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This episode of the watch is brought to you by J. Cole for your eyes only a Dreamville film, the Grammy nominated hip hop star second HBO special which gave you Saturday, April 15th at 10 p.m. Eastern. This is the exclusive presentation.
It's a multi-narrative show that combines music performances with intimate interviews documented through Cole's lens, the special showcases songs from his fourth album as well as revealing footage containing the heartfelt confessions, concerns and struggles of people in the South. Traveling through different cities, gathering interviews, J. Cole reveals the challenges lower income residents face trying to obtain viable housing as well as the frustration for felons of being barred from voting. I'm personally really excited to check this out.
It's rare that you get to see a rapper have the chance to make something like this with the interviews, the documentary element and the concert footage and put it on a platform like this. J. Cole's laid a special airs Saturday, April 15th, 10 p.m. Eastern.
It's 11 p.m. Eastern for the premiere of J. Cole for your eyes only a Dreamville film. You have to hit HBO.
I need support to have to be the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan.
I am an editor at TheRinger.com and today a special episode of The Watch. We're joined by a bunch of Ringer staff members, a variety of them. I was going to do a solo pod today that was just going to be like 63 minutes straight on the Americans. But that's premium content.
You got to pay for that. The free version here is me talking about the staff members from TheRinger, Sean Fennissi, Alice Herman, Mike Peters and more. And I just wanted to pick their brains. See what they're checking out right now and get some Ringer recommendations.
And I actually don't even know what folks are going to be recommending to me right now. But we're going to start off with the Ringer Editor in Chief and my arch nemesis, Sean Fennissi. I'm in the take cannon and I'm ready to be fired. This is, you have the floor, man.
You have cleared me out. I'm standing in the corner waiting for the ball. That's not what this is about. But I'm going to open up the story to set the scene.
Oh my God. Last night, members of The Ringer staff after a Ringer League basketball game went to a Korean restaurant, had some beers, had some skewers. Okay. Conversation to invite that school.
That was amazing. Well, if you could ball, you could be there. So anyway, we're at this restaurant. We're having a conversation, the same conversation that everybody in America is having today.
Who is the MVP of the National Basketball Association? Yes. Yes. As you know, and as you feel, many members of our staff love and support Russell Westboro.
We're at Oklahoma Thunder Hat right now, even though I'm from Philadelphia, two of your favorite places in America. Right. So those are Fester and Cauldrons. However, at this debate last night, Jason Gallagher and Mike Peters, among others, stridently supporting Russ, making their case.
As you know, and as you've known for many years, I am opposed to Russ at all costs. I do not understand the love. I do not understand the support. I'm not moved.
I hope that this is your Andy Kaufman move and when 10 years from now, and I'm toasting you as you open up your third in a franchise of shoe stores that you've opened. And I'm like, remember when you used to hate Russell Westboro? Can you just look up and it's like, it's like that was just a bit. It's a 10 year bit.
It's not a bit. So anyhow, we're having this debate. I'm arguing against it. I'm supporting hard and I'm making my usual case about how LeBron has been the MVP of the League for the last nine years.
He should have nine MVPs, et cetera. Things get a little contentious as I often do during these debates. To parry back at me, Jason Gallagher blank face looks me in the eye and says, you know what, man? I don't like Father John Misty, which was just the most it was the lowest blow because you know how I feel about Father John Misty.
Yeah. But I feel like you and I know that the deeper into the mist we get, the more we're going to lose other fellow travelers. Yeah. So that's what I want to talk about.
I want to talk about his father John Misty, not in the context of the MVP debate. He is the MVP of music in 2017. Yeah. He has a new record.
It's called Pure Comedy Came Out last Friday. You send me a Slack message on the Ring or Slack. Yeah. Four weeks ago, five weeks ago, low key, maybe one o'clock in the morning on a Friday night.
It was like, hey, man, just want you to know, Pure Comedy is really touching me. And I honestly thought that one hadn't given it as much time as I would have liked. I've been giving it a lot more time this week. We've talked about Father John Misty before, but now that it's out in the world and it takes a roiling, are you as excited about it as you were five weeks ago?
Yeah. I don't think that there's he's my favorite lyric system pop music right now. I'm actually like, you know, like, I have a bunch of friends who are, I don't, they're very into like, you know, it's just melody and, you know, if the lyrics are there. But I have like, I've always been really attracted to like probing funny lyricists who play characters or work with sarcasm or work with irony.
