The Flop House: Episode #17 - Untraceable

[0:00] This is the Untraceable episode of the Flophouse. So suck it, FBI!

[0:31] So guys, yeah, that's us welcome to the Flophouse Elliot you're back after

[0:39] We took a

[0:41] You were also

[0:43] Thank you ladies. Thank you. Hey, whoa our audience folks. Yeah, I had a replacement host for a week

[0:49] He seemed fine. So

[0:51] No, Elliot, but you know, that's I'm just saying I'm one-of-a-kind

[0:55] Geez so any any big life changes since we last saw you

[1:00] Well, I was hoping to get my own TV show off of my brief cameo on the recent daily show episode

[1:05] It was gonna be called correction with Elliot Kalin

[1:08] Walk out correct people in their every or everyday ordinary life when they made common mistakes

[1:12] Such as if someone was like man, that guy's a real Frankenstein

[1:16] I would walk out and say is he a mad scientist? Because if not, you mean Frankenstein's monster

[1:21] Really

[1:22] Well, that's what the that's what the people at the network said so that didn't happen

[1:26] So otherwise, no, not very much has been going on. All right. Well, but now we're all back together

[1:32] the original peaches

[1:34] What?

[1:35] It's from the American classic a league of their own. Oh, yeah, right

[1:39] Yeah, this used to be my playground Tom Hanks was in that movie, you know, Tom Hanks his son was in another movie

[1:46] What movie is that Orange County? Oh

[1:49] Mr. X

[1:51] But he was also in a film we watched tonight, which is a

[1:54] Untraceable and I have to say we were we were really looking forward to watching untraceable. Yeah for some strange

[2:00] Reason that I don't really let down. Oh, I've always liked movies that start with on and end in a bull

[2:07] Yeah, dude, you're basing this on Diane Lane's other film

[2:12] Well unfaithful unbreakable the aborted Rob Schneider project unrapeable all sorts of things

[2:18] That's a long story. Anyway, you know, I watched unfaithful once. Yeah, Oliver Martinez was hot

[2:29] Yeah, so the I think the real problem with this movie was we we preceded it by getting it like crowding around your computer and

[2:37] Going to IMDb and watching the trailer for the movie twin sitters starring the Barbarian Brothers

[2:44] And we got certainly nothing could live up to that yeah, we got only not untraceable we all worked up and

[2:51] Yeah, so I guess what we're saying is maybe you guys should watch that movie

[2:54] I mean, we haven't even seen it but just based on the yeah, or at least just watch the trailer like five times

[2:59] Just watch it. It's a great trailer. Yeah, it's really good. But untraceable was about an

[3:03] Internet killer and I think that that's probably what excited us about it

[3:07] It's always been a flophouse favorite theme to watch films that

[3:12] Vilify the web or that just use technology

[3:16] Incorrectly, yeah off the bat or that or that sling jargon left and right. Oh sure. No discernible

[3:23] Yeah, that's what I was gonna say

[3:24] I I don't know whether this movie was accurate or not because I couldn't understand any of the technical

[3:30] explanations they gave everything was vids and packets and data finder error sites and bots and and

[3:37] Weber so underage Russian

[3:40] It's under yeah, I was all oh no, he's mirroring his site with a Russian IP address firewall, you know, and so forth

[3:47] You know playing pandas

[3:49] Well, they and here's here's my problem with it

[3:51] We haven't gotten into the plot of untraceable in case anyone in the audience

[3:54] Hasn't seen it untraceable is about a man who has a website called come kill with me. No, it's just called kill with me

[3:59] Yeah, kill with me

[4:02] With me Tony Bennett's out

[4:05] inspired by the Friday the 13th films

[4:08] So he has a website called kill with me where he

[4:11] tortures people to death and the more people who watch the faster the person dies because

[4:17] Either more poison is injected or more heat lamps. Come on, but the thing that struck me

[4:24] He's almost making his viewers into accomplices. Oh, yeah. Yes

[4:28] That's your point is made many times just like we were made into accomplices for this film untraceable by me spending three dollars

[4:36] Torrented so you're like an accomplice to this crabby movie. Yeah, but not me

[4:41] I didn't pay nothing but here's my here's my most problem with the film my experience of the Internet is that people?

[4:46] Maybe in like the late 90s. They were sending around like crazy videos of guy, you know blown his head off

[4:52] Oh my god

[4:52] but now all the videos I get sent or of pandas or like a pet hippopotamus or

[4:57] Like a cat playing a piano check out this awesome flight of the Concord's clip. Oh my god. Awesome

[5:03] Exactly, but it's like the big hit at the office a while ago was the screensaver where it looks like a dog is licking your

[5:08] Screen from the inside and it's really adorable like they would no one's really interesting in blood and guts

[5:14] It's always like so you're saying that kind of be adorable with me

[5:18] Thank you with me

[5:21] Every ten people who watch I'm gonna add another kitten to this box

[5:27] The ducklings

[5:29] Said too much. Listen, we could be making a lot of money, but it's certainly more costume on this duckling

[5:36] But certainly kill with me calm would not be getting the viewership numbers that he is reporting on his site readout

[5:43] Which at one point go into the 14 millions? Yeah, that's a lot of people dude

[5:48] Yeah, I would think that just time zones would now aware that yeah zones all sorts of things. I know bad bad connections

[5:55] Yeah, slow slow hookup speeds. I don't want to like him. I don't know

[5:59] I don't get the jargon

[6:00] I want to compel you to name-drop but because I'm not in television you are like you've got a better idea of like what an

