0:10

Hello, hello, and welcome. It's Drive by Cinema, or, as Paul seems to describe it, Flump Slump Sofa Hour.

0:20

Paul is my co host. Richard is my co host here.

0:23

Welcome one and all. How are you doing, Paul? I'm doing very well.

0:26

You seem to be in fine fettle, Richard. You've got suntan there.

0:30

Have you been on your travels, perhaps? I have been travelling, you know, I was in the Hawaiian Islands.

0:36

Oh! Oh! Not so far away. Right, okay.

0:39

Just next door, in the Hawaiian Islands. and did you enjoy yourself? the Hawaiian Islands are very remote, aren't they? They're one of the most remote places on Earth, actually.

0:47

They are. Maybe only Palau is more remote, but then it's quite near to Hawaii too, so I don't know.

0:52

Made in an interesting way, you know, by sort of magma eruptions coming up through the crust and the Pacific plate moved so you get a string of quite a lot of undersea mountains but at Hawaii they burst, above the surface of the sea in what amounts to be some of the tallest mountains from like base to I see.

1:16

in the world, but quite a lot of them are under, underwater, so they don't count as super tall mountains, but they really are some of the tallest mountains on the planet.

1:24

I was confused. Underneath the crust is the mantle.

1:27

Is the mantle molten or just slightly fluid? Is it solid that moves over itself? Yeah, I think it's, Half liquid I think it's sort of semi phase, isn't it? I think, I don't, But I'm no geo, Oh, you didn't no you didn't go on the Hawaii let's look at the mountains and be delivered a lecture on the geology tour.

1:46

Oh, did you just drive up the mountains, Richard? Did you take the easy American option? I did.

1:51

Yeah, way to go. I drove up a volcano, a 10, 000 foot volcano in Maui.

1:58

Whoa, 3, 000 meters. was high. Yeah.

2:00

It was high enough that you felt a little bit short of breath.

2:03

It would do. Maybe your ears popped. Oh, ears were definitely popping.

2:06

Brilliant. No question. The sea was beautiful.

2:10

Beautiful. Black and red sand beaches, there Oh my gosh! I saw a whale tail.

2:16

That's no, that's not what you're thinking. Though they probably were on display.

2:19

No, I actually saw a whale. Off in the distance, way, man! Yeah, get back to what you wanted to talk about, Richard.

2:28

it seems like a long time ago, but on last week's episode we discussed Dogtooth.

2:33

heh maybe that's why Richard took a vacation to recover from it.

2:39

It was a little bit confronting, I grant you. Yes, yes, if you don't want to be challenged, don't go watch that movie.

2:45

listener Jolien Hello Charlie.

2:47

had an apologetic point to make.

2:50

I don't know why he's apologetic. He seemed to feel he was being overly pedantic by bringing up corrections.

2:56

love pedantism. Bring it on. To my mind, that's partly the point of this podcast, is that as we extemporise some of the things that we say, Arguably most of them are wrong.

3:06

We're going to be corrected we dig into it. Yeah, that's right.

3:10

everyone learns, don't they? The whole point is it's fine to make a mistake and it's also fine to be pedantic and to be wrong about your pedantism.

3:19

There's no need to sort of hide your head in shame when you're suitably and severely corrected by Richard here.

3:25

Here we go Richard, go on. Well, it's not me correcting, it's Charlene.

3:29

on Project Almanac, episode 34, the time travel, team time travel adventure, Yes! we talked a little bit, because he obviously references it, about Back to the Future and about the DeLorean used in Back to the Yeah, you said it was a Northern Ireland guy.

3:47

I could have told you it was an American ritual. I didn't want to sort of spoil your I think you did say that he was American.

3:52

Oh. He did set it up in Northern Ireland, though.

3:55

He did, yeah. but he was, John DeLorean was apparently, credited with turning around Chrysler.

4:01

So, I owe him the Chrysler Voyager minivan that I rented.

4:05

in Maui, in fact, don't I? but he, do, yeah.

4:08

he convinced the British government to give him a huge tax break to start up.

4:12

a factory in Northern Ireland making those stainless steel, weren't they, DeLoreans? What's Stanislav? Oh, a car being released this year? Or a truck being released this year? It's very similar, I think, isn't it? Back to the Future these days, It would be a Cybertruck, would be a short Cybertruck, yeah.

4:31

Because, as Jolyon pointed out, even in the movie at the time, in 1986, they weren't a fondly regarded car, were they? No.

4:42

No. No. No. and when Doc Brown unveils it to Marty, Marty is pretty incredulous.

4:48

you made a time machine in a DeLorean? Of course there's an in universe explanation.

4:52

It's something to do with the stainless steel skin of the car or something, isn't it? Doc Brown says it's perfect for the flux capacitor or something.

4:58

It makes the time travel work. So you could have the same kind of techno babble explaining why you have to have a Cybertruck, couldn't you? You could indeed.

5:06

Now, we mentioned that it referenced Back to the Future.

5:09

There's also, I think, a section in that movie where they're in a history of civics class and the teacher is asking comprehension questions and no one's responding.

5:17

Is that Ferris Bueller that it's referenced to or Yeah, Ferris Ah, yeah.

5:22

there were several nods, weren't there? Okay, so there we go.

5:25

Now, Jullian said that John DeLorean wasn't in his right mind.

5:28

The whole project folded after 24 months.

5:31

DeLorean was arrested shortly after in Miami with bags of cash and cocaine.

5:37

Yeah, He also we might see something similar in the presidential election coming up on your screens later this year, is it? Yeah, it must be.

5:45

Whoa, this year is the election, poor chap.

5:48

He also explained about Lollapalooza, which was a touring festival going from city to city throughout the summer.

5:55

And it was started by Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction.

5:59

da of the less musical bands that made music.

6:03

When I say less musical, what do I mean? Do you know James made really good lyrics, but their kind of tunes are a bit, to my, to my ear at least, a bit flat, yeah.

6:14

For me, Jane, really, isn't it? Jane's Addiction was the kind of American version of Jane, James, like, interesting lyrics, good idea, but musically just a bit, a bit Velvet Underground, square rooted rather than squared, do you know what I mean? Nonetheless, thank you, Julian.

6:30

Keep them coming. Keep correcting us. No corrections from Dogtooth that anyone has revealed to us.

6:35

Perhaps no one wants to admit that they've either watched the movie or listened to the podcast.

6:42

Hey Paul, what about this week? I think we should listen to a little bit of music, what do you think? Yeah, yeah, I was listening to The Week Before Last.

6:50

Amazing. Had lyrics in there. It's, it's AI singing to us now, Richard.

6:54

Bring it up. Oh, yeah, I think you've been using a new system, haven't you? Did you use I have Suno.

7:01

Sonu or Suno, I don't know what it's called, but yeah.

7:04

Will or Sora, or is it Sora? I can't, I don't know.

7:08

No, it's Suno, S U N O, the one I've been using.

