Full Comment - August 09, 2021


That virus that mutated the movies


Episode Stats

Length

39 minutes

Words per Minute

193.5549

Word Count

7,676

Sentence Count

4

Misogynist Sentences

11


Summary

In this episode of Full Comment, we discuss the return of movie theaters to the big screen after a 15-month hiatus, the impact of Hollywood becoming more woke, and why the Oscars are not doing so well these days. To break down all of these subjects, we're joined by Mark Daniel Post, a media entertainment writer.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 hey everyone welcome to the latest episode of full comment with me anthony fury have you been
00:00:10.440 to the movie theaters yet movie theaters closed for well many months in canada throughout the
00:00:15.480 pandemic although film production actually has been happening quite a lot all throughout the
00:00:19.920 country one of the first sectors to get back up and running so are movies going to recover from
00:00:24.680 covid in some sense well they never really lost steam when it comes to the filming of it but when
00:00:29.420 it comes to the showing of it on the big screen oh boy that was put on pause how are things going
00:00:33.980 to be changed for the foreseeable future are people just going to jump back in two feet forward or is
00:00:39.520 there going to be things that are changed forever is this just accelerating trends that were already
00:00:44.420 happening what's going to go on both in terms of how we watch movies but also in terms of the topics
00:00:51.200 the subjects is hollywood becoming much too woke those oscar ratings not doing so well these days
00:00:56.780 to break down all of these subjects we're joined now by mark daniel post media entertainment writer
00:01:01.640 hey mark how's it going good anthony how are you i'm doing well it's uh it's great to have you here
00:01:07.320 on the show and uh to answer that question of have you been to the movies i i finally went first time
00:01:11.520 in a year and a half uh here in ontario and uh the kids and i we we had a good time we checked out
00:01:16.420 space jam and uh i'm glad the movie theater experience is back so am i uh actually my wife and i went and
00:01:23.840 saw fast nine uh and the movie was sold out with limited seating so it was sold out with limited
00:01:30.800 seating but i think you're right anthony i mean after you know 15 months of being indoors of not
00:01:38.180 being in theaters uh to be back it is quite something and it is quite special um because it
00:01:45.600 is you know it's something that i look forward to and i think a lot of other people across the
00:01:50.400 country look forward to and i'm glad that we're able to do it again wait so that was pretty much
00:01:54.840 full i know i think the rules are 50 capacity when i went to the theater uh it was not very busy and
00:02:00.520 i've actually had a number of experiences where i've gone to things that are kind of back up and
00:02:04.200 i was originally worried oh the gym is only 50 capacity am i gonna have to wait outside and it's
00:02:08.640 like no i've had you know it's been totally easy for me every time and when we went to see space jam
00:02:12.920 there weren't many people there there's like 10 people actually at the showing and i thought
00:02:16.480 maybe that was indicative of just you know broader trends like not that many people are stepping
00:02:21.240 into it but you're saying you go to the new fast and furious movie and it was pretty much packed
00:02:25.540 the new fast and furious was packed now for certain you know hollywood had to pivot uh some of the
00:02:33.320 titles that have been released this year have been going uh directly onto streaming as a add-on pay
00:02:39.840 right uh so through your subscribe you have a subscription to disney plus uh and you want to see the new
00:02:45.480 black widow well you had the option of subscribing to it through disney plus or seeing it in a theater
00:02:51.380 um for space jam particularly space jam also was available to people in home uh as a separate
00:02:58.420 purchase uh and so yeah many families may have opted to see it that way in the comfort of their
00:03:03.780 own home do you think that's going to stick around and i remember like hollywood uh legends of old it
00:03:09.320 would be like okay the rule is you know this director or whatever says i want the i want i don't
00:03:14.300 want the the vhs or the dvd release to come out until like a year after it's in the theaters because
00:03:19.100 i'm a cinema director like a you know a marty scorsese view or what have you but now you're saying
00:03:23.200 like well no now you get theater and streaming on kind of the same day do you think that's sticking
00:03:28.060 around okay anthony uh jungle cruise just came out recently last month and the movie made 30 million
00:03:34.620 dollars on disney plus uh through subscriptions and it made 35 million dollars in the cinema
00:03:41.140 that's just north america alone uh black widow which came out earlier in july that made uh 60
00:03:48.740 million dollars on disney plus worldwide so of course everybody's wondering now well are people
00:03:55.320 just going to pay extra to see these movies in their home on their 70 inch screens um that's a big
00:04:01.580 question mark i think once everyone feels comfortable going back into a theater uh and that
00:04:07.940 means for family films as well like space jam uh maybe the crowds will come back but maybe audiences
00:04:15.660 have decided no i'd rather just stay home and watch this movie for me to take my two kids or three kids
00:04:21.540 buy popcorn pay for parking you know all of a sudden it becomes a hundred dollar plus a night out
00:04:28.200 whereas you know disney plus is 35 all in now mark i remember a year ago you were telling me
00:04:34.000 not big concerns about covid in the theaters safe to go back uh the head of cineplex here in canada
00:04:39.400 saying i think he said basically there have been zero cases of covid19 transmission attributed to movie
00:04:45.640 theaters in canada really at all tell us about that yeah i mean they were cineplex was very much uh
00:04:54.920 right out front in terms of keeping theaters safe uh they implemented all sorts of cleaning and safety
00:05:01.720 measures inside their theaters uh social distancing in their theaters uh became commonplace however when
00:05:08.920 the government moved to shut things down you know theaters were one of the things that had to close
00:05:14.520 now that they're back they've welcomed back i want to say it's something like almost a million people
00:05:20.040 have been going have gone back to the theaters uh since they reopened in early july now they won't sell
00:05:27.480 out the entire theater right now right now there it's it is limited capacity um depending on the
00:05:33.160 province you're in depending on the city you're in uh that can range um anywhere from 20 to 50 percent
00:05:39.800 but i think people want to come back and have those experiences i really do i mean you want to see a movie
00:05:47.080 like black widow and you want to experience it on a big screen um the filmmakers involved with these movies
00:05:54.200 they oftentimes they're shooting them with imax cameras and they're developing the stunts and the action
00:06:00.760 scenes to be seen on a big screen right now if audiences decide well we'd rather stay home and watch this
00:06:07.960 stuff at home that's going to change the types of entertainment content and the product quality i think
00:06:14.440 that you're seeing inside your home well where do you think that film goers are going to sit in the
00:06:19.240 general public like like what what is going to be their attitude in the months moving ahead i know
00:06:23.800 people are probably a bit reticent now but where is the sentiment going i know right now i am just kind
00:06:29.320 of sick of small screen viewing the number of movies i've seen everything just you know on that home
00:06:34.120 screen i don't have have the giant home entertainment system just watching it on the regular tv screen
00:06:38.600 i was really glad to get into the movie theater and just have that experience i think the big
00:06:44.360 question is i think for big movies so we have dune coming out it's slated to come out in october
00:06:51.160 there's a new matrix movie that's coming out this christmas top gun is due out in november
00:06:56.840 the new james bond is due out in november you gotta see james bond on the big screen i mean there's no
00:07:01.880 other you gotta see yeah exactly and so i think for those movies i think the audiences are going
00:07:08.520 to remain intact and i think also from a studio point of view listen they can make a lot more money
00:07:15.000 screening a movie in on a big screen than they can at home for people who are streaming and doing
00:07:20.040 in-home purchases because then something like piracy becomes a bigger issue as well we have no way
00:07:26.120 to quantify the number of people who watched pirated versions of black widow we can't but i
00:07:33.480 imagine piracy played a huge factor in that movie's overall bottom line so i do think audiences are going
00:07:41.640 to come back to those movies this year i think they'll be back next year and i don't think they're
00:07:47.160 going to go away anytime soon what i do wonder and worry about is what happens to those mid-level dramas
00:07:53.880 okay the the movies like nomadland which are great fantastic moving experiences but maybe people
00:08:01.080 will feel i don't need to see that on a big screen and so those are the movies that i think could be
00:08:07.000 in jeopardy you know one of the things that's been so interesting during the pandemic is how
00:08:11.160 filming has actually largely continued almost entirely throughout it it's really been quite
00:08:16.600 something and i know a lot of people have complained they've said oh you know restaurants are shut
00:08:20.440 down in toronto and yet i drive down the street and they're filming a movie scene in a restaurant
00:08:23.800 so you know you can do it if you put a camera in front of it and in fact i think a hamilton hair
00:08:27.640 salon even tried to get around some rules by by putting up putting up a camera in front of them
00:08:32.680 while cutting hair and saying this is a film shoot and so forth and it didn't pass muster um and and
00:08:37.640 i know you speak with a lot of film directors you speak with a lot of movie stars uh for interviews
00:08:41.880 that are in the post media papers mark what were they saying about the experience of just filming
00:08:46.120 almost like i'm sure there were a few weeks obviously where things were shut down but they got back to it
00:08:50.200 way sooner than most sectors did you know yeah i i had a really unique experience uh speaking to a
00:08:57.800 few different actors one of which kaylee cuoco for the flight attendant ryan cranston for your honor
00:09:04.520 those two come to mind and they uh were filming uh tv projects uh as a matter of fact but they these were
00:09:11.080 projects that started pre-pandemic and then had to be finished after the pandemic or in the midst of the
00:09:16.920 pandemic and so hollywood had to pivot what hollywood did is they they introduced rapid uh testing uh
00:09:24.840 they really limited the amount of people on a film set uh you know in years past i along with uh many
00:09:32.600 other journalists would be invited to go visit some of the these big film sets as they were being shot
00:09:38.920 and and and and all that went away i haven't been on a film set since uh february 2020 um uh but you
00:09:46.360 know listen hollywood couldn't stop because uh there's only so many weekends in a year uh you know
00:09:53.160 prime uh some of these weekends are are considered prime real estate prime viewing uh for for moviegoers
00:10:00.840 and so i think that they just uh they they just closed things down and then also limited the amount
00:10:07.080 of background actors that you would see in any given scene and um and they were able to do it
00:10:13.000 but listen anthony uh some films like the the new mission impossible i feel like has been shut down
00:10:19.000 at least three or four times uh due to covid uh the batman movie with robert pattinson that's due out
00:10:24.760 next year that was shut down due to uh covid uh and all these shutdowns i mean they cost money
00:10:30.440 um they cost time and they jeopardize uh film release dates you know i heard in ontario they
00:10:37.880 had a rule i'm not sure if it's still in place or it was just sort of last year that you needed to
00:10:41.800 spend 10 of your budget on covid uh precautions and covid testing so it was like a lot you know
00:10:48.440 a 10 million dollar movie or or miniseries or what have you you're spending a million dollars on your
00:10:53.240 covid protocols and testing and there were a couple projects i knew a couple crew people who were saying
00:10:57.560 they were being they were being swabbed five times a week so i mean it was almost the most airtight
00:11:03.720 operation film sets you know across canada compared to anything else almost you know comparable to
00:11:08.440 long-term care homes or what have you yeah i mean they had the the kevin hart movie that was shot uh
00:11:14.840 here in toronto uh late last year the man from toronto i mean that that went off without a hitch
00:11:20.840 jason momoa uh as you know him from his aquaman uh movie uh he was here for almost a full year he
00:11:28.680 was shooting apple's sea and then he was also doing a movie for netflix uh and these movies here in
00:11:34.840 toronto i mean we didn't hear about any outbreaks or any delays to uh covet 19. no it was interesting
00:11:41.880 to see that and in fact the crew person i was speaking to recently said that that big show that
00:11:45.480 they were talking about and you know 60 000 tests all combined only two people ever tested positive i think one
00:11:50.520 of them was the director and then they took a home and for 14 days they tried to direct via zoom which
00:11:54.600 must have been an absolutely very difficult experience oh wow yeah i'm sure most definitely
00:12:01.560 yeah one wonders where things are headed because now we're in this kind of in-between period where
00:12:05.480 it's like all right well you know what are we doing some places have dropped protocols almost
00:12:09.240 entirely some provinces some states others still have them and so on where do you think the film
00:12:13.800 ministry is headed when it comes to covet they're having the same conversations about the vaccine
00:12:17.880 passports and so forth as i guess any other line of work is so i think you know listen hollywood
00:12:24.040 is is always forward thinking uh they're thinking about movies that are coming about coming out in 2024
00:12:30.920 and 2023 and 2025 so i think that they're going to proceed as if audiences are going to come back
00:12:38.440 now if you and i are talking a year from now and audiences haven't come back and we've seen some
00:12:44.040 really big high profile failures then i don't know if hollywood would rethink some of these movies
00:12:51.560 rethink the budgets on some of these movies and rethink their strategy altogether um i don't think
00:12:58.440 that you can expect a big screen entertainment experience for the small screen in other words
00:13:05.240 what i mean is i don't think marvel is going to spend 250 million dollars making its next avengers movie
00:13:12.440 if people are only going to be watching or largely going to be watching that from home if audiences
00:13:18.440 don't go to the theaters they need to they need to dial back their expectations i think well it's
00:13:24.360 funny you should say that because amazon prime has released a couple uh direct amazon videos that i
00:13:29.720 know they financed it was no remorse i think starring michael b jordan i saw that one there's another
00:13:34.280 one with chris pratt i think michael b jordan's a fantastic actor but you know this movie and then
00:13:38.600 the chris pratt one i was kind of like eh you know it's got a little bit of the 90s like you know
00:13:44.440 bit of the steven seagal direct-to-video vibe kind of thing i mean that's almost kind of what you're
00:13:48.360 talking about here is it mark well it though in those those two movies specifically anthony were
00:13:55.720 supposed to come out to theaters they were both um produced by paramount and they were both slated for
00:14:01.880 theatrical release and paramount um decided to sell them to amazon so in the case of the pratt movie
