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Hello, listeners.
It's new episode time.
And this episode is all about films, one of my favorite subjects.
I could talk about films all day.
There's so many films I'd love to talk about.
And I have so many favorite films.
And we talk about some of those things in this episode.
But anyway, I'll let you discover that after the jingle.
But now I've just got a few kind of what announcements, little bits of news and stuff just to share with you Before the jingle and before the episode starts properly.
Okay, so first of all, Spotify listeners, hello to listeners on Spotify.
It's kind of the end of the year now.
We're in December of 2023.
And Spotify users.
You've probably noticed that you're getting your Spotify unwrapped, which is a little report about your listening habits for the year.
For me personally, my Spotify Unwrapped is completely ruined by the fact that basically, we listen to all of my daughter's music on Spotify.
So that means that we've listened to let it go from the frozen soundtrack about a million times.
We've listened to all the unicorn songs that we could possibly find in every single unicorn playlist.
So, like her favorite song, you know my, my spotify unwrapped it's just unicorns and frozen and the wheels on the bus and stupid stuff like that.
So my spotify unwrapped has been completely destroyed.
But anyway you, if you are a spotify user hello, you may have got your spotify unwrapped this year, which kind of It breaks down your listening habits for the year, including a little report about your favourite podcasts.
And I've had a number of people on social media sharing their Spotify Unwrapped with me, telling me about how many minutes.
They've listened to Luke's English podcast this year, telling me that it's been their favourite podcast of the year and all that stuff.
That's fantastic.
Thank you very much.
So hello to listeners on Spotify.
A lot of people, obviously Luke's English podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts.
My preferred way of listening to podcasts is to use Pocket Casts, because it's got a search function.
It allows you to search for specific episodes.
And also, of course, you can sign up to extra content through Acast Plus using Pocket Casts, also Apple Podcasts.
In fact, most of the podcast apps will do that.
You can't actually sign up to LEP Premium through Spotify because it's not a normal podcast app.
But anyway...
So, yeah, a lot of people discovered Luke's English podcast on Spotify this year.
So if you are one of those people, then hello.
And if you've written a little comment as well under episodes this year, then that's very nice.
That also helps as well.
And it's nice to get your feedback.
A little bit more information about Spotify.
My top countries this year.
On Spotify are Turkey.
Turkey, you are my number one country this year.
Hello to everyone in Turkey.
I went to Istanbul a few years ago, actually, and it was a fantastic experience.
Everyone was incredibly friendly.
And we went with our daughter, who was about how old?
I don't know.
It was just before the pandemic.
She was walking and sort of running around the place with her bright blonde hair.
And all the locals were crazy about her.
And they kept, like, picking her up and...
Everyone is very friendly and very, very generous.
Anyway, lovely place.
So hello to my Turkish listeners.
Spain, you are in second place.
Where are the hats?
¿Dónde están los sombreros?
Every time I mention Spain, I have to say that because it's one of the only things I can say in Spanish and I still think I'm saying it incorrectly.
But anyway, hello.
And Indonesia is third in the list.
And I've been to Indonesia as well and had a wonderful holiday there.
Did a couple of episodes of the podcast about it.
I've been to Spain as well.
Didn't I talk about that once upon a time?
Climbing in Spain?
I think so.
India is the next country on the list.
Hello to everyone in India.
And yes, I've been to India too, several times.
Talked about that on the podcast as well.
And the next country in the list is Brazil.
Unfortunately, never been to Brazil, but it's one of those places I'd like to visit one day.
I find it to be a fascinating country, especially the music.
I think all the music that's come out of Brazil is so wonderful.
So hello to my listeners in Brazil, and...
Let's not forget Poland as well, which is often listed as a top country for the podcast in general, but especially on Spotify.
So there you go.
Hello, Polish listeners.
I've never been to Poland either.
My brother has.
He has DJed there a few times and stuff, but I've never actually managed to make it that far.
But again, it's one of those countries I'd like to visit.
But anyway, hello to everyone listening to the podcast and to people listening on Spotify, especially those people who kind of shared their Spotify Unwrapped with me.
Top listener.
Who's the top listener on Spotify?
I have to mention this.
I think probably my top listener on Spotify, it must be Cam.
That's at ErcamUK on X on Twitter.
Cam is a long-term Lepster.
And this year, according to Cam's Spotify Unwrapped, Cam listened to the show.
Cam listened to 10,336 minutes.
10,336 minutes of Luke's English Podcast this year and is a top 0.5% fan.
So, Cam, you are in the top 0.5% of all fans of Luke's English Podcast on Spotify.
That is about 30 minutes every day.
30 minutes of Luke's English Podcast every day.
Well done to you Erkam, for managing to do that and also for managing to maintain your mental health in the process.
Hello, quick interruption.
I'm recording this interruption just a couple of days after I recorded the rest of this.
And yeah, I just said that Cam was the champion.
But then this morning I got a notification from another listener.
And so the tweet I got on X, what do you call like tweets now?
If it's not called Twitter...
Right.
It used to be called Twitter.
And on Twitter, you used to tweet about things and you'd send tweets.
But now it's called X. So what are they called?
I don't know.
It's stupid, isn't it?
Anyway, I'm going to call it a tweet.
So I got a tweet this morning from someone just called D and that's at green, mellow, blue.
And they got their Spotify unwrapped.
And Dee listened to Luke's English podcast this year for a grand total of 18993 minutes, making Dee a top 01 fan.
So I think that Sorry Erkam, your record has already been smashed by Dee, who stepped in and almost doubled the amount that you came up with.
So that results in almost an hour a day of listening to Luke's English podcast.
For an hour a day for a year.
And he wrote to me and said, I'm not even at episode 500 yet.
So I don't know how many minutes worth of podcast material I've provided for you.
I don't know.
I just can't work it out.
It's something like 50,000 minutes or something.
I don't know.
What's 850 episodes?
Let's just round it up to 850.
And let's say on average, they are one hour in length, although probably it's more.
850 times 60 right and then if you factor in the premium episodes as well and there's a there's let's say it's about a thousand minutes of premium content I don't know mathematicians you can work it out but it's a lot but anyway there you go so if you listening to this you right now if you got even more if you've listened to Luke's English podcast of even more minutes than 18,993 this year then get in touch because that means that you are the reigning champion and i want to see your spotify unwrapped as evidence of that claim because if there's no evidence then you know then it doesn't count so i need this the actual evidence okay there you go that's the end of this interruption so there you go that's what i wanted to say about spotify i've got some other things to to say as well So I had Amber and Paul here in my podcast room just a couple of days ago, and we recorded two episodes of the podcast.
Those episodes will be published probably in the new year.
I've got other episodes that are scheduled to be published between now and January.
So you're going to have to wait until January to hear the Amber and Paul episodes.
Okay, so that's coming.
And I just wanted to mention that Paul Taylor...
If you are in the Listeners, if you're in the Paris area and you'd like to go and see Paul Taylor perform his final bilingual show okay, his final bilingual show.
This is the final time he's going to perform.
A bilingual show.
And the last time he's going to perform his show, which is called Bizu Bai.
If you'd like to go and see that, you've got one last chance.
And you've got to go to the Zenith.
That's how I pronounce it in English.
Zenith.
It's a music venue.
It's a big concert venue.
And it's a massive place.
And Paul is performing there in January.
Let's just have a look.
You can get tickets for the show at Paul's website, paultaylorcomedy.com.
Okay, so he's performing at the Zenith on the 6th of January, 2024.
And you can get tickets at paultaylorcomedy.com.
That's your last chance to see his bilingual show Bizu Bai.
And after that, he won't be performing any more bilingual shows.
They will only be exclusively French or exclusively English.
And you can wait until January to hear Paul talk about that a bit more.
I just wanted to give you a heads up about that now, so that you've got a chance to actually book tickets and stuff like that.
It might be too late.
So I wanted to tell you about that now.
PaulTaylorComedy.com. to get tickets for his show at the Zenith on the 6th of January.
Okay?
What else?
If you want to come and see me perform stand-up comedy, then you can.
And I can tell you about two shows that I'm doing.
It's rather late notice.
I think this episode is going to be published on, what is it, like the 6th of...
6th of December.
So I'm performing tonight in Paris on Wednesday, the 6th of December, and I'm also performing on Friday.
That's Friday the 8th of December.
I know it's short notice, but there it is.
So you can see me performing.
I won't be at the Zenith.
I mean, the Zenith is a massive venue that holds about 4,000 or 5,000 people.
I'll be performing in a much much, much smaller room that holds something like 01 of that volume.
You know that it's a room that holds about 50 people, i think.
Uh, but anyway, come down if you're in the area and you want to come and see me performing stand-up.
Uh wednesday, the 6th of december friday, the 8th of december, at the monmartre comedy club.
The monmartre comedy club.
Right, it's the french fried comedy night at the monmartre comedy club.
You don't need to book tickets.
I think it's fine.
You can just turn up.
It's free to get in, So why not come down?
I'll be probably headlining the show on Wednesday, the 6th, and I'm going to be the host of the show on Friday, the 8th.