[6:07] Average show might let me tell you this ship if 14 million viewers or even 7 million viewers as the site seems to normally get

[6:14] Is a fantastic rating like that's really good a cable show can get by on

[6:20] Less than a million viewers much of the time like cartoon network

[6:23] I'm sure list listeners to this are big fans of Adult Swim and all that, you know stuff, but their shows don't make

[6:29] Let's say two to three million viewers. Most likely maybe family. I don't know but like 14 million or 7 million viewers like that's crazy

[6:36] Yeah, I think Seinfeld number by the end of the film. Yeah, we've the top out on

[6:41] 30 million really? I don't even remember that see to get put them perspective. That's 10% of the United States of America

[6:47] That's as if you were walking down the street with apartment buildings on either side and one out of every ten apartments

[6:54] Someone's watching kill with me.com. It's not just like people. It's like there's people with computers and that's that many computers

[7:01] Yeah, there could be like ten people cluster around a computer

[7:04] Yeah, as in this movie much of the time that was just like lazy screenwriting on behalf of the screenwriter, too

[7:09] They're like he's like I'll look up like how many people exist in the world and how accurate it would be

[7:16] I wonder if they hired what's a big number like I bet it

[7:19] I totally bet if like someone was getting killed online

[7:22] 30 million people would watch or I wonder if that if it was a more realistic number originally was like

[7:27] 500,000 and then in the punch-up sessions, they were like we got a punch up these numbers man. They're not impressive enough

[7:33] All right. What about a million? All right, that's good third draft. We got a punch up these numbers, man

[7:38] How about two million that's good for now, but we'll see, you know fourth draft. Let's make it 20 million

[7:43] Yeah, sounds good. Whatever man. Let's keep going. The first guy to get killed, by the way

[7:51] First guy was a kitten. Well, the first guy was a kitten, which I refuse to watch you know

[7:55] Well, you miss I'll watch people getting tortured. I couldn't tell what the torture is supposed to be

[7:59] It was like we were teased we kept being shown like this kitten being put on the floor and then it was like

[8:05] Oh, no, I got really sleepy. He's nurturing a kitten. Yeah, and it didn't seem to nothing

[8:14] Calm would make a lot of money or get a lot of viewers

[8:17] There's no way to make money on the internet

[8:19] But that's the thing is like as we will know it's not that I want to see anything happen to a kitten

[8:24] That's the last thing I want to see sure

[8:25] But you can't just show me a kitten lying on the floor and have me expect to be horrified

[8:29] The way that Diane Lane is and that she's obsessed with this site almost instantly

[8:34] Yeah, but this guy as serial killers do he starts out torturing kitties and then moves to bedwetting

[8:41] Humans human pee and the first human is his first website was pee in my bed calm

[8:47] That didn't do as well. The first guy that he kills he kills by he engraves kill with me

[8:53] I don't know what he says great. He adds the dot-com. I don't kill with me. It's implied

[8:58] Here's why this is a flawed advertising thing carving the name your site in your victims chest

[9:02] The customer already has to be at your site in order to see the yeah

[9:05] It's like that Domino's ad where if you it's the get the door

[9:09] Domino's like if I'm hearing this ad and Domino's at the door, I've already ordered the Domino's. Yeah, that's they're not randomly giving you

[9:20] But it's like if we it's a really conceptual criticism

[9:25] As if you're seeing this commercial that says get the door of Domino's and you're at the door

[9:29] But like what the fuck I did what you told me where's my pizza?

[9:40] In a in a terrible coincidence, there was a killer outside the door

[9:48] Pizza calm is none of the women ever seem to be surprised that a pizza they never seem to be like no

[9:53] I don't want this pizza. They're always into it. I don't know the weird. What's what are the odds?

[9:58] always find willing women

[10:00] What do they do with the little circle of pizza from the middle that they cut out?

[10:03] I assume they donate that to the homeless.

[10:06] I'm not familiar with the site, but I've just gotten an idea of what it is.

[10:10] I like to think they sneak it under the couch.

[10:13] I can only plead to them that now that we've given them free advertising that they link to us,

[10:19] because I think that they're probably more popular than a movie.

[10:22] Also, you have to carry the pizza perpendicular to the floor.

[10:26] At groin level, too.

[10:28] At groin level, yeah.

[10:30] No delivery person holds a pizza like that.

[10:33] The pizza would slide right to the bottom.

[10:35] I always thought that they'd wait until they determined that the woman,

[10:39] who can't pay for the pizza, obviously, because she has no money,

[10:42] that they'd just wait until she's not an uggo, and they're like,

[10:45] oh, okay, time to get out my circular pizza cutter.

[10:48] Slip my flask of pizza into the hot steaming cheese pizza thing.

[10:52] I remember that comic strip Nancy and Uggo.

[10:56] I was talking to somebody the other day about the penis in the bucket of popcorn prank,

[11:01] which has a similar failing, which is you either cut the hole where there's popcorn in it,

[11:06] popcorn starts spilling out, and you've got to jam your penis in,

[11:09] or you go up to the snack counter with a bucket with your penis sticking through it,

[11:13] and you say, quick, pour some hot popcorn in this on my erect penis.

[11:17] I've got to hurry over before I get flaccid from the heat of this popcorn around it,

[11:22] so I can pull this prank on the girl in it.

[11:24] What you're not realizing is that that's really the fetish.

