The Physical Media High Council Reconvenes!

It is I, Sean Fennessey, grand maester of the Physical Media High Council, and this is the big picture, a conversation show about that physical media I am honored to be joined by the three Lords, the three leaders, the three guiding lights of this endeavor, of course, Igor, Chris Ryan, here to help us with his chemistry. Just let out of my room in the basement. That's right. The first night, Timothy Hitmaker Simons. Sire. And the King of Physical Media, Tracy Letts. Please, please. Gents, thanks for reconvening today. This is a semi-annual tradition. This is the second time this quartet has come together for this endeavor. As you can see, we're taking it very seriously. Chris, how are you feeling about how you look right now? I'm worried that I either look like a chronic masterbater, public masterbater, or some kind of like guy who got the wrong Big Lebowski robe on eBay, but is still going with it. What do you think? I hope that when you take the robe off, you still don't also look like a masterbater. You also look like a public masterbater. You're like, oh, shit, it wasn't the robe. Do you have clothes on under the robe? I do. Okay. Good. Good. Tim, how are you feeling? I'm feeling great. As I texted many times, I'm like, really, I've really been looking forward to this. Yeah. Off mic, just a moment ago, I was saying, and Tracy, I don't know if this happens to you. Like, I feel like we've both done like public work that people have seen, but I feel like I get recognized so much just for this episode. People coming up to me asking me, like, what are your grails? Like in public, I have been asked that question. Has that been happening to you? It does happen to me. I don't go out in public much, but, you know, Kerry was just doing, I play bug on Broadway and she would go out and sign programs after the show. And she said, every night, there was one person there was like one guy. Yeah. I loved it. It wasn't always a guy. Oh, no. How exciting. I love the cast, love, you know, love listening to the big pic, blah, blah. Oh, that's great. How wonderful. How are you feeling about this project? You feel like at home, you feel safe, you feel like you're in your kingdom. I feel like I'm doing my job. This is my job. I used to be a playwright and actor. Now those are hobbies. Those are sidelines next to my full time job of podcaster and physical media collector. I think we can all safely say that nothing you've ever written stands close to what your physical media collection is. Safely. You can safely say it. Are we going to hash out the third chair fight today or is this just going to be ongoing? It's not for me to answer. I think there are two gentlemen here. So you just want to see open combat. I want to. Yeah. This is not honestly not my king. My king would do things differently. Well, this is the real king here. So you can speak with him, you know, this isn't the forum to address that question. I see. This is about love and sharing. Do you think you could grow beard the way that Tracy has? Because that's actually under consideration for third chair. No, I mean, obviously, like, you know, I'm flicularly challenged when it comes to that. No, I have like actually it's just very faint, but I was I was growing a little bit of of I've been in watching Takashi Mika movies for three days stubble, but I guess it didn't really translate. We're going to get you a beard cam so we can get a close up on all that transparent hair on your face like the like that Eagle's Nest live cam. Watch this bear fun for salmon. Chris denied. He grows a beard. He grows a beard. Yeah, I grow a beard. It's got I'm avoiding it because I've got these gray streaks in it. You know, like right here, I got these sort of Wolverine. Oh, yeah, I let it go. Man, you look like a 1970s pitcher. Yeah. Or like Ted Nugent. No, the gray strip. Believe me. Trust me. I almost want it to be all gray or or it's just these weird patches. I don't know. I'm having a bit of a crisis where the beard is effectively white and the hair on the top of my head is not yet. You get a good just for men, but for beard. Yeah. You know, I was watching a film yesterday last night. Wash stop dyeing your hair. I don't dye my hair and how fucking dare you say that. I was watching a film with it with an actor, an esteemed actor and filmmaker. You were watching it with that person. No, he was in the film. Okay. I saw him on screen and he's he's a man, you know, I'd say he's in his sixties. George Hamilton was not George Hamilton and there's no way that that's his hair color or beard color. Like there's just no way. Yeah. And he's perp. You know, he's playing a man in his late sixties and and what are we supposed to think about that as viewers? Like how are we supposed to accept that that this man is lying to us in that way? You think there's unfair beauty standards for men? It's always been the case. You know, HD has helped reveal Bogart's hairpiece, Jimmy Stewart's hairpiece, right? Movies where you thought, oh, he's not. Oh, no, they were wearing hairpieces long way back. Yeah. Shoe polish in the hair too. There is. There is a thing though. I also feel like the the I don't know if it's the technology or just the implementation. I have noticed from movies in like the eighties where it was like, oh, this actor is maybe like a little bit older, but they've dyed their hair. Like I think the implementation of it now is much more subtle and there's some nuance to the hair color that makes it look not like it's like a shoe polish hair dye. But I've noticed in some eighties movies recently that I'm like, oh, they went for it. Yeah. They should have left a little in there. This person had reddish auburn hair at the age of like 65. Just did not just just jumped out of me. I'm not going to name that person, but he'll be in a film soon. That's all that I'll say. All right. Oh, OK. Let's talk about physical media properly. I would take off this. Yes. Okay. So we've we we gathered last fall and we talked about a whole range of issues and we've asked for a whole range of issues. Yeah. It was like the street of hormones. It was like that Republican presidential debate when there were 16 men on stage yelling at each other about important political matters. This time around, we've asked for questions from from listeners of the show. Men and women who enjoy physical media and are interested in this endeavor. But before we do that, I thought we could once again just talk about the state of the art. I thought it was actually quite an interesting conversation last time around because this thing that you know, you and I started talking about is it four years ago when we first did an episode about it and that you and I have been talking about the last couple of years and that you in the last year or so have really gotten interested in. There's probably some self selecting bias going on here, but something's going on, right? Like that it feels like the industry in the boutique side is getting very big and it feels like the interest from the big studios is getting pretty small. There's news news story last week that Disney Home Entertainment's entire staff was let go. And so there's no longer people overseeing the production of that work. It's all being outsourced, I think to Sony at this point. So there's this weird dissonance right now with this fun hobby that we love that feels like it's simultaneously thriving and noisy and fun. And there's a young generation of people collecting, but then also the people who own the rights to the stuff and who technically manage all of the property seem completely disinterested in this. What do we make of that dissonance? I don't know. I don't have the slightest idea. I mean, it seems like exactly what you described, the market seems to become more specialized. The prices go up as a result, but these boutique labels seem to be thriving or I mean enough that they're keeping their doors open for the most part and continuing to do great work. And the big boys, they still put out, they're still going to put out the big releases on 4K. They still get enough attention. I mean, I hope that eventually the market drives, the interest drives the marketplace forward and we continue to have this. It doesn't seem like it's going the other direction. It doesn't seem like it's just continual constant diminishment. It doesn't. I mean, I feel like even from when we first kind of like almost offhandedly recorded an episode that was like, how awesome is this? It's just gotten a lot bigger or like the culture of it has gotten a lot bigger. Do you feel that? Yeah, I've definitely noticed that just in like the amount. It feels like a much less niche conversation and something that more and more people are getting into whether it be like, obviously vinyl has been a thing for a while, but then people start collecting cassette tapes. I know there's a question in there about VHS. I know that it's much more in the ether, the idea of what we initially talked about, the idea of like, oh, we actually own that thing. And it like looks great. And just as a side note, we were going to watch like last Tuesday, we were going to watch is it Warren Oates's film, Cockfighter. And we tried to see me. Do you mean you the family? Yeah, me and the family. We're going to sit down, just watch Cockfighter. And terrific movie, by the way. I can't where actually everybody's coming over tonight. I got the blue right. Like your extended family. No, like the Tuesday night movie group that I have. The Parent T-Shirt Association. Yeah. Oh, is it Monty Hillman? Cockfighter? Yeah. I like a group of neighborhood friends and every Tuesday night we get together and we watch these kinds of movies. And so Cockfighter, I had to order from the UK, but like, I was like, oh, it is available to stream on Amazon or whatever. And it was honestly like watching like a 480p snuff film. Like you couldn't even make anything out of it. And somebody even called it out like we're not watching this. Like we're not going to watch this in this condition. And so I ordered it that night. It was a couple of weeks ago. It arrived yesterday. But anyway, that just seems to be much more in the conversation to the point where I was surprised to hear that one of the largest companies had completely shut down that division only because it just seems like there is, look, I'm not a fucking businessman, but it seems like there's money there. And it seems like you guys used to make a lot of money on this. And why not maybe try to foster it a little bit? Like you can see that there's a little bit of a groundswell of interest in this in physical media broadly. Like why not try to foster it rather than cut it off at the knees? But I don't know. Yeah. I could see it from both sides on one hand, if they're trying to keep a stream. Charlottesville over here. Yeah. Yeah. Many good points from Bob Iger and his new CEO. Good people working in the business development decision. I could see if you were like one of our main business interests is the streaming service. So why would we give somebody an excuse to spend 150 bucks on the five movies that they like or the seven movies that they like and then cut the streaming service? On the other hand, specifically Disney has always had like one of their crown jewels was always like their home, their home video department and the way in which they would put things on shelves and then take them off and it would be like, hey man, next week for an indefinite amount of time, Cinderella no longer available and people would rush out and get it. So it's confusing. I was curious whether or not you felt like the major studios are like looking at this and they're thinking like we're going to start licensing our stuff to these boutiques to make these special editions of these films or do you think it's just something that like a business model that those major studios haven't figured out yet but aren't willing to give up? I think it's because when you have a division that requires employing a lot of people and this is like a very low priority on the totem pole ultimately. And so they feel comfortable saying, well, we'll just license to Arrow and Arrow will be putting out the 80s and 90s action adventure movies that we have pretty much forgotten about for the next 10 years. And like Arrow has just been doing incredible work with that band of movie over the last couple of years. And so they'd rather not think about it. But what you were describing specifically about Disney's home video strategy is, I don't know if it was revolutionary, it actually was sort of taunting to fans or it was like, don't tell me you can't make more video cassettes of the little mermaid. Like I know that you can if you just make an effort to, but they were kind of stoking a very similar level of limited edition feeling that I think a lot of the Blu-ray companies and 4K companies pursue now. Like I was in the video store with my daughter over the weekend and we were looking at the Disney live action films, not the remakes of animated movies, but just the films from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. And I was looking for a copy of the remake of the parent trap because I wanted to show her that movie, the Lindsay Lohan movie. They had the Haley Mills version. They didn't have the Lindsay Lohan version. But then I was looking at like return to Oz. And the video store had returned to Oz on Blu-ray, which I think on eBay is like 300 bucks. It's hard to find. The fact that there's demand for something like that means that there's probably demand in the broader world and that they could probably just have at least a modest business remaking those things. But there does just does not seem to be an interest beyond whatever outside company says, we want this title. You know, we want, I don't know what's a good example, like Red Sun, the Charles Bronson Toshira Mifune movie is coming from Arrow in July. There had to be some guy at Arrow who was like, you know, what I, you know, we need to do, we need to get Red Sun out there. Like that's one that really needs to exist in a beautiful $50 addition. And so they just don't want to employ people to do that work, which I do kind of understand because of the streaming concern that you're talking about. And there's a million other businesses that these capitalized mega corporations have to consider, but it does feel like leaving a $50 bill on the ground a little bit. And maybe that's just our own personal interest speaking, but it feels something feels not quite coherent. We're not going to know. They're not going to pull the curtain back and let us know what's driving those decisions. Meanwhile, I'm having a hard time keeping up. I mean, there's a lot of releases happening every week. And if I go a few weeks and then try to catch up, it's stuff. Like suddenly the mailbox is really jammed. Yeah, that's totally part of the dissonance is I feel completely overwhelmed. And I have way too many unwashed movies going right now. And I don't know how to make sense of that. Maybe we'll get into that a little bit. A little bit about like watching habits, because obviously you're watching for all new releases, pretty much all releases from a year. You're going to try and see 99% of those. You guys are both very busy men, but like have to watch stuff. I'm sure adjacent to your work, whether it's like I want to watch something from a filmmaker that I might work with or a writer or whatever. Are you making special time to watch the things that you've bought? Do you have like a system for three times a week? Twice a week, I'm going to make sure I get something from the unwatched pile. And then maybe like an old chestnut. Like what's like your habits right these days? I tend to because I'm the like the night owl of my family. We have a general system worked out where because my wife wakes up early, she kind of will like, we'll get the kids up and get them breakfast. And then I sort of wake up a little bit later, handle some of the morning, get the kids to school. But that also watch cockfighter. And then I watch cockfighter at 9 a.m. Your morning constitution. You get it. And but that means I sort of take the night so that because she goes to bed on the earlier side, I take the nights I deal with bedtime, I get them settled. And I have made a point this year of being like I have a lot of unwatched disks. And I am like not going to do the thing where I'm just like, oh, I'm going to. And I'm say this and I have watched Socario again, where I'm not going to like watch the comfortable thing that makes me feel good. I'm going to be like, no, I'm going to crack this open. And like a recent example of this was like, I've had a copy of the ascent, the like the Russian war film. And it's I've probably had it for four years and was just like, I'm just kind of going with like the A's just starting there. I mean, like, oh, the ascent, I haven't watched that yet. And I'll throw that on. That's a real mood brightener in that movie. Oh, yeah, I'll get your Monday going. Yeah. And so that's sort of what I do. The kids go to bed and I'll watch something. And I am making an effort to watch the things that have just kind of been there. Yeah. I'm programming for my wife and for our nanny, who will from now on be known as the nanny, my wife and the nanny. And I'm either programming for my wife or the nanny or my wife and the nanny. And so a lot of what I'm programming is based on what they've seen or haven't seen. And I'll give them an occasional quick survey. Have you seen this? Have you seen this? So I have no what I can choose from on the night. And then I make that choice and they don't know what I'm put. I try to I try to not even tell them show them the disc. Right. They're sitting in front of the screen. And just in the helmet. So you don't offer any enticements. You know, I know you're a fan of this person. Not at all. OK. And do you think that they have any interest in what the disc looks like? But you can look at it when the movie's over. That's nice. I feel like a lending library. That's nice. By the way, again, this isn't the way I want it. This is the way they want. Oh, OK. Well, it's very democratic. And it's exciting because Tracy, he's a little shy, but he has a new play coming out called My Wife and the Nanny. Yeah. Yeah. A searing political farce. Yes. Yeah. I'm really excited about that. He is just two people sitting down and watching a movie. And at the end of the play, they look at the disc. And your nanny is Fran Drescher or no? She's not Fran Drescher. She's an actress from Los Angeles. And when we get super busy, she comes and she stays with us for a time. And she actually lives in with us for a while. So like the other night, the nanny and I watched in the realm of the senses together. Stop it. Yeah. It was quite a night for the two of us. Are you serious? Had you seen it before? I had not seen in the realm of the senses before. I just saw it for the first time this year, too. Yeah. Not a movie I would watch with my nanny. Yeah. Watch it with my nanny. We both enjoyed it. A lot to talk about. Oshima will come up later in this episode, actually, interestingly enough. How do you choose? I tend to be a little bit of a victim of recency bias. So it's like the most recent thing I buy is the one this happens with books, too, is I'll be halfway through a novel and then I make the mistake of going to Skylight. And then I'm like, well, I guess it wouldn't hurt to read 20 pages of this. And then all of a sudden I can't remember who's who and what book. This is a particularly hard part of the year because of basketball playoffs still are like of a personal and professional interest to me. So it's like hard to like then at the end of a two game night, put on, you know, a Yakuza movie. Yeah. But. You know, we all make choices in this world. We all make compromises. I've been I've been really excited, though, recently. I think most of my buying has not been blind, but it has been on stuff I haven't seen. So the stuff that I've been buying recently is usually not like. And then, of course, I've watched that 50 times in my life, but now I have a good copy of it. It's more like, oh, I've never watched a movie by this director. So this is very exciting. I find it entices me to stay on top of my purchases a little bit better. This is slightly out of topic, but I just want to shout it out because I think I may have texted you this and I wanted to do on a mic. When we were here last, CR talked about Fun City Editions. Welcome to Fun City. And number one, he mentions it and it sells out immediately. Yeah, I have to email the Fun City Editions guy to be like, I will buy this, but just do you have any dead next to him when he said it? So I was like, I actually really do. And I am not kidding. I have never found a better thing because trailers will have usually will have a Blu-ray player in a television. Sometimes there's a cable box hooked up to it. I have never found a better thing to put on in a trailer than just five hours of like, here are movie trailers in from 1976. You mean when you're preparing to do your work as an actor? Yes. In a trailer. It's sometimes you lock in and then you can fade away and you can look at your lines. But just to have the background. It's a Vibes machine, that whole disc. It is incredible. Is the downside that you walk out of your trailer and you're like, I think I'm going to bring a kind of Martin Balsam quality. I'm kind of feeling like this scene had a little bit of a street walk involved. Have you gotten any of your colleagues to come by and hang out and watch a little Fun City? Why are you watching nine consecutive taxi driver trailers? Because it rules. I think they were hesitant. I mean, like they they understand the nerdy parts of my life. And I think they're supportive of them. But it was nice to when like when I would have it on and they'd swing by to just see their eyes kind of go toward it and then become sort of engrossed in it. And like that was nice to be like, see, it's not just me. This actually feels good. You know what I mean? It would be nice to have friends. You replace them with this except when you come here. I don't know how to deal with what I haven't how to choose anything anymore. You know, like Tracy and I are preparing for a Robert Duvall Hall of Fame episode that we're going to record this week. And you know, the man made 95 feature films. Yeah. And so that endeavor that I created thoughtlessly when we were talking about people like Tom Hanks for whom I have seen every single movie. I'm like, yeah, I can do Duvall. And then I'm seven weeks into trying to conquer his filmography and I've acquired, I don't know, 70% of his filmography on physical and I just can't get through it. And so what I don't have now because of this stupid job that I invented for myself is the time to just be like personal curiosity. I'd like to watch this thing that I bought two years ago that I was really interested in when I bought it. And I know in my heart is actually how I would spend my time if I were free from my own prison. But so I'm kind of trying to cope with that a little bit. And that's like a very specific concern. But I think you got you. I think you really do have to make time when you spend money on these things to like respect, appreciate and enjoy them. And if you don't, then you're just stamp collecting. Then you're not really like doing the thing that this is the purpose of this experience, I think. When the nanny showed up a few weeks ago, I said to her, it's all Duvall in 1976. She said, great. You know, so we've every night, it's a Duvall movie or a 1976 movie in the realm of the census, 1976. Sure is. Yeah. Again, amazing choice by you. We're going to circle back. You know, I asked you guys to bring some new acquisitions, some things that you're excited about. You traveled across the country to do so. You drove from 18 minutes from here. I did take the ride. I did. I wasn't paying attention and I made it a little bit longer because I went north on the five out of like sort of habit. I made a similar mistake on the way here. Yeah. Interesting. And yet you guys both made it miraculously. C.R.U. took your private helicopter and you landed on the pad on the roof. Did you bring your stuff? I did, of course. You brought your stuff. I brought some stuff on your behalf as well. Who's going to start? I think Chris should start because you were the you were the fawn. You were the baby bear. Last we spoke. Which is he? Is he a fawn or is he a baby bear? He's an anthropomorphized, gorgeous little little guy. I mentioned Takashi Mike earlier. So the first one I want to talk about is Underworld Chronicles. Where's the camera? This is. C.R.U. Hold it up right to your camera. Are I three? There you go. This is from Radiance. It's a trio. I want to I suppose loose trilogy. I wouldn't necessarily say you need to understand one to get the other. But they're all Takashi Mike movies. Yakuza movies, Japanese crime films from his V Cinema era. And a lot of people. So there's three films. There's Fudo, The New Generation. There's Agitator, which is his 200 minute epic. And then there is one I want to talk about, which is Deadly Outlaw, Rekka. Deadly Outlaw, Rekka is an insane film. And it features the greatest opening five minutes to a movie I've ever seen, which I will describe starting now, if that's OK. Please do. It starts with an old Yakuza chieftain talking about wolves. And then it cuts to the incredible flower band, which is an early psych rock band from Japan going. And then a dude running down a street at full speed while an old man cross cut is walking up some steps. And it turns out that this dude running full speed down the street is going to jump over a wall with two guns in his hand while this psych rock is playing and gun down the old man, thus setting off a Yakuza war. But it is the most electrifying, adrenaline-lized opening five minutes of a movie ever. I cannot recommend this more highly. It is a fucking weird, crazy movie that is in, you know, cascades of blood and intense violence and then interspersed with like Jim Jarmusch scenes of guys just eating rice and talking. It is a bit confusing in terms of telepathic connections to other Yakuza leaders and like you can feel the pain of other people. There's some strange stuff going on in here, but I highly recommend it. And I highly recommend this box. I am not a M.K. completist. It's a new. It's kind of like, you know, obviously you've seen the big ones, like Audition and Ichi, but like this is this is a whole new world. And I'm excited to be there. And it's a big filmography, right? He's huge. Like he was making three, four movies a year at some point. He is still extremely active as well. He released a film last year. I think he has a film at Cannes this year. Bad Lieutenant. Bad Lieutenant Tokyo. Yeah. Um, these are from 94, like 01 and 02. So just extraordinary pieces of action filmmaking. So I highly recommend it. Great. And from Radiance, our boys. So when you did you buy that blind? You were just like, I want this. I have a subscription for Radiance. So when you got the box, what made you choose that out of the three in there since you hadn't seen those three? I did a little bit of research, but I also watched the trailer that they put out for this, for this set and the footage from RECA from deadly outlaw was like, what is this? If you want to hear the aforementioned scream, you can just watch the trailer for this, for this collection. 75. You're still fucking like, what happened? 75% of my YouTube subscriptions, the things that are actually in my feed are just physical media companies posting trailers to movies that I want to buy. And it's a nice way to pass the time. And it's flower traveling band, not incredible. Flower travel. I mixed up with incredible string band. My bad. Okay, Tim. So I went with. I went with, so I talked about it before. There's like this Tuesday night thing that I've had going for for probably three and a half years now. Talkfighter Tuesdays. It's now expanded to like five people. Me and my friend, Johnny, who was very happy the night that you guys met at the screening of House of Dynamite. When you were introduced, you went, oh, Tuesday night. And he was like, that's so cool. But we do call ourselves the programmers. Like we talk about the programming and I was really happy to hear you say that earlier, this idea of like. Ask, do you call yourselves that to anybody else? We now to the world. We die now to the world. I mean, like when we talk at the barista, like are they like, and your name is and you're like the programmer, programmer. Well, no, I have to put a hitmaker on for that one. I when I'm taught, when we're talking to our wives, they'll be like, Hey, what do you guys have coming up like this Tuesday? What are you doing? Cause there are nights where I'm like, Annie, you shouldn't. You actually shouldn't even walk through the living room on this one. Like you're not in, you're going to want no part of this one. Um, but I'm curious what that would be. Salo was one. Yeah. I was like, you just don't want any part. That's what it's just for the guys. Yeah. Yeah. Just for the boys. Salos for the dudes. I don't. I. No, I just. I just. I disagree. Annie is, no, I think. I think it's less it's for the boys and more. I know what would upset my wife in movies. And there are things that she can engage with and things that she is just like, I don't like, I don't like seeing that. Like whatever experience that is, I don't like that experience. And it does seem like the Tuesday nights, you're in pursuit of extremity sometimes. We are very much in pursuit of extremity. And, uh, and so I kind of chose things based on like from this lens of I'm happy that this exists in like an elevated form because this feels like the kind of thing that could just go away, that a streaming service is like, we are not going to host that on our platform. So those are the choices that I made. Um, and I'll start with. Pull it out. Um, I'm weirdly excited. The suspense is with a thriller, a cruel picture. Yeah. Christina Lindberg is there. We definitely go with themes sometimes. Uh, you know, we'll have like, feels bootleggy, but it's not. And who makes that desk? Who made this one? Vinegar. Vinegar syndrome. Yeah. In fact, there's a nice slip cover box in the. Limited edition, maybe. I think I would. This is just the standard. Right. So this, it feels like the chick with the iPad to get invited to Tuesday nights, though, a hundred percent. And, uh, so we have these themes. Like one time we did like under sing, tangerine dream soundtrack. Oh yeah. We did that for a month. Great idea. And then like we did like a big Giala run last October for how, like around Halloween. And this was sort of like in a accidental, but in that world of extremities, there's a lot of rape revenge. So like this was one and it was one at the end, we all stood up and actually gave this movie a standing ovation. Like this happens when there was a particularly good one at the end. We stand up and we clap. And there are like, and I know that there might be families that are listening to this. Five men standing, applauding a rape revenge film at like 11 PM on a Tuesday. They're not allowed to walk out of the room. Look, it sounds. It sounds bad and it's going to sound worse when I tell you that no pun intended. There is a hard cut to close up anal sex in this movie. Hard cut to just all of a sudden. And it's like that kind of thing where I'm like, this shouldn't exist. Yeah, we shouldn't be watching it. Sure. But but now like in perpetuity, no matter what corporations do, it exists. And I think that's why I brought that. You are on a watch list now. Oh, 100 percent. I'm glad that me salivating at a dude jumping over a wall with two nines and killing a Yakuza chief and is not the weirdest thing that's happened in this first days are all five discs that you brought in this vein. One is not. But all the others are legendary shit. What is the parent trap? I don't know. You're going to follow it up. There is no way to follow it up. So I'm going to class it up. OK, network, baby. Selected because. Out on 4K, which those of us who love this movie, just it just feels like it just feels like manna that this would be out on 4K. Also, I selected it because it is the it's at the intersection of what we're doing this week. That's right. Robert Duvall, 1976, physical media. All are encompassed here in this American classic. It's a big titted hit. It's a big titted hit. That's all I got to say about it. I just watched it probably for the maybe the third time, but not honestly, probably not since I was in college. And was pretty blown back by how relevant it stays. And I don't know. It really was like, oh, fuck, man, they did it. They're like, there's a reason everybody talks about this one in those glowing terms. It's fucking fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I at the risk of tipping picks, it is one of my absolute favorite films ever. And maybe the first movie that made me feel like there was a world beyond the world that I was exposed to and whether or not it's actually true. And maybe at that point, it wasn't as true as it is now, but it made me it grew me up. I would say in an interesting way. OK, that's a great way. That that that disc in general looks very nice. And those features on it are very good as well. All right. So what? How do I? Create, I mean, this is this is an interesting buffet that you have to choose from. Yeah, I think I have stuff that represents all those different ways. Should we? Should we somehow? So this is the movie orgy. Oh, yeah. Blind by for me that I have not checked out yet. So something that I've always wanted to see and I had never seen before. Despite some of this discussion here, it does not actually feature an orgy. It is in a somewhat similar vein to Welcome to Fun City. It is a kind of like recombinant mashup movie. It's like a collection of stray cultural film, television, ephemera that is all smashed together in this. The runtime is 276 minutes. Jesus Christ. It is directed by Joe Dante, the legendary movie maker behind Gremlins and many other classics, one of my favorite directors of all time. This is something he did in the late 1960s, 1968 as like kind of a real project that showed off his editing skills. He also worked as an editor under Roger Corman, worked with Alan Arkesh. And this is like if he could get his brain on film, like all the things that he saw that he loved and was interested in that tried to represent this massive tapestry of like schlock genre, weirdo, side door culture that informs like all the movies that he made in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s. And it was just not available for the longest period of time. And it would pop up on YouTube and then come down. It's like it was like a rights issue forever. Agfa, AGFA released this edition. They released a lot of really cool stuff like this. American genre film archives. That's right. That's not right. And it's just a really cool artifact of movie history that as recently as three years ago, I was like, we'll never get this and I'll never get a chance to see it. And now it does, like I said, it operates in that similar way. We can just kind of like pop it on. And if you want to just like fast forward an hour, you're not like missing the narrative in any way. It's just like, give me like, what's a 20 minute section of that? Like it moves very fast. So it'll be like a crazy monster movie about giant ants. And then it'll be like, you know, what seems like a comfortable drama that has like a hard left turn that reveals that it's actually like a movie about like a possessed kid, you know, like it. And it just kind of constantly reveals the ways in which these stories are being told over this period of time. It's a lot of fun. It's very strange. And it is like, it's an unusual way to show like what your skills and interests are. It kind of reminds me of like, it's like a Pinterest board for from 1968. Yeah, it's just a really cool thing. I own it, haven't watched it, but I will. Same. I'm still in the A's and B's. I gotta get to the M's. M is far. One of one of the cool things about this experience so far of doing, starting to buy this stuff is that occasionally I buy something because I already love it. Sometimes I buy something because the production of the disc, the production of the film for home home physical media is such that it gives the film itself a different context or a different kind of weight. And that's how I feel about this at close range from Vinegar Syndrome. This is 1986 movie. Actually, is this from Cinematography? It's Cinemagraphy, which is Vinegar Syndrome. Right. 