from the Lego movie soundtrack.

[51:31] I still have not seen that movie.

Elliott Kalan

[51:32] I haven't either, but I want to.

[51:34] I mean...

[51:34] My kid is really keeping me from seeing the kids' movies I want to see.

[51:37] That, Frozen.

Stuart Wellington

[51:38] Lame.

[51:39] Just leave that kid with a babysitter, bro.

Elliott Kalan

[51:41] I will.

[51:42] I think I'll probably do that for Grand Budapest Hotel.

[51:44] I've now seen...

[51:45] I really want to see that.

Dan McCoy

[51:46] Sure.

[51:46] I've now seen two performances of Let It Go.

[51:49] I've seen the Oscar performance and that, like, lousy Fallon performance.

[51:52] I don't know that one.

[51:53] And I have not been impressed with Menzel yet.

[51:57] And I have to...

Elliott Kalan

[51:59] So, Dan, you're going on the internet slagging Idina Menzel?

[52:02] No, I have to...

[52:03] That is an unsafe mood.

Dan McCoy

[52:04] You are taking your life in your hands.

[52:05] No, I have to assume that she's amazing in the actual movie.

[52:10] But both of the performances that I saw of her...

[52:13] Like, I think that...

[52:15] I think at the Oscars, you know, she was being overpowered by the...

[52:19] By John Travolta's mispronouncing name.

[52:21] Yeah.

[52:22] By that and the orchestra.

[52:24] And I think that her doing, like, the Fallon thing with, like, the toy instruments is, like,

[52:28] doing her no favors.

[52:29] I have no idea what that is.

[52:30] It's like a thing that Fallon does.

[52:32] He gets people to get...

[52:34] He gets songs and does toy instruments with the roots.

[52:37] Like, it started out with, I think, Call Me Maybe with Carly Rae Jepsen.

[52:41] It's a thing.

[52:41] You know, all of Fallon stuff is about getting on the internet.

[52:44] You mean toy instruments like playing a Teddy Ruxpin or something?

[52:45] Yeah.

[52:46] Yeah, exactly.

[52:47] They're playing a Teddy Ruxpin and a Simon.

[52:49] Like Ruxkin?

[52:50] Teddy Ruxkin is the adult version.

Elliott Kalan

[52:53] No kids allowed for Teddy Ruxkin.

[52:56] You put filthy tapes in.

Stuart Wellington

[52:58] Yeah, you gotta play the tape backwards.

Elliott Kalan

[53:01] And it tells you to worship Satan?

[53:03] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[53:04] All right.

[53:04] I'm sure Let It Go is a great song in the actual context of the thing.

[53:09] But I was...

Elliott Kalan

[53:10] But it happens to me every year that I'm watching the Oscars.

[53:13] I'm like, you know what?

[53:14] I'm not gonna tweet about it.

[53:15] I'm just gonna enjoy it on a sincere level and not have to come up with, you know, like,

[53:19] snarky quips.

[53:20] And then I get...

[53:21] You get bored.

[53:21] And I get bored.

[53:22] And I start tweeting about it.

[53:24] Yeah.

[53:25] But it happens every time.

Stuart Wellington

[53:27] So you're saying the Oscars need to not bore you next time.

Elliott Kalan

[53:30] I think it should be, one, about the movies.

[53:32] Two, shorter.

[53:34] Three, less of a...

[53:36] Less bad.

[53:37] Less bad.

[53:38] We're trying to...

[53:38] Four, better.

[53:39] They do the thing where instead of being what they are, which is an award show for movies,

[53:43] and being that to the best, they kind of chase what they think people are gonna want

[53:47] to watch.

Stuart Wellington

[53:49] Which is like celebrities hanging out in one place.

Elliott Kalan

[53:52] Celebrities hanging out.

[53:52] Just like us.

Stuart Wellington

[53:53] And it's like, if you're not gonna give...

[53:55] They eat ramen noodles and put their pants on two legs at a time.

[53:59] Wait.

[53:59] Two legs?

[54:00] What?