00:14:07.960 they sold it to amazon for 200 million dollars so that movie was supposed to come out for uh was
00:14:14.040 supposed to be on the big screen it was actually supposed to come out last christmas so my criticisms
00:14:18.600 are just kind of random not connected to that i just don't like those movies then apparently
00:14:23.000 uh and without remorse again that's another movie that was due out last year and um amazon does have
00:14:31.640 the rights to the jack ryan character on they do have a series with john krasinski starring as jack ryan
00:14:38.440 and so the without remorse is uh also a tom clancy character and so uh you know eventually you might
00:14:45.640 see some sort of crossover there so that that it made a lot of sense for them to pick that up and then
00:14:50.360 in terms of tomorrow war with chris pratt well jeff bezos is uh he's a huge sci-fi guy so you know as
00:14:56.760 you or maybe you don't know but he bought uh the expanse from the sci-fi network just so he could keep
00:15:02.440 making that tv show speaking of spinoffs i i gotta ask you mark the marvel world how is that faring in
00:15:09.160 terms of success with all of like every week there's a new show that comes out and you know i remember when
00:15:15.160 i was a teenager you know in my early 20s and then like once every 18 months a marvel movie
00:15:20.120 comes out and i would watch kind of all of them and now it's like there's just like a gazillion of
00:15:24.440 them and i feel like they're kind of suffering a little bit for quality out there but i guess
00:15:28.920 there's an audience for it i mean what do you make of what's happening with that that uh very much kind
00:15:34.440 of enjoying getting that you know everything they can out of that uh brand identity so listen i mean
00:15:41.880 disney disney set up disney plus disney plus was going to was always going to be a home
00:15:48.280 for the vast repository of disney content and that's disney marvel star wars pixar on and on and
00:15:56.680 on as well as fox however part of disney's plan was to start taking some of its properties so in
00:16:04.920 star wars we had the mandalorian uh and then in marvel uh they decided to start using some of their
00:16:12.040 sort of smaller characters and expanding them out into tv into short tv shows now anthony these shows
00:16:19.640 you know they they operate almost as like you know elongated movies uh you know they're they're
00:16:27.160 they're not self-contained episodes uh every week there's a new episode and it picks up with last
00:16:32.360 week's cliffhanger so they've done so far this year they've done one division falcon in the winter
00:16:37.720 soldier and then loki um what's cool about this is that all of these shows are impacting marvel's
00:16:45.320 greater cinematic plan that they have um later this year marvel will release eternals and they've
00:16:53.080 got shang chi they just put black widow out in the theaters and so really marvel is building disney
00:16:58.920 and marvel and building out this interconnected world um so for fans of course you know they can
00:17:06.040 experience the shows then they get to go see the movies and all of it enriches and feeds in to one
00:17:12.440 another now for fans it's an amazing thing i mean i count myself among them i love uh these new shows
00:17:20.440 um if you're not into marvel though you're probably sick and tired of hearing about all these characters
00:17:27.400 mark you mentioned hollywood being forward looking and i know what you meant by that from timeline
00:17:31.400 schedules businesses and so forth also very forward looking in terms of being very progressive
00:17:35.640 looking being very woke and so forth lots of concerns now that hollywood perhaps becoming a bit too
00:17:41.400 much woke uh disconnected from well maybe not their audience entirely but i don't know 50 of their
00:17:47.320 audience something like that you hear the complaint a lot uh from from some pockets of society what do you
00:17:53.000 make of the hollywood woke conversation you know what at the end of the day anthony i've always felt
00:17:59.960 what hollywood will do uh whatever the audience wants whatever direction the audience wants to go in
00:18:07.800 wherever their pocketbooks are telling them to spend their money is where hollywood will go so certainly
00:18:15.400 yes there have been conversations about diversity on the screen uh and behind the camera as well and and some
00:18:23.240 of those are overdue and some of them are some of those decisions are coming because it makes business
00:18:29.320 sense for hollywood um i think that uh anytime that there's an opportunity for them to make money or to
00:18:38.120 or they see a a segment of the population that's being under service where they could potentially make more
00:18:45.000 money they're going to go out and they're going to make uh entertainment for that segment of the population
00:18:50.440 well i don't know that there's a couple examples where i wonder is that actually what's at play
00:18:54.920 one big big example is the television show last man standing which i i didn't even really know much
00:19:00.040 about it here in canada it wasn't advertised or promoted much and i found out it was like one of
00:19:03.320 the number one sitcoms in the us and i got a chuckle out of some of the episodes a tim allen show
00:19:07.560 his latest program and then it was just kind of dropped like it was hot well it was hot it was really
00:19:12.600 popular and they asked tim allen on a podcast why was this show cut and he's like i don't know i feel
