Breakfast All Day Podcast 1/10/19
That sound you hear is January movies slowly trying to kill us. This week on Breakfast All Day, Alonso, Matt and I review the painfully feel-good comedy “The Upside” and the shamelessly heart-tugging drama “A Dog’s Way Home.” We also play catch-up with “Bird Box” on Netflix and try to figure out what all the fuss is about. And there’s a ton of movie news to cover, including the baffling Golden Globe winners, who will host the Academy Awards next month, John Lasseter’s new gig after his ouster from Pixar, and some revelations that could hurt awards chances for “Green Book.” We’re so happy to see you again and we hope you’re happy to see (and hear us) again, too.
What song is playing at the beginning? It sounds familiar…
Pretty sure it’s the opera “Turandot” by Puccini. You might’ve heard it in the opera house sequence of ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.’
The french original of the Upside “Intouchables” is so much better because of the cultural and social context in france. Of course, an american remake can not work.
You do not KNOW anything now that you didn’t know then with regards to Woody Allen. You really have to stop using him as an example, because literally everything exonerates him. You only suspect something because you choose to believe a woman who is hell bent on revenge. She is an unreliable narrator. Please stop lumping together every range of suspect – 1% to 99% with 100% convicted criminals. Maybe you should watch “50 Shades of Gray” again! But I wouldn’t want to punish you that harshly.
The statute of limitations on being offended by something someone says or does is ONE MILLISECOND. No one should be allowed to get more offended than they were at the moment something happened. This “growing offense” as time passes and social rules change is pure lunacy. All three of you probably praised “The Pianist” when it came out… and only now are you starting to question that praise. Yet, you know nothing more than you did then. That is classic hypocrisy. You feel like you should change your opinion, because social pressure demands that you should. That is a dreadful way to judge anything. Instead, you are judging films dependent on how society will judge you as critics. Charlton Heston was a pile of human garbage, but “Ben Hur” and “Planet of the Apes” are still masterpieces.
Thanks again for a great podcast! January sounds to be living up to the expectation of crap movies, with a rare good one. So great to know what ones to avoid.
Can you provide the download link in the comments section again?
Thanks! Breakfast is the most important meal 😉
There was an interesting writeup on The Root by Michael Harriot where he interprets Bird Box as an allegory for how white people don’t want to see racism. I haven’t heard other critics acknowledge this theory; just thought some BAD/WTF listeners would also find it interesting.
Ha! Good one! Take your multi million dollar severance package or the money you made during your decades long successful career and start all over again from square one! Sigh*
I liked Green Book. It’s a movie, not a documentary even if it’s based on the lives of real people. “Movie” to me means the writers, director used creative license to make the story interesting. As a consumer, I got no problem with that.
For a download link and other information about this week’s show, go to:
http://www.chromapure.com/WTF/wtf.htm
I wanted to comment on the controversy about bad people who do good work. I really don’t think this is as clear cut as the gang suggests. The notion that there is exists people who are awful in a variety of ways in their personal behavior can also be excellent at their jobs, whether it is in the arts of other fields, is nothing new. JFK was by moth people’s reckoning at very good President. He also happened to be something of a pig in his behavior towards women. OK, he was sexually voracious and y today’s standards used his position of power as a level of seduction. He also happened to save the world in October, 1962. Do we really want to say that Kennedy–a man that arguably saved millions of lives–shouldn’t have been in that job because of his personal behavior?
For a case closer to home. Alfred Hitchcock’s sexual harassment of Tippi Hedren has been extensively documented. It was of the worst type: Have sex with me or I’ll ruin your career, which he apparently did. In the spirit of consistency, shouldn’t all of Hitchcock’s films be re-evaluated, perhaps removed from college courses and no longer shown on TCM and other outlets? This seems crazy to me. I, for one, have no problem recognizing that Bill Cosby is a comedic genius AND a serial rapist at the same time.
Is there a way that we can condemn the act, even condemn the man or woman who perpetrated the act, without consigning their work to the flames? Mark Halperin and John Heileman wrote one of the best books about politics I have ever read: “Game Change.” The country is better off as a result. They had largely finished writing a similar book about the 2016 election, an election that I suspect will go down in history as one of the most historically significant in history. Yet, the society has been prevented from Halperen and Heileman’s reporting on the subject (book and film projects were cancelled) because Halperin was credibly accused of sexual harassment of several women when he worked at ABC many years prior. The primary recipient of punishment in this episode was not Halperin, but all of us.
We have got to come up with some sort of an intelligent response to these sorts of episodes that benefits the victim and punishes the perpetrators without punishing everyone else at the same time. If I am going in for open heart surgery I want to know how good the surgeon is. I do not particularly care about his personal ethics that do not effect his success as a heart surgeon.
In the case of Louis C.K. he should have been required to pay damages to women involved and offer a public apology. Then, let the marketplace decide if people want to continue to enjoy his comedy. The result in the Cosby case was about the only fair result available. Of all of the public cases, only Cosby and Harvey Weinstein (and perhaps Kevin Spacey) have committed criminal acts. The remainder are civil offenses.
I should have edited this better than I did. Forgive the typos. I wish this comment section offered the ability to edit or delete posts.
Totally agree about an editing tool, Tom.