All right. Here we go. Quiet. Hello and welcome back to the big picture podcast where we take a look at the latest movie news, the films of today and yesterday, and we put them all into some sort of context.
Seated across the microphone from me is my law associate for today. Rich trees. Seated across the microphone from me is my law associate, my filmmaking compadre and all around great friend Natasha Bogutsky and also film off online contributing editor. Yes.
And he's also editor in chief, but you know, whatever. Wow. Thanks. We're starting already.
We've been off for a little bit. We may have been off from the picture podcast, but man, have we been busy. Holy smokes. Yeah.
Congratulations on your award for best screenplay. Thank you. Yes. To fill in details here.
Last weekend at the Route 22 Film Works Film Festival in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which was a day-long celebration of short film. A short film that I had written called The Test, won Best Reading Play overall. I don't like 30-some shorts, which was a very high honor. Now, we need to also say that Natasha here directed the short and she starred in it, and along with a couple of other people.
And it overall was very well received. And honestly, when we were working on getting this ready to shoot, you kind of were really adamant about me rewriting one scene over and over again, the argument scene in the middle of the picture. They were grass involved. And you made it better.
So really, you know, I feel like this award, at least in part, belongs to you as well. I mean, it's going to hang here on the wall. You're not getting the actual plaque, but I've had, I've had, I helped with one scene. I think that's, that's a scene that's very crucial.
It's the linchpin, not just because it kind of falls in the middle of the picture and segues us from the first act of the second act, but it's the linchpin of the whole story. And what we were trying to do, and we first talked about this idea, which is, you know, examining these new characters in this moment. Okay. Okay.
I will accept the honor as well. Thank you very much. You are most welcome. But yeah, no, we've been busy.
We've been filming. We've been promoting. We have been traveling for, yeah, I mean, I know it's been a little longer since last May when we've last done one of these, but it feels like, May, you've been off that long, longer, actually. Oh, yeah.
Sorry guys. Yeah, we appreciate you all coming back. But it feels like towards the end of May, when I got in the car to head out to the Block Island Film Fest, where we were also showing the test, it feels like I didn't get out of the car again until like the middle of August almost. We were just constantly on the way.
It was a great summer. Got a lot of things done. You know, some of the things were like hanging out with family, which is something I don't do enough. And I think given the passing of my mom earlier, you know, in January, it's something I'm like, I should probably maybe be doing this a little bit more.
I've always got to be the standoffish one out of my brothers. But you know, so I was able to take my one older brother, his wife and their youngest daughter, who's 15 to see Indiana Jones in the dial of destiny two weeks before it opened that critic screening, which is why that, you know, yeah, because you got cool points for it. Well, yeah, I've always done like stuff with my nephews and nieces about, you know, taking down the movies like a Christmas time. They knew the weekend after Christmas that they were visiting grandma and grandpa.
Uncle Rich was showing up throwing everybody in the car and we were going to say, Lord of the Rings films. And you know, stuff like that. And it's nice to be kind of back doing that again as a little bit. You know, most of my nephews, Anne Marie, my niece, the 15 year old, she is the youngest of all of my nephews and nieces.
The oldest is in his 30s, you know, I have three older brothers, one younger brother, widespread of kids that they all have. And so it's been a while since I got to play Cool Uncle and not just like, my nephew and niece, you know, I could now relate to them on an adult level, which is an entirely different kind of a relationship. Yeah. So it's kind of nice to have that one last fling of being the Cool Uncle who shows up and said, Hey, let's go do this.
I just realized that our podcasting schedule pretty much falls in with like school schedules. We tend to take a summer off. That's true. And the holidays are Hey, one of the biggest movie going times ever, the summer of the holidays, let's take them off.
We're not very well, that's also because, you know, we are so involved. So many things. You have, you know, theater stuff that you've been doing these last several months that has been wonderful. You know, like you said, we've been shooting stuff.
We've been running around wrapping ourselves a little bit here and there. But it's nice to be back spending a Sunday lolling around my apartment living room and watching a movie and then going to talk about it. Oh, yeah. But before we get to our, our retro review, which is a back to school themed retro review, and also kind of fits in with this summer.
What else has been going on with the film world that do you want to comment on really quickly? Well, obviously there's a double headed strike going on. That's right. By the way, did you see what the writers Guild of America was doing yesterday on the picket line?
No, there was a massive D&D game going on. Yeah. I have suspicions as to who probably organized that. There's certain, man, we've been so busy.
You know, and that is one of the reasons why I have never gotten back into D&D since like high school or early college years. I love the game. I love playing it. But, you know, again, it's it's a huge time suck.
Yeah, it's not a criticism. It's, you know, it's just a fact for me, especially when you know, I was DMing and I miss it. I sometimes will watch YouTube videos about like what's going on in like the D&D world now, not like the fantasy world, but like the world of gaming itself. Yeah.