1986 James Foley movie set outside of Philadelphia, kind of like a rural noir with Christopher Walken and Sean Penn. This has maybe my favorite Sean Penn and Christopher Walken performances individually. It's a really, really beautiful movie. And this is one that I feel like I'd seen on VHS or streaming over the years, but takes on a whole new weight with the 4K and has a lovely hardcover book, kind of like the kind of thing that you'd find on your dad's shelves. You can pull on out and great, like contextual information about the making of the movie. And just a lovely, lovely package that gives a kind of, I wouldn't say forgotten, but moderately admired genre movie from the mid 80s. And now I'm like, God, this thing has hefts. And it definitely has grown in my kind of estimation because of the production of the film. Can I tell you something? The film celebrates its 40th anniversary this week. How about that? RIP James Foley. Yes, that's right. Grown, arguably his best film. OK, I'm a fan. Good pick. Yeah. I'm going with Going Places, which is another. You're really pushing it. I'm really pushing it. I feel like the other ones, one more that pushes it and the other two don't really tell us about it. But Going Places is a Gérard Depardieu. I believe this is the movie that like made him a movie star. And I don't know how to describe it other than it's like two French sexual harassers drive around France and are bad people. But. Bertrand Blier. Yeah. And any hard cuts to anal sex in this one or no, but they do approach a breastfeeding mom on a train and one of them ends up breastfeeding from the woman. Yeah. And who among us has not found ourselves in this situation. Your fellow commuters. This is one of the reasons I feel like I'm not successful in this business is that now when I go with a hitmaker name says thing that is not true or maybe I could have moved the push the stone up the hill a little more if I wasn't going into like general meetings and being like, Hey, I had an idea for a show. But also, have you ever seen Going Places? Because now like the content is up for discussion, but there is no denying that I think this movie might have one of the funniest edit runner I've ever seen of these two men approaching a situation like the director puts all the elements together of something that's happening and then it's smash cuts to them running away while the event is in the background. And it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen and you can't believe that you go through this movie. I think the magic trick of this thing is that these are two of the worst people you've ever seen and yet they are not really portrayed as heroes, but they are sympathetic or you are empathetic to them. Like you find yourself wanting you find yourself wanting them to do better and they don't. And then the final like the final shot of the movie then kind of tells you why it's called Going Places. And I don't know. It was like another one. And again, hard to find on streaming services. I can understand why nobody wants to host it, but there's like a lot of amazing stuff. Is it Cohen who put this out? It's Cohen. Yeah, I think this had to come from, I think this was another out of country one. I haven't seen that before. It is a very controversial film. It was a huge hit. And a huge hit and like mint did both of them as movie stars. I think Shoradep are due to a much larger extent internationally. Well, Patrick DeWeyre was a big movie star too, but he killed himself. But he's so... Yeah, yeah. Kind of at the height of his career too. Ebert writes despite its occasional charms, Going Places is a film of truly cynical decadence. Yeah, I would broadly agree. I think when we stood up and applauded at the end, I think that's one of the things that we admired about it. OK, Tracy, what's next? Cutter's Way from Radius. This is one of my favorite movies ever. It's on my list. It's on my top, whatever list. I love this movie. The fact that this is available on 4K is just one of those. Again, it's just like I didn't think I would live long enough to see something like this available on 4K. If you haven't seen this movie, don't read about it. Don't look at a trailer. Don't just get this and watch it. It's a great film. Great Jeff Bridges performance, just his hottest and John Hurd just doing some some amazing work in this thing. Ivan Passer, great Czech New Wave director. It's great film, great noir. Check it out. Awesome movie. I have not seen that and I'm going to take that advice of just getting it and watching it. My favorite John Hurd performance. The thing that's funny about this one is I completely agree that it's fascinating that it's on 4K, but I think this is the third time a boutique distributor has put this movie. I think Twilight Time put it out many years ago and then Fun City put a version out on Blu-ray five years ago. Yeah. And then now Radiance is putting out this edition, which is the best one that's come out yet. I bought them all. I have to say to Triton. One of those things where like, so there is definitely a market of people who are like, I need to keep buying Cuttersway. I need to keep discovering this movie. Do you know how many times I bought kind of hearts and cornets? The greatest Tracy Let's quote that has ever existed. It's so funny though that like there are these, there's a lot of movies that are not available and may never be available and we'll probably talk about them shortly. But like there are also movies that just keep coming out and new editions. I'm like, well, I just got to upgrade. Cuttersway is funny in that it for so long kept appearing on these lists of the greatest movies you've never seen. The greatest movie you've never heard of. It's always on that list. So I have to assume by this point, a lot of people have heard of it. But if you haven't, check out Cuttersway. Great, great novel too. Yeah, it is. Newton Thornburg. Yeah. Pull that out of my ass. Where you going? Okay, I'm going to get a little fusty. So what? No. Yeah. Me. Fennessey? I know. Oh, yeah. So Frederick Wiseman passed away recently, the great documentary and perhaps the greatest American documentary in of all time. And I've seen some of his films, especially all of them made in the last 15 years or so. But the films that he became extremely well known for, they're not hard to find, but they were collected by BFI some years ago. And so when he passed away, I immediately raced out and bought this and now it's a little bit harder to find than it was. It's called Cinema Expanded, the films of Frederick Wiseman. I thought this was fairly new. I mean, in the last year or so. And it features, I think it's his first five features, which is Tiddicott Falls High School, Hospital, Juvenile Court and Welfare. And the reason those films have those titles is because that's what they're, they're explorations in documentary form of institutions. That's the thing that he did over his almost 60 year career, where he would go into spaces and train his camera on a mental health institution or a recently City Hall. He spent a year chronicling Boston City Hall and how their local government operated. He recently did one about a French restaurant. And some of these films are incredibly durational. They're like four hours long and they have no narrative, no into camera conversation. They are just observational and edited in a very discreet style to show you how these worlds work in a kind of with an unobtrusive camera. But the first films made a lot of noise because they seem to reveal, you know, some of the decay that was happening in some places, like the institution or in high school or in hospital. And they're not like, you probably won't stand in a plot in quite the same sicko way that you would when you get through thriller with your boys. But they're just tremendously important pieces of American art. And I hope that they like, I hope BFI continues to collect his movies and put all puts them all out, even though I think there's more than two dozen films that he made over his career, but he's just such a huge and important voice. And it's a great set. I think Tiddicate Follies was kind of instrumental in shedding light on mental hospitals and the condition of those. I think a lot of changes happened as a result of that film being distributed because people had simply never, most people had simply never seen what went on inside those institutions before that film. That's definitely true. And I think that there's a like documentary is not journalism, but sometimes it can be. Sure. And the some of these movies are cases where that's the case. So anyway, that's a little bit of seriousness. Do those have the same kind of vibe as like Street Wise or is is Street Wise a little bit more narrative to camera? Yeah. Like in Street Wise, they're asking people like, how, when did you start working on the street? This is, it's really more like the camera sits back and people are like having a meeting in a room and the camera's just looking at their meeting. Okay. And so it feels like you are spying in a way. And, and, and it's usually in a very public kind of forum, but it also feels like you're not supposed to be in the room. And so like you're gathering information. And also sometimes it's like quite dull. Sometimes it shows like how boring life can be and how like a lot of functionaries work throughout the world. And sometimes it can be beautiful and explosive and interesting. But anyway, that's, that's Frederick Weisman. Uh, I will go, I wonder if one of you guys also brought this. Go with stuntman, which just came from transmission a couple months ago. I think one of their first releases, I believe that's the second release they did the transmissions, a sublabel of radiance stuntman is maybe my favorite film about making movies. Uh, it starts Peter O'Toole directed by Richard Rush, um, Barbara Hershey's in it. Um, and oh my gosh, what's the stuntman's name Steve Reels back and, uh, maybe one of my like favorite opening hours of a movie, like really, like before, you know, they have to end it. Like there, there is a magic to this movie. There's a, a kind of mixture of cynicism and wonder that I really adore. And, uh, this is an incredible package. So not only is it a fantastic, um, just, uh, like reference, I don't want to reference quality. I don't even know if I, if I am qualified to say so. But, uh, Tracy is, I approve. Fantastic piece of, uh, of, of movie preservation. And then it comes with a fantastic, um, you know, book booklet with it, but then you get like these awesome postcards, which I, I can't bring myself to actually use, but are really dope. You should just send one to me. Just like write me a letter. Hey, was think, was watching the stuntman thinking of you. Hope you're well. See you at the office tomorrow. Sounds sweet. Uh, and a dope poster. So really awesome package. Uh, really excited about transmission. And this is exactly the kind of movie that deserves this kind of production. Have you watched it since you got? Yes. Yeah. I watched it too recently. Showed it to the wife and the nanny. Yeah. Thumbs up. Uh, thumbs up. Definitely. Uh, Barbara Hershey, man, underrated. Yeah. Uh, great, great actress, underrated. Uh, feelings were mixed about Steve Railsback though. I think he's great in film. Yeah. It's one of those. I don't know who I would replace him with in that movie, but, um, I, I, I like him in In the Line of Fire, which is really only a Railsback movie I can think of. Well, Helter Skelter. Yeah. Uh, I, I really like stuntman. I think it's a great movie. And the great mystery of Richard Rush and why, why he didn't have a bigger career. Yeah. There, there are some sequences in this movie where you're like, this guy's Spielberg, like this is nuts. Like what he's like a helicopter is flying across. And then the crane shot is going around this and he's shooting a crane shot. Like, it's a fascinating. I mean, he was in the same lineage of many of the movie brats where he made a bunch of biker movies for Corman and had a lot of success. And then in the seventies, he makes getting straight, freebie in the bean. And then stuntman and then nothing until color of night, 15 years later. Is that the Bruce Willis? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's maybe for you and the boys. I mean, it might be for me and the boys. It's similar energy. Controversial programmers. I don't think the anal is on screen in that film. But the dick's on screen. Yeah, that's right. So that's good. Okay. That's good. Definitely it would be a contender for programming. Oh, I also want to shout out, Tracy, I think you brought this one in last year, that fun city lifeguard. The same Elliott Lifeguard movie, which we ended up watching on a Tuesday night. And is a fantastic. Just a great movie. Yeah. It's a great. And it's kind of presented as like a sort of like Bikini Beach Party, but then it's a tone poem on aging. Like it's wild how good that movie is. It kind of reminded me of the books that McMurtry wrote about the last picture show characters, like after last picture show. It's just like aging out of youth and trying to figure out who you are. It's really good. I at the actor awards formerly called the SAG Awards this year, I was at a table close to I was close to Sam Elliott Sam Elliott. And I just said fuck it. And I went over and I did. I was like, excuse me, sir, I'm so sorry to interrupt. I just need to let you know I recently saw Lifeguard and I think it's a fantastic film and you were incredible in it. And he said, oh, thank you very much. I don't think he was expecting. And I saw you in Lifeguard. Yeah. And so I think that was a good like it caught him off guard in a good way. And then I didn't I didn't belabor, but I felt it was I felt it needed saying. Was he like, did he have anything to say about Lifeguard or is it just like keep it moving? I kept it moving. I think he was like, oh, thank you very much. You know that. Oh, thank you very much. Is that something? So I was I was with a with an accomplished person yesterday. And not like that. Not like that. No, I'm just watching. No, that's I say that to pivot to your perspective. Imidentally. And he was telling a story about how nervous he was to talk to somebody who he really admired. And like, will you guys do that? Will you go up to people frequently that you really if you really like what they have done in their careers, the way that you just described, is that common for you to go up to someone like Sam Elliott and say like, hey, I love that you did this. Also, I'm on this show. I it is, I would say it's common, but I try not to belabor it, you know, or I mean, honestly, more often than not, I try to engage in conversations that have nothing to do with the business. You know what I mean? Like I like that hat. Yeah. OK. Or, you know, like, you know, I got to meet like I met, you know, in passing Oscar Isaac at like an after party or whatever. Like, dude's been dressing really well recently. He's been going with like the sort of more like a drip off with Oscar Isaac. I didn't know if there was a drip off, he would have won, but it was nice to talk to him about like, hey, man, the pants, you're fucking killing it with the pants. You know what I mean? Now, here's Oscar Isaac, who probably would like to be complimented about his work as an actor, as opposed to the clothes somebody else gave him to wear. Nice pants, Doc. What's your favorite DeFartin movie? You want to do a Going Places Me and You? I think we just take our big pants off. Ever go up to a gallon of train breastfeeding your child and try to nudge in there? Guys, I should only be complimenting the fans because that is the shit I would say. And then I'm going to be asked to be the party. No, I think I try to do it if I'm going to have that conversation. I try not to do it in circumstances like that, where it's that's probably the majority of what you're hearing. And especially at like any event like that, you're so in a different brain that it's hard to even just have a regular conversation. So if I'm going to have that one, I try to do it in a more subdued circumstance. I don't know about you. Yeah, I'll go up to somebody and say something. I, you know, I like it when people say something nice to me. You know, I will tell them I admire their work or what their work is meant to me. But again, yeah, I'm selective about it. And I whatever it is, I make it I keep it brief unless they want to extend the conversation. I keep it brief. Like I'm not going to bother you, you know, what about pants? I have never discussed their pants. You got to get in there. I guess so. Yeah, try it out. I know I think that's right. Like if somebody wants to continue talking, like if I was talking to Oscar Isaac and he was like, hey, I'd actually really like to talk about inside Lew and Davis, I'd be like, yes, let's take a seat because I have questions. That would be weird if he said thanks for the compliment about my pants. But can we please discuss my performance? Back around to rise of Skywalker? I would be all for it. But I definitely like, yeah, I try to keep it brief. What what bundle of depravity do you have for us next? OK, so this one is actually you're hiding it, which makes me really nervous. Like maybe we can't see it. So this was actually after our our aborted cockfighter. I did say, well, that's somebody recommended I just bought death game. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Which I don't think is as depraved as the other two. But is I feel like it has had a few different remakes, including a Eli Roth remand. Yeah, Eli Rock, knock, knock. The conceit of it is incredible. This was released by Grindhouse releasing. Now, she's wearing brazier and no panties. Yes, that's right. That's Colleen Camp, I believe, in that photograph. Oh, Colleen Camp. Yeah. Yeah. And. And you should go to Colleen Camp. I said, brazier, like she has 1948. Oh, I spy that late. That that gentleman is neither. Neither interested in pants nor she needs to care that she isn't a brazier. She doth protest to thine undies. So an incredible conceit of a movie of like a happy family man who good luck with ends up fucking to go. OK, so they say that they're teenagers. We don't know if that's the truth. But there is like an extended scene in a bath. No, it's the key. We can't be sure. Well, the actors were not teenagers. Yeah, those are famous. I have to do my own research. This is a tough one because I love this movie. So I kind of want to be on Tim's side here. I wasn't just like hyperventilating, imagining Tim going up to Colleen Camp. It was like, I watched you in death. And did you know on the cover you're wearing a brazier? And no panties. No panties. And I'm going to keep it moving. Great pants on you now. Great pants on you now. Who takes the brazier off before the panties? You like the you're making a sign fell bit. You're making it seem like people who are interested in this hobby are like afraid to buy porn. We'll get to the absolute edge of porn and say, click, but they can't put me on any lists. The weirdest thing is before we started, we were walking in and I was like, sometimes I worry that people get the wrong idea about me because of the movie. So I think. No, I do. This was worse in the description than it is in the execution. And so. But ultimately what I what I love about this movie and again, this got a standing ovation, especially because of the end. And I think the reason that this was recommended to me is because I was talking about the movie Pieces and how that has the best ending to a horror movie that I've ever seen. And they were like, well, have you seen Death Game? And I said, no. And we watched this and when I saw the ending, we we abs were fucking floored by it. But I think this also exists in this world that I don't know that we have anymore. Where people that are over qualified for the material are taking it on. So I am now, of course, forgetting the actress's name. It's Sandra lock. Yeah, Sandra lock. Yeah. And a calling camp definitely. And Sandra lock certainly it is clear how good of performers they are. And Sandra lock elevates this to some like like where it has like a feeling of like a Marat Sad or like this is somebody who like studied theater and is bringing something to this that shouldn't be there, but is because of their own talent. And I don't know that we have that as much anymore. And so there is something again, it's this feels like a piece from a different time that I am glad exists. I am showing my ass to the entire world. No, I think this is a great pick. I don't know if you remember this, but I gifted you this film as part of like because I think I told you about Grindhouse releasing and I sent you a couple of discs. This was one of them. It's been called a couple of different things over the years. I think the seducers is another title for the movie. Seymour Castell is the male lead in the movie. I mean, he's an amazing actor. Apparently hated the director refused to do ADR, which is why there is all this very awkward. It's not his voice. It's barely not. Somebody's been dubbed over, which is very strange. But this is the same year that Sandra Locke made the gauntlet with Clint Eastwood. Like it's 1977. It's she's about to become a very well-known person in Hollywood. And it's like a pretty, it's like a sexy, weird, almost psychedelic at times. Like like torture sex movie. It's fascinating. And that is the thing is that like you at its basis level, that's what it is. That's what it is. But at the end, when she's playing a judge, it has like this sense of theatricality to it that just that goes so far beyond the material, you can't help but be impressed by it and by her. The gambler? Yeah. Cinematograph, cinematograph, radiance, all getting a lot of love here. Oh, look at that. There we go. Wow, hold it up. Double up on gambler. My dad took me to see this in 1974. I was nine. So dad took me to see this in the movie theaters when I was nine. And I can and I remember it. I remember seeing the movie and I remember like asking the questions when the movie was over. Like, Daddy, why did he? Why did he sacrifice so much for so little? I do what I really remember from it is the sense of dread. You know, the just that sense of dread when you're when you're in over your head and you're making it worse, that compulsion to make it worse. Great movie, Carol Reese movie. Great. Again, I've had a bad DVD of this on my shelf for 25 years. This is a big one. This is a long desired one that people want it forever. I wonder if this is a bit of a keystone to some of your writing. Oh, the gambler, which is like about a character who's a very sophisticated, well read person who is also kind of trapped by based desires, addictions, obsessions. This movie about gambling, you know, famously remade with Mark Wahlberg, a film that Chris and I think is fascinating. I admire quite a bit. Really? Yeah. I thought it was just considered a total misfire. It is considered that by most. But there's a lot going on in there. I don't think it has a kind of like a cruel picture. There's a lot going on. Yeah. James Cahn, man. He's the greatest. James Cahn, such a force. You know, we recently did a Godfather and Godfather 2 rewatch, which we'll probably get into later in the week. Two really misses. James Cahn, he's such a force of nature. You know, he's such a such a whirlwind, just a charisma machine. He just a tractor beam. He's really something to watch. That's something I've sort of realized recently is that I don't know that he obviously like it's something people don't know who James Cahn is. But the more I've gone back and watched earlier movies like this one, I am like, oh, he's should be spoken in the same breath as De Niro and Puccino. Like he has that level of charisma and ability and his choices are incredible. Like he and it's an incredible also an incredible movie about. It feels dangerous to. Yeah. Which is maybe why he's not thought of like those guys like he has like an edge to him. That maybe they were like, is that just what he's like? It feels authentic rather than studied where maybe like De Niro is like studied it. But like James Cahn playing Jake Lamada is like a different animal than De Niro maybe. But it's yours completely right there. And there is also something I love a movie having a part of my brain that understands that. Thankfully, I've never seen but that understands that level of like going on tilt or the attraction to making it worse. I'm always very. I always really respond to movies that have that thing that that really gets you to feel like what it is like to go on tilt. Like Uncut Gems, I think is a really good example of that this California split. Those movies that are just like why didn't they just stop or the last moment of California split with him being at the apex of everything he's been looking for and then being like. This is it. Like this is the thing. I it didn't do anything like, oh, fuck, this is bad news. You know what I mean? I love that. I love films that examine that idea. I think one of the reasons why he's maybe not held in the exact same esteem is because he, you know, De Niro and Pachino also have quieter 1980s and then they have these big comebacks in the 90s and Cahn never quite got that. But there's some really good. Con performances in the 80s, like obviously thief first and foremost, but like Gardens of Stone, I think is like the opposite of what we're describing. Very internal, quiet, copal movie that like not a lot of people have seen that I always point to to be like, there's different shades to these directors, these actors and these guys from this period of time looking at that sense of mortality that I think they're all starting to feel at that period. One of my faves. You know, all those guys at some point started to kind of trade on their persona for comedic purposes, right? And Con did that earlier than the rest of them, where he did become a kind of, eh, by the big, you know, this kind of guy. Sometimes to good effect. I'm not saying it wasn't, but I wonder if it didn't rob him of some opportunity or maybe he just wasn't getting the kind of opportunities those guys were getting. Yeah. Because he certainly seemed to make the most of them when he did get those opportunities. Well, he worked a ton in the 90s. I mean, the program rules. But like he did, like he did it in Mickey Blue Eyes, for example. That was a movie that like he was kind of trading on that, but it didn't quite have the same like meet the parents level explosive hit quality. Anyway, we're talking a lot about James Conn. My pick is John Singleton's hood trilogy. Nice. From the Criterion Collection, which is really fascinating. Of course, you would expect the Criterion Collection to pick Boys in the Hood for the collection because it's one of the landmark 90s films, one of the most important black American movies ever made. You know, a beloved movie that launched John Singleton into like a huge career in Hollywood. But what I love about the choice is that it also features poetic justice and Baby Boy, which are two of his best movies that I think to like a certain segment of the audience that was tuned into what he was doing at the time. They really care about, but are like really underserved historically by places like the Criterion Collection. Right. Baby Boy especially, which I think for the longest time is only available on DVD. I've never seen it. I haven't seen it. Such a good movie, Tyrese, a phenomenal Bing Rames performance in the movie. It's like a real, like classical melodrama in a lot of ways, but also really funny movie. And I wish that higher learning was in this set as well, because that's the other film of his that like I watched over and over again as a kid. And I really love the like outsized, almost like Douglas Circe in quality to a lot of his movies. Like he really does like old school, dramatic fifties Hollywood style productions, but in the world of these characters. And like they're just not, they're hardly any movies in this like LA milieu in the 90s and 2000s. So it's like, you might think that they're attempting to like class up something, but they're it's the opposite. Like to me, this gives such like definition and shape to what the Criterion Collection should be and can be. And they're also like, they're studio movies. They're not, they're meant to be like crowd pleasing and entertaining and interesting. Like, poetic justice is Janet Jackson and Tupac. Like a road trip on a road trip. And like giving, I think they're two best performances. I just think that this is like signals a path for where we can go once we get past like the Janice films, hundred year history of international cinema. Like there's a lot that's happened in the last 30 years that needs to be like mined and supported and lifted up. Yeah. So it's a really good job of contextualizing three movies that maybe at every day people don't associate with each other. Like they know that he directed them, but they don't think of it as a piece of work like that. Exactly. That they're connected in a way. In the same way that like we think of like Tarantino's movies as being connected to each other. Anyway, next pet Chris. John Borman's X caliber, which just came out in this Deluxe Arrow edition. It's a movie from 1981. It's about it's John Borman's big swing. I'm going to make a King Arthur movie. And it is something that like my dad showed me when I was kid. That was like an object of like complete obsession for me. But because I was more to King Arthur and like Arthurian legend and the idea of the swords and the stone and all that stuff. It's like that really interesting thing that happens with some movies from your childhood where you remember like you watched it a lot because you cared about what it was about. And then all of a sudden somewhere along the line, it becomes because you care about the movie, you know, and because you care about the director or because you care about the actors in it. That's happened with this. Some notable people in this, Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Nicole Williamson plays Merlin. It's really cool performance, pretty hammy. This is something that didn't look this fucking good when I was kid. You know, obviously we had boxier TVs and then, you know, VHS that was of dubious quality. This is an almost a reimagining of the movie to my eyes. And it kind of took me back to like seeing it for the first time. So you have watched this. Yeah, it's fucking intense. It's beautiful. You have been talking about it for like 10 years, though, as a movie that you love. But yeah, well, it's also notably the first time I ever saw people have sex on screen was in this movie. Gabriel. Buddy, do I have some films for you? But Gabriel Byrne has sex with a woman while wearing a full suit of armor, which I still haven't quite figured out the mechanics of that. But you've been attempting to recreate it for years. But yeah, this is this is a wonderful pickup. My last one might be controversial because I'm on the big picture, but I think it to I brought it to you did. OK, it is. But I think it speaks to something that we talk about. And that is I believe this is the Italian. No, this is from the UK. It's zero, zero, zero. It's like the Blu-ray of zero, zero, zero, which I don't believe. This is an important thing to talk about. I don't think you can stream this. It was a prime video original. Yes, that is no longer on prime video. It does not. It is not available. I'm delighted to say I've never heard of this. I don't even know what this is. This is what eight episodes. Limited series, limited series that kind of came out. I think it came out during the pandemic. During covid. And so it got a little bit covid memory hold has incredible. It's about the cartel and their cocaine business, the shipping and the shipping company that is attempting to get it to the Italian mafia. And it is those three stories told over the course of eight episodes. Andrea Rinesboro, Dane DeHaan, Gabriel Burns, speaking of fucking in a in a suit of armor and a gentleman whose name I can't remember, but who plays like the guy who tries to take over the cartel. Michael Pena. So Michael. No, it's a guy. It's a mixing actor. I haven't seen you do a lot. Honestly, one of the best performances I've ever seen and also one of the most terrifying, it is it's incredible. It is something that even as I was watching it during covid, especially during covid, I was the head this feeling of I don't know that this will ever get made again. The amount of actual location shooting they were doing. Landing helicopters on shipping on shipping vessels in the middle of the ocean, the level of violence that's in it. It is an unbelievable series that you just can't see anymore. And from what I understand, there is an Italian cut. There is, yeah. That doesn't do as much handholding for the audience. Yeah, I haven't seen that. I'd read about it when I bought this disc. This is this crazy period of Amazon where they were just kind of throwing money around. This is also the time period that produced Tool to Die Young, the Nicholas Winding Refn, Miles Teller thing, which is just a complete fever dream. Stefano Salima directed a bunch of these episodes who did Gomorrah and Dan Veselado. Just an awesome, awesome TV series. I watched the first two episodes as I have with most shows that Chris has recommended, enjoyed it and thought, I'll get back to that at some point. But that was exactly what I was going to say, which is it's just an artifact of a very recent history in artists racing towards opportunity and taking advantage of corporate circumstances in very interesting ways. And I do think that as we talk about film preservation, especially in a streaming era where stuff can just be pulled off and memory hold and no longer found, I kind of think this is going to end up being something that we'll be looking into in the future of. I had this one gave me kind of chills when this came off of Amazon and prompted me to think differently about picking up stuff like it. Series is like that, that seemed like international co-pros that got bought by a streamer for a finite amount of time. That if it's available, I'll grab it if I loved it because you just really never know if the rights come up again, if anybody's going to bother. Yeah, like I do have a copy of Station 11 on 4K for that reason. Yeah, you know, who knows? Am I up? You're up. All right, I'm going to dive into this. This is from my friends at Second Run, which is a UK label. This is a trilogy of films by Isvan Jabo. I'm sure I'm not saying that correctly. Sounds pretty close. They all star Klaus Maria Brandauer. They're all on Blu-ray, but one of them perhaps on Blu-ray for the first time. If I were making Mount Rushmore for film performance, Klaus Maria Brandauer in Mephisto is on it. I think it's one of the great film performances ever filmed. Can you tell people what the setup for that film is? Because it's a really interesting movie. It's basically a foused story about an actor in Nazi Germany who's selling his soul in order to be a successful actor in Nazi Germany. And it's based on a true story and it's horrible and heartbreaking and fascinating. And Brandauer is just amazing in it. Do you think there are any current day comps to what that might feel like selling your soul? I have no idea what you're talking about. No idea what you're talking about. Can't think of any. I've not seen those other two films. Mephisto is amazing. You should see him. Connison is pretty great. Okay. Do you want company in the perverted category? Please God, Sean, I'm out here on an island. So this comes from the Fine People at Umbrella Entertainment, which is a Australian company. This is what has been defined here and I don't know I had ever seen it described this way as the day of the woman set. This is I Spent on Your Grave and I Spent on Your Grave Déjà Vu. Now I'm not yet seen I Spent on Your Grave Déjà Vu, which is a follow up to the original film. Please tell me it doesn't document the same characters. Oh God. Déjà Vu. I'll find out when I see the film. I Spent on Your Grave is a 78 movie directed by Mir Zarqui. It is one of the rape revenge texts. It is like been studied far and wide. It is a very violent, scary, sad movie, but it is a movie that like really centers a woman taking revenge on the people who assaulted her and features incredible performances, especially Camille Keaton as the star of the movie. You know, the movie's been remade a couple of times. It was remade in the 2010s. But when you're trying to understand the history of violence on screen, I feel like this is an essential movie. There are lured thrills in the movie and that like you can see the movie was made with that intention, but that the filmmakers are also subterraneously doing something socially with what it's trying to portray and do. And this is another movie that was hard to find for a while. You can find it on VHS, you can find it in video stores for sure, and was passed around amongst sickos discovering horror movies over time. But this set is pretty crazy and there's just a tremendous amount of work that's been put into it. Similarly has like a huge booklet with several essays. If you've ever wanted postcards featuring day of the woman, you want those. Maybe I'll send you a stuntman one and you send me that's a good idea. Nice. The postcards that come in these books, I remember talking to a friend of mine about they had like given me like a nice bottle of wine for a birthday or something. And they asked if I had I said, no, I'm like saving it for a special occasion. They told and this is going to be way too heavy a story when it comes to postcards that come in blue Ray boxes. But they were like, I actually recently had a friend who was diagnosed with cancer and he was a wine collector and they had all this wine. And because he had limited time left, they were just like cracking bottles at breakfast because he had never and was not going to have the opportunity to taste these. And really like what it came down to was drink the wine. Don't wait for a special occasion. Just drink it. And so I think I'm just saying that I apply that same sort of thing to those postcards. It's like, oh, I got to keep those in there. Those are special. Oh, yeah. I can put a stamp on them. You know what? I mean, this is how we make friends as adult men. You got to get in there, Tracy, with those postcards. You program. Oh, I didn't know this was coming. Coming my way. Well, we're sharing postcards. So yeah, I can share. Oh, God, you're a dear son. And then you made it as a job. Like, you know what? I met somebody at a party. And I wanted to talk to them more and we didn't have the opportunity. And I'm going to send them a postcard. You know what I mean? This is how we make connections in the modern world. Nice. How are you feeling about making friends at this stage of your life? You've made a couple of references here. Like, I don't. Well, dear friends around this table. Yeah, really lovely. Chris, you're up. It's the day of the woman, man. Don't worry about it. It will be momentarily, actually. My last one is. Was that one too perverse? No, it's just like kind of repetitive with some of the other stuff. I grab Red Rooms, which is one of the best movies of this decade, I think. And one of the most relevant movies of this decade. It's from Utopia. I know that this is another example on the flip of the zero, zero, zero conversation, a film that a French Canadian like Harth Riller, that Sean and I both love that you really cannot speak enough about because I think this is Pascal Plante is a very, very powerful filmmaker and I cannot wait to see what he does next. Who put that out? Utopia. Utopia. And not a lot of special features, nor do you need them. It's a great looking movie. And I just wanted to make sure it didn't fall through the cracks. I was going to ask you guys how you approach buying recent releases. Do you think, OK, I got to get Oppenheimer or whatever, like as soon as it hits 4K, do you wait for something special to come along in terms of it's an addition? Because I'm sort of like in my head about like, do I need to buy a movie that I saw 18 months ago or 24 months ago? And this feels so much more historical and archival. And then when I buy something from 2023, I'm like, I'm glad I got it. But this was just when I was worried about it falling through the cracks of streaming. I have an answer to that question. I'm obviously like trying to collect complete filmographies of many filmmakers at this point. And so I was thinking about, do I need to be spending money on Bagonia, which is a movie I liked but didn't love, wasn't like in my top 10 or anything like that. But I'm just interested in Yorgo Salonthimos and interested in having a stack that just is all of his movies. And I'm like, am I going to spend forty five dollars on a steel book of Bagonia, a movie that I like, maybe we'll watch one more time before I die. And the answer is no. But I am going to get it at some point. And the movies like that to the point about big studios putting movies out, I'm like, I'll just wait until this movie is on sale at some point in the next two years. And it will happen. And it'll be eleven ninety nine. And I'll and I'll I'll get it at that point in for my sense, sake of completism. But that's and that's been my strategy with newer stuff, unless it is in the one battle after another sphere where I'm just like, I'm just auto preordering it no matter what, I'm going to pay top dollar. Like I just