The 10 Best Movies at the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals. Plus: Nathan Fielder’s Stunning Elizabeth Holmes Doc.

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the fall film festivals. On today's show, I am back in L.A. and ready to report on my annual sojourn to the Telluride Film Festival. Amanda is still in Venice, Italy, and ready to report on the proceedings there. We've seen all the major movies that played, and we'll give you our favorites and not-so-favorites on today's episode. But first, some movie news right after this. This episode is presented by State Farm. You know the feeling. Long day, good meal, you finally sit down. And now you're just staring at your screen. Slasher, rom-com, period drama, psychological thriller. But some decisions don't have to be that hard. State Farm is here to help. Like when you choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Okay, Dobbins, what time is it where you are? Ciao, big guy. It's 6 p.m. Wow. It's cocktail hour. Wow, good for you. This Negroni was purchased. It was sold. Sold pre-mixed in a plastic bag. And then in a little paper envelope. And then I poured it into this glass. It's pretty good. That sounds horrible. But okay, I'm happy for you. I'm happy you've got some social lubrication for this conversation show. Hopefully things will go great. Have you been having a nice time in Italy? Yeah, it's been great. I'm very pro-Italy. This has been a very fun experience of a festival. And it's of the. This is my. This is my third time here. I would say that the crowd control is the best that it's been. Oh. The logistics are the best that it's been. This weekend had a fun party atmosphere to it. There were people around. I was seeing people I know. I've run into friends. And, you know, maybe some of that is just that I've been coming long enough that I have festival friends and know the route. But it hasn't rained here, which is great. Last year, Yossi and I had to wade through a lot of light flooding. I almost got stuck on the Lido after J. Kelly. And I've navigated the regatta with no problems. You know about the regatta? I do because I've seen the film The Social Network. Didn't you know about the Venice regatta? Well, no. I mean, yes. That one's not in Venice. Every year, smack dab in the middle of the Venice Film Festival, they hold a historical regatta. And they close the main waterway, the Grand Canal in Venice, which is also like, you know, closing Fifth Avenue. New York or something. Like, they close the main street. And they also close many of the shuttles to and from the island where all of the films are. But I was not stopped. And I got a shuttle that worked. And I saw the films. And that's what I do. We will talk about those films. Every year, when you go to this festival, you come on the pod and you start describing it. And you give me more and more reasons to never go. It's just amazing. There are so many things that make no sense about the Venice Film Festival. We'll get into all that. We'll get into the experiences at the festival. One of the things that you were hoping would be at the festival that you're at is the Luca Guadagnino film Artificial, which is the since dispensed with by Amazon portrait of Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, co-founder, I should say. And we have a new trailer or teaser trailer for the film. This movie has been a subject of much discussion, I think, in the world of movie nerds. But I'm not totally sure if this film has quite reached the public at large. And so we got to talk about that. We got the first look at it now. It's coming out later this year from Neon. There's going to be a screening of the film at the New York Film Festival in one month. You've just watched it. I'm very curious for your thoughts on it, given that you're a Luca, I don't know, completist, defender? Well, I'm not a Luca completist because I did not make it to his seven or eight-hour documentary about Berlucci here at the festival. I saw a four-hour documentary. So, you know, I'm doing my best. But seven. Seven was a bridge too far. So, nor do I have any of Luca Guadagnino's Zara Home collection, which I don't know if it's for sale yet. I see. But the images were released. So, I'm an aspiring completist. I thought it was a good teaser. I mean, it's a minute. It's just, I mean, it's, you know, pure editing. And you just, you get kind of one-shot flashes of everything except for Andrew Garfield doing his best. Jesse Eisenberg walking through the square of Harvard and the opening of. You know, they are leaning into the homage and trying to draw a line from that film to this film. I'm okay with that because that's one of my favorite films of my lifetime. I would really like to see this movie. I think it would have fit in at the Venice Film Festival this year and some of the movies that I've seen. But, you know, you get what you get and you don't get upset. I love when you speak to me like I'm a toddler. Well, I mean, that's what they teach. Just in the Montessori way. I'm aware. I have heard such wildly different reactions to the movie from people who have seen it. I have been told that this is going to be one of the funniest movies of the year. I've been told this is one of the bleakest movies of the year. I totally agree with what you're saying about its clear connectivity to the social network and the idea that open AI and the AI rush feels like a kind of two decades later extension of what Mark Zuckerberg helped to launch in the world of social media. In the 2000s, I hope this is good. I don't really know what to say. Garfield, you're Borisov. You mentioned that you saw a four-hour documentary, which I know is about Elon Musk. He is portrayed here in this movie by Ike Barinholtz. Monica Barbaro is in the film. Pretty excited. It sounds like it's going to come at the end of the year and then go wide to the public at the beginning of 2027. So it's still a long ways away. But so far, so good. Okay. Where would you like to start? Would you like me to start? Yeah, I did. I taught you about the regatta. So you can teach me about, you know, how one gets into a secret screening. Oh, sure. That would that maybe we should we should probably just talk about that. That's okay. Yeah. Well, we're going to do a whole conversation about the summer at the movies on Friday. So from here on out, it's all fall film festival stuff. If you don't want any of it spoiled for you, I understand. I won't be spoiling any of the movies. Amanda won't be spoiling any of the movies. We'll just be talking about what we liked and why and what the atmosphere was like. And, you know, Telluride, it's pretty safe to say was defined this year by a secret screening doing some press beforehand. The director of the festival, Julie Hunsinger, in an interview with Variety, noted that there was a true TBA on the calendar, a to be announced film, which is something that happens every year. There are always TBAs on the calendar. Sometimes it's a, you know, a smaller film, an independent film that hadn't been previously announced. Sometimes it's just a repeat of a movie that had been playing really well across the festival. One of the great movies. One of the great things about Telluride is that the films play three, four, five times. So in this case, this was a true TBA. Nobody knew what the movie was. And it became the talking point in every line at every movie over two and a half days. What is it? What is it? What is it? Many guesses, many wrong guesses, lots of anticipation and speculation. I think it created a little bit of a sense of anxiety at the festival because everyone was starting to get worried if they could get in to the screening. Which, you know, the Werner Herzog Theater, which is one of the primary theaters at the festival, is fairly big. I want to say it has maybe a 600 person capacity, maybe more than that. But it's not huge. And there are thousands of people at the festival in this tiny town in Colorado. And I did know what it was, which was very strange because every single conversation that you have with people, they're like, do you know? Do you know? Do you know? And I knew it was going to be a big deal, but I don't think I anticipated quite a lot. I didn't know quite how big a deal it was going to turn out to be. Did you? What was your strategy when people asked you? I know. And I'm sorry, but I can't say. And I was so lock and key with it the entire time. And I was honestly, I'm proud of myself. I felt like I feel like I could work for the government now. If you want to, I guess. I think you did a great job. I question at some point, I think that you should have just started lying and just be like, I don't know. And I understand that, you know, knowledge is, you know, currency and it's, it's very cool. And I actually got angry text messages from friends of ours asking if I knew, uh, so that because you wouldn't tell them. Uh, and I also kept a secret just so everybody knows, but I, it's kind of annoying. It's sort of like the extended version of, yeah, well, I've seen this movie six months ago, but we can't talk about it for a while. Of course. You know what? Annoying is just a part of life for me. There's not really anything I can do. about that. The problem is if you tell one person you know, then it gets out pretty quickly that, oh, well, knows. And so accounting for that was, it was fine. It was honestly fun to hear people guessing. And the guesses were myriad. They were, is it the new Terrence Malick film? Is it Frank Ocean's A24 movie? Is it Zac Efron's movie Famous? There were movies that haven't even been shot yet that were being guessed about. It became clear that it was a documentary at a certain point because of the way that the information had spread. And then it ultimately was revealed that it was a Nathan Fielder project. And then it was a Nathan Fielder project about Elizabeth Holmes. Now to some people, I think that that would be really, really exciting. Somebody like me who loves Nathan and has been kind of, you know, venerating all the projects he's been doing since Nathan For You. I mean, I think other people were like, a documentary? And it's three hours long? And about Elizabeth Holmes who like has already gone through the content meat grinder in so many ways, books and television shows and podcasts. And, you know, her story has been told. So many times. So anyway, by the time we were in line to get into the movie, which was on Sunday night, which is not quite the end of the festival, but more or less is kind of the closing evening. I would say about 50% of the people in the line that I was in felt like they had a handle on what the movie was. And so then it became this question of, well, this better be good. You know, like, I'm because when you get in line to tell your ride, you do have to sometimes wait an hour, two hours. I saw a film at the theater where the where the you can see everything the Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim film played at 1245 p.m. And so I arrived at that theater at 12. And there were people who were already in line for 615 showing of the secret screening. That's that's really early. I think you saying that you arrived 30 minutes early for the first screening of this is the most obnoxious thing that you've said on this podcast. No, no, that's not that's not what I said. I said to the to the 1245 screening earlier in the day, I showed up 30 minutes early of, oh, a movie that was not that movie. OK, yeah, I was gonna be like, that's listen. No, I showed up two hours early to tell you, right? OK, all right. I showed up. Yeah. And I'm you know, I'm very fortunate as a member of the press and somebody who, you know, knows a lot of the people that were trying to get people into the screening that like I didn't have a hard time getting in. It did become a fairly exclusive line, though, because the way the telluride works, as I've talked about many times over the years, is there's a group of people who are called patrons. They have very special passes. They pay a lot of money for those passes. They get first rights into the door. So because of their passes, they are the supreme leaders of telluride. The press gets treated very well at telluride. I love my experience there. We're not quite at that high tier, but in the right circumstances, you can get in somewhat early into screenings. Yeah. Then there are people who, of course, are celebrities and work in the movie business. And I've not seen so many people from so far who didn't make the movie at a screening like this, on top of the fact that, you know, all the stars like, you know, Jordan Firstman and the cast of Club Kid were all there, you know, like a whole raft of famous people were also in the screening room. So I don't know how many regular festival goers got in, maybe a hundred, maybe less, not a lot. So this was a fairly exclusive room and the film only played once and it was three hours. And so you effectively had to give the entire seven hours of the screening. And so I don't know how many regular festival goers got in, maybe a hundred, last night of the festival over to this movie. So a lot of people were like, this better be good. And it was fucking amazing. And, you know, it's so rare that something that everybody is like, oh my God, I hope this is good. I hope this is good for it to be good. It's such a rare feeling, Amanda. Yeah, I am. I'm quite jealous. I, uh, we were texting because many, much of the A24 team and, and Lance Oppenheim, who also directed Primetime, which debuted here on at Venice on Friday night, the 5 p.m. slot. And it was like the big sceney premiere of the week and, and the big party of the week. And it was really fun. But so I met Lance, I met his entire family, congratulated them on Primetime and they were in Venice, like at midnight local time Venice, and then made it to, and like all traveled and made it to Telluride in time for this premiere. So like I had an inkling and was just incredibly