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I just wanted to say I just bought the soundtrack and I love it 🥰

New episode rumoured to drop this Tuesday

The gang seemed confused by the idea of massive armies sending out a champion to fight a battle for them. Daniel concedes that this probably happened, but everyone agreed that it probably didn't happen until later in history. First of all, I don't feel like the idea that each side would send out a champion is really all that crazy. The rationale being: if our very best guy can beat your very best guy, then ultimately, we'd would probably win the battle anyway, so why bother with all the bloodshed? As far as it not happening until later in history, according to Judeo-Christian history, the story of David and Goliath (perhaps the most famous example of this kind of thing) was said to have occurred around 1025 B.C. - approximately 975 years before the events of this film. Whether or not you believe in David and Goliath as historical fact, it would have been a story circulating for almost a millennium. To me, that at least suggests that the idea of sending out a Champion to fight a proxy battle for your army wasn’t something that would be completely unheard of at the time.

First of all, I just wanted to say that I thought Erin and Daniel were fantastic guests! I loved the energy they brought, and I really hope that they can be brought back sometime in the future. In defense of John Cusack's accent work, or lack thereof, I have to admit that I was totally cool with it. The movie had already made the decision that English was going to equal Roman/Latin, but back then, just because someone was "Roman," didn't necessarily mean that they were "from Rome." The Roman Empire stretched from the Portugal to the Middle East and from the British Isles to Africa. Once a culture was conquered by the Romans, they weren't expected to completely abandon their native language, so I'm sure that a pure "Roman accent" would be pretty hard to pin down. I mean, how many accents are there in the America? Hell, accents can change within the same state. So, maybe, in the world of Dragon Blade, to show a difference in class, Roman's born in Rome - like Brody's character - have English accents, while Roman's born in Gaul or some shit have a more Chicagoan, every man type of flavor. The fact that they all sing in Latin still makes no fucking sense though...

hmmmmmm.. i thought they did a good job, and everybody is being mean

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D’ARCY CARDEN returns to the show to let The Boys fix The Good Place.

Possible correction/omission: The actor who plays the blind kid is named Jozef Waite, and per his bio he is "English-Chinese" and born in England (though raised in China since the age of 1). Per this photo of his family, looks like he's half Chinese, half English by parentage. Apparently he and his sister are both pretty popular kid actors in China. I'm guessing he was the whitest child actor they could find in China, so they threw a wig on him and put him in this movie.

There is a line (again maybe cut from the American edit) when they encounter the two armies at the start and identifying them and what language they speak. I think it is a given that the Silk Road Protection Force is versed in various languages. What I find strange is that it seems that Jackie Chan is the only character than can speak Latin. Or that he knows enough to have some broken communication with them. However, his second in command that betrays them, Yin Po, met Adrien Brody's character and made a very complicated plan with him to set up the Silk Road Protection Force and take over the area. So Yin Po knew Latin as well? He seemed to be speaking much better "Latin" than Jackie Chan as well.

About that, I was annoyed by the quality of the slow-mo. Was it just my copy, or did it seem like they shot the movie at too low of a framerate to produce smooth motion?

The in-universe language barriers in this movie drove me insane. I've seen enough Jackie Chan movies to know that he can deliver lines in English, even if he has a strong accent. And yet, when he's speaking to John Cusack he has obvious grammatical errors. I'm pretty sure he's reading the script correctly, and that the writers of Dragon Blade wanted to emphasize that Hua An and Lucius speak different languages. Ok, except... The dialogue in this movie is already so bad. The only thing that could make Hua An's monologues less inspiring was the addition of grammatical errors. Were we supposed to think Huo An had never heard Latin before? In that case, is Lucius teaching him the language by speaking louder and gesturing? Or, are we accepting that Huo An has to have learned some Latin to get by as a Silk Road Protection Force Captain? Well then it would have been so easy to put in a line explaining his near-fluent speach instead: "As more Romans are traveling the Silk Road, I decided to learn Latin." Or, just gloss over it and write the best dialogue you can! It's not like they're trying to explain why the Roman centurions speak english, except for when the sing in actual goddamn Latin. Were the modern-day scientists actually speaking Latin?

Without the slow motion, this movie would have been 45 minutes long.

When Great Wall came out, Matt Damon got a lot of shit for this Chinese movie being whitewashed. I remember articles at the time saying that getting any big American Hollywood star to be in a Chinese movie for Chinese audiences kind of legitimized the movie to a degree. It wasn't that Matt Damon injected himself into this; it's that Chinese audiences thought that was cool. I'm not sure American audiences have a cultural equivalent. Stunt casting an international star in an American movie typically only works for international audiences or for 1% of Americans.

I know this won't mean much to anybody because most everybody probably watched the American edit, but they talk about the couple that bookends the film in the international cut. Yes while they use satellites and computers to reconstruct how the city looked there is a plaque that they uncover that basically gives a brief history of the city. This combined with the fact that it is mentioned they found out about the place from a book and legend would imply how they knew the story and the computer wasn't telling them the story. Their reason for lying about it is still a mystery. However the craziest part is how in just under 2000 years the city that seemed to be on level ground in the desert went to being in the snow covered mountains. That's the craziest part about the bookends.

I will back up everything you are saying here. I can only go by what I know from my friends and people I've met but most people do not know accents. I should say people who study English or particularly like a certain country will notice a difference but the average person will think it's all English. There might be "He sounds different than him" but not the the point of thinking about country of origin. Also, unless again they know English they will be reading the subtitles at the bottom of the screen and not so much care about how they sound. It's more about the look of the person and also a hollywood name. Which I find odd because I don't image John Cusack is a huge draw in China. I think it is more about "we have a hollywood star" than anything else.

Was Jason a big fan of the HP movies? I thought he listened to the audiobooks? Anyway, I've weirded myself out that I guessed who the guest was last week. I'm concerned that I know more about Daniel than I thought I did. Can I be unintentionally stalking him? What does that say about me? Am I okay? Should I lay down? So far my big take away is that I like Erin Darke.

Hearing Jason scream" Fuckkkk You! " at Harry Potter has changed me as a person. I think this movie turned him into a Deatheater. Frankly I don't blame him.

WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!

Three of my favorites from 2018 that haven't been and probably won't be discussed in Unspooled are Skate Kitchen, Blindspotting, and They Shall Not Grow Old. I'm kind of curious how they determined best reviewed movies according to Metacritic. I assumed it was based on the Metacritic score but First Reformed has a lower score than several movies on this list. So, I'm not sure why it's the best reviewed. Also, They Shall Not Grow Old is higher rated than anything in this episode but I assume it's incredibly limited release is why it didn't get mentioned.

Hearts Beat Loud was maybe my favorite movie of last year

I honestly could have listened to another twenty. I love hearing them talk about what they liked and didn't like about these movies, even when I don't agree with them. To that end, what are some great 2018 films that haven't been discussed on either list so far? They're not great, but I expect they'll touch on Green Book and Vice anyway. I hope they talk a bit about what works and doesn't work in First Man, which I mostly enjoyed. So what else? Death of Stalin? Isle of Dogs? Wildlife? Maybe Hearts Beat Loud? I don't think any of these films belong on the AFI list, but I'd still like to hear Paul and Amy talk about them.

loving the sound quality on the stitcher feed! makes me feel like i'm listening to the podcast on satellite radio!

Well this episode certainly got me mumbling food and good on the bus.

doin' the greatest good

Um. No audio either now? I knew that place was going to take a hit with the return of Cody... but damn.