00:19:17.160 no reason you know we were doing great ratings were great i feel like it was just because there
00:19:21.000 was such a sympathetic conservative leading man because he was always making jokes from the
00:19:25.240 conservative side of the spectrum so tim allen thought that that was kind of what was going on
00:19:29.640 i thought something similar with the roseanne show they rebooted roseanne and then she made this
00:19:34.600 you know dumb tweet or what have you and people were angrily you know tweeting back at her and so
00:19:38.840 forth and you know maybe she shouldn't have made that tweet and then they drop her from the show and
00:19:42.600 you're like okay it's roseanne she made a stupid tweet did you need to actually cancel her from the
00:19:46.840 show kind of in perpetuity i'm looking at those examples and i'm like mark was this really like
00:19:51.800 a business decision here so it's funny that you should the roseanne the rose the roseanne one was
00:19:59.640 very curious because listen the show had been off the air for i don't know 20 something years or maybe
00:20:06.760 not quite 20 but quite a long time so they decide okay we're gonna bring back roseanne we're gonna bring
00:20:12.040 back the connors they bring back the family and then yes she makes this ill-advised uh social media
00:20:18.200 post i think in her case though uh she was slow to to be uh to to own up uh to to the error of doing
00:20:27.960 that um and i think they looked at it and said maybe we can keep this going without roseanne we've got
00:20:35.080 john goodman who's a celebrity in his own right uh and the rest of the cast who who people had known and
00:20:41.880 loved over the years and so they decided let's let's see let's try and get rid of her now if the
00:20:47.480 if it didn't work if audiences didn't tune in then the connors would have been canceled but in fact
00:20:53.400 audiences stuck around with that show uh in terms of the tim allen one the tim allen last man standing
00:20:59.640 yes again very curious uh that show originally i believe aired on abc abc is owned by disney
00:21:06.680 except tim allen does have a very uh healthy and prosperous relationship with disney uh due to him
00:21:13.320 voicing buzz lightyear in the toy story right so i always felt that that one was again um you know
00:21:21.640 you can say the ratings for something are good but maybe uh the bean counters upstairs feel well the
00:21:27.160 ratings aren't good enough i mean there's been other shows brooklyn line of brooklyn 99 was on fox and then
00:21:34.120 it was cancelled and picked up by nbc um lucifer was another show uh that was cancelled and picked
00:21:41.240 up by netflix designated survivor was on i think abc and then cancelled and picked up again by netflix so
00:21:48.680 i mean we have seen these things before i know that tim did think that potentially his conservative
00:21:55.400 viewpoints might have had something to do with it um but i'm not entirely sold on that argument what about
00:22:01.640 the gina carano situation i had never really heard of this lady before i guess i'd seen her fight once
00:22:06.360 or twice i know she was a prominent ufc fighter then she becomes uh one of the leading characters
00:22:11.720 in the in the star wars series and uh great show i loved it she was fantastic on it she had a lot of
00:22:19.080 fans and then she was dropped from the show for and it's like how do i really explain this i guess
00:22:25.080 she'd put ambiguous social media posts suggesting oh she might be a trump supporter she's not woke
00:22:31.960 she's not an sjw you can kind of tell that maybe she's saying that trump actually fairly won the
00:22:37.400 election biden didn't win and so forth but she wasn't even saying it outright and it was just kind
00:22:40.920 of like this odd situation where i think people got a whiff that like i don't think i like this lady
00:22:46.600 so let's kind of push her out of here and i can't remember exactly the offending post that that
00:22:51.560 pushed her over the ledge but a lot of people were really upset and there's calls cancel your
00:22:55.320 disney plus subscription uh and so forth my kids wouldn't let me do it so i had to keep subscribed
00:22:59.800 to it and so forth but uh you know lots of lots of questions and and culture war around the gina
00:23:05.080 carano situation yeah gina carano is someone who had been outspoken on social media for a while
00:23:12.200 um the thing that the thing that sort of you know was i guess the the last straw with disney uh lucasfilm
00:23:21.400 was a post in which she compared um you know the divided political climate in the united states
00:23:28.280 to nazi germany uh and you know she went all of a sudden from being just the sort of fringe um
00:23:37.000 celebrity to all of a sudden everyone there were there were petitions to to have her um removed from
00:23:44.040 the star wars show the mandalorian uh there were petitions to have her action figure um cancelled
00:23:51.960 you know hasbro stopped selling cara dune figures uh and karana was supposed to be part of a spinoff
00:24:00.360 a star wars spinoff her her part in the spinoff was was cancelled and they announced that she will not
00:24:07.000 be back for the mandalorian season three um it's one of those things where uh again uh what was it
00:24:16.840 was it uh something that was perhaps uh she shouldn't have spoken about was it an analogy
00:24:23.720 she shouldn't have made um it's not for me to to really say on that but um but i think disney felt