jealous and remain incredibly jealous. And everyone working on the team now knows when I land in Los Angeles so that I can then see it in Los Angeles. And I'm going to send some more follow-up texts as soon as we're done recording. Hi guys. I love you. Um, that said, I didn't even read your entire newsletter because I don't want to know anything else. All I know, like I've watched the teaser and I know that I know what Nathan Fielder said as soon as he walked on the stage, which you can share with people. And I kind of don't want to know anymore. I know. I know. I'll try to respect that and be careful in this conversation. Cause I think, um, it's a fascinating to me how quickly the teaser went viral. And I think it kind of indicates the curiosity that drives so much of the movie. And I think the teaser is in some ways an accurate reflection of the film. And in other ways, a little bit of a wrong footing of what the movie is and is a really great draw into the story, but it does start out as what it looks like, which is Nathan Fielder shooting a sort of a on the rehearsal, um, and on the curse and on Nathan for you. And as a sort of like snapshot of Elizabeth Holmes in the final days before she goes to federal prison. And then the film goes in many, many other directions from there. Um, I thought it was like a fascinatingly form breaking approach to telling a story. It's three hours for a reason. It's sort of a bifurcated story. The first half is what it looks like. The second half, it goes in wild directions. Um, you know, before the film started, Nathan and, and Lance, um, came out after Julie introduced them and Julie was like giddy and ecstatic introducing the movie, which is also dangerous to kind of set people up that you're like so excited to have something. Um, and then they came out and you know, they're both very low key down beat, you know, Nathan doing his kind of like, Hey, hope you guys like this, you know, even though you've all been waiting, you know, 72 hours to see this movie. Um, Lance jet lagged. Yes. Although I also spoke with him, uh, after the film and he seemed more awake than I was. So I was impressed. Uh, and the movie played like gangbusters and it became pretty much the only thing that anybody wanted to talk about in the ensuing 24 hours of the festival. And I think there are a lot of reasons for that. I do think that some of this is of course the natural festival high of you make a big trip to go somewhere and you want it to be worth it. Like you were describing your experience of Venice and how it's been like a good Venice and you've had like a good slate of films and you see friends that you like and films. Oh, interesting. Yes. Okay. But, and that's part of it too, is the, the films sometimes matter just as much as the experience. And this was kind of a fusion of those two things. This was an event and it was a movie and those two things colliding in this way, I think were really exciting and gratifying to me as somebody who really loves documentary and is fascinated by the form of documentary. The fact that this is something that felt part of a lineage and also very new. I really enjoyed, um, I love portraits of complex people who we don't know whether we should trust or not. And what is the true self? What is the overarching concept of the movie? I'm trying to be very careful here. Now, when the movie ended, um, Lance and Nathan came out for an interview, which was moderated by Emma Stone, which is just some like classic Telluride shit. You know, like Emma Stone's here. She's going to do the Q and A. Um, and she was a very good moderator and asked five very simple and straightforward and good questions. And when the film ended, I watched a bunch of people leave, um, the screening and not sit for the Q and A, which I found baffling. Cause I've never wanted to hear a Q and A more after a movie. However, one thing I should mention is that, you know, I should mention is they did bag our phones at this screening, which has never happened to me in film festival history. So no one had access to their cell phone for almost five hours. So I guess some people were desperate to just race out and tweet about what they had just seen or something, but like check in with their family. Sure. Yeah. Okay. That's generous. I mean, whatever. These people don't give a fuck about their family. They went to Telluride to watch movies. I guess it's true. I don't know. I still remember bartering with the Spider-Man press people about like, I'm really pregnant and I need my phone in case something happens. I remember that. I remember that. Uh, so anyway, you know, we didn't, we didn't have our phones. We were, we were a true, a truly captive audience. And in the conversation afterwards, they talked about how they still don't really know what to make of what they made and, and how they made it. And to see them so unguarded about that. And especially Nathan, who as much as he is a filmmaker and a TV show impresario and a documentarian is also like he's a character, you know, he's a performer and he has like part of his art. That's part of his, well, his, his art and his work and his, however you want to define, I mean, it is art, but it's also journalism and also, you know, I always think of it as anthropology, cultural criticism. Yeah. Yeah. I always think of it as him trying to kind of understand human relationships and interactions and reactions. And this movie is a huge part of that project, but they both were, and Nathan, even more so than Lance, we're still a little bit just about gobsmacked, about what they had done in this project. I think it started in 2023. It's been going on for a number of years and they stopped after a period of time and then came back to it. And you can see that it was in the making of it. It was something that they were figuring out in real time, especially the second half of the film. They kind of got to the end of the moment when Elizabeth Holmes goes to prison and had to think about where they wanted to go next. And it's an extraordinary thing. And I'm, I'm really happy to have been in the room. I feel very lucky to have been in the room. Um, the cool thing, is in addition to this kind of simultaneous release of that teaser that you mentioned, the movie's coming out soon, which I think is great. It's coming out in October. And thank goodness, I think kind of like lording this over people, would not only be obnoxious for me, but even from the studio and the people who made it, there's this kind of urgency to want to see this thing, which is really cool. And now it immediately falls into the category of like, well, now it's been overhyped. But I just have to give you like an honest reaction to how I felt in the room, which was we were buzzing. Yeah, no, I was watching from afar. And until, with some envy, and until Sunday, it had seemed like the festivals were kind of, we had many of the same films. Many went from Venice to Telluride. You know, we had the, we had Liam and Noel Gallagher and Oasis on Saturday night. And, you know, I'll talk about that. And so- I'm jealous of that. They were, it was like, it was even. And we were having different experiences, but like you were in the mountains and I was having a tremendous number of spritzes and like life was good. And, you know, and then it was like the whole primetime crew like left. And the energy shifted and I was like, I really want to be, I really want to be seeing this. Yeah. And, and also somehow I'm like still in Venice. So I can't see it yet. I can't believe this happens every year. Why am I still in Venice? I don't know. It's okay. You extended again this year. You're like, I think one more day I have to see something. I was like, good Lord. Honestly, I extended at this point so that we could record and we didn't have to record so late because it takes like a full day to get back home. But I should have come home on Monday, but that's okay. I'm, I really want to see it. But let's, let's talk about Oscars. Yeah. You know, people have been bringing this up. I saw Clayton Davis of Variety immediately after the movie and invariably that conversation just started right away. And Clayton and I were sort of talking about there's one component of the movie that I do not want to spoil for people that I think kind of shatters this conversation in a really interesting way. So I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to talk about that. Okay. Is it going to be eligible for the best documentary? It will be. The documentary branch is a little weird. Yeah. They're a little tricky when it comes to celebrity-focused stories, which this sort of is. They're a little tricky when it comes to true crime. They're a little tricky when it comes to celebrity filmmakers. So, and because this is so form-breaking, maybe they'll embrace it. Maybe they won't. It's a little hard to say. I heard people talking about Best Picture. That seems like a reach to me. Okay. I would campaign for it. It's right near the top of my favorite movies that I've seen this year. Like, we'll be talking about it quite a bit. I've already had to, like, look at the October schedule and be like, oh, fuck. I got to break this and start all over again because we're going to do at least one conversation about the movie itself. Okay. It is, but it is unique. I mean, it's a Nathan Fielder project. Like, it's not inherently mega-commercial, but what it is is it's something new in the mix and something that I had texted you and that you and I have been talking about for months is that it's so weird how it seems like, for the most part, the awards calendar and our expectations of what's coming feels hugely settled right now with the exception of, like, two or three movies. Like, I said to you, Digger and Dune are two movies that nobody has seen. Maybe Werewolf, but probably not. Yeah. But everything else, we kind of know what it is. I guess you could put Artificial on that list. A handful of movies are yet to be seen, but this was the first thing in a while where I was like, oh, this could upend some of our expectations of what's happening this season. I don't know. I mean, from afar, do you have any thoughts on it? I mean, I think we were also hungry for that, right? Is that we even, we went into the festivals and we identified, you know, okay, this premiere, this premiere, this will get this slot, this slot. And for the most part, we'll talk about them individually, but the films met our expectations. And so you're kind of assigning everything, doing your little draft board. And it's clear, but I think it's been confusing and also just a little narratively frustrating to us. Like, we have six months of a show to do and we already know everything. Like, what? You got to give us something else. Like, give me a fall, give me a fall thing. So that's very that was, that's the genius of a surprise drop. It is. And, you know, that actually kind of speaks to a little bit of the vibe for me personally at Telluride, which I think is quite different from other people. So because we had the chance to go to the Cannes Film Festival this year, roughly 40% of the slate at Telluride I had already seen. And so it created a different kind of experience for me where I didn't see as many movies as I usually do. The timing didn't work for as many things. And there were frequently times when I would look at the calendar and be like, seen that, seen that, seen that, seen that, and then not really have anything to do. Um, which. What did you do? Uh, hung out with friends, had a meal. I don't usually eat a lot of meals. So I had some meals. Thank you, yeah. I'm so proud of you. Thank you. Uh, I also was sick the entire weekend, which was not ideal. Um, but I powered through. I kept my head up. Um, anyhow, because of that, I think that it was a very, very good Telluride. Like, if you came into the festival like almost everyone there not having seen Club Kid or Fjord or La Bola Negra or Minotaur or the huge number of Cannes times, the Cannes titles that came over. Yeah. I mean, I would say specifically Club Kid and La Bola Negra played huge at the festival. Yeah. People loved both of them. And I'm not super surprised by that, but, um, it was clear that those movies are going to have a life after this. Yeah, it's Club Kid season. Yeah. I'm ready. Yeah, and I saw Jordan Firstman and Alex Coco in the airport before we got on the plane to go. And we were talking and they were like, oh, I feel like people are forgetting about the movie. And I was like, you're going to be fine. Nope. You're going to be fine. Don't worry, guys. People are going to see the movie. They're going to love the movie. They had Reggie, the young actor who plays the kid in the movie. I know. He was there. He was doing great. So his Instagram account is still managed by his parents, but they did a reel of like his highlights at Telluride. It's great. Great stuff. Can't wait. He was charming, everybody. So the vibe there was good. I mean, you know, we can get into the new movies. Like you said, we have a lot of crossover for some of the films that played at the festival. But in general, I thought the vibe was good. The weather was very good. Everyone seemed happy. It's my happiest place on Earth. I thought it was. At the end of this year, despite being really sick, I was like, I will come here until I die. Like, this is a thing that I just want to be a part of my life. I know. Remember like a week ago when you suggested that we switch places at some point? No, no, no. You're never going to do that. I also, I mean, listen, I have this on lock now and I'm really proud of myself, but I've thought about just how much you would be weeping and bitching like everywhere I've gone this festival. Well, you're stronger than I am. I was like, I can't even. Yeah, I am. And, you know, the lines are not a thing here. Instead, you have spritzes. So that's really nice. Or go on a boat. But you would hate the boat. Do you get seasick? No, no. I grew up on Long