[11:27] People are really into exposing themselves to concessions, people,

[11:32] and demanding that they pour popcorn on their dick.

[11:35] Salt, possibly, hot, butter, liquid.

[11:38] They have barbecue powder now you can get on your dick.

[11:41] That's not going to feel good.

[11:43] I don't know. It's sort of like gold bomb medicated powder.

[11:46] Are you saying they don't get such an immediate strong erection

[11:51] that it busts through the bottom of the popcorn?

[11:53] Like an eruption?

[11:55] And the popcorn kind of shoots out a little bit like a gremlin was in it?

[12:00] It's always assumed that there's some premeditation about this.

[12:04] It's not like when the girl sticks her hand and feels his penis,

[12:07] it's a surprise to both of them.

[12:11] My face is red.

[12:13] Who holds popcorn literally right on their crotch in such a way that it's sticking outwards?

[12:20] In case you're wondering how busy I am at work, yes, we did discuss the mechanics of this.

[12:24] By the way, I was first made aware of this technique.

[12:28] Older brother?

[12:30] No, the video cover. I believe the video is called Feeling Up.

[12:36] It looked to be like an 80s or 90s T&A comedy,

[12:41] and it was like a nerdy-looking guy in your average 80s nerd glasses

[12:47] looking really happy with a blonde woman reaching into the thing.

[12:52] And I'm like, oh, I see what's going on here.

[12:55] I mean, he's already got her out on a date.

[12:58] He's on the hard part right there, yeah, because he likes popcorn.

[13:03] What you couldn't see because it was just a box cover and he didn't watch the movie

[13:07] is he's actually just enjoying that movie a lot.

[13:10] He doesn't even know what's going on below the waist.

[13:12] He's feeling up.

[13:15] That's such a good title because it's got three meanings.

[13:18] He's feeling happy, feeling up.

[13:21] Uh-oh, my penis is rising.

[13:23] Feeling up is probably going to feel up that girl.

[13:25] That's a brilliant title.

[13:26] That's like a Shakespearean pun.

[13:28] Yeah, there's three meanings.

[13:29] Tom Stoppard would be shitting his pants if he could come up with that.

[13:32] He'd be so excited.

[13:34] He's like, get somebody on the horn.

[13:37] Get Baz Luhrmann on the horn.

[13:39] I want him to make this movie.

[13:42] Oh, man, I could talk about this all night.

[13:44] I could talk about anything but untraceable.

[13:46] So untraceable.

[13:47] The thing was it was really boring.

[13:49] I wanted to say, though, this guy gets killed with me, carved on his chest,

[13:54] and then the way that he's being killed is the more hits the site gets,

[13:59] the more anticoagulant goes into him, so he's bleeding out.

[14:03] I made the point that before there were a bunch of hits,

[14:08] wouldn't his blood actually clot early on in the process?

[14:12] You have to imagine that business would start slow.

[14:14] Yeah, and you have to imagine that then once it did clot,

[14:17] the guy has to go in and re-carve in come kill with me

[14:20] or at least clean off the scabs.

[14:22] It seems like a weird way of doing it.

[14:24] I don't know about you guys, but when I get hits in my web box,

[14:27] my online web mailbox,

[14:30] I usually get these hits from, I don't know, penis enlargement,

[14:34] podcasts about bad movies, things like that.

[14:38] Most of the time I ignore them,

[14:40] because eventually everybody went right to the site.

[14:43] That's the thing is whenever there's a new killing,

[14:45] people rush to the site and the numbers are racing up,

[14:48] but it means that either he's sending out email notifications

[14:51] that there's a new killing on the site

[14:53] or people are just lurking around kill with me waiting for something to happen.

[14:57] In the millions.

[14:58] They saved it and then they opened up a new tab on their web browser.

[15:02] They just sat and monitored that.

[15:04] Yeah, of course.

[15:05] You're saying that there's got to be an email blast?

[15:07] Is that what you're saying?

[15:09] I used that term earlier when we were watching it.

[15:11] I've actually never heard that before.

[15:12] An e-blast?

[15:13] Yeah.

[15:14] Or an e-worm?

[15:15] It's like finger blasting.

[15:16] Nice.

[15:17] This is a filthy episode of the blob house.

[15:20] No, it just seems that, yeah,

[15:22] the only way that people would know is if you sent out a mass email

[15:25] to like his listserv and be like,

[15:28] hey guys, I got a new victim.

[15:30] You might want to come check it out.

[15:31] I'm throwing this guy in a tank of piranhas.

[15:34] I add a new piranha every time someone clicks on it.

[15:37] Let's find out the answer to this equation.

[15:39] 30 million piranhas plus one news reporter equals question mark.

[15:44] You'll find out.

[15:46] Yeah.

[15:47] The French would say an angel just passed over us.

[15:50] That's what that silence was.

[15:52] Okay, that's nice, Elliot.

[15:54] Good night, everybody.

[15:56] So they killed a guy with anticoagulant.

[15:59] They killed a guy with acid.

[16:01] With battery acid.

[16:02] A guy with heat lamps.

[16:03] And those lamps must have been, I don't know how hot,

[16:06] because he looked like he had been on site when Hiroshima was hit.

[16:11] Yeah, sure.

[16:12] His body was charred, and he was like,

[16:15] it looked like the scene in X-Men where the senator crawls out of the ocean

[16:20] after being hit with Magneto's mutant-making machine,

[16:23] and he's just turning into a blob of kind of human water.

