Season 2 Premiere: Letterboxd Redux | Episode 18

Adam and Charlotte are back! This week there are no tears... but there absolutely might be some singing. They drill down into last year's Letterboxd stats and discuss some of their favorite discoveries of 2022.  

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Letterboxd : Perf Damage

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Transcript

Season 2 Premiere

Adam: All right. Welcome back. Yeah, welcome. This is the brand 

Charlotte: new season. Yeah. Season two of Perf Damage. Thanks for all of you that are joining us for our second season, and if this is your first welcome. 

Adam: Yeah. I'm very excited to get back into this. Mm-hmm. . 

Yeah. 

Charlotte: We had a nice little break. 

Adam: Our feedback has been really good over the break.

Adam: Really positive. 

Charlotte: It is good to be back and chatting movies with you, with headphones on . 

Adam: Yeah. We always do it offline too. Mm-hmm. , but we don't have the headphones. I know. That's what makes it special. Yeah, it really is. It's 

Charlotte: the headphones. It is because everything else is really the same except for the uncomfortable chairs.

Charlotte: That's true. The wine. 

Adam: Yeah. The arguments about whether that was good trash or bad trash . 

Charlotte: Yes, that is, that is a common argument over 

Adam: here. That's probably almost a nightly 

Charlotte: argument. Yeah. So thanks for joining us. If you're back, you listen the first season. Thank you. Thanks you for coming back.

Charlotte: And if this is your first time, this is a podcast where we're like we said in the intro, we're a husband and wife team. Yeah. I mean, we're a team. A podcast team. 

Adam: Yeah. But we're also a team in real life too. Yeah. 

Charlotte: And we love talking movies. We had a bunch of friends say, why don't you have a podcast?

Charlotte: And we thought, why? What are we gonna talk about? And they would always say, you know, this, these conversations we're having, because not only do we like movies, well, we love movies, but we love going deep into the history and finding things out about movies. Oh, we 

Adam: love research too. That's the thing. , we both share a passion for 

Charlotte: research.

Charlotte: Mm-hmm. . That's the best thing about research when you can share it with everybody. Yeah. Totally 

Adam: agree. Mm-hmm. , I love knowledge. It's much more rewarding 

Charlotte: that way. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So it makes it seem like it's not for, not right. You know? 

Adam: And I used to work in development Yes, you did.

Adam: For, for over a decade at a major motion picture studio. You did. So we thought we could bring that unique perspective. Charlotte works in restoration and preservation. Film. 

Charlotte: Restoration. Preservation. . Restore old movies. 

Adam: So we thought we could also offer that unique mm-hmm. perspective on film.

Adam: Yeah. So we tell little anecdotes about things that have happened to us while we've been meandering through our jobs. 

Charlotte: Right. Or if we discuss a film that maybe I've worked on part of it, or even that particular film, I'll share stories of that. Or similar tales. 

Adam: Right. It's fun. We go down little rabbit 

Charlotte: holes.

Charlotte: We do, we live in a rabbit hole, , so that's perf damage. So again, welcome. Thanks for joining us again or for the first time.

Charlotte: So Adam, one of the last things we talked about on the podcast was our top 10 of the year of 2022.

Charlotte: And we had the caveat that there were quite a few films that we wanted to see that weren't out yet, or we just hadn't been able to see. Yeah. 

Adam: Or 

Charlotte: we hadn't gotten to yet. Right. That hey, those could end up on our top 10, but we weren't sure. Did you see any films? at the end of the year that slipped into your top 10?

Charlotte: No, 

Adam: no. I think we've now seen all of those films that we wanted to see except for maybe we haven't seen Empire Val Light. That's the only one I haven't seen. Mm-hmm. , I think that was on that list. And you hadn't seen eo, which was on your list. Mm-hmm. still haven't seen that. Yeah, 

Charlotte: so those 88 minutes, I just haven't found the time to this

Adam: Those are the only two that we haven't seen. And I was really looking forward to Babylon. But having seen all those films now, I would not change my list. Yeah. I think my list was accurate. I really liked a lot of Babylon but it was an imperfect film in a lot of ways, so I 

Charlotte: liked the first two hours of that film a lot.