[54:00] How do you do that?

[54:01] Is it like the wrong trousers?

[54:03] Yeah.

[54:03] No, you lie in your bed and you stick your legs up in the air and you yank them on.

[54:05] And then when the magic legs jump up?

[54:08] Yeah.

[54:09] I have button eyes and things like that?

[54:11] Yeah.

[54:11] You rub your legs with chicken fat.

Elliott Kalan

[54:14] Keep talking.

[54:16] You rub your legs with chow yun fat.

Stuart Wellington

[54:18] You get a good grip on the sides of your pants and you yank them on there.

Elliott Kalan

[54:22] How do you get them over your butt?

Stuart Wellington

[54:24] Well, you tuck your butt in.

[54:26] That's what the chicken fat is for.

Elliott Kalan

[54:26] That doesn't make any sense.

Stuart Wellington

[54:28] Dan's right.

[54:29] The chicken fat's for your thighs, though.

[54:30] You just suck your butt in.

Elliott Kalan

[54:32] So how do you get...

[54:33] You can't suck your butt in.

[54:34] Yeah, you squeeze.

[54:35] You squeeze it in.

[54:36] So you have like a concave butt?

[54:39] And for a moment...

[54:42] Well, when you're flexing...

[54:43] It pops out and it goes...

[54:45] Boy-o-yo-ing.

[54:47] Okay.

[54:47] I'm with you on the boy-o-ing sound.

[54:49] I just...

[54:50] I don't know how you get to that point.

Stuart Wellington

[54:53] It's pretty simple.

[54:54] You suck it in.

[54:55] You yank them on.

[54:56] You button that shit.

[54:57] Boy-o-yo-ing.

Elliott Kalan

[54:59] As the boy-o-ing comes post-buttoning.

Stuart Wellington

[55:00] Yeah, because if you boy-o-yo-ing before, you're not getting that button on.

Elliott Kalan

[55:04] It'll just pop right off.

[55:05] Exactly.

[55:06] Fly through the air, hit a mouse in the face, he uses it as a monocle.

Stuart Wellington

[55:10] I was going to say it knocks the stuffy butler's monocle out of his eye.

[55:17] So I never...

[55:18] And then maybe like a hip-hop lyric or something.

Elliott Kalan

[55:22] Somebody's got baps on the brain.

[55:25] So...

[55:26] I had another thing to say.

[55:27] Oh, so if the Academy Awards is not the place to give Angela Lansbury a Lifetime Achievement Award...

[55:34] And just on a side note, I can only think of like...

[55:36] Four movies that she was in that bring her up to Lifetime Achievement level.

[55:39] I'm not sure why they gave it to her.

[55:41] Murder, she wrote.

[55:42] Does that count?

[55:42] It's like a movie, but it's short and it's on TV.

[55:45] Aside from The Manchurian Candidate, Beauty and the Beast, Gaslight, and Picture of Dorian Gray,

[55:49] I can't think of another classic movie she was in.

[55:51] I'm sure there are more, but I just can't think of them.

[55:54] But they didn't show you.

[55:55] She's going to be a letter campaign complaining that you don't.

[55:57] But like, if the Academy Awards is not the place to give her a Lifetime Achievement, then like, why are you doing it?

[56:02] Yeah.

[56:03] Is there reason to do it for ratings?

[56:04] The awards predates television.

[56:06] You know, like, come on.

[56:08] Let's just do it up to do it.

Stuart Wellington

[56:09] And the Immemorium, like, it was pretty up to date this year, yeah?

[56:13] Like, up to, like, Harold Ramis.

Elliott Kalan

[56:15] Mostly, they put Harold Ramis in.

[56:16] Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Dan McCoy

[56:17] They put in that lady who died in that horrible bridge accident.

[56:22] I mean, like, barely.

[56:24] They, like, sort of, like, shoved her in as a footnote at the end.

[56:26] I'm not familiar with that one.

[56:28] There was a train accident where, like, a sort of production assistant got in.

[56:32] Oh, that's terrible.