So come down to the Montmartre Comedy Club, the French Fried Comedy Night, and you can just Google that.
And the show starts at 8.30.
Okay.
All right.
Now that we're not finished yet because, talking of the Montmartre Comedy Club, I was there a few weeks ago doing comedy.
And I saw one of my friends, one of my comedy friends.
His name is Artem.
Now, Artem is a comedian who performs in English.
I think he performs in French as well.
He's a Ukrainian guy who lives in Paris.
Artem.
Now Artem told me.
He came up to me and he said Oh Luke, I was in Japan recently.
I was in kyoto.
I was at a hostel in kyoto what was the name of the hostel?
The len hostel in kyoto in september and a girl.
I met, a girl called my right and you know, after getting to know her a little bit and telling her that i did comedy in paris, she told me oh, do you know, luke thompson?
And artem was like yeah, i do.
And my was like oh fantastic, i listened to his podcast.
So I just wanted to say hello to Mai from Kyoto in Japan, who met my friend Artem at the Len Hostel in Kyoto.
Hello, Mai.
Hi.
Thanks for listening to my podcast.
And I just wanted to tell you that Artem told me that you told him to tell me hello.
Okay.
And so I'm now saying hello back again.
All right.
Nice one.
Okay.
Is that it?
Oh, yeah.
One more thing.
One more thing.
So the last episode of this podcast, which was the short story episode called Learn English with a Short Story, The Invitation.
So that's been a popular episode.
Those short story episodes usually are pretty popular.
And I said at the end of that episode that I would do a premium podcast episode series based on the grammar from that story.
I explained the vocab in the previous episode, so I did that.
And then I said, right, the grammar stuff, that's going to be in a premium episode.
So I've been working on that.
And this afternoon, I'll be recording that episode.
And in fact, it might already be available.
It might be available.
So premium listeners, have a look.
Make sure that you've added Luke's English Podcast Premium to a podcast app on your phone, and then you will be able to easily listen to those premium episodes.
It'll be P55, Grammar Review, The Invitation.
You'll be able to listen to them conveniently, and also in the show notes for each episode you'll see the links for the PDFs and also for the video versions of Part 1 and Part 2.
Okay, so just wanted to let you know about that.
If you'd like to sign up to LEP Premium, I think you know what to do.
Just go to teacherluke.co.uk slash premiuminfo for all the information.
Right, sorry for all this talking in advance, because the episode is called Discussing Films, and here I am definitely not discussing films.
The majority of the episode is all about films, and let's first of all Cara and I talk about this and that.
There's a bit of talking around the subject of films before we get into the, into the actual substance and talk about I don't know it's like at least 10 films that we discuss here in this episode.
Okay, I hope you enjoy it.
Thank you for listening to this pre-ramble.
Okay, I'll now let the jingle commence and then we'll get into the episode properly.
And here we go.
You're listening to Luke's English Podcast.
For more information, visit teacherluke.co.uk.
Hello listeners, welcome back to the podcast.
In this episode, you'll be able to listen to a conversation I had with Cara Leopold recently.
All about films.
Okay, films, movies, movies, films, what's the difference between the word film and movie?
They're more or less the same thing.
In fact, we answer that question during the episode, so keep listening to hear our answer to that question, which is Luke, what's the right word, film or movie?
Film.
We answer that question.
So it's a conversation with Cara Leopold all about films.
If you're a long-term listener to this podcast, then you'll know Cara.
She's been on the show a few times before.
Just in case you need a reminder, Cara Leopold is an English teacher from the UK currently living in France, and she loves films and uses them to help people learn English.
In fact, she is the creator of the Leo Listening Movie Club, where she helps advanced film-loving English learners understand and discuss iconic movies together in order to master conversational English.
So, Cara loves films.
I love films, too.
Who doesn't?
Who doesn't love films?
We all love films, don't we?
And it's very common to talk about films that we've seen.
Are you able to do that in English?
Are you able to have a discussion about films?
And just before you listen to this conversation, I want you to think about what is involved in having a conversation about films in English.
How do we actually do that?
When we talk about films, we do a number of things, including summarising the plot or story of the film, describing the main characters, talking about actors and their performances, talking about directors and the way films are directed, edited, locations, effects and music. giving our opinions about films, including the things we like and don't like, and discussing the meaning of films and any social, historical or personal issues which are connected to them.
So how do we actually do those things in English?
Are you familiar with the language of cinema and the language of talking about films?
Like all the vocabulary, all the different sort of structures, the kind of typical things that people say on the subject of films.
So what I want to do with this episode is actually let you listen to a natural conversation about films in order to let you hear all of those things being done.
So that's what this is.
And you can use this episode in several ways.
Firstly, you can just listen to this for enjoyment, listen to what we have to say about various different films and just try to follow the conversation and practice your general listening skills in the process.
Secondly, you could focus on noticing the specific vocabulary or grammar that we use to do all the things I mentioned before.
Listen out for the specific ways that we describe summarize, give opinions and generally share our thoughts about films.
You can either just sit back and listen for enjoyment or, if you want, to focus more specifically on the actual ways that we do that, with vocabulary or grammar.
OK, now we mentioned lots of different films in this conversation.
And one thing which I'm thinking about is that those films might have different titles in your language.
I hope that you're able to identify the films that we're talking about.
They may have different titles in your language, in your country, so you can see a list of the names of all the films we mention on the page for this episode on my website.
So if you want to check out those movie titles and perhaps google them to find out what they are called in your language, just so you know exactly which films we're talking about, then just go to the episode page on my website and you'll see all of the movie titles listed there, plus various other links to things that we mention or which you might find useful in including other episodes of this podcast and other episodes of other podcasts about films and about some of the specific films we talk about.
Right then.
So it's now time to listen to my conversation with Cara.
I'll talk to you again briefly at the end of this.
But now let's get started.
Hello, Cara.
Welcome back onto the podcast.
Hello, Luke.
Thanks for having me back on.
It's all right.
It's a pleasure.
We're going to talk about films, films and movies.
And even just saying films and movies.
I know that someone out there is going, but what is the difference between the word film and the word movie?
Do you have to deal with this question sometimes?
Yeah, a little bit, because when I sort of started working with films, you know, some people told me oh, you should probably say movies Cara, usually Americans.
And, you know, some people considered that's the kind of wider used word.
I think the distinction is interesting because there is a British American distinction right between film and movie.
And there's also kind of a highbrow and lowbrow distinction.
Yes.
So maybe in the UK, people would consider like superhero movies, movies, right?
Because they're not particularly like sophisticated.
They're not indie movies or um, art house cinema right, whereas you know film would probably refer to I don't know, like something by Wes Anderson or um, you know, something kind of arty and cinematic and or independent.
You know we say independent films, not independent movies, because movie tends to be associated with you know Hollywood.
You know big budget, big production.
Does that ring true for you?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So exactly what you just said.
Generally speaking, movie is more commonly used in the United States.
And we probably say film in the UK, although a lot of people say movies as well.
And yeah, highbrow and lowbrow.
So film.
The word film is probably associated with the more, slightly more intellectual, serious types of films.
Whereas movie, the word movie, as you said, is probably more associated with cinema.
Yeah, the big budget blockbuster popcorn movies.
Exactly.
Yes.
But then again, we do use the words interchangeably.
And so, you know, there it is.
I think I'm probably going to use the word film in the title of the episode, just because British English we tend to say film a bit more, although we will probably.
Listeners, you'll probably hear us using the word movie as well because, as I said, to a large extent those words are more or less interchangeable.
Although some people might, some British people might say, we don't call them movies, they're films.
Thank you very much.
You know, and if you're talking about arty, arthouse or independent films cinema, then you're probably more likely to say film, whereas if you're talking about the marvel, star wars type things, then that's going to be the word movie.
But then there's a bit in the middle where it doesn't really matter.
There you go.
So to conclude, it doesn't matter.
No.
It doesn't really matter that much.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, yeah.
Anyway, we're going to talk about films.
And Cara, you are sort of interested in films and learning English, right?
I am.
Can you remind us how you work with films or movies and learners of English?
What do you do?
Yes.
Yeah.
Let me just read my latest bio.
So this is really interesting because it includes both film and movie.
So I help film-loving non-native English speakers understand and discuss movies together so that they can master conversational English.
Okay.
So it's a combination of helping learners of English understand films when they watch them, right?
And also then using the subject of films as a discussion point, a conversation point.
Exactly.
And I think that works really well because sometimes some of the things we've discussed, thanks to films, some of the topics have been quite heavy, you know, to do with, you know, grief and loss and mental health and, you know, all these heavy topics.
And if you went into a class and said hello, today we're going to talk about death, obviously that would go down like a lead balloon.
You know it would be a disaster.
Nobody, you know, who wants to talk about that?
But when you kind of view it through the eyes of a character on screen, it's a little bit different because you're a bit more detached from it.
And you're kind of discussing it in the context of the movie.
You know you're not being asked necessarily to reflect on a super personal situation, although sometimes it can happen.
Um go in that direction.