Charlotte: And I thought this is perfect. Although I, I remember felt like the elephant thing at the beginning for anybody that's seen it, I thought that was just, it was stupid and it didn't belong in the 

Adam: movie. I do remember we had just seen Feldman's a few days before or a week before and I leaned over to you in the first hour of the film and I said, this is a movie about the passion of filmmaking.

Adam: Mm-hmm. , this is everything that Fable Man's isn't. Yeah. 

Charlotte: And for anyone that doesn't know, we, we don't like to bash movies, but neither one of us were big fans of the Fable Man's, the Stevens Spielberg film that is getting lots of awards and recognition right now.

Adam: Neither of us disliked it, but it was kind of just forgettable, almost connectively, yeah. Instantly forgettable 

Charlotte: type of film. Yeah. I, I did like the first third. 

Adam: when he was making his war film. Mm-hmm. , I thought that 

Charlotte: was pretty cool. But when he moved to California, that's when it all fell apart.

Adam: Yeah. I think it was a little before 

Charlotte: that. Yeah. I'm being generous. Yeah. . Yes. Anyhow, yeah. Same with me. I wouldn't change anything on my top 10. Looking at my top 10, I would love to include less murder mysteries. I feel like it was a little, 

Adam: well between our two, we had I think four or five on those.

Charlotte: I know. So, yeah. And, and that's kinda, eh, 

Adam: well, I mean, we were coming outta the pandemic. There are a lot of smaller films like that being made. 

Charlotte: Yeah. And you know, there's a lot of films that we saw every year that Sundance has had, the online pass, we've bought it. All the film festivals that are doing the online thing, we have just taken advantage of that.

Charlotte: We love it. We don't know how long it's gonna last, but there's a whole lot of films we saw at Send last year, and I don't know if those came out or not. And those could have qualified, but I, you know what? I didn't even look at those. . 

Adam: Yeah. I think most of them have come out. Yeah. But I remember ending Sundance last year going, well, there's nothing here that I would put in, contention for mm-hmm.

Adam: Academy 

Charlotte: Awards. Yeah. And Sundance is going on at this time of the recording. It's going on right now. And the online stuff starts in a few days, and we've got at least 10 films to see. Yeah. That 

Adam: might be our next episode. We can talk about some of those. Mm-hmm. or we include it as a, a part on it, maybe.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I didn't change anything. I thought that, my top 10 was pretty solid, and if you really wanna know what the movies are Yep. Go to our final episode of season one. Yeah. I think it's called 

Charlotte: The Big finale. The big finale. So that's when we, we share all our pic.

Charlotte: The, you know, the episode? Just the last episode before this? Yeah, the previous one. Yeah. That's it. Just click 

Adam: above. Actually, it'll probably be the one right above it. Above, below or below 

Charlotte: it. Yeah. Just, you know what 

Adam: depends on, depends on which service you're using. Yeah. 

Charlotte: anyhow, the big finale. That's where we discuss all of that.

Charlotte: So our, we both have the same number one film for 2022 and that was everything everywhere, all at once. It's already making a splash at some of the award shows. Key Hak won best supporting actor at the Golden Globes. And his speech was so good. This is what speeches should be like at award shows. They're not just namedropping people. John, Adam, Sarah, thank you.

Charlotte: You know, nobody cares. Nobody cares. Well, he's so humble. 

Adam: That's the thing, 

Charlotte: I think he was shocked to win. I don't think he prepared anything. I don't know. No, 

Adam: and it, it felt very genuine. 

Charlotte: Yeah. And you 

Adam: were there. I was there and the, the best part wasn't even on stage.

Adam: The best part was in between, during the commercial breaks, he would. Run over to all of his favorite actors, like Brad Pitt, and he would say, Hey, Brad, do you mind if I take a picture with you? I know this isn't cool or anything, but he's like, I don't think I'm ever gonna be here again. , so can I get this picture now?