Like there's that hubbub over the open gaming license a little while back, things like that. And you know, so I try to kind of keep up as they what's sort of going on. But I'm, unless I were to win mega millions next week and, you know, have half a billion dollars handed to me, I won't have the time to really get back to D&D, unfortunately, I don't think. And I miss it a little bit.
It was a lot of fun, a lot of good times, especially in high school with my high school crew sitting around on the picnic table behind the back porch at my friend, Frank Chadwick's house, playing D&D. Well, my, my unfortunate issue with D&D as much as I love it is that every time I've ever tried to get friends together, yes, there's, okay, so there's two issues. One, you book like six people for a campaign. Next thing, you know, three of them drop out and now you're down to like, you know, two people, maybe the dungeon master, like it's not a campaign.
That's, that's a disaster waiting to happen. It's either that or this is the worst one. You don't get a chance to get together all that often. I don't want to be spending all night trying to create my character and then us not be able to get together again for another six months to a year to actually start playing the game at which point, I don't fucking remember what I created.
Yeah. Well, during the pandemic, didn't you, your husband and your two steps sons have like a family night for D&D? We did for, yeah, about three or four months and then it died as soon as lockdown was over. So basically you're saying in order to have a successful D&D campaign, people have to be forced into prison.
Prison probably has better D&D games than we did. I was just gonna say, maybe the folks who ever owns D&D now, I think it's Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast who bought out TSR hobbies, whoever owns Dungeons Dragons now, you gotta be marketing it to prisoners because they got nothing but time to play. Yeah, but it can get really violent. They may not, they may not be able to shell fantasy from reality.
I should have this red dragon in the shower. Okay, anyways, this started off discussing the strike and now here we are, talking about shivik in the shower. Oh yeah, we haven't missed up. No, we just fell right back in the way.
Right back into our own silliness. Anyways, but yes, we are both very much in some Pataco with the writers and the actors guild on this strike. Everything they are asking for is absolutely reasonable. And I think the problem here is the overall giant guild that they're, you know, bargaining with the AMPTP is made up of so many different fractions, different fractions of businesses.
You have television, you have movies, you have streaming and they all have different business models at this point. And it's hard to see how all three of those types of businesses are collectively bargaining because sometimes what's good for the one isn't good for the other two. And I'm thinking that in part might be the problem with these negotiations, not that I'm excusing them. I also think there's a large factor with like somebody like Apple, whose overall income isn't reliant on Apple TD Plus.
And they're just like, well, we can hang out for, you know, hold out for however long we want because that's a minimal income stream for us, whereas, you know, we have everything else. It's the same sort of with Amazon, too. But you know, somebody like, well, like A24, for example, no, we just do movies. And well, okay, bad example because A24 isn't part of AMPTP.
And secondly, yeah, and they actually came forward and said, yes, we will abide by your, by what you want. And they've got an interim agreement to keep making movies. So I think Neon just did, there's this week in order so that actors could promote the Neon projects at Venice Film Festival. True.
Because Adam Driver spoke out against a lot of the larger studios not being able to give SAG what they were looking for, but a little studio like Neon was able to. Yeah, he spoke out a telly ride the last couple of days. Yeah, that's right. So I think obviously, I mean, back in the spring when the strikes were starting to loom on the horizon, I pretty much said, yeah, there's going to be at least a writer's guilt strike, maybe a SAG.
I was surprised actually that director's guilt kind of sucked right up to some bad terms and signed a deal. But big deal, the directors can work, but there's nobody for them to direct or to write something to direct or anything else. So I think the directors kind of shot themselves in the foot, unfortunately. If all three guilds have gone out together, this would have been over by now, maybe, I don't know.
But I see this going at least a couple of more weeks if not into late into the fall. And that's going to affect all sorts of things. It's going to affect all the film festivals coming at Venice, Toronto, New York, thinking, you know, thinking locally for myself, it's probably going to affect who shows up for the Philadelphia Film Festival and some of their showcase films to promote. I don't expect anyone showing up for Philly, unfortunately, at this point, outside of like some of the smaller indies stuff, which I think would actually be good for them.
I mean, they'll get more, more people pay attention to them. I see New York Comic Con taking a significant hit this year in terms of media programming. And, you know, like last year where you had like guys from Muffin Mayhem, you got Dan Harmon promoting Crapopolis, which Fox kept delaying until it's finally airing next month. It was supposed to air like start airing like last March, February somewhere in there.
I think maybe even they saw the strike coming up and said, you know, maybe we should hold this off. And so we had at least some programming for the fall. Has the programming for New York Comic Con then released yet? Autograph guests as they have not announced the panel schedule.
That's usually about two weeks out. So we've got a month or so before we hear that. Yeah, and the fall schedule's already taken beating. Most shows won't be back.