7:10

Yeah. Uh, yeah, so maybe we'll try a different one.

7:14

because yeah, you can just put a bunch of lyrics in, can't you? And it actually gets an AI to sing it to you.

7:19

Which is amazing. Or you can put a prompt in it, it'll write the lyrics for you.

7:23

true. So, maybe this will be a drive by cinema themed, track.

7:28

Here we go. Okay, Paul.

7:57

what movie this week did we watch? we watched, under duress, or presumably, not under duress, presumably voluntarily, we watched the movie Infinitum, or Infinitum, Subject Unknown.

8:08

Yeah, I didn't know about the subject and known bit, but that's indeed its full name.

8:13

Helps when you're searching it up because it's not necessarily, a big budget or a big studio movie, so you say that Paul, but it does have Ian McKellen in it.

8:21

I was amazed Star billing Ian I thought Patrick Stewart's gonna be around the corner anymore all these sort of Dame Judi Dench all these like scions of the British acting scene for the last 50 years.

8:31

Yeah. I mean, how was he in it? What was he in it? I guess he was bored during lockdown or something or what? I don't think he spent very long recording his piece, did he? No, he's there for some time.

8:41

What, two minutes or maybe two and a half minutes? I mean, I think he's there to, encourage investors or please the studio or whoever, whoever funded this project.

8:49

Which we can talk about shortly. This is a British production from 2021.

8:54

So yeah, it is lockdown material, isn't it? And it's mercifully short.

8:58

we've been watching lots of long movies recently.

9:00

This is well under the 90 minute, runtime.

9:04

welcome back movies that you don't have to pee in the middle of.

9:08

Yeah, I mean, lockdown movie. I think maybe it's interesting to talk about how this movie got made and who made it and that kind of stuff.

9:15

Alright. Matthew Butler Hart is the director, And writer.

9:21

Co He wrote it along with his wife, I guess, or sister, I don't know, Tori Butler Hart.

9:27

Who is Is the, the, the, well, go on, well she's a star, isn't she? She's a protagonist, yeah, I mean, she's a star.

9:34

So, I don't know if it's cottage industry.

9:36

Oh, I assume it is cottage industry. but well done for doing it all in house, everybody there.

9:41

It does involve a certain amount of, limited special effects, but I don't know who did that.

9:47

It doesn't really say, because it says cinematography is listed, the credit here is listed as Matthew Butler Hart too, so maybe he did the special effects too, I don't know.

9:55

So it's an in lockdown, husband and wife vanity project.

9:58

In a sense, yeah. he made it as, like, a storyboard to get interest, for three films that were gonna follow.

10:06

Really? Okay. Yeah, this is a prequel to the actual three stories that he wants to tell, I think.

10:13

That does explain a great deal about the So it wasn't here to be released as a movie, it was here to be released introducing the ideas that were gonna form the basis of his pictures to studios.

10:27

And he never intended this to be either paid for or viewed by a general audience.

10:31

Okay, well, we can let him off a bit then, can't we? Now, Sir Ian McKellen's involvement, they get it out of the way pretty I thought if we can, but we'll get, we, we can let 'em off certain things, including the budgetary aspects and the scope of making this impressive, but sorry.

10:49

But some of the things don't take money to make good, do they, really? And some of those other things we can maybe talk about too.

10:54

Do you think maybe they kind of knew Sir Ian McKellen and they asked him for a favour? It must be, mustn't it? Or, he was like, Oh gosh, I'm not going to be working now for two years, I better get some jobs that I can get.

11:06

Doing Pinocchio, or, being a clown at the local school, before I have to go and sign up for the Dole again like I did in the 1970s.

11:14

Just a bit like that, I He's quite a down to earth guy, isn't he? Is it if you're at Burnley? Stockport, I thought, but somewhere, it's somewhere around these parts, yeah.

11:22

Yeah. He is playing, and we know this because it appears, Uh, because he does a sort of two camera interview piece, like a mockumentary style.

11:31

He's playing Charles Marland White, some kind of professor.

11:35

And he talked some babble that I didn't really take in, mentioning something about the Paraverse, I think.

11:41

Is that right? The Pyroverse has been discovered by his organisation, which he's financing the estimable work of a professor in an umbrella organisation called Witness, spelt with a Y.

11:54

Is that Witness smelt with a Y. Or is it the name of a village or something? I spent a lot of this movie trying to figure out why she was pronouncing it Wit ness.

12:02

She pronounced it really weirdly. Wit ness.

12:07

If Ollie had noticed that, that would have made this movie so much more entertaining, Richard.

12:10

I could have waited for that, looked out for it, couldn't I? Would have been like, something to do like when you're a kid travelling in the car and your dad makes you count blue cars versus red cars kind of thing.

12:20

Yes.

12:23

the CIA experiments with MKUltra in the 1950s and other paranormal related stuff.

12:30

He's saying that we've been working in this field for nearly 25 years, which actually isn't very long is it if you think about it.

12:36

I mean that's only back to 19 sort of 90, 95 isn't it? 1999? Something like That's him done, and we now cut to an image of the London skyline with airships in it, which are the universal symbol for alternate reality.

12:54

Because obviously, I mean, there's nothing stopping us having airships, is there? I mean, we've had airships briefly, We could have them again with helium.

13:02

They're perfectly safe. could have them all over again, yeah, but we don't, so every time you see an airship, integrated into a familiar scene, you know that we're in another dimension or parallel the digital code of Pink Floyd CDs has spread into our DNA kind of stuff.

13:17

Yeah. were an ordinary detached house somewhere in London.

13:22

I was trying to find out where in London they were.

13:24

I don't know why I care. But judging by where she ended up walking, guessing on it, were you? I was doing, yeah, I was doing geoguessing.

13:31

Yeah. Yeah, judging by where she ends up walking, which may have no relation, of course, to where they were, it would be somewhere around Islington.

13:38

I think somewhere in North London, which makes that house a very expensive detached house in London.

13:44

Doesn't it? Somewhat dilapidated. Yeah.

13:46

We focus on kind of an attic room Yes, it's kind of ramshackle, isn't it? Is it a granny flat or a or some sort of one room, isn't it, that's been, like an extension, isn't it? The kind of thing you would have done in the 60s or 70s, maybe.

14:01

A loft extension. Yeah, exactly, yeah, inside we see a woman who is gagged, tied to a chair in this box room.

14:10

And we know that she is our lead actress, Tori Butler Harr, is it? She's gagged.

14:15

She's tied to a chair and her hands are tied also.

14:18

Is that right? Oh yeah, she's completely tied up.

14:21

So wouldn't it be nice if we spent the next five minutes watching her untie herself? Oh, we do, don't we? Yeah, they don't spare us any of the details of how she gets out of this predicament, do they? it's so much detail I kind of ignored the actual results of it.