[16:26] Yeah.

[16:27] He also glowed like, like I said,

[16:29] he was like the lava guy from Altered States.

[16:31] Yeah.

[16:32] I kind of wanted him to have magma powers all of a sudden.

[16:34] That would have been awesome.

[16:35] He was supposed to take down the serial killer.

[16:37] Magman.

[16:38] Magman.

[16:39] What a terrible name for a serial killer.

[16:41] He's a magman.

[16:42] He has the powers of mag.

[16:43] Sure.

[16:44] It could mean anything, magazines, magwheels.

[16:47] I don't want to tell you.

[16:49] I think it's magma, though.

[16:51] Magman.

[16:52] I couldn't really follow how they actually tracked the guy down eventually.

[16:56] Oh, they used the internet.

[16:57] Oh, okay.

[16:58] So it is good for something.

[17:00] You wouldn't know that watching this movie,

[17:02] because it had this weird reactionary quality to it,

[17:04] like Diane Lane makes some sort of offhand anti-net neutrality comment.

[17:09] There were a lot of comments against movie and song piracy,

[17:14] against net neutrality, against video sharing.

[17:17] There's that one weird bit where she was setting her daughter up to play with,

[17:21] like, a weird, like, internet horse game, because little girls like horses.

[17:25] They do.

[17:26] And, like, she made sure that she had, like, a nice plate of apple slices to eat.

[17:30] Like, what kind of nerd eats apple slices for a snack?

[17:33] She was eight years old.

[17:35] Well, come on.

[17:36] It turned out there was a backdoor Trojan in it.

[17:39] That innocent horse program was actually a backdoor Trojan.

[17:42] It sounds really dirty.

[17:44] I couldn't follow it because I was thinking about how I'd like to give Diane Lane a backdoor Trojan.

[17:49] Oh!

[17:51] That was a terrible, terrible thing to say.

[17:53] It was pretty terrible.

[17:55] Oh, my God.

[17:57] But it's like an anti-freeware stance.

[18:01] Don't download these games.

[18:03] You shouldn't be playing Snood.

[18:05] Is the message that if, like, Comcast is controlling which websites get through,

[18:11] that we won't have killing websites?

[18:13] It seemed to be very much in government oversight of the internet in every way.

[18:17] It was also very heavily pro-eavesdropping, pro-entering buildings without a warrant,

[18:22] pro-wiretapping.

[18:24] Pro-entrapment of people by chatting with them online.

[18:28] That's the thing.

[18:29] We didn't mention Diane Lane plays an FBI investigator who works in, it seems,

[18:32] the internet entrapment department.

[18:34] It's three people, one of whom is deaf, who sit around and look at computers all day

[18:38] and basically entrap people.

[18:40] They look at gross videos and they're like,

[18:42] Oh, get a load of this shit.

[18:44] You're arrested, buddy.

[18:46] It doesn't seem like they're going about it in sort of a scattershot way, too.

[18:50] It's like, oh, here's a pop-up.

[18:52] I'll click on that.

[18:54] That looks like it might be.

[18:56] No, it's nothing.

[18:58] What is it, Song Thief or something like that?

[19:00] Oh, that's like that Napster thing.

[19:04] Remember that, guys?

[19:06] As if you didn't live through Napster being around.

[19:09] That's like the Napster thing that my grandpa told me about.

[19:12] From the early 2000s?

[19:14] That's like the Napster thing from seven years ago.

[19:18] I guess it was eight years ago.

[19:19] So Colin Hanks was one of those guys, though.

[19:21] He played the character of Griffin.

[19:23] Griffin Dowd.

[19:25] Was his last name Dowd?

[19:26] I didn't remember that part.

[19:27] Griffin Dowd is a big Internet dater.

[19:29] He's always dating girls on the Internet.

[19:31] That's what I always said about him.

[19:34] In his day job, he pretends to be an underage girl and then traps older men.

[19:40] Wait a minute.

[19:41] This just in, guys.

[19:42] His character dies in this movie from too much acid.

[19:46] Spoiler alert.

[19:47] That made me sad.

[19:48] This just in, guys.

[19:49] You've got breaking news from the movie we just watched.

[19:52] Breaking news.

[19:53] He gets trapped by the killer who uses a really good voice modulation device

[19:57] to make his masculine voice sound exactly like...

[20:00] a girl's voice. A girl he's never met. Who the character has actually met before.

[20:05] That's the crazy thing is that the voice not only is a girl's voice, but it's a girl that the

[20:10] character knows. That's the sort of thing you can do when you're really good at technology,

[20:14] though, Stuart. I'm not very good at technology, clearly. And who was the killer in the end?

[20:19] Should we give it away? Well, it doesn't matter. Was it the bald Asian cop? No, he was the star of

[20:28] the film as far as we're concerned. We were quite taken with the bald Asian cop. A man with a

[20:33] mustache, Asian, bald, kind of heavyset, appeared in the backgrounds of different scenes. And he

[20:38] had more charisma than everyone else in the movie put together. But yeah, the person who was the

[20:43] killer was mad at the internet, basically. And so he used it as his tool to destroy others.

[20:52] Which answers the question. There's a hilarious line at one point where they're doing an FBI

[20:56] briefing, and one guy goes, why is he using the internet to kill? And that's answered,

[21:02] because apparently some YouTube video of his dad killing himself became a big hit,

[21:12] and people were watching it all over the place. I don't think you can watch that on YouTube now.