And it's not to say that everybody doesn't do this. But like, you know, I've always had a soft spot for people like that, whether it's like Stephen Malcolmus or Misty now, I'm sure I sound like I only have two examples. But there's something about the dead-eyed kind of horror that lurks underneath this album and it's, but it's being played like by an indie band at a Holiday Inn at the Edge of a Desert, you know what I mean? Like, I really like this idea of like almost like a lounge act at the end of the world, which is like the way I envision pure comedy playing out.
This is, the album has a lot of elements of your favorite music like Randy Newman, Harry Nelson. Is it almost one of those cases where something is too close to home? It is. Yeah.
A few years ago, I profiled Father John Misty, Josh Tillman. We spent some time together. And at the end of a long conversation that we had, he was telling me about what he was working on next. And he pretty accurately described what ended up becoming pure comedy, which is a sort of like existential look at the world and the way that information comes in and the way we can't get it out.
You know, this sort of like never ending stream of information that is unprocessable. This is pre Donald Trump. This is pretty all manner of things that have since destroyed the world. But even at that point, he kind of knew what he was doing.
And I remember specifically thinking this is a mistake. Obviously, I wasn't going to say that to him. But what I like so much about his second album, I love you, Honey Bear. It's just that it was very intimate and specific and was very much about him.
And I could relate to him in a lot of specific ways. And I completely agree with everything said about the lyricism. I completely agree with the sound of the music. It's like is a mode of music that is very sensual to me.
But for whatever reason, even after spending a lot more time with it this week, I can't connect. Maybe it's because I don't want to spend my time thinking about how I can't connect to the rest of the world the same way that he can. You know, I have the same like miserable list view of things. So let me ask you, and this is not just because both of these songwriters have lurid lines about Taylor Swift.
But do you feel like he is kind of entering that Kanye zone where the music is at one so personal, but for you? But it's also like a shared experience for a lot of people. And there's so many takes about him. And there's like, he's obviously like going through a very special moment in terms of being an interview subject and being a pundit about pop culture and the like industrial complex around how we prop up and knock down pop culture figures.
Do you feel like he's almost entering a zone where it's not it's no longer like a private relationship with a musician. And now he's like a figure that you have to kind of like think about. Maybe it's possible. I only felt that way at the very beginning with Kanye.
I accept Kanye belongs to everyone. I think with father John Misty, it's more that he's trying to figure out how to say one step ahead of everybody. And the way that he's doing it in a form that is like much more rigid, like folk music and the form of rock music that he plays is pretty straight. It's hard to reinvent it.
He'll just rip down this album from the last record. Kanye usually does the opposite. Kanye is usually like, how can I blow up the last Murakami painting into a new painting? And I think that because of the strictures that that Misty puts on himself, it makes it more challenging.
But I don't feel like a loss of closeness to him. I just don't like the songs as much. Okay, so Sean Fettnessy recommends pure comedy by father John Misty. Obviously available wherever you find music online or otherwise.
And it's a record that he's still struggling with, but is obviously deeply engaged by. Protect FJM. Yeah. Okay.
Let's jump to our next guest. Okay, that was Sean Fettnessy. And now we're joined by the original television critic, Alison Herman. Alison, welcome back.
This is like now four times, three times on the pot. I'm a recurring guest. Is that the technical? You're gonna have to get the Tom Hanks jacket soon.
Okay, so Alison, what do you recommend? So Netflix, as we know, is a never ending font of content. This weekend, they dropped the second season of a British show called Chewing Gum. You might have heard about it.
Holly Kana wrote a recommendation for it in our running television post, but it is created by written by and stars, a woman named Michaela Cole. And I guess the loose plot is it's about a virgin named Tracy, who lives with her. Immigrant mom, who's super Christian, her sister, who very much buys into that. Is this technically right?
It's set on a real housing project where Council estate, as they are called in North London, basically. Okay. But yeah, and she decides that she kind of wants to grow up and venture out of this very strictured. I mean, it's sheltered in some ways because she's a 24-year-old virgin.
So she grows up in the middle of a working class housing project and she's surrounded by the realities that come with that and the show is very frank about that. And what I personally really like about the show is it follows very loosely a template of the young single girl in the city. But we're so used to seeing that template reflected through usually white, usually affluent, usually not on a Council estate, usually not a virgin, usually just not as culturally specific about anything except I'm in New York and I'm going to train in that iconography. Right.
And I think- Extreme Hannah, who fourth voice? Yeah, or London Glaser or even, I mean, there's actually a lot of parallelism between chewing gum and flea bag. I think their first season is dropped in American Stream. So they were both British and board, American streaming services.
I think Netflix just distributed the first season and contributed to the production of the second. But British Comedy is six episodes, American streaming services. They even both share that breaking the fourth wall device where the- Okay. Terri is as dark as flea bag or- That's also what's kind of nice about it is that there are dark elements in that it's much more frank about teen pregnancy and the desperation that can come with poverty.
And these are not classy people as we might understand them, but it has this total unrestrained joy to it. It's just kind of a technicolor palette. It even has a very old school sitcomy montage opening that's a little bit ironic, but also sincere. And it brings this palpable sense of, I think, it's really interesting that it manages to balance both.
It's very sharply written and there are one liners to be found in it, but Cole is just such a gifted physical comedian. It's almost like if you made an entire show out of that scene in Broad City where a lot of Jacks off a tree. Yeah. Like, it's that level of total commitment, total enthusiasm, total lack of inhibition.
And it's really fun to watch. And I literally sat down on a Saturday afternoon and knocked the whole thing out in three hours. Okay. Is it- I'm asked the leftovers question.
Is it a- do you have to watch the first season, but under 10 seconds, even bit just as like a service journalism guy that questioned her? It's a little bit serialized. You probably could just read the Wikipedia page. Yeah.
I do think so the first season she sort of magically just picks up a boyfriend and so the first season was sort of, this is my first relationship. How do I negotiate that? And then the second season, they've broken up. Now she has to negotiate the aftermath of her first breakup.
And one of the great ironies is that she manages to have this escalating series of sexual adventures, but spoiler alert, I guess she's still a virgin at the end of it. Right. Even though she's managed to like go to a sex club and- It's a high degree of difficulty for maintaining virginity, I guess. Yeah.
Okay. I would be remiss if I did not ask you because I already know the answer, but for listeners who know, Andy and I have been sort of talking about the leftovers piece by piece here and there over the last week or so, but just to corroborate the fact that Andy and I are not on Leftovers Island. How good is this? I mean, the entire profession of television criticism is one giant leftovers island.
We just kind of scream into the void. Because of the boom, there's like two and a half million of you. Yeah. I think we got three people to watch it, but we're just sustaining these final episodes, but it's incredible.
I can't recommend it more. I'm really excited to hear you guys' conversation with Damon. Yeah. Yeah.
Go watch. Okay. Allison Herman, she recommends chewing gum. It's streaming on Netflix.
Thanks very much for stopping by Allison. Thanks for having me. Okay. So that was Allison Herman.
And now I'm joined by the ringer's chief millennial, Mike Peters. Mike, this is your first time in the watch? I think it is my first time in the watch. It's a big day.
It's a big day. It's a big day. Yeah. So you're going to abandon my office and say that you were obsessed with some piece of obscure anime or like, I spent a lot of time on SoundCloud.
Okay. You know, like some judging before the future based community. Michael, what do you have to recommend for the watch listeners? Right.
Okay. So my recommendation is this rapper from St. Louis, who is a Chicago trans plant. His name is Smino and his debut album was called Black Swan.
And it is Smino for people. Smino is S-M-I-N-O. Great. Okay.
I can remember that Smino is from, he's from, he's from, he's a Chicago trans plant to St. Louis. No, St. Louis, Chicago.
What's his stuff? Like, um, okay. So it's very, I don't want to say future about it because that's a gold length term, but it's very vibey and kind of mellow, but bouncy. The way that he, it's kind of like a, it's something in the legacy of, uh, Nelly, I would say.
Oh, but I mean, updated for, well, updated, updated for my generation. Gotcha. Okay. So big.
Okay. Um, okay. What is it in a sense that is it melodic? The way, but Nelly is extremely melodic.
Oh, there's my favorite song on the album is called, uh, Father Son, the Holy Smoke. It's very much like the melody, you can tell when the melody is the, is the bedrock for, like it's, it's more, it's more heavily weighted on the melody than it is necessarily the lyrics. Okay. So although there are things that are the way that he, the way that he wraps is very, even when he does interviews, like he was on a selection radio a couple of months ago, um, talking to Joe Kay.
And even when he's just talking, like you and I are talking right now, it sounds like he's still performing. Like he's doing a melody and like his voice is inherently melodic. Yeah. So like, you know, shout out my momma.
She never does me even told me on cue when I know I'm ugly. Yeah. It's very like it's, and everything is very precise and fun. It's just a fun album.
Would you compare? I mean, just out of curiosity, because like I think that when we first started working together, obviously there was that burst of like new talent that kind of broke through a little bit and rap where it was like verity and yachty, especially was like, I think while whimsical, I think that pre-stage is like a degree of like interest in melody that had been maybe not lacking, but absent from a lot of hip hop, like do you feel like that there's been a turn towards like almost sing songs to songy melody in hip hop or something going off? I think it's been going on for a long time. I think that it's maybe more it's more of a mainstream thing.