00:24:31.160 that her character cara dune and and her specifically uh they could live without her
00:24:37.720 as part of the mandalorian and as part of the ongoing star wars franchise and so they elected
00:24:42.440 to just say uh we're moving on and and we're leaving her behind mark i certainly hear from
00:24:47.800 more conservative-minded folks that look i'm happy to watch you know whoever act in this role so long
00:24:53.160 as they're talented and so forth i just don't want to hear their politics i don't want to hear them
00:24:56.120 ranting at me and that that is argued to be one of the reasons why oscar ratings are just plummeting
00:25:01.400 and in recent years uh there have been more preachier or more politicized speeches that have
00:25:06.040 taken place when people go up uh to pick up the golden statue i got in front of me ratings i guess 1998
00:25:11.640 academy awards year of titanic 57 million people and then you get down to 2008 80th oscars uh 72 million
00:25:19.480 pardon me 32 million people um dropping down to 24 million last year in 2020 and then this year
00:25:27.240 10.4 million people and they go well it was coveted and i was like okay i know it was coveted but you
00:25:32.600 know also everybody's sitting at home so they could watch it what's going on with the oscars mark
00:25:37.560 you know it's a combination of things anthony i think really the the reason that the oscar ratings
00:25:42.840 uh are dropping to to i feel like every year it's a record low is is some of the nominations and the
00:25:51.880 films that they're choosing to sort of celebrate are ones that people aren't going to and ones that
00:25:59.320 the majority of the population don't see or uh don't care about um you know a few years ago they released
00:26:07.160 um avengers endgame okay biggest movie of all time uh and that movie doesn't get nominated for best
00:26:15.960 picture well i mean to me i look at that and say well how is that possible here's a movie that's
00:26:22.440 the culmination of 10 years of filmmaking from marvel it brings together 22 or 21 different uh movie
00:26:32.040 storylines uh it's celebrated all over the world it's the highest grossing movie of all time and
00:26:39.480 you're you're saying well that's not at least in the conversation for best picture to me that makes
00:26:45.640 no sense and then you look over the years uh previous to that avatar which uh i think is now actually
00:26:53.880 again the the highest grossing movie of all time avatar in 2009 lost to the hurt locker now i i
00:27:01.800 i i say to you anthony if you go up to anyone on the street and say hey what did you think of the
00:27:05.880 hurt locker right 90 of the people aren't even going to remember that that movie came out but
00:27:10.680 everybody has seen avatar and avatar changed the movie going game with its use of 3d and its digital
00:27:17.400 technology so to me again that there's a movie that should have won best picture so i think really
00:27:23.400 hollywood is a is not in sync with with audience uh likes and and audience and what audiences
00:27:31.560 are into so if you're home on a sunday night uh are you going to watch them celebrate a bunch
00:27:37.560 of movies that you didn't even watch probably not i also feel like i guess there's just been
00:27:43.000 so many newcomers and such a democratization of the film industry which is a great thing but all
00:27:48.360 these movies come out and i'm like i've never heard of any of the people who are starring in it
00:27:52.200 and then if some of them do a really good job they get nominated for an oscar i'm like i have
00:27:55.400 no clue who this person is yeah i mean i think that that certainly it's great to celebrate newcomers
00:28:04.040 and it's great to celebrate new cinematic visionaries certainly 100 and and i i think some of the best
00:28:11.960 films that come out every year are the ones that maybe not everyone is going to see i just think you
00:28:18.840 know when we look back at last year's nominees for best picture uh you know the majority of them were
00:28:26.600 titles that not a lot of people saw or cared about um certainly the performances might have been great
00:28:33.080 and and deserved uh consideration but the oscars and and all award shows really need to sort of mirror
00:28:43.560 what is in line with with popular tastes more and they're not doing that and that therefore people
00:28:49.480 aren't watching and i guess what a lot of people want out of the oscars is you know us regular schmoes
00:28:54.520 just want to see you know this this fantasy evening of of you know lifestyles of the rich and famous
00:28:59.800 beautiful people up there smiling their perfect smiles being happy and uh you know winning their awards
00:29:06.120 and we can be like maybe that's us one day and kind of thing and there's that it's almost like the
00:29:10.040 original reality television kind of thing or something yeah certainly i mean look this year
00:29:17.080 it was a different year yes people were at home people were watching a lot of content at home and
00:29:23.400 i think when you know the oscars rolled around it was april usually i think the oscars are in late uh late
00:29:30.280 february um you know i think people were i think people were you know the weather might have been a little
00:29:36.600 nicer people want to get outside a little more and are you going to stay home and and and root for
00:29:42.760 for you know mank which was on netflix but i didn't hear a whole lot of people talking about
