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THE LOST CITY OF Z

Before James Gray hung Brad Pitt on wires and took him to space, he first brought a different blonde to the Amazon (the rainforest) to encounter snakes, torrential rains, and an insect extracted from his ear during the shooting of he writer-director’s first Amazon (the company) Studios distributed film THE LOST CITY OF Z (2016).

Charlie Hunnam is that blonde, the -e is intentional as that’s the more common British spelling and despite an American accent convincing enough to fool Gray, a man of many impersonations, Charlie’s a bloke. His Percy Fawcett protagonist is joined by fellow Brit and future Batman Robert Pattinson as the pair of British explorers (and WWI soldiers) map out the Bolivia-Brazil border in an adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller of the same name (although the Americans, per its author, say the final word-letter as “zee” instead of “zed”). Also cast and a contemporaneous Spiderman is Tom Holland as Fawcett’s son Jack Fawcett, who will take the place of Pattinson’s composite character Henry Costin in Percy’s final voyage back into the jungle to seek the titular lost city.

For this sixth of eight Gray episodes, guest Shannon returns, host Ken stays ill, co-host Ryan gushes, and the lone Gen Zedder Thomas has read the book. Opinions are mixed this week, with guest Shannon believing the proper title of the film should be The Lost City of Zzz (snooze sound) while Ryan’s been Zed-pilled into believing it an amazing film.

Next episode, potentially a very special guest who might have watched that week’s film.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

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We Own the Night

For Season 16 Episode 5, TGTPTU dives deep into what writer-director James Gray considers the conclusion of his NYC crime trilogy WE OWN THE NIGHT (2007) while also starting the first of two planned sizzurp episodes with host Ken sick and sipping on some strong cold medicine. And joining this top to the third temporal pincer™️ pairing is special guest and inveterate bookworm Shannon.

For his third film, and second time being booed at Cannes (Harvey Scissorhands’ cut of The Yards being the occasion for his first), Gray after seven years in development had his first financial success with his unique, untrademarked combination of family drama, crime, and Greek tragedy. Together again but reversing roles from The Yards, Mark Wahlberg plays supporting as Cpt Joe Grusinsky while Joaquin Phoenix takes the lead as night club manager Bobby Green/Grusinsky. That slash becomes important as Bobby has adopted his dead mother’s surname prior to the start of the movie to distance himself from his brother Joe and their Deputy Chief cop daddy Burt Grusinsky, played by Robert Duvall. When Brother Captain Joe’s pursuit of a drug smuggler leads to his family being targeted by the Russian Mob who are also owners of Bobby’s club and his surrogate family, Bobby’s different last name comes in handy as he goes undercover for the po-po.

Oh, and it’s a period piece occurring in the late-80s set in NYC, so cover those squares on your Gray bingo card.

This ep, guest Shannon bumps on overwritten cop dialogue culled from Gray’s NYPD ride-alongs; former co-host Jack weighs in off-mic on Gray’s best use of CGI for rain during the car chase scene; Ryan suggests this is the last Phoenix role before he became too fussy, and Ken suggests it's the last of Wahlberg actually being interesting while effectively suppressing a cough; Ryan questions the merits of the temporal pincer movement being applied to Gray’s filmography; and Thomas considers it his favorite Gray film of the five he’s watched.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

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As if the fourth in a horror film series, this week TGTPTU goes to space! In Season 16, Ep 4 of Gray Matter (working title), Ken, Thomas, and Ryan discuss writer-director James Gray’s AD ASTRA (2019) as their unpatented pincer movement continues along the auteur’s eight-movie filmography.

Cowritten with a television writer of meager IMDB credits, Gray’s highest budget film to date sends astronaut and resting heart rate champion Roy Richard McBride (Brad Pitt) to the furthest reaches of the explored solar system in order to present him jump scares and (un)excusable homicides on his journey in a near future to retrieve his father played by Tommy Lee Jones who apparently can’t get enough being in outer space (see Season 2, Ep 8 for our Space Cowboys coverage). Because this is a Gray joint, you know daddy and son are gonna have some emotional reckoning. What you might not be expecting are a moon car chase, falling from near orbit to Earth, or kickflipping a shuttle’s flotsam while grinding a wicked rail of an asteroid belt (at least one of these happens, no further spoilers).

Like last week’s ep, Gray did not have final cut (i.e., the film rights; he might have had the professional, high-performance video editing software designed by Apple for macOS and iPadOS, although there is a strong possibility he had neither), which allowed for surprise research revelations by Ken, Tom, and Ryan and a wish for a hard media release of the Director’s Cut audio track.

Chris Nolan’s late-career cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (listen back to Season 12 for more on the lenser so nice they named him twice) shoots this beautiful film. Ad Astra garnered Gray’s first and to date only Academy nomination for Best Sound Mixing, which host Ken is in real time appalled by what films received Academy noms for Best Special Effects to the exclusion of this film’s many practical VFX. Also, Ken struggles to name Robert McKee to really land a movie reference despite covering Adaptation in both the pod’s Nicolas Cage (Season 3) and Meryl Streep (Season 8) coverage; Ryan has galaxy brain generational conflict ideas about the movie’s themes; and Tom tries placing the flick among the good space movies of the past decade.

Factoid: The film was released in France under the tile “Ad Astra,” which means “to the stars” in Latin and in Finland as “Ad Astra,” which also means “to the stars” in Latin.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.social
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Letterboxd (follow us!):

Podcast: goodpodugly
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias