A pop culture talk show discussing movies, series, and entertainment trends. #film #talkshow #entertainment #movies #series #viral #video #discussion #media #show
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:12Hello and welcome to Screen Babble, your guide to what to watch. We'll be tuning into hours
00:17and hours of TV so we can tell you what to switch on and what's to be avoided. I'm your
00:22host Kelly Crichton and as ever our resident TV critics Stephen Ross and Benjamin Jackson
00:27are here praying, praying for January to end soon, overcoming illness and exhaustion and all sorts
00:33of things so solidarity everybody. Remember if you want to see our exhausted faces you can head over
00:41to Freeview Channel 276 Shots which is brought to you by a network of journalists across the country
00:46who are transforming stories at the heart of your community into great TV. You'll find true crime
00:51stories, football news and analysis plus coverage of lifestyle, TV, film and much more. If you haven't
00:56tuned in before each week we'll be chatting about what we're watching as well as looking more closely
01:00at a new program or something making the headlines in the deep dive. This week Stephen brings us the
01:05much anticipated Masters of Air. Finally we go back to the future to tell you about a program we may
01:11have, you may have missed when it first aired our stream. This week Benji takes us to the wacky world
01:17of Twin Peaks, a cult classic for sure. But first we'd like to talk about what everyone has been
01:23watching recently. So Stephen over to you and magic. Stephen's got a new colour top on. It's
01:33because I was wearing such a nice brightly coloured. Yeah, I just thought the sort of colour palette
01:37on my end was a bit grey and washed out. So I've added a pop of colour. This is the
01:43only
01:43coloured item of clothing I own actually. Everything else is navy grey or black. You're bringing it.
01:50Okay, sorry. Over to you Stephen. Tell us what you've been watching. Yeah, so as I said last
01:55week I'd started the Apple TV free trial. Oh yeah. And I was hoping to milk it and watch a
02:01load of
02:01films on there. In the end because I was watching Masters of the Air for the deep dive, I didn't
02:08really get much chance. But I watched another Apple TV second world war drama and it was a movie
02:16again with a Tom Hanks connection called Greyhound. So Tom Hanks plays...
02:21What? Greyhound? Like a name? Greyhound. Greyhound.
02:24Greyhound, sorry. Greyhound. Okay. Which is the name of this, well I assume it's the name of the ship
02:29that they're on and Tom Hanks is the captain. Okay. And he's essentially trying to cross the Atlantic
02:35and his job is to help defend the sort of flotilla of allied ships as they're crossing the Atlantic
02:44through the U-boat, Peril and the German submarines. Okay.
02:50And I watched it with my friend and he's also quite, you know, discerning about movies and we
02:55both just thought it was for the first half laughably quite bad. And there's no like sound in the
03:02background, like someone just shouts through a doorway from outside the ship.
03:07Quite clearly.
03:07And you can just hear them. Yeah.
03:09And I said, I said to my friend, I said, the sound on this is, is terrible. And, and he
03:18said,
03:19he was just looking at his phone, he said, yeah, it won the Oscar for best sound.
03:23No.
03:24And like, I mean, maybe you should not...
03:27That is so random.
03:28I think it's only, you know how like when you notice something and then you can't stop noticing it.
03:32But I sort of thought, the sound is just terrible. Like you, it's very difficult to hear a lot of
03:37what they're saying because they're mumbling and then the sound doesn't seem to make sense.
03:41And then also the like dramatic sounds like the Jaws music, that kind of thing,
03:46just seemed very amateur and obvious and like, oh, something's about to happen now because
03:53it's going...
03:53Yeah, yeah.
03:54I thought this is, this is amateur hour. And he was like, yeah, no, it won, won best sound.
03:58The second half was a lot better. But I think Tom Hanks definitely phoned it in,
04:03like it wasn't a strong...
04:05Weird.
04:06It felt like the movie,
04:11that it should have been another Captain Phillips and it just had none of the like emotion.
04:17And we didn't care about any of the characters. I don't think I could tell you any of their names.
04:21None of them had any personalities. It was, it was pretty bad. And it was one of the first Apple
04:26TV
04:26original movies as well.
04:27That's what I was going to say. I feel like I have no knowledge of this thing whatsoever.