Island. Seasick, what are you talking about? I grew up on boats. It's an island. It is an island, but you don't really take the boat to go anywhere else. I took a boat to school every morning. Six hours across the Long Island Sound. Congratulations. So I guess the last thing I'll say about just the general mood and atmosphere is I think I do think that the Odyssey like put a little bit of a dent in some of the vibe, which was for like the Oscar stuff that you're describing. But in a good way, where it was sort of like let's just enjoy what we have here instead of it being like a series of conversations. Because, you know, there are a lot of awards pundits at the festival. There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff. And strategizing that six-month calendar from this point forward. We do plenty of it on the show. But it became more of a like, did you like it or did you not like it? And there were a couple of titles like Elsinore, for example, where it was like kind of the only conversation about it is, is Andrew Scott a best actor contender? But not really a lot of movies led with that, which I was grateful for, at least for me. And also just that having gone there now, I think, eight or nine years, I have a lot of friends there. Like you said, you said you have your Venice friends. And made new ones, too, which is really fun. Yeah, so it's great. And I met so many, so many young people in the student symposium. Just like young people in their 20s who were just like, this was my big splurge for the year. I heard you talk about it on the show. I really wanted to be here. Every person there is so fucking nice. Like it's just the most pleasant, convivial, sincere collection of movie nerds. So once again, I had a wonderful time. What was the actual vibe like in Venice? So, I think last year I mentioned that it was pretty, last year was very oversubscribed. And it seemed like none of the logistics were in place and there were too many people and not enough boats and not enough spaces at a festival where you really do have to have the logistics nailed down because you can't just walk everywhere. Like you do have to take a boat. The Lido is its own island separate from like the Venice that you see on postcards. So, this year, I'm happy to say, and I wonder if it's because this year was also the Art Biennale, which is only every other year. Right. And you had been there when that was happening before, right? No. You know what? This is my first year. The other two years I've been on the off years. Oh, okay. And so, the Biennale, you know, the openings and all the big part of the festival happens I think in May or June earlier in the summer. But the pavilions are still open. And so, it seems like the infrastructure is just kind of held over and in place. And so, it's been it's been a fun vibe. I think there were slightly lower expectations movie-wise because the lineup was, you know, most of the big Hollywood expected movies were not on the lineup. And so, you know, I heard of a couple journalists who even switched from Venice to Telluride because they couldn't justify it. But with low expectations comes, you know, the possibility to have a lot of fun. and to see movies you like and then other you know that it just wasn't as stressful this year it was everyone just kind of rolling in and out of stuff i have also met a lot of young people who and a lot of italian young people who apparently listened to the big picture and then ciao and made their way here so so that's very fun um and then saturday was really fun saturday was a jam because everyone as soon as the schedule was released we all identified okay primetime has a 5 p.m saturday uh premiere and that's like that is in fact primetime at venice and there's that's also kind of like that's not going to tell you right probably so because of the way the schedule works saturday is too late to get over to tell you right in time so you're like this is this is our centerpiece event this is this is going to be it and you know and like pattinson will probably be there and they'll use his star power and you can just kind of like feel it going and so you know 5 p.m on saturday also leaves time for a great 824 party which definitely happened and then i realized also that oasis don't look back in anger the documentary about the recent tour was premiering afterwards i was like oh my god they're going to get liam and noel so i did not i only went to the primetime premiere okay which i had a great time at and then listen parties remain unmatched thank you guys so much for everything that you do are you thinking parties as a concept right now what are you i'm thinking of the 824 as a concept and like i said i met lance abenheim's entire family they were like we haven't slept in a week we were so nervous they were so sweet so that was really fun um and i had seen so i didn't go to the oasis premiere but i did see it in the morning i did start crying at like 8 45 in the morning while singing at the like top of my lungs along to were people singing along in the movie not really but i was okay that sounds kind of obnoxious if you were the only person singing along at a very low volume like i wasn't like up there waving my phone doing don't look back in anger like what are we talking about i was just kind of you know i was i was i was having a good time i was in the moment of this very wonderful documentary okay uh and and so as we left the lido on saturday night to go to our party like the oasis premiere people were arriving and i didn't see liam and noel arrive on their water taxi as i had a few hours before but it was it was convivial it was like this is the place to be for about six or seven hours it seemed in the photos that they were they were warm to one another they seem to have embraced each other yeah well one of the most moving things of the documentary because it's um it's the whole tour and so it's you know they filmed every show and it's just the montages of every single time they walked on stage liam grabbing noel's hand and holding it up and i'm holding hands together and the the the rediscovered if not love i mean love yes the way that they express love of this movie is so moving it was incredible that's great i'm supposed to see it this week i'm looking forward to it it's i mean it's a delightful time so yeah they're in decent spirit i mean not decent enough to get noel to like wear real pants instead of jeans but whatever it's a noel move you are the noel i'm the liam it's just how life goes yeah i'm very proud of that fact um so it was a good vibe is what you would say yeah it was good and it was a fun vibe now everyone's like why are we still here and why are we seeing like junkie movies i saw two movies this morning in competition that i we don't really need to talk about on this podcast wow interesting we won't even utter their names i mean we can they're companies directed by casey affleck affleck and uh bunker directed by florian zeller starring javier bardem and penelope cruz well it's good to know that that those were not successful in your opinion yeah i didn't totally i mean it's a beautiful home in the in bunker it's like a really as you know i am a florian zeller denier i have never really i've never really understood and and i was thinking about you and the sun like 30 minutes into this movie i was like no this is we just we don't got it there are a couple interesting scenes um but i thought it was silly and inept so yeah i mean that's i think that speaks to the film festival experience which is you go in knowing there's probably two or three two or three things you're gonna love you go there's two or three things you know you have to see that are like it's a part of the reason you went and then a lot of it is a coin flip you know a lot of it is we don't really know which way this is gonna break and so there is a lot of risk taking that comes into it and a lot of do you have the same kind of schedule time management because i see like two maybe three movies a day when i'm really going hard at a film festival i'm trying to see four and maybe even sometimes five if i'm really crazy this year i only saw four on one day but the the schedule stack strategy is challenging at telluride to make sure that you get to see what you want and i miss some stuff this year that i i regret missing how is that for you at venice well it's really really hard to do four in a day i did three in a day and that was from um begging a lot of publicists to get me tickets to premieres because the way it works here is there are press screenings there are market screenings and then there are public screenings and and premieres that are also open to the public which is cool so you can get you can buy a ticket and roll up to the oasis don't look back and anger premiere which i just i i'm excited for all of those people and your seat is reserved in the premieres yes yeah you get an assigned seat and they only show three press movies a day they parcel them out over the course of the festival and so you know they'll do two press screenings on premiere day for each movie and then there will be like one makeup at a later date okay but then everything else is public and so you're competing with other people and it's hard to get tickets and there is a ticketing platform a la the can ticketing platform that i'm sure you still have nightmares about and so you're competing with it's it's it's hard to make the schedule work where you can get four every day yeah it's just and and then when you add in the logistics of it it's hard to stay on the lido um because it's a small island with not that much accommodation so the getting back and forth to it with the boats you know stacking three is the sign of a good day yeah that sounds challenging i mean one of the wonderful things about telluride is just the conquerability of it you know the fact that it is essentially seven or eight theaters that are spread across this small town and you can walk roughly three quarters of a mile all the way across town and just make it and bounce and for example on saturday i saw four movies and none of them were in the same theater so i was constantly walking back and forth and sure i got 15 000 steps that day but it was totally manageable and not that hard and still giving yourself time to eat and wait in line for the appropriate amount of time that you needed to right and so are you eating in line sometimes if you're down at the hertz like they have a hot dog stand so it's like very efficient to just grab a gatorade and a hot dog just power up get some protein get in a movie but uh that's like the best you can do there's there's a pizza there's a pizza place in telluride called brown dog pizza which is like a great pizza place but as you would think that it's like spago in 1984 like it is like just full of people the line is like it's like a two-hour wait to get a seat at a pizzeria but there aren't like official like cantinas or like pop-up places not really i mean it's such an it's an unincorporated town you know like you can't bring in the big businesses there's no sponsors like that oh right i guess they're the sponsors because listen here's the thing you can get a spritz and some potato chips literally anywhere i i snuck one into part two of musk last night oh wow and they just and the potato chips come i mean it was four hours long yeah and and like part two was was trump and twitter so i was like i'm gonna have a spritz for this um so you can bring like a drink into the screening no i poured it into a water bottle okay it was like teenage behavior but like do you do you understand it's like spring vodka screwdriver wow so it was like day seven i'm still in venice because they spread the movies out so you're still in venice i'm homesick and i have to watch two hours two more hours of musk trump and twitter and i was like i'm gonna have a spritz the spritz also no gin so this is kind of this has been my trick this this um this festival but yeah that part's amazing just everywhere you go they're like here and the potato chips just come with the drink yeah because i was sick there was zero alcohol consumption over the weekend which is probably a good thing honestly um but yeah i'm trying to think of what else i should share that is notable from tell you right before we get into the movies themselves do you hike uh i don't usually have time yeah you know i'm not averse to it at all um part of part of the interesting thing i was just posting photos on instagram it's just like you are in the middle of town you are surrounded by epic natural beauty i mean the town is surrounded on both sides by two mountain ranges and there are rivers wherever you walk and so you are really in the heart of what you would go hike to seek you know what i mean it's not it's not like you have to go to find it now there is an entire part of the festival that happens on top of the mountain where you take a gondola up hmm and there are two theaters up there now one of them is called the chuck jones cinema and they added a second one this year called the marvin and i don't usually go up there but if you go up there there's a large hotel up there where a lot of the celebrity in Filmmaker's Day. Oh, interesting. And it sort of splits the festival in two. I don't like the theater as much on top of the mountains, so I try to avoid it as much as possible. But there are a lot of people who spend most of their time up there. And up there, there's also lots of hiking and cycling and you can go fishing. And there's a lot of things you can do. And that's the funny thing, too, is when you're there, there are a lot of people who just live there or who are just visiting the town to hang out with no intention of seeing any movies because there's parties and restaurants. I mean, yeah, same here. Yeah. So even though it is not, you know, a world-famous global capital like Venice, it still is like drawing a lot of, I guess, like, looky-loos, for lack of a better word. You know, just like