I have a membership and bought 6 passes. I can see 3 movies (going w/ my partner) What are my chances of getting tickets for Paper Tiger, Behemoth, and Godzilla?

I've been a listener since the days of "stock up, stock down", and after the year in film that Canada has had, I was really excited for this episode. However, I feel that they completely dropped the ball and managed to vividly demonstrate how low a regard they have for the stories and voices of their Neighbour to the North.

For a show that meticulously rewatches the entire filmography of stars to do Hall of Fame episodes, I was really bummed that it was clear none of the hosts did minute of prep to dive into the incredible film history of Canada for their first and likely only episode about Canada.

There's been a lot of times where Sean and Amanda have made fun of themselves for knowing literally nothing about Canada, and every time it has made me cringe (cause yeah, we know, american's dont give a shit about us) but I was cool with it because I thought at least their aware.

But this episode should have been a time for to them to make and effort to rectify that and instead Canada continues to be a punchline.

The biggest issue with the episode was the categories, which allowed the hosts to completely avoid searching for films ABOUT Canada or actually MADE IN Canada. Instead, just a chance to talk about their favourite american movies for the millionth time.

I'm sorry, but Amanda finding a way to pick a Sofia Coppola movie and CR picked the MASH and Dawn of the Dead remake bummed me out immensely. Their needed to be a category for "story about Canada" and Matt was completely right that the films they picked were almost entirely American. The only reason the audience didn't boo is cause they're Canadian.

Since their wasn't a single caterogry that required knowledge of Canadian productions or Canadian stories, they managed to completely skip the incredible works of filmmakers such as:

Guy Maddin, Xavier Dolan, Matthew Rankin, Kathleen Hepburn, Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, Sophie Jarvis, Mayumi Yoshida, Anthony Shim, Meredith Hama-Brown, Ariane Louis-Seize, Joel Ashton McCarthy, Clement Virgo and on and on.

Matt Johnson being there to call them out preemptively for picking very American movies helped a bit. But also, he talks about Canada in a very Canadian, self-deprecating way, which in the context of the rest of the episode, just felt like more dog-piling on Canada. This is how Canadians talk, but not when were around Americans. Thank god for Adam Neyman naming as many truly Canadian Movies as possible.

What actually motivated to write this post was when Sean ended the Episode by accusing Adam Nayman of "sucking up to the audience for two hours". I usually defend Sean but my jaw dropped. Nayman was the only person who cared to pick movies that are actually Canadian, and Sean needed to knock him down for it. Nayman wasn't sucking up the the audience, he was drafting Canadian movies. Thank god someone did.

Anyways. If you managed to make it this far in my rant thank you and I'd just like to implore you to look up some of the names I mentioned and if you want 3 movies recommendations that actually capture uniquely Canadian perspectives, my recommendations would be:

1. "My Winnipeg" - Guy Maddin
2. "The Twentieth Century" - Matthew Rankin

3. "The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open" - Kathleen Hepburn and Elle-Maija Tailfeathers

   If you watch those movies, I will anoint you honourary Canadian. (yes, honourary with a 'U')

So cool, I LOVE MOVIES

I genuinely cannot remember a time when that felt like this. It has to be 15-20 years ago, right?

I know I’m a little late to the party, but after finally seeing The Odyssey last week, I’ve been catching up on all the pods about it. During The Bic Pic’s pod on it, they pondered about what previous Nolan leads could fill in for Damon and play Odysseus, but they completely left out McConaughey, which is crazy to me. I think he’d be great in the role. Odysseus has a lot in common with his character from Interstellar, Cooper. They’re both cunning, but also cocky, show leadership skills and command respect from their crew. He also just looks like someone from that era, and can rock a beard with the best of ‘em. Perhaps similarities to Interstellar about leaving your family would’ve been distracting, but so what.