04:32I've never heard of it. So, you know, I think you might be on to the fact that it's a
04:37bit of a
04:39lemon. What do you think Benji, have you heard of it?
04:42I don't know. I heard that controversial as it sounds, kind of a little bored of Tom Hanks these
04:46days.
04:47He's got it everywhere, isn't he? He's got his finger in so many pies, it's like, okay.
04:51And at some point, he's going to bump into another version of himself in all these world movies,
04:56because he's been in every aspect of the Second World War.
04:58Yeah, that's quite funny. Maybe you should write that film, Stephen. Maybe you should do it.
05:01It'll be a bit of a being John Malkovich spayed off.
05:05You could call it like big two. Big two, cruise control.
05:10Okay, so a major avoid on Greyhound and Apple TV. I'm sure lots of people will be avoiding it
05:15because they won't have Apple TV anyway, but fair enough.
05:18Looking forward to hearing about Masters of Air in a while though. And I know you spend a lot of
05:22time watching that. So cool. Okay, Benji, tell us, you've not been well. So you've probably been
05:26doing a little bit more viewing than the rest of us. Tell us, what have you been watching?
05:31Somewhat. I mean, when you have a male flu, like I've had, you know?
05:36Yeah.
05:36Oh yeah, your one eye pairing underneath the cover, drinking Lemsip after Lemsip.
05:42You kind of get a bit feverish. You kind of get a bit weird. So my viewing habit was watching
05:49the entirety, once again, of My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic.
05:53That's just, I can understand.
05:56I got into it because there was a documentary called The Brony Movie, which just basically followed
06:02the whole subculture of bronies when it was peak kind of fandom back in like, would have been
06:11late 2000s, early 2010s. And I went into the series thinking, this is just going to be childish and
06:19trivial. No, it's actually brilliant. It was like old school Simpsons that had like a bit of a morality
06:26play going on. So I enjoyed re-watching that. For anyone that wants to know how I watched it,
06:33I'll out myself now. I own it on DVD. Benji, I love it.
06:38I brought it with me. I brought it over with me from New Zealand, along with my wife and my
06:43personal
06:43belongings. I have to say, I have such respect for your massive genre-spanning likes. Like, good for you.
06:53Yeah. And so hard recommend there. So that's good, especially if you're in.
06:56Oh yeah, definitely hard recommend. You just need a bit of escapism. And then on the flip side of that,
07:01I ended up also making time to watch Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday, which was a 1980s
07:07British gangster movie that heavily influenced the genre. I mean, if you go and watch The Long Good
07:16Friday, which is basically about what effectively has become Canary Wharf in London in the eighties,
07:21and a British mobster, one of the, you know, with Bob Hoskins, I want to get into the old,
07:27the building game. I'm tired of being a thug. I just want to get and be in proper British and,
07:32you know, get into industry again. And then you go watch rock and roll by Guy Ritchie,
07:37which was basically about a British mobster who had his fingers in many pies regarding developments.
07:43And that last scene in the taxi has been one that has been frequently, and it's up there with
07:52how The Untouchables, the iconic scene with the pram that goes down the staircase and how that was
07:59borrowed from Battleship Potemkin. There's my media course knowledge coming through there. But it was one
08:06of those scenes that everybody has taken or derived from the whole, I'm in the back of a taxi, I'm
08:12in
08:12trouble. And I've just got this contemplative look on my face. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. And I love Bob Hoskins.
08:18Yeah. I only knew Bob Hoskins through originally Super Mario Brothers 2. Yeah. Is he still alive?
08:25Yeah. Is he? No, no, no. He died. He died 2017 or 14. Okay. But I remember going back to
08:33watching Super
08:34Mario interviews he did and I will always remember the classic comment of, oh, my son showed me he's
08:41just this character that jumps up now in a video game. Why once played King Lear? And that was the
08:47end of the interview. I love it. I love it. Mario is King Lear. Love it. I'm on board for
08:52that. Okay.