Recently i've been talking with someone that who i'm working with about like life transitions through the movie lost in translation, which is kind of about two people who are kind of stuck in their lives and one is having like a midlife crisis and the other is having um, i guess, what we call a quarter life crisis.
You know, when you're in your 20s and not quite sure what, what you're going to do with your life.
And, yeah, again, you can't just go in a lesson, are you having a midlife crisis?
And, like, expect people to say anything.
But yeah, totally different when you're exploring it through.
You know Bob and Charlotte in Tokyo in Lost in Translation.
So...
Right.
Absolutely.
And this is, I guess, one of the great things about films is that you can kind of just go into the cinema or switch it on on your TV at home and you get swept up in the story of the characters.
And through that medium you get to explore these big themes about our lives, about life and death, and you know all those big things very true, the big questions facing humanity.
Yeah, there's a good martin scorsese quote about that.
I'm probably gonna like misquote, but he says you know something like now we need to talk to each other more than ever and movies are the best medium for doing this, and i just love that quote and it really informs what i do.
So thank you, martin scorsese, for that, amongst other things.
Thanks for that quote, but also thanks for some pretty good films as well.
Thanks for the movies also, Marty.
So, in terms of helping people to understand films when they watch them, this is probably.
Another big thing that learners of English think about with regard to films is that people naturally go to films or go to TV series in order to improve their English right.
We've heard it so many times before.
Yeah, it's common advice.
People say oh, just you know, watch Netflix in English and switch on the English subtitles, or something like that.
And people do this and they try to do this.
But it's difficult, isn't it?
It's actually quite a challenge.
People might expect to have a nice relaxing, entertaining time learning English with Netflix or films or whatever it is.
But it actually is often quite a difficult thing.
So, yeah, I mean, this is a whole, maybe a whole other conversation for another time.
In fact, we have had this conversation before.
Yeah, we've kind of had this conversation.
But yeah, I think it's very important to say that it's hard and people always like cite these success stories of you know oh, so-and-so just learned in their bedroom watching Friends as a teenager and it kind of assumes that they didn't do anything else.
And yeah, you know, movie watching is hard.
And so I've got like products that help people develop their listening skills so they can understand films better.
And that's done through film.
And I also have a movie club where we watch a new movie every month and we spend a whole month, you know, discussing it and working on it and understanding scenes and really going deep with it, because it's hard.
And my students are quite advanced, but they still need that month to really, you know, get to grips with the film and be able to understand and discuss it.
So you know that's very different to just watching it on your own and kind of maybe understanding half of it and then just moving on to the next thing.
So, yeah, I just think that's an important reminder.
Movies are hard and they're not magic either.
Like, they're not magic learning tools.
Netflix is not your teacher is something I say quite a lot because it's true.
So, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
You can't just expect to just sit there and watch and expect the magic to happen.
I mean, it does to an extent.
To an extent.
It's true, but also you do have to do certain things and take a more controlled approach perhaps, to using movies and TV series as a resource which can help you learn English.
I guess one of the great things about movies and TV series is that we enjoy them and they're motivating.
We want to watch them.
Well, that's half the battle, isn't it?
Yeah.
So if you're motivated, you'll keep going.
But if you don't want to watch them, don't watch them.
There's nothing special about them.
You can learn English with anything.
So learn with what you want to learn with.
So, listeners, you could go back to the previous episode that Cara and I did in the past.
And maybe I can't remember what number it was.
Hold on.
I can find out.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I'm going to just quickly do a search on my website.
If I just do a quick command F search of my episode archive for the word Cara.
I think there's only me.
All the different episodes we've done.
Here it is.
Episode 660 is called Using TV Series and Films to Improve Your English.
Lots of practical advice and comments about how you can use films and TV series to work on your English.
Oh, hold on.
So, actually, this episode 660 is a recap of some advice from episode 523 with Cara Leopold.
So, okay, several episodes.
Listeners, you could listen to episode 660...
And also listen to episode 523.
Both of those are about this subject.
And also you can learn with Cara on her website, leo-listening.com.
You can see that she's got several things that you can use.
There's an audio workbook to help you understand native speakers with movie quotes.
There's also an audio course called Movies on the Run, which is all about learning listening skills with movies.
And there's the Movie Club that Cara mentioned earlier, where it's a community for movie lovers film lovers who want to understand and speak authentic English and connect with others through films.
And there are a number of other similar things on Cara's website, so you can just check out leo-listeningcom if you want to check those things out too.
So...
Cara.
I thought that.
So my reasoning, my thinking behind this particular episode now is to essentially have a conversation about films, just so that my listeners can listen to how that is done in English.
Listen to a natural conversation about films.
And I've probably said in the introduction stuff about...
When we talk about films, we do various things.
We summarise the plot.
We describe the characters.
We talk about the actors and their performances.
We talk about the directors, the way that films are directed and edited, the locations, the effects, the music.
We give our opinions about films.
We talk about our feelings in relation to what happens in the films.
And we talk about bigger subjects.
You know what the themes are and how this relates to the world that we live in and stuff like that.
So...
I expect that by having a conversation about films, we'll end up doing quite a lot of those things.
So this is essentially a conversation to present how those sorts of things are done in English.
No pressure, though, Cara.
For us to have a deep and meaningful conversation.
You're putting pressure on this whole thing.
What if it's boring?
Maybe we'll just have really, really we'll just have nothing to say about the films that we've seen.
Nothing insightful, nothing intelligent, nothing.
No insights, no deep... Revelations about humanity and where it's going.
Yeah, well, who knows?
Anyway, so Cara, films or TV series?
What do you prefer?
Do you prefer watching films or do you prefer watching TV series?
That's a good question.
So like 10 years ago, I probably would have said TV series, because we were very much in the golden age for TV series.
And there was some really really good stuff on, like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Americans like all kinds of amazing series.
And now I feel like that era is kind of ending.
And also just in my work...
I have to watch movies a lot because it's for my job also because I like it.
So nowadays, more movies.
Yeah, me too.
Same thing.
We did have that golden age of TV series.
Maybe it's still going on.
It's just that I'm not aware of them.
But I think overall, I prefer films because I like the way that films...
Usually, unless it's one of those big Hollywood blockbusters where they're basically setting up the film for a sequel or a franchise or something.
Usually films are done within the two hours, or whatever it is.
You know, you kind of get the beginning, the middle and the end.
There's an ending and you know it's the end.
Whereas with TV series, sometimes they just go on forever.
They're always stringing it out.
They tease you throughout the series that nothing much happens.
And then, you know, you have to watch about 10 hours worth before anything significant happens.
There's a lot, you know, they really string it out.
And sometimes the story goes nowhere.
It's sometimes it's just a general decline from series one, you know.
Well, that's a grim view of series.
I was actually going to say what I liked about the Golden Age era is that watching two episodes of, you know, an absolutely classic series like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones is that.
It was like watching a film.
Like it was such high quality, you know, that it had a movie like quality.
And that's what I liked about them.
Yeah, I suppose.
If it's a really good series, then that's true.
Every moment is great.
Although, having said that Breaking Bad, I remember when I first watched that I felt like it dipped in the middle.
Maybe it was just me.
Maybe I dipped in the middle.
I don't know.
I felt like greatest series of all time.
There was that dip in the middle.
In the middle yeah, i think it was just me just kind of losing focus um, but um yeah, because i have revisited breaking bad and i realize now that there were moments in the middle that i where i thought i don't know where this is going.
When's this going to get?
When is this going to become the greatest series of all time, which is what people have told me?
You know, this is like i don't know where this is going.
Revisiting Breaking Bad now I realise that those moments in the middle are all really pivotal and really important moments and the gradual change that then climaxes so satisfyingly at the end.
Yeah, but in the case of the really good series, then sure, every episode is wonderful.
But there are some series that I've invested my time into and they haven't really paid off.
Like something like The Walking Dead, which I loved series one.
I think really, with The Walking Dead you can probably just watch series one and that, and it doesn't really get much better than that.
There are some moments, pretty good moments.
But then, as you get further and further and deeper and deeper into it, it just starts to be more and more disappointing, until it gets to a certain point where you feel dirty.
You're like oh God, I can't believe that I've spent this much time on the series and it's just doing this to me.
It's so disappointing.
So maybe I've had a few bad experiences with series.
I understand also something like Lost, which is a series that had so much promise, so much mystery.
What does this all mean?
And in the end, it's just, no, it doesn't really mean anything.
Sorry, but you watched it all, didn't you?
Right.
Yeah, thankfully I didn't.
But yeah, I heard that people were very disappointed by that ending.
Funny story about The Walking Dead.
So I did start watching that.
And I remember when my partner started watching it and I came in the room and I was like wow, what's this on TV?
Is this a film?
And he's like, no, it's this TV series.
It's called The Walking Dead.
And I thought it looked amazing.
And I actually had to stop watching it because I kept imagining like I was having bad dreams about everyone in my life turning into zombies.
And I think it's more to do with like I was just going through like a rough patch in my life and I wasn't doing too well, so it kind of like transferred into my psyche.
And you know because, other than that, i love zombie movies.