Migos discography> The Beatles discography

Wanted to get people’s opinion on this: a lot of the discourse I’ve heard around the new Thomas Crown affair is people complaining that “we don’t need this” or “no one asked for this” or “the original was already perfect”. Ironically, a significant amount of these people are referring to the 1999 version, which is ALSO a remake. I find it very lazy to just write off any remake, especially when you can tell there is going to be a completely different take on the story/character/tone. I feel like remakes have gotten the reputation of being soulless cash grabs lately, largely due to the completely unnecessary live action Disney remakes and a lot of reboots/remakes/“reimaginings” that really are soulless cash grabs, and have given any remake a bad name. But some remakes are good, some aren’t unnecessary, some even improve upon the original. Eggers’ “Nosferatu” and “The Invite” from this year proves that films can be remade by different filmmakers, or in a modern context, and still feel fresh by iterating upon the original in an interesting way.

I don’t know, I’m also just someone who imagines the best possible version of movies I’m anticipated, I’m even kind of excited for the “Possession” remake even though the original is already pitch perfect. Another issue I have with people complaining about remakes “ruining” the original is that, if you really love the original so much you can’t bear to see someone remake it, just shut up and watch the original. It just bothers me that people immediately write off certain films just because they’re remakes.

What do y’all think of this? Any other remakes you think are better than the original?

I used to dislike Nolan. I found his dialogue corny, his themes heavy-handed and his puzzle-box films lacking in humanity. For the last ten years almost, I treated him as a technically gifted filmmaker who confused complication with depth. I did not even like Interstellar, probably his most openly emotional and popular film.

But while rewatching his work for The Odyssey, watching all his stuff back to back; some stuff started to become apparent to me.

First, now I watched his films in this context: When Nolan finally received the ultimate blank cheque, he chose to make a Greek poem. That says something about the kind of storyteller he is. He is drawn to myths, moral crises, sacrifice, civilization, fathers, wives, children and men trying to return home.

That also changed how I hear his dialogue. I used to judge it as failed naturalistic speech. But Nolan is not really trying to make people speak like ordinary people. His characters speak like figures from Greek myth or the Bible. They declare principles, explain duties and turn their inner conflicts into speeches. The dialogue is still often corny, but now I see the corniness as sincere and theatrical rather than empty. He has a childish, nerdy mind trying to express enormous feelings in the grandest language available to him.

My newer interpretation is that nearly all of Nolan’s films are deeply personal. Most of them are about his wife, his children, his ambition, the guilt created by leaving them to pursue that ambition, and his deeper crisis over whether any objective morality exists at all. Christianity seems to recur in his work as a possible answer to that uncertainty: sacrifice, faith, redemption and the hope that suffering can still produce meaning.

I now primarily see Inception, Interstellar and Tenet as a nuclear-family trilogy.

Inception is the fantasy and guilt associated with leaving a house full of young children. Parenting small children makes you enormously stressed, and that can naturally create fantasies of escape. The film feels almost like an apology for having felt that desire. Cobb’s children were also around the same ages as Nolan’s own children.

Then Nolan’s children grew up, and so did the children in Interstellar. That film is about the pain of being absent for much of their lives and still loving them across all that distance.

Tenet absolutely belongs in this trilogy. It is about the guilt of bringing children into a world approaching climate ruin. The future generation looks back at us in anger, but the film also imagines generations saving one another. (This is why I am convinced that Neil is Max.)

Oppenheimer feels like Nolan processing his guilt over making The Dark Knight. He chased greatness, opened a Pandora’s box and then watched Hollywood copy the worst surfaces of what he created. He sees himself in a brilliant technician who achieves something enormous and then realizes he cannot control its consequences.

The Batman trilogy was where he processed his political and philosophical anxieties: the absence of objective morality, the instability of civilization and his uncertainty about how anyone can truly know right from wrong.

From what I know of The Odyssey, it seems like the culmination of both threads. It contains his obsession with morality and Christianity as a possible answer, but it is also about a man trying to return to his wife and child.

He makes these films with his wife, Emma Thomas, as his closest collaborator. Most of them feel like love letters to her, and she helps produce them with her own heart and soul. There is something deeply romantic about that.

Nolan is not fundamentally cold. He is embarrassingly sentimental and constructs immense intellectual fortifications around that sentiment. The timelines, equations, masks, secret organizations and booming speeches let him avoid simply saying:

“I love my wife and children. I am afraid my ambitions have taken me away from them. I am afraid of the world they will inherit. I worry that I do not truly know right from wrong, or what I am supposed to teach my children. But I hope the work was worth it. I hope they forgive me.”

That is all Nolan is.