Cordkillers 617: Congratulations, You Found the Trope

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1:01We are just trying to find out how we can keep watching what we want, where we want, whenever we want, on Tom Merritt, where's good stuff, Brian? Oh my goodness. The good stuff is right here on this very program. You know, we keep getting new people who say really nice things in the comments. Thank you to everybody who's the first time. If you are now go get us in your ear faces at a podcaster app of your choice. Yeah. Move your ear to your face and put us in it. Yeah. It's that easy. Yeah. That's all we ask. Let's check the supply run. Supply run. Supply run. Supply run. I love this question. While on the press tour for the Odyssey last month, Christopher Nolan was speaking with a podcaster named Zhongshu and had this to say about common film criticism we see on the internet these days. Nolan said the criticism that's often leveled at movies in general is, oh, the character

2:05has to be made sympathetic. So the character is manipulated in different ways or changed in different ways. And that's a fundamental flaw of film criticism in a way or storytelling criticism because to be able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism. He continued, I'm thinking more of amateur criticism because they feel they've identified the mechanism. They feel that invalidates it. That can be true of certain elements and film grammar, film language evolves with that. So when a trope becomes too familiar to an audience, then it has to be changed. But we do as filmmakers avail ourselves of that common language. We build on that understanding. Our audience has seen many films and they understand that language. So Brian, what do you think? What is the line between tired trope and fundamental building block of storytelling? So I think that the question itself kind of tickles me because it implies that there

3:10is a line. And that's one of the hardest things like when, when, let's say television, when the old dinosaurs, the three broadcast giants roamed the earth, there was a bright line. You either had a show or you didn't have a show. You were on primetime or you were not primetime. You were the part of the cultural conversation or you were not. And there were people who flip switches and sign documents saying you're in or you're out. One of the strange things with YouTube is that there is no line. How many, what time should you post your video? Look at the heat map of when your audience shows up and you know, do you want to get everyone that particular day or do you want to get them when they're peak energized? That's up to you. And that is very, very difficult because when we play a game, we tend to like to want to know the rules and know whether we're winning or losing. And now, because Christopher Nolan is such a pardon the apropos analogy, a god of Olympus at this point, then he is subject to miniature demi gods in the form of media criticizers,

4:14people who can speak enough of the language that they can allow their denizens of the internet to feel like they're on to it or they know enough about the trope to call it a trope. That's one of the things that drives me nuts is a trope is inherently a dismissive way to phrase that thing. But it's also an established best practice would be the best way to do it. That's why we're watching Get Smart right now. When I find myself, whereas I as a child would have derisively rolled my eyes at the predictability of these beats, I now as an aging out adult, as a withered old Gen X, I'm able to nod that frame for frame. There's no more efficient way to telegraph the hypnosis is happening than this cheesy trope. Now if you are an amateur, if you're a bit player in the game, just knowing that it is a trope, you get to feel smug and satisfied. We see this all the time in magic circles, magic competitions.

5:16You know that there could be such a thing as a mark deck of cards and you smugly point and say that's not a real authentic brand, that's that Bobo brand. And then you're done. But in meanwhile, the wise ones are going to use that as leverage to get you to fall even deeper for the trope, which is what we're seeing now with pen and teller Fulis. Those who are performing the effect that everybody knows is an out of the box thing and they're using that to get everyone to lower their guard so they absolutely get fried when they disprove that method. What Christopher Nolan is grousing about, sorry you don't get to have legitimate complaints when you're a god of Olympus, you only get to be perceived as grousing. He's grousing about the fact that everybody thinks they're well informed but they're not. The first generation wizards and he's like, no, you don't understand. I'm doing a deeper thing, but you're not smart enough to see how I use the established thing to do the deeper thing. So what?

6:17That's how it goes. Welcome to the game, Mr. Nolan. Congrats. There are lots of players. How much of that made any sense, Tom? Well, I found it apropos. The grouse is what I would probably sacrifice to a god of Olympus. So that's, you know, perfect. No, at all, it all made sense. I think it's interesting that you took it as like Nolan grousing and get used to it. Perfectly valid perspective, which is like, what are you complaining about? Right? You know, yes, people say things that aren't exactly accurate or well informed. Welcome to the internet, Christopher Nolan. But on the other hand, something, something struck a chord with me that I think it would have struck a chord whether Nolan or anyone else was saying it, which is that sort of tired criticism that I hear from peers, right? So this isn't a power level thing. This is a like, I'm talking to someone on the same level and we're talking about something and they say, but they used a trope.

7:17I'm like, okay, that's like saying they told a story. Did they tell it well or did they tell it poorly? And I think Nolan also identified that yes, these building blocks of storytelling can get overused. And at some point, you're like, I am tired of seeing this kind of story. And I have seen this kind of story too much. And you have to rest it for maybe a decade. And then suddenly it comes back. And you're like, ooh, zombies. I haven't heard a good zombie story in a long time. Zombies are a trope, right? And at a certain point, you get tired of zombie stories because everybody's doing them. But then once they get rested, they come back. It's not that the zombie trope is bad or good. It's that you're tired of it. So yeah, I identify, I rang true with that of like, yeah, I think he's, whether he's God of Olympus or not, I think he's correctly identified that like just because you identified a mechanism doesn't mean it's bad. You need, and what he didn't say, which, which I would add is you have to then evaluate

8:19the mechanism. Did it, they use it well? Was it appropriately used? Was it in the right place? And that's where your criticism comes in versus just saying like, ooh, it's a romantic comedy. There's my criticism. It's like, okay, great. But was it a good one or a bad one? Well, and I wonder how much of it, because being just a demigod here on YouTube, we still have to encounter and actually read the YouTube comments. And we have also felt that very Nolan-esque feeling of saying, if somebody does the most surface level base thing I observed. And it's like, yes. And if that's the level of concern, I am offended that you refuse to engage enough with my art to, or whatever my commentary is, to actually, you miss the point. And it's got to be, I know how enraging that is as somebody reads the comment. And then meanwhile, God of Olympus, Mr. Nolan, he doesn't see YouTube comments. And if he does, they really are. They're like nanobots that he just brushes off.