I love the george a romero trilogy, i love um evil dead, i love the zombie thing in game of thrones, but the walking dead it just like it really disturbed me.
It is a really horrible, disturbing series.
I always used to find myself watching it while I was eating.
So I'd have my lunch break.
I'd be doing work or something at home, and I'd have a lunch break.
And I'm like, oh, a new episode of The Walking Dead.
I'll watch this.
And then it's just horrible.
I'm there eating my food and watching.
And I'm just thinking, why am I watching this?
Also, it's very dark.
It's not in terms of the themes, but the lighting is often very, very dark.
So I'd be there watching it on my laptop.
And you know, there's reflections on the screen from the windows behind me and I can't see anything.
And then it's just horrible.
And then I'm trying to eat my food.
And I felt like it just kept telling the same story again and again.
You know about what people have to do to protect their family.
You know all this stuff.
So anyway, but that's TV series.
We're here to talk about the films, aren't we?
We shouldn't get sidetracked by TV series films where normally, unless it's setting up a sequel and a threequel and a whatever 27 yeah, unless it's setting up a 27 film franchise that that probably is never going to get made anyway normally films are done and dusted within the running time.
So cara yeah you, you must watch a lot of films.
Uh, for your course and just generally, i think you're quite sort of cine literate.
What have you seen recently?
Do you know what?
Funny showbiz story.
It probably sounds silly to you because you live in Paris.
So maybe you come across celebs all the time.
But I think it was at the beginning of the month.
We're recording this in October.
Like the weather was still really good.
And we went on this massive bike ride.
We took the bikes on the train and then we cycled back to Besançon and I was like, shall we go for a drink?
Because it was warm and we were tired from cycling, and so we just go to this bar it was a Sunday, so it's one of the few ones that's actually open and we're having a drink and Julien goes.
Oh, that guy there on the phone, he's a guy from the TV, he's a guy from the media, and I was like uh okay um, he looks like a sort of homeless guy but um, all right if you say so, and it turned out it was um philippe robot, i think is how you pronounce his last name.
So he's um a french uh actor, and um, He had been in a film that we enjoyed called Temps de Chien, I think it was called.
And yeah, so not long after that we were having a look at like his filmography.
You know what he's made recently.
And yeah, we watched this movie where I can't remember the name of it.
So it's obviously a French film and he's in it.
And yeah, it's him and his mate in the film.
They're in the Basque country and they're both like unemployed or whatever, and they decide to set up like a sort of horse trekking business, you know.
So they'll take tourists out into the mountains and, you know, go camping and horseback riding in in the Pyrenees um, and so it sounds really good on paper, but obviously like they're completely incompetent, so it goes, you know, sort of horribly wrong in the classical tradition of like French movies like this, where people go on holiday together and then they all start shouting at each other right yeah yeah, everyone's incompetent Um, and it goes wrong.
But in the end they all kind of like um, it all sort of works out in the end and we all have a good laugh.
And yeah, so he's in, he's in that movie and he yeah, he was having a drink in Besançon and I can't remember the name of it.
I'm sorry.
We'll look that up later.
But yeah, so he was having a drink in Besançon cause he was filming something in Besançon and he had his entourage, you know.
Um, so he, yeah, he looks a bit scruffy.
Um, but he, you know, he is actually a uh, I suppose that's a rich person thing is actually.
You look scruffy, but you're actually well, I don't know how, I don't know what his net worth is.
We could probably look that up, but, um, yeah, so that was, that was, that was a good movie.
Um, and the other one I've watched.
Um well, I didn't.
I didn't rewatch it, but we we watched get out for my movie club and that's a really amazing film mixture of horror and social commentary.
Get Out.
Yeah yeah yeah, which it felt a bit like an episode of Black Mirror or something.
Yeah yeah yeah, that's true, actually that's true, but it's um, i would say it's even better than an episode of black mirror.
Yeah, we both really enjoyed it.
He was in the movie club and, yeah, we re-watched it.
Challenging film, though, because there is a lot of, some of the dialogue is quite hard.
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So Get Out is the film we're talking about here.
2017.
Yeah.
Directed by Jordan Peele, the comedian.
The comedian who turns out to be a cinematic genius.
Like this was just, I don't know.
I don't know if anyone was expecting that.
He comes out with this film and now it's considered as one of the best films of the 21st century.
Yeah.
And it's his debut film.
And up to then, we just knew him as part of the comedy duo Key and Peele, who were quite funny.
But I mean, you know, I had no idea that, you know, he had it in him to direct such an epic film.
Yeah, as you say, it's described as a psychological horror film.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And, well, how would you describe the plot quickly?
Just give a quick summary because we're not going to do a whole, Because you've done an episode about this.
Is that for Daniel's podcast?
It's for Daniel's podcast, yeah.
So if people want to know more, they can listen to that.
Basically, it's a young couple, Rose and Chris.
Rose is white, Chris is black.
She invites him to her parents' estate.
So her parents are obviously white wealthy whatever, but apparently you know liberal, you know not racist.
It's set in the United States as well, right?
It is.
Yeah, that's important.
Important context because it does deal with sort of the minutiae of social relations in the context of race relations in the US.
So, yeah, she's from this kind of wealthy but liberal white American family.
He's a black guy.
They're a couple.
And she invites him to her parents' house to meet her parents.
Okay.
So he's a bit stressed out, you know, because he's like, do they know I'm black?
You know, he's not quite sure how they're going to react.
You know, even if they're Obama voting liberals, you never really know.
And yeah, things, she reassures him.
And then when he actually gets there, things start getting weird really, really quickly.
And he actually, something we discussed with Daniel is he has multiple opportunities to leave. but he doesn't and um it gets pretty pretty scary pretty quickly um but thankfully he has the best friend in the world rod who worries about him and who starts like kind of investigating on his side and rod is quite hard to understand but very funny and um the just the best friend that you wish you had because he yeah he's amazing Yeah, and there's a weird twist, a weird horror twist.
It doesn't start as a horror film.
It starts more of a sort of awkward drama, but then it becomes a horror film at a certain point.
Yeah, I was going to say there's a bit of mystery.
You're kind of like, where is this going?
The horror part is a bit kind of silly in some ways.
But actually, the message is really deep.
Yeah, it's an amazing film and there's so much to pick up on visually and yeah, so many little kind of hidden meanings in in what's on screen.
Brilliant, brilliant film.
Even if you don't like horror, i would say, give it a go.
Yeah yeah, very interesting film.
Okay, so you can.
My fluent podcast is the name of the podcast that daniel goodson does, and so there will be an episode about get out coming soon, i guess, on his show, So people can listen to that if they want more conversation on that subject.
A question that people often ask when talking about films is, what is your favourite film?
And I find it a really difficult question to answer, actually.
Yeah, I would say it kind of changes and sometimes it's hard to pin down exactly which one.
It's like there's favourites maybe for different times.
Maybe there's some movies that you like to watch when you're sick sometimes, you know, to help you feel better or others that really um well, there's some that can be really good, like get out, but I wouldn't really say it's my favorite movie, but it is a really amazing film.
So I have a bit of a hard time with that one.
I mean the one example I can give which is interesting, which I would describe as a movie club favorite, is the film Groundhog Day.
Oh yeah. which turned 30 this year, which makes everybody feel old all of a sudden.
Well, I don't know if, well, because I'm old, so this is why.
But yeah.
And then you kind of look into it more And you know the director has been contacted by several religious leaders from different faiths saying oh, you made our movie like.
This is a movie about reincarnation or this movie about, you know, redemption and rebirth or whatever.
And it's true that you know.
The message of the film is that people can change, and no matter how hard the circumstances are.
They can change and that's the incredible thing that happens in this film.
I should just say, cause I'm always aware, when we're talking about films, that these films have different names in different countries.
Oh yes.
This, this, yeah.
The name of this one is really interesting.
Yeah.
Cause in France it's called a day without an end.
Oh, Daniel told me the name in Swiss German.
It's really silly.
I think it's cause I don't even.
I didn't even know what Groundhog Day was before the film, before I saw the film.
There is actually a thing in America on February 2nd they have this Groundhog Day tradition where A groundhog is like a kind of rodent.
And yeah, it comes out of its little hole in the ground where it lives.
And depending on its shadow, it either predicts six more weeks of winter or an early spring.
And yeah, I didn't actually realize that was a thing.
I thought they made that up for the movie, but that does actually exist in the US Yeah, so probably in a lot of languages it will be some kind of variation of like a day without an end or a never ending day, something like that.
I've found some stuff.
So apparently in Argentina, it's called time spell.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Yeah.
These are translations.
In Brazil, they call it maybe the same thing.
I'm just having a look because I don't speak Portuguese.
Time spell as well.
In Bulgarian, it's known as an enchanted day.
There are lots more of these.
Hold on.
Let's see if I can find... In Croatia, they call it endless day.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Okay, these are all quite sensible, but we need a silly one.
I'm going to find one.
I'm just going to keep going through.
Finland, my day as a marble.
Okay.
What?
That's apparently a Swedish one.
Okay, interesting.
Swedish version as well.