14:32

I don't know how she gets her legs free. She just kind of wiggles her legs a bit, doesn't she? The leg tie is quite easy to get out She does a wiggle, and I suppose she's probably tied to the chair legs, so when she falls over, probably releases her feet, doesn't she, at that point? this first, well, let's not plot spoil too much, but in this first iteration her hands never become untied, did they? Well, they're zip tied, Paul.

14:57

Now, you know there is a technique to get out of zip ties on your wrists.

15:01

Have you seen that? can see it done on off.

15:03

can't what is it? I'd have to demonstrate by standing up.

15:07

Is Oh, you do a figure of No, you, no, you do, you gotta do this.

15:11

This kind of action. And you break it on your kind of hips, as it were.

15:15

I see. You just, you kind of, sorry, you probably can't hear me.

15:18

You For listeners, for listeners, Richard was auditioning to rejoin the village people there.

15:23

Yes, it is a bit of an interpretive dance move.

15:26

But yeah, you're using the leverage of your arms parting around your body to break the zip ties.

15:31

Now, I imagine that works perfectly well.

15:34

if your captor has improvised cable ties as wrist bindings, and less well if the police have put special, wrist ties on you because I imagine that the latter don't break all that easily.

15:48

But there we go, But there's another way of defeating wrist ties and cable ties, Burn them off? sure, sure, but if you've got a lighter, I mean, no, but, If they've got like a dangly end with the the sort of pointy end that that you you thread them with If you loop that background And shove it in again you'll you'll basically unlock the little catch that engages with those sort of you know Oh, it's like sticking a knitting needle in pants that have lost their, their, their, their tie kind of thing.

16:18

Right, so, anyway, A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, but you're just pushing the latch up.

16:22

You should then be able to slide the Ties open, I reckon, in most cases.

16:27

So there you go, some safety tips if you ever find yourself zip tied.

16:32

Either try the hip dance or try threading the end back around if you can.

16:44

wobble, we get a flashback moment, and we get a, a slight zoom, and then a zoom in, zoom out, within a, like, split second to her face, inevitably.

16:54

And we might get some sort of, distorted machinery noise as it happens.

16:59

Oh, we also sometimes hear the distorted voices of people talking, don't we? In it from a control room, Yeah.

17:05

presumably. Yeah. Although that's never satisfactorily That is never satisfactorily explained.

17:10

mean, let's deal with that a little bit later because it, whew, got quite a lot to say about that.

17:14

Right, okay, so this first time it all buzzes and goes wobbly wobbly and she, sort of resets back to where she started straight away, doesn't she? That's right.

17:21

This She makes no progress, This time she goes to the window and shouts and it is impressively silent and quiet out there and I've only now realized that the reason that they managed to do this in the centre of London is because of lockdown.

17:34

Yeah, yeah. There's no one out there. There's a dead Red Admiral Butterfly inside window.

17:39

Stuck in a spider web, I think. Oh. Right.

17:42

So, we get this iteration thing, plot spoiler, it's kind of like a Groundhog Day situation, isn't it? Just a bit more terrifying.

17:48

A groundhog day of her continually escaping from being tied up in a chair.

17:52

over several quite torturous, sequences, she eventually finds that the room, which initially appears not to have a door at all, but a, just a wardrobe, closet for our American listeners.

18:03

Well, in two or three sequences, in sequence two, sequence three, or iteration two, iteration three, we see her ransacking and painstakingly searching the room for exit points.

18:13

Yeah. But it's only the fourth time that she discovers it, by accident, which is strange.

18:18

Because it's behind a, it's behind a fucking mattress, which you think you're gonna move anyway, huh? Well, it's on the floor, isn't it? It's not a doorway.

18:26

It's a staircase down. A very narrow, Oh, lateral freaking thinking in this escape room, Yeah, But this, I mean, this movie, I mean, fundamentally there's some quite good ideas here, it's an escape room scenario, but with Time travel, essentially, or with paraverse implications.

18:44

I mean, it's really rare that you get those two ingredients put together in a restaurant meal, isn't it? So, Yeah, that's right.

18:52

It's a novel innovative. Yeah.

18:54

very novel combination. she makes her way downstairs, slowly, because the first time she does it, I think she flashes and resets back to the chair.

19:02

Yeah, no, it's not really clear what, why she's flashing.

19:06

Her mind goes mind meld and flashes and goes wibbly wobbly.

19:09

Is it her thinking too much, maybe? Or what is it all about? I think it's when she starts to think that the plot of this film is not making any sense.

19:19

Then the director intervenes and resets back.

19:24

Because that was how I was feeling. I realised the only way to make progress is not to overthink and just let it happen to me.

19:32

And Yeah.

19:36

There might be some Daoist Daoist conclusion to reach from this, Yeah.

19:39

Well, okay. So she makes it round some callers in the staircases and gets down.

19:44

Now on, hold on, Right now, the action as it were If you can call it that, is interrupted by another two camera piece, an interview, a talking head.

19:54

By a guy who isn't Ian McKellan, because I think they've probably run out of goodwill with him.

20:00

There's another professor who's explaining how Who's employed by Ian McKellen, yeah, yeah, Sir Ian McKellen.

20:06

Here's his understudy. He was saying how they need the subject to feel threatened.

20:11

So we gather that she's the subject, don't we? I mean, I mean, that's it, right? Okay.

20:15

So she's a subject in one of these test, yeah.

20:19

training test to evolve, well, a para universal human, we guess, or something like that.

20:26

And again, it's never made explicit. There's a, there's a brief exposition at the end of the movie which doesn't really help that much and just just, I mean, plot spoilers, she means her doppelganger, doesn't she? But the doppelganger kind of explains what's been going on.

20:40

So, We don't only meet a doppelganger at the end of the movie.

20:43

Actually, a couple of times during this first sequence, we do see brief glimpses First in mirrors and then not in mirrors, weirdly.

20:52

But there we go. Now, when it's not about haunted I mean, this is the Para unit, Paraverse, so it can't I mean, it presents itself kind of like haunting, doesn't it, at first? Like ghosts appearing.

21:02

But we can't really do jump scares and stuff like that, can we? What we can do to make it spooky is have a downstairs to this house that's set in the 1930s and 40s.

21:12

So, like, it's art deco all the way, isn't it? An old gramophone record playing, or whatever, in the corner.

21:18

there's that's supposed to there's a piano, isn't there? She goes downstairs, she plays a single note on the piano.

21:25

I think that might trigger a reset and they have to do it all again, of course It does trigger a reset.

21:29

Now I lost count of how many resets there were, Richard.

21:32

so do we die. Yeah too many to But there were Now interestingly, like, later on in the movie she doesn't reset right back to the beginning, does she? And I don't know I don't know why that is the case, you know.

21:42

reached a save point, I was thinking, like, is she in a video game here? Like, she's got to a new level, so she resets to the start of another level, kind of thing.

21:51

But, none of this is explained, so, Right, is she ever going to get out of this Well, I don't know because the front hallway is packed with junk that she starts trying to move but then gives up on.