9:20But he does read the comments of the critic class and the critic class doing the equivalent of a dumb surface level observation seems to have gotten under his skin. Well, I think you're identifying the human element of this very well, which is sounds like Nolan read some blogs the first time, right? Because you and I are both reacting of like, yeah, that's been going on for a while. It's not new. But I also liked, you know, again, pulling away from the human into the Vulcan. And just like, yes, but are words that Nolan strung together in syntactic order? True. Like, yeah, he's dead on. Like it may not be new, but I do get frustrated when I am engaging not even in YouTube comments, but just in a conversation with someone in real life. And they're like, yeah, but that's the, you know, boy meets girl trope. I'm like, okay. And let's keep talking about it.

10:21Was it a good boy meets girl trope? Did they turn it on its head? Did they do something creative with it or did or were they lazy and they left it at that? And I think a lot of times amateur and professional critics for that matter do use that as a shortcut of like, it's boy meets girl, meaning they didn't do anything interesting with it, right? Not that the trope itself is bad. But yeah, I think sometimes people feel like, oh, I identified the kind of story it was. And you got to, you got to keep going if you want to have a more interesting conversation. Yeah. And I would imagine that if you are somebody who deeply appreciates the complicated jazz of Miles Davis, let's say, and you played that music for somebody who was accustomed to very rudimentary pop understandings of music. And they correctly said, what even is that? It was all boo-dee-dee-le-le-le-le-le-le. There's no melody. Right. Yeah, yeah. And he's not wrong, which is what makes it all the more agonizing is that like that's the point.

11:22You're comparing Nolan to the critic of jazz? No, I know. Are you comparing the critic who talks about the trope? Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, so I'm saying that what Nolan is expressing and he's not wrong to do so is that it's agonizing when somebody is refusing, you know what it is? It's a bit like I get, again, parallels to YouTube comments, the number of comments of people chiming in on videos that they proudly are refusing to watch and announcing and explaining in detail why they don't need this video. And I just respond. Sounds like he didn't watch the video. Then they come back a second time. And so yes, because nothing will change my body. I'm like, good day to you, sir. I mean, you know, 50% of those are bots. So it's it's hard to tell anymore if you're talking to an LLM versus versus something else. But yeah, it is, it is frustrating. And you know what? This is going down a little bit of a side rabbit hole.

12:24But since you and I have taken to switching roles occasionally, I'll, I'll go galaxy braid on this. I think we are living in the liminal space between having a platform being a status symbol and everyone understanding that everyone has the platform. And so both the ability to comment on YouTube makes you feel like finally I can have my critics say on the world. And you and I read it as like, damn it, they have published their comment. And therefore it must be important. So I must respond to it. And everyone younger all my nieces who are growing up in this world where they're swimming in this are going to laugh at us and go like, yeah, just because someone publishes something doesn't make it valuable. There are other ways to decide if something is valuable or not. And my generation has decided it's x, y, z, et cetera. And I think that's a little bit of what Nolan is dealing with is like, wait, everyone thinks

13:24there because they're publishing that they're, their word is valuable. So some of these publishers don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. The specifically everyone, I don't know. I've mentioned this before, but there's a, there's an episode of King of the Hill where some of these teaching Bobby how to be funny and he's got this. There's ha ha ha, triple ha and all of this technical stuff. And then in front of the audience, Bobby throws it out the window and starts making fart impressions. And everybody's laughing in the guy shouts, Bobby, don't accept their laughter. It's healing formed. But there is a strong anchor of media being precious among the olds us, our generation where an older, yeah, yeah, where it's like, I remember being blown away when I found out that scam school was on the in-flight entertainment for Virgin America. That was the pinnacle of I can't believe I made it. And then it was last year.

14:24I think we were talking about somebody having some airline having YouTube on it. And it was like, oh, none of it matters. You could just, yeah, also what's the difference between on this seat and on your laptop? Yeah. It's those anchors take a long time to let go of. Yeah, they, they really do. And I think it's perfectly natural. This isn't a, you're so stupid. You don't understand. It's like, no, we, we have an ingrained habit. When I was growing up, as Brian mentioned earlier, there were three dinosaurs that controlled television. So if you got on TV, chances are people saw it, a significant number of people saw it. So being on TV made you famous. And I remember actually the first time I ever got on tech TV back when it was ZD TV. And then afterwards realized like, yeah, I was on TV and I could walk around San Francisco and no one's going to recognize me because we had already splintered with cable, the