And the Finnish version is my day as a marmot.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, like the German or the German or Swiss German woman, something daft like the groundhog marmot, relives the.
You know like they use groundhog in the name and it's yeah, it's a marmot, for right.
Yeah, that's in German, apparently it's, and the marmot greets you every day.
Yes, that's it.
That's so silly, but it's true, it's true, and the main character of the film is called Phil and the groundhog is also called Phil Right.
So listeners, we're talking about that film.
You've probably worked it out by now, everyone.
So the film we're talking about, Groundhog Day, stars Bill Murray.
He's a guy, a journalist, a very cynical self-absorbed self-oriented, selfish journalist who goes to this small town in America to cover what he thinks is a very annoying story in a very annoying small town, about an annoying tradition, where this marmot, this groundhog, comes out of its hole and um, it's like all a part of a ceremony just to work out when winter is going to end or something like that, and he's annoyed by everyone and everything and he's very cynical and not very nice really.
But some weird thing happens to him, some sort of odd supernatural thing happens where he ends up stuck in a time loop and he lives, relives the same day over and over and over again and um, he kind of goes through all these weird experiences and actually, as well as it being a funny romantic comedy, there is a much deeper side to it as well.
You know what, cara?
I did an episode about that as well.
You did yeah episode, episode 709.
Oh, I'll have to listen to that.
Yeah, Daniel and I did one, just constantly plugging Daniel's podcast.
We had a discussion about Groundhog Day.
And yeah, the messages are quite profound, in fact.
And yeah, it's a movie to make you feel kind of better about your life, I think.
Yeah, definitely.
So the episode I did listeners, if you want to go back and listen to it if you haven't already done so.
Episode 709 the Stoicism of Groundhog Day.
And that was with my mum.
Oh, lovely.
So I talked to my mum about that because she is interested in Stoic philosophy.
And we use the film Groundhog Day to understand the principles of Stoicism.
Oh, brilliant.
What a great take.
Yeah.
And how this can help us all feel a bit better about the world.
That's the idea.
It's connected to religion, philosophy, even just in the movie club.
You know, one of my students said you know my dad is worried about retirement and how what he's going to do every day.
You know when it's the kind of the same day every day.
And I was like, you've got to get your dad to watch this film.
Yeah, it's got life lessons on so many levels.
It's a film to help you grow as a person while also enjoying a really funny film.
Absolutely, yeah.
Really good.
Everyone enjoys that film.
Yeah, and if you don't, there's something wrong with you.
British films, Cara.
Do you have any particular recommendations for British films?
Do you have like a favourite British film?
Do I have a favourite British film?
Or one that you would recommend?
I quite like my period dramas, like Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice.
Although I do think the best version of Pride and Prejudice is the TV series from the 90s.
With Colin Firth.
Yeah, and we saw it recently on Arte, the Franco-German channel, and we actually found out that the lead actress who plays Elizabeth Bennet, is American and she did a really good job.
Yeah unbelievable, because I just assumed she was British born and bred.
Because her accent you can't tell that she's American.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I didn't realise she was American.
She's been in some other stuff as well, right?
Probably, yeah.
I think she's had quite a long career.
And yeah, so do you like my period films?
I used to like Love Actually but again, we re-watched it in the movie club and I was like what is this?
Like fat phobic?
You know, creepy man trash, you know.
You know there's loads of like.
There's films made in the 2000s that are super problematic nowadays.
Call me woke if you want, but some of them have aged worse than older films because apparently in the 2000s we all decided to I don't know um, we all decided it was cool to insult Martine McCutcheon, who's in this film, for being fat and it's like she looks great.
But the problem was at that time you had to be size zero and be incredibly thin if you're in the public eye.
Um yeah, I don't know, there's just so.
I don't really.
Yeah, I feel a bit differently about that film these days, now that I re-watch it, and I know there's quite a lot of analysis and discourse about that online, about people's changing views on that film.
I still do like bits of it, but I'm kind of like, hmm, yeah.
And maybe I'm not the same person now either.
Wasn't it written or directed by the same person who did Four Weddings and a Funeral?
The Hugh Grant film.
I believe so.
And, you know, it's an all-star cast.
Richard Curtis, isn't it?
Is it Richard Curtis?
I think so, yeah.
Richard Curtis did Four Weddings and a Funeral Notting Hill Love Actually About Time, and then more recently Yesterday, which has got the Beatles connection, which I absolutely don't want to see it.
I know enough about it to know that it's not for me.
And if I watch it, it would just make me boil inside.
Because I mean, like the concept of Yesterday.
Oh, here we go.
I'm talking about it.
I realize I haven't seen the film, so I probably shouldn't be judging.
But I just know I've seen clips.
I've seen the trailer.
I've read about it.
And I'm just like, no.
The concept of the film is that through some weird moment of supernatural thing, for some reason.
A guy who's a struggling songwriter.
He wakes up one day and he realises that no one knows anything about the Beatles.
They just haven't happened.
They just never existed.
They never occurred.
You know, some little glitch in the universe means that the Beatles never actually got together, never wrote those songs, never recorded them.
No one knows anything about them.
And he's a struggling songwriter.
And he works, he just decides to play a song to this girl he's interested in.
And he plays her Yesterday.
And she immediately almost starts weeping because she's so moved by it.
So it's a film about plagiarism.
Yeah well, he struggles with the.
You know, should I, shouldn't I be, you know, using all these songs and pretending I wrote them?
But I guess the problem I have with it is that it takes the songs completely out of the context in which those songs became so popular and so meaningful, which was that it's not just the songs on their own.
This is not the reason why the Beatles are a big phenomenon, right?
It's not just that those songs in isolation are good songs.
No one has listened to Yesterday and immediately started weeping because they're so moved by it.
That's not the way it works.
Yesterday is a catchy pop song, which does make you think a bit if you listen to the lyrics.
And there is depth to it, because maybe it's about Paul McCartney's relationship with his mum, who died when he was 14.
You know, so that's not overtly what the song is about.
But you know, you can go deeper into the song and realise that there is something meaningful at its core.
But actually, when you listen to it, it's just a catchy melody with lyrics that don't quite make sense but which definitely have a sadness to them.
It's not something you'd weep when you listen to it.
You know, you don't go, oh, my God, that's the most beautiful song I've ever heard.
You know, which is what happens in the film when he just randomly plays it to this girl.
They're like having a nice picnic or something.
Ha ha ha, it's a nice picnic.
I do want a sandwich.
And he's like, oh, I've got this new song I'm going to play to you.
And then instantly she's like, oh my God, it's so meaningful.
You know, that's, it's just not, that's not how the Beatles music works.
The reason it's taking the take, stripping away all of the rest of it, which is like the the the, the four individuals.
The Fab Four behavioural dynamic that existed between them and the context, the social context in which those songs arrived and happened their place in history.
If you took those songs and published them now without any of the backstory uh, they probably wouldn't work because you know anyway.
So oh, i got.
I went off on a rant about yesterday.
You should send that to um richard curtis that I'm sure he doesn't want to know my opinion on his film.
Directed by Danny Boyle as well which Oh, now there's somebody who's made some interesting British films.
Exactly, yeah.
Danny Boyle is a great director, definitely one of my favourite directors.
So I don't know what happened there, why he ended up doing a Richard Curtis film, but there it is.
Times are hard.
Yeah.
You've got to eat.
Yeah, so yeah true, but you would imagine that Danny Boyle could eat, considering he made some of the most successful British films ever probably, and also was involved in the Olympics opening ceremony, which probably you know, probably made quite a lot of money from that anyway.
So Danny Boyle though yeah, his films talking of zombies, again 28 days later yeah, British zombie movie Danny Boyle was yeah, the director of 28 days later.
And then what's the sequel?
I think it's called 28 Weeks Later, which is 28 Weeks Later, yeah.
Hilarious, yeah.
Yeah, yes.
Very scary zombie films where they're not zombies, they're infected.
They're infected.
Well, zombie-esque, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, they're zombies.
Ultimately, but they run fast and...
They run really fast and they become zombies really fast.
Yeah.
So they sort of break the rules of zombies to an extent.
Yeah.
They're not like, you know, shuffling around Night of the Living Dead style.
They are running, sprinting.
Imagine being faster as a zombie than you were in your real life.
Yeah, because they're infected with rage, aren't they?
It's a rage virus.
And if you just get a bit of... Oh, a drop.
A drop of blood from a rage-infected person.
If it comes into contact with you, then you will instantly turn into a rage zombie within a matter of seconds.
There's a very tragic moment in the movie where that happens.
Yeah.
It's just like, it's game over, you know.
The person you loved, they're gone.
You don't even have the time to grieve because it's like, boom, now they're going to kill you.
Yeah.
Grim.
Really grim.
Actually, really, really grim and horrible and scary.
Yeah, definitely.
But it's a really good film.
I make it sound like I only watch horror.
It's not at all the case.
But when horror is really, really good, you know, it's really made a big impact on me.
And some of my favourite films are horror films, but they have to be really, really high quality, with a certain depth to them.