Maybe it's more of a verb now that everything is it's songs are consistent of many hooks rather than having like a verse hook bridge, whatever structure, anything that's straightforward. There are those things like say even just in that one specific song I was talking about before, like there's there's a verse structure and a bridge and a hook, but it bleeds into like each bleeds into the next versus like you being able to say distinctly, this is what this does and this is what this does. Let me ask you this. How do you find out about this guy?
Because I'm always curious about like the way people find out about especially like a little bit slightly more obscure artists because of like the way that the sort of the delivery system of like music information has changed so much in the last few years. Is this something you just like were on SoundCloud like scouting stuff or did it come to you through like to read about it or what? No, I mean, okay, so there was this song, I want to say it was three years ago almost, Pigeon of the Plains does this thing called Songs of the Week and I would like, you know, just look at it every like just in when you're making your daily rounds around the internet. And there was a song called Chibata, everybody just doing names, you know, I was just like that is the dumbest song name I've ever heard.
But it was like it was a song about, you know, like, you know, the different, I mean, the different words you have for money like Chibata, bread, cheese, so on and so forth, but like introduces Chibata on top of that. That's good. And it was like, it was just like, um, I mean, like it was interesting. And I was like, okay, this is cool, but I didn't come back to it.
And I wasn't like really, really in until the Monty Booker, who is the producer that works with him primarily, there was, he had a selection of white label release that just was like a handful of songs. And there's this one song on there called Colors. And Colors is, it sounds like in like a super Nintendo, like, beat or whatever. And it's just, it's so, it's so, it's so, it's so sunshiny.
And it's like, it plays on nostalgia, but also doesn't make it so that it's not in a way that's boring or heavy handed handfist or whatever. It's not a gimmick. Exactly. It just felt very, it felt fun.
Like I was saying, the entire album does. Okay. Like there's also another song on the album called Edgar Allen Poe Dop. I'm not making, I'm not making these up.
Chibata and Edgar Allen Poe Dop. Chibata was just a SoundCloud Lucy. Edgar Allen Poe Dop is, that was an official. It was like, it was one of the leads in the album.
Um, and I think that I'm just going to continue using this, this explanation for the song because somebody asked me what it sounds like. Remember the D12 video for Purple Hills? Yeah. It sounds like rolling down one of the Purple Hills in that video.
That's a very, very evocative summary. All right. So this guy's name, you know, yes. And you can find his stuff on Spotify, music, SoundCloud, wherever.
S-M-I-N-O on a scale of one to 10, one being like, I'm over it, 10 being shoot me into a sun, the sun via like a catapult. How excited are you for Kendra tonight? Uh, 11. 11.
11. Who is going to be the first person to be like, I'm over Kendra? When can we get that person on the watch? And do you want to be here for it?
Justin Charity already said that like two years ago. Justin Charity is over everything. That's true. He hates fun and two dollar bills and rainbows.
Ryan is fake news. Yeah. No, it's, you know, he's already over it and I would gladly argue with him publicly about it. All right.
All right. Maybe next week. Uh, Mike Computers, thank you for joining us, artists. You know, you can catch him everywhere you stream music.
Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Before we get to Amanda Dobbins, we're just going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. This episode of the watch is brought to you by our buddies at Sonos.
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Today's episode is also brought to you by the AV Club. Listen to this, have you ever been on a website and thought this seems pretty good, but what if it were a TV show instead? You're in luck. Since 1993, the AV Club has produced some of pop culture's best writing on the web.
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I'm not net slush. We're to watch for details. Okay, we heard from Mike Peters, but now we are joined by the Queen. Queen Victoria, it's still live, right?
It's Elizabeth, but I'm really very pleased. Amanda Davenport is here. Queen Victoria was the Queen of England once. Yeah, no, I know.
She's moved on to another plan. They made a bunch of shows about her recently. So we'll both of them. Amanda, I can't wait because you've threatened to release upwards of 10 recommendations.
I'm just excited for the first one though. I'm willing to go as far as you know. It's fine. It's fine.
I will let it down. I feel like that's going to be the same focus. Yeah, but they both will kind of like intertwine my guy. If you think about it, what you got to teach kids how to do drugs, you know what I'm saying?
The small one. And I probably shouldn't admit this because it's sort of my job to keep up with television on my own basis. It is the only show that I am reliably 100% caught up on DIYs. Guess what?
This makes you the perfect watchcoast. I've watched the other things, just like not, you know, like there are a couple of billions on my DVR. I'm going to get there. I'm excited.
There are no Dsas and Maro on my DVR right now because I've watched them all. Has Dsas and Maro changed its format at all? It's like 30 minute talk show on Viceland. It's like Viceland's Late Night Show.