[21:17] No, I mean, it was a YouTube-ish video. At this point, YouTube is no longer a brand name. It's a

[21:22] brand. It's like Kleenex or Frisbee. Yeah, so he was infuriated by...

[21:28] Xerox or Flophouse. It just comes to typify a certain type of thing.

[21:32] Our Gawking Society. That's what he hated. Our Rubbernecker.

[21:38] Our Rubberneckin' Internetin' Gang. Yeah, it was really...

[21:42] That's a good country song. Our Rubberneckin' Internetin' Gang.

[21:45] And then the climax is really boring, because it was just her hanging over a rototiller,

[21:50] and then she falls down and shoots the guy. Well, she got trapped by her car being taken

[21:58] over by the web. I guess he hacked in through the GPS. You can do that with hacking, right?

[22:04] Through the OnStar system. Well, I think that you can actually do that.

[22:07] Which I guess means that you could hack into the Batmobiles. As we learned, he has OnStar on there

[22:12] in the film Batman and Robin. I don't think that's canonical, Batman and Robin.

[22:16] I want to believe that Untraceable is part of the same canon of films as Batman and Robin.

[22:22] But the thing is, I'm willing to take the movie's word for it that an evil hacking

[22:27] serial killer can hack into the OnStar. I don't believe that then that means he can lock the

[22:33] doors on the car. Because I think that's a simple electrical circuit. I don't think a

[22:37] computer has anything to do with that. Like locking the doors now,

[22:41] Diane Lane's character. I can't do that, Diane Lane.

[22:45] That's right. The computer knows that she's an actress playing this part.

[22:51] And it was really difficult in the filming of the movie because it never referred to her as her

[22:56] character's name. Well, you can't explain to robots the concept of acting.

[22:59] Yeah, sure. So once they got a robot car...

[23:02] I don't understand, Diane. Why is he calling you a different name?

[23:05] Robots. Genetic imprint reads Diane Lane.

[23:09] But one of the disappointments I had with the film was that the killer did turn out to be kind of a

[23:14] random character. As it would in real life.

[23:17] As it would in real life and not like a side character who was, you know... I was expecting

[23:22] Bald Asian Cop to be a possible suspect. I was expecting Griffin to maybe have done it.

[23:27] You know, all these sorts of things. So we're hoping that it was like a

[23:29] sort of a jagged edge sort of thriller where... Well, yeah, you know what? I mean,

[23:33] let's just say... Kiss the girls.

[23:35] There's a reason Stan Lee was right in his argument with Steve Ditko about who

[23:39] the Green Goblin should be. You know, if you introduce a totally new character,

[23:43] it just doesn't mean as much. Yeah.

[23:44] Although Kiss the Girls was one of the worst revelations of who the villain was.

[23:48] It was Carrie L. was the whole time, dude. But why?

[23:50] Go back in time. Because he's a corporate

[23:52] sponsored serial killer. That's why.

[23:56] I think I'm mixing up two movies. You got to think backwards and imagine

[24:01] all the scenes that Carrie L. was in where he said really cryptic stuff.

[24:05] Like, I'm not killing these girls. I wonder who's murdering these girls.

[24:10] Wink! Now I know why you were winking at me, Carrie.

[24:13] Yeah. It was just disappointing because it was

[24:15] like you see these... Everyone was ominously introduced.

[24:20] And the whole thing takes place in Portland, Oregon, which was apparently the most ominous

[24:23] place in the world. Rainy.

[24:24] Never stops raining. Always gray. Nothing but overhead shots of bridges and things.

[24:30] But everyone's kind of ominous and quiet. So you're like, well, I wonder who it is.

[24:33] Is it him? Is it him? And then this guy is introduced who has evil eye.

[24:37] And you know immediately that it's him and we've never seen him before.

[24:40] And, you know, and he kills a guy by hitting him with heat lamps.

[24:43] The only thing we ever learn about him before his motive is that he likes Korean things.

[24:47] No, that was just the house he was staying in, dude.

[24:49] That's just the house he had stolen to bring that guy.

[24:52] So that was... Untraceable.

[24:54] Yeah, that was really scary. But this is a movie that the most...

[24:58] To give you an idea of what watching this movie is like, right about a little bit before the

[25:02] climax, the CD or the DVD... Sorry, I thought we were using a Philips CD-i.

[25:08] The DVD paused because it was... I guess it scratched or something.

[25:13] It started skipping.

[25:14] So that was the part of the movie that got worn out, right?

[25:16] Because people wanted to watch it.

[25:17] People kept rewinding and were like, what happened?

[25:20] But it stopped and...

[25:21] That was the part with the back door closing.

[25:24] And Dan sat on the couch and said, I don't care enough about this movie to fix this.

[25:29] So he sat there for a little bit, just hoping it would restart itself

[25:32] because we couldn't muster the enthusiasm for any of us to get up and press the play

[25:37] button and try to see how to get past this moment.

[25:39] I did not take it out and clean it at all.

[25:42] You didn't do the technique that you used to do with Nintendo cartridges

[25:46] and then stuff another cartridge on top?

[25:50] You didn't do any of that?

[25:51] I did try and stuff a Nintendo cartridge on top of the CD, but I think I broke my DVD player.

[25:58] This was also the most... We couldn't get the enthusiasm,

[26:01] and this was also the most suspenseful part of the movie was, uh-oh, is this disc broken?