Um, because i'm very pretentious and i don't just you know, but i mean i don't want to know is i don't just want to watch like blood and gore for the sake of it, like i want some kind of deeper um message coming through.
Yeah, i totally understand.
I mean there are, there are the the sort of uh, mainstream blockbuster hollywood horror movies which are essentially, i mean, do you know the film critic, mark kermode?
Yeah, I do.
I actually made a YouTube video recently about podcasts for movie lovers and I included his new one.
Yeah, I'm familiar with him growing up in the UK, you know, hear Mark Kermode's opinions on films.
I'm a big fan of Mark Kermode and always listen to his podcast with Simon Mayo.
And so he is a horror aficionado.
And one of the things he says about modern, let's say, blockbuster Hollywood films that he doesn't like, Hollywood horror films that he doesn't like.
He calls them quiet quiet bang.
Quiet quiet bang, which does describe those sorts of what are those ones like insidious or the paranormal activity.
Is that what it's called?
Could be, yeah.
Is that your paranormal activity?
I think it's, he calls it parasnormal activity because it makes you snore.
Oh.
Parasnormal, yeah, paranormal activity was a series of horror films from the noughties, I think.
In which we saw, for example, footage of a family in their home and it's kind of night.
They're being disturbed by strange things and they set up night vision cameras and the night vision cameras like capture some weird moments and stuff.
But those films and then the other, that some of the other ones like insidious, the insidious series, i think it is um, they basically do the same thing which is like quiet quiet quiet, bang.
You know really really basic jump scares.
Uh yeah, see that's, That's not so smart.
I really like John Carpenter's movies.
So he's well known for horror.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
Like, for example, John Carpenter.
And maybe this answers one of your questions.
So John Carpenter directed Halloween.
So that's kind of the genesis of all these slasher flicks.
And actually that movie I was listening again for this YouTube video about movie podcasts.
I was listening to a podcast about it.
And, you know, they mentioned that it's a long time before the first person gets killed.
And there's a lot of buildup of tension before that.
And what I really like about Halloween is its simplicity, for one thing.
And especially in the second film, a lot of that is filmed in a hospital.
And there's just really clever use of light and darkness.
And so in the Halloween movies, the killer is Michael Myers.
He's this masked knife wielding killer.
And he sometimes he moves really, really slowly.
And then other times he seems to move really quickly.
And just his movements are really unpredictable.
And then just yeah, the use of light and dark is really really clever, because you're like where is he?
Where's he gone?
Where's he coming from next?
And I just love how it's so simple.
And the gore isn't over the top.
But it's, yeah, it's just, you know, very clever and simple.
Good twist as well in Halloween.
And yeah, those films are brilliant.
And then John Carpenter also made The Thing.
Oh, yeah.
And that film's incredible.
That film is actually.
Yeah, we watched it in Movie Club and I think it was a bit maybe, hard going for some people because it's a bit It is a bit gory like, because the monster is pretty.
It's an alien who takes over your body.
And, you know, we watched it during the pandemic and there's actually... Oh my God.
There's pandemic vibes there, because it's like you don't know who's infected.
Right with this alien.
It can take on human form and then it suddenly appears.
And they're on a naval base in Antarctica.
So it's already a really weird environment.
And then everybody gets really paranoid and suspicious of each other and they do tests constantly yeah, to see who's infected by this alien.
And yeah, i know that i've heard that john carpenter's rule is never fully show the monster.
Always, you know, leave a bit of room for doubt.
So you know his use again of like things like shadow and half showing you and not showing you, and that you know that's really creepy because it's like what am i dealing with?
I'm not actually 100 sure And you know why can't it be defeated?
Why can't you know?
And yeah, I love the thing.
I saw that when I was about.
I think it's one of those films that I, a lot of us have, these experiences where you see a film that you shouldn't have seen at a certain age.
You know, like you're at a friend's house and their friend has got their dad's video collection or DVD collection, you know, and you end up watching something that you definitely shouldn't have seen.
So I used to go to a friend's house up the road from where we lived and his dad had all these like pirated movies.
Oh wow, on on like fairly low quality vhs copies and we just watched them and i saw robocop, i saw um the running cop's amazing yeah, and so violent like way more violent than anything i'd ever seen at that point.
Yeah, it's true that that director is known for sort of over the top violence.
I love the um the anti-capitalist message.
There's a lot of 80s movies with a hard-hitting anti-capitalist message and you watch them now and people maybe just don't get it.
In Robocop, the message is that the police force, the police service is private.
It's a privatised company and they go on strike because it's not a nationalised service.
The police, it's a profit-driven enterprise.
Yes, for-profit police service.
So, A, that's what they're doing.
They're doing it for profit, which makes them completely corrupt.
Yeah, and it is very, very corrupt, more than we can imagine.
Yeah, they're working with the gangsters and it's like horribly corrupt from all the way up to the very top.
And secondly, the actual police who are trying to do the proper police work.
You know they are underpaid, undersupported and they go on strike.
And as a result, there's like a massive, ridiculous crime wave that envelops the city.
So anyway, and, you know, a lot of violence.
And Robocop, the fantastic character, this cop is, what's the tagline?
Half man, half machine, all cop.
Yeah.
That was on the poster.
Anyway.
So I saw Robocop and I was totally blown away by it, because I think I was about 13 at the time.
Oh, wow.
And also saw The Running Man, the Arnold Schwarzenegger super violent dystopian action film.
I think I saw Predator as well.
And I saw The Thing.
And The Thing was just...
I mean, you say that what John Carpenter does is that he doesn't always show you the monster.
Apparently that's his rule, but I think in The Thing he breaks his rule a little bit because, I mean, The Thing is very interesting because actually you only see the monster properly a few times, but when you see it you really see it.
You know you so it.
John Carpenter shows you the monster transforming and you see it for a good few seconds.
It's not quite enough time for your mind to comprehend what you're seeing.
And then you, then you stop seeing it.
So you see enough for you to kind of like stare at it with you know your eyes wide open, what the hell's that?
And then it's gone.
And the effects in the film are the thing.
I can't remember... I say the thing.
The cool thing.
I can't remember the guy who did the effects...
Yeah, again, yeah, we watched it in the movie club.
So I got like some behind the scenes stuff.
And it turns out that the guy who did the effects, he was really young.
And apparently he was super overworked because obviously this is like pre CGI.
The film was made in like 82, you know, early 80s.
And so he had to like build out all this monster stuff manually.
And yeah, apparently he had a really bad burnout because he was just working like crazy hours there.
So I hope he recovered.
And you know, the film wasn't successful when it came out and that is the bitter pill to swallow because it probably changed John Carpenter's career trajectory because, had it been, it's now considered, like you know, a cult film, one of the best films ever.
Like you know, it's really well respected.
But at the time people just didn't understand it and maybe if it had been successful, John Carpenter's career would have really taken off and been completely.
I still, I think he's had an amazing career yeah, but you know, by Hollywood standards, you know he's a bit, he's a bit sort of culty horror genre, like he's maybe not as well known as and as he could be.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Yeah yeah, definitely.
So I feel sorry for a white boomer man's career trajectory, which is way better than most people's, but I feel sad for him.
No, I don't think we need to feel sad for John Carpenter.
John Carpenter's had a fantastic career and I think that he's got the advantage of probably feeling that he was able to make the films he wanted to make, while having people on podcasts talk about his films like this.
People love John Carpenter films.
And so, you know, as a director, that's what you want, isn't it?
You want to be able to make the films you want to make and you want people to then talk about how great they are.
So I'm sure he's happy.
I'm sure he's pretty pleased with himself.
Just, you know, maybe he could be sitting on a bigger pile of money.
But is that really what it's all about?
No, I don't.
I don't think so.
So, yeah, John Carpenter had some flops in his time.
But anyway, the great work really stands up.
But the guy who did the special effects for the thing, his name was Rob Bottin.
Right, and he was knackered.
He was exhausted after he did the thing.
But he did go on to do some other films and it's quite interesting to see the other films he worked on.
So he specialised in prosthetic special effects, which is again one of the great things about The Thing is that it was done in the 80s and they use real models and prosthetics, which makes it so much better.
It's so much better than computer-generated images, which are...
You always know it's done by a computer.
It just doesn't look right.
And so it takes you out of the film.
But with The Thing, it's all done with actual prosthetic stuff.
And it looks really, really... Really horrific.
It's really disturbing.
And also the level of ingenuity, the creativity that they used with the way that the monster transforms and some of the horrific, like the body horror.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, it's amazing.
So Rob Bottin, he also did...
So he did the thing.
He also did the special effects for Robocop.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
He did the special effects for Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Oh, yes.
Amazing.
Right?
What a legend.
He also worked with David Fincher on Seven.
Okay.
Nice.
Which, if you remember Seven, you know like the Seven Deadly Sins.
There's some pretty horrific moments.
Pretty gory, yeah.
There's one guy where they find a guy on a bed and he seems to be a skeleton.
But he turns out to be alive.
Do you remember that?
I don't remember that.
It's probably a good thing that I don't remember that.
The special effects in that moment are pretty incredible.
And he also worked with David Fincher on Fight Club and probably other films, too.