Okay. And I honest to God, like never saw in my life that I would be anywhere recommending a late night show on Viceland. But here I am. Dsas and Maro too, guys, who, I guess there were Twitter's letters.
Yeah, I think that there's three good people at Twitter. Yeah. There's Jason Concepcione who luckily hired Andy's two guys. Yeah, and they have been, I mean, they've been on Twitter since 2010.
Yeah, I was good on Twitter in O8. Okay. And then I kind of like fell off. Are those tweets still available?
Like five scrolls or something? Sure. I don't believe anything. I don't believe any of them.
Is there evidence of you actually using Twitter? So they were very good on Twitter. And then actually our pal Donnie Quack, when Donnie worked at Complex, invited them to do a podcast, I think, for Complex, right? That was a good move by Donnie.
Yeah, it was a great move by Donnie. And they have continued to just be in the public sphere, making jokes on a regular basis, and they were complex, they did MTV, and now they started this show. And the show is essentially a podcast, but on TV, with slightly night vibes. And it's extremely well produced, it's produced by our group at home, and it just allows them to make jokes.
And they're very funny. I think they're the only funny people on TV right now. They're the only people who can consistently make me laugh. They're the only people who I wanna hear making jokes about Trump.
They're the only people that I wanna hear talking about viral videos, which they do regularly, and they'll do kind of the screen and screen, where they will directors commentary, like a child interacting with a mom, and it goes wrong, and I'm just, I'm like over 30 years old, and just sitting on my crotch, like crying laughing. Do you watch it every day? Do you save them up and watch them in a batch? I think part of the reason I can't keep up with them is that I'll sit down and kind of do two in a row.
It's a 20 minute commitment, because you can fast forward. I'm not watching it live, it's not like I race home. But yeah, I would say that within the week, they do, they tape every day, so they're fairly current events. So it's better if you kind of watch, it's funny to watch them do the Spicer press conference, like the day it happens.
Yeah, it's like, because something new should happen. Yeah, it's like if you're watching the press conference from two weeks ago, it's not quite as funny. All right, that's a great recommendation. Did you have any other, so I know that you said that you were like, I have five, there's a bunch of things on the top.
Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, come on, let's just hit us up. Okay, so I'm reading a book. Yeah.
Which is great, it's called The Idiot by Ella Pachuman. Oh yeah. It's basically, it's a campus novel, is that what you would call it? The literary genre?
Yeah, that's Julie Ellippon's favorite genre. Exactly, I don't want Julie Ellippon to give out of me. I only have three, it's just really engrossing, it's about a young girl at Harvard. And also, I really enjoy it, also the book is Pink, it's Millennial Pink, do you know about Millennial Pink?
I do, yeah. Okay, so it's on trend, I feel very cool when I'm, I actually don't know whether I feel cool or like played out when I'm walking around with it. Well in Los Angeles, you look like a Rhodes Scholar, so it's like New York may be a little bit by the times. Okay, number three.
But you're like one of only six people reading a novel in Los Angeles right now. I know, maybe 10. Right. Number three, Scandal, 100th episode tonight.
Yeah. I'm still watching. Yeah, how's it going? Okay, so season five was, I actually think one of the best seasons of the show because it was before Trump was elected president and they kind of created a Trump character.
I think they just got lucky with the timing and the way they wrote the show. Lucky, quote, quote. Yeah. You felt lucky when you're watching it.
I guess I haven't gone back to watch it now to see whether it's less funny. Okay. But the kind of president election that they did in season five, they had a female candidate, they were kind of doing parallel life before parallel life got horrible. And it was very interesting.
Okay. Little more, soapy and ridiculous. Like there's a lot of spy shit, but not cool spy stuff. And Olivia, she's still with Fitz.
How's that going? No, so Olivia's with no one right now. That might be my other concern is that there's no regular sex scenes on the show, which is like honestly, let's just be real about why we're watching Scandal. Right.
But for me, it's the politics. Sure, of course. But it's still such escapism for me. I think Shonda's so good at that.
Yeah. And I'm not caught up on raising that. I'm used to Scandal's where I am. Okay, the idiot, Scandal, Deezer Sameiro.
Yeah. That's a great triple header. Thanks. Thank you for joining us.
All right. Now I'm joined by Cam Collins. Cam is the Vringers movie critic and one of my favorite errors on the site. And Cam is great to have you back on the show.
What's that? How you doing? And now I, from some of the people who have been on the show already, I didn't know what they were going to recommend. But for you, I have to assume we're going to be talking about James Gray's Lost City of Z, which opens up this weekend in the Fast and Furious, the wake of Fast and Furious.
That's right. There's a major exploration effort. Credible disease, murder, savages. The journey may well mean your life.