[56:33] Yeah.

[56:35] I'm just bringing the podcast down.

[56:37] So here's what I would tell the Oscars.

Elliott Kalan

[56:38] Here's what I would tell the Oscars.

Dan McCoy

[56:39] You pick a movie.

[56:41] You guys bring it along, and I bring it back down.

Elliott Kalan

[56:44] I'd say for the Oscars, your time as a...

[56:46] I'm like the sandbag of the podcast.

[56:47] Your time as a television program is over.

[56:49] Sandbag.

[56:50] Unless, maybe, you don't do it live.

[56:52] You have, like, an hour and a half, two hours cut down version,

[56:55] and then you release the whole thing on the internet.

[56:58] Mm-hmm.

[56:58] For free?

[57:00] No.

[57:00] You either charge people, or you have sponsors.

[57:02] The same way you make money for anything.

[57:05] And then you can do...

[57:06] You can include Angela Lansbury

[57:07] as part of the cast,

[57:09] and then you can cut it down however you like

[57:11] for the television, primetime, whatever.

[57:14] But then I can see the full speech that Steve Martin gives,

[57:17] because I'm way more interested in that

[57:19] than the speech that Baz Luhrmann's wife gives

[57:21] twice in one night for her Great Gatsby Awards.

Dan McCoy

[57:25] So, I mean, I think that that's pretty much all

[57:28] we have to say about the Oscars,

[57:30] especially considering that only two-thirds of us saw them.

[57:35] But in a more general sense, this is kind of our...

[57:38] Aren't we all watching the Oscars?

[57:40] This is kind of our chance.

Stuart Wellington

[57:41] Isn't there a little bit of Oscar in all of us?

Dan McCoy

[57:44] Well, there's a little bit of Godzilla in all of us.

[57:46] I ate a little bit of Oscar, so yes.

[57:48] But this is...

Elliott Kalan

[57:49] I don't understand what that means.

Stuart Wellington

[57:53] Why is Dan locking the door?

Elliott Kalan

[57:54] Yeah!

[57:55] Why is he looking at us and seeing two big chicken legs?

Dan McCoy

[57:59] No, this is kind of our chance to put a bit of a bow on 2013,

[58:05] so if there's any kind of year-in-review things

[58:08] that you want to say.

Elliott Kalan

[58:09] Well, thanks for not giving me time to prepare.

[58:11] Stuart, I think you had your top five movies.

Stuart Wellington

[58:14] I know that Stuart had something, so I wanted to...

Elliott Kalan

[58:17] Castle Freak, Castle Freak, number three, Castle Freak.

Stuart Wellington

[58:19] I did glance...

[58:20] I did jot down five movies that I felt were a little overlooked

[58:25] or were just genre movies that I liked a lot.

[58:28] Okay.

[58:29] Pacific Rim.

[58:30] Yeah, Pacific Rim.

[58:31] Wow, you guessed it.

[58:32] I know you.

[58:33] Place Beyond the Pines, actually.

[58:35] I don't know if you guys saw it.

[58:36] I did.

[58:37] Yeah, I really liked it,

[58:38] despite the fact that I felt like it was a little...

[58:40] It had some, like...

[58:42] I don't know if I'd say saccharine

[58:43] or, like, cliched elements.

[58:44] Yeah.

[58:45] Or overwrought elements.

Elliott Kalan

[58:46] It's a little...

[58:47] It's overwrought.

[58:48] It's very melodramatic and slow.

Stuart Wellington

[58:50] But there was a lot of stuff I liked about it still.

[58:53] For some reason, it worked.

Elliott Kalan

[58:54] Any movie where a guy rides a motorcycle

[58:56] inside of a globe cage, you're okay with?

Stuart Wellington

[58:59] Globe of Death, yeah.

[59:01] World's End was fantastic, of course.

[59:05] And then I would say,

[59:06] if you haven't seen Ninja 2

[59:09] or Ninja Shadow of a Tear,

[59:11] you should watch that.

[59:12] That's a release this year.