want it. It matters to me in a way that like a movie like Bagonia does not. Yeah, I was kind of thinking this would fall almost more like do you buy the Christopher's as soon as it comes out or something, because it's like a Steven Soderbergh movie. And in any case, if you guys don't know about Red Rooms, if you missed me and Sean talking about it before Sean and Naiman talking about it before, I found out about it because of Sean and Adam. If you like Fincher, if you like Olivia Seyes, if you like Lynch, I would highly recommend it. Remember for sure. It's just yeah, incredible. Kerry and I watched it. We didn't know anything about it. It was one of our favorite movies of the year. We watched the Utopia disc too. And I don't buy everything new. I don't have a consistent. I mean, I did buy Bagonia because it's like, well, I'd rather see it in 4K than watch it on the Academy Streaming app. I'd rather give it a more of a shot than that. You know, one battle after another, we really wanted to see on the big screen. But timing in our lives, we weren't able to do that. And so we have a big screen in the house. But again, I wanted to wait for the 4K to watch it as opposed to the Academy Streaming app. So some of them I buy, some of them I don't. I've made some bad decisions over the years doing that, but I live with it. That's how I wind up with his copy of Wrath of Man. One weird thing I just want to say very quickly before we get away from Red Rooms. I watched this movie, Myland Kicks recently, Chandler LaVax movie. And Juliet Gareppi is in that movie, The Woman from Red Rooms. And it was like seeing like Freddy Krueger. In like a comedy, like it just didn't. Because that actress is so singular in that movie, the idea of like seeing her in another environment was super confusing. Nina Gore from Eastern Gate is in a Charlie XCX movie coming up soon. And I was just like, this doesn't feel right. You're supposed to be shooting your boyfriend in the face. Sorry, I interrupted you, Tim. Well, no, I was just going to say, I was very rudely looking at my phone a moment ago, because I don't know if I this is like a tweet that I saw a couple of years ago that I love that I may have actually read the last time. And if so, I apologize and you can cut this out. But it is a joke where it's like essentially a conversation between a filmmaker and vinegar syndrome filmmaker. This is my worst movie beyond reclamation, serious, but only for true, sicko, completists who will never see the light of God. Not even I will watch this again. Vinegar syndrome now available in limited edition, $40 media book slip case with 40 page booklet. And there is so much of this that of what we do that is summed up in this. Like this is irredeemable garbage. And also I have the nicest presentation of that irredeemable garbage possible. That is from somebody named Ashley. Nuff Nuff tool on Twitter, I believe. OK, so you you've all done all five now. So you're you're up now. And I cheated. I got a couple more extras. This is also from Umbrella. This is Suicide Club. Haven't seen this 4K. You haven't seen this. Is this the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've seen this movie now. Yeah, but not in a long time. It's upsetting. It's hilarious. And ultimately, surprisingly, it's very moving. For my money, it treads some of the same ground as audition. But I think I think I prefer Suicide Club to audition. I'll check it out. I'll just describe the opening to the film. There's a busy train station in Tokyo, and you just see people milling around almost documentary style, busy train station there, all two different types. And these schoolgirls arrive at the train station to take the train. And fifty four. And they're sort of sailor suits. Fifty four schoolgirls step forward in the train. And as the train is approaching, they hold hands and jump onto the train tracks and are immediately massacred. Suicide Club. What's wrong with us, man? As long as we're. Irving out, I think I should mention Russ Meyer, some of his work has become available on 4K. Yeah. Thanks to the good people at Severin. And I really like Russ Meyer. And. Kerry likes Russ Meyer. I've shown her a couple of these movies now and she's really enjoyed them. They're very funny. And we really enjoy the film. The presentation of these movies is absolutely gorgeous on 4K. You never thought you would get it. I've even got both Kerry and the nanny, Russ Meyer, Busamania T-shirts that Severin and they wear them. And they're great conversation pieces. I'll love wearing their Russ Meyer shirts. School pick up. Russ Meyer is like a perfect. Saint for this conversation, because as a filmmaker, one of the most impressive and accomplished independent directors in American history and also a guy who just loves a big rack, like all of these movies are just like these gals are stacked and I am into it and I'm not afraid to talk about it and show it to you explicitly. Also, watch me move the camera and cut like Steven Spielberg. It is an amazing, weird collision of like, I'll say, heterosexual impulse. And, you know, there's been an argument ever since these movies first came out about the feminist impulse and Kerry and the nanny can speak on that because they're not simply, it's not a simple matter. It's not complex. Something else going on there. I didn't know that this was going to happen, but I'm not mad that it happens. We seem to be going through something collectively. Yeah. Yeah. OK, hold on. I got one more. Oh, you got one more. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. So this is the good fellow who bought Hammer Films. I bought it a couple of years ago and they've started releasing these Hammer films. I mean, you've got dictionaries at home that are not as big as this edition of the Curse of Frankenstein. Now, you'll notice that this isn't open because I thought we'd have a little unboxing boy scene. Right. This is titillating. Jebediah unboxing. You've just said all of the smoke alarm. I think the D.H. Department of Homeland Security found us. Bill Simmons fucking heard part of this recording and pulled. I think the FBI is coming through the doors for Tim. A fire emergency reported in the building. Please evacuate the building by the nearest exit. Jack, how does this keep happening? Well, I have to pee. There has been an unboxing boy, an emergency in the building. Oh, my goodness. I've been trying to revive Gerard de Berge. All right. So I'm my name is Jebediah unboxing, and I am the unboxing boys. Older brother. I don't think I've given the unboxing boy a first name. If it if you're Jebediah, maybe I'm. Oh, look at this. Look at this. Wow. That is that is gorgeous. The other side. Vintage poster. Yeah. Yes. What do we have inside here? We just bought. I can't believe you did this for us and not your son. The books of Frankenstein, volume one, a very replete booklet. Here's the curse of Frankenstein, the horror classic as a graphic novel. That's cool. Hmm. Postcards, postcards. Maybe I'll send some of these to my friend. Sweet poster. Oh, is that French poster Italian? Yeah, French. There you go. I don't need to unwrap this. God damn poster. And then look at the discs. How many we got there? My goodness. What, 12, six, six. The widescreen UK theatrical version, full screen as film version, widescreen US theatrical AR, widescreen UK theatrical version, full screen as film version, widescreen US theatrical AR special and two discs of special features. You got to get a padded room if you watch all of this. How much could a person love this film? My son loves it. A great deal. Will he watch all of these versions? Right now, we wouldn't know the difference between the versions, right? But maybe he'll get to that point. Anyway, Hammer is putting out just these delicious boxes. Thanks to a guy who has a lot of money, who bought a company and decided that this is the way he wanted to spend his money, as opposed to some asshole who buys social media company and decides that's how he wants to spend his money. Yes, Sam Altman just fucking really zero, zero, zero. That's right. Yeah. Step it up. Yeah. Do something good for the world. Is what I can say. And we don't have to belabor it because I know there's time constraint that I don't think is going to rival Tracy's trench run take. Here we go. I don't know if I give a fuck about Frankenstein. Wow. I think there's just a part of me that my entire life I've watched all these Frankenstein movies, including last year, and it has nothing to do with the film or the filmmakers. I just like. Or Oscar Isaacs pants. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's an essential problem with Frankenstein. And I love Frankenstein. I'm there, but there is an essential problem. This guy has discovered how to bring dead people back to life. And they're just going to like kill him and throw him out of the villa. He's got to like find equipment and build it. Why would you not like give this guy a big grant? Why would you not let Frankenstein cook? It's it's it's a it's a fair point. Obviously, the original intention is a fear of science, right? And in a God fearing community, the man who has control over life and death is dangerous and not to be celebrated. It feels like also like the that that take might be like sort of like like when Megan McCain is posting pictures of Bob the Butcher being like, all this is all of America this week. And it's like, shit, did you watch the same movie? And that was the bad guy where you're like there's a little bit of this. Like the thing is the thing about Frankenstein is that he played God and nobody rewarded him. We're both sizing Frankenstein. OK, two more for me as well. You mentioned you watched In the Realm of the Senses. This is a set I've not had a chance to dig into yet, but I'm very excited to, which is called Radical Japan. It is cinema in state. It is seven films directed by Nagisa Oshima, the Japanese director of In the Realm of the Senses, who made some of the most confrontational politically and socially aggressive movies in Japan in the 60s, 70s and 80s into the 90s, I believe. And this collects seven of his movies. A couple of them are fairly well known death by hanging specifically is in the Criterion Collection. But a lot of these films are not often seen. The man who left his will on film, boy, diary of a Shinjuku thief that are like all effectively looking at different aspects of Japanese society and training a very intense lens on them. I'm very excited to dig into this. I want to give it a shout. It is now sold out, as I understand it at Radiance, but hopefully they will print up some more and let people discover these movies. Because in the realm of the senses, split my head open when I saw it earlier this year. Fantastic film. It really is. He's also the director of one of my favorite movies of all time, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Yes. It's a great movie available in the Criterion Collection. The last one I want to shout out comes to us from our friends at Fun City. It's called Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. Yeah. Some of the best movies about music and bands. And this is a fake band that, you know, led by Diane Lane. Another movie that I think was like very much a cult classic for many years and now has been restored majestically to 4K. I'm not get the box. I don't I'm pissed off. I apparently got a standard edition when I definitely would have liked a limited edition. It also features a poster, but it does not feature any postcards. But this is no postcard. No post. How are you supposed to have any friends? You can't have a friend. Diane Lane postcard sending me. I don't know, but long live Tony Thrills. And yeah, that's that those are our top five, six, sevens. And some of these stories, Respect Women and Understand Women. Yeah. Some don't. Some a little less. Some less so. Russ Meyer is in the respect category. I agree. Speaking of women. There there we have there's a woman is present. A woman is she has not been present the entire time. Does that woman want to be named? Well, I thought it was going to be funnier if I just said the first question. Oh, John, you know, you know, it's OK. The first question is from John. I'm here. I've sort of been listening. I've also been doing my expenses and preparing for other podcasts. I've learned a lot about you all, and I think you're very respectful towards the female form. Thank you. In physical media and in all other forms. OK, I'm here to ask questions. The first question is from John. Your soul is being transferred onto Blu-ray and you will be put on your shelf with the rest of your collection. You get to choose where on the shelf you will live for an eternity. Will you wedge yourself between two beloved films or hide away in a far corner? What will be your eternal resting place? Well, that's a totally normal question. That's actually Cronen Berge and the idea of your final form existing in one of these boxes. I I have such little like love and respect for myself that there's no way I would like wedge myself between two filmmakers. There's no chance. I think I would even if I was on disc form, I'd still want to be buried somewhere is how I feel about this. I am I think ultimately and this is maybe more for my family, but is also a little bit of like we all want to be remembered. I would get one of those little stand up things and it like on the shelf or above the fireplace, it would just be placed on the little stand up thing. Yeah, like a Mickey Mantle rookie. Yeah, like a little Mickey Mantle rookie Carter, whatever, just like fuck like a war boy, witness me. That's what I do. I think I would just be happy to be slid in, do a bunch of Freedkins, you know, just the book of C.R. just like the book of Frank Stein, you know, and just between bug and killer joke. Yeah, sure, man. Nice. I'll go by the Russmeyer collection. And then my when my kids come to check that out later in life. I'll be right there. I was like, oh, there's dad. Dad, there's also. Yeah, we all decide. Super Vixen. Vixen bosoms. Don't be mad when they pick that one. Do you? Like I'll unbox dad in a minute. Do you have a favorite Meyer Vixen? You mean. I mean, troop actress. Yeah, a front. No, I don't have a favorite. I do. It's Erica Gavin. Next question, please. Understandable. This is totally normal so far. The next question is from Ian. How do you organize your Blu-rays? Personally, mine are in chronological order by release date because I'm a psychopath. On a side note, a woman I'm dating picked a movie for my collection for us to watch after a date last week. She went with total recall. She's a keeper. Ian, congrats on dating a woman. I'd love to know what her other choices were, though. Uh, we haven't discussed this. I just go alphabetical by title. I don't have, I'm not putting up the numbers yet to be like filmmaker or genre or anything like that, but I would love to get there one day. I'm alphabetical at one point on the shelves. The criterions were by spine number, but when it started spilling into the next shelf, I was like, I just got to go alphabetical. Mm hmm. I would love to. I just don't know that I have the executive function to be able to find anything. If it were somehow by filmmaker, and then what if you only have a movie that's, you only have one movie by that filmmaker? Yeah, where does that go? You know, where does that go? Yeah. Then you're doing alphabetical and other things. Just go alphabetical. I like putting all the radiance discs together. Like I think there's an argument to be made for by label, but how do you do it? Wrong. I do it wrong. And I'm, I'm about to undergo a massive reorganization, I think, uh, because it's wrong. It's mainly by label, uh, stuff that isn't in on interesting labels is alphabetical. Uh, but the nanny recently watched, uh, Spy who came in from the cold and she didn't watch the 4k and I was enraged by this because it was so poorly organized. She didn't know there was a 4k. How dare she? She watched it on the blue right. She allowed to make a selection for herself. This was not programmed by you. I was going, I mean, like she, you know, right, she's picking movies for herself right now. So yeah, the fact that she watched Spy who came in from the cold and didn't see the 4k was hurt me. I like what she's cooking though, by just choosing that film. That's a great choice. I also mean, it's wild to me that this person is still in your employ. Uh, I've spoke of this before. I organized by director sort of by preference of director, but that was something that was started more than a decade ago. And I've changed living environments multiple times through that strategy. And I have to rethink it completely. And then there is the looming Amanda Riorg, which often threatened, but unfollowed through on, I think, cause that's like a nine day project. And Amanda just doesn't have the time. So she knows deep down she better off more than she can chew. Um, but I got to figure something else out too, because I also do know I'm fully in double stacking era. Like I am now it's beyond the beyond. I am investigating with my AV man putting movies on a server. He's, he's going to start doing it. I've given him a couple of stacks of stuff that is not watched much to put on a server. And he's going to show me sort of a prototype for how this would work. Like a Plex situation. I like, I don't know that it's that, but like, is this a private technology that's been developed for you? Not necessarily though. I have a very good AV man. You know, he was Milo Schformans AV man. A lot of people don't know this, but Milo Schforman was a collector, was a physical media no doubt and had a quite an extensive collection. How will you decide whether or not there's any degradation by moving it to digital? He insists there's not. I'm, I can tell, I can tell obvious changes. I can't tell. I'm not, I don't have that thing. I, right. I, I can tell when it looks like a reference quality. Yeah. Does your AV man travel? He probably would. Ooh. You want to, you want to bring my AV man out? But I don't know if this works though. I don't know if you guys building your own streaming libraries is really honoring the physical media. I would never give up the disks. That's my thing. I would never give up the disks. It's not like I'm throwing them away. Then you would pack them away maybe. Yeah. There's some things that I, that don't necessarily warrant display. Yeah. It would get packed into a storage area. Okay. Man. Okay. I'll let you know how it would be great to have the AV man on the next episode. The good idea. I, I don't know if I can do what you're describing, but I do need a new system entirely. I need to do space. I asked him by the way, if he wanted a shot on the show and he said, you know, we only work by appointment only. Yeah. By recommendation, recommendation. No kidding. Yeah. Wow. Wow. He's like a drug dealer. Um, okay. What's the next question? I promised that I wouldn't insert my own opinions into this. So we're just going to keep going. I never go into the promise. I did. Sean said that this had to be a safe space. So I love you all and I support you. Um, Johan from Sweden. What is your most anticipated release that's been announced for 2026? I thought we could quickly talk about the near dark situation. Oh yeah. That went, that was one of the tangerine dream lesser known soundtracks run that we had. And how did you watch it? You just rent it? I honestly, I don't even know if it's available for rental. Oh, I have a Blu-ray. It's not great. And is it a U.S. produced? It is U.S. produced, but