22:02

in fact, she's scared she's sort of, scared off from moving the junk because she hears voices and dogs barking outside.

22:09

Mm hmm. she finds a way to cut the wrist ties.

22:13

The zip ties off her wrist in the kitchen with a pair of scissors.

22:16

Very smart. and then she goes out the back door.

22:19

Where she finds two things.

22:22

There's like a, a garage that's been partially converted.

22:25

So it's more of a storeroom, isn't it? And parked in front of it, unaccountably under a tarpaulin, I don't know why you'd do that, is a Volkswagen 2006, yeah, 2006 Volkswagen Golf or Polo.

22:35

I think it was a Polo, wasn't I mean, is this the kind of car you would invest in a tarpaulin to protect? I don't know, I don't know why.

22:43

Now at this point she starts having flash forwards rather than flashbacks, doesn't Yeah, she's like having memories from other versions of herself in the parallel universes, isn't she? Helpfully tell her what to do to get out of the house or to get the car started.

22:56

In this case, she sees where the keys for the Polo are, which is hanging up in the garage over the doorway.

23:03

And she would have seen those anyway if she walked into the fucking garage, so I'm not sure, her doppelgangers are helping her that much.

23:09

So she gets the keys, she hops in the polo, tries to start it.

23:14

Yeah, it won't, it won't start. Yeah, so she resets.

23:16

So I think it's, she resets when anything frustrating happens, basically.

23:20

Any, anything, any minor difficulty or, obstacle happens that she resets.

23:24

Does she realize she's resetting? 'cause the film hopefully doesn't point this out either way.

23:30

I think we're led to believe, because we're following her, that she does realise that she's resetting.

23:35

She does when she starts having the forward flash forwards, doesn't she? I think, but before then, I'm, when she's in the countryside, she does know that she's resetting.

23:43

She explicitly says it, but I'm not sure when she realizes.

23:46

I think it's when she starts having, if you're like. Or Atreides Light Visions, isn't it? The nice thing about this film is, as you say, she seems to reset whenever she gets frustrated.

23:55

And it really, the film really communicates that frustration.

24:00

By making you feel extremely bored.

24:04

Oh no, we're gonna have to watch the same thing over again.

24:08

Yes. Yeah, I think the decision really I don't know how you could do it elsewhere in other ways.

24:15

When Bill Murray resets, we get indications that his day is repeating, don't we? We don't get the entire day from the start all over again, do we? But we do, but they make it humorous, don't they? we only get bits of his day.

24:30

Yeah, whereas we kind of get her entire descent from the, imprison room down to the garage several times, don't we? And in this film, rather than humor, we are invited to understand that it's harrowing and distressing because our protagonist, our lead actor, is acting the hell out of it, isn't she? Yes.

24:51

If I heard another breathy intake of breath to express alarm, shock, Or, some such emotion.

25:00

I had another one and I had a penny for each one I had before, I could virtually retire.

25:04

It's just, oh, I don't know.

25:06

It got on my nerves towards the end.

25:08

Richard, you're going to have to settle something for me, right? Okay, how does she get the car started? Because it doesn't start, it doesn't start, and then it does start for some reason, and I don't know why it does start.

25:16

Does she think it starts, or I think she has a flash forward to having started the car, which prompts her just to keep turning it over.

25:24

I mean, I think if you take a tarpaulin off a Volkswagen Polo, you should fully expect that it's been sitting around for a while.

25:33

Because during one of these semi expositional sort of, adverts for their company by, uh, Sir Ian McKellar and his understudy, they start to mention the fact that subjects can start to control the universe, don't they? Do they? Oh gosh, I didn't even By thought alone.

25:50

Oh, right. So I was wondering, was that the first occasion, or she wasn't aware of it, like she wasn't aware that she'd be resetted to start off with, or was she aware that she was thinking? Actions into existence.

25:59

Yeah, we get a brief, monologue, come exposition about the nature of quantum mechanics.

26:05

Do you not remember? It's later on in the movie. well, she does actually kind of use that later, doesn't she? before she's got the car started, though, she looked around the car, finds a pile of files all to do with research Institute.

26:17

I think the only purpose of this is to tell her that she should be going to that research Institute.

26:22

yes, going to the Witness with a Y Research Institute.

26:26

Interestingly, the hand ties, she has two different ways of sort of releasing her hands.

26:32

The first is with the kitchen knife, and the second is with some secateurs in the garden shed, I think.

26:37

Yeah, that's right, yeah. I mean, the movie's been obsessing for 25 minutes about how she escapes.

26:41

So I thought it was worthwhile, to mention how she actually does get her hands But also, as you mentioned, we see a reflection of another self of her in a mirror.

26:50

We also see her kind of running behind her in the background, don't we, at another point.

26:54

And I thought, yeah, it's gonna turn horror! It's gonna turn horror, it's gonna turn jumpscare, but it doesn't we get the sense, because she hears like doors closing and stuff as well, we get the sense that she's sort of partially interacting with these other paraverse versions of herself.

27:10

so this is the research isn't it? The paraverses exist anyway, maybe, but we, they found a way to make the subject sort of interlink them or partially see into other para universes.

27:21

How fascinating. It'd be nice if they explored that, but they don't explore it in any way whatsoever.

27:25

Well, they do towards the end, but not in a satisfying found walkie talkies in the garage.

27:32

Garage. And she brings those with her.

27:35

She actually packs a little hold all, doesn't she? With and she puts, like, a flashlight and A bunch of things she finds walkie talkies in this whole doll.

27:46

And she has a nice little flash forward that helps her find a map in the, the glove box of a car? Who would have thought it? There we go.

27:52

she actually tries walking out of this place before she's got the car started.

27:56

there are zeppelins in the sky and stuff. and she comes upon a park quite quickly.

28:01

I get it, this is an expensive area of London, isn't it? but she soon resets and ultimately has to drive well, parks do, I mean, parks do that to me anyway, so.

28:10

What, you just reset and flash back I have a panic attack if I go to an open space like that, it's just fairly terrifying a park, Why? Because are you expecting an exiled bully to come running out? Ha head.

28:23

ha! Or something like that, do I mean? Right, Paul, I feel like this is another PTSD moment where you need to reveal how you've been abused by, in your community, by, by yobbos.

28:36

parks just, they're just not nice places are they? Well, it's a tragedy of the commons, isn't it? They're abused by a small minority of the public.

28:45

Yeah, yeah, let's get our cows grazing on them again.

28:48

Like common land. They do still have it in either Cambridge or Oxford don't they? Both I think.

28:53

Huh, yes, Well, if you have livestock that you need to graze, You can in Cambridge, you can take them down there, if you don't know the Cambridge Commons.

29:00

Graze them on the dandelions and the forget me outs.

29:03

Huh. but are you telling me that a field full of cows wouldn't give you anxiety? Never turn your back on a cow.