regular folk who are like, I'm going to see what's going on in this town this weekend. So it's an interesting collection of people that are attending as opposed to, like, when you're at the New York Film Festival and you're like, okay, well, these people are here just to go to this screening at the Lincoln Center, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, that's fun about it. There are also people who seem to come here just to be adjacent to the festival, you know? And so, and by people, I mean, like, companies and also there are art exhibits and there are parties and there are, you know, pop-ups and all sorts of stuff. So it's, I mean, it's a lot. Mm-hmm. But it's pretty great. I agree. We're very lucky to be able to go do this. So let's tell people about the movies because that's what they really want to hear about. It's interesting how the amount of overlap, the overlap that we have on our lists, especially right at the top. Yeah. So you got the movie Ink. Mm-hmm. And then I got the movie Ink. Yes. And Ink is the new movie from Danny Boyle. It is a portrait of Larry Lamb, who is a, well, is an enterprising Fleet Street British newspaper editor in the 70s and 80s. And he. Thanks to the financial capital and encouragement of one Rupert Murdoch, helped to redefine journalism in England. And perhaps as the film makes a point, 100,000 times over the course of two hours, changed the very nature of our media and interactive culture. It makes the point and also, well, yes, it makes that point. And then also somehow doesn't totally land it, but that's okay. Yeah. So, you know, you and I both have this movie in the number five slot, which I find to be really interesting because we're both big Danny Boyle fans. Yeah. You know, we love 28 Years Later. We talked about why we have, you know, he hasn't been on the show before and, you know, like what his career means and all this. This is a movie that makes a ton of sense for him on paper. And I found it to be incredibly engaging and entertaining. It was like very energetic from the opening moments when the sprint song hits. Yeah. And, you know, after this wonderful sequence between Jack O'Connell and Guy Pearce who play Lamb, and Murdoch at a dinner table, I was like, boom, we're in like a flying Danny Boyle movie. I was pumped. But I will say by the time we got to the end of the movie and some of the decisions that were made, I was like, sir, we know, you know, like we do know. And also, and there's one specific decision that you're talking about that I'm like, sir, this movie didn't earn that totally. I know you wanted it to, and I don't know whether that's the source material or whether the script or it just pulled back a little bit. So I completely agree. I think it's good, not great. I think the review I gave to a friend of ours was, I also use the word incredibly engaging, really loud music. Everyone looks handsome. Yes. And I would like to say right now that it is not too late for Jack O'Connell to test for James Bond. It is not too late. This man wears a tux in the movie and he can wear the tux. Okay. I have some complicated feelings about him right now. Because one, he's like, he's afraid. As an actor. He is like so charismatic and locked in. But he's in a little bit of a dangerous area that I'll call the Nick Cage zone where he's like really big all the time now. And there are very few moments of quiet reflection happening in any of his performances. And maybe that's the kind of film performances he wants to give. But, you know, this film, 28 Years Later, The Bone Temple, Sinners, Back to Black, Ferrari. Like these are the last few movies he's made many of which are good movies or interesting. And his performances are good. But they are high octane, like mega performances. And he's on a precipice here. I'm not encouraging him to like make a quiet chamber piece or anything. But there were times when I was like, this is really cranked hard. Well, the whole movie is cranked hard. It is. It is. Like, and the whole movie is cranked hard just like as an aesthetic and energetic strategy as to make up for the fact that it's like, people in rooms talking about printing things on paper without, you know, a smoking gun, really. I mean, and even the smoking guns, which there are some things in this movie where I'm like, is this real? Did this really happen? Well, like what, for example, what strained credulity? No, no, not in that way. I was just like, I can't believe this is happening. And I assumed that this is real and this is pretty gripping. So, I mean, there are stories within it and stories that they cover. Like, it's really good. I just, there's something, I think it doesn't totally land the plane and that we wanted to, you know, coming out, the comparisons were, it has a little bit of social network and it has a lot of Wolf of Wall Street, but like, it's not in a league with either of those movies. I agree. It has, it has the blueprint and is doing a lot of the things, which means that I really like it, but it's, it is much like Jack O'Connell's performance going big, just as much as possible. And to, to just try to hold your attention rather than like offering any sort of nuance. Yeah, I think, I think we're on the exact same page. Like, I really liked it. And I think when the movie comes to Netflix, it's just so watchable. It's, it's just, it's going to do really well. I don't think it's quite like an Academy Award movie or anything like that. I thought Guy Pearce was very good. And actually the way that Murdoch is, was portrayed, I'm not, I'm not a Murdochologist. I'm not, I haven't read any biographies of him. He's not somebody who's like life and career has fascinated me in any way. Although I know it's interesting. The impact is profound. I, I liked seeing this sense of resistance or concern at a turning point in his career as he is about to kind of change culture forever because of his financial capital and insight into, I guess what I'll call like the outsider perspective coming into establishment media and trying to upend it. And the way in which it's being upended is to corrupt its decency, I guess, for lack of a better phrase. But showing Murdoch as this really hot-tempered Australian who also knows deep down something about this isn't right. And so the dynamic between him and Lamb and Lamb becoming really more of the like arch-villain of the story in a lot of ways. Yes. Yeah. Is, was really fascinating. I like that, that stuff the most. Once again, I was like, this movie could have been told through the eyes of Claire Foy, like another Claire Foy performance where I was like, she's so good. And she's clearly like a composite woman who represents, like five women that Larry Lamb worked with. And I feel this way about her in so many movies where I'm like, maybe just like let her have the movie for a change, but I don't, what, she's your girl. So what'd you think? Um, yeah, I mean, she does the most that she can with what is like a non-part, you know, she is, she is the girl and she's meant to embody the, the ways in which women at this period had some say, but not enough say were used against what, like were used as, as tools to make, to make more money and were sort of complicit, but also taken advantage of. And then, you know, she exits, you know, stage, right. So it's like, it, it is, it is what it is. It's not really interested in investigating her, but she's very good. And again, also looks really hot. She's wearing all the seventies clothes. She's beautiful. Really good. Yeah. No, I know it is its own pleasure. I completely agree with you. It's a fun festival movie in that specific way too, because it's not a dour existential drama, human drama. It was, it's a, it's a rock and roll movie in a lot of ways, the way a lot of his best movies are. And it features a lot of the formal stuff that you've seen in the movies from him over the last 10 years, the step printing, the slow motion, the speeding up the, the frames, you know, the wild camera angles shifting, you know, film stocks. Now, one of the things that I didn't totally know, though, I did sense while I was watching it that came out after the fact is that Boyle said he used generative AI for some of the sequences in the movie. And he's come under fire for this for obvious reasons. Well, it's, it's very, as soon as we saw, I saw it. It's there. He uses some old photos and then like animates them. And frankly, it looks like a, like a filter that Instagram keeps trying to get you to use. Yes. And it was so clearly, I was like, oh, you didn't need this. And I like can see what it is, but it also looks like a screensaver and it's on the screen for two seconds. So like, I don't know. Didn't he also say that he used mice, used it for mice? Yes. Yes. But I don't remember the mice. I do remember the mice. Um, you know, it's one of those things. It reminded me a lot of the Steven Soderbergh, uh, John Lennon documentary in the conversation we had about that. I can, we're sort of like, you've made an interesting film here. This film could be a success. You've also layered on top of it. Generative AI that is noticeable. And you've kind of undermined some of the notions of what you're trying to convey. That is true. I will say that the Steven Soderbergh movie is like 50% generative AI. And it was like the point it was like that, that was the experiment, right? It wasn't 50%. It was, there was a lot of, A lot more than in this movie, but it wasn't 50%. It was like. a lot and it was and and part of that enterprise was and you know this is like me sort of defending my guy steven soderbergh but like it's their tapes it's audio we don't have video for it so let's see whether we can use this tool to to animate and the answer i felt was no which we said at the time and i felt like you tried it and let's not do it again but it was a lot more than this this is two seconds there is it's but it's one of those things where if you make that choice then that becomes definitional to the movie and when people ask about it now they're like oh there's ai in it but it's like that's not what the movie is at all it's a it's a two-hour docudrama with a ton of energy um so yeah i i'm not surprised we're on the same page about this i do think that people are going to generally enjoy this movie um i i think so incredibly watchable uh okay let's take a quick break and then we're going to get into the rest of our top fives this episode of the big picture is 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autograph journey terms apply all right so i i had a film tied at five along with ink and you you have this film tied at four tied at four so we can like 4.5 it yes talk about it right now yes so the film is called everest the other side it's a national geographic documentary from chai vasarely and jimmy chin who are a very well-known pair of documentarians who have made a number of extremely successful films including uh the rescue and free solo and niad the narrative feature film that you saw instead of eating dinner with ethan hawk which one once ruined one of the what could have been one of the best nights in telluride film history for me um this movie is about a man named jim morrison not the lead singer of the doors but in fact a uh a mountain climber and skier of some renown who i'd never heard of and this movie like all of jimmy and chai's movies looks incredible has pulverizing emotional moments is about people whose psychologies i don't understand at all like i have no idea what compels people to do the things that they do in these films and also i had some like frankly like ethical misgivings about should it exist yeah yeah should it exist it's an incredible movie that i'm not sure it should exist yeah and this i wept like three times watching this movie well because it is about the mountains and they talk about the power of the mountains and i felt like that was like family as well amanda jesus christ it's definitely about marriages so yeah i so i saw it i knew nothing about the story either going in and i and i don't think that we should say anything else and if you're at all interested if you liked free solo if you want to listen to the barn room an episode we're going to do about this when it's widely available um don't i would recommend that you not read anymore and just see the film which is pretty astonishing and is the probably the the movie most this festival where would i run into people and it's a movie that i would love to see and i would love to see it and i would love to see like what have you seen what have you liked it's either you know i said have you seen this and someone says oh my god yes or someone says no and i'm like i'm not going to say anything just go because there is there is much to discuss as i texted you like i walked out of the theater and texted you and i was like we got to talk about this right now my guy i know because there's i mean it's it's a really rich and incredibly upsetting text um but i i couldn't believe what i was watching a lot of the time i'm trying to think of like what what we can give to people well one i you know this is rare but i think it is very much worth seeing on a big screen because of the epic photography um the at the center of the film this guy jim morrison he wants to scale the north face of everest that is his mission in the film which is something that very very few people have ever done that requires an enormous amount of capital both human and financial and is is is deadly is it is a risk of life and this movie is in many ways like a lot of the chai and jimmy movies these there's an exploration of the psychology of a person who wants to do these things however jim morrison's personal story is so powerful and overwhelming at times the way that it's on unveiled in this in the film but i never felt like i could really get to the bottom of the psychology of what he was doing or if i could i was like i didn't i wasn't happy about it i was like kind of angered by it and and that