Martini Giant loves movies like you love movies. Three industry professionals, Chris Nichols, Daniel Thron and Erick Schiele gather biweekly to talk obsessively about their favorite films, share insider stories on moviemaking, and drink some mighty fine cocktails. In this podcast, there's no kind of film we don't love, and everything is on the table from Infinity War and a Star is Born to Alphaville and Eraser head. So if you like your opinions served up as strong as your drinks, then saddle up to the bar, my friend,and enjoy the expertly mixed, lovingly crafted hot takes of Martini Giant.
Enjoying the show about an hour in so far. Grew up watching the Texas wresting circuit, in particular Houston Wrestling on Saturday nights. hosted by Paul "Cauliflower Ears" Boesch. Fritz Von Erich, what a villain, performing the iron claw on not just the arms and legs but the abdomen of Mr. Wrestling, Mil Mascaras, Wahoo Mcdaniel, the Funk Brothers and others. You know they all pulled up stakes and went to Japan when the balance sheet told them to. I'll have to see the movie to see if this is in it. As for Raging Bull: Joe Pesci to an overweight Jake played by Robert DeNiro whose wife is enraged at him: "...a little more _____ and a little less eatin' and you wouldn't have that problem upstairs!" One of my favorite lines of all time. Thanks guys.
Eureka is a masterpiece. The final ten minutes is my favourite part. Sex and death. Ecstasy and suicide. The opening image is the eternal struggle of the fight between two men for a woman. Sexual jealousy. It’s one the reasons we all make choices and decide who we can and can’t be. The film comes in mid fight because like the Big Bang, we don’t know what sparked it. Could sexual jealousy be a reason we exist today? Could that have sparked it? It’s speculation. Roeg said he didn’t like calling the characters symbols but more grecian. Relating to ancient Greece, especially its architecture. Being or resembling that of ancient Greece or the ancient Greeks. Mcann is jealous. Mcann thinks he needs to get away from partnership in order to find what he’s looking for. But it’s not a natural state, hence him being jealous to begin with. That’s why the woman makes no sense. Once he parts ways, she’s speaking in tongues. He’s basically about to fully descend. He goes totally inside of himself. The man who shoots himself at the beginning, that’s Rutger Hauer’s Claude. How does he get there? Before he leaves Eureka at the end, he puts his head on the mirror. That’s the kind of film it is. It very much is inspired by Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The young boy who witnesses the suicide? That’s Mcann as a young boy with his sister. The Irish woman who calls him is his mother. The silent man who packs the bags away his father. The whole opening is basically taking place within a snow globe. When Mcann strikes the gold, he smashes the snow globe and with that his reality. He dies a death basically. It’s the myth of the prospector. Within discovery is death, within death is discovery. The gold strike is also an orgasmic flood, a birth. Lots going on. The court room scene is pure burlesque. It’s an arena. It’s also an inverse reflection of the gold strike scene. So from spectacular and magical to dry with all the air taken out. If you notice, they put pictures up of Mcanns dead body. It makes no sense. Look closer, and you can see it’s not just Mcanns burnt body, but a shot of him from under the gold flood when he drowned . Also, Theresa Russell’s monologue is just spilled over passion. It’s someone bearing their soul but words aren’t enough. It’s an internal moment. An internal monologue heard out loud. There is supposed to be an awkward uncomfortable quality too it. It’s very British in its humour. It’s also very Alice in Wonderland. The carpenter and walrus poem from Alice through the looking glass is placed under the judge on a big picture similar to the pictures of Mcann. This scene is not going for cool or sold emotions. You either go with her or you don’t. It’s similar, little bit of an homage, to Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (amazing film) but the inverse of that. That’s a melodrama that wants to sell you those moments. You know, like this is the moment to cry here. Eureka isn’t doing that. Eureka is a pastiche of melodrama. The whole scene is played almost for laughs until it gets serious and then back to laughs and so on. It is an internal dialogue played out in public is the way I would describe it. It’s also a no man’s land. The film has died at this point, committed suicide. The main character is gone. It’s in pieces trying to become whole again, but it’s not possible. Like their relationship. It’s already dead. This court room thing is just a performance of soemthing already dead. That’s my attempt at defending the scene anyway. Mcann is murdered but he also commits suicide. Lots going on in this film. It’s legit. This is a suicidal film about ecstasy. The pitfalls of ecstasy. It’s a come down film. Like when kicking drugs or alcohol. The opening 25 minutes have to be incredible. It’s like drugs. One big high and then just middling addiction until you either die within that or push on out of it. After you come out of addiction, life becomes more stale, more boring for a while. Almost confusing even though on the surface it seems to make sense as you aren’t in total dreamland anymore but it still feels off. For Mcann, he can could never experience the high of gold strike again. The only way to experience the ecstasy again was in death. He was a suicidal man. It’s tragic. Suicide isn’t in his nature and yet he’s suicidal. After the gold strike, it was just left over life to kill. His nature is discovery but there was no discovery left to be found. The gold strike you could say isn’t really about riches. It’s more like a scientific discovery. Once he strikes the gold, his search is over. When he’s in the whore house in the beginning, that’s a spiritual place. All the whores