08:53So there's a bit of a segue there from Mario to, I've not been watching anything particularly new
08:58this week, just continuing with like the Traitors and After the Flood and True Detective and all
09:01that. So I'll chat about some of them next week. But the Oscar nominations came out since we last
09:07spoke and Mario didn't get any. Oh, yeah, it didn't. It didn't get the sound from Peaches and it didn't
09:16get animation, which I am. I'm pretty annoyed about, to be honest. Were you upset about it as
09:21much as people are upset that Barbie apparently is being slubbed apart from the fact that it's gotten
09:26eight nominations? Exactly. And when I went on this morning to look at it and I was like,
09:30well, it's got loads of nominations. And I know Greta Gerwig. Okay, fair enough. And Margot Robbie.
09:35But like Margot Robbie's performance is like, she's playing a doll. You know, it's not like...
09:39Can I just interject and say that before, so I was covering the Oscars yesterday.
09:47I didn't care before, I do know. About an hour before the results, I turned to my friend,
09:52who actually is the friend that I watched Greyhound with. And I said, wouldn't it be
09:58strange if Ryan Gosling wins Best Supporting Actor, but Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig both miss out
10:05on nominations? Yeah. And he said, haha, yeah, that would be the entire point. And that happened.
10:09I think Greta Gerwig's more of a snub than Margot Robbie. I agree. That's what I was just about to
10:14say.
10:15Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But I do, you do sometimes think to an extent,
10:19like because of the weight of the film, Margot Robbie should have maybe got a nomination.
10:23Like Martin Scorsese got a nomination. I'm glad America Freire got hers,
10:28because I thought she was really good in Barbie. And I felt like she was very overshadowed
10:32in the publicity, you know, and I thought she was actually quite a key character in it,
10:35you know, but anyway, okay, sorry. I did like, considering she was playing a doll,
10:39she did properly put the work in for her. Like it was a pretty stonky performance. I don't necessarily
10:45think she should have got a nomination, but it's more that Ryan Gosling did and she didn't.
10:52And I think Greta Gerwig was snubbed as well in 2020 with Little Women. And that was a whole thing
11:00back then. So to potentially snubber again here is, is an interesting one. But, um, yeah.
11:11Oppenheimer has done very well.
11:13Thirteen. Thirteen nominations.
11:14And Barbie's got, what, eight, uh, Poor Little Things.
11:18Poor Things got 11, Killers of the Flower Moon got 10.
11:22Yeah. So they're dominating, aren't they? You know? Um, but I think it's going to be interesting.
11:26I'm hoping, um, Cillian Murphy does the business. But anyway, we, Saltburn got none, which I think
11:34we were in agreement about, weren't we, a few weeks ago? Um, but yeah, so there was,
11:38there was a little bit of controversy. Again, not an awful lot of black women nominated,
11:43um, which seems to be an ongoing issue. And, um, yeah, but anyway, it'll be interesting to see
11:48what happens in a few weeks time. Okay. Uh, we will be back after the break with
11:53Masters of Air and Twin Peaks.
12:04Okay. Welcome back to part two, where we're going to be talking about
12:08Masters of Air and Twin Peaks. So, Stephen, we're going to go to you now.
12:12To talk about Masters of Air, which, um, has been hotly, hotly, hotly anticipated.
12:18Is it all it's cracked up to be? You've watched all of it now. Fair play.
12:22Yeah. So it's, it's pretty good. Masters of the Air. It's a, um, it's a, it's a successor series,
12:29a spiritual successor to Band of Brothers, which I guess is one of the very early super, super
12:37prestige TV shows where TV shows basically became movie level experiences. And now we have
12:47Masters of the Air, which follows American fighters and bombers in the B-17 flying fortress planes,
12:54flying missions over Germany in occupied Europe, uh, during the second world war from bases in Britain.
13:01And so you, you have a bit, you have a bit of the very stereotypical British characters in it who
13:08are
13:08not the villains, obviously, because they're the allies, but they're sort of a bit snobby and very
13:13RP and, um, they don't come off too well, which is fine. You know, I don't mind. We, we, we
13:19all know that,
13:20that we sort of helped the Americans out more than they helped us out. So it's, we can, we can
13:27laugh at it when
13:27they, when they come back at us. Right. But, um, yeah, it's got a super duper cast, this film. So
13:34it's got Austin Butler, who we now all know from Elvis. He, he was sort of fairly, fairly low level
13:41in, in, in the UK until he did, um, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And then Elvis really sort
13:48of
13:48shot him to like mega stardom and masters of the air. He, he's great. And he plays major
13:54Dale Cleveland, who is one of the sort of main pilots that we follow. Uh, and he, he's cast
14:04alongside Callum Turner as John Egan. You have Barry Kern who plays Biddick and one of my,
14:11probably my favorite character, Anthony Boyle plays Crosby. And Crosby is a navigator and he's
14:18super nervous. He gets air sick. He doesn't have any faith in his own abilities. And in the end,
14:24it turns out that he's probably one of the best navigators they've got. He's super, like it,
14:29he comes in clutch all the time and he keeps putting it down to look and just dying himself.