If we may find a city where one was considered impossible to exist, it may well write a whole new chapter in human history. I'm on the record as a fan at the point. I feel like I've tweeted about this movie more than even like it out. Yeah, it's my favorite movie of the year so far.
Actually, the second time I saw it, I'm not afraid to admit that I got a little theory at the end, which does not happen to me often. It was very overwhelmed. It's a movie about, for anyone who's seeing more than one movie this weekend, I do everything back to date and you should. It's really fun.
But it's a movie about, you know, trip it to the jungle, search for the blind. It's an old fashioned adventure story of a kind that really have not been in American theaters in a while. Yeah. Charlie Hanon plays this British explorer, a soldier who's looking for basically some upward mobility class-wise in British society around the, I guess it's sort of in the late 19th century, right, into the early 20th century?
Yeah, it's early early 1801. Yeah, and so he is tasked by the sort of royal geographic exploration society or something close to that to go explore Bolivia, go explore the Amazon, make maps, and obviously, there's other layers to the story you won't get to into a play. For someone who's never seen a James Gray movie cam, can you, succinctly even sum up what makes him such a special filmmaker? I think for me, it's just like he takes familiar, you know, early movies were crime dramas, and he made like a movie called the Amigre that was gay, similar to like Brooklyn, which came out as the Amira, like he makes like genre, like movies where the kind of movie that he's making, or typical movies, typical dramas.
But he just instills them with this sense of, for me, sometimes it's anguish, sometimes it's just familiar warmth, which is something about the history of the people and the history of the relationship and feelings in his movies that just really stand out for me. It's kind of hard to really qualify as sort of a, if he hits for you, he hits in a very emotional way, that people who like his movies are very devoted. Yeah, I think that there's a, I don't want to get too into the plot, but there's a relationship in velocity of Z between Charlie Hano and Sienna Miller, who plays his wife, that in 99.9% of other movies that would have, if you gave this to 99% of other filmmakers, and we're like, okay, make a movie out of David Gran's velocity of Z, Sienna Miller's character would be practically, you know, should we be window dressing and she would only be kind of there to wave goodbye and say hello. And the time that James Gray spends developing her character, even if she is still limited in the scope of this film, is like, is a really good example, I think of like the little things that he does that are just slightly different than most filmmakers.
Yeah, I'll just say like the, you know, the time, the second time it's the movie when I got really emotional, it was really because of the miller's character because the movie is so, so devoted to both exploring his desire to get into the jungle, but also her inability because of her station, right, her inability that she's an explorer, and much of he is, and her inability to go into the jungle and join him is like really moving to me, because the movie is really, really, really, intently making you aware of her modernity, like her independence, but her just social inability to join her husband in the jungle, they have arguing with that is really, it's just really, it's really, I frustrated for her. That's what really partially what really. And we should say cool. You know, we joke about fast eight coming out and a lot of majority of people are going to see that this weekend, but I would say to anybody listening is not familiar with the material or greys of filmmaker, what Cameron and I are not talking about, you know, experimental avant garde, you know, tracking shots of pottery here, like, this is actually like an adventure movie, you know what I mean?
And it's got a lot more in common with Raiders of Lost Ark than, you know, it's then a Swedish film about like, you know, a marriage falling apart or something like that. It's a very thrilling adventure ride, but it's kind of languid in the way it tells it and it just reveals so much detail. I really love your review of the ring today. Beautiful look at that.
And there's a shot, you're going on a last trip with the sun, there's a shot, like the thing to bite us anyway, just a shot of the dawn in the sky. It's just like what? It's just like, it's just like, painters and just out of this world. But kind of it, I really think people need to be in theaters.
You and I both got, oh, yeah, absolutely. It's totally like a widescreen experience. You and I both got very excited about Grey's Next Movie, which you begin shooting in July with Brad Pitt, who is now officially just keeps good filmmakers in business is like what I think like he's trying to do. Right, totally.
It was supposed to be the star of Wachity of the actual. Oh, was he really? We stand beak. Yeah, he was minus and he was supposed to be at the four Charlie Hahn.
That was great by the way. I think it would have been strange. He could be Brad in that role. Yeah, that would have been a weird legends of the fall move for him.
I'm glad I told him. But Grey's Next Movie is called Ad Astra, and it's about, it's a sci-fi movie with Brad Pitt in Space. And I think if I read the sort of summary, right, is Grey hasn't like gone too deeply into the plot points, but he's been saying that it's basically about how horrifying it must be to be in space. Oh my God.
Yeah. And how? Oh, ready? Chow.
I can't wait for this. Um, can I have any other? I love space movie. I love it.