[59:14] And Your Next was probably my favorite,

[59:17] like, straightforward horror movie of the year.

[59:20] I don't know if you guys have seen that yet,

[59:21] but you should check it out.

[59:22] I haven't, no.

[59:23] And I didn't want to point out that there's a couple...

[59:24] I didn't see a lot of...

[59:26] There was a lot of movies that I haven't seen.

[59:27] I'd still love to see Upstream Color,

[59:30] The Evil Dead remake,

[59:31] and The Wind Rises.

[59:33] And my biggest disappointment of the year

[59:34] was probably Elysium.

[59:36] I don't know if you guys saw that.

Elliott Kalan

[59:37] I also didn't see that,

[59:39] but I heard it was disappointing

[59:40] from you and others.

Dan McCoy

[59:42] I'll just toss out that,

[59:44] you know,

[59:45] I didn't see a...

[59:47] There are a lot of movies, obviously,

[59:48] that I did not see,

[59:50] and I feel like...

[59:50] Most of them, I would say.

[59:51] With every year that passes,

[59:53] I see fewer movies that are released

[59:55] in a certain year.

[59:58] But...

Elliott Kalan

[59:58] You've been watching a lot more movies

[1:00:00] released in 30-minute chunks

[1:00:02] on porn websites.

[1:00:03] Sure.

[1:00:05] Well, priorities...

[1:00:06] 30-minute chunks, huh?

[1:00:07] Yeah.

[1:00:07] But...

[1:00:08] Because they've been stolen

[1:00:09] from another site

[1:00:10] and uploaded to somewhere else.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:11] Of the films that I did see

[1:00:13] that were released this year,

[1:00:14] I think that my three favorites

[1:00:15] were probably

[1:00:16] Inside Llewyn Davis,

[1:00:18] The Wolf of Wall Street,

[1:00:19] and Blue is the Warmest Color.

[1:00:22] Uh-huh.

[1:00:23] Of movies that were...

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:24] And what scene did you like the best

[1:00:25] in Blue is the Warmest Color?

[1:00:26] Ah, Jesus.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:27] It's a three-hour movie.

[1:00:29] It's not all that.

[1:00:30] But, um...

[1:00:31] Of the movies that were...

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:32] All that was a TV show.

[1:00:34] Already made it.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:34] And she's all that as a movie.

[1:00:37] I, uh...

[1:00:37] Quid pro quo,

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:38] you're a pervert.

[1:00:39] I don't think that's what that means.

Dan McCoy

[1:00:43] Of the movies that Stu

[1:00:44] already said something about,

[1:00:45] I also very much enjoyed

[1:00:47] The World's End

[1:00:48] and Upstream Color.

[1:00:50] And here's a movie

[1:00:51] that I'll toss in

[1:00:52] as, like, a left field...

[1:00:53] Just toss it right off, bro.

[1:00:55] It's a left field thing

[1:00:56] that did not get

[1:00:57] a lot of attention.

[1:00:58] Um,

[1:00:59] I saw Brian De Palma's

[1:01:01] Passion,

[1:01:02] which was barely released.

[1:01:05] Um,

[1:01:06] but it's...

[1:01:06] I heard some negative reviews of it.

[1:01:08] I very much enjoyed it.

[1:01:09] I thought it was, uh,

[1:01:10] in the vein of,

[1:01:12] um,

[1:01:13] a film Fatale.

[1:01:14] Oh!

[1:01:15] Okay.

[1:01:16] Like a pretty, like,

[1:01:16] a very glossy,

[1:01:18] campy,

[1:01:19] kind of arch,

[1:01:21] uh...

[1:01:21] Scampy.

[1:01:22] film.

[1:01:23] I mean,

[1:01:23] it is super De Palma-y

[1:01:25] and some people

[1:01:26] don't like that,

[1:01:27] but, um,

[1:01:28] just as a

[1:01:30] pure, like,

[1:01:31] glossy surfaces,

[1:01:33] cinematic,

[1:01:33] uh,

[1:01:34] bit of enjoyment,

[1:01:35] it is a very smart

[1:01:38] piece of trash filmmaking.