is such an unusual combination of feelings yes that's so interesting because i felt like i got to a place where i understood his psychology but every other single person in the movie i had a lot of thoughts and questions for yes um and i also found myself angry i found myself angry at my husband just by the transitive property after seeing this movie and like called him and then i was also honestly like a little bit angry at you too because i was like this is a movie that i'm not going to watch i'm not going to watch it i'm not going to watch it this is like some shod bullshit like they like some of these people live in telluride so i was just like yeah um it is a very telluride movie there are a lot of moments where you can see like you you would walk out of the movie and see what we were seeing showing showing yeah so i mean it's like it's so engaging and i mean i guess even that question of should it exist is interesting and and it's a should it exist in a more traditional documentary sense which you know i know is we started this conversation by talking about a movie that played telluride that just blew up what a documentary means but this to me is still is walking on the edge and um i you know it does exist so i would encourage people to see it and then there's i i guess well it's interesting you know one of the movies that it was here at um at telluride was tenzing which is the a portrait of tenzing norgay and um edmund hillary and their attempt to scale apple is putting that out it's a feature film and you know it's like a pretty successful portrait of a historical event it's it's right down the middle but it tells that story very well from from tenzing's perspective and one of the things that this movie is attempting to do everest is at least be generous and thoughtful about the role that sherpas play in this world but the movie just feels so exploitative of what the work that they do and that the whole it's crazy the whole enterprise of this we're like incredibly wealthy people attempt to conquer these natural this natural beauty but they need the help of people who like need to do this work to make money is a it's a very and who go ahead of them it's so and then there's and there's more like we you do have to put this on the schedule i'm sorry for a conversation i know yeah no i know i know it's such a rich movie and and it is in a lot of ways like a culmination i think of what jimmy and chai have been doing and jimmy is a huge participant in the film yes he participates in in scaling the mountain and he's a huge participant with jim morrison so you know i i'm with you like i was fascinated i was completely engaged i was moved like it did all the things that you want a movie like this to do and i also spent an hour being like i don't think this is okay and that i mean i'm not sure i guess you know that's life well i'm i mean but like what's not okay is like what's happening in the movie not okay is the making of the movie not okay like how much does the making of the movie inform what's happening and you know so i people should see it i agree i agree or they should see it or if you're interested see it and then we're gonna yell about it okay um okay so what is the other half of your number four well i paired it with the other documentary that i saw which is previously discussed was uh oasis don't look back in anger which is uh dylan southern and will lovelace followed noel and liam through rehearsals and then seemingly all of the tour um that oasis embarked on these last years the reunion tour and it is it's not reinventing the form um and there there is there are fan testimonials kind of sprinkled throughout which i think that like they are as creative and original as like a fan testimonial of like what oasis means to me can be but you know they're in there so it's like but they have access to rehearsals they have at least one sit down with liam and noel together oh and they're backstage they're on the side of the stage you get like they're behind the stage so you get reaction shots you get a lot of like noel turning around and playing the guitar with his back to the crowd because he's like overcome you get liam and like it's it's like it's really good and they use the good archival i mean liam gallagher is so important to me just like so spiritually important to me um and i was reminded you know reminded of that once again it's i i thought that it was just like well i'm of a certain age i went to the show in there at the rose bowl when they played in los angeles um like maybe this is just for old people that i like teared up but then everyone i talked to was kind of like no i teared up too um yeah well again it's it's you know it's not like historical but also it kind of is it's beautiful yeah i mean i love oasis so it's a no-brainer for me i don't have to think twice about going to see it yeah i am i think it was interesting too that the you know the band had another moment during the world cup you know the fact that the the english national team and wonderwall and the way that that kind of like went back into the culture six months after their reunion tour was in the culture was cool and there is something really interesting about these guys to me and i guess we'll talk about it maybe later this week if i get a chance to see it before um yeah before we record again were instantaneous like megastars who were trying to be megastar rock stars but also it was so clear how derivative they were and they were getting dinged for their being derivative but also their derivations were so satisfying and exultant and and like the fact that we can be okay with that you know so internationally resonant and much of the movie is it reminded me a little bit about like when we talk about this show and we're like why young people listen to this and liam and noel are kind of like they weren't around the first time yeah it's really special um yeah it's really special and i think it's really special and i think they're like fairly sincere about it anything to compare us to liam and noel you love it uh okay that's good i need all of those windbreakers because then i got to see the windbreakers every color i mean that's the other thing because you didn't go to the shows i mean it's like it is like a well-recorded concert and you get kind of concert doc and you get a lot you get a lot of the full songs and it looks cool and it's loud and um you know it's definitely better than a taylor swift documentary concert documentary so uh i loved it that's great noel and liam um number four for me is tender loving care which is like the complete emotional inverse of everything we've been talking about so far this is reportedly mike lee's last film um it stars kato flynn and miriam bailey kato flynn having a big moment she's on widow's bay which i know you haven't seen but um she's wonderful on that show as i guess a woman who works in local government who is sort of bewitched haunted and constantly at the center of some crazy stuff she's been working with mike lee for a long time i forgot she was in happy-go-lucky like almost 20 years ago um and she plays a woman who is turning 40 single has just moved back in with a friend her life is kind of at a crossroads she's just been dumped by her boyfriend who went back to who's going back to her his ex-wife and her parents are getting older and it's a portrait of who you are at in your late 30s and also what it's like to watch your parents slowly and then quickly move into the last phase of their life um and you know like all mike lee movies it's like very closely observed highly specific utterly intimate this one is very sad um i thought it was brilliant i thought it was like also kind of a callback to a lot of the movies that he was making in the 70s and 80s that is very different from when he was making these like explosive international art house hits in the in the 90s and 2000s um o'flynn and bailey are fucking amazing and it's very similar to me to hard truths which came out you know a couple years ago yeah which like kind of got right up to the precipice of the awards race and never totally got there this movie's from the same studio you know i hope that this movie gets more attention and love but it is a small english domestic drama and so it's a little bit of a harder sell you know i'm i am really looking forward to seeing it um i've waited too long on hard truth and and and much of mike lee's work so uh let's let's get it in the mix yeah we'll talk about him more definitely as the year goes on i think this is coming out in december and um it's very much worth your time okay what's what's next for you so this might be a little controversial um uh and i want to talk about it so i have possible love at number three okay so um possible love which you've not seen yet i haven't i'm seeing it today it's imminent is the new uh lee chang dong film as first since burning and everyone by about friday everyone at the festival was like okay so possible love is going to be the best movie at this festival um this like this is it like masterpiece incoming and i i saw the movie and i think that it is like empirically excellent like it is it is undeniably very good and i have some sort of like i have a distance from it as i did from burning that i'm trying to work through and so i think i've crystallized it for you okay and you're gonna understand this comp and everyone else is gonna have to wait until they've also sat through ryusuke hamaguchi's all of a sudden to understand it but i think this has the whiteboard problem so this is a movie about two couples one who is wealthier one not as wealthy um and the the husband of the the poor couple was fired from his job at a factory participating in strikes and so it's a little bit about and and then the wife of the other couple is making a documentary about um you know unemployment and class and the and labor and strikes and and all of these big themes and so you know it's about how these two couples kind of entangle from there which is very interesting but it so it is about like big heady issues and in all of a sudden we've talked a lot about the whiteboard scene which is 30 minutes when people are diagramming how capitalism works and there is a segment in this that is more interview and it's the character who's making the documentary making the documentary and kind of interview styles but there is just a lot of very um straightforward educational uh theoretic discussion that i found myself kind of hitting a speed bump on even though it's essential to what comes next um but this is something that you did like in all of a sudden right and that's the thing i liked the whiteboard and all of a sudden i was like i think how other people bumped on the whiteboard this is my whiteboard i see and that and that doesn't mean that it doesn't all come together and it does and it's i mean it's it's it's so good it's really good and i think you're really gonna like it i'm such a huge fan of his films i mean that's the other thing is that i did also i like i recognized that burning was excellent and like i didn't like feel it in my veins you know for whatever reason so i think that's maybe a me issue but it's very very very good and it is south korea's selection for the oscar i'm certain it'll be in the international feature conversation um and i was very glad to see it that's great i'm really looking forward to it as well um yeah it's an it's a it's there's just generally a very interesting netflix slate this year that feels very different from what they usually have where they have like one big famous titanic auteur scorsese cuaron campion like it's not that's not what their slate is this year and they acquired la bola negra out of out of can um they have this movie and i think they developed you know like i think they've always been on this film as far as i know i'm not quite sure maybe it started with some south korea funding and they they came in on it but um ink is another movie too or they came in and they acquired it like they didn't have that big movie at the middle of their slate that was meant to be the dominant champion right and um so all of those the way that those pieces fit together fascinates me uh okay i'll talk about my number three which was maybe the most joyful movie going experience that i had over the weekend which was the debut which is jesse eisenberg's new film as a director his third feature it stars julianne moore and paul giamatti julianne moore plays a housewife who auditions for a local community theater production of a musical that is made up that eisenberg wrote the um words and and uh the lyrics and music for giamatti plays the local community director and i thought this was going to be the just the episode of the simpsons where marge auditions for streetcar named desire streetcar named march famous simpsons episode and in some ways it is that and it's also way more absurdist and Kaufman-esque. I thought of the European filmmaker Aki Korosmaki watching the movie. It's not quite as like down-the-middle crowd-pleasing as I expected. However, it has a few moments and a performance from Julianne Moore that are so exciting and fun and funny. And like there's a moment in the middle of the movie where Moore's character is giving a performance and she's being coached by Giamatti. And when that sequence ended, it was nearly a standing ovation in the Palm Theater at Telluride. I've not heard such a mid-act break of appreciation for a performance for what Julianne Moore is doing in the scene pretty much in my history of going to Telluride. And so if you like her, it is her at all the levels. You know, sad and distraught, manic and funny, wildly over the top, wildly sensitive and thoughtful. It's the fucking whole shebang. It is like the total Julianne Moore package. And Giamatti obviously is always very, very compelling and strong and interesting. The movie, if you, I was talking with Kyle Buchanan about this movie and he was making some notes about its general story