it's old. Okay. There was an announcement maybe a year ago that this was in process. And then on April Fool's Day, I want to say it was, was it Severin who announced that they had been working on it? And then people could not figure out if it was a joke, if it was a joke or not. What a weird thing to joke about. And I know, but to, to our community, near dark is one of the precious few kind of lost to physical masterpieces, right? Yeah. I mean, Catherine Bigelow's earliest films, one of the, we've talked about it multiple times on the show. Um, and I still don't really have answers on like that news that came on April 1st, if it's real or not, or if we're being fucked with, but there's like a fairly elaborate communication from the owner of a physical media company about the process that they're exploring. It seems fake to me, but then there were some who suggested, well, it seems like a bit, but it's actually not a bit. So I'm, I'm a little bit confused about it, but that's one that if it were happening, I've had that circled in red pen for 10 years. Any others? The general Buster Keaton coming out on 4k from Eureka, uh, just next month. I'm very excited about that. The outfit 4k coming from Aero. Uh, we'll talk about that on the Duval draft, uh, HUD from Criterion, long, right? That's been a white whale for a long time. HUD and, uh, Alice doesn't live here anymore. Also from Criterion. Those are some biggies. Those, there you go. In the same year we were getting boxcarbertha and Alice doesn't live here anymore, which I think are, are they the final two Scorsese films that were not available on Blu-ray or 4k? I think they are. Makes sense. Um, and he's for you, Tim. I don't have the executive function really to keep track of things that are coming up, but I am excited about the outfit, which you told me and then I forgot. And now I'm remembering and that's great. I don't mind sharing that my, my owning a DVD copy of the outfit was my earliest in with Quentin Tarantino. When I met Quentin, he was like, have you seen the outfit? And I sent him a photograph of my DVD copy. And I think that that was like, oh, okay, you're cool. And because that movie, which is directed by John Flynn, who also made Rolling Thunder, which is one of his favorites. Maybe we've talked about many times, um, is just an absolute stunner of a crime thriller from the seventies. What's, what are you anticipating? I liked him. I'm not like trawling for like really states. I let, I let the game come to me. Interesting. I think I like that attitude. I don't understand it really. Uh, I mean, it's just, I can't also be on top of that. That's like, I feel like I'm kind of like almost early 27, knowing what's coming out on TV. So it's like, we can't keep on top of that because he's first chair on the watch because he's trying to be first chair on the rewatchables. Because he's maybe spread a little thin. That's true. It's true. That is a absolute dirty pool. And I don't respect it. I'm not going to dignify it. Can I tell you the movies that I have on pre-order right now? Yeah. Yeah. Moneyball 4k. My beloved was supposed to be arriving in my house April 28th. That's today. It got pushed back by Amazon to May 12th. And I'm not happy about it, but arriving on May 12th as well, Fight Club, 4K Steel. Oh, yes. That one. Extremely excited. You got to try to get off the Amazon pipe. It's hard, but I know. But with those releases, there's not a lot of politics or because of like just they screw over the release dates and they're because of politics because of it's terrible. I generally agree with you. Speed Racer 4K May 19th. The cars that ate Paris and the plumber 4K Peter Weir films. And then along with that bundle, I ordered from the atomic movie store, Benedetta 4K from Paul Verhoeven. There you go, brother. Benedetta fucking rules. Yeah. Great movie. Fucking rules. Great movie. Yeah. And the one battle steelbook, which I still don't have. I'm still waiting. I don't know either. Is that delayed or something? It was delayed to June 2nd. So let's sit here quietly with my. Wait a minute. Do I have the steelbook or do I just have a regular? Presumably you have a regular edition. Looks good, by the way. Question reader. Would you want to be identified by name? Whatever you think works. Are you the executive producer of this episode? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You want that credit on your CV forever? I do, because once again, I think that you guys have been really respectful to women and to cinema. You know, you lift us up every day. Yeah. There's women in red rooms. And so. Yeah. This is the Busa Mania episode. Executive produced by Amanda Dobbins. So, you know, as like any good girl boss, I'd like credit for that. The next question is from Gabriel. Who are some directors or actors whose history feels like they are being forgotten by current generations and could use an arrow or criterion, etc. a box set to help regain a new generation of viewers? Well, I'll jump in here. I had this listed on my White Whales as well. Paul Mazurski is one of my favorite directors, and he's wildly underserved on physical media. Harry and Tonto. My God, just release it. So I do all these fucking people bitching about Al Pacino, not winning the Academy Award can see that Art Carney was cooking. Blumen love, Alex in Wonderland, the Tempest, Next Stop Greenwich Village. This is his whole 70s run. Almost the entirety of his 70s run is not available, even on blue, much less 4K. Really? What the hell, man? We've talked about this before. Next Stop Greenwich Village does have a Twilight time, I think, but all of those other titles are not even available on blue right at all. It's kind of a mess. And it's, you know, some of his films like Moscow on the Hudson, there's a nice indicator, right? There's a couple of titles that have, but, you know, in that realm of like kind of second tier, you know, ator comic voices from that period of time, like working in the mold of like a Woody Allen type. And like these movies are kind of forgotten. Or Hal Ashby, who's very well represented. And yet I think of Ashby and Mazursky in the same sentence. Like it speaks to, I think, to the way that like some people just get canonized and others don't. And there's the other example that I think of all the time, and we mentioned this, Amanda, when we talked about Meryl Streep is Mike Nichols, who is considered a much more sort of like hallowed and legendary filmmaker. But when you go back and look at all of the movies that he made, especially his movies in the 70s and 80s, like there are a lot of them are not available on anything beyond DVD. Or if they're available on blue right, like they were very limited runs of blue rays, so like Silkwood and Heartburn and, you know, Bluxy Blues, I think just came from Shout Select in the last couple of years, but that was not available for a long time. Catch 22 just came out on a Shout Select as well, which is a underrated movie as far as I'm concerned. And I think last time we were all together, we talked about Cardinal Knowledge and that coming from two different places. And like it's, you know, in 2025, they're kind of finally getting around to a bunch of these movies. So he's one I think of all the time. And it's kind of inexplicable. Like these were big studio movies and then they just never got that attention. I think it's postcards from the edge. Is that also not available on blue right? I don't think so. That I mean, that's crazy. That's are you serious? Yeah. So there's a, I don't know if there's anybody else that you guys are thinking of that you think. No, not really. I mean, like, you know, when I first got into this, I was like, oh, there's no way like these 10 VHS classics from my childhood will ever have like deluxe really, and they all have, you know, like there's like a deluxe edition of Rad. You know, like. Yeah. So I feel like it would be hard for me to think of there are directors that I would like to see centered as the sort of principle of the release rather than maybe the title. Like I would love to like get like a bunch of McTiernan movies that are like about him and about like what he did. But I don't know. I mean, like there's there's plenty of good releases of his movies. It's just really more about the context and what's the diehard still not on 4k. Oh my God. Like there's still there's still plenty of things like that that are just kind of no-brainers that are obvious. Like, you know, for example, Disney is waiting to put Star Wars on 4k in upset next year to match the 50th anniversary. Right. Like they're going to do that. I'll be shocked if they don't do it and they'll probably put all the versions on it. Not happening, though, is it possible? It's definitely possible. But like I was thinking about for the 76 draft, this movie, not a pretty picture. This Martha Coolidge kind of documentary slash scripted exploration of sexual assault, which is a really fascinating interesting movie that was effectively like retrieved and saved and reconstituted by the criterion collection. Then I was looking at her career and it's like a lot of her movies have been issued over the recent years, like Cinematograph to Joy of Sex, Valley Girls available, Real Genius has a 4k. Like, does the filmmaker do you think like, well, Martha Coolidge, we need to do more work to protect her. But you know, Rambling Rose, like all these movies have nice additions of them. And then Mike Nichols doesn't have Blue Rays for a bunch of his movies. So it's just a very capricious kind of business and you don't totally always understand why this happens. Anyway, what's next? This one comes from Andrew. This is a big one. I hope you guys are ready. I hope you got your Tom Cruise emails ready. My TV just broke. It's time to upgrade. I want to hear from each of you. What is your full AV setup? TV projector, audio and 4k player, seating, lighting, popcorn maker. Give me the full details. Popcorn maker. I don't have a popcorn maker. Do you have a microwave? I do. Yeah, I barely use it, but I do have a microwave. I have a pretty standard setup. I can't remember how big my Samsung TV is, but it's it's fairly large. And I bought the Sony that Sean had recommended before. There was sort of like the starter kit for multi region DVD viewing. I there's really nothing remarkable about about my setup, though. I think I have a Sony OLED. I think I went into the 80s for that, like 80. Like it's big. It feels nice. Have a soundbar, the Sonos soundbar, I think. And then, yeah, like a region free 4k player. The only thing I think in this question that I I think play stations and Xboxes can play 4ks, but I feel like Xbox specifically, which we do have has like kind of can't play the larger storage versions of 4ks, which is sort of which is why I went to the region free. 4k Sony player, the one that you recommended, just because like I think it's like if it's a hundred gigabyte disk, Xbox can't play it. And I was having trouble with that because then I wouldn't be like, well, fuck, I got to watch this Blu-ray. That's lame. The whole thing is lame. But if you want to, you know, if you want to just parse it out, playing the Blu-ray when you have the 4k is lame. So yeah, that's sort of the setup that I have. I asked my AV man what I have. I'll just say before you pull it up very quickly, if you want to upgrade from that Sony that I recommend, which is the one that I usually recommend to listeners of the show, because it's like 200 bucks and it does most of what you need. Occasionally you'll meet a 4k where you can't handle the bit rate and it's too strong. But if you want to upgrade, I think the Panasonic DP UB820, which is a region free Blu-ray player is very powerful and can do most of what you need. Yeah. What do you got? We have a flagship 7.1.4 immersive environment, meticulously architected with a full monitor audio array. This high fidelity 11 channel layout is driven by the reference grade silicon of the Morance, delivering a seamless Dolby Atmos soundstage that marries British acoustic precision with legendary musical warmth. The auditory experience is matched by a monumental 150 inch canvas illuminated by a Sony premium 4k laser projector under the unified orchestration of a Crestron control system. These elements serve as the exhibition stage for broadcast TV, high bit rate streaming and bespoke master tier digital library, the Cinema Atheneum. I'm sorry, did he write you this text message? He did. Holy shit. He also ghost wrote bug. Is that the setup that you watch? You're going to watch Kyler Murray on British acoustics. Quit checking on that. How are you feeling? Yeah. Good baby. Skull. Skull baby. Wow. You're feeling good. Skull. The draft is we're going to see. We took a couple of big swings. We're going to see. OK. I would have worn my cubs hat. I am aware it's baseball season, but my wife looks too good in it. She stole it. She stole my cubs hat. It's adorable. Well, that was information. Don't fucking stand on that. Like, can you beat that? Do you know, I put, but I'm but a popper relative to Mr. Letts. I almost it's weird how like our setups are commensurate with our station in the High Council. I'm like, I would have a TV. The next box. I haven't seen sunlight in years. This fucking guy's got like. I will tell you this rule. British war about your setup. Well, first of all, let me say this. Get an AV man. Get an AV man. What is it? You know, get a chauffeur. No, it's not a chauffeur. It's a it's worth, you know, maybe if you're a bit of a tech head and you know how to hook everything up and do all that stuff. OK. I can't hook up. I can't do critical question. You democracy falls. You got to get out of this country immediately. Maybe something for us all to consider. You can only bring one person with you, your AV man or your nanny. Who's coming with you? The nanny. OK. I have a critical question about this. What's the remote control setup? Like, is this something that you need to have like high level understanding of different channels and all this other stuff? Like, or can you just hit play and it goes? My kids can operate remote control. Well, yeah, my kids, both my kids can operate the remote control. Is it like an iPad that you have like kind of like it's no, it's just a big ass remote control, but they can get around on it. That's often the we have some disagreement in my home about how complicated the remote controls have gotten. So the first thing is get an AV man. And the second thing is whatever you spend on your visual, you should match in the audio. If your TV and your player cost six hundred dollars, you should be spending six hundred dollars on your sound system. I love a philosophy. That's nice. Um, OK, what's our next question? This comes from JD. And I'm let's be clear that I'm I'm channeling the voice of JD here. Greetings, gentlemen. I am humbled to be addressing Tim Hitmaker, Simon's Tracy, Playmaker, Letts and Chris Haymaker, Ryan in the esteemed council of physical media. Thank you, Grand Knight Fenton Fennessey with Noble Squire Sanders at your side for assembling this round table to tout the tangible rebuff buffering and elevate classics new and old to their four K glory. And of course, Lady Dobbins, who probably wants no part of this allegory, correct, but we all owe you a negroni. My question deviates from substance and instead focuses purely on the aesthetic. Do you remember a film you purchased purely for the box art, heft or style? No. You know, this, I don't really have a lot of examples of this. It does raise a question about buying things in person versus ordering online. Over the weekend, I went to the video store in part so that my daughter could pick some movies out and also to see if there was anything I wanted to buy to bring here today. And it just so turned out that at this video store, which I love, video tech in Highland Park, I just didn't, there wasn't anything that really appealed to me, but I will occasionally, if I see something, I'll just grab it and say like, what the heck, I'm going to try it out. But nothing sprung to mind because I don't do a ton of in person shopping at this point in my life. Far more likely to do this for books than a movie. Oh, yeah. Just from cover art? Yeah, like I love going through used bookstores and it's like if there is a tableau that I am interested in on the cover art, I'll be like, this is really good. If sometimes even just the title of the book, I'm like, that sounds really compelling, I'll scrap it if it's like a five dollar paperback or whatever. I kind of agree that like most of these are based on emotion or recommendations. So there isn't, you know, like I have a connection to the movie or I love it or it was seminal from when I was growing up or you guys have recommended it, that kind of thing. But I don't know that I've ever gotten something just because it sort of like looked nice. You know what I mean? I've definitely gone with like blind buys, but again, that's just sort of by recommendation. Yeah. Or it's the label and or you know what I mean? Like it'll be like, I'm happy to do that. Like I have the radiant subscription is one of the best purchases I've made in years, but I don't I don't know that I would necessarily just like walk into a video store and like just grab something like that because I like that. I'll double up. I will occasionally double dip and buy a movie that I've already got because there are some bells and whistles that I'm interested in. I'm buying the John Woo movies on Arrow in addition to the shout. So I almost brought the stack of shout John Woo's just to kind of put a circle around all of these films are available now or like, you know, Choi Hark's The Blade just came from Criterion. Like this that wave of Hong Kong cinema, like all of it is now coming. I know. To physical, which is so crazy because it was among the most desired stuff forever. But why you just want to have you want to see the different transfers or you want to see the different features? I think they're essentially going to be the same transfers, but the special features are going to be wildly different. Some of the bells and whistles are a little different, but I don't buy it because of the box, right? I don't buy it because the heft of the box. I bought both carnal knowledges, right? I thought that was worth. And those transfers are very different. They both look great, but they're both the color correction on them is very different from each other. Interesting. I've been like intrigued by the idea of like the Halloween that was going to kind of the Halloween box. It was going to come in a pumpkin or the unboxing boy chainsaw massacre, but it really then I guess like, do I love those movies enough to have it take up that amount of space? So I end up sort of pulling back from that. Yeah, I don't really want toys. Really. I don't really want the toys. I'm much more if there's an elaborate box, I'm open minded about that. It might be something you're interested in. I could dabble. Quite an elaborately phrased question as well. Thank you for that. What's next? From Will. Oh, hallowed council members. Can you explain the differences between standard blue rays and 4k blue rays? Also, more importantly, how confident are you that there won't be a new updated medium in 20 years that will render 4k obsolete like DVDs and VHS have become? I think I'm only qualified to handle the second one. And even then a little bit hesitant. My understanding is that if you go up to 8k, the human eye can't actually tell the difference. That's my understanding as well. You know, talk