Stuart Wellington

[1:01:41] True story.

[1:01:42] The first time I saw

[1:01:43] Femme Fatale,

[1:01:44] I...

[1:01:44] Ejaculate.

[1:01:45] I haven't...

[1:01:46] I haven't rent the...

[1:01:48] I rented the, uh,

[1:01:51] the Pan and Scan version

[1:01:52] and had to take it,

[1:01:53] like, I stopped it

[1:01:55] and took it back

[1:01:56] to Blockbuster

[1:01:56] and got the widescreen version

[1:01:58] because Pan and Scan

[1:01:59] in that movie

[1:02:00] was worthless.

[1:02:01] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:02] Uh, Elliot,

[1:02:02] I know that we did

[1:02:03] spring this on you,

[1:02:04] but if you have any thoughts

[1:02:05] that you want to do,

[1:02:06] uh,

[1:02:06] toss in.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:07] Uh,

[1:02:08] not.

[1:02:10] Uh,

[1:02:10] movies.

[1:02:10] Movies.

[1:02:11] Hey,

[1:02:11] everybody loves them.

[1:02:12] Uh,

[1:02:12] from the very beginning,

[1:02:13] uh,

[1:02:13] with the workers

[1:02:15] leaving a factory

[1:02:15] the Lumiere brothers

[1:02:16] made it.

[1:02:17] Uh,

[1:02:18] I,

[1:02:18] I mean,

[1:02:18] I liked,

[1:02:19] I liked the World's End

[1:02:20] a lot.

[1:02:21] I liked some of the other ones.

[1:02:22] You guys named

[1:02:22] Inside the Wood Davis

[1:02:23] I liked a lot.

[1:02:24] I really liked Gravity a lot,

[1:02:25] which is lame to say

[1:02:27] because it was a big hit

[1:02:27] and it was a lot of fun.

[1:02:29] No, it's a lot of fun.

[1:02:29] It was one of the few times...

[1:02:30] I've said negative things about it,

[1:02:31] but I really enjoyed it.

[1:02:32] It's one of the few times

[1:02:33] lately that I've seen

[1:02:33] a movie in the theater

[1:02:34] and I've been like,

[1:02:35] one,

[1:02:35] I'm glad I saw the theater

[1:02:36] and two,

[1:02:37] this is an experience

[1:02:38] I'm going to get

[1:02:39] out of a movie

[1:02:39] that I'm not going to get

Stuart Wellington

[1:02:45] the last 10 minutes

[1:02:46] of Gravity

[1:02:47] over somebody's shoulder

[1:02:48] they were watching

[1:02:49] on their laptop

[1:02:50] and I still couldn't

[1:02:51] stop watching it.

[1:02:52] Yeah,

[1:02:52] it's a really,

[1:02:53] it was a really good movie.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:54] I'm sure there are

[1:02:55] other ones that I saw

[1:02:55] that I liked

[1:02:56] that are just not

[1:02:56] coming to mind

[1:02:57] at the moment.

[1:02:58] but I also really liked

[1:03:01] Only God Forgives,

[1:03:03] which is not,

[1:03:06] it's one of those things

[1:03:06] where if you're the right

[1:03:07] audience for it,

[1:03:08] you're really going to like it.

[1:03:09] If you're not,

[1:03:09] you're going to hate it.

[1:03:10] But for all its kind of

[1:03:11] slow, overwrought sleaziness,

[1:03:14] it was just,

[1:03:15] it was exactly the movie

[1:03:16] I wanted to see

[1:03:17] when I watched it.

[1:03:19] I was,

[1:03:20] I think,

[1:03:20] and my disappointments

[1:03:21] for the year

[1:03:21] were actually

[1:03:22] Upstream Color

[1:03:22] a little bit,

[1:03:24] which I really liked

[1:03:25] when it was about

[1:03:25] people trying to build

[1:03:27] a relationship

[1:03:27] and I didn't like it

[1:03:28] as much

[1:03:29] when it got into

[1:03:29] the more science fiction-y stuff,

[1:03:31] which I was disappointed about

[1:03:32] because I really liked Primer.