coherence. All of which I think were completely, completely fair and did not bother me in the slightest because I thought of it as this like heightened, absurdist experience. If you go in with like, does this make sense brain? Okay. May not work as well. The other thing is for Amanda Dobbins purposes, you know, there's a thing about local community theater. Sure. So what's the ratio of singing to, and so what's the ratio of singing to not singing and what's the ratio of like waiting for government, like Christopher Guest style situations to. That's an, that's an interesting comp. It doesn't have that like faux documentary feeling that guest movies do where it's sort of like, we're sort of mocking these people, but we sort of love them. Like this is a movie about, it's a more heartful movie than that. It's hard to say whether the actual musical is like meant to be bad, good, or bad, good, like, or good, bad. And so like, there is plenty of time. You probably see three to five, full musical song and dance performances, but a lot of the film is actually the sort of like rehearsing of those sequences and seeing what it's like to do that work. And it's in a comic way, but it is very specific about like, if you dedicate your time to community theater, this is what you have to do to put on a good show. And I know that that's a, that's a danger area for you, you know? That's true. But this is like, this is a film about that. So there's some distance from it. I think, I think, when there's no self-awareness is when, and when there's total vulnerability is when I get upset. And there's, there's someone standing in the way of this. Yeah. It seems like Julianne Moore is going to win an Oscar for it. So, you know, who cares what I think? I'm a little reluctant to just be like, it's done. She's got it. But like, that, that, that was one of the few movies where people came out and they were like, boom, number two for her. You know, she should have had number two for Safe and Boogie Nights and End of the Affair and all these other movies she should have gotten it for. But she's, she's just completely remarkable. And the movie is a lot of fun and I liked it quite a bit. And it played really, really well at the festival. And until the Fielder film, I would say that was probably the movie that had the most, like, did you see it? Did you see it? Like, it was a very tough ticket. A lot of people got shut out of it. I think they only showed it twice, which is a pretty low number. Eisenberg seemed like so nervous beforehand as he always does. And it was just like, what are you nervous about, man? Like, you got it. Like, you got the juice. But yeah, it was great. And Emma Stone and her company produced the movie. So she was there supporting the film. Giamatti, I sat behind him during the film and he was just having a ball, laughing through the whole film, having a really good time. It's always funny to be watching a movie with someone who's in the film and you never know if they've seen it before or what or how, how they choose to support a movie. Some people don't like to look at themselves, but it was a good time. Okay. Number two for you. How much are you going to talk about this? Not too much because it's coming out pretty soon. Yeah. And I don't want to step on people, but it's similar to the way that until the Nathan Fielder, Elizabeth Holmstock, the debut was sort of the movie. Primetime was the movie here. Primetime was the have you seen it? Have you seen it? Are you going to see it? When are you going to see it? What do you think about it? And this is, so this is Lance Oppenheim's narrative feature film about Chris Hansen and To Catch a Predator starring Robert Pattinson along with Skylar Gazzando and Merritt Weaver and Phoebe Bridgers. And it worked for me. It, like, it worked for me. It did. I, like, I felt kind of skeezy afterwards in some ways. You know, it, like, it goes in and tries to to recreate not just the the moment and the moment in which in media that we were all a part of. You know, it's like, it's maybe not in conversation with ink, but there are media executives of various eras portrayed in all of them and those decisions and what the decisions that you're making for ratings or in terms of what's permissible to air and what's not and how far you'll go is a consistent theme. So, so it worked on that level. But, I mean, I just, like, Robert Pattinson, like, I'm, I'm, I'm here for you. I've always been here for you. It's, like, Did you meet the man? No, I would never meet Robert Pattinson. Come on, you know that. He did, he and Suki Waterhouse, his partner, stayed at the party, they were at the party the whole time. I've never seen celebrities, like, stay that late at a party and seem to be having a great time from afar. You didn't roll up. Rob, what's, what's cooking, bro? I was at the party. I talked to, I talked to everybody else, like I said. Like, I, you know, I was like, It's me, Amanda. I'm a podcaster. I'm a mom. What's happening? Never. I'd rather die. Okay. I heard he's cool. Your husband's met him. He's profiled him. I'm sure he's cool. Yeah, no, Zach is, like, he's my favorite. He's interviewed him multiple times, and he's like, yeah, he's the best. He seems great. And also, Jennifer Lawrence says he's a big gossip. Like, I know we'd have a lot to talk about, but that's, you know, that's not how I roll. You fucking blew it, Dobbins. You blew it. You know that's not how I roll. I had a great time at the primetime party. You don't need to worry about me. I'm glad. So, anyway, I just, this performance is so fucking out there in the best way. And watching it, I was like, you know, do you remember the interview that Peter Sarsgaard gave during Jackie about the first day that Natalie Portman came to the set and he said, and did her voice, and he said, oh, this is what you're doing. And you have, like, 18 oh-this-is-what-you're-doing moments in the, but they all kind of come together. I don't know. It's really, it's really fun to see a master at work and that master is Robert Pattinson. Do you think he will be recognized for this work? Because he's obviously having an amazing year. Right. So, a game that I was trying to play for, and I don't want to say too much about the movie, but so I mentioned Skylar Gazando is in it and he is, there's a case for him in Lead as well. It is not quite a two-hander, but there is a lot. He's great. Merritt Weaver is great. Everybody's great. But the way the story is constructed, he does a lot and he carries a lot of the emotional weight of the movie. Okay. And so, at one point, I was sitting there trying to game it in my head and I was like, okay, so can you put Skylar Gazando in Lead and Pattinson in Supporting and then Pattinson just walks? And I don't, like, I don't think you can do it. Okay. I think they really are co-leads. If they do it, I won't complain. Fraud defined the Oscars in my opinion. And I don't care about category fraud. But it is, I think it would make more sense in voters' minds as, you know, that completely wild supporting performance and just going for it. But I hope he'll be recognized in Lead. I think, I mean, it is really out there. That's what I like about it. You know, and I know that more people really enjoy, like, get these beggars out of here and we haven't even seen Dune. So it could go some other way. Yeah. But I thought it was just rad. It's really interesting because obviously he's developed, like, I think there's a huge appreciation for him as both a star and an actor, which is unusual, right? That doesn't happen very often. When someone is, like, put him on the poster, open the movie guy, who also is, like, a leading progenitor of his craft. And he's never been nominated for an Academy Award. He's in five movies this year. He's kind of staked his claim alongside Tom Holland, Zendaya, I don't know, Sidney Sweeney, like, a handful of people who are just like, this actually is the future of the business in terms of who you're putting on the poster. And it would be cool to see him recognized, but it also feels like his taste is why he's not being recognized, but that's why he should be recognized. You know, it's that perfect paradox of the Oscars. I completely agree. And that's why I was, like, sitting there literally in the room engineering, like, okay, so if we do supporting, then are they going to understand it a little bit more and can we kind of, like, sneak this really cool thing by him? Yeah. But that's a testament to the movie, that it builds the architecture for him him to be really really out there yeah and and for it to make sense and also still be really surprising um and i like i haven't just been like oh that many times in a single movie in a in a cool way i'm such i'm a fan that's very exciting um i'm seeing it soon so hopefully you know we'll do a whole episode about the film i think about this movie and and you can see everything and obviously an insane moment for lance oppenheim who's only 30 years old to have these two movies which i think will be two of the most talked about of the fall um and as somebody who's been like really a big fan of his since i saw some kind of heaven whatever a few years back and had him on the show to talk about ren fair it's also very rare to see a young filmmaker but also that's kind of been the story of this year too of like 20 somethings and 30 somethings kind of emerging and bursting through and the thing i've been thinking about with both of his movies is how commercial are both of these movies like right is is because prime time obviously it sounds like it's pretty edgy and sure confrontational and you know it premiered here in italy where it's really not clear that that many people uh non-americans know what to catch a predator is right right you may have seen reported that zucker has a cameo yes and this i i knew that was coming silence in the room because no one no italian knows who jeff zucker is like no italian remembers the prime time wars there's a there's a whole plot line about how they have to be lost you know like i'm sure they had lost in italy but like i don't really think they cared in the same way so what do you make of the decision to send that film to to venice and nowhere else because it's not playing anywhere else i from what i understand is the telluride crowd i don't know that they would have felt i think it's like the wrong kind of edgelord movie right um and that you know uh what is i keep i keep wanting to call the elizabeth holmes movie um now you see me but it's not now you see me you can see everything you can see everything uh it would be amazing if she starts doing magic and then rosamund pike shows up with a south african accent anyway well you can there is a kind of magic in the movie i'll say that so actually you can see i not to interrupt you but no no no i just nathan and lance told the told the story about where they came up with the idea for the movie and it was when they went out together to the magic castle here in los angeles and they went into my favorite room in maybe all of the city which is the close-up magic room and that's where they saw something they heard the name elizabeth holmes uttered in that room and that led to the making of the movie sorry to interrupt you okay well there we go so i was you know picking up something but so you can see everything at least has the veneer of like elizabeth holmes is like a true story and that was like exposed in the wall street journal and you know like so the retirees are like have some grounding from which to be pushed into weird unexpected territory probably not primetime i'm sure they remember chris hansen but it's it is purposefully um a sleaze fest the whole time so i think that there is something that you know italians even if they don't know who jeff zucker is are not quite as uh prudish in the same way and also they got the star spot like i do really hear that was the thing and he's was like in all the slideshows and like he was like the biggest star here right and they can still do that so so to me it makes sense i mean is it not going to be at new york i know it'll be out no it's coming out september 25th yeah that's also very smart right you do one you get like a star push for a movie of this size that is like not huge not as commercial as dune um also starring robert pattinson i think it's really smart to get the to get the runway and then go can't wait to see a great sale um my number two is your number one so this is nice we can talk about this movie um which is wild horse nine which alongside the debut i would say was the biggest film at telluride and same same here and it premiered at venice and then the folks from from the film came over it's overnight in the same fashion as the oppenheim team came for uh to tell you ride and we've talked about it a little bit this is a new martin mcdonough film it stars john malkovich sam rockwell parker posey it is about two cia agents in chile in the 1970s uh after allende's election and they visit easter island to see as malkovich's character calls them the big heads and they're i'm very excited to see that this movie is so high on your list i think it is wonderful it is a very specific thing that i love and i have been calling it the american in bruges which is one of my is my favorite martin mcdonough film um but there is a component of this movie that i did not know about that made it a wonderful exploration of the american project um that i don't want to ruin for anybody either that i think i've seen in a lot of the reviews and stuff but i i feel like you should preserve that for yourself so what did you think of it it's true well though i mean that reveal is you know that's kind of one of my favorite things in the world across genres and um is here in white men be invested in that you know that's like my comfort thing that thing yes i thought of you when i saw it i was just like oh my god this is and you know the way i feel like this this marriage of subjects of just not just