I know. And this is because I'm a fan. The Quantum Leap reboot, the second season of that will be back with some episodes because they started shooting their second season in February. They, you know, they started shooting then.
So I don't know how many episodes they have ready to go. But there'll at least be a few episodes there. So I don't know if people just gravitate. And that's a really good thing and helps their ratings or if people are just like, well, I didn't know because I thought everything was not happening.
And then no one watches it. It's kind of like a weird thing where I can't decide one or the other is going to happen. It'll be interesting to see. Hopefully it's the former because I like the show.
I like it to stick around for a few years. So I can enjoy it some more. But we'll see. We've already started seeing some shows getting canceled.
And I wouldn't be surprised if it's in part because of the strike. Well, they pretty much said that League of their own second season, which was already shortened down to like four episodes or something stupid. It was canceled because of the strike. They were just like, well, by the time we finished the strike and by the time we can get everybody back together, the show won't be out until like 2025.
And I'm like, people will still want to watch it when it eventually shows up. How long are the weights between outlander seasons? How long are the weights between a stranger things, for goodness sakes? Oh, yeah.
So if you have a fandom, they will still show up. Bio season and stranger things, though, was shot, I believe, back to back with season four. And I may be wrong on that. So don't quote me on it.
But that would make sense as to why, you know, but yeah, no, I get what you're saying, but I'm sorry. People will wait for stranger things. People won't wait for League of their own. They'll forget about it.
Move on. I think it has I think anybody's core fandom show will that wait and go. Oh, cool. But there is a different level of core fandom.
There is like core fandom. I would say core fandom for stranger things is probably much bigger than it's not cold. It's not cold. It's fucking mainstream.
It's one of the big hitters. It's like I'm not saying cold. I'm just saying core. Yeah.
So so what I'm saying is that there are different levels. I think the League of their own the following on that may be a lot smaller. So Amazon is like, yeah, we can shop this and we're not going to lose too much in revenue, because well, in truth, we didn't get much back from it to begin. True.
Yeah. I mean, it's just a fact that they can just take a lot of tax loss on it. It's the fact that they said, well, taking a tax loss on a series in order to, you know, avoid paying people residuals is a shitty thing. And I would say that, you know, they said, well, we'll give you four episodes to wrap up everything from season one in a season two, you know, is at least acknowledging that some people were watching it.
It probably wasn't a huge money loss if it or maybe wasn't a big money earner for them or, you know, whatever their metric was, which is another thing in the strike. We'd have to see these metrics to see how these decisions are made. And I know one wants to show them. Yeah.
Everybody wants to hold them real close to their best. And that's just not workable. But we'll see. We'll see how this goes.
I know that you were bummed about how I met your father. Yeah. That was another one that I don't know if that was strike related so much. But, you know, it might have just been a, you know, viewership thing, but I was enjoying the show.
I think the second season was, you know, improving on what they did good in the first season. I still have a couple of small qualms about it, mostly being in the original How I Met Your Mother series. There was a lot of flash forwards and hints as to what was coming and things like that in that kind of rambling way that you tell a story to a friend. And you'll be like, oh, and then there was the, oh, wait, no, the pineapple happens.
Like, hold on. You know, how you do that. Just casually telling a story. Yeah.
That's the feel that the original series had. And I don't think how I met your father quite captured that vibe. It was still the overall flashback framework was working. But it lacked that nuance that the original series had.
But I enjoyed it. Made me laugh. I was bummed about season three after season three of The Great. They've decided to go ahead and cancel that as well over at Hulu.
Now that being said, I kind of understand it. I sort of see it coming. And I think the writers did a great job of trying to, they didn't wrap up the story completely, but they made it feel like this was the ending of part of her story. And there is so much more to come, but we just won't be able to witness it.
It was just like this chapter of the book is closed. But the story lives on kind of thing. And I like those kind of endings that I don't mind them. For example, this is how I'm going to transition to this rebels.
The Star Wars animated series ends on a note where one character kind of disappears off into legend. He makes a sacrifice to save his friends. And that's great. I think that's a great character art ending point.
And it's really wonderful. And so, of course, that becomes like the let's reverse this and bring him back moment in in Ahsoka. And I'm enjoying Ahsoka for the most part. I think it's a little slow.
But the fact that they want to reverse this whole idea and bring, you know, this character back, actually these two characters back, is alienating for people who never watched Rebels like yourself. And I watched the first episode of Ahsoka in half of the second episode. And I said, I'm out. And I, you know, I'm sad about that.
Because I, like I said, I'm at least enjoying it. But I can't blame you either. You know, I, you know, watch all the Star Wars animated stuff going through. But like you said, when we were talking about it before, it feels like homework, you know, if you're just getting to it now.
