El Conde & Mouk

El Conde

Reegs: Welcome to Bad Dads Film Review, the podcast where a bunch of film loving dads who traded blockbusters for baby bottles reunite to discuss the movies they missed during the glorious reign of night feeds and nappy changes. This week we kick things off with a look at narration in film, a cinematic double edged sword which can swing wildly from subtle storytelling finesse to the blaring sledgehammer of spoon fed exposition as we discuss the top five scenes with a narrator.

Next, we'll follow that up with what is undoubtedly the best monochrome gothic alternative history fascist vampire movie starring one of history's greatest monsters and General Augusto Pinochet that you've seen this year as we review Chilean director Pablo Lorraine's sharp toothed satire El Conde before we close things out by looking at animated series MOOC, a children's show about a globe trotting bear, not a low level gangster as it really should have been.

Thank all that's left to do is introduce the dad, starting with Sidey, who's amassed the world's largest collection of airplane sick sick bags. It's true, isn't it? Some of them are even empty.

Sidey: By The Last Bus, I was. Yeah.

Reegs: We also have Romanian stunner Chris. He's so good looking, he makes Brad Pitt look like Steve Buscemi.

Also a master of accents, you can imitate any character or actor, so, give us your Yosemuel L. Jackson there,

Nice. Yeah. Oh, that was, that was awesome. Spot on. Yeah. Yeah. There's also resident Methuselah Dan who's so old his chiropractor is a paleontologist. And finally there's me Riggs. Hello.

Sidey: Hello.

Cris: Hi.

Dan: G'day.

Reegs: You all right?

Dan: Yeah, how are you? You've been injured.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. My hand is still sort of like, it often feels like it's vibrating, like it's going to try and phase through a solid object, but yeah.

Dan: yeah. If anybody else has got that, shed some light on what might be wrong.

Sidey: Did you watch anything down this week of notes?

Dan: been watching Ted Lasso, which is really good. I really like that actually. And

Sidey: the guy, the, the Britt comedian guy who's in it,

hE,

Dan: Yeah,

Sidey: type, he posted a massive spoiler for the end of season two at the time. He just tweeted a pitch and it like, gave everything away.

Dan: Right, well, I'm on

Sidey: pretty low

Dan: three now, I think I've only got one to go

Sidey: Right.

Dan: And West Ham are featured quite heavily and we're we even top of the league once in Tadalesso.

Sidey: Yeah, it's fantasy,

Dan: yeah

Cris: Yeah,

Sidey: There's it's Keeley Hazel is in it, isn't she? She was a Page 3 girl, and now is She, she, I think she wrote some of the screenplays for that, and was dating Jason Sudeikis.

Dan: was dating Jason Sudeikis. No, no,

Reegs: no. That's different.

Sidey: No, different one.

Reegs: Helen...

Dan: Mirren... She's

Sidey: a, a sing-along thing on Netflix. Is it?

Dan: Right, yeah, she's got, she's got a good voice though. And I've also been watching Winning Time, the story of the LA Lakers, the rise of the dynasty. And it's a season two, just started.

Well, they're all out now, so, yeah, it's going well. Yeah, it is.

Sidey: Has he got AIDS yet?

Dan: No, he's fighting up against Larry Bird. We've got into the eighties where he's, he's going. So I imagine it, I don't know if it's going to tackle all that, but he's still quite, he's still quite young at this stage. So I don't know how, how much how many, and it's about, it's about the dynasty anyway,

Sidey: than... Yeah, well,

Dan: Yeah.

Well, fuck, fuck the fuck. Boston. That's the, the last episode name I

Sidey: last episode name, I think. Well, we've been talking about having a James Bond themed episode at some point, so I've been studying up. We did...

Reegs: It's when we can convene all the dads,

Sidey: Yeah, they've

Reegs: all got a stake in the bond.

Sidey: Yeah, we

Dan: a long time they were all on Prime.

Sidey: are, that's what we've been doing, because it's their, I think they've got 30, it's on like the 30 day... Is

Dan: Tick

Reegs: Is it? Because by the time, I've been waiting for

Sidey: been waiting for like, Alright, and then Howie,

Reegs: Alright, and then Howie, we've got to make a desperate plea for

Sidey: desperate plea for

Cris: Oh, I

Dan: Dad, dad, da. You can come along as well.

Sidey: It's dad bank. A dad. kake. . Yeah. so We watched Quantum as solace. Not as bad as everyone says. Not as bad as everyone says. It just has some weird stylistic things that aren't generally accepted. Bond

Reegs: Yeah. And it's pretty dull as Well,

Sidey: Well, the villa's not great. You can say that about quite a lot of them.

And golden. I pretty bad and we were watching another one last night. No, we weren't classic Goldfinger last night. Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant,

Reegs: too much bond for me that,

Sidey: Yeah,

Dan: Okay.

Well, yeah, if we're going to do another one, we should do it relatively soon. I agree. Did you watch anything

Reegs: Not a lot, no. Rick and Morty, that

Dan: Oh, it's good.

Reegs: the new season of that is out, so I've

Dan: How is it? A new one? Why, on Netflix?

Reegs: Yeah, there's one without Justin Roiland as well, who I feel as...

Sidey: cancelled,

Reegs: He's been cancelled, yeah, and has possibly been doing what he's been told for the show for a long time, so it isn't any worse without him.

It doesn't seem to be in the moment anyway.

Dan: Excellent.

Cris: I watched the Robbie Williams documentary.

I think it's,

Reegs: I heard he spends a lot of time in his pants. Yeah,

Cris: it's very strange. I really don't get that part. I know he's, he's kind of struggling. He's been famous for so long and all that, but you can put a pair of shorts on and you're still comfortable. You can get shorts that are really comfortable these days. And you don't have to be just in your underwear.

It's just, it's just a bit uncomfortable for everyone when you're watching it. And I mean, obviously his kids are in it and you know, you can be in your pants around your kids, not a problem, but, uh, I don't know. I, I, I've, someone said that to me. I've only watched the first three episodes. The fourth one, I haven't watched yet, but I didn't expect him to be any, any less because he is an awkward guy and he's been famous for so long and so young that.