[26:08] Are we even going to be able to finish this film?

[26:10] Are we going to have to review something else entirely?

[26:13] Are we just going to talk about the Twin Sitters trailer?

[26:16] Or Indiana Jones?

[26:17] There were three points in the movie that because of a bad DVD, I skipped ahead

[26:22] and then reversed to like, I don't know, 40 seconds after where we stopped.

[26:26] So that lost 120 seconds.

[26:31] Might change my opinion on this.

[26:32] Yeah.

[26:33] Redeemable, question mark?

[26:35] Yeah.

[26:36] Unredeemable.

[26:37] Oh, unredeemable.

[26:38] Is the movie I would make about this movie.

[26:39] Unredeemable.

[26:40] Oh, just like...

[26:42] Let's just stop talking about it.

[26:44] I mean, I think I know where we're all going to go, but...

[26:48] I'm going to go home soon, because it's late.

[26:50] Is this a movie that was a good bad movie, a bad bad movie, or a movie that you sort of

[26:57] liked in some way? Elliot?

[27:00] This was a bad bad movie for me.

[27:01] I've been on a pretty good roll of Flophouse movies lately, I feel like.

[27:04] Bratz, Dragon Wars, movies that I surprisingly found something to like in,

[27:08] but this one was no good.

[27:11] Yeah, this was really rough right on the heels of AVPR, which was really bad.

[27:18] This was a terrible movie, Dan.

[27:20] Yeah, I agree.

[27:22] I mean, I like bad internet thrillers.

[27:26] I think Diane Lane's really cute.

[27:29] Sure.

[27:31] Come on, Hanks.

[27:32] What's not to like?

[27:33] He's adorable.

[27:34] He's a likable actor.

[27:35] I was sad to see him burn to death from acid.

[27:38] Well, you kept talking about how sad you were thinking about Tom Hanks being sad over the

[27:42] death of his son.

[27:44] You forgot the difference between an actor and a character at that point, too.

[27:47] Well, imagine Tom Hanks...

[27:48] Like the car.

[27:50] I'm sorry, your son has been burned to death.

[27:51] Now, why would he learn by telegram?

[27:54] His son didn't die overseas.

[27:55] Imagine that everyone whose sons die, they get a telegram about it.

[27:59] Yep, somebody from the War Department shows up.

[28:02] Well, he was an FBI agent.

[28:04] Sure.

[28:05] It's not even close.

[28:06] Not even close.

[28:07] He used telegrams.

[28:09] But ultimately, there was just...

[28:10] Teddy grams?

[28:14] All the World War II wives whose husbands were dreaded those teddy grams.

[28:21] We're sorry about your son.

[28:22] Here's some teddy grams.

[28:24] Maybe that'll cheer you up.

[28:25] Those chocolate ones were so gross, dude.

[28:29] They're little bear cookies.

[28:30] Maybe that'll take a place in your heart.

[28:35] Maybe this will ease some of the sting.

[28:37] It's a little cracker.

[28:38] It looks like a bear.

[28:41] Anyway, I got a lot of...

[28:43] I got a lot of teddy grams to give out today.

[28:48] I'll see you later, I guess.

[28:56] So we might see her again?

[28:58] Like, I don't know, I'll see you around.

[29:00] It's distasteful to hit on a woman just then, but he knows she's single.

[29:04] He's going to come back with more teddy grams.

[29:06] Yeah, catch you on the flip side.

[29:08] I'll catch you on the flip side.

[29:12] She's all alone in this world.

[29:14] Yeah, so it looks like a teddy gram delivery guy can give her...

[29:17] Any man who gives her a teddy gram, she's just going to be so grateful.

[29:21] Well, that's what it was like in Europe after the war.

[29:23] The occupying soldiers just had to give girls teddy grams,

[29:26] and they could do whatever they wanted.

[29:28] I didn't know that.

[29:29] It's a teddy gram-based economy.

[29:31] So we all really hated this movie.

[29:34] That's too bad.

[29:34] I was really hoping it was going to be fun.

[29:36] I think the amount of time we spent talking about teddy grams...

[29:40] So far in this episode devoted to the movie Untraceable,

[29:42] we've talked about teddy grams,

[29:44] cutting holes in things and putting your penis in them.

[29:47] What else?

[29:47] Anything else of note?

[29:49] Uh, I don't know.

[29:50] The internet?

[29:51] Wait, that was relevant.

[29:52] Oh, God.

[29:53] Oh, let's just move on.

[29:55] Let's move on.

[29:56] Dot org.

[29:57] That's an internet joke.

[29:59] So...

[30:00] okay so that will be a we agree that this movie so it's a nice part of the

[30:03] podcast and is it's a recommended recommendations

[30:06] okay ellie you go

[30:08] ellie kaylin goes

[30:09] all right man i'm on top of this uh... i got two movies

[30:12] uh... the first is for anyone who won a little action which this movie did not

[30:16] have

[30:17] a little movie called the driver

[30:18] uh... which is a walter hill film

[30:21] nineteen seventy eight starring ryan o'neill and ellie

[30:23] uh... was a uh... that's a legal bruce stern

[30:26] they look similar

[30:26] a little bit

[30:27] though they play similar characters

[30:28] ryan o'neill is the best getaway driver in the business

[30:31] uh... and bruce stern is the cop who is determined to take him down

[30:36] and

[30:37] you know they're both kinda swaggering macho guys though ryan o'neill is very quiet