00:29:49.000 that movie or or saying how great it was i know and when i say people i just mean you know the people
00:29:54.520 that i meet average people that i talk to and what about the fact that there's just so many choices
00:30:00.200 out there so many streaming devices you know if you want to watch uh this thing that's only on apple tv
00:30:05.000 well you got to get apple tv and not everybody has all seven or eight or twenty of the things that
00:30:09.960 are on offer i always think back to when people are like everybody watched game of thrones and i'm
00:30:14.440 like well i don't know if you look at the numbers not really that many people watch game of thrones
00:30:18.760 everybody watched the series finale of mash and everybody watched the season finale of seinfeld
00:30:23.720 but now we're kind of out in in all these different pockets out there of things we watch and
00:30:27.880 view and that's great i have no problem with it but it's kind of funny like i'll find this you
00:30:31.240 mentioned brooklyn 99 i actually only started watching that very recently a few months ago i
00:30:35.960 barely heard about it i watched i'm like i love this show why didn't anybody say fury this is your
00:30:40.680 thing you got to watch this but you know i just didn't actually hear it talked about all that much
00:30:45.800 you know it it is i mean listen anthony i think people uh in the industry looked at netflix they saw
00:30:52.760 what netflix was doing and i think they saw that the future is you need to create content you need to
00:31:00.520 own the content that you create and uh and people will want to watch that content enjoy that content
00:31:07.160 except okay so you have netflix then you have disney with disney plus and disney plus is only going to
00:31:13.720 get bigger i mean your kids are never going to let you uh cancel it because it's going to just
00:31:18.920 it's going to have yeah it's the the amount of original programming that it's going to uh that's
00:31:24.360 going to be coming out of disney plus is just going to grow and grow and grow and yes you mentioned
00:31:29.240 apple tv plus apple tv plus is great they've linked up with a lot of really really high profile uh
00:31:36.360 filmmakers and actors and actresses and they're putting out some really great content as well
00:31:42.120 paramount plus is another service that not a lot of people are talking about but paramount plus here in
00:31:47.480 canada is going to have you know even more uh he's going to have even more uh content uh services that
00:31:54.840 people can take advantage of so uh geez and i probably forgot there's hbo max in the united
00:32:00.120 states hbo max in the united states is putting out um the uh warner brothers movie titles this year
00:32:07.240 and uh as well they're going to have their own shows including a sex in the city spinoff so um
00:32:14.360 you know it's it's it's just growing and growing and growing you know one thing i love about all these
00:32:18.760 streaming devices mark is the back catalog as well i know we're talking about disney plus and my kids are
00:32:23.160 watching the new stuff but also we have a new ritual now where we sit down and we watch the
00:32:27.320 home alone movies together at christmas time because it's like hey this is what dad watched
00:32:31.880 when he was a kid a teenager now we can watch it and i'm even going through the back catalogs i'm like
00:32:36.280 oh yeah this 80s movie i never got got around to seeing or this classic 90s movie let's sit down and
00:32:40.840 you know watch the first speed flick and it's just you no longer have to wait for them to like
00:32:45.160 you know come on tv on a sunday afternoon on tbs like used to be the case now there you go they're right there
00:32:50.440 yeah and especially with disney plus you you also have the fox catalog that's on there so
00:32:57.000 you know all the old die hard movies will be there and the alien franchise ridley scott's alien movies
00:33:03.240 um you know you could you could literally sit on your couch and never leave um there's so much to
00:33:09.320 watch uh on all these different services then of course netflix has some of the older movies as well so
00:33:15.960 so it's certainly um it's an embarrassment of riches i can't even imagine what it would be like
00:33:21.480 to be a child now one thing i do want to get your thoughts on though is like yes there's an
00:33:25.880 embarrassment of riches but sometimes if you want an older movie if you said i want to see this movie
00:33:31.080 you can't find it because the rental places they don't exist anymore you can't i guess you can buy
00:33:36.360 dvds at best buy but you know it's kind of a challenge maybe the library has it to rent a couple
00:33:41.560 examples and i know this doesn't apply anymore because it's on fox but um we were watching
00:33:46.120 re-watching the x-files series on streaming and then we had to see the x-files movie because the
00:33:50.440 x-files movie happens in the middle of of uh the x-files and it was like i couldn't find it eventually
00:33:56.200 i drove to another city to buy it in one of those two dvd combos and it came a planet of the apes for
00:34:01.640 like 7.99 but i had to like search around ontario for it i finally found it last week i went to the
00:34:07.640 ago they have an andy warhol exhibit it reminded me i always wanted to see the movie i shot andy
00:34:12.760 warhol from like what's it from like 1995 or something i was like i got to see this movie