You can't be normal after that. You just can't be. It's just impossible.

Sidey: I think Bree, he's a big fan, so maybe she's seen it. She could let

Cris: But I did, I did kind of enjoy it. He's, he's quite strange to be fair,

Sidey: but there's, he

Dan: his demons at times, isn't he?

Sidey: There's the Ron Sullivan one out this week.

Dan: Ah, yeah.

Sidey: So I'm really

Cris: I'll, I'll watch that. And I watched a movie called the killer, which I think just came out on Netflix.

Sidey: Fincher. Yeah. the director is David Fincher. Michael Fastbender. Yes.

Cris: Yeah, which I expected a bit more from, from what I've seen in the trailer, and it's not as action packed as I thought.

It's more of a,

Sidey: the Discord chat.

There's a, there's a bit Discord chat about that one.

Cris: Is it? Okay, I'll, I'll, I'll get on that. And what else did I watch? I think that's it

Reegs: think Beavis said he liked it, didn't

Sidey: liked it, didn't he? Yeah, if you want good film reviews, don't come to the Disco, go

Reegs: you want good film reviews, don't, come to the Discord channel and read Darren's, they're off the charts.

Dan: I also watched The Old Dads

Reegs: Mm.

Bill bur.

Dan: Baer. Yeah. And it wasn't dreadful,

Sidey: I like Bill Burr. I don't want to watch it

Reegs: if they'd have called their movie Bad Dads, that would've been better for us than them calling it all Dads. Or we should be old dad

Sidey: Imagine, and then the whole like marketing work was hashtag bad dads. We might have got like five more.

Reegs: hits.

Dan: Oh missed out.

Sidey: We did,

Reegs: have you been on Twitter recently? x, everybody who followed us for about the last month has been a scantily clad,

Sidey: a bot. It's

Reegs: but like , it's just amazing.

Sidey: And the whole thing about him is trying to... Carl or the bots? It's better.

Reegs: It's better. He tells it's better.

Sidey: He's a fucking idiot. We did do a top five last week, which was opening scenes.

Is that right?

Reegs: Yep, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: And we had a couple nominated Good Darren Leaf, A Matter of Life and Death. That's the Powell Press Burger, 1940s Classic.

Reegs: He's a big fan of that,

Sidey: Yeah. Starts in space, zooming into Earth, then into the fog above the channel, eventually finding David Nevin crashing a plane.

Dan: Right. Yeah.

Sidey: Classic. And Beaver was uh he's a big fan I watched some documentary thing about that

Reegs: is a good one, that,

Dan: is.

Sidey: He calls it elite that opening scene. He's probably right actually. And he says he's got soft spot for the greatest showman's opening scene. And he would have nominated Sicario but he says the Romanian dreamboat beat me to it.

There you go. And we've got a few in for this week's top five. Should we get into it?

Reegs: We need to pick one of those though.

Don't we are they all going in or

Sidey: No, we can't do that. Shaun of the Dead.

Cris: that. Sean will do

Sidey: is a good topic, I thought. I'm surprised we haven't done it before.

Dan: Narrators. Yeah. And yeah, good. Narrator can just speed along a story, can fill in all the gaps for you.

Cris: just speed along a story and

Reegs: all of it. I thought all of

Cris: in all the gaps for you. Yeah,

Reegs: yeah. Well, go

Dan: way to go. Brilliant. And yeah, well, you know, they do, they're memorable, aren't they? They provide, as

Reegs: I think we only are pretty horrible out about the rules when it's something very specific or Pete. Yeah. Something very specific like glasses was good because we had a good argument about where the sunglasses but

Dan: Well, you've got Andy Dufresne.

Reegs: yeah.

Dan: You gotta start out with Isn't it something like that? Dufresne, Andy Dufresne Morgan Freeman, Shawshank Redemption

Sidey: He's like the king of the

Dan: of it Yeah, his voice

Reegs: Well, just Morgan

Dan: measured

Cris: Morgan Freeman. Yeah, generally,

Dan: The delivery,

Sidey: is perfect. What age is he now,

Cris: 86 or 84? 86, I think.

Dan: Not 85

Cris: not your

Sidey: only does even numbers.

Reegs: But

Sidey: But yeah, he does, he did March of the Penguins as well, didn't he? old. Crumbs. We

Dan: were right. Yeah, and it just adds all the way through the film that, Warmth and

Sidey: yeah, when there's all the male rape. Yeah. He really takes the edge

Dan: he he does, he does. And he's got that empathy and his, his voice just commands, you know, you can't think of that film without his voice actually listening to

Reegs: this sort of melancholic quality to him. And his story is of course sad and it helps preserve the movie's big twist as well.

Dan: Yeah, that's

Reegs: him being the

Dan: it's used kind of quite regularly through, not all the way, but enough to to, you know, some narrators just write, they write the top and the end or something.

But his voice comes all the way through the film pretty regularly. Liked it. Perfect.

Cris: Can I hit me? Yeah. 1990 Goodfellas, another one that I thought it was. It pretty much Shang Redemption was the first one because obviously Morgan Freeman and I think they, I've seen a tweet once where they were saying that I wish that I could have hours of recording of Morgan Freeman talking so he could talk me to sleeping

Sidey: Didn't,

Cris: or something like that.

Sidey: That fucking idiot from. Facebook have him have Morgan Friedman narrate his AI in his

Dan: his

Sidey: So I'm sure that's the thing.

Cris: be, it could be. I'm not, I'm not really sure, but I'm pretty sure I've seen a tweet that there's the perfect man to Shoshank Redemption was the first one, but then

Sidey: That could be anyone for you, you just put something on and fall asleep, right?

Cris: Yeah, that's true, actually.

Reegs: He's fallen asleep six times since we did this.

Cris: Yeah, I just keep waking up with the sound of my own voice in my head. But yeah sure. Sorry. Good fellas.

I think a classic

Dan: Henry Hill.