Adam: And all of them were just so happy for him. And they all took pictures with them. Yeah. So he just went around the room to all the big stars and took pictures with them. Oh, that's so cool. Because he just was so incredibly excited to be there. Yeah. Exci excited to win, but exciting to be with all of the people that he adores.

Adam: Right? So that was really, really fun. Yeah. To see you don't see that level of excitement, that often. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Michelle Yo also won at the Golden Globe Awards. She won Best actress and her speech was also really good, and 

Adam: then when she said she was 60, we both were like, what?

Adam: Yeah. How is she 60? She looks 

Charlotte: so darn good. She looks amazing. I loved when she told the lady playing the piano to shut up or to stop playing that. And then she said she could kick her 

Adam: butt. She could, yeah. . You know, I could kick her butt.

Adam: Right. . Yeah. 

Charlotte: That was so funny. Yeah, that was also a really good speech, but not quite as good as the other one. But, but 

Adam: also so true cuz she could definitely kick her butt. Yeah, she could, she could probably kick everybody's butt in that entire room. I love Michelle. Yo, I hope she wins the Academy Award too.

Adam: Me too. Just for all of her contributions to the film. Yeah. She's been acting for 30 years and not just here. Her Hong Kong stuff is amazing. Mm-hmm. , 

Adam: Yeah. But, oh, but you did make a change on your letter boxed, did you not? I did. So we did talk about this in the very first episode.

Adam: Mm-hmm. That we ever recorded for perf damage. Yeah. 

Charlotte: The letter box slash introductions. Introductions, yes. I believe it's called. And we discussed. , all of our, well on letterbox, if you're not familiar, it's an app where you can log all of the movies that you watch. So it's sort of like your film journal diary.

Charlotte: But you can rate them and you can write reviews and 

Adam: write reviews, and you have, you can comment on other people's reviews 

Charlotte: and Yeah. So I can see Adam and I have connected, so we're, we're following each other. And so I see what he's seen lately. We've usually seen the same thing. We're, we're obsessed with this platform, so Yeah.

Charlotte: We love letterbox 

Adam: and we've turned many of our friends onto it as well. Now we have, which is kind of fun. Yeah. So you can see what they're watching. Mm-hmm. And when you text them, you can go, Hey, I see you watch this three stars. Really? 

Charlotte: Yeah. You know, like, wait, you didn't like the menu?

Charlotte: Let's discuss this. 

Adam: Yeah. Oh, this sounds like it's something that we can talk ad nauseum about. 

Charlotte: Yeah. And it's not because we wanna be argumentative or anything. I'm just, I love hearing why someone. didn't like a movie that I really liked. No. I respect 

Adam: everybody's opinion. Mm-hmm. , because I think, movies are personal.

Adam: Mm-hmm. Some things affect you more because of something that's going on in your life. You're emotionally attached to something or something that has happened to you in your lifetime. Mm-hmm. . And so it's gonna affect you in a different way that it does other 

Charlotte: people, one of my coworkers, Jeff McCarty, who we had on an episode last season, it's the micro budgets one. We talk about films all the time.

Charlotte: I mean, every Monday it's, what'd you see? What'd you see? What'd you see? But we, for the last couple months, we've just been polar opposites on all of our film opinions. And we're waiting for us, you know, to go back in sync. , and I know he's probably listening right now. Oh, we talked about 

Adam: this at, maybe it'll happen.

Adam: We talked about this at dinner the other night, how we disagree about certain things, but we're pretty much maybe 75 to 80% in sync with Yeah. Especially older movies or eighties movies. Mm-hmm. The films that we both grew up on. Yeah. Those, those were almost always in sync on. Yeah. Newer films are a little more polarizing for us.

Adam: Yeah. 

Charlotte: It, but it, again, it's fun to discuss it and we don't look down on each, I mean, Lisa, I don't look down on you, Jeff, I don't know about , you know, so it's fun. Anyways, so 

Adam: yeah, we just like, we just like having conversations about it, so it's actually better when someone doesn't agree with us so that we can actually have a, yeah.

Charlotte: There's more to discuss or talk about. So we talked about letter boxing that first. Episode and on letterbox you have on your little profile page, you have to pick four films that are your top films. And for us, that was so hard to do because it's hard to pick just four. 