29:09

Yeah, you're right. Actually, that's even worse. They're dangerous.

29:12

People forget that they're really dangerous, huge They're big animals, yeah, yeah.

29:16

Don't worry, we've digressed, haven't we? Parks, yeah.

29:18

So she goes to the park and she resets, doesn't she? And then she runs along a canal and gets reset.

29:26

Gets reset. Again, because she hears dogs and voices.

29:30

Although, and I don't want to stress this, certainly nobody is seen.

29:34

For budgetary reasons, or lockdown reasons, I don't know.

29:37

but we do get the audio impression that there might be people chasing her.

29:40

Which causes her to panic, which causes her to reset.

29:44

think it's other paraverses impacting on her mind, isn't it? Rather than actual people running.

29:50

Maybe. Although, again, it's not strongly suggested either way, so.

29:53

That would make sense, actually, yeah. Okay, you're making this film make a little bit more sense than it was, Paul.

29:59

I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried, but.

30:02

I think we'll find then that it doesn't actually make sense, does it? When we lay the cards on the table.

30:07

bit of a tension, isn't there? A film which sets up the idea that if she gets too upset, we're going to reset back to the beginning, and at the same time wants to put a lot of sort of tension and scare and, general disturbance around the main character.

30:23

So, you're constantly concerned that she's going to get too upset for the story to progress.

30:28

Which is a really weird feeling to have during a film.

30:31

I think the reset should have been like a time limit or something like that.

30:34

Does that make sense? that would have made more sense.

30:37

Or maybe a limited number of lives to be killed by explicit baddies, something like that.

30:41

I know it's not as authentic as what they're trying to do in ideational terms, but, But wow, I mean the rendering of what they're trying to do is just too difficult, isn't it? I mean, it's a rather ambitious idea that they're trying to get across here.

30:52

Hmm.

30:59

and when she's driving along in the Polar later, So.

31:02

looks normal in many respects, there are cars parked and everything.

31:05

But there's a lot of boarded up shops.

31:08

So we're obviously well into lockdown and the high street is being decimated by lockdown and other economic factors.

31:15

get what, I think we've all completely forgotten. Shops, businesses closed down completely, didn't they? I forgot about that.

31:21

Exactly, yeah, Well. I'm not sure what it means in the context of this movie though.

31:25

Why are the streets deserted and the shops boarded up? Well, at the end of the movie we get an idea that these terrible scientists, because they don't have the direction of either historians, politicians or social scientists, have taken their experiment too far and not gone to the ethics committee, and something terrible has happened.

31:48

the general idea is that something terrible has happened because of the power of us.

31:52

I see. Hubris. Scientific hubris.

31:54

Listen, Paul, I've been watching, I've been binge watching the Three Body Problem on Netflix lately.

32:01

know about. You introduced the idea to me.

32:04

I think I have seen adverts for the book, which is probably selling, has come up on Google adverts now because, well it's selling well on the back of, the recently released series.

32:13

Is it recently released? it very recently released the series.

32:16

The book's been out for quite some time. And there was a, another TV adaptation from China as well before that.

32:23

But we know the author of Free Body Problem because he wrote a movie that we watched back in the day in drive by cinema history.

32:31

I know, I know the movie, but I don't know the name of it.

32:34

Did it involve, did it involve underground cities being built? Yes, and cooperation between nations? giant engines being made.

32:43

That was, that was a very ambitious movie, wasn't it? Did it stray into hard sci fi? Did it try to, it is hard sci fi isn't it? It's perhaps an unbelievable solution to the problem.

32:56

But the idea is to try and move the planet somewhere else.

33:00

So the three body problem has got a lot of plaudits as a sci fi novel.

33:05

And I was quite interested to see what it was actually about and what concepts it embodies.

33:09

And how was the film, or how was the televisual rendering of Well, I've not read the book, so I don't know exactly how close it is.

33:17

I understand it's reasonably close, except the Netflix adaptation has westernized it.

33:23

rather than a bunch of Chinese scientists and main characters doing it, it's a bunch of Oxford.

33:30

And they're not Caucasians, actually. There's quite a few British born Chinese or of Chinese students, but they're all Oxford students who are working, some of them on the famous Oxford particle accelerator, which really exists of course not.

33:44

one of the things that happens in the start of the free body problem, because if you remember we talked a bit about the differences with the Chinese sci fi adventure movie that Wandering Earth represented.

33:57

It was a very collectivist idea of solving the problem, wasn't it? It was rather, yeah, yeah.

34:02

Interestingly Chinese, A rather hokum collectivist idea as well.

34:06

in the three body problem, sort of the start of it, one of the things that is happening is Scientists are committing suicide, and one of the impetuses for this, apparently, is a lot of them are starting to find out that their experiments are producing results that can't be interpreted.

34:24

some of them say things like, physics isn't real, or physics doesn't exist.

34:28

It's quite a weird conception of science that you do get in a lot of media sometimes.

34:34

It seems to be this idea that science is supposed to be like, a fixed, crystallized body of knowledge, and that if you start pushing bits out of the Jenga blocks out, it's all going to come tumbling down and scientists will be terribly upset.

34:47

sometimes it's presented, isn't it, like a tension that science is going to be, upturned.

34:53

it applies to physics. I mean, if, if the building blocks of physics started to be disjointed, every physicist in the world would would be celebrating, you know, jumping at work, Oh gosh, we've just guaranteed another hundred years of work for ourselves, exactly.

35:05

I think that's true of all science though, they love it.

35:09

Scientists love anomalies because it means there's a lot more to do.

35:13

And I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding that seems to be slightly perpetuated by technology.

35:19

by Three Body Problems author. Although, to give him his view, turns out that Does it, does it also include the common trope that scientists need well minded politicians in particular and sociologists and historians to help them along the way in the human world To make those bigger sensible decisions.

35:36

Yeah, there's quite a lot of contrasting how scientists behave versus how, like, police and military people behave.

35:42

And, obviously, it's military and police and politicians who are ultimately in charge of the whole thing.

35:47

is true. I have a little problem with human interaction.

35:50

Maybe that one of Yeah, of course.

35:53

Yeah, the scientists are kind of It's grotesque, isn't kind of nerdy weirdos in almost every case.

35:57

It is true. And ultimately, the scientists end up just being kind of problem solvers, that they get them through these little hurdles that happen.

36:05

boys essentially But to be fair, in the three body problem, it is the case that the story is there's an alien race living on a planet.

36:13

star system four light years away. Not that far in galactic terms, right? And they live in a solar system with three stars.

36:21

And because of a minute. Where's our nearest star? it's not beetlejuice.

36:25

Beetlejuice is pretty close, but it's It's pro I think the nearest star is Proxima Centauri, isn't it? That's hence the name.

36:32

light years? No, it's not that far, is it? I think it is.

36:35

it 4. Yeah, something like that. Okay.