Cris: and and a good

Sidey: Harry's brother.

Cris: and a good narrator throughout the

Sidey: Yeah, you know, it cropped up last week in opening scenes and the way he narrates, you know, and it's that great opening line and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, really good.

Dan: yeah, really good. He would also explain loads, wouldn't he? There'd be all this kind of complex

Sidey: introduces every

Dan: guys will get those guys.

And those guys will pay those guys. And you get five for those guys. And then we'll get ten of them. Two of them go over there. Done. Just

Sidey: Yeah, just like that. Just

Dan: that, but not quite. No, maybe not

Reegs: Well, I'll piss on everybody's chips by choosing Blade Runner the 1982 theatrical cut having this ridiculous voiceover that is largely explains and spoon feeds the, the, the sort of events of the movie that he was forced to, to, yeah, no, I've not actually, forced to, to, do it by the studio and obviously later retracted that with different versions, but ultimately a little bit uninteresting anyway. Yeah, Blade Runner.

Sidey: Runner. He's getting heat now for the Napoleon film not being historically accurate. He's getting really prickly about it in every interview.

Yeah. Like telling people to fuck off. Is that

Cris: Is that, the Blade Runner, is that the one with Harrison Ford that we watched? So,

Sidey: There's a version because they keep it mysterious and kind of vague in the the one that we would have watched but when they actually was released at the at the pitches the studio like we can't have this like no one knows what's what they forced uh uh I like post

Cris: Right, a

Sidey: to explain literally exactly everything that's going on.

Why

Reegs: It has Deckard talking over, I think think, Roy Batty's death

Dan: Right.

Cris: death scene. Isn't Thornton's character listed as a narrator?

I thought

Sidey: Well I'm going to have to mention Fight Club.

Dan: Right,

Cris: Thornton. So,

Sidey: isn't Ed Norton's character listed

Dan: I thought we weren't going to talk about Fight Club?

Sidey: No, he can't, it's an exemption. Isn't he, isn't he, because he's, he's unnamed, Ed Norton, isn't he not listed in the credits as narrator? there you

Reegs: He's in a whole bunch. I've got of unreliable. Narrators. Okay. Yeah. Do you remember Of American animals that we did for the, for the pod about the they went in a the, the, the heist.

The heist, yeah. And we get the different tellings of the stories through it and a lot of voiceover in that. That was pretty good. They were unreliable narrators.

Dan: Yeah. I was just thinking of it's, it's one we've mentioned on the pod loads of times before, but the big Lebowski and you've got,

Sidey: Sam Elliot.

Dan: yeah, just putting in his distinctive sort of drawl, American drawl where he's just going to do, he just makes everything sound much cooler. And just really laid back and then they meet,

Sidey: Well, I ain't never seen no queen in her damned undies.

Dan: no queen in a damned

Sidey: them why he swears all the time. Do you have to cuss so, so

Dan: have cuss the white swears all the time. You didn't have to cuss so, so much. I've never

Cris: watched it.

Sidey: What? I

Cris: Honestly, I've never watched it.

Sidey: watched it. No, I don't

Reegs: I don't want to talk about it though. It will fuck it up, surely.

Sidey: it

Dan: with Jeff

Cris: is it with Jeff Bridges? Yeah. Yeah. I've

Reegs: It's a bit of a holy cow for

Sidey: bit of a holy cow for

Cris: Okay. I've, no, yeah, I've, I've definitely never watched it, but I'll tell you what I have watched, which is a true masterpiece in terms of narration and as a movie is Forrest Gump. And I, I, I really, really liked it. Fuck. And I actually like Tom Hanks as well.

Sidey: Eat a shit, it's fucking, absolutely horrible film.

Cris: liked it. I really,

Dan: it. Yeah, I

Cris: watched it in a million years. I mean, I've watched it, I don't know, when I was very young.

Sidey: There's no excuse.

Dan: No.

Cris: do remember the, the narration and I, I really, I really enjoyed it at the time.

I've not watched it in, it must be 20 years now, easy. So I don't know if I would, I'll have to rewatch it just to see that. But I really enjoyed it. And the second one I have is one that I don't know if anyone of you has it, but I remember it. And I really liked that one was Conan the Barbarian

Sidey: Pete's favorite

Reegs: Pete's favorite

Cris: the, the, the narration is really good.

Because it tells you the story like in the between the two worlds and how he grows up and when he pushes the

Sidey: He won't nominate it because he just assumes that I will hate it just to annoy him. he won't, but I have never seen it.

Cris: it They're really good and it's they're all quite sexy as well. So it's yeah, they're good.

Sidey: You're wrong about Forrest Gump, it's an absolute piece of shit.

Cris: I disagree, but you have your opinion and I have mine

Sidey: and I have

Reegs: Stranger Than Fiction. You seen that one? Will Ferrell

Emma

Sidey: Thompson narrating his

Reegs: Yeah. Ferrell is an IRS auditor named Harold. He's just kind of minding his own business, living his life when suddenly he can hear a voice, a woman narrating his life. And yeah, eventually when his, his watch stops working He resets it and she says, Oh, no, little did he know the act of resetting his watch would cause his death.

And he's like, what? Hang on a minute. And so it's yeah, it's, it's a sort of comedy and a bit tragic and yeah, it was pretty good that I remember. But also about storytelling and narration features heavily in it. And

Sidey: was in something recently, like, full on naked, wasn't she?

Was she? She had a full on sex scene, Yeah,

Reegs: Alright. it? Yeah, I'd watch it. The Captain's log from Star Trek. I've got that. That's a kind of narration, isn't it? It is. Every episode beginning with the

Sidey: And then you get, you know, First Officer's Log, Captain's Log Supplemental and all that. Yeah, love it.

Reegs: all that Star Trek logging.

Dan: that's all good narration.

Sidey: Yeah. Do you want a couple of girls narrating?

Reegs: Oh, please.

Sidey: Mean Girls.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Lohan. But a, like, a top tier film from 1995, Clueless. It's the retelling of Jane Austen's Emma with Alicia Silverstone narrating her life in Beverly Hills. Fucking, what a film. Great film.