Adam: Well, and I love so many types 

Charlotte: of films too, and, and you think someone's gonna find me that knows me, one of my friends, and they're gonna see these top four and they're gonna call BS on it.

Charlotte: They're gonna judge you on it. Yeah. But also I think what you're favorite or what you're thinking about changes all the time. You know, there's standards that are always gonna be some of your favorites, but I thought it would be fun to maybe change one of mine. So I changed one in December. . 

Adam: Which one did you change, 

Charlotte: Charlotte?

Charlotte: It was a really hard choice. I took off umbrellas of share. . And I gotta say it's probably because of Lala . , 

Adam: which is now years and years old,

Charlotte: yeah. Directed by Damien Chael, who did Babylon, who I didn't like. I wonder. Oh, 

Adam: that's probably what did it, it, yeah. It brought up old pains. Maybe 

Charlotte: it did.

Charlotte: Anyways, so I took off the umbrellas of Shabo, which is a French film that I absolutely adore, and I still adore it, but I changed it with a polar opposite film, the Shining. And, I mean, that seems like, oh yeah. So generic put the Shining on there. But over the break, we actually went up to Yosemite, we did a little road trip, and we went to the Awan Hotel. And. That hotel, the interiors were used as the inspiration for the hotel in The Shining, 

Adam: not just the inspiration. You walk into that main room, you feel like you're very, that is the room exciting that Jack Nicholson was writing in typing the entire time. I mean, it is picture perfect.

Adam: It 

Charlotte: is. So you walk in there and it's just kind of magical. You're trying to keep it cool, but, 

Adam: and it has the red elevators too, . It's just like, I see the elevator. I'm 

Charlotte: like, ah. But all over the house, I've had little shining rugs for how long? I have little shining blankets. Well, not to 

Adam: mention, you're obsessed with Krick? Yeah. And you did not have a Krick movie on your top 

Charlotte: four. Exactly. And we had that discussion and I think that's when I was.

Charlotte: I'm thinking, man, I, I have to, I have to put one on here. So, I even have a can of that Kalamu baking powder, which you see in the background in a lot of shots of the Shining. we also own two copies of the film because the European cut, which is shorter than the American cut by like almost 20 minutes. Yeah, yeah. Significant. So yeah, it's, it's a big one in this house. So I felt like, you know what, I'm gonna put it up there, but now it seems like all of my movies on my top four are kind 

Adam: of hard.

Adam: Hard as in what do you mean? Hard 

Charlotte: as in,

Charlotte: I've got The Shining, I've got the devils, I've got Elmer Gantry, I've got, well being there that's kind of lighthearted. . Yeah. What I mean is they're all kind of serious and

Charlotte: Kind of darker in tone. And I feel like that doesn't really describe my movie taste, but it's hard to do that in four 

Adam: films. I don't know. We don't go run out to every comedy that comes out in the 

Charlotte: theaters unless it's a Martin McDonough comedy.

Charlotte: And then 

Adam: yeah, we're there. And then the word comedy is in, quotation marks. Yeah. Cause it's like, it's 

Charlotte: black comedy. Yeah. That's really what I lean towards. So I don't know. They're dramedies anyways, who knows? Maybe I'll change another one, but it's gonna be really hard to get one of these off.

Adam: Well, I didn't change any of mine. I couldn't. ReAnimator Brain Dead Jaws in 2001.. 

Charlotte: So we have a whole episode where we talk about our top films and if you wanna hear more about that, if you haven't listened to it, that's our first one from season one.

Charlotte: So what are we gonna talk about this week? We're kind of gonna sum up 2022, so we're gonna go through one thing about letterbox. Yes. We're still talking about letterbox. 

Adam: We we're not sponsored by letterbox. We're not. But when I say we're obsessed with this, we're obsessed with it. I write everything down. Everything. Yeah. 

Charlotte: No, and it's fun reading people's reviews. We have a friend who wrote a sort of a heartbreaking review of the Whale Yeah.