36:38

So they're in Alpha Centauri. Well, I believe that's true.

36:41

Yeah, yeah. think that the made up bit is a trinary star system with three stars.

36:47

Because it's a three star system, three body problem, right, gravitationally.

36:52

And that means that there's no stable orbits. In fact, it's a chaotic system.

36:56

And so the civilization, stable orbits, yeah? civilization that lives on the planet there, endures periods of stability where they're orbiting one of the stars and they get things done and they advance their Then they get flung to another one.

37:10

Yes, and some kind of horrific global disaster occurs and it kind of wipes their technology and all of their civilization out and they have to kind of restart again.

37:19

And they've come to this conclusion over, millennia that they're going to have to.

37:23

move their civilization and they've, they've worked out that Earth is the place to, to go.

37:28

in preparation to invade us, they've sent these miniaturized supercomputers that can fuck with our science.

37:36

and that's how they are manipulating the scientists.

37:38

Quite an interesting idea. So they're going into like all the They're recalibrating the machines in the, in the, in the factories that make thermometers just to make them 0.

37:49

1 degree colder than they should be. Yeah.

37:51

That kind of kind of thing. Exactly. Oh, it's fabulous! I'd love to see that subterfuge in detail.

37:58

So the Netflix is, sort of, eight episodes covering, one and a half books.

38:03

And the Chinese version is much more, sort of, language paced.

38:07

So, so, Uh, we've all seen, we've all seen Monkey, haven't we, as kids, so.

38:12

We know how those East Asian cereals, Don't really rush to finish.

38:16

Yeah, exactly. So you do get a lot more detail.

38:18

one of the things about it that's cool, and I do recommend it actually, either of them, but, The aliens have sent this VR game down that some of the scientists are playing.

38:28

in the Netflix thing, it's a really amazing, completely immersive VR system that's otherworldly.

38:35

In the Chinese adaptation, which I think is more faithful, they're just using normal VR to play this particular game.

38:42

But what it does is it puts you on this alien planet and to make it sort of palatable to the humans, it pretends it's like different phases of Earth history.

38:53

it slowly, sort of unfolds the problem of living on this planet.

38:57

And the idea is that throughout their history, they've had to work out that they're in a three star solar system.

39:04

It wasn't obvious to them in antiquity, because there would only usually be one star in the sky.

39:08

When there were more than one, you were probably in a cataclysm that was destroying everything.

39:13

So no one, so no record survived. it down, yeah.

39:17

Johnny, write that down before you run out the house, kind of Yeah, it's right.

39:21

I mean, one of the disasters is there's a sgy of the three stars and gravity sucks everybody off the surface.

39:29

that is cool. it is a cool sequence, but it, it's taking the players of the VR game who are all the scientists on earth who have got nothing better to do now.

39:37

'cause they're all the science are shut down.

39:40

And it's taking them through the, the sort of history of how they worked out.

39:44

They were in a a three star system, system.

39:46

At one point the scientists have come up with a scheme to try and predict the motion.

39:53

Obviously there's no analytical solution, but there may be numeric solutions.

39:58

So they come up with a computer, but the civilization that they're faced with on the, the three star system planet is sort of the level of the, Sort of Attila the Hun kind of dynasty So there's no computers But what the what the emperor does is they get sort of 30 million of his troops Lined up in a massive human computer with a load of flags and cavalrymen sending messages between each section and the the vr players program a like an operating system for this computer and write a numerical three body solution, program to run, which they do and get a numerical solution out.

40:37

The problem is, because it's a chaotic system, it's very, intimately dependent on the initial conditions they observe for the positions of the planets and the, and the suns.

40:47

So, they can only predict for a few years, which isn't really enough for them to, To figure out when the next cataclysms are gonna happen.

40:54

But it's a really cool sequence, especially in the Chinese version.

40:57

It's dealt with in a, in a matter of moments in the Netflix version, but in the Chinese adaptation, they go through all the detail of how they set up.

41:04

adaptation? Great question. It's on Amazon Prime, but I'm not clear whether it's free or not.

41:11

I started watching it and it seems to be free, but with adverts occasionally.

41:14

then. Some episodes seem to be sort of locked behind a paywall, and it's asking you to buy them.

41:21

But then, three or four episodes later, you can just carry on free again.

41:24

So I'm a bit puzzled by the whole experience, to be honest.

41:26

It might be free on YouTube with Spanish subtitles, they often are.

41:30

Possibly so. But I've enjoyed both of them.

41:33

They're quite different. you say they're hard science fiction or not? Yeah, fairly hard sci fi, yeah.

41:38

Because, I think he almost coined the term the Dark Forest, which is this idea that we shouldn't make too much noise and reveal our location in the universe, on the game theoretic idea that If you imagine hunters in a dark wood, If one hunter hears another hunter, the game theoretic solution is to shoot them before they hear you and possibly shoot you.

42:02

So you can't, you can't impute their intention, right? So as soon as you're aware of the location of some other agency in the forest, you should aggressively pursue it and kill it.

42:13

if you don't, you'll step on a twig and get, possibly get shot yourself.

42:17

And on this basis, the argument is we shouldn't broadcast signals to other solar systems and stuff.

42:22

Or send the world in Action Man with the alphabet out into space.

42:26

But what do we send out there? The world in Action Man Oh, you mean the, alphabet.

42:31

The on Voyager? Yes. Well, I mean, Voyager's not going to get very far, is it? Within reasonable amount of time.

42:38

What's Speezy doing now? 30, 000 miles an hour? Something like that? Yeah, something like that.

42:42

It's barely got out of the heliopause, has it? So, it's about 10, 000 times slower than the speed of light, so it's only going to take 30, 000 years to get to, the nearest star, isn't it? But all of our radio signals, our TV and radio signals, have been beaming out, for a hundred years or so now, haven't they? So, if they were there, well, 100 years, so, I guess now they could be here, couldn't they? Particularly if they can time travel.

43:08

I think they're probably too Or if they can They're probably too weak, I think.

43:13

particularly the transmissions we were doing back in the early half of the 20th century, probably too weak to be detected at any interstellar distance.

43:22

So maybe we're okay. you might say, why is Richard talking about another movie? Or another, another TV sequence series rather than the movie we're talking about today.

43:30

Well, because there's not much to say about this movie we're reviewing, is there? So she's out of the house and she's heading towards this research facility here.

43:37

So the second half of the movie is basically her on the road in a Volkswagen campervan.

43:42

Not quite sure when and why it happens, it's just what's a Volkswagen Golf for a Well, the Volkswagen Golf packs up, doesn't it? It overheats.

43:48

and then she has a flash forward about how to start the campervan or whatever, I don't know.

43:53

so it's her going through some rather nice country lanes, which are deserted because of lockdown.

43:58

Really beautiful, and heading towards what's going to be, it seems to me they've rented a school Ah, yes, well.

44:05

research institute. I looked this up because I was interested in where this was filmed.