Reegs: I haven't seen it for a while, but I

Sidey: I remember Paul Rudd still like, looks the same.

Reegs: Same

Sidey: crazy,

Dan: Yeah. he does. He's not aged at all. He's got one of those young kind of faces. I'm thinking the Princess Bride and Peter Falk Columbo. And he's, he's next to his grandson, his bedridden grandson, who's not very well, Fred Savage and he starts to tell it, Randy's son, and and starts to tell him the the, the story of the Princess Bride, and oh, it's, it's such a lovely film, it's, it's a brilliant one for, for the kids but you, you know, it's still a firm favorite in our house enjoy it.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: The last one I have is the Grand Budapest Hotel, which I think that is I really, really enjoy the movie and is one of them that is the closest. In my opinion, you can you can have a movie to An actual play as a theater that you can kind of, you would, you would see that being played as a play and it's still,

Dan: Just Wes,

Cris: yeah, it just worked.

It was, I really enjoyed it. And I, the narration is really good as well. And I thought it was quite funny. So I'll have that.

Reegs: The Jet Li movie hero,

Dan: Oh yeah,

Reegs: seen that? That's he has to tell the same story three times, three different versions to get closer to the King to assassinate him.

So it's literally the whole story

Dan: haven't seen that in a long time actually. I remember really enjoying that

Reegs: pretty slow. It's one of those with unbelievable. Visuals and, but the fight scenes are a little more dance and ballet than they are other things, you know, yeah, but it's still a beautiful the usual suspects had a bit of narration going on a Dan Dun Dun.

That we done for the pod. Featured a lot of narration as well. Transformers The Last Knight had Anthony Hopkins say the dumbest shit I ever heard.

Sidey: I ever heard.

Reegs: He says without sacrifice there can be no victory like 250 times. So yeah, it can be done badly. I might argue it was done badly in Casino.

There's a lot of... Narration in casino almost too much, but it's done brilliantly in george of the jungle, which I know you will have seen brendan

Cris: I've seen it. It's

Reegs: The narrator actually interacts with the story at one point like grabbing one of the characters, by the neck and stuff So, yeah and threatening them and all sorts of stuff.

So yeah george of the jungle.

Cris: yeah, it's like a parody of Tarzan, right? Yeah. It's good, actually. I forgot about that.

Reegs: about that. Hey, if you're a brendan fraser stan like you should be

Sidey: you should be. Yeah. Cast your mind back, Dan, to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I think it was the first one that you did for the pod.

RDJ is the narrator and he calls it early on, I'll be your narrator, and then berates someone else and says I don't see another goddamn narrator, so pipe down gives himself a hard time, damn I forgot something, this is bad narrating and orders extras out of the way of the camera, and then even criticizes the film itself, that was a terrible scene he says at one point, so that's Top narrating,

Cris: Yeah.

Dan: Well top narrating the top. The top of the top is awesome Wells. He's, his voice just kind of transcends it all.

Sidey: It transforms the movie.

Dan: transforms the

Reegs: what are you saying, unicorn is it

Dan: a unicorns. Yeah. Yeah. He's he did, he did it in a lot. The journey into fear Othello he did it in the lady from Shanghai as well.

But his voice was just booming and would take on each word would just be elevated.

Reegs: Following another.

Dan: almost like that. Yeah, just felt like crazy.

Sidey: Crazy.

Reegs: Oh yeah, there were others but, oh, zero effect that we watched. Remember that had a lot of

Sidey: of uh, narration. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Probably, probably out.

Have you got any more?

Dan: have

Sidey: Yeah, I do. Raising Arizona has some

Dan: Cage. Nick Cage, yeah.

Sidey: The assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. That's a meandering bit of folklore kind of storytelling.

Reegs: Oh, I quite enjoyed that.

Sidey: Yeah, I liked it. Yeah, it does.

Reegs: And the narration is a bit of a make or break for that because there's quite a lot

Sidey: that because there's quite a lot of it.

Yeah,

Dan: David Lean, yeah, that's a brilliant film.

Sidey: Yeah it's the sort of unrequited, well, no, it's requited love, but they can never, it's too proper.

Dan: Yeah. And they, they fill in the blanks though, within narration of how they're feeling, you know,

Sidey: lays it all down. Yeah. And then American Psycho. Yeah.

Dan: One flew over the Cookie's Nest.

Reegs: That's a different film, but

Sidey: And adaptation. Which is, again, another Nick Cage one, as Charlie Kaufman, or Kaufman, how are

Reegs: I would say Kaufman,

Sidey: Kaufman, yeah. That's lots and lots, isn't it? I do have two

Reegs: Oh, I did have two more actually. Sin

Sidey: a bit

Reegs: a bit in there, and The Muppets Christmas Carol. Gonzo is

Sidey: film.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Our tree is up, so. Is it?

Reegs: it? Yeah. And it's like August the 5th or whatever when we started recording this.

Sidey: Yeah, it's up, so we're like, full. Muppets Christmas carol season now. Wow, yeah,

Dan: Wow, yeah, you've gone

Sidey: You're wearing, you're literally wearing a Christmas

Reegs: clothes.

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Cris: and you were wearing them. from last week as well, so you can't really say anything.

Sidey: as well. So

Dan: a tree up though. STand by me. That was

Sidey: It's rubbish, but yeah, fine. boring, it's really boring.

Dan: Okay, go on then, pick your pick.

Sidey: Well you start, it's your, it's your party.

Cris: Goodfellas for me.

Reegs: Straight in there. George of the Jungle.

Cris: Boom. Mic

Dan: pick Orson Welles,

Reegs: something that starts with G

Dan: but I'm, I'm not sure I'm going

Cris: You've nominated Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption and you're going for

Dan: that, that's the one, well, there's so many good ones. The Lebowski is brilliant, but I will go for Shawshank because Morgan just owns it. I can't think of the film without thinking of his voice

Sidey: And the gay rape.