to us in five years when we're around the, hey guys, new 8k release of I spit on your grave and I picked it up. And you know what I mean? Kind of hurts and cornets 8k. Tracy got it on free order. It's possible. It's possible. That happens. I don't get the impression that there's going to be a pivot anytime soon technologically, just based on how a lot of these companies are operating. The difference between blue ray and 4k is fairly legible by just saying there's more information in the technology so that you're just getting more pixels effectively. So you're getting brighter color, deeper blacks. You're getting sometimes a different aspect ratio, depending on how the transfer operates. It's just a, it's like a bigger piece of machinery that you're consuming with the film. You know, sound is improved often. Um, it's just better, clearer, not always. I think there are some films. There's like a human eye component to relative to how the films are remastered. We talked about the James Cameron movies and how like they don't really look the way that the James Cameron movies on screen. I've been having this issue recently with, um, toying with the settings on my television in terms of matching them to what I think that, you know, there's the standard kind of like what is recommended for watching a 4k on my kind of television. But you can get in there and start to adjust it from like warm one to warm two. And some things come out like a bit brown, I think I find. So it's like, I'll, I'll mess with it because I'm like, I don't think X caliber is supposed to look like this. And you can, I, but that sort of gets into like, then like you're playing Dr. Frankenstein with your movie. And it's hard sometimes to like exactly identify that perfect thing. My thing with the, if they do come up with an 8k and they're like, no, you could buy these movies again, I would probably say to Tracy's point earlier that the more money you spend on your setup, you'll probably get more out of your movies that you already have them worrying about some new technology coming along. Yeah. And I would imagine at a point, Tracy's AV guy is probably right that there is going to be more and more work done on like having a private server and having all this stuff backed up so that you have like a digital copy of it as well. I think that's right. You know what will help with your remote control investigation? Sure. AV man. OK. What's next? I do think that, yeah, sure, something will come along that will replace it. Just like something came along that replaced DVDs, but not everything gets replaced, right? I've I've got the outfit on DVD. And I'm glad I've got a California split on DVD. I'm glad I've had those to go to until something better comes along. So maybe my four case will be the thing I have until something better comes along. I'm glad that the technology has advanced as far as it has. But sure, something better always, you know, we we don't know what the world is going to look like in 20 years. It's probably just going to look like all of us, you know, grubbing for food. I know, I know, I know. It's going to look like the beginning of Fury Road with Elon Musk with a bunch of fake metals turning on the water and telling us not to become addicted because we will mourn its absence. At least I'll have these, you know, yeah, they won't hopefully won't degrade by then. What's our next question? They won't because they're made of plastic. The next question is from Georgia. It is I, Georgia, one of the dozen of women who collects physical media. I, Georgia, am new in my journey and looking to grow my collection this year. What is one director you recommend buying their whole body of work or as close to the whole body as possible? Russ Meyer. That's a tricky question, right? Because I what kind of movies does Georgia like? That's just it. It's like, you don't want to I don't want to sit here and say, well, Georgia is going to like movies directed by women. It doesn't necessarily follow the nanny, for instance, her favorite movies are action movies, and she's the one who's made us watch all those goddamn Mission Impossible movies. We've watched them because of the nanny. Let's try this again. Say the same thing, remove the word God damn from the sentence and then we're OK. So maybe add thankfully. So different people have different tastes. My wife tends to not like the action movie. She can. She she if you ask her one thing about the Mission Impossible movie, she could tell you one thing that's happened in those films. She likes a more personal story, so it's hard to know where to start. I would just say that the filmmakers who I've had the most fun collecting their titles, I think I have all of them up to a point is the Coen Brothers. And I'm just going to take a wild guess and say if George is listening to this show, she probably likes them. But these are, I think, relatively economical purchases. You know, you can get the full breadth of two of the great filmmakers of this this era. And I find that like having those as having those as physical objects is really satisfying and you can follow their and there's a bunch of different kinds of of editions of them. And you can you can mess around with that. But I love I think that's a good place to start. Yeah. No, I don't really have like what director do you like and then go get all of their movies and like watch them in chronological order and like see them develop and see, yeah, like, man, why did they make this weird choice? And it was like, oh, because they were a cokehead and they ran out of money. And they needed to take a job. You know what I mean? Yeah. See it in order would probably be interesting. I think there's there are some simple signposts to direct people to. For example, I'm fairly certain that the Criterion Collection has issued every single Charlie Chaplin feature film. So if you wanted to have the totality of Charlie Chaplin's feature filmmaking career, you could just get all 10 of those discs and just say, well, here is a pretty dramatically important phase of filmmaking. Yeah. And that if you watch these movies and this is like the totality of their filmography, which spans like 40 years, you can get a lot out of that. Like if you were just like starting a project and you wanted to say, well, let's say there are a hundred important filmmakers, that's one of the first 10 that would probably get named in your standard one on one film class. But most directors, I would venture to guess no other directors shy of like Bergman have a complete collection from one distributor. Most of them are kind of dotted across and so it's like harder to find. Even the Collins like there is no Blu-ray of the Lady Killers. I don't think there's a 4K of raising Arizona like that kind of thing. So, you know, you have to think hard about which are the ones that you can get in totality, but you know what, Georgia, right back. Let us know who you like. Yeah. What are your five favorite movies? And then maybe we can help direct you in the future. Enjoy all this Charlie Chaplin movies. And thank you for your your womanhood and your insightful. Oh my God. You just thanked her for her womanhood. We're not feeding any of Amanda's allegations. The next one is long, but it's incredibly worthy. So buckle up. It comes from Luke. Hello, High Council. My name is Luke and I'm a librarian down in Florida who runs our movie section. I want to sing the praises of the High Council. Most of our patrons don't have internet or can't afford to go to the movies. So physical media is their only way to watch these films and shows. It's the only way most people get to experience film. So I'm thankful for y'all's passion and obsession. Y'all points for y'all. Thank you. Well, you know, I come by that one personally. To honor the High Council, I would love to put together a High Council picks collection. These are usually five to six movies picked by the staff that we think go together or carry similar themes genres. I would love to have a reason to explain to my boss who Tracy let's see are the hitmaker and Sean are. So we'll start with thriller, obviously. Yeah, I would throw a crew. Put that in the kids section for the family. This is a big, big ask. Yeah, I maybe don't understand the ask. What is the ask? What do I have? Like a basically like what are what are recommended by the High Council recommended by us, but like a little show recommended by the High Council. Yeah. What's a thematic quintet of films that we would select to represent our tastes and interests and speak highly of physical media. Australian New Wave horror films. That's the thing is like I think that the. The the craft of physical media has is really peering down like exploitation, horror, you know, these extreme subgenres. So you're not thinking as much of like force Gump is now available on 4K, you know, but a lot of that stuff is also available. And so what what represents this this this project? And should we keep a generic and pick one criterion movie each? Well, I was going to say like one do you like one samurai movie, one Italian crime movie, one, you know, we can say like what are the kind of pet interests of each council member? OK, I'll pick an Italian crime film. I'll just do one that I have in my bag that I want to grab it, actually. Look at you. Hold out on us. Illustrious corpses. Nice. Radiance, Luna Ventura. And it's about a bunch of Supreme Court justices in Italy getting murdered. And this guy's got to get to the bottom of it, but it's really like a meditation on corruption in institutions and it's from radiance and it's fantastic. And I think actually would would still play, you know, like I just like him coming in and just picking up so slow, maybe, but fabulously bleak ending on the movie. I wouldn't know. I don't know that I would like put this in my like top five movies of all time, but I think it might be a good thing. Like if you're at the library, you're interested in movies, I'm just going to go off the Coen Brothers thing and be like, throw Miller's crossing. Oh, yeah. Because it might not be the Coen Brothers movie that you've seen, but I've like weirdly like watched it four times in the last couple of years. And I find it so comforting. And I think it's like, I don't know, I think it's great. And I think if you're just like in the library and you're looking for a good time from a filmmaker that maybe you haven't seen their entire filmography, like you're probably not, you probably haven't seen that one. I think that'd be fun. It'd be fun to sit down and watch that for the first time. It's thrown Miller's Cross. Yeah, I don't think it's their best movie, but that's my favorite movie by them. You go, Sean. My go-to is always the third man, which now has like multiple editions that you can find of the movie. I think it's one of the richest and most interesting men. It's a huge influence on Miller's crossing. I'm fascinated by post-war collisions of noir and crime movies. And it's the kind of movie that I think is best appreciated with like a really high quality edition of the movie because it's a black and white film that has like this amazing cinematography, this black and white photography. And it kind of, it has like an interest in perverting perspective. Every time you see a character, the way that they're shot indicates how the film feels about that character. And it's like one of the great powers of cinema is that like, it's not like watching a stage play or even a television show, which is usually standard like on a tripod, you know, the camera's not moving a lot. And it's also just from a kind of writing performance and character perspective. It feels like the pinnacle of 20th century movies to me. So maybe the studio canal most recent 4K of the third man. The third man, Lustries Corpse is Miller's Cross crossing. I'm going to go with don't look now. Yeah. I'm going to put Nicholas Rogues, don't look now. And there are a couple of beautiful 4K editions of that, both from Criterion and Studio Canal is the other gorgeous edition of that. So yeah, 4K, don't look now. Hopefully the fine folks of that Florida library enjoy those movies. All right. This one is from self styled Gen Z Dominic. Hi. I'm sitting up straight to read this one. I don't understand what that means. It means I didn't identify him as Gen Z Dominic. He identified himself as Gen Z Dominic. I thought you were saying his name was self styled. Lustries Council. My name is Dominic. There's no way that all of these started like this. Tim, you can't interrupt me on this one right now. I'm so sorry. It's okay. It's just I need everybody to hang on for the ride. Okay. Lustries Council. My name is Dominic and I'm a 20 year old student at the Ohio State University. After hearing the last convening of the council, you all awoke a nostalgia within me for the discs and blue rays I had growing up editors note five years ago because I am 20. Eight months later, I have now basically given up going to the bars to fund my 4Ks and vinyl collection that I have started because you all made me realize the joy and human connectivity we feel towards physical media. I did want to tell you all that any person my age who has seen my collection has taken an actual interest and have expressed interest in starting a collection of their own. But I will say sadly, whenever I bring back birds from the bar, not once has one asked me about the 4Ks. However, it is quite automatic after I throw on a tame Impala or the new Bruno Mars vinyl. P.S. Yesterday, I was able to show a girl I've been seeing Fight Club in theaters for the anniversary screening and she loved it. She had no idea about Tyler Durden and I was able to see her reaction. My friend then told me tonight that it was crazy to have taken a date to see Fight Club. Is he right? What a roller coaster. Yeah, I didn't know where that was going. I don't. So if the question is, was it crazy? I don't think it's crazy just in that way of like, I think you should be radically yourself on a first date. And if they're not into you, then they're not into you. If you can't look me at my Fight Club. Yeah. I, well, what do you think about that? I showed a woman I was going out with a Clockwork Orange and right before Alex's rehabilitation starts, she burst into tears and asked me to take the movie off. I was like, but, but, but you don't understand, he's about to, there's about to be a, he's going to get, it's like, if you stop now, all you have is horror. Yeah. You know, there's, there's plenty of those to show you. There's another, yeah, it was not a, not a great selection as it turns out. Her dad was in the hospital. Maybe just wasn't a great selection. Can I be kidding? Did I get to the question? Yeah, yeah. I would just say don't necessarily at your young right age, where you're still experiencing life. Like don't, don't shut yourself off from real life experiences because that's what's going to inform your, your movie taste in the first place is. Well, it's a bit of a contradiction in this email, which strikes me as a bit stream of consciousness where he says that he's basically given up going to the bars to fund his 4Ks and vinyl collection, but then one or two sentences later is talking about bringing back birds from the bars. Well, do you think he's like not drinking at the bar, but is still going to nab women to take to fight club? That's an interesting use of the word nab. Maybe we've been in this room for too long. I, um, this is like going places. I want to say this. Getting physical media does not mean that you're shutting out the rest of the world. I don't, I didn't say that. And no, I know, I know, I'm speaking for, I'm speaking to Dominic as well. I think go to repertory theaters and experience films with people as well. That's important. Don't spend all of your money on 4Ks and Blu-rays, despite evidence of the contrary, that's not what I do. I think that it's good to share these things. It's good to experience them with people. Like that's kind of one of the magic of movies, right? That you can have this communal event. It doesn't, it isn't just, but the collection is more of like, um, organizing your feelings around some of these things. That's one of the things it helps with. So I hope Dominic understands that. I would, I would, I want to echo that Dominic and say like one of the reasons I got into this was because I had gone to see like a rep screening of Out of the Blue in Atlanta. And the community around that kind of movie I was, I felt great about. Amanda, what is the name of that theater? The Claremont? No, the other one, like one screen revival. In Atlanta? In Atlanta. The, not the, I don't know, besides the Claremont. What? Okay. Whichever one it is, and it very well might be Claremont. And I might just be, the Plaza. Um, thanks a lot. What a day for it. I've been there in 25 years. It is Atlanta's oldest continuously operating cinema and a hub for indie films, cult classics and film festivals. Yeah. Like I would say like take the money you would have spent on the bar or maybe spent on a Blu-ray that you think would look good on the shelf, but isn't one of your favorite ones and go to a rep theater and find a community there. You know what I mean? Like still get out there in the world. We are old as fuck. You still have a life ahead of you. We are on the downswing. Yeah, we closed the bars. Yeah. And now we buy DVDs. Yeah. Tracy's just going to tell him to get an AV guy. It's my best advice. AV guy. And I don't know about all this going out into the world. I can't get behind that. Stay in. Stay in and program. Uh, let's read our next question. Before we manage, I have two clarifications. Number one, Tim, I'm sorry that the Claremont is a strip club that is right next to the Plaza. Claremont Lounge. That's right. So I was confused. I remember Lee on my public sponsor. Yeah, I apologize for that. And you know, hello to everyone in Atlanta, still in Fulton County. Especially at the Claremont. Yeah. Just I want to say two things about the Claremont. Yeah. A wonderful honky-tonk bar that also happens to be a strip club. The two times that I have been there, one was with who played the king and the king's speech? Colin Firth. I went to the Claremont at one point with Colin Firth. And I know that's a little bit of a name drop, but I just want to say with a large group of other people. But I just want to say that Colin Firth went to the Claremont and I was there for that. And the other time that I went there. I can see the expression on his face. All right, so already imprinted right here. The other time that I went there, I parked and a gentleman came up and said, Hey, for $5, I'll make sure that nobody steals your windshield wipers. And it was very clear he was telling me, if you don't give me $5, I'm going to steal your windshield wipers. And I was like, yeah, that actually sounds like a pretty good deal. And I gave him $5. And when I came back, the windshield wipers were there. Well, that's wonderful. Yeah. I do love the idea of Colin Firth in an English manner. He's popped downstairs having his breakfast and tea. And he's checking out what's going on with his friends on the big picture. What are they discussing today? And he's listening and he's like, oh, Timothy Simons, I know this fellow. I'll listen to this episode all the way through this three hour digression. I went to a bistro with him and he's pretty good at that. Everyone's had a meal. And lo and behold, he reveals that we guys watched women dance together. There was a very large group of people. It's kind of like Jumbo's Clown Room in LA. It's not