that thing but um the cia in in chile and so americans destabilizing a a foreign government which has a very cynical um viewpoint on and malkovich's character is at a late phase of life and all of these like all of all of the plot choices and the subject choices put through the are like the perfect um or martin mcdonough is who i want to interpret them like that right the the blend of cynicism and there goes that dream and and wistfulness and like it is a perfect marriage in these movies and i think malkovich just like gives an incredible performance and we should say that you know just like julianne moore in the debut everyone's like well malkovich gets the oscar sorry matt damon better luck next year it was the same thing until you're right that's exactly yes yeah yeah um so and and and it's hard to argue with when you watch it because it's so winning and he's so funny and heartbreaking um but i i really like this as a mc as a mcdonough film like i felt like exactly he like his spin is the right spin on this and sometimes like the balance is i mean he's very talented i like all of his movies but the like all of the balance is just right here well it's a really interesting movie to put into his filmography and i guess we'll get into it later when we do an episode about it when it comes out this fall but you know he received such acclaim and such blowback for three billboards and it does feel like him circling back a little bit to some of the ideas in that movie and trying to put a slightly different gloss on it but he's consistently telling these stories through the eyes usually of two white guys that's two white guys an older guy and a younger guy that's usually the dynamic in his movies the older guy knows a little bit more the younger guy is a little bit more energetic um in this particular case i think you can make the case there's nobody better with his dialogue than rockwell and rockwell while malkovich is giving a performance that will be about the totality of his work and about what we know about him as this kind of like trick explosive trickster figure of american cinema and the american stage rockwell is forced to carry the movie in a lot of ways and be the like the fulcrum for this aging cia agent and who is reckoning with his history and the things that he has done um and the two of them are just phenomenal together um the movie also looks beautiful i think it is probably perhaps the most artfully made mcdonough film the most cinematic mcdonough film um and choosing to do it in the same way that he does it in the same way that he does it in the same way that he does it which is a prism through which to see how america runs the world you know and the fact that we think we can just kind of drag our ass into any city or country and and make people do things the way we want to do them i thought was a fascinating idea i think you can read it unfavorably too and say why is this film about what happened in chile in the 1970s about these two white americans um i think that's the wrong reading of the movie but i think people will read it that way and we should probably prepare ourselves sure they will and there and there is also uh there's some joke lines baked into the movie i think to preempt or provoke those exact people i agree um there's no to know that they're coming but but they're funny one criticism that i have read of the movie which i think is fair but doesn't bother me is that some of its sort of perspective like it's it's a it's a lens on the events and history does not feel like contemporaneous to the story it's sort of like it's an ex post facto reading of how some people might have talked about things but again like i see it similar to the way i see the debut where i'm like you're in kind of a fantasia of history you're not in a what's meant to be a literal reading of events that happened and so if you're going into that worrying about you know the the translation of the times doesn't bother me as much i also i also think that remove is is wise and also like an honest reflection of you know mcdonough's not an american so telling a story about americans but set not in america is is probably like a a more accurate representation of of the perspective and gives him more room than if you're, for example, three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, and you're trying to you're claiming to represent like the actual U.S. itself. Right. Rather than like a perspective away from the U.S. And I think we do often find that films about the U.S. are received very differently in the United States and elsewhere because clearly we have different understandings. So to me, it's smart. Yeah. I mean, just a quick testimony to how much I like this movie. I had a chance to see it the week before Telluride, and it was revealed as the patron screening, which is sort of like what usually is the secret screening at Telluride. It's the first film that is shown to all the patron pass holders and also to the press that happens very early on on Friday afternoon. And I sat through for almost the entire thing a second time, like less than a week later. So, yeah, I mean, it's really good, really good. And we'll talk about it more as time goes on. And then, of course, for me, my number one is You Can See Everything. I did write about it a bit more on the Substack. So if people want to read a little bit more, I tried not to spoil really any particular details of the movie and talked more about how I see it as like a real confrontation with what we think documentary is. And specifically, this idea that the two most popular forms of documentary right now are the authorized, you know, the participant is driving the creative, you know, that is frequently about a famous person. The producer. Yeah. And then the other strain of it, and the wave of true crime documentary that, you know, is on Netflix, but is also on Hulu and on HBO Max and like that. And the reason that those two things are so popular is because or they're so prevalent is because they're so popular, like they are what people want. And this movie is kind of about those two things. And it really tangles with those two modes of documentary and also completely detonates them in such an interesting way. So I tried to get into that a little bit when I wrote about it. So you can check it out on projections. Let's do some honorable mentions because we did see some other films. Yeah. And I'll start. I saw The Liberation, which is the new film from Guy Nativ that stars our friends, Carrie Coon and Tracy Letts. Tracy was there. Tracy was here with Venice. It was here with me in Venice last year. And now you get Tracy and Carrie both. Yes. And a great Carrie performance. I'm pissed. Full disclosure. I dined with Carrie and Tracy. So I am not objective about this film. But I was on the record about Carrie Coon before I met her. So I feel comfortable saying that I think she's incredible in this movie. The movie is based on the director Nativ's real life grandmother who in the middle of her life while working at a bank joined a cult and completely upended her family and left her family to join this cult. And his grandmother was a survivor of the Holocaust and had a lot of unprocessed trauma. And Coon plays the grandmother figure. Tracy plays her husband. They have two children played by Bella Ramsey and Odessa Young. The leader of the cult is Lily James. Wow. Who is very good in the movie. I like the movie and don't love the movie. And it's interesting because what I think I don't love about it is something that I think is a very artful choice, but makes the movie not cohere for me, which is that the movie is very focused on Coon's characters. Not her decision so much as like what actually happens when she joins and what the cult is about, but the movie doesn't explain hardly anything about how the cult started, where Lily James's ideas came from. Like that same true crime cult documentary style that I was just talking to you about. We've come to expect a certain form of explanation in those stories and the movie withholds that from you. Yeah. And I found it a little maddening. The other thing is that it's a very sad and depressing story. There's just no way around it. Like it's just a tough, tough story. And so you're not going to come out of a film festival screening at 1030 p.m. and be like, let's go party. It's not that kind of movie. Yeah. But and Tracy is very good in the film as well. He has a modest part, a couple of really good laugh lines that broke up the doom-like tenor of it. And so it was fun seeing them. It was really fun to see Carrie in like the prestige movie atmosphere where it was like Carrie Coon Oscar nomination. There was another example of that. When you came out, that was the conversation that people wanted to have. And obviously, she's very worthy of that sort of a thing. So I like the movie. I didn't love it. But I think it's very much worth seeing for the performances. What's one of your honorable mentions? So we have one honorable mention that's the same, which is Bucking Faster. Oh, yeah. You did see this. Good. I did see it. Yeah. I was charmed by it. I mean, it's pretty odd, even by Werner Herzog standards. It's weird. And the first, the title card is that dedicated to David Lynch, which also, you know, I was like, oh, right, this is this is going to be weird. And then I it's going to be out there. And I was so charmed by the Rooney and Kate Mara performance. And, you know, they they are in the whole movie together. I don't really want to say too much more than that. But so many great moments, such a cool thing for them to do. I like them both individually as actors. I like that they are engaging with their fame and also the idea of being sisters. And I can't say that it revealed a lot to me about what it means to be a sibling or a person in the world. I'm an only child, so I have limitations there. Oh, interesting. But that's OK. Like, I still enjoyed it. And and I like there's there's one scene with a forklift that I just think is triumphant. I think about it every time I see a forklift. There's a lot of really fun stuff. I saw it very late at night and it was a little challenging in the final third of the movie where it takes a digression to Ireland that I felt was a little far afield. But you're totally right about the Mara sisters like they're what they do in the movie is not something I've seen before. And it's rare that you can say that about a movie. I've not seen a performance like the one that they're giving. And I use the singular performance very specifically. We should talk about Elsinore. So this is the film about Ian Charlson, the British actor who performed at the National Theater whilst struggling with HIV and AIDS. The movie is directed by Simon Stone, who is mostly known as the theater director, stars Andrew Scott as Charlson. Charlson, you know, is an actor who like you would know he was in Gandhi. He's well, I guess, best known for Chariots of Fire. He did some Hollywood stuff, but he also had a big career in the English theater. And he is. The movie is so strange because it's just so obviously one of the most committed performances from an actor you'll ever see in a movie. And it also mirrors what's happening, like what the character is doing in the movie. And Scott is a favorite of ours and he's phenomenal in the film. But the film is like. And a lot of people are comparing it to 90s Miramax films where you've got these kind of like very heartfelt docudramas about artists struggling at a certain point in history, and it is that. But the movie has this very weird editing style that is montage plus we don't have it in the edit that you can feel as a viewer where like there were just too many sequences to me of just like Andrew Scott walking into buildings, wandering on top of a roof, reciting his lines, you know, looking in the middle distance from his apartment, you know, like shots of the book of Hamlet, you know, where is it that he's been studying like a lot of just like that stuff, uncinematic things where you're like, we're trying to find the movie in this story. Right. That and then there are other sequences where it's just like for 30 seconds on broken Andrew Scott doing Hamlet. Yeah. And you're like, OK, this is the this is the movie, right? Like this is this is the magic. This is the special effect. Like you don't need to do anything like stop cutting. It's like hold on this moment because this is something that we would want to watch. And that is actually what the idea of the movie is, is like what you would want to watch when somebody really takes it over. One thing is very funny about this, which is a true story, is that, you know, Charleston came in for Daniel Day-Lewis, who walked off stage in the middle of a performance of Hamlet and then never performed on stage again. So it is sort of like the sequel prequel to the Daniel Day-Lewis legend, you know, which I mean, and I think David Sims actually may have even spoken about this exact moment in history when we did the Day-Lewis Hall of Fame. And so that that's very like a very fun. It's like that's the opening moments of the first minute of the movie is Day-Lewis and then what that means for Charleston. But I just don't think the film is very good at all. But I thought that the performance was extraordinary. And so what it felt feels like to me is actually what usually happens in the context of the Oscar race is in movies starring women. The best actress race is usually like, oh, this film's not gonna be nominated for Best Picture, but it will get a lone nomination. You know, the Renee Zellweger and Judy situation where it'll get one nomination and it might even win. Julianne Moore and still Alice. Yes, it is. And that I mean, that happens every year in Best Actress. But this is that this is what that feels like to me. OK, well, I'll still see it for Andrew Scott. OK, what's next for you? This is not a new film, but I for the first time I went to our pals at Letterboxd had an