Charlotte: Film that we really liked last year and it, 

Adam: and if you listened to my best of it, was heartbreaking for me as well. Yeah. Adam 

Charlotte: broke down into tears last year. Let's see if we'll get some tears this year. 

Adam: Oh man. , just don't mention the whale. I know. . 

Charlotte: It actually happened, I think three times total. 

Adam: You well during the movie break down, then talking about it on our podcast and then talking 

Charlotte: to your boss.

Charlotte: Yeah. We were at my boss's holiday party and she brought up the whale and ugh, he 

Adam: was whaling. Couldn't even get through it. Couldn't even talk about it. Nope. . 

Charlotte: Anyhow, on letterbox, there are free accounts, but then you can pay, it's a little under 20 bucks a year. For they're first tier membership. There's other ones above that. But even with the first tier one, you get your stats of the whole year. And with that is you can go and you click on the air and it'll tell you your most watched director, cinematographer, your most watched actor, how many movies 

Adam: you watched, how many movies, how many hours that 

Charlotte: was, how many countries of you've watched movies from, and which was your most 

Adam: popular.

Adam: I mean, you can drill down into cinematographer. And set designers. Yeah, I mean it's 

Charlotte: fascinating. It just keeps getting drilled down and down, 

Adam: down. You can get really granular with the information. I love 

Charlotte: it. But it's interesting because sometimes your favorite director or actor, you didn't realize you saw that many movies with this person because that person could just be a small role.

Charlotte: Doesn't have to be the star. 

Adam: Right. But the fact that they were in it, that it gets counted. Yeah. 

Charlotte: So it's a lot of fun to look at that at the end of the year and just kind of see, and we always talk about it. So we thought, Hey, why don't we, why don't we chat about that on the podcast? Because maybe that's interesting.

Charlotte: Because we like stats and you 

Adam: know, we love, love 

Charlotte: data. See what our film trends are, data points 

Adam: for the year. They. pie chart breakdowns of your watches versus re watches.

Adam: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, that's really interesting too. Yeah, it's super cool. And then like older versus 2022 or 23 or whatever year you're in. So your older watches versus newer watches and then they do one that I always really fail pretty hard at. You're reviewed versus non reviewed. And that's always just like this little teeny green line in the middle of it.

Adam: Cuz that's, I only do like five or 10 reviews a year. Yeah. 

Charlotte: I don't write too many reviews. I don't know why. And if I do, it's like a one line snarky comment, usually , or not even snarky, but if I thought of something that I thought was pretty funny, then I'll put that on 

Adam: there. Well, and for reviews, if they already has like 7,000 reviews, I'm really not interested in writing another review and putting it out there, so a lot of the current movies I don't write reviews for because there's already 10,000 or 30,000 of them.

Adam: depending 

Charlotte: on the movie. So how many reviews did you write last year, according to your letter box stats? Five. You got me? I wrote four. Ah, none of mine are longer than one 

sentence. 

Adam: Oh, mine are all longer than one sentence , because I'm incapable of writing a single 

Charlotte: sentence. Wait, there's five here and it said four.

Charlotte: There's clearly five letter box. What's up? Oh no, it's counting one from 2021. Yeah, cuz 

Adam: you got a like on it or something. It also does that. Oh, your most liked one. Gotcha is 

Charlotte: always in there. Well I got no, it has no likes. Nobody liked it. I liked it. I probably liked it. You didn't 

Adam: like it? I didn't like it on there, but I like it.

Charlotte: Yeah, no it was my review of Santa Jaws and I said, oh, Santa Jaws. I said, I saw mommy kissing Santa Jaws. Oh yes. That was pretty funny. . 

Adam: Well, because it was funny because there was a whole line of people doing Santa Jaws riffs on holiday songs. Mm-hmm. . And you're, and they hadn't done that one. You were like, oh dude, I have to put 

Charlotte: this in there.

Charlotte: It had to happen and it did happen. Like someone had, you better watch out. You better not die. . 

Adam: Yeah. Santa Jaws is coming. 

Charlotte: He knows when you are swimming and when you are at the beach, he knows if you can swim or not to stay out of the freaking lake.

