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I am here for you on this theory.

Unbelievably the fact that the Romans helped them build a city in 15 days might be the most historically accurate thing in this movie. Rome use to dominate in warfare back in the day. And the way they accomplished this was with heavy armor, lots of training and most importantly... engineering. The rules of ancient warfare meant that defending walls gave you a huge advantage. Like you need to have 3 to 5 times the number of troops to attack a properly built fort. And the Romans where the best in the business at building walls. Roman soldiers where said to be able to build a camp, while under attack, in as little as a couple hours. They built bridges, layed roads, made siege weapons on the go, nothing stood in their way. One time after the Germans told them that the Rhine river was the limit of roman power, Julius Cesar had his men build an overly elaborate stone bridge across 300+ feet of river in ten days, just to flex on the Germans. These guys where so serious about construction that each Roman legionary had as part of his equipment a shovel, alongside his sword and spear. And even weirder the way in which they fix the walls is somewhat accurate too. One thing the Romans really did right was concrete. They used to make everything with it, from the coliseum to the aqueducts, roman concrete was the shit. Much of it still going strong til this day! That's why roman buildings are so well preserved thousands of years later. So it is entirely possible for John Cussack's army to build reasonable walls in 15 days. No, the real question here is why exactly did Jackie Chan have to build the city in 15 days? no one ever came to check that the walls where done. And even though they spent all that time building this great defense, all of the fighting takes place out in the open in-front of the walls. Building the city, like this whole movie, was a waste of time.

I don’t know. There’s a kind of thrill in the anonymity the Internet provides. We can be anyone we want. For instance, you guys have no idea that for all this time, I’ve actual been star of screen and smaller screen Kirk Cameron! (The “H.” stands for Christ. As in, Jesus H.) Gotcha! Now, let me tell you about my favorite fruit: bananas...

Jones isn't even the craziest offender.

"“Boltneck was a masterpiece!”, Reynolds shouts – apparently having not checked the dud’s 34% rating on Rotten Tomatoes." https://deadline.com/2018/05/deadpool-2-trailer-ryan-reynolds-david-beckham-apology-boltneck-1202387395/

As a joke I was called the breakfast machine as a child. I think this was because when it was breakfast time steam would come out of my eyes and I’d vomit hot tea. Then, I would take a knife and cut open my chest. Inside would be four rounds of crisp golden brown toast. Also would shit out a Cumberland sausage

In for a penny, in for a pound

Thank you!!!

I think this would be like Repo! The Genetic Opera for me where I get far more out of the music without the visual “distractions”. The Last Five Years as well, come to think of it.

I like the music more and more each time I hear it! Thanks for picking this as I would not have known it existed

The guests brought up Steely Dan and the call sheet unprompted, so this has to be one of Scott's favorite episodes of all time.

I'm a million years late on this, but fuck this movie.

Maya is humbly downplaying the fact that her dad is one of the greatest modern jazz drummers of the past 40 years. In fact, when Scott introduced her, I was like, "Huh, someone else has that last name." Nope, same family.

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.

Much like this movie

Hmmm...I see what you’re saying and it honestly wasn’t my intention to try and silence anyone. I apologize if that’s how it came off. However, overall, I still stand by my point. I’m not trying to say that being able to discuss the artistic merits of ACO makes you a sociopath, only that we should recognize that there is a certain level of privilege there. I guess for me, it would be like a group of white people praising and clinically dissecting the racism in DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation , especially if it seemed like the only people praising it - or, at least, a disproportionate amount of those people praising it - were white. I’m not saying that those people aren’t capable of empathizing while also enjoying whatever else it is they’re getting from it, but it’s not really the best look. At least, not in my opinion. I feel like I should say something else simply because I might be silencing again. I swear to God, I'm honestly not trying to. I guess I just want to add perspective. I'm not saying anyone needs to be shut up, but I think everyone needs to be able to listen. Say your peace but make room for other voices that might be getting drowned out.

But the people who try to cure him are definitively judged to be wrong (by both the novel and the film) in the way they are portrayed. And Kubrick's decision to have Alex singing and dancing while he rapes the writer's wife gives that scene a charming and whimsical tone. I understand that it's meant to contrast with the horror of the act, but it's presented in such a way that I can absolutely see how some people would see Alex as heroic. Hell, the reason it got "banned" in the UK was because of all the copycat crimes. I'm inclined to say no. Every artist's intention is to make a great film, and we obviously don't see all films as great. So if the artist's intention is to make an anti-violence statement through satirization, and it doesn't come off that way in the film, why shouldn't we criticize the film for achieving the opposite of its intention?