14:34And he has a really nice development of, uh, the series. He comes up against some real, like,
14:40bad luck and some unfortunate incidents, but he's, he's a great, um, character, a real bit of,
14:46in a turmoil as well. Um, but it's, the series is exec produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks,
14:54who worked obviously together on the, the probably definitive nineties World War II movie,
15:00Saving Private Ryan, and then came together for Band of Brothers and the Pacific. Um, and it's got,
15:06it's, I would say it's closer to Band of Brothers than, than the Pacific. It's, it's got a lot of
15:11insanely good action scenes. Is it a discreet series that is not going to go on, is this?
15:16There's not going to be future? No, I imagine, I imagine it'll be like Band of Brothers. Well,
15:20no, it won't go on because they, the war is seen through in, in the series. Okay. So it'll be
15:26another Band of Brothers type show where it's the entire, well, a vast swathe of the war
15:32from this perspective. I hope they do more. I hope they come back with, you know, maybe an African
15:38campaign series or, or what I would love to see is a, is a, um, submarine series or like the,
15:45the Atlantic series where they're, they're sort of manning the, uh, fright over the Atlantic. I think
15:52that would be fantastic. Um, but yeah, I heavily recommend this. It's, um, yeah, so it's a great,
15:59great, great history buff. So people can get a week's free trial, can't they, of Apple TV and
16:04binge it on if they want? Well, yes, you'll have to wait a little while though. So it comes out
16:09on
16:09the 26th with the first two episodes and then it's weekly. So if you wanted to watch it all with
16:16your free trial, you probably want to watch the end in like March and then binge it all.
16:23Darn it. Um, fair enough. Fair enough. Uh, if you want to be on top of it, you're going to
16:28have to
16:29subscribe to Apple for a few months. Um, okay, cool. That sounds great. I am actually looking
16:34forward to watching that and yeah, God, the cast is amazing, isn't it? So, um, that'd be great. Um,
16:40great masters of air. Thank you, Steven. Right. Benji over to you. We're going to talk about,
16:45I mean, like quite different TV series here and confession time. I have never watched Twin Peaks.
16:55Well, let me, let me just break it down for you. It's a nice, simple TV series.
17:00I mean, I think everybody knows it though, don't they? Everyone knows Twin Peaks. They know what
17:04it's about. They know names of characters. They know it's a cult. It is a cult classic completely,
17:09but it's like, I've never, I never actually sat. I actually remember when it came out the first time,
17:151990, what? 19, what was it? What was it? Well, it first aired on ABC in 1990.
17:22Okay. And for those that perhaps aren't familiar with the series, it's pretty simple. It's about,
17:31uh, it's a, almost like a crime procedural drama that's based around an FBI agent teaming up with
17:36a local sheriff to determine who killed the body of a woman called Laura Palmer. Hence,
17:42the tag for the first season was who killed Laura Palmer. Uh, and it takes its name from the coastline
17:50or the sleepy little lumbering town, uh, where the murder took place and is being solved, which is
17:56Twin Peaks. And, uh, yeah, it's a fantastic show. Thanks for coming. Wait a minute. It's a David Lynch
18:02production though. So there's more to it than that. Of course. Um, yeah, there is of course the cult
18:08and the fandom, uh, with it being David Lynch, it means that anything and everything could happen.