are like spirits. When Mcann is murdered, the goons (the wolves) are led by actor Joe Spinell. Notice that he himself is a reflection of Mcann. Inverse and twisted. He wears a suit similar to Mcann. Has a similar grin, like a Cheshire Cat. Notice how he’s always wet, even when out of the rain. It’s like mcanns younger drowned self coming back. Spinell is also the one who drops the snow globe and notice in that scene how he’s always shot in mirrors. It’s also similar to Claude’s twisted reflection at the beginning who shoots himself. When Claude leaves Eureka, he goes on a search of discovery like Mcann is on at the beginning, but he goes on a boat with no clear land in sight. His journey is destined to fail. That’s Claude after his failed journey. Withered, alone, deranged with no shoes . His only way to find ecstasy is in death. It cuts to exploding stars. Claude returns to the universe . We all have traces of stardust in us. Claude was gold himself. Tracey’s gold. A well endowed playboy. He’s every woman’s dream. Tracey is only 20 years old and rich so she’s enjoying herself. As she says in the courtroom, I seduced you. Claude is only with her to get close to Mcann who Claude wants a piece of. A piece of his power. Everything has a consequence. Claude doesn’t realise that Tracey loves him for more than that though, but because he’s essentially a shallow coward, he abandons Tracey. He doesn’t realise that he’s already at his Eureka. He leaves Eureka. Just before he stumbles out, he’s looking up. He can’t see the gold beneath his feet. Him touching the mirror is him trying to leave his old self behind. It was Claude who cut Mcanns head off. He put Mcann out of his misery but he didn’t do it for those reasons, it was a cowardly attempt to steal Mcanns soul when he was already completely incapacitated. It sums up his character. He’s a pathetic mummies boy. Look at his reaction with Tracey when he finds out his mother has died. You can go on and on about this film. Joe Pesci’s character is a charlatan. He’s not a real person. The opposite of Jack. It’s an attempt to deromanticise the gangster. In no way at the end do you respect or think he’s cool. He’s a pretentious clown basically. Trying to hide his true origins, escape his roots. He’s basically personification of American businessman in the way the film draws its characters. He uses his Jewish faith as a mask of respectability. All he wants to be is an American, or the idea of an American, which is not culture but money. The Holocaust is happening at the same time but Meyerkofsky doesn’t care. That doesn’t interest him. He uses Mickey Rourke as his face, to handle the violence. In the beginning, the shot of planet earth from space, when the camera zooms in, it passes through glass. The final frame is a sheet of glass that ices over crystallised with hexagons in a pale blue. It’s a cosmic perspective. The opening montage with the glimpses of the gold flood, it’s an inverse reflection of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series. The opening titles of that tv show. When Mcann receives the philosophers stone under the tree of life, it’s an inverse reflection of Jacob Bronowski’s opening title sequence for The Ascent of Man tv show. Also the stone imagery has that Da Vinci connection. Or is it Galileo? Loads of references to Newton, Galileo, Da Vinci, Einstein throughout. Mcann looks a little like Einstein in his old age. Apparently Einstein died because he refused treatment. He was about 74. He basically said what’s the point anymore. You need to remember that cinema broke linear time first in the visual sense. In 1898, the first edited film. Then 7 years later, Einstein makes his discovery of relativity. Also, this film is like a silent film. It’s pure visual language as outlined above. The dialogue is like soundtrack to the images. Like lines of poetry. It’s almost like a comic book with the panels and speech bubbles. Every line relates to something or is an echo of something else. Images are a mental thing. Almost psychic. The retained image. As if you could put ideas into an image and someone 100 years later could watch it and pick up on those same ideas. It’s all speculation. That’s what the film is, a speculation. It’s almost like a new kind of mythology. Tracey was born same year as Margaret Thatcher. 1925. When Eureka had just come out, Thatcher had a couple years before become prime minster of Britain. One of the most powerful women in the world. Tracey is the symbol of a new kind of women. Unburdened by the idea that you must be dedicated to a man. Die in domesticity, sacrifice for a man, like her mother or the spirit Frida who dies for Jacks glory. Notice the three women look the same. At the end, her image also brings to mind the Statue of Liberty. But she’s holding a glass of champagne instead of a flame for someone else. She watches a French man row away. It’s all visual language.
There Will Be Blood is what you call a perfect film but this is more human and has more understanding about life than that film. I don’t agree that this a film studies, film class film. That goes to films like There Will Be Blood or films like The Graduate or Bonnie and Clyde. They are boring to me. This is way too alive for that. It’s more alive than those films will ever be. Hopefully this film will live on, despite its supposed flaws. Roeg wasn’t interested in the immediate. I see the film as a person, with all its flaws and all. If it was perfect, it wouldn’t be human. This film is living and breathing. Its amazing. That was my Eureka moment. Understanding that. I think that’s what Eureka is saying overall. Just accepting, coming to terms with what can and can’t be. Think outside yourself. That’s the eureka moment. Taking on a cosmic perceptive. Once you accept that then you may find some peace within yourself but easier said than done as we all have wants, are haunted by our pasts and we all want to experience more and more ecstasy. Maybe. That’s where I am with it today anyway.