Dan: it. And, obviously,

Sidey: Clueless, for me.

Dan: Okay,

Sidey: And we do have, we do have some nominations online. One of them is absolutely, I can tell you now, categorically not going in.

Darren Leafley, they're all Leafleys. Shawshank, Blade Runner, some versions, he says, Barbie. Ooh, topical. Well, not topical, but recent. tHat's Helen Mirren and she does some good fourth wall breaking, that's true. Stranger than Fiction he mentions as well and then he just like, all his good work and the shout out that we gave him earlier, ruined by shouting out the Rocky Horror Fucking Picture Show.

No. Disaster. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I've that. It's an absolute

Dan: I've got the sound, I've got the

Sidey: up

Cris: By shouting out

Sidey: It's a film for sexually

Dan: sexually...

This to the time warp again.

Sidey: Awful. So I think we'll just let that fester and garner a few more nominations before we complete the list.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: the list.

Cris: I can't remember the last sex tape I've seen.

Sidey: The snacks. Because they are legion tonight. We have had I got some fizzy whizzy laces, but they're like the thick ones with the mysterious white,

Reegs: Cream.

Sidey: yeah well, I don't think there's anything like natural. There's nothing dairy in there, I don't think. And some mawum, but the like the ones that are almost too big for your mouth to eat in one go.

Cris: They're called the joysticks.

Sidey: and then we had a cheese Which I'll tell you what they are. I can't do the pronunciations as well as Pierre. Amorbier, Salpiro Matthias, Sirfoui Montagnolo, Affinei, and Taleggio.

Cris: Taleggio,

Dan: better than Pete

Sidey: And we've only tried one of them. For some reason, we're just not feeling...

We want to get

Cris: either, so I'm a bit, and I think we have, we've eaten too many sweets.

Dan: That's a massive wedge

Sidey: There's a lot of cheese there, so that will probably still be here when Pete gets back

Reegs: and we all ate Chris's walnut cake.

Sidey: And Chris, we have home baked goods. Chris baked us a banana bread. It was sensational.

Dan: It was an absolute triumph. That was fantastic. Yeah, we have eaten well.

Sidey: have it, and that segues almost too well into this week's main feature. El Conde?

Cris: El Conde.

Reegs: The Count.

Cris: Yeah,

Dan: the Count.

Sidey: he loved to count.

Dan: Yeah, it's a film I'd kind of gone past once or twice whilst looking

Reegs: for the film. Well, it's on Netflix, isn't it? And it's pretty striking because it's got that black and white thing and then it's blazoned in pink El Conde across it.

And it's sort of that shot of the cape, basically. So it is pretty intriguing when you...

Dan: And it's basically the story of the true story, the true story of Pinochet, the Chilean dictator who was, uh, obviously a vampire in his, his real

Cris: Yeah. we've, we've just found out.

Dan: documentary esque, I guess. And we learn

Reegs: in the 18th century, wasn't he?

Yeah, yeah, he's Well, he's an orphan

Cris: Pinoche. yeah,

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: And he's in, he's in, that's,

Dan: But he's, he's taken on, he's lived many different lives, and he, we see him, as you say, in France, he becomes a soldier then

Sidey: he eats, he just takes a bite.

Dan: He eats, he just takes a bite and he likes the taste of the

Sidey: it. Oh no, it's this bit. So it's the day after, or he's captured and he's in bed. And they're about to put the stake through through the heart.

And he fights them off. And there's some narration, you

Reegs: Well, I was about to say, we have kind of skipped the beginning bit, you know, which is in Patagonia and a woman who is really unmistakably Margaret Thatcher, really.

From the, it wasn't a surprise to me, she drops a few of her key sayings before she's revealed. But I mean, it was so obvious who it was, I think. Who is

Sidey: I thought it was even Gillian Anderson. Yeah. Doing her Margaret Thatcher. Because she played her, didn't she, in whatever it was. So when she said one of the, this lady's not for turning, I was like, is it actually her? So I had to stop the movie and Google

Dan: So, yeah, so we learn a little bit later on down the,

Sidey: that scene. you

Reegs: Pinoche, this orphan who grew up in the French revolution, who witnessed Marie Antoinette being beheaded, who licked the guillotine clean of blood and revel, he was horrified at the elites being taken down and he actually caught, he, he acquires her head because in the opening scenes of the movie, we've heard this music and seen his place, isolated place out in Patagonia, like where he's got all these remnants of wars and his conquests and stuff, Napoleon's hat and the comp.

Cris: Yeah, he's souvenirs.

Dan: That's right.

Yeah. He he's collected all these things and I say for for in the film, you you see it a lot later but for the purpose of the pod, we we learn that Margaret Thatcher is indeed his mother.

Sidey: fOr, that same with the prostitutes, he bashes one. He gets hold of the hammer, doesn't he? To do the stake. And he just, that's one on the floor, he just smashes her head in.

It's so

Dan: Yeah. it's, it's one of those moments like in Midsommar where you, you're not sure that they're actually going to show you the scene and then they

Sidey: They show you

Dan: And they show it full on and you, it's like, oh, oh, oh, you're

Sidey: Okay, stop

Dan: yeah, you're still showing me. But that is probably the worst kind of gruesome part in the whole film.

Sidey: Yeah. So I was expecting a lot more. And you don't, that's really, I mean, there's kills and stuff, but not as

Dan: That kind of ends there. As far as that kind

Reegs: of... Oh, that level of violence, yeah, really.

Well, later it becomes slightly more mundane, but I guess we'll get to that. So he flees from France and eventually winds up in Chile in 1935. And this bit is like a sort of parody of his actual life,

Dan: basically. well, his life as we know it in Chile before.

Reegs: Yeah, yeah, exactly. He changes his name to Pinochet. And he rises through the ranks pretty quickly.