Oh, I admitted that there are probably many women who like this movie. I'm just saying I've never personally encountered one. Nor did I assume there would be that many - which was more or less my point. What I meant was, I see a lot of men defending this movie, now and throughout my life, and that defense, at least in part, comes from a place of detachment borne out of privilege. When they watch an unnecessarily long rape scene, they can sit back and think, "Oh my, how dreadful. This really makes me think..." but they're probably not experiencing that scene from the woman's perspective. Statistically, they have probably never had to worry once in their life about being viciously gang raped. (Hell, they'll probably never even have to experience it as an actor.) For lack of a better word, this isn't "real" for them. Hell, even in the scene with the writer and his wife, most men are probably more likely to place themselves in the position of the writer than the wife. So, it's not so much "How terrible it would be to be raped?" but "How terrible it would be to be beaten up and watch my wife get raped?" We don't linger on closeups of her face, but on his. The women in each of these scenes are merely props. Their rapes are merely to serve to the men in the audience - to allow them to quietly ponder the complexities of morality. And because of the safety afforded by their privilege, they are able to view these scenes as horrifying yet "engaging." As I've said before, I simply don't feel like the underlying questions are really as deep or as interesting as defenders try to make them out to be. Certainly not to the extent that that they require much of what's presented to us in the film. If you need to see these things so graphically spelled out for you in order to consider these moral quandaries, then I really don't know what to say. However, I'm going go ahead and let the topic drop as I feel I'm teetering outside of my depth. (I want to be an ally, but I don't want to be presumptuous or speak out of turn) Really, I would love to hear from more women in general. And, if they like, it, I would love to hear why and what they respond to.

According to that table, women also only represent about 13% of the total number of people rating it on IMDb - which is in itself a bit of self-selection as it only represents the type of people who voluntarily go that site, create an account, and rate movies. What happens when you increase that sample size and broaden its scope to include people who don’t rate movies there? So, yeah, as Bleary suggested, I’ll take it all with a grain of salt. I mean, between The Canon and Unspooled, people (not saying anyone here) have always tended to be generally dismissive toward IMDb user rankings (which is based on ratings). So I’m not sure I agree with using it here as proof of popularity or whatever. You can’t use that list to and try to diminish the importance or worthiness of movies like Shawshank Redemption and Forest Gump and then turn around and use the exact same list to raise up A Clockwork Orange. It’s either a reliable gauge of a movie’s quality and popularity or it isn’t. We can’t pick and choose when want to confirm our own bias. I mean, I’m willing to concede that even if you broaden the sample size nothing changes at all. Maybe I’m just being presumptuous and I’m flat out wrong. All I can point to is, anecdotally, in my entire life, I have never heard an impassioned defense of this movie from a person that wasn’t a dude.

My comparison wasn’t based on their content. My point was KISS and Marilyn Manson are trash bands that wouldn’t have found success or be remembered at all if it weren’t for their shock value. If you take out everything shocking in A Clockwork Orange, it’s kindergarten philosophy with Monty Python aesthetics. (in my opinion)

I wanted to call A Clockwork Orange the KISS of movies, but I'm not sure if it even deserves to be called that. At best, it's Marilyn Manson. No one remembers him for being a great musician, just his "shock value." A Clockwork Orange is peanut-packed bro-core, drenched in sophomoric moral philosophy, that titters maliciously behind the guise of "Art." No thanks.

I like a lot of Amy's points she's made about past movies, but I disagree with a couple she made about this one. I don't think it's necessarily Kubrick or the movie that feels bad for Alex. It's Alex who feels bad for Alex. We are very entrenched in his head, which is why his injuries are made to look painful while everyone else's is either non-existent or portrayed as comical. Alex sees himself as a victim, and he expects everyone else to feel sorry for him and even like him (hence him referring to himself affectionately as "your faithful narrator," etc.). This is part of what makes the movie so great: we're forced to take this journey through a really fucked-up mindset, something books sometimes do, but movies so rarely get right. I also don't think his victims were portrayed as unlikable. The two women who didn't want to let Alex in were smart to do so. They know that the streets are running rampant with gangs and cons like this, and the second woman even directed Alex to a place he could get help before calling the police. The only one I throw shade on is the writer for being naive enough to let him in; his wife had much better instincts. I do agree that Kubrick probably empathized with Alex more than a normal person would, but we also know that guy's brain worked like no one else's.

It's weird, I'd probably defend this movie for a lot of what is in it, as a story, art, comedy, multi-layered, ironic, etc. There is a lot there and I thought it led to a great discussion via Amy & Paul - this may be my fave Unspooled ep yet! But like Paul, I've also grown up and maybe away from the film and I don't find it particularly enjoyable anymore. In the end, I think its points just maybe come off uninteresting to me, feel way too ironic, and perhaps too stylized. I do have a vague, unworked-out theory that perhaps, as Alex is the narrator, that EVERYTHING we see in this movie, is entirely his delusion. Thus, the world consists fully of his world view: misogynist art, phallic symbols, the victims who seemingly deserve it (as Amy noted), the recurring idea that he's better than everyone else. Or, like, take those two girls in the record store -- did he really pick them up? Or did he just convince himself he did? If we Rashomon'ed this movie, how would we see it from other characters' views?

I don't know why this show works as well as it does, but it's great. My job is pretty dull and requires very little cerebral activity, so I spend most of my day listening to podcasts while I work. This is one of my favorites. It makes me laugh and helps me to not think about the vortex of pointless entropy that is my life for a little while. thanks Paul, Lauren, Scott and Shevin! (Shevan?)

How can a tap dancer not cite Moses Supposes as an incredible number? Yeah, Make Em Laugh is a blast, but for technique and skill, you can’t touch Moses.