[1:03:34] And,

[1:03:34] I guess,

[1:03:36] if you're going to go

[1:03:36] super popcorn-y,

[1:03:37] whatever,

[1:03:38] Iron Man 3.

[1:03:40] Big disappointment for me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:03:42] What are you going to do?

[1:03:42] You want a real

[1:03:43] magic mandarin

[1:03:44] with magical rings.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:46] Yeah,

[1:03:46] that was part of it.

[1:03:47] Was I really,

[1:03:48] if you're going to,

[1:03:48] like,

[1:03:49] the surprise twist

[1:03:51] about the mandarin

[1:03:51] was,

[1:03:52] is one of those

[1:03:52] where it's entertaining

[1:03:53] for a second

[1:03:54] and then all you're left with

[1:03:55] is a fucking

[1:03:56] another villain

[1:03:56] who's just another

[1:03:57] industrialist billionaire.

[1:03:58] great.

[1:03:59] When I could have had

[1:04:00] a Chinese warlord

[1:04:01] with ten magic alien rings

[1:04:02] that have different powers

[1:04:04] that are very vaguely defined,

[1:04:05] like cold and black vortex.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:07] You do make a good point.

[1:04:08] You're like,

[1:04:09] oh,

[1:04:09] this is a clever idea,

[1:04:10] but I was hoping

[1:04:11] to actually get this cool band.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:12] Yeah,

[1:04:13] I was like,

[1:04:14] oh,

[1:04:14] that's an interesting take

[1:04:15] for a second,

[1:04:16] but yeah,

[1:04:16] I'd rather see

[1:04:17] like a big comic book movie

[1:04:18] that doesn't end with,

[1:04:20] that doesn't end in basically

[1:04:21] like,

[1:04:22] just by turning into

[1:04:22] The Last Boy Scout

[1:04:23] with some armor.

Stuart Wellington

[1:04:24] Well,

[1:04:25] I think there's something

[1:04:26] to be said about the,

[1:04:27] about an Iron Man

[1:04:28] suit filled

[1:04:29] Last Boy Scout ending.

Elliott Kalan

[1:04:30] And also,

[1:04:31] that was just,

[1:04:32] that was a movie

[1:04:33] that you could tell

[1:04:33] so much money

[1:04:34] went into it

[1:04:35] and so little thought

[1:04:36] where by the end of it

[1:04:37] it was like,

[1:04:38] sometimes this guy

[1:04:39] hits hard enough

[1:04:40] that things explode

[1:04:41] and sometimes he

[1:04:41] just punches people.

[1:04:43] Also,

[1:04:44] Pepper Potts is dead

[1:04:45] for like a second,

[1:04:45] but Tony doesn't really care

[1:04:46] because he knows

[1:04:47] she's coming back

[1:04:47] even though the audience

[1:04:48] isn't supposed to know it.

[1:04:49] And this thing

[1:04:50] is really impossible to cure,

[1:04:51] but we cured it just now

[1:04:52] so Pepper could live.

[1:04:54] Oh,

[1:04:54] he can breathe fire now

[1:04:55] for some reason.

[1:04:56] Also,

[1:04:57] the villains of the movie

[1:04:57] are wounded war veterans.

[1:04:59] All right.

[1:04:59] There was so much

[1:05:00] I didn't like about it.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:03] But it,

[1:05:03] but it started with that

[1:05:05] I'm Blue song.

[1:05:07] which is pretty great.

[1:05:08] You're right.

[1:05:09] I stay corrected.

[1:05:10] Change your mind.

[1:05:11] It started with that

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:11] terrible I'm Blue song.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:14] I like the balls of that.

[1:05:16] So that,

[1:05:17] that was the best movie

[1:05:18] of the year.