[30:41] and there's a lot of good car chase stuff

[30:43] there's one scene where he's gotta show these guys what he is what he can do

[30:47] to earn this bank job

[30:48] and he drives through a parking garage doing these really

[30:51] close turns and almost hitting walls and stuff

[30:54] and they're like okay okay we get it we get it and he goes

[30:56] just to prove it he slowly destroys the car

[30:59] with very very accurately done

[31:01] uh... moves and things like that driving just close enough to a pillar to knock

[31:04] the mirror off and things like that

[31:06] uh... it's pretty awesome

[31:10] we've talked about how the seventies were a magical time when people like bruce stern could star in a movie

[31:14] but also there were an odd time

[31:16] when ryan o'neill could play a very masculine role

[31:18] could play a very tough silent guy

[31:21] and bruce stern's character is hyper masculine

[31:24] like he's like he talks like bruce stern so he's kinda like uh... well you know

[31:29] that you know i'm gonna catch that guy but it's you know it's uh...

[31:32] he's still like a badass

[31:34] uh... in the other movie uh...

[31:37] the uh... nineteen sixty six check film

[31:39] closely watched trains which i saw the week before last and was awesome

[31:44] it's a it's a very kind of funny

[31:46] deadpan comedy drama about

[31:49] a young guy who becomes a train dispatcher in his village in czechoslovakia

[31:53] during world war two

[31:54] and he really wants to get laid

[31:56] and those two things kind of intertwined kind of

[31:59] the bureaucracy he's living in in this train dispatcher in this train job

[32:03] and the fact that according to this movie everyone in czechoslovakia was

[32:06] trying to avoid work all the time

[32:08] and also

[32:10] him his kind of getting older and trying to be a man through

[32:13] sleeping with women which he's very bad at

[32:16] there's some pretty good there's a pretty funny jokes in it

[32:18] uh... this is stewart and stewart is going to recommend

[32:23] our voices don't sound anything alike

[32:25] this is stewart and stewart is going to recommend the movie them

[32:29] it's a french movie and it has uh...

[32:32] it's basically a couple in the middle of nowhere in near bucharest i think

[32:36] getting uh... terrorized by

[32:38] who knows

[32:43] strangers or with strangers or with the old movie them

[32:46] about giant ants yeah it's not about giant ants i don't think

[32:50] oh my god elliot

[32:52] spoiler alert

[32:53] the uh... it's got a lot of tension

[32:57] there's a lot of good like long shots and it does a lot with like light and

[33:01] sound and it's just really tense so

[33:04] if you like uh... i watch it with two girls and they spent most of the movie

[33:07] with their hands over their eyes

[33:09] uh...

[33:09] because they're scared

[33:12] i do like to scare girls i'd like to wear a cape and uh... scare girls so

[33:18] it's all on his facebook page

[33:23] what about you dan

[33:24] i would like to break

[33:27] the rules

[33:28] and recommend a british television show however there were only six episodes of

[33:33] said show

[33:35] and it was intended as a six episode closing so it's like a three hour movie yeah so i

[33:38] think i think i can maybe make it work and say that uh...

[33:42] people should watch uh... state of play

[33:45] the great uh...

[33:46] series

[33:47] is directed by david yates

[33:49] who uh...

[33:51] he just directed the last harry potter movie but this movie is about

[33:56] journalists basically it starts out with

[33:59] a woman

[34:00] falling on train tracks and you don't know whether she committed suicide or what

[34:05] but because of this death

[34:08] it is revealed that she was having an

[34:11] affair with a

[34:13] high ranking british government official

[34:16] and

[34:18] from that

[34:18] you know more developments and more developments spin out

[34:21] and it has uh...

[34:23] bill nighy in it

[34:25] the science guy

[34:26] the science guy he

[34:27] yeah bill nighy is the science guy

[34:30] and uh...

[34:32] james mcavoy is in a small role

[34:34] this is a pretty big name cast

[34:39] and kelly mcdonald is in it

[34:41] yeah i like her she's scottish

[34:43] it's hard to sort of concentrate on

[34:46] what she's saying

[34:47] because she's so adorable

[34:50] and like in a

[34:51] like with the olsen twins

[34:52] exactly

[34:55] uh... and uh... and the reason i

[34:57] wanted to see this show was it was recommended to me as something that

[35:00] people who really enjoy the wire might like because it has

[35:04] sort of like

[35:04] similar storytelling

[35:06] set in baltimore

[35:07] take a lot of uh...

[35:10] pay a lot of attention to what's going on

[35:11] like untraceable

[35:13] so to be distracted by an adorable scottish accent

[35:16] uh... is a bit of a uh... problem

[35:19] but uh... it's really good and it stars also

[35:22] the main guy is the guy who was the star of the tv show life on mars which i've never seen

[35:26] i've heard that's good i have also noticed that was

[35:28] uh... on bbc america on demand for a long time and i never got around to watching it

[35:33] man so that's a lot of good recommendations guys man

[35:37] i think i'm going to go out and watch some of these movies

[35:41] i'm going to watch thems and states of play or what was it

[35:45] yeah state of grace

[35:48] state of maine

[35:50] state in maine

[35:51] david mamet's state in maine is my recommendation

[35:54] you're going to take that out of context

[35:58] make it look like you have bad taste

[36:00] uh...

[36:03] when you're doing the satire of the movie industry and you just keep

[36:06] pulling your punches the way he does in that

[36:08] uh...