44:09

they wind up at a place called Roxton College.

44:13

Or Roxton Campus, which is part of the Fairleigh Dickinson University.

44:17

How did you, how did you work out You can look up the filming locations in IMDB.

44:21

www. imdb. org Woah. this, used to be part of Trinity College Oxford, but they sold it presumably because it's out of town, to Fairleigh Dickinson University.

44:31

Fairleigh Dickinson University is an, Fairly Dickens, it sounds like Come on, it sounds weird.

44:37

Is it university. It's, I think it's based, you're trained to be a whore.

44:42

it's based in Canada, and this is their international campus.

44:46

So it's like Kaplan, but not as dodgy.

44:49

it's like it's for American students who want an education in Europe.

44:53

Oh right, summer school kind of stuff.

44:55

I think, I think you would do a full kind of term there.

44:59

a full course there, I think, possibly.

45:02

Yeah, I'm not sure. But, that's why it looks exactly like an Oxbridge College, because that's exactly what it is, really.

45:09

I see. So they've chosen locations to be sort of old worldy, but like, Second World War code breakery kind of vibe.

45:16

Like, I don't know, I can't explain it. It's quite a nice choice, really.

45:20

It's a very old fashioned view of science, though, isn't it? How science works.

45:23

It is sort of a plausible kind of private research institute type thing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

45:29

Although it is very clearly a college, right down to the computer room that she ends up in, is your standard college computer room.

45:36

And the little library she goes to where she finds a periodical, actually a pile of periodicals, one of which, I think has got, it's got some kind of headline on the front, hasn't it? something about the Paraverse has been discovered.

45:48

Not DVDs, not CDs, but LDs that she plays and cries out.

45:55

No, I thought it was DVDs, wasn't it? But they're in DVD boxes, so Oh, I thought they were bigger than that.

46:00

I wasn't paying attention. Right, we need to talk about how she gets to the, to the research institute.

46:06

Basically, she has to, she's on the road, walkie talkie, seems to herself.

46:10

It's fairly keeps hearing people talking on the walkie talkie, and she corresponds with them, and it, it is obviously herself talking at different times in the movie, isn't it? And so they say, let's meet up at Witness with the Y Research Institute.

46:24

Let's campervan kind of thing.

46:27

And as she's going along, she has Revelations, or, it's revealed to her, through her flash forwards, that she's resetting in a continued time loop kind of thing.

46:40

And that, if she just imagines the things that she sees as not being there, she'll be okay.

46:46

So there's a pivotal moment where she drives over herself in the campervan and nothing happens.

46:50

There's no blood on the road behind or anything like that.

46:53

so yeah, so, and then she has to, she has to escape the soldiers who come out at night.

46:58

she gets to the perimeter of the research facility, knocks on the window.

47:02

and the people inside don't see her.

47:04

So obviously there's some sort of glitch in the Paraverse.

47:06

Does that make sense? Is that, will there be a fair summation of it? I don't know.

47:10

you seem to have picked up a lot more than I managed to at about this point in the movie.

47:14

I know that she, she winds up in this college, in this witness, witness institute.

47:20

Having reset several times along on the road, by the way.

47:23

but once she reaches the college, she starts resetting to the lawn of the college, of the witness So she's reached level three.

47:31

as you say, she finds a stack of DVDs and starts watching them.

47:35

Quite a lot of them are, again, two camera pieces by not Ian McKellen.

47:40

Quite short as well. Don't really reveal anything.

47:43

But it makes, but it makes us like, I think it's supposed to be like the defining lines of the movie.

47:49

Oh, what have you done? She's crying at this point because I think she realised something terrible has gone wrong.

47:54

Then there comes the moment, the pivotal moment, where she kind of opens doors inside the college research facility and opens doors on herself, herself, of course.

48:03

ballet and doing something else.

48:06

We all want to find ourselves, don't we? Apparently.

48:09

Yeah, and when she does that, the other, her other version kind of splatters out of existence.

48:14

In hour. part of the paraverse. Whether they actually splatter out of existence completely is, is, is, is a moot point, I guess.

48:21

In what must be the student's common room, but actually is, I don't know, the coffee room of the, very convincing research facility, she just peacefully comes face to face with one of her doppelgangers who doesn't splatter out of existence, and they have a conversation.

48:34

They have a conversation in which she tells her that she's in a repeating time loop.

48:38

And that she's one of the doppelgangers that isn't happy with her situation, and so keeps repeating.

48:43

Or something. I must say, other than the time, you'd have no way of knowing that we are now reaching the very climax of this movie, no, no, we wouldn't.

48:53

in which you overhear another of the voices saying, prepare to disconnect the subject on three, two, one.

49:01

one, and then she dies. Or Oh, it fades to black, doesn't it? We don't know what Yeah, whatever, it's clarifying miss by bringing us fog, isn't it? The ending.

49:10

So there we go. But you're telling me this is just a preview Yeah, Yeah, Yes.

49:17

There's more to come, Richard. This was just like a little taster, a An appetizer.

49:21

An amuse bouche. A mooseboosh for, for potential investment.

49:26

Right. Shot on an iPhone and nothing else.

49:30

But not shot in isolation. The actors obviously had cameramen around them.

49:34

So I don't know how they got around the two person limit.

49:37

Maybe it was just those two. Maybe they declared themselves friends or something.

49:40

I don't know. The limits of lockdown. God, I think we've got to give a score to this, don't we? Yeah, okay.

49:47

how Well I was worried, I thought, I thought Richard's chosen this movie.

49:50

he must have loved it. I was really worried about scoring it to be honest with you.

49:53

But it transpires that Richard didn't think very much of it either.

49:56

Listen, I mean All respect to them for their ambition and what they did, particularly as you, I didn't, I didn't realize it was filmed only on iPhones.

50:07

That's quite amazing. Let's focus on the positives.

50:10

Wow, amazing, they've done it themselves. Two, they've done it with very little money.

50:14

Three. After a while, after about 15 minutes, I was convinced of the world, that they built.

50:20

I was convinced the situation was real.

50:22

Although it did take quite a lot of motivation on my part to make, to stay within that fourth wall.

50:28

and it's a very, very ambitious idea that they're putting forward.

50:31

They're kind of bringing escape room ideas with Paraverse and Time Loop and putting it all together.

50:37

So. the, we are government conspiracy kind of things.

50:39

the whole empty streets thing was very reminiscent of 28 Days Later.

50:43

Yeah. that was quite impressively done. I guess easier in lockdown, but still, they pulled it off quite well.

50:49

We've watched three movies that is also reminiscent of Alone, The Spanish Sea Container, The Classic, Daily Express Readers, Children of Men, What happens when immigrants come to the UK.

51:00

And, Monsters, which was an escapade where they had to get back out of dangerous South America, back into the US of A.