a sort of salacious place. It's more of like a celebration of dance. A celebration of dance. It's a review. A review, a coed hang and like a good indie bar hunky-tunk. The kind of place Russ Meyer might have enjoyed. Yes. Okay. I think we have time for two more. So this comes from Nathan and Emily. Dear esteemed members of the High Council. Again. We are getting married at the end of June and have been struggling to think of interesting items to put on our wedding registry. One thing that is a big part of our lives is a massive physical media collection that takes up a full wall of our house. So we ask you, is it appropriate to put Blu-rays or 4Ks on a wedding registry? And if so, what movies or box sets would you recommend we ask for? A Criterion, Fellini Box, Purosawa Box, Bergman Box. Right. I mean, that's a lot of the history of film right there. Those chaplains that he talked about. Again, it depends on the kind of collection you're trying to. So you're saying this is appropriate for them to put Blu-rays and 4Ks on the registry? More than, you know, some cheap fast-toaster. It'd be pretty funny to put scenes for a marriage and people's to gift bags. Why does love that Nathan and Emily are doing this together, right? They've sent the female in together, which means that they're committed not just to a life together, but to collecting and supporting film history together. Yeah. I mean, 100%, it's a good thing to throw on there. You know, I mean, do the napkins and all that. Like, you know, if you need some dishware, that's important. You're starting a new life together. You need new dishware. I think that's like, that's your life. That's your life together. It'd be cool if you could put an AV guy in your registry. Is that a service he's willing to provide? I would throw in like that Wes Anderson box. Yeah. And I think maybe, I think you're maybe right to keep it to boxes rather than individual titles, just because you're probably less likely to spend the money on a box. And it would be, and it would be fun. And you always remember that it was for your wedding. And maybe that Capra Columbia box. Oh, I was thinking that. That would be a good one, right? That's a pricey one. Wong Kar-Wai set from Criterion. Great one. That Godzilla one for their future kids. Oh yeah. Godzilla one. That's terrific. Yeah. Herzog collections from Chef. One of my first big boxes was that set. That's how I got up to speed on all of Herzog's first 20 movies. The Zhang Yimou set from. Oh, I don't have this. From Umbrella? I don't have that. Is it Umbrella? No, it's imprint. Okay. Well, that's, you could get into the Australian and English companies that, where they're going to be more expensive to import to, you could think about that. And I just want to throw this out. And I don't know your plans on having children. When you get to a baby registry, you'll absolutely need burp claws, get more of those than you need. You're going to need onesies. But you know what? Throw kids movies on that registry as well. Great idea. Or Larry Clark's kids. Larry Clark's kids. Which is available from imprint, actually, but not in the United States of America. My boy right now is really into time bandits. Oh, sure. Oh, man, that scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. He and his little sister dressing up as time bandits. Really? Yeah. He's got great taste. Yeah, he does. Okay. Will this be the last? Yes, this is the last one. Okay. It comes from Trevor. A hot topic in the physical media world is the Grail 4K. The one movie above all you'd like to see get a 4K remaster. I'd love to know yours. I don't have one that's like a collector's grail. It's one that I just missed the window on, which is a Canterbury Tale, the Powell and Pressburger movie. I watched that for the first time randomly on TCM a couple of months ago. Fell deeply, deeply, deeply in love with it. Great movie. I know it came out on criterion. I've seen it used on eBay. I think I've seen a couple of times for $80 unopened on eBay, but I would love a beautiful, beautiful edition of that. And that's one I'm really waiting for. The ones that come up for me are, I think at one point, like the Devils might have been in that question. Like the Devils seems to be like, but that's going to be a lot of people's answer. I think the Danny Boyle movie Sunshine, which really has like a very... What are we doing? I have the Blu-ray of it that I found in a thrift store, but I think it's like finicky and skips a lot. I think that was, there was like a problem in the production. I think one, I mentioned it earlier, sort of offhand, but you can only find Blu-rays of Streetwalking that are used and that are like in the hundreds of dollars. And so it'd be cool to see that upgraded. And then just one of my favorites that I kind of can't believe doesn't have a Blu-ray or 4K is the candidate, which I think is a phenomenal movie and has become one of my favorites. And it just bums me out that like that performance in that movie isn't more accessible in that format. A few, the conformist, I don't understand why there's not a 4K of the conformist, which is not only one of my favorite movies ever made, but there's a book or a documentary, I think it's called Visions of Light. Yeah, and... Right, Intermediate with Centographers. And the one movie that is consistently referenced by all of them is the conformist. When it's like when they were getting together to make the great movies that they made, they sat down with the director and watched the conformist. That's the first thing they watched. So it absolutely needs reference level. Disc. California Split, we've talked about, really needs an upgrade. It's maybe my second favorite altman after Nashville. The Heartbreak Kid, I think is a great white whale for a lot of people. I've got a bad old DVD of it, but such a great movie. Lonely Are the Brave, a great movie that's not talked about very much anymore. David Miller movie with Kirk Douglas and Walter Mathow. There's a Twilight Time, oh and General Lenz also. There's a Twilight Time disc of that, but that could certainly use an upgrade. I just did Year of Living Dangerously on Blank Check. There's a terrible, terrible DVD, but there is no Blu-ray representation or 4K. And then a sentimental pick, because it's the first movie I ever watched with my wife, Sherman's March, which is a great, hilarious, wonderful documentary. I tell you something, last Saturday, Ross McElwee, the director of that movie, was at the American Cinematic Tech presenting that film. And they asked me to moderate the Q&A and I couldn't do it. And I was devastated because I love that film so much, selling college and speaking of documentaries that cooked my noodle. It really, for those writing about your nascent relationships with your partners, I have to say, Sherman's March got Carrie and I off on the right foot. That was a great movie to start our relationship. If she clicked with it, that's a good sign. She definitely did. I made a list about a year ago of 21st century movies that are not available in these formats. Part of it is there are a great many Netflix and Amazon movies that have never been issued, and hopefully we're changing that over time. But I'll just go through like a handful of them. Some of them, for example, David Burns' American Utopia, which was only available on HBO Max for a while. The Criterion Collection put it out, directed by Spike Lee. So fascinating capture of the stage show that Byrne put up. But let's look at a couple of them here. The Handmaiden is still not on 4K. Sexy Beast is still not available on 4K. Waking Life, I don't believe is available on Blu-ray. Maybe an international Blu-ray, Richard Linklater's film. Tic-Tic Boom, the Netflix film that Lin-Wen Will Miranda directed, is not available in the bedroom, is not available on anything beyond DVD. As far as I know. I don't think so. Is that true? Is there an Australian? Okay. Yeah, there's an Australian in the bedroom. By the same token, Little Children, Todd Field's other film, I think is also only available on DVD. American Splendor, as far as I know, is not available on Blu-ray. We could go on, I mean, The Tragedy of Macbeth is a Joel Cohen movie that is just not available on physical period. Because it's just on Apple, right? Yeah. I think Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes is not available on physical, or maybe just on DVD. I had to blow up a pipeline, a recent film, that was never issued in physical. One of the big ones on this, my list for years and years was birth. And finally, criteria and put that out, which is wonderful. But still haven't seen it. Never seen it. I mean, I just got the disc, but I've never seen it. Is there something up with the Glazer movies that takes a while to come? I don't know. I know Under the Skin is on Blu-ray. Zone of Interest has a 4K from A24. Under the Speed Racer doesn't have a 4K? As far as I know, it does not. Just watched Birth Last Week. Fantastic. Yeah. It's an amazing movie. Speed Racer was on this list. That's been since corrected. To your point about 0000, there's a movie that Chris and I really loved from Fierce Back Called The Vast of Night that Amazon distributed that just may as well be gone. I think it's still available on the service. I believe so, yeah. I liked checked recently enough. So, you know. I would throw the killer on there. Like, I mean, that's the thing is the Fincher's. And the Soderberghs of the last 10 years are all, I don't know. I mean, like no sudden move might have gotten a release when it was on from Max. And I don't think it did. I don't think, I think many of those Max and Netflix Soderbergh movies are not available. I'm thinking of anything that's not available. The one that, you know, Zach Craig was barbarian, not available in any physical format period. That's wild. Yeah. You know what's a really weird one is I Heart Huckabees, which is only on DVD as far as I know. Which was a pretty big film in its time. A lot of big stars, big director. We can get the Lily Tomlin. Put it on the boat. Is that on the extras? But like, wouldn't you want to see an interview with her today about her experience on that film? That would be fascinating. Another weird one is M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. Only on DVD as far as I know. As other, his first few films have now since been issued on 4K. I could do this for like hours, but there's Shattered Glass is one that I think is still only on DVD as far as I know. A lot of favorites of mine over the last 25 years. In fact, one of Amanda's favorites, Something's Gotta Give, was only available on DVD for the longest time and they announced this a month ago that it's coming to 4K. Amanda, is that exciting for you? I look forward to one of you giving it to me for my birthday. And I'll listen, I'll treasure it. This morning, I'm not joking. My son went upstairs and found the only 4K I own, which is the 4K of Bring It On, which Sean got me last year. A treasured artifact explaining what a 4K is to a four-year-old was interesting. But we're going to try to make the player work. Or is it 4K or is it Blu-ray, Sean? It's a 4K. Okay. Tracy, have you watched that film yet? I haven't. I only watched it. I remember. It's a great one. I've been watching. I've been steeped in Duvall in 76. I told the nanny, I said, as soon as I come home, we're going to start watching stuff that's not Duvall in 76. She's very excited. How do you feel about all these questions? Do you feel that everyone is normal who really enjoys this experience? Who are we to judge what's normal after the selections we just made? You know, we talk about, we joke about the people who come up to us and the people who came up to carry and say, they're a fan of this. It really is great. It really is great to know that people are enjoying this stuff, especially when I feel that they're diving into some of the older or more obscure stuff and they're starting to expand their vision of what a movie is or how a movie works. I just think it's really cool. And I would say something else about the guy who talked about not going to the bars. Dominic, Jim D. Dominic. I have 12,000 discs. I've also been sober for over 30 years. If I do the math of how much money I haven't spent on booze and drugs and other vices, and I put that money toward the discs, that's why I have 12,000 discs. With money left over, I might add. From what I say, from, you know, getting off the dope. Get off the dope. Get off the dope. Get off the dope. I just think that's, I think you need to rationalize that with your own personal success. You're in four versus four. I don't know if Dominic's going to... I'm just saying... A little scratch left over. I'm just saying, you have a pull-out. Get off the dope. That's my advice because not only is it a financial question, but the truth is that I like myself more as a dork with a huge physical media collection. That asshole at the end of the bar who's cynical and puffing on his sigs and talking... It's the scales of justice, man. I mean, couldn't have said it better myself. What would have happened if Nancy Reagan had that messaging instead of just saying no? But would you have done that as an undergrad in college? It's been like, it's time for my dork era. Like, you want to go out and like, you have like a couple of years of... I don't know. I feel like I've always kind of been myself. I've kind of always been like really into the stuff that I'm into to the potential alienation of others. But I think when you have a lot of enthusiasm for stuff, it can be infectious. I think this literally did start out as a weird... Like, can you just come in and let's hang out? Like, it was not some strategy and the fact that people responded to it as wide as like, become this beautiful space where these men and women send us letters about how we're like royalty. To that point, Carrie also is like, I'd rather be... It's not like she's a scold about my collection. She's like, I'd rather be with a guy who's doing this than a guy who's got some other vice, right, that is ugly or unmanageable. Ambling on college basketball or something. No. But are you still like a little hung up on being cool at this point in your life? Me? Yeah. No. Dude's effortless about it. He's not hung up on it at all. Do you think I used to be hung up? Well, you're kind of circling back to like what I want to be doing is ripping heaters and picking up chicks at the bar. I didn't say... I did not circle back to that. I was saying to Dominic that these years at the Ohio State University are formative. And you want to build your own lore. You know, you want to have your own... I think Dominic was in the UK and the other... The Ohio State was a different person. Oh, well then fuck it. Yeah, he's fine. I'm just saying if I was... Let's... Regardless, let's be careful out there. Yeah. Everybody be careful. Everybody make good decisions. Be careful with these with thriller, you know, if you get thriller. Watch it in... That's not a first date movie unless you think she's really special. She's really, really the one. Unless she's really the one. I also... One thing that I love about this is what this all comes back to. It's hard cut. Is she hard cut material? She's hard cut. Wait a minute. Wait! That cut was a little... That cut was a little hard. It's not the only thing that's hard. Yeah. I think what this comes back to is that ultimately my favorite thing that this opens up is that... Is that you end up in a conversation with someone and then you're talking about movies, which is what a fucking great thing to do. Yeah. I agree. To just be out in the world and somebody that you don't know comes up to you and then you're just talking about movies for a while. There's nothing better than that. Couldn't have said it better myself. This was healthy. This was normal. This was the behavior of mature men. Yeah. Our selections reflect incredibly peaceful interior lives. Yeah. We're not trying to understand anything more deranged or depraved within ourselves. We're all in functioning relationships. Yeah. Right? We trust institutions. Absolutely. We're upholding democracy. I'm in a functioning relationship with my wife and my new wife. And your AV guy. It's the great romantic square of Tracy, his nanny, his AV guy. Is your nanny aware of your AV guy? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Do you think they would have chemistry? Uh, no, I don't think so. Yeah, okay. Would you be jealous of your AV guy? Can't have her running off with him, yeah. Because then you'd lose childcare, an AV guy. No, that's total nightmare. Okay. I'd like to thank Amanda Dobbins for her. Any words of wisdom, Amanda Dobbins? I would just say, to go back to Dominic one more time, that the tradition of watching Fight Club with a woman who you're not willingly willing to publicly call your girlfriend is time honored. It's generational. And everyone needs to go through it at least once. So he's going to be okay, I think. Right. Is she going to be okay? You know what? She has to see it sometime, you know? And that's probably the right context in which to see Fight Club. Fight Club was released the month I started dating my now. Wife and we saw the film and we're together to this day. Hey, look at that. So what more can you say? Yeah. What more can you say about the film? Amanda, thanks for sitting in on this. Really quite a strange choice on your part. I admire it. I have to be honest, I was doing other work here. That's the second time you said that. But you've been very clear about that. Yes, yeah, yeah. But listen, it's called multitasking. It's called having it all, which I as a woman can do. You're like a rustmire heroine. Despite everything that was just said on this podcast. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for production support. Thanks to Jack Sanders for the robes for producing this episode, for guiding the council comfortably. How will you be cutting social clips of this episode safely? I mean, we probably have at least 24 ready to go. So we're okay. That's cool. We'll reconvene again this year. Christmas. Conceivably. Christmas. Yeah, I think we need to bring the four Santas together. Like on Christmas Day, you want to record an episode? Yeah. I just let your kid know. This is what it's going to be like. Sorry, Alice. I got to go sit with some men and talk about plastic. No, we should do a Christmas like a holiday gift guide. Oh, I like that. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I do not know when this is airing or what episode is next, but I'm sure it will be very good and we'll see you then. Oh, wait. Shout out Alex Ross Perry, who's Anglin. Oh, yeah. What do you want to do about that? I don't know. Okay. Actually, before we truly wrap, there's been some questions about admission into the council, right? Griffin Newman wants in, Alex Ross Perry wants in. These are men who are longtime collectors of various items. I mean, what are the thoughts? I don't feel like I can be possessive here. I'm a new addition to the council. I think if you wanted to create a high and low chamber of Congress, maybe an East Coast, like you, Tracy, Alex, and Griffin could do that, I'm not going to stay in the way of it. I mean, the round table was round for a reason, right? So it's not have a hierarchy. I mean, I feel like if you swap in and out, it's like, you know, we're all one head of a Hydra or something. I don't think Tracy feels that way. No, Tracy obviously doesn't feel that way and he is irreplaceable. No. Well, that'll do it. We'll see you next time on The Big Picture.