So that's interesting.
So he recovered from the thing.
He did.
He recovered from making the thing.
Yeah.
But yeah, he was working very long hours and in difficult conditions.
But good on him because we're still, you know, it was it was worth it.
I hope I hope if he, you know, he recovered.
Also, when you talk about horror films, people say, oh, no, I don't like horror.
And also people say, I don't know why people like horror.
I've actually read some studies about this that say that, in fact, horror movies watching horror movies is actually can.
It can actually be good for you in various different ways.
One of those ways is that we like to be scared because it helps us to prepare ourselves for moments in real life when we will really be scared.
And if you've been scared, in a sort of safe environment, like in your living room watching a film which you know is not real, if you've had those scares and those disturbing moments, it actually prepares you for genuine scary experiences and disturbing experiences in your real life.
Yeah, I've read studies about that and from psychologists and other other things, which suggests that actually watching horror movies can actually be quite good for you.
Weirdly enough, it sounds like reverse psychology, but i kind of believe it actually.
Yeah that's, that's interesting.
Okay, So we went from talking about British films, Danny Boyle, who directed those zombie, not zombie films.
The sprinting zombies.
The sprinting zombie films, the Olympics.
You see, there's the connection.
He also directed the Olympics opening ceremony.
Luckily there were no sprinting zombies there in that, but then so we went from that to talking about horror films, to talking about John Carpenter and the thing and stuff like that.
So I'm just trying to keep track of this conversation.
Cinema Cara, what do you prefer?
Do you actually prefer watching films in the cinema or in the comfort of your own home?
Yeah see, I do like going to the cinema, but I hardly do it anymore.
And I kind of just like staying home now, which is maybe a shame.
What about you?
I prefer the cinema.
I still prefer the cinema.
I mean, I love watching films at home, of course.
And, you know, I have watched most of the films I've seen in my life have been at home.
Previously.
You know I'm showing my age here, but previously it was on VHS videocassette connected to a very small TV on the other side of the room.
In the 90s, when I watched probably most films, I watched most of them on a tiny little TV.
TVs used to be so much smaller than they are today.
Kids these days, they have no idea.
TVs are massive these days, aren't they?
And so it's probably better these days to watch films at home because...
Normally you're watching it on a much bigger screen, at least in 1080p HD, maybe 4K or something.
But I still love going to the cinema.
I just love the ritual of getting the tickets going in, sitting down on probably nice plush red seats.
The seats are lovely, I have to admit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then, you know, waiting for the film to begin.
And then you get the adverts, which I can't stand.
I can't stand the adverts.
But then the trailers.
I love watching the trailers for new movies.
I love that.
And then I love.
The other thing I love is, you know, I guess you call them the idents for the production companies that made the film.
You know?
So, for example, if it's Star Wars, you get...
You used to get the 20th Century Fox animation.
Yeah, those things.
Okay, I didn't know they had a name.
These days it's just... It's Disney, I guess.
And then it says Lucasfilm in shiny writing.
But you know, when you see arthouse films or more independent films, there are lots of really cool.
I think they're called idents.
I don't know.
But, you know, there's...
There's like the famous DreamWorks one, which is like the kid on the moon fishing in the water.
There's Bad Robot, which I think is, what's his name?
Who's the guy who did Lost?
J.J.
Abrams.
It's his production company.
The Bad Robot animation.
You know, those things.
I love those.
You know, Pathé films and Focus films or whatever.
Oh, yeah.
Focus features.
Yeah.
Focus features, yeah.
I love those little eye dents and then the opening credits of the film.
And I love the first five or ten minutes of a film.
I love the way that a film presents itself to you.
And when it's good, that's just a wonderful feeling.
Often you know within the first five or ten minutes if the film is going to be good, you know.
Yeah, they're important, those first few minutes.
So I just love that whole ritual of going in, getting the trailers, then getting the eye dents.
The way the film opens up the first five minutes you get a sense of where it is.
And if it's a good film, I just love that feeling of like, okay, you've got my attention.
You've got my undivided attention.
I'm in it.
I'm in.
And I'm not going to go off and do something else.
I am in.
I'm not going to look at my phone.
I'm not going to worry about other things.
I'm just in this film until the end.
That's true, that that is the advantage of the cinema, because it's like being in a cave.
A cave with surround sound.
The sound is actually the thing that really shocks me when I go to the cinema and I'm like bloody hell, it's so loud.
Like it goes right through your body, you know, the vibrations of it.
Yeah.
You can't, well, I can't get that at home.
Maybe if you have a very fancy home cinema you can get somewhat halfway there or something.
But yeah no, that that's true.
Actually, the only films we're really going to see consistently at the cinema now are the Wes Anderson films.
So when a new one comes out, we we make the effort to go and see it at the cinema because we really like Wes Anderson.
Yeah yeah yeah um, so that's kind of the exception we we make so, but that's not very often, I have to say.
Also, I think you know films are meant to be watched maybe less and less these days, but films, I think generally, are meant to be watched on the big screen.
You know, it really is a different experience.
And I've seen films which I'm already familiar with, which I was already familiar with from watching them at home, lots and lots of times.
You know, when sometimes cinemas decide to show an old film.
Yeah.
I've seen.
I've gone and seen old films that I'm familiar with, but on the big screen for the first time.
And it was a totally different experience, like so much better.
And you just it's a visceral experience, you know, and and also I love the.
I love the experience of being in a full cinema as long as the audience are behaving themselves.
Right.
And they're not talking during the film or on their phones or whatever.
You know, if the audience are paying attention and behaving themselves, then that is a great experience too.
I love that because you can sometimes you hear reactions from the audience and you get the sense that you're experiencing this thing together.
You know, I love that.
So I love a good cinema experience.
Yeah um, but also it's lovely to just get cozy at home.
If you've got a good uh good tv or a good projector or something you know, to just get yourself a nice cup of tea or some snacks and just settle in for a good, you know night of film watching at home is also lovely as well.
True very, very true.
You've sold me though, on the cinema experience.
Maybe i should go more often.
Get back into the habit.
I think lockdown, the COVID pandemic, changed a lot of our habits.
And so I think a lot of people stopped going to the cinema.
But it's worth rediscovering that.
And I think that, yeah, films should be seen on the big screen.
I think it's the best way.
I watched Taxi Driver.
In the cinema after having seen it many times at home, and just again, the opening credits.
The first five minutes were so much more powerful.
I don't know if you remember the opening parts of Taxi Driver, but you see shots of the streets of New York and there's a lot of steam and a lot of smoke everywhere.
Oh, right.
And so there's these clouds of smoke and the taxi emerges from the smoke and it is disturbing.
It's scary.
The way it comes out, it comes out of it.
It's like, you know, a bit like a John Carpenter sort of thing.
And also, as well as that, you see the lights of the city, the cinemas and the streetlights and the car headlights and stuff through Robert De Niro's windscreen.
And there's rain falling on the windscreen.
And so everything melts together.
All these colours all bleed together.
And I'd never noticed that before like the sort of hallucinatory quality of some of the scenes in the film.
And the idea is that it's showing us how Robert De Niro's character is kind of becoming a bit mentally unhinged.
Yeah, I was going to say there's a lot of foreshadowing there.
Like you say, the smoke and the blurring and yeah.
Yeah.
So you really get the sense of that by watching it in the cinema, the combination in that particular film of the kind of gritty realism, but also the sort of expressionistic sort of psychedelic hallucinatory side of the film as well, which I hadn't really noticed before. um so yeah it's a different experience in the cinema yeah yeah you notice you notice different things uh yeah for sure yeah um okay so sort of final question um what about films that are coming soon are you aware of any films coming soon or films that you would like to see that you haven't seen yet um i don't even think i don't think even think i am aware of what's coming soon because i don't go to the cinema that much i don't get to see trailers but you're right trailers can be really cool and they can be um You know, they build anticipation for a film and there's things like you might not have thought of going to see them and then you see the trailer and you're like, oh, yeah, this sounds good.
Yeah, I can't really think of anything coming up.
You know I'm mostly looking to the past, you know, for inspiration and for films to watch, or for films to watch with my students for various reasons because you know often older films.
Some older films are easier to understand.
Some...
People have already seen them in their own language, so there's a bit of a gateway there.
It makes it a bit easier.
So, yeah, I'm more looking back than looking forward.
So I don't even know what's on the horizon.
Also, I kind of Maybe it's not fair, but I do feel like a lot of movies nowadays are basically, you know they're superhero movies or it's like Fast and Furious 27 and you know I'm just not interested.
Actually the only recent film.
Another film we went to see because we saw it when we were back in the UK over the summer was the Barbie movie, because we were bored and we needed something to do.
I think that was worth seeing on the big screen because there's a lot of singing and dancing, interestingly enough.
So that probably deserves to be seen that way.
But I don't see anything on the horizon that interests me.
But maybe I'm not looking.
Maybe I'm too prejudiced, because I'm like oh it's just, you know, going to be another superhero film.
Yeah, well, probably.
Yeah.
I mean, there's probably going to be yet more of that kind of stuff coming.
But I mean, I don't really know either.