15:26attention that went on that now imagine taking that time's infinity, right? Now, there are things that are popular and there are people you can recognize because they're popular. But just being on the internet, publishing something on the internet doesn't mean anything. We have to move that measurement to did a lot of people watch it. Why did a lot of people watch it? People engage with it. There's a whole new vocabulary being built around that. Yeah, it makes me, I've been thinking quite a bit about like, what is the new impressive in an age where there's a few waves that I was lucky enough to catch. You know, a skim school was right place, right time on, oh my goodness, I see you just put in the chat, a photo of Night Attack album, All's Well on Delta Zip Flight, Intertavit. That's amazing. That's great. That's amazing. But you catch the wave of YouTube and when there's a, a, a dorth of, of qualified, I,

16:30I like to think of it as the realm of B plus. If you show up on time early and you're pretty good, you can plant a flag and then you can ride that until it gets crowded. Then A plus is the land of zero, some thinking and everybody cutting throats to get ahead. Then same thing happened on YouTube shorts and I feel and I've not been quiet about this that the same thing is going to happen on YouTube live and that's part of the reason. It's funny because when we, when we move this program over to the modern rogue channel, somebody is like, why does your show look so good? Why are you trying so hard to look like a TV show? Nobody is watching. And I'm like, yeah, dummy because that's how you get people to watch is you put on your Sunday best and you dress for the job you want to have. And so it'll be interesting to, to see what the new status symbol is in that regard. Yeah. And when does it go from well now everyone looks good. I want it to look a different way, whatever way that is.

17:31In fact, earlier you were mentioning about podcasting and RSS feeds and listening and part of me was like, there's a big chunk of people for whom podcasts means watching a video on YouTube, like not even not even like turning off the video and listening to it. Like I watch podcasts is a thing people say now and everyone knows what it means. In fact, we're the inacredisms where we think of podcasting as being audio in this day and age because it has come around that way. Where celebrities and musicians and everyone are doing what we would have called vlogging back in the day. But vlogging has now taken on a very different meaning that's edited and you know, a slice of life. And they're just doing what we're doing right here, just talking into a mic and that's podcasting or pod racing. Depending on that. That's pod racing. Oh, yeah. One last note. It is interesting as the shifting modalities and somehow we drifted all the way from

18:33Christopher Nolan, but then he's the one who made it. Well, we can't stay up there on Olympus, right? There's not enough atmosphere. That's right. The air is too thin. Demi gods have to actually breathe. But even the the new, I don't know what you would call this, heads up display for the podcast that we're doing, I like the fact that a quick side story then we'll move forward. When I was out in Huntington Beach, I went to a barber who just had YouTube rolling on at all times. And I was thinking in this case, it was always pleasant and always on theme. And I was like, what would happen if cord killers was up there? And then I remembered imagining somebody coming in and say, is there a Skype conversation happening over there? What is that? And now as we get closer to it with the lower thirds, the crawls, all of that stuff, it's like, oh, you're watching a, a Newsy thing where let me guess. Are they going to talk about topical events and all that stuff? So hopefully, hopefully that's working. Anyway, sorry, Mr. Nolan, your complaints didn't last all the way to the 20 minute mark.

19:37Yeah. But I liked them just just for the record. Yeah. And I understood what you were getting at. However, what I like more is patrons, people who say, you know what? I'm tired of being a middleman where someone pays to advertise to me. And that's how Brian and Tom get funded. I want to fund them directly. I want to be the people who make their independent thing happen. And I could say, I'm the boss of them. And there's only one way to do that. Patreon.com slash cord killers. Yeah. And guess what, man, in just what, 60 days, no, no, no, less than 60 days, we're less than two months away from a big change happening to the way Patreon does its things. And I'm going to go ahead and call this Tom. Anybody who is subscribed before the big change gets to be a member of the before timers club. You do not get to be, there will be an after timers where it's like you showed up late,

20:37but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to have special gifts for everybody who is a before timers. So you don't know what that means. Don't worry about it. It's going to be awesome because we're going to make big changes when we flip a switch coming up in just over a month. We'll talk about it in after talk, which you before timers already can access with your own RSS feed. We'll explain it. But head on over to patreon.com slash cord killers. Keep us loud live and independent and be a before timer because the after times are coming. Yeah. And we might call down the after times with our demigod powers at any moment. At any moment. At any moment. Yep. Patreon.com slash cord killers. I see it's time to go to the search party. Yes, indeed. Hi, guys. It's Paige from Gagley Squad. Oh my god, I've been binging the funniest TV show. FX's adults. It's about five roommates living in New York. I mean, who would ever live in a house without many roommates? They're leaning on each other to navigate love, work, friendship, and family.

21:40Not relatable to me and Hannah at all. While tackling pressing questions of your 20s, like what if the person who inherited your fake ID is cooler than you ever were? Why does being around your family make you regress into your worst self? And how do you tell your roommates that you have other friends? FX's adults, all episodes now streaming on Hulu. Book a love by guest property with Virgo and you get a top rated vacation rental that's love for all the right reasons, like being in a great location or having great amenities. Oh, I love my Virgo for the view. Good reason. Ooh, and the sauna. Sweet. Another good reason. And that it's one of those goods to honest with the hot rock thing. Oh, well, the good hot rock thing. Fancy. That's also a reason. Don't worry about surprises. Book a Virgo you'll love with the love by guest filter. If you know, you Virgo. SL Brian, did you catch the teaser for Harry Potter in the Philosopher's Stone HBO Max

22:48TV series premiering December 25th? I did Tom and number one, I was confused because I thought, is it this show out? And then I thought, no, Brian, you've just been reporting on it with Tom for two years. Great. Now this is what this gave us some casting news as well for season two, which will be called Chamber of Secrets. So they're going to name the seasons based on the books, the way they named the movies based on the books. Well, we'll be played by Lenny Russian. They they easily will be played by Bonnie Hill and Tom Riddle will be played by Billy Barrett. Do you recognize any of those names? I do not because I am an old man, Tom. Yeah. I know you are going to point out the sorcerer's stone philosopher stone thing, weren't you? That is correct. Know your teammate. They say. So yeah. I guess you're right. The TV show is only going to name season one after the UK version of the book because they are calling it philosopher stone everywhere. That is interesting.