And I don't think as much as I like what Dave Filoney mostly does with Star Wars, I think here, it's a mistake because it's kind of reliant too much on stuff that's kind of on the fringes of canon that not as many people have seen as, I mean, okay, look at the number of people who've seen the Star Wars movies. Smaller number who've seen live action Star Wars. And then there's an even smaller number who've seen the animated stuff. You know, that's, that's, that's like the, um, the niche of the niche there.
And to kind of have bigger things depending on intricate knowledge of that smaller stuff is not good story telling you my opinion. It's annoying to crap out of me because I consider myself a Star Wars fan. I would not consider myself a die, like a die hard Star Wars fan. Like I not read the novels.
I have not watched Clone Wars. I have not watched Rebels. I'm sorry. There's just so much out there in terms of, you know, product to absorb like shows and films.
I'm not going to give all of my energy just to my nerd core. I want to be able to experience other things outside that and that's better to be more well-rounded. And so yeah, I come into this. I've watched everything of Mandalorian that has come out.
I, um, and book a Boba Fett. I didn't watch book a Boba Fett. I only saw the first couple episodes and I went I'm out. Um, I stayed around for Obi-Wan.
I loved Obi-Wan. I watched the first episode of Andor. I know that is the best of all of them. But right now I'm so fucking burned out on Star Wars.
I can't do it. I can't do it. So I got really excited about Ahsoka. I did.
I know roughly the general storyline of, of her and Anakin in the Clone Wars. I didn't realize how much of an impact she played into Rebels. Um, but I know who she is. I got excited to see her story come to life.
And Rosaria Dawson is fine. Yeah. And then the first episode of Ahsoka dropped and I got into it. And they're talking about shit that I have no fucking clue what is going on multiple times.
And they're introducing characters like you're supposed to know who they are. I mean, I know who Ron is. I know who Ezra is. Basically.
I have ideas of who these people are. Now, did you realize in the first episode they recreate live action like the final scene from Rebels? No, I don't even know what the final scene of Rebel was was. Okay.
The final scene of Rebels was a Coda. Rebels takes place like the three to four years to one year before, um, the first Star Wars will be. And then like the very last two minutes kind of jumps forward in time to after the war is over. And that's when Ahsoka shows up and, um, Sabine Ren is looking at that painting, that cave painting that has been taken off of a cave and put into that room.
And then they get into the, the ship to fly off to go find Ezra because that was kind of how Rebels ended with this promise that they were going to go try to find Ezra after the war ended. Yeah, no, I did not know that. Yeah. And so they recreate you see, but they, and I'm sure everybody who watched Rebels and enjoyed Rebels was like, Oh my gosh, the scene.
And I was kind of like, Oh, they're recreating that. That's good. Glad I rewatched Rebels this previous weekend. You know, the last episode of Rebels this previous weekend.
So I can recognize it because it's bill hot minutes and take about it. But I don't want to go back and rewatch all of that in order to understand this. I was hoping that this was going to be its own separate thing, obviously linked to some of the stuff that went on, but I don't want it to be a fucking continuation story. True.
And it is it's, as people said, it's Rebels season five. And there's ways you can use some of the, the lesser known Star Wars canon in ways that kind of enrich the movies without, without mandating that you enjoy this lesser canon stuff. Okay. The character of Snap Wexley in the sequel trilogy.
Oh, I love Snap. Yeah. Great character. I wanted more of them.
Well, good for you. You can find out all about his growing up years in Chuck Wendy's Star Wars aftermath trilogy. The first three books that came out in the new movie. Yeah, I'm not reading those books.
Okay. Then you're not going to get it. But it's there if you want it. And everything in those books does not necessarily predicate anything you need to know to see him in the movies and enjoy him in the movies.
Exactly. My point. Why does it have to be so, you know, insular? Yes.
Yeah. That's, I don't know. But I think that's probably, I mean, yeah. Okay.
Dave Filoni loves Ahsoka. You want to talk about hitting a core member of fans or a core group of fans with the right material, Star Wars is getting to that point. But they're going to lose the casual viewers who just kind of pop in and out. Yeah.
A casual viewer can pop in and watch Rogue One and know what it's all, you know, and doesn't need to know everything else. But Ahsoka, I think, you know, it's very, it's very dependent on knowing rebels. And I mean, it does try to give some exposition on the first couple of episodes. You get to the space whale things in episode three.
But I knew by that point, you at least had checked out. So, you know, in terms of storytelling, it failed for you. And I understand that. I can't blame you actually.
And I am, I am a big proponent of watch the first four episodes of any show before you check out. Do that. Because that's when the story really gets moving. But that is, I, but when they throw in the deep end on mythology and stuff like that, right at the beginning, without throwing you a lifesaver so to speak, it works.
The idea of the four episodes things work if it's a new story. Because that's when you've gone ahead and you've introduced your main characters, your supporting characters. And now the actual story is progressing to its ultimate goal. That doesn't work if it's, you need to have all that backstory.
If the first episode of Ahsoka feels like episode six of some of rebels, you know, it's definitely built on stuff separate. And yeah, and I can see where that's an issue. You know, even, you know, I had to turn to my husband midway through and I went, wait, what the hell happened? What did they talk about?
Space whales and Israel? What, what the hell happened? And he goes, Oh yeah, this and this and with Ron and then they were taken out to a deepest part of space and I'm staring at him like he had just turned into a banter. Like I was like, what?
And people say, Oh, there's explainer videos on YouTube. You don't like the fuck do I have to go back to that? Exactly. Yeah.
I mean, they're nice if you want to, but to require somebody to do that, I think it's more certain. I got you want to do a couple season five to rebel season five. Don't call it something else and then and market it as something else. I mean, I got into this fight with people over of all things, Mel Gibson's Last Temptation Christ because I felt that that Mel Gibson that wasn't Mel Gibson.
Yeah, it was Last Temptation of Christ. Or not Last Temptation, but Mel Gibson's Passion. Passion of the Christ. Yeah, excuse me.
But I got into that because the movie only dealt with Christ's last suffering on the cross. It doesn't give you the basis as to what his teachings were and why this happened and why it had happened. There's a whole school of things that happened to help make that sacrifice understandable in context. And they didn't do it.
It was just the misery porn of him being nailed onto a cross. And you know, so many people were like, Oh, this is so great. I'm like, no, it's not. Because you don't have it within within the piece of art itself.
You don't have that context. And they're like, Oh, everybody knows like, shouldn't have to go into you should not have to walk into a movie with prior knowledge of certain things to understand the movie. Which is kind of that can be a flexible law. And especially in terms of things like Marvel movies now or the Daniel Craig James Bond movies, how they had an overall story arc.
And maybe if you kind of were just just hadn't seen any of them and decided to show up for no time to die, you might be wondering who a bunch of people were outside of. Well, that's not okay. I know Q, I know M, and who are all these other people? Who the hell's Madeline?
Yeah. So yeah, so that can be a kind of a flexible rule. But in terms of Ahsoka, and honestly, I've had this conversation about the Marvels as well, coming up in November. Yes, I never finished Miss Marvel.
Okay. Yeah. And some people are coming. I saw they dropped the new trailer on Thursday, I think it was that showed little clips from WandaVision, how Monica Rambo got her powers.
They show a little couple of clips from Miss Marvel, showing how she got her powers. And then, you know, a little couple of clips from the first Captain Marvel movie, and then, you know, kind of weaved it all together. So, you know, and I was like, oh, that's great. They're trying to show it.
Yeah. I saw somebody complaining online saying, oh, they just gave us a reading list. And I'm like, no, they didn't. They gave me the cliff notes.
Yeah. That's true. Spark notes. Yeah, exactly.
You don't need any, you don't need to go back and watch any of this. If you just watch this two minute trailer, you got it. You absolutely have character relationships between Monica and Carol. You have everybody, how everybody got their powers.
And you got a nice little quick little tidbit of how Kamala and her family interact. That's all you need. That's really all you need on this. And I was just like, dude, you're stupid.
I just couldn't believe it. You know, that they're like a reading list. There are times when that's a valid criticism, i.e. Ahsoka.
But not for that one. I don't think. Anyway, speaking of required reading lists, it's back to school time. So we wanted to do for a retro review this week.
A back to school movie. And you picked a movie that in hindsight, after you picked it, I realized it kind of pairs well with Barbie from the summer. I didn't pick this movie. You pick.
Well, you suggested it. No, I did not. You did. Did I suggest?
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah, I suggested I guess legally blonde then.
And then in hindsight, I'm realizing it fits up with Barbie in a nice way, I think, thematically and color theory wise. Lots of pink. So yes, we're talking about legally blonde. Now, you surprised me earlier this morning when you came over and I was just finishing my rewatch of it.
And you said you would have voided this movie up until last year. About six months ago. Not even three months ago. Okay.
So why were you avoiding this movie? And and what was what changed you to wanting to check out the movie? And then what were your first impressions from three months ago? Okay.
So I think I think some of the the look of the film is one of the things that made me avoid it so long. You know, the the blonde and pink and I'd seen the trailers as a kid. Some more trailers for red, white and blonde than I did for this one. And you know, her showing up to the Supreme Court dress like Jackie over some reason was a huge fucking turn off.
I was like, yeah, this is not for me at all. And then there was a musical and every time someone did the musical, I was just like, good for you. I hope you enjoy it. It's just not for me.
But what changed all that? I don't know. I think with I think we're heading when did this come out 2003 2003 or four? Okay.
So I think since we're heading towards like a 20th anniversary on this. I also with the Renaissance of Y2K films being discovered by like the edge of Gen Z into Gen Alpha. Oh, is that what we're calling after Gen Z Gen Alpha? Yeah, I did not know that because I'll admit at some point I was wondering at some point I have wondered, we're gonna run out of letters, aren't we?
So we're going Greek. Yes, we're going to Generation Alpha now, which is like sororities, which are mentioned in Legally Blonde. So back to Legally Blonde. Anyway, there is a renaissance of Y2K films being discovered.
Sex in the city is a big hit again. Legally Blonde is coming back around. People are discovering mean girls and and all of those big films from Y2K again. And so my TikTok was getting flooded.
My Facebook was getting flooded, prime video was sending out little clips of things here and there. It shows up in fucking Wednesday as a horror movie for Wednesday. That's right. That's right.
And I finally went, you know what, I'm just gonna cave. I need something to just throw on in the background that I was sitting home the one day by myself. And I'm like, I want some like girl energy. I want to feel like I'm a girly girl.
But something I hadn't seen again, just something I could throw on. So I threw on Legally Blonde. I wish that people could see this in my own creeping across your face. And it was one of those, what is it?
What is this? Oh my God, this is amazing. I think I called you after I got done with the the first one. I went like amped me.
I went for a run afterwards. I was I was feeling so damn good. And I came back and I'm like, that thing cooked. It's like an hour and a half.
It did not even feel like an hour and a half. I feel like I was not even an hour. You know, with apologies and no puns intended about the accused murder, murderer in this movie being an exercise instructor or anything else that they talk about in terms of body shapes and stuff, there's not an ounce of fat on this movie. It's there's nothing you would absolutely nothing that you say.
Well, that doesn't serve the characters or the stories. It's boom, super good. And then I came back and I was like, you know what? What the hell?
I threw in red, white and blonde as well. I knocked that out. So I knocked out both Legally Blonde films within like four hours. Great.
And honest, I was very impressed. And I hated myself for for avoiding it for so long because of my own prejudice, I guess. Against Ditzy Blonde. See, yes.
So you basically the theme of the movie. I was I was. But it didn't help that those first trailers that I saw didn't do anything to subvert that idea. It completely backed at 100%.
They just like, Oh, look, Ditzy Blonde goes to law school. Yeah. There was no meat in there that made you feel like I can't remember any of the trailers from when they came out originally. I can't remember any of the real marketing about this movie.
But I have to wonder, did they bother to use what what I think is the single best best line, not funniest line, not, you know, awesome line. But I think it's the best line in the movie because it sums it up thematically. It's on that first day of class with homically thematically. It sums it up very well thematically with that first day in Holland Taylor's class as the professor.
And she says, basically, you will sharply question what you know. Yeah, I think that was in there. That should have been in those trailers that maybe the kind of hints at this movie might look like one thing, but it's definitely going to be the other. And that's like I said, that's the theme of this whole movie.
Yeah. And I mean, I remember when I saw red, white and blonde, it was all about goofiness. And yeah, she goes to the Supreme Court dresses a pink Jackie Oh, and then there's obviously Jennifer Coolidge. Oh, you look like the fourth of July, it makes me want to hug really bad.
And I was like, yep, no, check it out. Like it felt very like let's celebrate the stupid blonde going to stand up for a ridiculous idea in front of the Supreme Court. See, unfortunate. Well, for, you know, I don't want to say unfortunately, but I had been planning on rewatching this last night along with Legally Blonde, too.
And friends were in from out of town. We wound up, I thought, Oh, two hours for dinner should be enough. Four hours later, we're stumbling out of the restaurant. So, you know, so I didn't have a chance to rewatch this.
Whatever got a Vasquez is in town. I expect that. I expect that it's not going to be two hours. It's going to be like six minutes.
We've got a Vasquez who is our comic book editor here at Film Buff Online, who is starting a new series of reviews called we saw it on streaming about weird movies that only show up on streaming because they never got a theatrical release. So that's most movies, how days? Well, this is like some older stuff. It's first one scheduled to start to go live this coming Friday.
And then I think we're going to go every two weeks with that. I know one of the movies he has coming up is New York Ninja, which has it very interesting production history, which I'll save for you to read. But he did tell me at one point, there is a ninja fighting bad guys while he's on roller states. And I'm just like, well, I need to see this movie.
You just sold me, baby. But anyways, back to Legally Blonde. Yeah, that was a weird tangent. Anyway, we're back.
We're back as podcasters. That's our weird tangent shows. What did you think? Okay, I hadn't seen it in a very long time, probably about 15 years.