51:08

yeah, kind of role movies with extreme cortisol levels, basically, isn't it? yeah, very ambitious, but obviously they don't pull this off, do they? In any shape or It doesn't really convince, does it? What about the acting of our Well, there's only really one actor, isn't there? And that's a shame, isn't it? Because, I mean, the spotlight is on her.

51:26

There's no escaping the fact that she's in the middle of lockdown, on her own, trying to emote all this.

51:33

Hopefully she channeled her lockdown energies into feeling frustrated, alienated, and impotent.

51:39

saying she's not a versatile actor, it's just, there's just a lot of it, her kind of, Gasping and sort of breathy intakes to indicate surprise or shock.

51:48

It was just a bit monotone. I'm gonna score it 5.

51:52

5. Yeah, I It is asking a lot of her to carry this entire A lot.

51:58

got nobody to talk to, has She That's the problem. She She So, I mean, No, she can't do any exposition.

52:04

Yeah, because she can't even And well, she doesn't know her situation either, does she? So she can't expose.

52:10

It to herself, can't she? And also, I mean, so you've only got one choice, which is to tell the story viscerally, like, Daddy Neil Villeneuve can do with a big budget.

52:18

And yet, they can't do that with an iPhone, can they, really? I will give it I'll give it a generous 6 for acting.

52:25

Plot and pace. Can I include pace within the plot score here? Or rather, bring it to the front of the generalized score.

52:32

Yeah, I mean, I don't really understand the plot.

52:36

the plot was never, the plot was never explained.

52:38

Now Richard, I'm usually the one that just doesn't get any of these time loop movies.

52:43

whereas you do. So it's good to know that you didn't get this one.

52:46

So it must really not work at all. So they don't explain, they don't explain the reason for the, for the resets, or we don't even come to learn to it later.

52:54

Like, ah, that's she's resetting We don't know the rules of this universe.

52:59

Why is Why are the streets empty? Why are there zeppelins and airships? Why do her doppelgangers first appear in mirrors and then appear in real life? Is that to do with her growing, force that she has in controlling the doppelganger? What's this mechanism where she can control the universe? Why does that suddenly come into play? Is it to do with the flash forwards? yeah, none of it's explained, is it? I mean, And finally, what's all this stuff about? There's like, at the end of it, the reason that she's resetting is she's not happy where she is.

53:29

What's all that got to do with it? It's just You know, she's she and me She's right? Well, she's supposed to be a ninja of sort of time loopiness, isn't she? And able to meld the universe.

53:41

how can a bit of dissatisfaction mean that she's stuck in loop? I don't get any of that.

53:47

The movie doesn't explain it, We know the version of her that she sees crouching in the road, and the first time she swerves to avoid her, and the second time she just accelerates and goes through her.

53:58

We later see it in a We later see that same person, that same version of her, in a different location, like, crouching by a wall or something.

54:07

And we see her react like she's about to be hit by a car, but there's no car there, and then kind of fall over.

54:13

I couldn't explain why that makes any sense, even in the, this in universe kind of thing.

54:18

It doesn't, it doesn't make Like if we, if we were seeing it from the crouching down crouching Tiger's view, then we wouldn't be watching it whilst our protagonist was in the same universe, would we? Exactly.

54:32

they're trying to say is it's our protagonist driving the car that we can't see, but we wouldn't be, but we would be able to see the car, wouldn't we? Because we're in half track this universe.

54:40

yeah. So for all that, and the strenuous effort it took to get through the several resets down some fucking stairs out the front door, I'm gonna have to score it a 4, unfortunately.

54:52

I think I will do a three. Mmm. I think it's particularly unsatisfying, sadly.

54:58

mean we could give it like a technical achievement, like cinematography and, and setting.

55:03

Oxford Countryside is beautiful. I thought the two general locations that sort of dusty scientific creepiness like the little art deco semi detached house and What isn't a school is actually it's a college well well chosen so for locations and scenery and scenery setting i'm gonna give it a six a generous six richard Yeah, yeah, I'm all for driving through the Oxford countryside, Mm hmm shades of Sapphire and Steel or The very much.

55:30

So yes. Yes, very much. Sapphire is still yeah So, I'll give it a seven for all of that.

55:35

But overall, can we right film? I'm looking at my scores.

55:40

It seems I'm gonna say yes, but no, no, I'm gonna have to score an overall four.

55:44

It's just too much of a hard slog. Whilst I really appreciate what they're trying to do, and I think in many ways they've achieved a lot, on a small budget.

55:52

just not something that's palatable, is it? Agreed, it's a swing and a miss, I think.

55:57

I would love it to, A shame. I would really love it to have done better.

56:01

They had a big idea, but they didn't build it with ideas that popped, did yeah, I can't grok it.

56:06

so what's your final score gonna be Oh. a four.

56:09

Gosh. There we go. A sad disultery result there.

56:14

But, competently done in many ways, except perhaps for the storyline.

56:18

Yeah, I would say, there were many limitations due to budget, but the storyline isn't limited by budget, is it? You just need to work through it again, tighten it up, put through, put some screws in some corners, and just make sure that it just fits a little bit better.

56:32

just make it a little bit more populous, Maybe think about a mechanism for reset that wouldn't be.

56:38

internal anguish that is difficult to represent with a sole actress, you know what I mean? You need an ending that resolves something as well.

56:45

Give us, as the audience, give us something to hang on to.

56:49

Yeah. to hang on to. Alright. shall we move on to the next tweet, Richard? okay, I'm ready for Okay, I've got three offerings of which you are free to choose any one, but not two.

56:59

Or three. Or four, because there's only three of them.

57:03

you ready? So, we've got anatomy of a fall 2024 Brand spanking do it's been making splashy splashy waves all around the place.

57:12

Scandinavian or French or something. Is it French Scandinoire? Oh, I don't know, probably.

57:18

Let's correct each other next week on that one menu Which I know you're a fan of although you haven't watched it.

57:25

I know you are eager to watch shall we say Well, it's just, it's just food related, isn't it? I think it could be entertaining.

57:30

Finally number three. I didn't like the look of it. But now I've delved into that.

57:33

I can't want to see this one dash cam from 2021.

57:36

I think think that could be another low budget lockdown adventure.

57:41

Yeah, I think it's another in lockdown let's get some two or three actors together and make a movie kind of thing.

57:47

up to you Richard. I know which one I'd pick.

57:50

Yeah, no, I'm gonna pick Anatomy of a Fall.

57:53

Yes! Which I think has a performance by a dog that everyone seems to enjoy.

57:56

But I don't know. I don't know anything about it. Okay.

57:59

There we Alright, so Anatomy of a Fall will be next week.

58:01

I think after that it will probably be Civil War, Alex Garland's cinema release.

58:06

America falling apart in an extremely prescient way.

58:09

I don't know. Oh, oh, not in a funny way.

58:12

In a not funny way. but next week at Anatomy of a Fool, thank you for Do join us then, episode 37.

58:18

Ciao for now, see you in the next one. Bye bye.