[36:09] it does have jonathan katz in it

[36:11] okay i'll give you that it does have jonathan katz in it

[36:14] but he's better in the spanish prisoner

[36:17] uh... i just want to tell people

[36:19] they should go to

[36:20] uh... the flop house podcast

[36:22] dot blogspot dot com

[36:23] for more than just going and

[36:25] voting on our behalf

[36:27] and writing good reviews of us

[36:29] uh... recently in the last full episode

[36:32] we asked people to uh...

[36:34] draw their own version of an alien vs predator fight

[36:38] and we did get a piece of fan art that i uh... enjoyed quite a bit it's posted on the site now

[36:45] and uh...

[36:46] last week

[36:49] when there was no new show or i guess the week before that

[36:52] i stuck up

[36:54] this episode of

[36:55] captains in space

[36:57] a web series that i write for and the reason it's sort of flop house related is that stewart

[37:04] uh... came up with a story for it

[37:06] yeah

[37:07] at a party

[37:08] i did, it was pretty impressive

[37:10] at a party he like sidled up to be drunk and he was like

[37:12] you know that captains in space thing you do

[37:14] yeah you should do an episode where uh

[37:17] the captains get their mustaches

[37:19] yup

[37:21] and uh... and then a great story was born

[37:25] a great yarn

[37:27] it's just like it's just like that castle

[37:29] in uh...

[37:31] in switzerland

[37:32] where frankenstein and dracula were both born

[37:35] exactly

[37:37] i'm just saying that if you like pictures

[37:39] or video

[37:41] you should go to the website

[37:43] if you're tired of listening to things with your ears

[37:45] when you're tired of going to killwithme.com

[37:47] and watching guys being killed

[37:49] or kittens

[37:51] there's a lot of other good stuff on the internet

[37:53] it's not related to killing

[37:55] sometimes it's podcasts

[37:59] yes like this one

[38:01] let's listen to it shall we

[38:03] uh so wait are we done

[38:05] yeah i think the high point of this show

[38:07] was actually the stuff that didn't have anything to do with the movie

[38:09] yeah well cause fucking untraceable sucked

[38:11] it was so long and boring

[38:13] it was it wasn't even long

[38:15] it was 95 minutes

[38:17] but it was so boring that it felt like it was twice that length

[38:19] like oh my god she's staying in a hotel

[38:21] because the killer knows where she lives

[38:23] oh no the killer's there

[38:25] he's untraceable he's caught her

[38:27] oh no she survived and killed the killer

[38:29] yay

[38:31] I was hoping this movie was just about a guy

[38:33] who wants to copy a picture from a book

[38:35] but the paper he's using is too thick

[38:37] so he can't trace through it

[38:39] I like to think that it's a guy

[38:41] who's trying to copy a picture through a book

[38:43] and he has the appropriate

[38:45] girth of paper

[38:47] thickness

[38:49] let's say

[38:51] he's got paper of appropriate girth

[38:53] and then he's got like charcoal

[38:55] charcoal or a pencil

[38:57] but he starts trying to trace it

[38:59] alien geometries of the picture

[39:01] like his brain can't comprehend

[39:03] and worse yet the girth of his penis

[39:05] is too big to poke through

[39:07] the pizza box

[39:09] and or popcorn

[39:11] so too much girth yields

[39:13] too little popcorn

[39:15] it would have to be enormous

[39:17] to be too big to get through a pizza box

[39:19] which is roughly the size of a shield

[39:21] that's

[39:23] like a fucking manhole cover

[39:25] he must

[39:27] that's like he has

[39:29] elephantiasis or something like that

[39:31] arguably make a hole of any size

[39:33] a hole so big that it encompasses the entire pizza box

[39:35] the penis box?

[39:37] so that's

[39:39] crazy like does that mean like the sides

[39:41] of his penis go out onto his thighs

[39:43] or is he just incredibly obese

[39:45] yeah how does he walk? Flop House listeners

[39:47] if you'd like to draw a picture of this horrible

[39:49] thing

[39:51] please feel free to do so and keep it to yourself

[39:53] and not show anybody

[39:55] because they'll get the wrong idea

[39:57] sounds like the giant guy from Big Fish

[40:00] If you do send it to us, we will not post it online.

[40:04] We may look at it and describe it on air, but I think you can pretty much imagine.

[40:10] I don't know that we're going to do that.

[40:12] Well, speak for yourself, Ellie.

[40:14] Let's continue this conversation off air, but for now, for The Fluff House, I'm Danny

[40:20] Foy.

[40:21] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[40:22] And I'm Stuart Wellington.

[40:23] Good night, y'all.

[40:24] Y'all?

[40:26] You were just in Ohio, weren't you?

[40:35] My favorite part about that scene is when the crystal skull flies up and magnetically

[40:40] attaches itself to the bones of the neck, and the neck bones noticeably go, like, sproiling

[40:44] a little.

[40:45] Oh, my.

[40:46] We're going to turn into an alien soon.

[40:51] Oh, man.

[40:52] Oh, man.

[40:53] That's going to be in the, uh, that's going to be in the after credits music.

[40:57] I think it has to be, yeah.

[41:00] And then there's this awesome bit where this fucking alien skull attaches to this other

[41:05] thing.

[41:06] Lame.

[41:09] Mini crystal skull review at the end of the episode.

[41:12] Ah, I don't want to talk about it on Treesville because it sucked.

[41:17] All right.

The Flop House: Episode #17 - Untraceable

Transcript

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