We see that him pledging his allegiance to the military and the flag and becoming a general and becoming a supporter of the president. And he marries Lucia. Who's a wealthy and conservative woman who sort of shares his

Sidey: views as

Reegs: well, so And then yeah, he leads the coup, the coup d'etat against the state, against President Allende who was his friend And this was, we get the like bombing

Dan: So you get this kind of history, and to be honest, I didn't know lots about the history of

Reegs: Yeah, and there's a lot of it, but the main point of it is that he kind of eventually ends up as the Count and, you know, asking his family to call him the Count and, you know, he's isolated and away from it all

Dan: it's, it's probably worth mentioning it is black and white and subtitled. So, although it does cut into English at, at different parts of the film,

Sidey: Margaret Thatcher is all in English.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. yEs.

Reegs: So, eventually anyway, he has to fake his own death in Chile at his wife's birthday party, does it? Because he's getting tired of the life, and he gets tired, he doesn't want to be known as a he doesn't care what history says about him, but he doesn't want to be known as a thief.

Dan: Eating hearts, isn't he, at this part, part? He does have downstairs like, a freezer. There's a butler friend of his a manservant, yeah, Fyodor, who's over many years of services, acquired the honor of being bitten himself on the leg which turned him into a vampire and I think that's probably just shows the, the level of, evil really in the in the men in and around him because this is obviously a satirical look at his life the whole way through and you get um I I think it's fantastic the way that they've kind of just produced this character to almost say you know this guy's so bad we can only imagine him being part of the undead really like all the things that he's done and and then envisions him as this but he's got all his children around.

So eventually Theodore has gone on a killing spree. And he's done this to bring the children. He's in love with the wife. And he wants to bring them all together because they want to kill the old man. They want to get him,

Reegs: And they suspect he has riches that he's acquired over the centuries. Also Lucia the wife is desperate to be

Sidey: Yeah, he won't do it.

Reegs: he won't do

Dan: be turned and he won't do it.

The problem with this is that

Sidey: holding on to power. yeah. We do

Reegs: Fjordor hunting at night and it's quite striking. He goes in Pinochet's full military regalia and he's like soaring through the

Dan: dude, there's this like cape, don't they?

Sidey: A bit Wes Anderson this for me.

Dan: that part Yeah.

The way he flies.

Reegs: But the way he takes off is actually super realistic.

It's sort of like eerily, they sort of eerily rise into the sky. Don't

Dan: it? Yeah. No, it was, I really like the flying parts actually, because because it's black and white and you just got this. Sort of small kind of shape when he's, when it zooms out, you had the moonlight there and it's just going along the coast.

And you just see this little shape and you almost lose him. And then he comes back into, into light and you see him just going over the street lights and how fantastic a, a country chilly must be to have the,

Sidey: be able to fly over it as a vampire.

Dan: to fly over it as a

Cris: and with our music

Dan: See, see the the Andes on one side and then the, the sea on the other as well.

You know, it's it was quite visually

Sidey: also introduced to, well, we go to a nunnery, don't we?

Reegs: Yeah. Carmen is a, the hope, the great hope of the church to bring down

Dan: Or at least to bring down, or at least take some of the, the wealth that he might have acquired. So, yeah, she's sent in, but there's a narration over the top, isn't there?

And it says this is one of the most, sort of,

Sidey: wicked

Dan: wicked and horrible women. She might look, like, lovely and beautiful, but, you know, she's not.

Sidey: Where she audits them.

Reegs: bUt she's come under cover as an accountant, but they hired her from the church to do the excommunication anyway. But she's come under cover as an accountant and then pretends to learn about them a bit, it

Sidey: on a bit.

Reegs: Yeah, and, yeah, so, it's, I don't know.

Sidey: know. There's loads of talk about certificates and title deeds and... This is hidden here, and they aren't all there, and it's got some stashed here, and

Dan: aren't all there, and yeah, I've just got some stashed here,

Reegs: a couple of funny lines in there, not enough though.

Dan: are a couple of funny lines in there, not enough though, they're serious questions really, you know, they're poking around that, you know, the money that has been robbed and the lives that have been lost and, and things like this and the, the accountant nun is, is kind of just smiling it all like she's not giving herself away.

She's agreeing with

Sidey: to build up a dossier.

Dan: And as she's kind of agreeing with, with them, as it goes on in the film, she actually finds herself. Being turned more and being more attracted into him because he turns his

Reegs: think she gives in to temptation right at the last minute, doesn't she? She's being pretty resolute. She thinks she's in control of that

Dan: She does, but you can see it slipping away.

Reegs: relationship between, you know, church and state and all that sort of

Sidey: But wasn't it the church's plan for her to be turned all along, to infiltrate?

Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: To, to a certain point, yeah, and so she's trying to collect

Reegs: I don't think she's supposed to fuck him like she does and

Sidey: turned They do do that. Yeah, they do

Reegs: So you know, that is, that

Dan: well that's, that's kind of the third act, isn't it, and then you see Margaret Thatcher come in.

Reegs: Yeah. She does turn up like a sort of demented Mary

Sidey: Yeah, I guess, yeah.

Reegs: sky.

And yeah, like I said, one of history's greatest

Dan: monsters. Yeah, and we start to learn a little bit of you know, their relationship and and

Sidey: had given him up.

Dan: Britain's

Sidey: had given him up, wasn't she? To an

Reegs: She had abandoned him, yeah, yeah. So she's the original vampire she'd abandoned him. That's why that kicks off his story at the beginning.

Sidey: Yeah,

Dan: And he explains a lot about Margaret Thatcher.

Sidey: yeah. we always suspected something

Dan: something like that. I

Cris: always knew

Dan: Well, they

Reegs: Well, they all come up with the plan, basically, don't they? All the kids and the butler and Lucia come up with a plan to stake, to get dad done and they turn it on him. And what does he do? He beheads Fyodor with a saw, doesn't he?

Sidey: Yes.

Reegs: Which is nice, but, and he

Sidey: puts a stake through

Reegs: a stake through Lucia's heart,

Sidey: The nun, the nun gets guillotined. Yeah. And thrown on the bonfire, along with her manuscript.

Yeah. Of all the evidence and whatever she's

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: All the bonds

Dan: that's been done by Theodore though, hasn't it? That's been done by him, and out of the rage then he, he kind of kills everyone else.