Charlotte: What? I don't know what those are. A 

Adam: lake. They thought that. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. It wasn't , it wasn't an ocean. That was the other thing, because Santa Jaws was just a drawing that came to life. Yeah. I'm trying to find out. Anyway, Santa Jaws is one of those really bad trash movies that was actually way more entertaining than it should have been.

Adam: It was really poorly acted and really poorly executed. No, but it was butter. But it had really good ideas. Like the concept behind it wasn't a terrible one other than the extreme ridiculousness of the core concept. 

Charlotte: I don't, it was just, it was sort of a hot mess that you kind of, you can't hate, you sort of love it.

Charlotte: It 

Adam: was entertaining throughout and that's all that really 

Charlotte: mattered. Yeah. So to go along with all the songs, I did my own and I, you know, I got no likes on it, but that's fine cuz I don't do this for likes. Okay. . I still think mine's pretty good. Some mommy kissing Santa Jealous job. It's gonna be in everyone's head now.

Charlotte: All right. Back to the reviews 

Adam: my most liked review was on Christmas, bloody Christmas. And that was because I saw it at Beyond Fest. . I was like, oh, so you saw it early? I think either the first or second review on it, and that's why you get a lot of likes if you do it first.

Charlotte: I only have one, like on one of my reviews, even Adam doesn't like my reviews . And it was for the film Honeycomb. Oh gosh. I said I laughed a lot for all the wrong reasons.

Charlotte: I was pretty happy with the Jeepers creepers reborn. Oh yeah. My review, which I gave it a half star. This film, I called it Jeepers Creepers Stillborn. I thought that was 

Adam: pretty good. 

Charlotte: Okay, Adam, so how many films did you see in 2022 according to letter box? 

Adam: I saw 438. Dang, you 

Charlotte: beat me. How many did you see? 438. No, that's what you said. 

Adam: That's exactly what I said. That is exactly the number that I said.

Charlotte: Okay. I saw 434. Oh, okay. You got me by four films. Four movies. To be fair, I probably forgot to log a bunch of 'em. I'm, I'm really bad about it. Well, 

Adam: to be fair, I watch a lot of half movies and things like that, like, and then you count those. I do not count those. So, yeah. How is that fair? So, I mean, I probably saw more, is what I'm 

saying.

Charlotte: Oh, you're saying I forgot some and you forgot. 

Adam: Probably an equal amount, so maybe, maybe not. I mean, this is accurate. Only as accurate as you report. Okay. 

Charlotte: So how many hours did you spend watching films in 2022? According to 

Adam: Letter Box? 739.9 hours. 

Charlotte: You got me. 7 36 0.30. Yeah. 

Adam: Well, it's the four extra 

Charlotte: movies. Yeah, I guess so. All right. What month did you watch the most films? Mine says January. Oh. But, but that was because of Sund. 

Adam: It was third week in January. 17 films. 

Charlotte: Yeah, the third and fourth weeks of January. 

Charlotte: The day of the week, when you watch the most films, mine is a Friday followed by a Saturday, and then the next highest is a Monday and Sunday are tied.

Charlotte: Oh, wow. Mine 

Adam: is Friday, followed by 

Charlotte: Sunday. Yeah. Okay, so your first film that you watched in 2022, I, I'm 

Adam: sure this is the same as yours. Dark Web Cicada 33 0 1. It was not. 

Charlotte: Whoa, really? Nope. I watched a documentary on Raul Julia, the World to Stage. Wow. That was my very first one. That was your very 

Adam: first one?

Adam: Mm-hmm. . What was the last film? It's probably the same as mine too. History. 

Charlotte: History is made at night, which is my favorite discovery from 2022. . If you haven't seen this, I actually, I made you watch it because I loved it so much. Yeah, you got it for Christmas, I got a copy of it for Christmas.

Charlotte: Criterion put it out and the film, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna share some info about this film. You Should. History is made at night 1937, directed by Frank Borzak. 97 minutes on the synopsis, a romantic head waiter fights to save a woman from her possessive ex-husband that just doesn't do this film justice.