[1:05:18] It's almost like

[1:05:18] the movie was going,

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:19] it was being,

[1:05:20] was warning me,

[1:05:20] you're not going to like this.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:24] I,

[1:05:24] I enjoyed that movie

[1:05:25] a lot more than you do

[1:05:26] while acknowledging

[1:05:27] that all of your

[1:05:28] objections are valid.

[1:05:30] Thank you.

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:30] Yeah,

[1:05:31] it's like Prometheus.

[1:05:32] Like I understand

[1:05:33] every single argument.

[1:05:34] But still liked it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:35] And I liked Captain Phillips

[1:05:36] a lot too.

[1:05:37] I'll say that.

[1:05:39] I'm not usually a big fan

[1:05:40] of the shaky cam,

[1:05:41] lots of cutty style.

[1:05:43] Lots of cutty style.

[1:05:44] But I thought it worked really,

[1:05:45] I found it to be

[1:05:46] a very tense movie

[1:05:47] which I liked a lot.

[1:05:48] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:50] Yeah.

[1:05:50] So I think this was

[1:05:51] a good experiment,

[1:05:52] guys.

[1:05:53] Wait,

[1:05:54] do you mean

[1:05:54] We know what you mean

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:55] by experiment

[1:05:58] and it's going to get

[1:05:58] weird in a second.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:00] No,

[1:06:00] I think that

[1:06:01] abbreviated flop-tacular

[1:06:04] was a nice

[1:06:06] Next year we could even

[1:06:07] do no flop-tacular.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:11] We could try it

[1:06:11] with our clothes on.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:13] It's nice to acknowledge

[1:06:14] the passage of time

[1:06:15] as we all grow older

[1:06:17] and closer to death.

[1:06:17] How did this do that?

[1:06:21] It's a year in review,

[1:06:22] I don't know.

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:22] But it wasn't really.

[1:06:25] I suddenly had to think

[1:06:26] of a couple movies

[1:06:26] off the top of my head

[1:06:27] that I saw.

[1:06:30] That's the best way

[1:06:31] to do it.

[1:06:32] Not really,

[1:06:32] no.

Dan McCoy

[1:06:34] So for the Flophouse,

[1:06:36] I guess I've been

[1:06:37] Dan McCoy.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:38] You guessed?

[1:06:39] Yeah.

[1:06:41] Well,

[1:06:41] that was definitely

[1:06:42] Dan McCoy

[1:06:43] and I am probably

[1:06:44] Stuart Wellington.

[1:06:45] And I know for a fact

[1:06:46] I'm Elliot Kalin

[1:06:47] because I'm looking

[1:06:48] at my driver's license.

[1:06:49] Or is he?

Elliott Kalan

[1:06:50] Bum, bum, bum.

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:52] He is unless

[1:06:52] he has his driver's license.

[1:07:00] Phil, I'm sorry.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:08] I apologize to you all

[1:07:10] that we're sitting

[1:07:10] further away from each other.

[1:07:12] Yeah, how am I supposed

[1:07:12] to touch you inappropriately?

[1:07:14] What's going on?

[1:07:15] What's crackalackin'?

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:15] What's with the new table, Dan?

[1:07:17] Well, it's the same

[1:07:18] old table, though.

[1:07:18] It's the way we're

[1:07:19] doing it these days.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:21] Just doing it weird style.

[1:07:23] He did it so that

[1:07:24] we can't give each other

[1:07:25] high fives.

Elliott Kalan

[1:07:26] I can't reach.

[1:07:27] I can't reach.

[1:07:28] Ah, you're so far away.

[1:07:30] Just fingertip touches.

[1:07:31] Sometimes you want

[1:07:32] a strange touch.

[1:07:35] I didn't like that.

[1:07:37] Dan McColl's talking

[1:07:39] strange touch.

[1:07:40] With your glasses

[1:07:40] and fleece on

[1:07:41] and a beer in your hand,

[1:07:42] you were basically

[1:07:43] a Stephen King protagonist

[1:07:44] just now when you said that.

The Flop House: Episode #147 - Devil's Pass AND Awards Floptacular

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