So a lot of it was very fresh to me. And I really liked it. And again, I think, you know, I find it does play pretty well with with Barbie from this past summer in that, you know, definitely addresses the don't judge somebody on their looks, especially if those looks happen to be, you know, blonde and big tits, or boobs, excuse me, as you know, I'm trying to quote Elle herself in Legally Blonde. And they find they have their own native intelligence that might not work the way the rest of us work with our intelligence, but it gets there.
And it shows that that different, unique point of view is just as valuable. If in the courtroom scene, and at this point, I think I'm going to get into a bit of a spoiler here for the ending of the movie. So if you haven't seen Legally Blonde, hit pause, go find it. It's on Amazon.
I don't know. And that could change rapidly, but go find it, watch it and come back. Are you done? Okay, welcome back.
And I don't think a man would have recognized the perm clue during the questioning scene in the trial that I okay, I did. And that's because well, I used to date, you know, somebody who worked in a salon. And you know, so I, you know, when you date somebody who works in an area that you don't, you just kind of pick up stuff. And somewhere along the lines, I probably pick that thing up about perms.
I'm not saying that in the early 90s, I may have had one or two. I've had two perms in my life. One was for a role, actually. So I do know the rules about perms.
And so I, I actually did kind of clue in on to that. And I was like, wait, hang on. And then I watched her head pop up. And then you can see a sharp turn in Ellen, that final.
Yeah, that's a great moment. She goes from feeling very awkward and out of her depth for the first half of that to, oh, you just fed me a piece of information. You just walked in the door of my building. My house.
And I'm gonna take you down and you watch her shoulders pop back and her chin go up in the air. Oh, it's a great physical transformation. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
And what's great is that the prosecutor here, who is should be on the side of this witness is also female. And she didn't know it. She didn't recognize it until Elle has to spell it out in her in her questioning. And I think that also speaks to the idea of, again, judging on appearances that even the prosecutor was like, A, didn't think to ask the question of what were you doing all day?
Oh, you went and got a perm and then you came home and took a shower? Or B, the prosecutor was in a rush. So they're, you know, just to. That or she had never had a perm before.
She may not understand the rules that go behind it. And I understand it would be kind of sexist for me to say, well, she should know that anyways. But, you know, I live through the 90s. Yeah, this will be takes place in the 90s.
If she lived through the 80s and the 90s, she even if she had never had a perm herself, she probably would have had friends who knew that. There's two embarrassing photos in her high school yearbooks of her and a bad perm. Everybody in the 80s had that just. It's the hair decade for a reason.
But yeah, so it's a great moment. And you know, that's almost a punch in the air kind of like, yes moment. And you're suddenly realizing, you know, because it's it's a trying for her. It's the thematic paying off.
I mean, it's great. It's so good. It's tight. It's a tight yeah.
And the only thing I don't like, and this is a minor quibble, her two friends and undergrad are a little too cartoony in terms of like the whole sorority sister thing. They don't get any better in the second one. Oh, good. But and yet, um, you know, she plays L as just almost to that border of cartoony, Ditzy, but still has an actual emotional core, emotional life to the character.
So it never becomes, oh, she's just a clown character who suddenly, you know, makes a, you know, gets lucky with with with how the film ends in the climax. It's no, she's smart. She just hasn't been challenged in this particular way. And she's never met a challenge she couldn't.
Yeah. Yeah. And ultimately, you know, but she probably because, you know, probably people were giving her a pass because of her looks. Some of those challenges were probably easier to navigate because people were just like, Oh, hey, I'll do this for you.
As opposed to, you know, if she showed up, 85 more pounds on her and dark hair, and it would probably be a lot harder for, you know, her to meet those obstacles. Yeah. Might as well. Yeah.
Might as well. Yeah. Summer Blair, I think, um, she doesn't, she, that could have been a very one note character as well. Yeah.
And as, you know, the ex boyfriends new girlfriend slash fiance, the one who got the ring. And I think how that character actually has a bit of a journey as they become friends, then she overhears something and then she feels the remorse about misinterpreting it and goes to help is really great. I've been watching a lot of 80s movies for the other podcast show that I do on Monday nights, called Generation Movie, plug plug, and 80s movie villains, comedy movie villains are always kind of one note. They're just complete douchebags all the way through, and then they get their come up into the end and things like, you know, like weird science or real genius stuff like that.
So to see a character who's kind of like, there's not a whole lot of real villains in this movie. There's some antagonists. Um, but to see that character kind of have that growth, a little bit of a backslide, and then ultimate kind of a redemption for that, you know, that character is very refreshing as well. Indeed.
I really, really loved what she was doing here. Shout out to Victor Garber. He, I always love Victor Garber and anything that I see him in. And, you know, Mr.
Andrews to me, he'll be Mr. Andrews to you. For me, he's always going to be Professor Stein, um, when half a firestorm on the CW's DC TV shows and Firestorm was one of my favorite comics growing up. So, and I thought he was like, just absolutely wonderful as Professor Stein.