23:49I watched this teaser Brian and I was struck by how familiar it was. So when you said, I thought I had already, this was already out. I thought maybe it was a commentary on how it doesn't look different than the movies in any appreciable way. Well, although and to be honest, we might have been blind to the fact that that was a giant checkpoint to pass because reminder that TV shows often don't look as good as movies. And it means something that this seamlessly could stand shoulder to shoulder with those mega juggernauts of blockbusters. And being a TV show, they means that we're going to have a lot more comfortable schedule. We're going to get to spend more time with the characters, more time in the weeds, more times with interesting interpretations and more depth. I got to tell you, I'm well pleased with what I saw. Yeah, on the annoyed board continuum, too unfamiliar, too different.

24:51And suddenly I'm annoyed like why they have to change everything to familiar. I'm on board. I'm like, well, this doesn't look any different at all. There's just enough difference here that I'm not all the way on the end of the board spectrum. But I did have a little bit of that reaction of like, okay, so mechanical is kind of like mechanical and wow, Dumbledore's really like the later Dumbledore's like almost one for one. And everybody else, you know, we can get a huge look at it. There's some different ethnicities of people playing certain roles, which is noticeable. But otherwise, it seems like everything is kind of looks the same. So we'll see. Maybe it's great. It's certainly the same story. And I don't know that they care if I think this is a lot like the movies because honestly, what they're looking for is super fans and new fans and super fans are not going to care. In fact, the super fans probably prefer that it looked like the movies, right?

25:52Yeah. And there does need to be a substantial enough reason to give the super fans an excuse to go again, even if they're only going to say, right? All those things that got cut out of the movies for time, you're going to get them. That's going to be the pitch there. HBO Max's lanterns continues to grow the third episode premiered Sunday, August 30th to 10 million viewers globally, seven million of them coming from the US. That marks a series. Hi, it grows from week to week since it premiered on August 16th. The pilot episode has now reached more than 20 million viewers worldwide. We're going to talk about this in a little bit during buried treasure as well, but lanterns, I feel like not a stealth success, but a bit of an unexpected level of success. Yeah, we'll talk more about our opinions about it, but by all just looking at the headline chatter, there's like a one in 10 sour grapes didn't exactly get my favorite character

26:57right out there. But sure. I mean, even if it's pretty low as far as like comic book productions go, don't you think? Yeah. Well, and I think the one critique I've heard more than once is that it's uneven and having completed the fourth episode last night, I'll grant you it's uneven, still loving it, still loving it. Yeah. Netflix has decided not to move forward on its forgotten realms TV show, but it's pursuing a different D and D adaptation Ravenloft, which will center on the backstory of Dark Glory, Destraud von Zarovich, a popular vampire from the Ravenloft series or setting or however you want to think about it. And deadline reports that Alfonso Cuarón, the director of Roma is going to executive produce the Ravenloft series for Netflix. I wonder if that was a kind of a pivot. If you have a and keep in mind, I'm not speaking from understanding or paying a lot of attention to stuff I played for gotten realms as a kid, but but if you have a story that is about

28:01a world, producer eyes, producer ears here, oh, expensive, but if the central thing is about a person, affordable, let's crush it on that. And if the audience is there, then we could do your whole world thing. I mean, in this case, though, they were developing forgotten realms. So wasn't I here expensive? It was I see. Yeah. They were already laying it out. So that could be a big part of this. Super girl coming to HBO Max Thursday, September 10th. And that might already have arrived, depending on when you're listening to this, it will premiere on HBO linear TV on Saturday, September 12th at 8 p.m. Eastern time. If you are the kind of person who still watches HBO and linear cable, I wonder if this is going to get the HBO bump. There's a lot of stories that I have seen in movie theaters that I thought were pretty annoying, not very good. But then I watched the exact same show on HBO because it was on the small screen or the convenience screen that I could do other things during.

29:02I thought, that's cute. And I wonder if super girl will be that's cute. I think that Christopher Nolan should have said this too. I think we underestimate just how much of an effect it has on our brains when we're sitting on our couch surrounded by our home versus being in a theater. Being in a theater raises your expectations. You think I'm in a very formal setting. I'm out in public. This must be really good, right? You're getting all of these status symbols when you're out in the world. When you're sitting at home, you're like, hey, how could be? I'm able to watch it in my house. Like, oh, that's pretty good. It just totally changes the formula that goes through your head. No matter what you want to do, that just happens. I've actioned Moana speaking of movies that may or may not have disappointed you. Will arrive to buy or rent on digital platforms, including prime video, Apple TV and Fandango on September 8th. That is today as we are recording this. So it should be pretty much out for everybody. And then the 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD release on October 6th.

30:07Now that one I anticipate will not get a halo just because if what you want, if it's on a small screen and you're watching it for comfort food, the most comfortable flavor will not be the one with any changes. And I imagine the big market for buying this is kids who want to rewatch it over and over and over again because Moana was their favorite, which is a total market for that. Finally, we got a trailer for Godzilla minus zero. This is the sequel to Yamazaki Takashi's Oscar-winning Godzilla minus one takes place in 1949. It will make its world premiere at a New York film festival, the 64th New York film festival on September 26th, then open in Japan on November 3rd during the Tokyo International Film Festival. But you won't have to go to the festival. It'll be available everywhere. And then it gets its wide release in North America on November 6th. What do you think of the trailer? Tom, I wish. I wish that I had not been informed about this and happened to be watching an IMAX feature.

31:11Because I don't know if you noticed. Like, number one, I loved the fact that the trailer was released in America with no dubbing with just subtitles. You're like, this is a foreign film. You're like, okay. And then it was also in widescreen. And you're like, okay, maybe kind of artsy. And then you piece together. It's a Godzilla thing. But then about the 2 thirds mark, they said Japan's first ever shot in IMAX. And then it changes the aspect ratio. Gets all the way full screen and just hits you with these mad over the top visuals. I did not, I mean, I got the surprise of watching it on the small screen and imagining how impactful that would be in a big theater. But man, I think this looks really great that for I loved all the previous stuff. Yeah, yeah. I think it looks pretty good too. Man, excited about it. All right, let's move on to the buried treasure. Mm-hmm. Most people want to know why they suddenly got rich. Buried treasure. Buried treasure is the portion of the show where we talk about something we have seen

32:14because it might be a little treasure that you would like to watch as well. Brian, what you got? Yeah, well, we're both, I continue to watch the pit. But I stumbled across this Denzel Washington clip where he's barking about AI Slop and I realized, oh, this is great. It's AI Slop that is kind of counter programming. Denzel Washington took almost no part in the creation of that video. It's a clip from one of his movies, a very good movie. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I probably just annoyed Denzel Washington because that's probably the one thing he doesn't want is to have his name associated with what some random person using his likeness without his permission says. But if you look, just search for Denzel Washington AI Slop, we watched it at the beginning. It's a, you could, regardless of where you are on the logic, it's certainly an impassioned pro AI storytelling message. How did it land with you, Tom? Yeah, I, at first thought it was very clever, you know,

33:19in kind of trying to associate the argument for being lazy with the young person who's mad and then the older, more experienced person trying to explain like, no, no, no, this isn't why we make art. We make art because we are having fun with it, right? And the tools help us to have more fun. So it's not about being lazy and cheating art. I also like the part at the end where he's like, no, you're, you're worried about studios not needing artists. This is going to make it so artists don't need studios. Those are great. I love those, I love those concepts, placing it all in the AI Slop certainly is going to get a lot of people talking about it. Like we are right now. There was a part in the middle where it started to feel a little bit propaganda to me. And my final thought was like, this is really fun for people who are already convinced of this argument and probably is going to do nothing to convince anybody who isn't. Yeah, there is, as we all know, what really matters is whether or not Brian gets to be

34:21right about a prediction. And so when I saw this, there's one moment where he talks about moving from drawing to photography and it tickled something in my head. And so I chased a white rabbit of a clip from shock G of digital underground, rest in piece. And it led me to, this will be my actual pick. There's a movie called Copyright Criminals about Kippop sampling culture from the early 90s. You can find it on YouTube. The full movie just came out four years ago from the original creator. But let's watch this 30 second clip here of it. The argument that a sampler is no different from any other instrument is absurd. It's absurd because no other instrument allows you simply and easily to take someone else's life's work and put your name on it. Perhaps it's a little easier to take a piece of music than it is to learn how to play a guitar. So true.

35:21Just like it's probably easier to snap a picture with that camera than it is to actually paint a picture. But what the photographer is to the painter is what the modern producer and DJ and computer musician is to the instrumentalist. And I think that's particularly interesting sentiment because all of the album Sex Packets by Digital Underground is composed almost 100% of samples from Parliament, Funkadelic albums. And so anyway, that's pretty interesting. Maybe dive into that if you want to know what rattles around in Brian's brain. Yeah. It reminds me of Found Art, you know, or Mosaic's where people take pieces of other materials and rearrange them into art and complaining about it at a certain level is a little bit like saying, Hey, I made that tin can. That was my life's work. And then you put it in your art and took credit for it. I watched the first episode of lanterns and found it to be quite interesting.

36:27Got a little slow in the middle. So I was some of the criticisms you've heard about it being uneven. I can relate with. But I really liked a lot of the themes and the way they were treating them. I like the mystery. I certainly like the twist at the end and the, you know, the sort of the time jumps that they they did in there. So I will I will likely continue it. I don't know how fast I don't think I'm going to catch up. I know because it's an hour long episode, it's hard for me to find the time for it. There's a lot of things competing for that time. So it wasn't one where I'm like, I got to keep watching it. It's not like silo where like new episodes out, got to jump on it. And you know what? I probably should talk about silo because they had the season finale, but hold that for next week. Maybe I'll give my brain a little chance to ruminate on it. Give everybody a chance to watch the finale because that season was very good. However, lanterns was, was a drinking. I get why people like it. And a couple of my friends have said it just gets better for them as each episode comes

37:29out. I actually, for my tastes, each episode does a little more. And you can kind of tell like, well, this doesn't make sense. Why it's in there. Then you read the next day, like finally, they bridge to this fan theory and this fan theory. The comic books now match the cartoon. And I'm like, okay. So so I found it each episode a little more tedious than the one before it. But by episode four, it speeds up again. Okay. Yeah. So it's going on behind the, not behind the scenes, but it, you know, in the background, so to speak, good to know. Hey, folks, if you got something we should be able to look at for, we'd love to mention it. Email it, cord killers at gmail.com. Brian, I hand you the talking rod. Oh, man, look, I've been squandering all my talking rods. So you know what? Here's what I'm going to say is by golly, I would like you guys to just watch the video version of this episode. Try it out, put it on, put on the TV and just let it run.