Yeah,

Reegs: exactly it. Yeah. Yeah, he does. And then they retire to the basement where they make these horrible heart smoothies to rejuvenate themselves.

Sidey: To start a new

Reegs: of the vampire hearts 'cause that will make them, she's like, oh, we'll be 15 again and go to,

Dan: well, that's it. At various parts of, of the film, they, they've talked and reminisced about, well, we could just give all this up and go and start a new life somewhere else.

And, you know, going. Gross and torture and everything, and the nun asks about this. Oh, when are you going to go and do this? All very nicely. So it's bizarre. It's twisted. It's a very original film. I thought, which was Interesting to to watch rather than it was a little bit confusing in parts the the plot and exactly what was going on but there was an always enough in it for me to just keep watching and And I thought it was shot really

Reegs: It's very striking, to, you know, not just because of the monochrome, but lots of other bits, but yeah, some of it was a slog.

Dan: These modern kind of black and white films, I mean they always take a bit of a risk because Yeah Most aren't doing it like that.

Sidey: I think the way it looked was the best thing about it.

I did, I found it dragged, I really, it was, to me this was a slog. I, I really had to And I did lose concentration quite a bit here, the middle part, because you get the initial bit, Oh right, vampire stuff, cool, and it's quite

Reegs: you get the metaphor, the like, you know,

Sidey: and to me,

Reegs: the life of the working class and all that.

I've got it, I've got it,

Sidey: and then they just go on and on about his assets and stuff that he's squirreled away, and you're like, And really, I, I was likening it to like, almost like a, like a big train skit, you know, where someone, historical figures a vampire and it could have been a series of, of quick skits about it rather than, it was just too long, I think.

Reegs: I've got a few here, Albert Einstein, Time Cop, Mozart, Ninja Master Elvis Presley, Werewolf Hunter. It's just easy. But yeah, I don't, I did like quite a few aspects of it and it did encourage me to read up on England's horrible complicity and Margaret

Dan: This is the rabbit hole. I went down

Reegs: of all of this.

And just, you know, led me to feel ashamed really.

Sidey: she actually a vampire?

Reegs: Yeah, absolutely. Well, no, she was, she was probably worse, but yeah,

Dan: have been a

Reegs: was definitely a staunch supporter of this grotesque and awful man that I now know a lot more about courtesy of this movie. So it succeeded in that, certainly. And it is one you'll think about because it looks so compelling and the idea is so ridiculous.

Dan: Yeah, I enjoyed the ridiculousness of the idea and the thought of putting somebody who is obviously given so much pain and horror to people, to paint them out to be a vampire. To make sense of it almost in that way and say, well, you know, they must be because who else would do something so horrible.

Reegs: Alien Gandhi.

Dan: Maybe, like this, yeah, yeah. That he may have come from

Sidey: outer

Dan: outer space.

Sidey: and the barometer of how many times you fell asleep

Cris: Three times.

Sidey: Three

Dan: Three times.

Cris: times, I couldn't

Dan: That's pretty good, that's pretty good for Chris. He must have been into this.

Cris: this. I, I remember when he kinda... When the guy spits on him and he kind of, he's like a assassin or something and he kind of wakes up in the coffin and then he goes back to being dead.

And then he kind of flies away

Reegs: There weren't enough of those moments though. 'cause that was a genuinely funny, it starts really strong. The first 20

Cris: yeah, yeah. With the prostitutes, with the guillotine, with the, you know, he becomes, he flies away, the music is like, da da da da.

Sidey: and then it talks about,

Reegs: minutes and then it just sags

Sidey: for almost becomes a board meeting where they're talking about

Cris: Well, when it started that I fell asleep and then I kind of woke up and I could see the same, the woman with the, with her paperwork and stuff. And then I fell asleep again and I was just, I, I just, it was a snooze

Dan: it. It, it did spend a, a long time on those kind of relationships in and around and, and picking

Sidey: The finances.

Dan: how, how much money he'd stolen and feathered his own cap and, you know, and his nest and anything else that wanted feathers.

Yeah. Or diamonds.

Reegs: I mean it, you know, it satirizes him up real good. We know he was brutal and a megalomaniac and insecure and, sucking the lifeblood out of the people,

Cris: pretty much the stereotype of a dictator, no?

In, in real life, no?

Reegs: Strong recommend then.

Dan: so I I would I'll go and check it out if you want a black and white film on vampires and politics I think it's quite an interesting one

Reegs: What's a MOOC?

Sidey: It's De Niro in... Mean Streets. Mean Streets, is it, quite a lot.

Dan: not a massive online course or something, a MOOC?

Sidey: I don't know, but this was hard to make notes about, and it was also the thing that we watched for the kids.

Dan: Yeah, it was it's spelled M O

Sidey: French? Is it French, originally? Yeah.

Dan: But this episode is based in Chile.

Reegs: This is one of those shows that's edutainment, isn't it? It's about educating and as much, it's not like, you know, unicorns like

Sidey: fingering each

Dan: Yeah, it's, it's a kind of mix up between Little Einsteins and Peppa Pig or something. It's it's trying to find that,

Reegs: to

Dan: that way. But this is on, on YouTube,

Sidey: is that where this lives?

Dan: That's where I found

Reegs: The baffling, you know, these things are always baffling if you choose to, you know, look at them through a prism. And the baffling aspect of this is this, this is two preschoolers going around the world by themselves on a bike. MOOC

Sidey: have started to go around doing things on their own.

Reegs: They're going on the bus.

Sidey: gets the

Dan: But they are like

Sidey: on a bigger, grander

Dan: They are like goats or something, aren't they? What are they?

Reegs: Well, one's a brown bear and Chavapa is a cat.

Dan: Yeah. So

Reegs: And they, and they, and they

Sidey: would they be okay together? I don't think that

Reegs: What, brown bear? I think, yeah, they're pretty moody, aren't they

Sidey: I think they would swipe the cat, surely.