Even in the films where he's absolutely just kind of crappy, like, uh, first wives club. Ooh, I don't think I've seen that since it came out. It's really good. That's another one that's, that's starting to be reevaluated by the younger generation.
Um, yeah, like any sort of like female centric, uh, empowerment film of the late 90s, Y2K era, all coming back around. All of them. That's good. That's good.
Because I think it's, it's, um, in this day and age where we do have them, but yes, but I think a lot of them don't approach it in a more, I want to say, uh, I kind of want to say like a mature way. Um, so like looking at say first wise club, you get to see the older generation trying to go through that epiphany of their life as a woman and what did it mean? What did it all mean up till now? We were told if we did all of this right, we get what we wanted in the end.
I got nothing in the head. So what, what was the point? And I think we're starting to see a lot of, um, a lot of people going back to that because there was an energy to those films. It was happy, go lucky, but also at the exact same time that it looked at it from, um, maybe a more subtle way, not but sure.
I think subtle is the word I'm looking for. They were very critical of a patriarchy. And I think in terms of overall civil rights, especially in hate get political, sorry, um, no, I don't hate to get political about this. Um, in light of, um, the repeal of Roe v.
Wade, I think that's reunited a lot of anger towards patriarchy, patriarchal constructs. And rightfully so. And I think, um, you know, that's going to ignite an interest in all these other movies that kind of talked about this before. And did they affect change in society or not?
But if not, you know, we're still going to see them and we still speak to us and they still speak to our viewpoint of as women, um, or as hopefully allies in the same way Barbie did, you know, honestly, the, I think the people who got the most upset about Barbie were, you know, um, people who have always been upset about women's rights and women's issues and somehow thinking that if women have an equal place at the table, it diminishes men somehow. And it's stupid. With Barbie, the way I see it is, it's not the first to do a story like this, but they told it in such a, a very outright and fourth way. They weren't leaving anything on the table.
They were just coming straight out and saying, no, this is what we deal with. The monologue that America Ferrera does in that, which is absolutely incredible. Might be one of the greatest female monologues I think I've ever heard in my life. And it's been shit.
I've been saying for fucking years and no one listens, but thank you, Greta Gerwig, someone to listen to you. Um, I think the way that they do that is they're like, no, we're not going to hide anymore. We're not going to play behind the subtlety. We're going to just come right out and be blunt and tell you what the fuck is going on and and what the issue is that we deal with instead of just trying to hide them behind a pretty smile and a tight skirt.
Um, now I do kind of like how some of those older films address that with the subtlety because it allows you to really kind of, for me, it allows me to step into their shoes instead of just tuning out what they're saying. Let me feel what you're going through. Whereas Barbie was a case of, well, at the moments where you can feel and then we're going to add the moments where you're just going to shut up and fucking listen. And that's why I think it might be the best of these is because it molds the two together.
Would you say that we couldn't have gotten to Barbie? Oh, well, let me rephrase that. Without legally blown up. Would you say legally blonde walks so Barbie could run?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I know that even in the music alone, watch me shine and perfect day, which are the two kind of stand out songs in this film, perfect day, bookends the beginning and the end of this movie where we see Elle in this in different states and are like, hold on.
I'm making up. She's feeling is perfect. Yeah. And in the beginning, it's all about dawling herself up for a man who she thinks is going to propose to her.
That is considered to be her perfect day at the end at the beginning of the film. And I'm like, please, please, please, please don't let me go through what I think this film is, let it surprise me, let it change me. And then by the end of the film, the idea of her perfect day is standing at the podium, getting a speech to the graduating class of Harvard Law students. That is a perfect day to her.
And I love seeing that switch. But in the middle of it, you want to talk about a switch, it's the moment she realizes she went to Harvard for the wrong reason and watch me shine clues in as she walks out of a Halloween party dress like a playboy bunny and immediately goes and buys a Mac laptop and goes to the library and we see this montage of her just working her ass off. Well, everyone else around her is just like, either playing it cool or is just sees her and is dumbfounded by what the fuck happened to her. And it's a case of, okay, who is really going to surprise here, that determination, that willingness to finally say, you know what, fuck what's on the outside?
I'm going to nurture the inside and I'm going to go after and get what I want. And I think because of that, I think this film is always going to be there for women, for young girls who are going through transitions in their life and they're looking to feel some semblance of being strong. And I think that is a perfect place to wrap this up for today. If you haven't seen League of London a while and you're looking to see it, it is available on Amazon Prime and Hulu.
And it looks like YouTube TV, Voodoo, Redbox. So it's around. Remember, you can find us online at BigPicturePod.com and we are now available on iTunes and Google Play. So either use the link in the show notes post or head directly there.
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