Oh, yeah. I mean, just like what James Gray's going to do with shots about her space is like I'm already there. What give me another recommendation for people this weekend? For small movie for any literary heads out there, the movie called the Quiet Passion by Terrence Davies.
But the movie about Emily Dickinson and it's the artist from Phoenix and the movie that I've been I've been waiting to see for a while. It's kind of been in the pipeline for a while, but it just alongside lots of these when my favorite movie is a big year. It's just if you're looking for a movie that that really gets that what was distinctive about Emily Dickinson, not just as a writer, but as a person. Um, like how rebellious she was in spirit, the kind of argument she had with people.
It's just unmissable. And if like me, you are a fan for Jennifer Ealy, who is not in enough movies, Oh, yeah. This is also a chance to see her in something. She's great in a line.
And stuff. You'll know. Like in direct 30. Oh, yeah.
And she's in a, was she in contagion too? Was it? What else is she in? She was in contagion.
Yes. That's right. I just love to see her in things. And she's been happy to make them like a sister, but it's just if you're looking for a movie where Emily Dickinson, you know, doesn't need a house has a crush on any dude who enters the house and has all these spiritual like languages and it's also like kind of bitchy.
It's just fantastic. It sounds like it will partner. Need to be a part of really well with the finale of girls. Absolutely.
Okay. Has prickly. Yeah. Can't thank you so much for calling in.
We'll talk to you again soon. And we're closing out the show with the closer. Julia, I live in. Hey, my office.
My office roommate is my friend. Office roommate. My sources say partner in crime. Not our IP.
No. No, maybe we'll come back one day. Just on a hiatus. Um, Juliet, thank you for joining me.
Thanks. What is your pop cultural, cultural recommendation? Okay. So I have lots of yet, but I just want to say that I'm really looking forward to the three parts six hour World War One documentary on PBS.
Is this a Burns? A British Jam? It's an American experience. Okay.
Jam. I don't know. I'm just excited about it. World War One set the violent 20th century in motion.
It was the first use of chemical weapons. Why ever could you be interested in World War One? Because it's the Great War. I know.
I was saying that it has so many echoes to our current time. Oh, I see. Cool. Yeah.
So I'm excited about that. Um, I'm also really excited about Riverdale. When I, uh, like at home. Interesting thing with Riverdale is that this happens with shows a lot.
I think there's like a cool period. I'm not saying like I'm out of Riverdale, but like basically, like the thing that I think I like about Riverdale is the thing that they can't do if they're going to make X amount of episodes per season. Sure. So now it's like super soapy.
This is precisely what happened with the OC. And it's a lot of like Riverdale town business being done. Like what's going on the Luke Perry's construction site. Yeah.
And ski, Ulrich. It's incredibly similar to the OC. You could really draw a lot of parallels. The OC premiere of the summer of 03, seven episodes.
Sprouse is coming on just like Adam, what's his face did? What's the name? Adam Brody. Yeah.
I think I've like sprouts to Brody. Yeah, they had a really strong like first five to seven. I mean, the first seven episodes though, so you're like, just classy. Tell me like just incredible.
And you're like, Oh, this is show for teens and adults can like too. And then it just becomes so soapy. They're like, Nope, this is just a show for teens and I'm going to pretend that I am one. So I still record.
Riverdale. You're excited to catch up. I do too. And then I have the thing I'm most excited to watch this right now.
You've no interest in it, but I'm going to try to convince you. OK, that's one reason why it's great. Oh, it's slash extremely painful. Wonder if I'm at the top house.
Why just Carol Radzewill. You can call her Radsy if you'd like Andy Cohen does. OK, she is related to the candidates like she was she vaguely. We were at the well, it's like her.
Her relative. OK. And she's like extremely pro Hillary into last week was the season premiere. And she's like, this guy's never going to win.
He's a disgusting sexist misogynist, the food. And Bethany, who is who is usually my home girl, was just sort of like shut up. Like she just like, she doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want to be into it, which is probably because Bethany's very savvy and knows it's not good reality TV to be so tied to that.
And he was like that professor who was like, I predict Trump will win. I have a 13 13 reason why he's going to win. Yeah, Bethany is like, I work for the USC Dornsife polling. And I understand.
I've been writing the last three elections. No, but so Carol is like, it's taped in October and it's like, it's kind of, it makes you feel a little shook. I'm just like, God, this was this was a different time. It's really weird.
It was six months ago. It was a different time. And so Carol's great. Like, for so many reasons, namely is that a couple of years ago, we saw her meet a 30 year old private chef in one of her other housewives kitchen and now they're living together and they're still dating.
It's like a made December romance turned into like a love of like just like an epic love affair. It's kind of amazing. You only watch New York. At this point, yes, I dip in and out of Beverly Hills, but I just fucking love New York.
And so Carol's like all hot about Trump. She doesn't know what's coming for her. It's really weird to watch. I didn't have an election episode.
Probably. It's funny because last season Carol was on her co-op board and she was running for her co-op board. It made a really big deal about the campaign and her election stuff. And so it's like so weird to look back and be like, that was the prologue to her caring a lot of the presidential election.
It's a running for a co-op board. So there's a store going on vacation. Number one, number two is how much were you reading gawker.com in like the year 2006? Fair amount.
So you remember Tinsley Mortimer. Yes. Tinsley Mortimer is on the shelf. What?
She made her debut this week. Yes. Tinsley Mortimer has fled Palm Beach where last season she was arrested for trial last year in 2016. She was arrested for trespassing.
What happened with those charges? I'm not sure. Okay. All right.
You're bringing this to me. I'm not looking for a research project. So it doesn't really matter, but she's had to flee Palm Beach. You got arrested, et cetera, et cetera.
She's back in New York. She arrives last on this week's episode, stepping out of a cab like very much like Veronica Lodge in Riverdale and like just fleeing to a different city, which for her, it's going back where she kind of like made her name. She walked out of this cab, like it's like a black car or whatever, all the Louis Vuitton luggage in the world. And she's arrived at Sonya Morgan's house.
Sonya Morgan used to be married to a rich guy and has gone through her own bankruptcy and is totally bonkers, but has a beautiful townhouse on the Upper East Side. And at various points, she houses other houses. So Tinsley Mortimer has just moved in with her while she looks for a place. Okay.
So like Tinsley Mortimer is like back in New York trying to get back every sheet. No big topic of conversation as well. She's 41 and Sonya assumed she would never want to have kids. She was older than me back then.
Yeah. But she remains older than you now. That's wild. And she talks to Ashley for us her eggs and it's just like so weird.
Are we going to get a Julia Allison cameo? We might. Anything to play. We got to get these dueling narratives of Tinsley Mortimer, socialite of the previous decade.
I'm certain has Matt Donald Trump probably in like some weirdness. Yeah. Who hasn't? And meanwhile, like the replying of the election and then of course, Bethany, who's just like part, she knows exactly what to do on TV to be compelling.
So it's like your friggin James Mitchell and all of a sudden. It's like it's like it's my platonic ideal for reality show. That's great. Because there's so many compelling storylines that like resonate with my very specific interests that like it's just fun to watch.
I freaking love it. And I feel like you could really get into the Tinsley Mortimer stuff. All right. I mean, if they want to just bring Gawker 06 back into a housewives, I'll check it out for sure.
That'll be a good mix tape, kind of like Summer 06, but Gawker 06. That's high point. Did you already address what you're looking forward to watching this weekend? I'm very much looking forward to the leftovers.
I'm curious about Gorilla, which I think airs on Sunday on Showtime. I'm going to be watching multiple NBA playoff games, which is in itself. Adorama. Me too.
And I've been watching. That's about it. You know, like I just I have a lot of stuff in the DVR. Me too.
So I'm not going to ask you. Yeah. Not to have you here. She directed the first episode of the leftovers and it is one of the most masterfully directed episodes of television.
I can remember. I'm very excited about it. And so I was inevitably just scrolling through ER hits. Hit and run.
Do you remember that one? Oh, yes. Yeah. Do you have a give me the Juliette Lippin top three E.R.
ups. I just want to say, didn't she do the George Clooney? The car accident? Yeah.
Work, he's like in the sewer. Did she not do that? I'm not sure. I thought she might have my favorite ER episodes.
Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. I mean, this is not I just want to say that I have on YouTube a few videos. I return to Oprah and Oprah again.
I'm aware. The dulce and sounds of Don Henley saying, take me home with Carol arriving at the waterfront where Doug is, which was filmed in Gloucester while he was filming the perfect storm. Oh, but supposed to be Seattle is probably one of my favorite clips. My favorite E.R.
episodes though. God, this is really hard. The Doug one of him in the car is a pre-wild Doug when he saves the cake. Yeah.
And there's the rain. So flood, right? That's probably it's like, yeah, that's probably there's a Tarantino episode, right? Well, yes, it's a Tarantino episode.
I think the Doug one has to be number one. It's so good. But in season one, very close to the end of the season, Mark Green mishandles pregnancy and this mother dies from pretty clamps. Yeah.
And her husband is just so distraught. Like he has baby lives, but it then just kind of changes the course of the show and changes Mark into like a really more inward guy. Or inward. It's kind of like ruins his marriage.