38:31If you're listening, stop listening right now, go put it on the TV and just let it run. See how you like it. And then write us cord killers at gmail.com and hit us up with any suggestions. That would mean an awful lot. That's the one ask that I have for you guys. I have one more ask for one person out there. And you know who you are. CB, keep listening to the audio, but then put the video up and sync it. Oh, just try to, you know, fast forward to where you are. And then just it's fun because once you make a work, it's like magic. Oh, I do the, I love doing that all the time. It's like, you get, you get somebody else like watch the thing and you could hear the audio of it playing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You kind of try to scrub and get them synchronized so you're watching together. Yeah. I don't know if that's any beach or not, but I know it's one of you. All right, let's scan the horizon. Brian, notice this one in the New York Times summer ticket sales have reached $4.76

39:37billion. That's up 26% from last summer after inflation for movies. And I've seen that headline on deadline of variety and everything. Last summer for movies ever. However, the New York Times pointed out that the number of butts in the seats is below pre-COVID levels compared with summer 2019 revenue was 9% higher in raw dollars, but 17% lower after inflation. And through mid August, theaters had sold 30% fewer tickets than in 2019. So adjusted for inflation is one of those things like, wow, we're actually not, you know, making as much more money as we thought. But they are definitely making more money because of higher ticket prices. And it's not just they raised the prices. It's also we're selling more of the already higher ticket prices like IMAX. They're getting people to go see IMAX movies more often where those tickets cost about

40:37$20 versus $12 that you might get for a standard movie. Five non franchises hit five non franchises have earned 1.4 billion this summer, whereas franchises like Spider-Man and Toy Story 5 supplied nearly 30% of the summer revenue, which is a bit over 2 billion, which tells me what we're seeing Brian is a nice even spread of like some franchises are very successful. Some are not some movies are very successful. Some are not. Nice even playing field. But the fact of the matter is fewer people are seeing movies than in 2019. They're just paying more for them. It's interesting because I feel so many impulses to both like and dislike it on the liking side. Man, we've talked on this very program about how we yearn for some aspects of the monoculture, having a shared reality of a shared cultural understanding across generations, all quadrants. But we also hate the fact that what brought us that was gatekeeping and mega, mega popular,

41:43overly popular stars who were either loved or hated for reasons totally outside of their control. I, I strangely am optimistic that the dollars are still there because the dollars being there, even if it's for fewer things, higher fidelity, spending money, that implies that they're still regardless of how we argue about politics or social media. It implies that there is an understanding, an underlying yearning for us to all share the same myths and legends, which seems terribly healthy. Yeah, I think so too. The BBC was doing a report, no, sorry, the economist was doing a report on radio where they talked about the fact that radio is still incredibly popular in areas of the world like Britain and Nigeria. So not necessarily related to GDP. And a lot of the reason is people like listening to something they know other people are listening to, right? There's just that sense of like when I listen to a podcast, yeah, I know other people also

42:45listen to this podcast, but they're not listening to it right now. So when you listen to the radio, you're like ever a bunch of other people are listening to the same thing at the same time. And live streams are like that too. You don't have to use radio to get that. Well, that's, I think that's, that's really interesting. So my daughter recently went to college and she's in an apartment for the first time. She's three weeks into being a freshman at university. And so with her roommate, they had to figure out like, well, what do we like to have on? And they, she made me go out and buy a radio for her because she wanted a thing that would have some kind of filtering that every so often she'd encounter new music. And she wanted a thing that somebody could walk into the room and say, who not that? And turn a dial and there's a limited number of other options, not all of them of the same quality. You could stumble upon something interesting and just stay for a song and move on. So I think that there is a yearning for not just the old you and I, but also the. Yeah. Interesting. Uh, here's another interesting approach to marketing your content over the next two months.

43:49Yahoo sports. Yeah. Yahoo. Still there, folks. That's right. I'm going to stream alternate broadcasts of four Apple TV sports events to Major League Baseball Friday night baseball games and two Major League soccer matches. The alt cast will have different play by play hosts. They will stream for free on the Yahoo sports website and on the Yahoo sports app and they'll even have their own unique camera angles provided by Apple TV for the Major League Baseball games. They are only going to show you the first two innings on Yahoo. Then you have to go to Apple TV and there'll be a big promotion of like, you know, try Apple TV for free. Keep watching the game. However, for the Major League soccer games, they're letting them stream the entire game. They'll still promote Apple TV during the game, but you get the whole thing. Yeah. Though I love those little artifacts that almost certainly are the result of high stakes back room agent driven arguments and this is the pretty much the same, but this person