I only watched Bonnie & Clyde as a young teenager so a lot of the plot went over my head. Need to rewatch as an adult. Not sure what I think of Easy Rider. I appreciate how groundbreaking it was but I don't care enough for any of the characters.
I need to rewatch Everything Everywhere All at Once. Amazing film. I love the tone of it. Bullet Train was stupid but fun. Had a dreamlike quality to the visuals which makes it a good match with EEAAO.
I love the Donnie Darko film. I only watched it for the first time a couple of years ago. Definitely a film that keeps you thinking for days afterward. I haven't seen Enemy yet. I need to find it and give it a go
I watched Another Earth after listening to this. I have to admit, I didn't understand the ending. I think you guys were projecting your own theories onto the end of the film but looking at it with fresh, virgin eyes, there's not enough footage to come to a clear conclusion. I just have more questions than answers after watching the end.
This film was a solid "it was great but I never need to watch it again" sort of film. Interesting in the UK I never heard anyone clutch their pearls or be shocked with it. I think it must be the stereotype of the USA being generally squeamish about sex but all "Hell Yeah!^ for gratuitous violence, while the UK population is generally the opposite
I enjoyed this entire podcast very much at work today. Theresa and I also enjoyed Godzilla Minus 1 at a Saturday matinee a couple of weeks ago. I was 10 years old in 1968. Godzilla roared through the house every Saturday afternoon on the black and white TV. So did the fire-breathing turtle Gamera, from a competing series, who, as far as I know, never actually went up against Godzilla.
Hollywood's problems are not CGI, are not too many remakes, are not franchises, are not superheroes or monsters.... Godzilla Minus One did all that and was a huge success. But what where it succeeded where so many others failed in the last year is story. Turns out if you have a good story, you probably have a good movie.
Great episode. Warner seems to be making a bunch of really weird decisions. Hiding CG and not producing Making Of content? Gone are the days of the Lord of The Rings extra features. Those documentaries were gold.
I enjoyed Air whilst I was watching it, but most of the time I was 'waiting for the other shoe to drop' (pun slightly intended). It felt to me like none of the tension had any ultimate payoff, and therefore was lacking in pathos. If you combine that with the inherent corporate subject matter, I felt like I was watching a presentation from a department at work who were looking for a big round of applause having just finished their latest project. In those situations I cynically feel like replying "congratulations, you successfully did what you were paid to do". Having said this, I do love a movie which is content to just make you feel good these days! I'll try to watch Blackberry following this, I wasn't aware of that one at all :)
...and when you put out your first feature on RU-vid or Vimeo, try to have an audience of subscribers built from 'the making of' content already and a website of your own up and running to collect email addresses, so that youre not beholden to Google. If you miss these steps Google will become the next studio to abuse you!
It turns out Cameron wanted Enya to perform for Titanic but she refused so he got a Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø who has a similar voice to sing some vocals on the soundtrack. (By the way Enya started her carreer in a family irish band Clannad - that has an awesome soundtrack for a British TV series 'Robin of Sherwood' in their discography - though that was some time after Enya left the band to start a solo career)
Just listening through the podcast. I wouldn't 100% agree with Walter missing the spot with reality. Take a look at him really catching Dude's story about the trophy wife who kidnapped herself (turns out a bit of a miss but the nihilists really are a 'bunch of f..n amateurs :) ) And he instantly gets that the toe is not Bunny's. That makes him kinda grounded in some part of the reality :) perhaps this violent deceitful part (that's what you get from the bloody mud of Viet-Nam :))... wait.. I just felt a bit stupid taking apart the depths of this hilarious movie as it was some Bergman... :). Loving Martini Giant !
Really? You don't find the idea of a "man gets in car and car explodes award" funny? Or the idea DeNiro turning into a mannequin a split second before the car exploded funny?
Fallen out of the public eye? Says who (besides you, I mean)? It fails on many woke fronts, as do all 20th century movies (Mame wears fur, smokes, and falls for--gasp--a Southerner), but as long as it continues to turn up regularly on Turner Classic Movies it will have an audience.
Like any older art, it has to be taken in the context of its time - and for itself, Auntie Mame is actually not only an incredibly progressive example (woke, if people prefer) of film for its period, it's also very much about the same stress between socially progressive and socially conservative views that we have today. I actually think it's praiseworthy for not making a more easy punching bag out of its republican-coded/southern characters, as well as taking time to make fun of it's own progressiveness. It knows that if you are picking on one side, you have to save a little criticism for yourself, or you're not changing any minds - when creators get too self-congratulatory about their own goodness, time often reveals them to be just as short-sighted as the people that they were lampooning. Times change, largely for the better - and we should all be aware that everyone of all political stripes will seem at least somewhat embarrassing by future film nerds. MG fans will know I'm a dope on a regular basis :) - Dan
I have herpes. There is no cure for herpes. Do you know what it feels like to wake up with burning pain at 3am in the morning? Please support herpes research.