18:14Can happen. So we're treated to, uh, agent Dale Cooper, played by a regular collaborator with David
18:20Lynch, Carl McLaughlin, who is a dune and blue velvet. Um, he uses a bunch of unorthodox methods,
18:29including, including spiritualism, first nation mysticism, uh, to try and find out who, or maybe
18:37not to spoil it too much, what killed Laura Palmer. And every cast member has their own little
18:44idiosyncrasies. Agent Cooper sending memos on his recorder. We never find out who he is talking to
18:53until a couple of seasons later. Um, we have a audience surrogate. I felt in the form of the
19:00local sheriff, Harry Truman, who is basically the straight man, as opposed to all of the well-meaning,
19:07but slightly odd town folks in Twin Peaks, which I have to give a big shout out to, um, she
19:13died when
19:14the recording of, uh, Twin Peaks, the return, which was the third season that came out a couple of years
19:20ago. Um, the log lady. And I'm sure if you're not familiar with the log lady, she was a character
19:27that used to work around with a log and the log would actually be a conduit to the spirituality
19:31in Twin Peaks, such as, for example, my log believes that it's a spirit that has killed Laura Palmer
19:38rather than anything else. Okay. Right. It's a log, the log for every reason is a conduit, not tarot card
19:46readings or anything like that, but a log. Uh, I really don't want to give too much away because
19:51much like Cooper remarks in the diner in Twin Peaks about the cherry pie, there's a damn fine
19:57television series that had a very damn fine prequel with fire walk with me, which snud,
20:03uh, the late David Bowie and the second season venturing more into the law or actually killed Laura
20:10Palmer. But it's brilliant. You could, I mean, I haven't got too much time. I could probably go
20:15into an entire podcast about Twin Peaks, the whole mythos surrounding it and everything like that.
20:22But, you know, unfortunately, if you want to watch it, it's on Paramount Plus. So a subscription
20:27is required. There might be a possibility that it might still be on Sky Atlantic, which showed
20:35Twin Peaks the return when that first came out. But I know for a fact, all three seasons are on
20:41Paramount Plus. Okay. And yeah, I, I can't do it justice within the five minutes to talk about it.
20:47You have to go and see it, even if you're not a Lynch fan. Yeah. Lynchian is a word now
20:53in
20:53the cinematic universe that gets used a lot. And Twin Peaks is definitive, you know,
21:01not offensive to the point where you, I mean, fire walk with me is a different story, but
21:05yeah, it's entry level Lynchian surrealism and it's fantastic. I think it's worth saying that
21:12probably nowadays we're a bit more used to sort of surrealism or sort of otherworldly elements
21:20coming into sort of like normal TV programs or whatever, you know? Yeah. Whereas he was one of
21:26the first people to do it. He was one of the first people to be like, what if this happened?
21:29Yeah. I mean, it's the only TV series I can recall where the opening episode both had
21:35the impactful reveal of Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic being found. Yeah.
21:41But that same episode having Jack Nance, another frequent Lynch collaborator, because he was
21:46Henry in a razorhead remarking, oh, there was a fish in the percolator. So that's the kind of
21:54humor that Lynch goes for the very stark, but then very surreal. After all. Yeah. But I think because
22:02of that, it did become like, it must be the most cited TV program. You know, it's been referenced
22:10in everything. Yeah. When we talked about the Sopranos, we talked about how the Sopranos opened
22:17the doors for prestige television. But I think perhaps we're not too kind on how Twin Peaks did that
22:23on a network, which was ABC, which is the equivalent to maybe our ITV channel four in America.
22:30And the fact that he got, they asked him to do a soap opera, kind of like a crime drama.
22:36And he got
22:36away with what David Lynch thinks a soap opera should look like. It's incredible. And the fact that he got
22:43away with those elements of surrealism, of spiritualism, and just absolute existential horror at times as well,
22:51when you realize just exactly is unfolded. And if you don't have time to dedicate to all three seasons,
22:57the international version of the pilot acts as just basically a one and done, which gets confusing.
23:05Oh, interesting.
23:05Because then if you watch it on some streaming services, they will play the international
23:12pilot and then you get confused. But this has all been solved. Why do they continue?
23:17Great, great, great. Cool. Okay. Thank you so much, Benji. And thank you for joining us this week,
23:22everyone. Do look out for Friday morning's Screen Babble Weekend Watch, which will preview
23:25what to watch over the weekend and beyond. If you have any suggestions for what TV we need to get
23:30into our lives, do drop us a line by our social media at National World TV and on all other
23:35platforms
23:36at National World. We'd love for you to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast so we can reach
23:39as many TV lovers as possible. We'll be back next week with more Screen Babble. Cheers. Bye. Bye bye. Bye.
Comments