44:52yelled louder than this person for these reasons. Yeah. I think it probably has to do with the rights in the contract to like Major League Baseball probably doesn't let Apple TV share their broadcast beyond a certain percentage of the content. So that's why you got the two inning mark. Whereas Major League soccer, who knows they might have some kind of stipulation that says, well, if you do, you have to share the whole game. You can't limit it. So it's interesting to see how they're going about that. And I think it's just really interesting to see that Apple TV is like one of the best ways to get people in is to make it give free samples. We are the Swiss colony of Apple TV. Yeah. No one, no one remembers Swiss colony. When I think Apple TV, I think immediately of Swiss colony. Did you ever have Swiss colony in the mall? It was the place that always had the free sample of cheese and sausage. Nope. Not at all. Although Apple stores are at the mall. Right. There you go. They probably are in the old Swiss colony locations. Yes. All comes back around. All right. Finally, gamers nexus worked with some independent researchers to look at data that

45:56smart TVs collect. Most of the ones they studied collect what you might expect. Your IP address, your location, nothing particularly shocking unless you just didn't know they already did that. Almost all of them do automatic content recognition where they monitor what you watch. And then they use that to target you with ads. Again, if you didn't know this was happening, maybe it's a little shocking, but it's very similar to what happens on the web where what sites you go gets logged and then they target you with ads based on what sites you go. But LG LG TV, my brand of TV goes above and beyond. They log the names of the Wi-Fi networks in range and the network names of any devices on your network. This is called fingerprinting. That way they don't have to set a cookie. They can go like whenever we see that combination, we know it's Tom. They also record and transcribe what is heard in a voice command for 15 seconds after you finish your voice command.

46:57Now there is a reason you record and transcribe. It is to make sure you get the command and it's to improve the service. You can take that and say this was a successful operation. They didn't have to redo it. We didn't hear them say it again. Tell the model that that worked. 15 seconds however feels a little long, don't you think? Well, here's the strange thing is I want to wherever that line is, I want to pull it back. It's like it's clearly too far. But then I played the game of like how far? Like do you expect it to be any less psychic about measuring sentiment? Like does it need to actually hear you say if it's still good anymore after calling for a show or is it enough data to watch that you made it 15 minutes and press pause and never really came back? It's 15 seconds after you finish your command. So that means it has heard enough of a pause that it's like, okay, the command is done.

47:58I'm going to execute it. Then it keeps going. Like, well, just listen in and see if they say anything else. And it's not using that to execute the command because it's 15 seconds after they executed the command. Well, so to me, it's like, yeah, you might need a couple of seconds there just to be sure you don't accidentally cut off the data, but you don't need 15 seconds. That's what we're doing. So in this case, an impotent gesture that people are tempted to do is to grouse about this on social media. I'm looking at you, Christopher Nolan. But it didn't interview. He didn't do it. Okay. Some people might decide to call up variety. Yes, exactly. But if you really want to make your voice heard, number one, you can let this affect your buying decision, but that's going to be a long time till your next cycle. But another way to vote with your actions is to keep an eye out for bootleg firmwares that that shut off all the smart TV features.

48:58Like they know this. That stuff. Yeah. No, that is a better way to do it. One other part of what gamers nexus found. And by the way, great great job gamers nexus on this. 135 minute video detailing everything that they did. They found that even if you keep your internet connection off, it logs all of this stuff. Just in case you turn that internet connection back on at any point and then it just sends it all. So some people are like, well, I keep the internet connection off. I just turn it on to get firmware updates from time to time. So we collect it whole years worth of data. Just give it all that all that payload. Yeah. So firmware. That's a good idea, Brian. Let's do that. All right. Let's hold for the chatter. Please. Hi, guys. It's Paige from Gagley Squad and oh my God, I've been binging the funniest TV show. FX's adults. It's about five roommates living in New York. I mean, who would ever live in a house without many roommates? They're leaning on each other to navigate love, work, friendship and family,

50:00not relatable to me and Hannah at all. While tackling pressing questions of your 20s, like what if the person who inherited your fake ID is cooler than you ever were? Why does being around your family make you regress into your worst self? And how do you tell your roommates that you have other friends? FX's adults, all episodes now streaming on Hulu. Anybody can make jeans, but you can't do it to religions. That famous fit pockets you recognize instantly stand out stitching. They try to get the full package, but only we have the legacy. Shop the iconography capsule now at true religion. Got an email here from Andrew says last week, Brian was speculating the Netflix and other streamers might start threatening to delete your watch history and account data when you cancel, just as a way of retaining you. Uh, I just wanted to point out that they already do this.

51:02I'll be into a much lesser extent Netflix keeps your account data for 10 months. If you cancel and I've definitely gotten emails from them when I've been canceled for a few months, warning me about that in an attempt to get me to come back. I still think slash fear annual planning exclusives are what companies end up doing to combat the cancellation train. I think I think you're probably right about that. Andrew, uh, PS pro tip when you subscribe to a service, cancel it immediately. Most all services will keep your subscription active until the end of the month or period you paid for. If it's a paid plan, no reminders, no robots needed, you can sign back up as soon as you want it again, only caveat is that sometimes if you're on a free trial, canceling early, we'll end it right away, but it should work if you actually paid for the service. I do that a lot. Andrew, that's a, that is a great pro tip. I highly second it. Yeah, I think it's a gamble that you're likely to win. It's going to be very rare that you'll cancel it and you'll say, get the bricks out. Yeah. And there have been a minority of situations where I've signed up canceled.