00:34:16.520 always wanted to see it couldn't find it someone had posted it to youtube so i watched the whole
00:34:20.680 thing on youtube just blown up on the screen finally saw the movie but it was like and it wasn't on any
00:34:25.560 streaming like i would have paid i would have given my credit card to this or that to rent i wasn't
00:34:29.240 trying to steal the movie but it's like some things yes you can find almost everything but the
00:34:33.960 things you can't you can't yeah it is it is really funny i mean listen here in toronto uh there are a
00:34:43.480 handful of independent video stores that still exist if there's something you're really they're great
00:34:48.440 uh hungering for uh certainly in other cities across canada i'm sure there's one or two remaining
00:34:55.400 video stores that will happily search that title i will find it for you but you're right anthony um you
00:35:01.800 know there's there's uh there's so many times where i think to myself i'd really like to see
00:35:07.800 you know i wanted to see the the most recent fast and the furious movie with my with my nephew so i
00:35:13.320 looked on netflix and it wasn't there and it's a universal title so it's not going to be on disney
00:35:18.040 plus right and uh and and so we and it wasn't on amazon prime so we were we were uh we were sol we
00:35:24.360 weren't able to watch uh the the fate of the furious because i wanted to get him ready for fast nine
00:35:29.960 and um so you're right but the beauty of our times is that you can just quickly move on to something
00:35:35.320 else uh and save that movie for another day yeah good point good point mark daniel before we go
00:35:42.840 you're always up on all the movies you got to see all the great tv series you speak to a lot of the
00:35:47.880 celebrities yourself as they're coming into town or as they have a new release out there tell me what's
00:35:52.600 the latest news in terms of what are the things you got to see this summer and and tell me about some
00:35:56.440 of the things the celebs have been telling you well anthony we did a lot of coverage for james gunn's
00:36:02.600 new suicide squad this is a new sort of rebooted suicide squad it still features some of the actors and
00:36:10.680 characters that appeared in the last suicide squad but there's some newer uh villains if you don't know
00:36:16.680 the the storyline behind suicide squad basically it's the crappiest super villains uh in the dc uh
00:36:25.800 comics universe uh they are all in prison they are all allowed out of prison to complete a mission
00:36:32.680 for a government agent known as amanda waller uh that's played by viola davis uh if they complete
00:36:39.320 the mission uh that will most likely result in their death they get 10 years off their sentence
00:36:46.120 so this new movie uh takes some of the crappiest super villains uh in dc comics sends them on this
00:36:52.280 crazy mission uh down to a fictional country in south america where they have to fight a giant alien
00:36:59.560 starfish uh it is just a wild wild ride anthony um it's so violent it's not for kids you'd have to
00:37:08.200 leave your kids at home um and it's so bonkers uh and so outrageous and certainly comic book movies
00:37:16.600 have sort of fallen uh followed a a certain uh trend uh if you will um they're never too violent
00:37:25.160 they're always uh the type of movie that can appeal to just about anybody but this movie is really
00:37:31.000 outrageous really over the top it's a great time though so if you're not too squeamish if you don't
00:37:36.840 mind uh the odd swear word here and there and you don't mind lots of blood and guts you're going to love
00:37:41.800 this movie um the other movie that we saw recently that we liked was was actually uh there's a new
00:37:48.680 matt damon movie called stillwater it's just come out into theaters uh amanda knox uh made some headlines
00:37:55.480 because she accused the movie of ripping off her life story um but really the movie is loosely inspired by
00:38:04.760 by her case but really it focuses on uh the family and and how the family would react right how the
00:38:12.600 family deals with uh their daughter who's in prison for for killing uh her girlfriend so it's it's a
00:38:19.720 great drama it's one of those it's at the beginning i talked to you and i said well what's going to
00:38:24.680 happen to those mid-level dramas uh and this is an example of that type of movie uh it's not flashy
00:38:32.120 there's no stunts matt damon doesn't play a jason born type hero um he's just a father trying to
00:38:40.600 work to get his uh imprisoned daughter uh out of jail uh it's a great movie it really stuck with me
00:38:46.840 uh after the ending uh and then of course you know uh there's the new jungle cruise with the rock and
00:38:52.680 emily blunt i'm a fan of that ride at disneyland as are a lot of people and and that's a great fun kind
00:39:00.520 of uh popcorn summer movie it's a great blockbuster and i think it's one that families can enjoy
00:39:06.040 together mark daniel you're one of the most knowledgeable guys on all things movies it has
00:39:11.080 been a great conversation thank you sir for joining us today thank you anthony full comment is a post
00:39:17.400 media podcast i'm anthony fury this episode was produced by andre prue with theme music by bryce
00:39:23.000 hall kevin libban is the executive producer you can subscribe to full comment on apple podcasts google
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00:39:38.200 thanks for listening