Dan: Mm-Hmm.

Reegs: They seem to have made an, maybe it's an uneasy truce, but I didn't, they seemed okay.

Sidey: They're good with the internet as well,

Reegs: And they talk to their mates back home, Popo and Meta, on the webcam.

Dan: and yeah. Poppo.

Reegs: Yeah, the Popos.

Dan: Popo's. yeah. And they're talking about, So

Sidey: looks, I just want, the aesthetic is like, hey Dougie. Sort of. Yeah. But not quite as

Reegs: But, sort of web

Sidey: But quite crude web animation, yeah. Like, like you could churn it out real quick. Yeah.

Reegs: Popo is trying to, he's not, he's, what is he they've made a bet that he wouldn't talk.

Sidey: at their

Reegs: Gambling, yeah. They made a bet that he

Dan: entire stakes because Yeah,

Reegs: today. No, he wouldn't, he would spend the whole day

Dan: he wouldn't do that line

Reegs: he fucks it up straight away,

Dan: coke or whatever. Yeah.

Reegs: it. It's the, it's the joke. Anyway they go off with somebody's aunt, Copiapoa.

Dan: That's right. And they go to a place that. Has lovely multicolored houses on stilts,

Reegs: loads of talk

Dan: it is, It's down in beautiful

Reegs: Chilean culture, like the water houses that you're talking about on stilts, and this food, a traditional dish made with nalca, which is a Chilean rhubarb. And they use the leaves and some large stones, and it's basically like, this massive one pot.

It's got absolutely everything, and it sounds

Dan: and they, they head off to a volcano to go and cook it. And find out all these little dangers on the way. They have lots of like, escapades.

Oh, look, it's on fire. No, it's just the steam coming up from a pit that they've, kind of dug and then

Reegs: But they, yes, they, they evacuate the nearby town of nearly 2, 000 residents on a false seismic alert.

Sidey: Ah, quite rough.

Reegs: yeah, yeah.

Dan: Yeah. at one point, but you learn that they've got these little, because there's a volcanologist or something, isn't there?

And yeah, exactly. Live long and prosper. And she's going up the volcano and saying that she can read different instruments to tell you how close it is to erupting. And we would be

Sidey: have you, have you actually been following that with the stuff in Iceland? Yeah. It's pretty cool...

Dan: Well, this is all very topical, isn't it

Sidey: Well, it didn't go off though, did it? No. But they could track the rivers of, like, fucking lava onto their houses.

Dan: Yeah, there was some big cracks as well,

Sidey: some of the roads are gone. But yeah, that stuff and this and that

Reegs: Chavapa, he, the cat, he like... He's reluctant with the food a little bit. He's like, I'm not eating that rhubarb shit.

And he like burps or farts or shits himself or something. 'cause he sent off for a

Sidey: a bath, isn't he? He's set

Reegs: He sent off for a bath. He

Sidey: meshed his fur.

Reegs: springs.

Dan: And they were they're going to the hot springs

Reegs: they splash each other. Splashy. Splashy. They toss each other off.

Dan: That that rhubarb thing that they were making though

Reegs: what I'm saying. Yeah. It's really cool. Potatoes, meat, bread, seafood, everything in one pot. And they eat. It's delicious.

Dan: And they put some rhubarb over the top we're gonna just heat it up there the volcanologist is on top of it Oh, she's kind of supervising these kind of Little animals. So

Reegs: And then it's one of those that just ends in like 20 seconds.

It cuts back from suddenly from this adventure to them on the webcam to one of them says some words which, and then everybody laughs like it was a joke and then it

Sidey: I think because this has been translated into a few different languages, it probably worked better. I think something might have got lost in translation

Reegs: Well no, I quite enjoyed this.

Dan: It wasn't the, it wasn't the worst thing on YouTube.

Reegs: No,

Sidey: no, but that, that's a low bar. but Yeah. I

Reegs: the animation was It did look a bit budget, but it was clean and And it was nice educational stuff.

Dan: Thought it wasn't too bad, I learned some stuff, I didn't know they, they could do that fire cooking in, in volcanoes

Reegs: They fucked up though, because they did an episode called The Bamboo Plantation, and bamboo isn't native to Vietnam. That's where they set it so.

Sidey: oh, is it an invasive species? Yeah. Oh, there you go.

Dan: maybe they'll do another

Sidey: Should have fact checked that, shouldn't they? Silly twats.

Dan: Did you manage to catch up on this one Chris or is it no saving this for next time? I get yeah

Cris: fell asleep before I even did the research on

Sidey: was mercifully only ten minutes. Which is good.

Reegs: good. That instantly is like a six or seven out of ten for me, like,

Sidey: There's a lot of episodes of this. There's a lot.

Dan: It is quite a lot. And where did you say it was from? French. French France. Right.

Reegs: 62 episodes. It's based on a 2009 activity book by Marc

Dan: Ah. Mr. Boutevard. Monsieur Boutevard.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: there you go. So

Dan: Well, um. merci.

Reegs: No, no, no. I don't want that to be the

Sidey: Okay, well done. Well done, Mark. Well done, Mark.

Dan: Nice, nice

Sidey: This is a strong recommend, Mark.

Dan: about that, mark. But yeah. Um,

Cris: Bien, Mark.

Dan: is, it? Is that, that is,

Sidey: yeah. Pete, I think, is going to nominate for next week. We had a

Dan: gonna be bond?

Sidey: No. Well...

Cris: has to be, because otherwise The

Sidey: he's strong arming. The original plan was it to be some kind of shark week. Which I thought we'd done, but we hadn't. We just did,

Reegs: did

Dan: well, let's do

Sidey: Deep Blue Sea,

Dan: the bond with the sharks in.

Sidey: Frickin laser beams.

Dan: Yeah.

Sidey: Thunderbolt has sharks in it.

Dan: There we go.

Sidey: Yeah. It's actually, it's my favourite Bond film. But we'll get into that next week. All that remains for now is to say, Sidey signing out.

Reegs: Reegs out.

Dan: Dan's gone.