52:04And then I got to the end of the month and realized, ooh, I don't want to lose access or I went to use it and realized, oh, my subscription lapsed. Let me, let me re-sign up. So it can work, but it does reduce that like crap. I forgot to cancel that. And I got paid for another month. So that's a very good tip. Sign was among many people who wrote in about us talking about the anime, your name. Sign said, I'm so pleased that you both enjoyed your name. And now I have to do it to you. There are two more movies. Makoto Shinkai, the writer director of your name created it as the first film of what is known as Shinkai's disaster trilogy. Shinkai was deeply affected by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which inspired him to create these three films all grounded by the theme of natural disasters. Keep going in blind, but each movie only gets better than the last as he mastered his craft. My guys with the praise you have given your name.

53:06Wait until you see weathering with you and then finally, Suzume, lightning rarely strikes twice, but this time it struck three times in a row. Weathering with you is on HBO Max and Suzume is on Netflix. And then head to Andrew who pointed out that when we were talking about the ending, he's like, that director is well known for doing the ending that Tom thought was going to happen. And everybody was like, no, he's going to do it to us again. And then he didn't do it that way. Tom thought for once. And I'm like, oh, that explains it. Okay. I get it credible threat. That's great. Yeah. Lynn wrote in and so did Norman, by the way, said hi, all since Patreon is changing the way to support to monthly rather than per episode. Have you thought of offering an annual membership for court killers? Yeah. That'll be one of the things that we'll talk about in after talk, which is for bosses only specifically before time bosses. Yeah. And since Andrew just pointed out it's a great way to lock people in from gets like,

54:10I think it's a wonderful idea. Yeah. But yeah, actually, um, when all the monthly patrons on them on offer the annual option to people, because what's awesome about the annual option on on Patreon is you can give people a discount and still make more money as a creator because you're not paying the transaction fee every month. So you take that transaction fee divided by 12 that you would normally have to charge people and then give them a portion of that as a discount and everybody wins. Yeah. Um, Mark says here's an idea. If a company scuttles a film so they can write off the loss for tax avoidance, they should be required to release the film in public domain. It should belong to the general public. A lot of people worked hard to produce that work of art. They deserve to have it be seen. I would think the various unions and guilds would support this and help police this. Now it'd be a little difficult to enforce because stupid, it's stupid, uh, because stupid, I guess he means the studio, uh, but stupid actually works to, uh,

55:11could just lie and say that it didn't meet their quality standards, but maybe some sort of independent agency could determine the truth of that. Unfortunately, while 10 out of 10 agree with the sentiment, whenever you have a rigid structure, just think of the number of perverse incentives that open up if that were to happen. Everything from, uh, you know, deliberately tanking, I mean, imagine, yeah, to, yeah, sinister Brian suddenly has a billion plans to abuse this system with if there are any accountants that can, uh, refine my understanding of this, please do send court killers at gmail.com. My understanding is you don't scuttle the film as a tax of voidance. No, it's better. It's illegal to do that. Yeah. It's that the, your cost of doing business is, is subtracted from the money you make, uh, so that you can say like, yes, I, uh, my company made $100,000,

56:12but I spent $30,000 running the company. So you have to only give me $70,000 as a tax basis. Don't tax me on the part that I spent running the company. And when you scuttle the movie, you can now say that entire movie was cost. We didn't make any revenue on it. And you do that because you're like, we're not going to make that much revenue on it. That it's going to make much of a difference. So we might as well just count it all as cost. I would, I expect there's probably more nuance to it, but my simplistic understanding makes me think it would be hard to write a rule that doesn't affect the legitimate need to be like, yes, I spent money on paperclips that, that shouldn't be counted as revenue. That was a cost of doing business. Uh, and, and so there is a disincentive to do this because as we saw, you can make money on these movies if you properly market them. Uh, and so maybe they were wrong. And there's already, and so that's already a testament of like, well, wait, do we want to scuttle this movie? Cause then we get the backlash and maybe missing out on revenue if it was marketed

57:15properly. Uh, Frank says, hello, Tom and the gang. I figured that the series stargate SG one would be great as a full experience. The series itself was consistently good over its 10 seasons. And it's lowest rated episode is a clip episode that'll fill in various gas gaps. That's great. Anyway, I hope all remains well and that you and Brian keep on killing the cords, Frank. That's great. I like them. Uh, good. Yeah. SG one is a good one that we need to make sure we keep up on the list. It's on the list, but keep it in mind. Finally, oh, no, no, second penultimately Scott from Houston says, I'm currently listening to the after talk discussion about doing the original battle star Galactica. Ram for one season was canceled and then immediately revived as Galactica 1980 to make the production cheaper. From my point of view, as a nine year old kid, 1980 was season two of battle star Galactica. Since the shows are so intertwined, should they be combined for the full experience? Yeah. No. I totally get the reasoning for asking, but yeah, they are two separate series.

58:20We have to respect the law of what happened when we are, or we could drive each other crazy with all kind of like, well, but Roda was technically, you know, et cetera. And then finally, AB puppy says, what if while watching your TV, you get a prompt to shop the store, you click it and it sends a notification to your phone with the shop link. Show continues to play while you shop on your phone. Like a lot of things, you could cut out that entire middle step and say hypothetically, what if you just held your phone up and said, I want that. Guess what? That's reality right now. You have a robot. It's a genie. You just got to remember that you have infinite wishes. Yep. Our website is cord killers dot com. Our email address is cord killers of Gmail.com. And we are live at twitch.tv slash night attack and youtube.com slash modern rogue. Tuesdays at 5 30 PM Eastern 2 30 PM Pacific. I reckon we'll talk to you next time.

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