I mean, I feel like recently I just sort of lost control or lost my grip on what's going on.
Not just generally in my life but in terms of in cinema, as I said before, in the 90s and then into the noughties and stuff, I really felt like I knew exactly what was going on.
I knew what all the films were that were available and that were out and I tried to see all of them and I really had a sense of, you know, cinema and.
And then, maybe just since I moved to France and then since we had kids, and then COVID, and then, just as you get older, I just get less and less of a sense.
And maybe because of everything going online as well, I get less and less of a sense of like what the landscape of cinema is these days.
It's the latest Martin Scorsese film, which is called, is it called Killers of the Flower Moon?
Yeah, Killers of the Flower Moon.
And it's another collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, who I always enjoy watching.
And De Niro's in it as well.
Robert De Niro.
And he's one of my favourite actors, even though he has made some terrible crap recently.
Like, you know, there's awful comedies that he decided to make.
Like, Robert, what are you doing?
Stop it.
But he's working with Scorsese again.
And so is DiCaprio.
And so, yeah, if it's Scorsese, I'm in.
So I can't wait to see that.
Yeah.
OK, I'll keep an eye out for that one.
Yeah, I think so.
OK, Cara, thanks for talking to me about films.
It was good fun, wasn't it?
We could talk for ages more, but it's probably enough for now.
Just you know, as a final thing, remind everyone how they can find you and find your work and stuff like that.
Yeah, sure.
You mentioned my website earlier.
So it's still leo-listening.com.
That's probably a good place to start.
And then I'm still posting on LinkedIn.
This has been an interesting experiment going on for some time now.
So if you look for Cara Leopold on LinkedIn, you'll find me and posts about movies, learning English, reflections on all those things.
And, um, I've sort of reactivated my YouTube channel a bit this year.
So that's also Leo listening.
So you can go check out my videos about, yeah, podcasts for movie loving English learners pod.
Um, no videos, not podcasts about questions like, should you watch movies with subtitles?
Um, all these kinds of questions that people have about learning with films.
I try to answer them to the best of my ability.
And I do some like movie reviews, kind of, you know, along the lines of like, here's something we watched in movie club and is it good for you as an english learner, and what kind of things did we discuss and you know, is it worth?
Is it worth watching it?
So yeah, i need to make some more like that um, going into uh classic, classic films that we enjoyed and that i want to recommend to others.
Brilliant.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Well, great.
Have a lovely rest of the day.
You too.
And I'll speak to you again soon.
Cheers.
All right.
Nice one.
Take it easy.
Okay.
Thanks, Cara.
Bye.
So there you go.
That was my conversation with Cara about films.
We could have carried on for ages.
I mean, it's one of my favorite things to talk about.
And there are loads of other films that we could have explored.
You know, it's just so much, just so much to talk about.
It would be fun to do an entire film podcast.
But anyway, thanks again to Cara for that conversation.
I really enjoyed that.
And yes, you can check out Cara's work.
On her website, you can see details of the different courses and resources I mentioned before, which involve improving your English with films.
That's leo-listening.com.
By the way, all the links that I'm going to mention, you'll find them on the page for this episode on my website.
So there's leo-listeningcom if you want to find out about things like Cara's Movie Club for English learners.
Also, you could check out her YouTube channel where she's been posting videos lately.
And um.
Some of the video titles there include things like this like the best movies for English learners the five best podcasts for movie loving English learners.
Uh, she did a video called should you watch movies in English with or without subtitles, which is a question that lots of people ask and wonder about.
Lots of language learners often wonder about that, you know.
With subtitles, without subtitles, subtitles in English, subtitles in your first language.
What's the best option?
You could check out Cara's episode about that.
And also she did an episode called How to Understand Movies in English Without Subtitles, and more as well.
So that's Cara's YouTube channel, which is called Leo Listening.
It's basically Leo listening on YouTube.
And also, you'll find a link on the page for this episode on my website.
You'll find a link to Cara's LinkedIn page.
LinkedIn.
That's how we pronounce that website in English.
LinkedIn.
I wonder how you pronounce LinkedIn in your language.
For example, in French, it's LinkedIn.
I think.
Anyway, LinkedIn is how we pronounce it.
L-I-N-K-E-D-I-N.
So you could check out Cara's LinkedIn page where she's been writing posts about various things.
So yeah, anyway, you'll find the links to those things on the page for this episode on my website.
And as well as that, as well as those links, you'll find even more links.
Is this what you want?
Did you want links?
If you want links, then you've got them.
I've got all the links you need.
You'll find links to those previous episodes of this podcast about using films and TV to improve your English.
Because yes, I've talked about that subject in some depth.
I did one episode with Cara.
That was episode 523, which was called tips for learning English with films and TV shows.
And also I did episode 660, which was, I think, just called Using TV Series and Films to Improve Your English.
Both of those episodes are full of comments and advice on doing exactly that, including the questions about subtitles and more.
Also, yes, even more links.
You'll find links to the episodes about Groundhog Day that we mentioned.
So there's the episode I did with my mum about Groundhog Day and Stoic philosophy.
That was episode 709.
You'll find a link to that.
And also, you'll find a link, or several links, in fact.
Just millions of links.
Too many.
Just overload.
Link overload.
But you'll find links to...
Episode 129, parts one and two of Daniel Goodson's podcast, which is called My Fluent Podcast, in which Daniel and Cara discuss Groundhog Day as well.
So that was My Fluent Podcast, episode 129, parts one and two.
And just in case that wasn't enough, you'll also find that list of all the names of the films that Cara and I mentioned in this conversation, just in case you wanted to Google them and find out what they are called in your language.
OK, you'll find that whole list.
And here are all those titles.
There was Get Out Groundhog Day, the Jane Austen adaptations, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice.
Those Richard Curtis films, Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral Notting Hill About Time and Yesterday.
Don't get me started.
Then there's Danny Boyle films, including 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, which led us to talk about horror films, including Paranormal Activity or Parasnormal Activity and Insidious, and then proper, really good horror films, like the John Carpenter films, Halloween and The Thing, and then Paul Verhoeven films, Robocop and Total Recall, several David Fincher films, Seven and Fight Club.
One of my all-time favourite films, that's Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese, of course.
More recent films too, including the Barbie movie and the latest Scorsese film called Killers of the Flower Moon, which I still haven't seen yet.
I haven't seen the Barbie movie either.
It's rather difficult to get to the cinema these days when you've got a four-month-old baby and a five-year-old kid as well at home.
They tend to sort of keep you indoors quite a lot.
So there you go.
You can find all of that stuff, all of that information on the page for this episode on my website.
And where's that?
Well, you'll find a link to it in the description.
Oh, my God.
It's just like following one link which takes you to another link.
It's like The Legend of Zelda or something, isn't it?
You've got to just, I don't know, a link to the link to the link to the link.
All right.
Okay, listeners, how are you doing?
A couple of questions for you here at the end of the episode.
Here are a couple of questions which you could answer in the comments section if you like.
So simply, what about you?
Have you seen any good films recently?
What have you seen recently?
It doesn't have to be the best film you've ever seen, but can you think of a film that you've seen recently that you remember?
What was it?
Can you describe it?
What's it about?
Who's in it?
What did you think of it?
What about you?
Do you prefer films or TV series?
Why?
And what about films and learning English?
A lot of people say that they have learnt English just by watching films or TV, which is sort of amazing.
So if that's true for you in your language learning or English learning life, which films have played a part in that process for you?
Which films have helped you?
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That's warbyparker.com. to learn English?
Which ones?
And how did they help you?
Can you think of any specific titles?
Or is it just like movies in general that you've just seen throughout your life?
Or are there any specific films which definitely you can say have helped you?
Which films?
And I wonder why?
What is it about those films that helped you?
Do you remember specific lines?
Did you watch those films again and again?
Leave your comments in the comments section, either, well, wherever you're listening to this.
You can actually comment, I think, on Spotify now.
You can comment on YouTube if you're listening to this on YouTube.
And in any case, you can leave your comments on my website, on the episode page, on my website.
And, by the way, if you're looking for all the episode pages yeah, I'm going to give you more links now, just in case you needed more.
If you ever want to find every single episode page for every single episode of this podcast, just go to teacherlukecouk slash episodes.
And that will take you to the full episode archive with every single episode there.
Okay, so if you ever want to kind of search and check out all my previous episodes, teacherlukecouk slash episodes.
Okay.
To just jump straight to the episode page for this one, you'll find a link in the description.
All right, then.
Thanks so much.
That's the end of this episode.
All right, everyone.
I look forward to reading comments and stuff.
But otherwise, have a lovely morning, afternoon, evening or night.
OK, take care out there in the world.
Try to be excellent to each other if that is possible, please.
All right.
As if it's going to make a difference.
You know, just my comment, just saying, please be good to each other.
OK, world peace achieved because Luke said so.
But anyway, have a nice time, okay?
All right, that's the end of this episode.
Speak to you again soon.
But for now, it's time to say goodbye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.
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For more information about Luke's English Podcast Premium, go to teacherlukecouk slash premium info.