event. And so I went to see Three Colors Blue. Oh, cool. The Christoph Kieslowski movie. Yeah, it was amazing. Like on a rooftop. It was I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about it. So they can post or whatever. But they said I could log the movie, which I did. Um, and since possible love is like alleged like it has been described um by lee chang dong as like a very loose inspired by one of the decalogs uh episodes oh okay i didn't know that thou shall not covet um it's like it's been in some of the materials or in some of the interviews just that it's in the air so i thought given given that i could at least include this movie that i saw while here in venice that just absolutely rocks um and it's so cool and and i believe they chose it because it was the the shortest golden lion winner with the highest rating possible but it stars julia panosh um it did win the golden lion here it's wonderful if you haven't seen it it's it's also the first and sort of an unofficial trilogy i'm gonna seek out the other two um borrow my blue my 4ks yeah and then also just the view is absolutely amazing from that rooftop so nice that's fun worry about it that's really great uh i guess the last film i'll mention is the disciple which was quite interesting for me um i think this film premiered at sundance but netflix picked it up and this is a movie about the world of the wu-tang clan specifically about a member of the extended wu-tang affiliates silver rings netflix did a smart thing at the festival that i did not totally get to participate in which is that a lot of the movie is about the creation and delivery of once upon a time in shaolin which is a wu-tang album that of which there is one extant copy and virtually no one has heard it was released in 2014 it was acquired by martin shkreli you may remember the infamous pharmaceutical uh oligarch who was brought down on fraud charges i don't know if he's still in prison but he is the guy who bought this album the album was created to be owned by one person with an 88 year license fee non non-distributive license fee the movie is also a portrait of silver rings this guy who is a moroccan dutch guy who grew up as i did obsessed with wu-tang but unlike me flew himself to new york multiple times just to sit outside the offices to hope to meet the people who are associated with wu-tang especially rizza and eventually he found himself in the inner circle of wu-tang in the 2000s and he worked as a tour manager he worked as a rapper he worked as a producer he worked as a general confidant and affiliate and the movie is like it's an immigrant story it's an outsider story it's about a guy who's desperately trying to find out who he really is and who he wants to be and how art inspires him and moves him and some of that that stuff is fine like it's like pretty standard not the most revelatory thing in the world but i enjoyed it what netflix did that was smart which i failed to participate in was they did a listening party for the album which very few people have heard at and you didn't go i because i was sick and i fell asleep and oh it's tough and i got one of these every year i know and i didn't wake up but i was really sick and if i did not sleep i would have had a really hard time at the festival and i have a lot of regrets and i'm hoping that they'll play the album again but you know eventually the album did go back kind of into the into the ether um and the film explores a lot of the decisions that happen around that and some of the controversies around that in an interesting way but it was just a great film festival stunt and i'm sorry that i didn't get to participate in hearing the record but i've spent so much time in my life listening to wu-tang albums that i was like yeah of all the of all the days to get things to wildly ill um yeah nevertheless i'm not going to i persist the the disciples pretty cool i think if you're a wu-tang fan it's a must watch um because it explores like an outer ring of the group that we don't hear talked about nearly as much like the the bees and the affiliates and all the the international crew of people who are associated with the group so that was really the last big thing that i saw i only saw 10 movies at the festival this year which is wow might be a low for me now i've seen i have seen 27 movies that were at the festival but so many of those were pre-screened or canned or whatever so i feel like i have my arms around the festival and as i said la bola negra club kid minotaur fjord those movies played great my one sadness was my checkout time was really early and so i had to miss the making marie antoinette screening i mean i would have been really upset if you saw that and i didn't okay okay so then you can feel fine about that i mean like i would have been excited for you and i did see the new paul schrader um oh yeah and it didn't come up and it didn't come up here in this conversation it did not come up maybe the single worst performed movie i've ever seen wow but he had quite a weekend paul schrader a lot of unfortunate comments yeah but you also begin to wonder whether it's intentional i've always felt that with him um anyway tough scene over there yeah um so i got to see that and you you missed marie antoinette did you see musk have you seen musk no it wasn't shown at telluride okay um what did you see what did you do what'd you think so i i mean i'm mixed on it it is it is comprehensive it's four hours long it should be comprehensive uh and it's very convincing and it's like deeply researched i wouldn't say that there's a lot of new material in it um but it does a good job of bringing together all of the reporters who have been reporting on his antics for the past 20 years in all the you know the various tentacles that he has now because it's a little bit of and so it synthesizes and i think in a good way and so if you have not been paying attention or you know it kind of puts everything in one place in what is it's being described as damning and like i i think i already knew that but it is very damning it makes some structure it it uses two devices and they're kind of related so um elon musk did not participate in this documentary obviously as many people connected with it and so i think it's very damning and i think it's very um did not this um alex had me said that he had he like a lot of people said no out of fear or you know ndas or whatever the case may be um but so he does not have elon musk he does have all of the recorded things that elon musk has ever said um which is a lot because this is a man who likes press and attention and so they make a bit because of elon musk's belief that we're all in a simulation and it's like a video game and whatever blah blah blah they make an elon musk avatar and so they feed all of his quotes and then edit it together you know they edit they use his quotes so it's his real words and this kind of like eerie purposefully fake weirdly handsomer than elon musk so i don't know what they were thinking about there um but like they it's like it's like elon musk uh like after a glp1 they've really defined the cheekbones but but but it's also clearly like cgi and he's in a gaming chair and so he's this avatar is narrating the whole movie and then also the movie is structured as the video game the simulation with elon as the first person shooter so they use a lot of video game animation interesting and i just personally it's it's a clever idea and it does provide some of the details of the story and i think it's really interesting and i think it's really interesting to see how the story is obviously in keeping with some of the ways that elon musk thinks and talks about himself which is the purpose of the documentary it's it's just not fun to watch in my opinion like this is a purely aesthetic note that i was like this is irritating and kind of junky looking okay and that is possibly the point because i think those are also two words that you could use to describe pretty much everything elon musk has put into the world including the tesla 3 which like what happened just like put buttons back on the car what's wrong with you guys so i but you know it's interesting it is like a it's a storytelling choice but aesthetically just really soured me on some of the experience um i also this is this will be released in theaters but like it's four hours it's a classic like watch at home when it's streaming over a couple of nights and you can watch all of it and again it's like very very deeply researched and convincing but i don't know i just the video game stuff it's not for me in any in any genre understood we thank you for your service of sitting through the whole film i'm i love gibney's movies you know i've watched almost all of them and i think he's really interesting and the fact that we're talking about everest and you can see everything and the vanguard of documentary filmmaking and what it is and where it's going you know he's somebody who i think modernized the form got a lot of people interested in documentary and then i think the world kind of like pat the commercial component of the world kind of passed him by while he held on to a lot of what most interested him in terms of in interrogating systems and power right like that's really the big theme of a lot of his work and so i'm very i'm very interested in it um i wouldn't say i'm i'm like musk is kind of like murdoch to me where i'm like i know i don't really want to that those people's power and influence and corrupting power and the programming of ink and primetime and musk all together you know they're like there is a through line one of the galling but i guess interesting parts about musk is that in the second half when he becomes like a right wing you know a media personality they just have a lot of of that footage and i like i don't watch any of that stuff i've never seen it maybe you know like you see tiny clips and it's it's not like i enjoy watching it but as a as the media analysis the media through line and and then does draw i think in a stronger way than ink does the the conclusions of what the media influence then can do to the rest of the way that we live right so it's good i but you know there's an avatar okay good to know i'm good only james cameron can do that uh i guess that's right i guess that's right um let me just take a look at my telly ride list to make sure i've given you everything that you need to hear about i guess there were a couple of other movies that played here that seemed to do well like the only living pickpocket seemed to do well john trattoro was here um and he was also similarly working through the uh the stages of of oscar candidacy um i did see a couple of really good documentaries as well beforehand one is called zero intention of living quietly which is about adam pearson the actor from a different man um and i thought that was a really interesting story and really well told i also saw a carl sagan documentary called we are made of star stuff it was all about his life and and and pursuit that i thought was kind of revelatory and a little bit unsparing about some of the things that weren't so great in his life um that i really appreciated you know pavel pavlikowski stood behind me online getting on the plane yesterday heard him speak he's six foot four a very strikingly handsome man fatherland was there um that's pretty much it you happy you went you ready to come home i'm ready to come home it'll be a long day tomorrow uh and then i don't know whether i'm gonna have time to see any more movies before thursday though did you see that we just got a resident evil invite oh my god did we really yeah when is it oh my you know but now i gotta figure out child care and all sorts of stuff it's okay geez okay so you know it begins it begins it begins again i've got a school function that evening that's not ideal zach's in new york i don't know what i'm supposed to do gosh it ain't easy being us no it's so easy being us uh well amanda these this is always one of my favorite episodes of the year so thank you for your service um you'll be back later this week and we will talk about i think we should do it in two parts we can talk about a bunch of movies that we've missed from august and september some of which you've seen some of which i've seen we'll bounce back and forth recommend a few things you know there's been this really fascinating thing where like coyote versus acme has been a nice success you know the movie buddy has been a nice success so like weirdly the end of august and beginning of september had a couple of interesting storylines we'll go over the results of the summer movie preview game which are effectively concluded now right because we're it's going to be september 11th and and then we'll also just hang out you know okay sound good i know it sounds great i can't wait to be home okay safe travels buddy thanks to jack sanders for his work as the producer of this episode thanks to for production support we'll see you later this week this is the way hi i'm john favreau we are launching the all-new star wars the mandalorian and grogu official podcast i'm sorry i can't focus at the moment we're going behind the scenes with the cast and crew sharing stories from the set creative insights and a few surprises from across the galaxy i think he's earned a little snack watch and listen to star wars the mandalorian and grogu official podcast now streaming on disney plus or wherever you get your podcasts and catch star wars the mandalorian and grogu now streaming on disney plus streaming on disney plus terms apply for adults with crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms every choice matters trimphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start trimphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks if your doctor decides that you can self-inject trimphia proper training is required trimphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative 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