Charlotte: But I mean, 

Adam: in a nutshell, that's kind of what it is. Yeah. 

Charlotte: It starts Charles Boyer and Gene Arthur and this film is just absolutely, I say this all the time, but it's delightful. 

Adam: Yeah, it's surprising cuz Gene Arthur is playing against, she is because you know, she's usually the world weary, fast talking.

Adam: Mm-hmm. Metropolitan woman, and she's not in this at all. She's not. It's, she's kind of soft. I mean, she's headstrong, but she's a much more muted character than you're used to seeing her play. Mm-hmm. . And same, I would say the same for Charles Boyer. He's not as flamboyant or ob obnoxious in this film as he usually is.

Adam: Yeah. 

Charlotte: But it's a love story. It's a comedy. There's a great friendship between Charles Boyer and the chef at this restaurant. Oh, that's 

Adam: the best. That guy is exceptional. The great 

Charlotte: Cesar. Yeah. Leo 

Adam: carillo. Yeah. The Great Carillo Carillo. Uh, It's probably Carillo, 

Charlotte: know.

Charlotte: C a r R I L L O. 

Adam: I mean, we'll say Carillo because we live in California, so Yeah. Leo 

Charlotte: Carillo. Yeah, that's how we pronounce it here. . Even if it's, if it's not 

Adam: right. Apologies. Sorry, 

Charlotte: Leo. He played the great Caesar and . He's just, he's 

Adam: so funny. He's this, every time that guy is on screen, he just is so funny.

Adam: Yeah. 

Charlotte: And there's a moment kind of, and maybe it's the end of the first act where you think that he's maybe not going to be in the film anymore and you're really bummed because they're moving locations and then he shows up and you realize he's gonna be in the whole film. And it's, I know you had the same reaction that I had whenever.

Charlotte: Yeah. I was really bummed. I show up. He wasn't gonna be there. I know, because in the beginning of the film, he's just, he's such a comic relief and he's just, he's so funny. Well, and he's such 

Adam: a well-defined character with very little screen time, it's like, wow, I know this guy. This guy's. , he got this inflated sense of self and this big ego.

Adam: Mm-hmm. , and he's the chef. Yeah. The greatest chef. The great ciar. Yeah. The greatest chef in all of Europe. Mm-hmm. . And what is it? Lobster ala Ciar. Mm-hmm. . That's the the dish that he's renowned for. Yeah. He's 

Charlotte: fantastic. He is. Frank Borzak is known for his kinda romantic films.

Charlotte: And this one is no exception. It's, it's definitely got that, but I don't think that's the, no, I mean, I, forefront 

Adam: of the story. I think this movie was kind of exceptional in that it started out kind of being a crime thriller. Mm-hmm. . And that's the way it's presented to you. Mm-hmm. with no romanticism at all.

Adam: Right. There's a murder that takes place. And then there is , there's the love story, 

Charlotte: lover sort of getting separated and right then coming back together. And then there's a bit of like disastery Actionist at the 

Adam: end. At the end. Yeah. It's just that you don't tone so fast and quickly, 

Charlotte: but fluidly.

Charlotte: And it just, it pulls you in and I don't know what it is about this film where you just get sucked into it. Well, 

Adam: Beki handles all of the different genres really well too. And one 

Charlotte: thing he does, you have certain expectations about what you think's gonna happen. This, this scene is happening and you think, oh, I know this character is going to do this.

Adam: Right. I've seen this a million times. And then that doesn't happen. Yeah. That you never know what's gonna happen next in this. And he 

Charlotte: does that all the time, so you just never quite know where he's gonna go with it. And it is such a great film. Yeah. There's 

Adam: even a courtroom sequence. 

Charlotte: I gave it four and a half stars. I feel like I should have given it five. Yeah, I gave it four. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the last film. I mean, that's ending on a high note for 2022.

Charlotte: It was. It really was. And if you haven't seen it, history's made at night. Great film. It's streaming on the Criterion Network, at least it was. Yeah. Criteria channel. And they actually have a lot of really good documentary 

Adam: and screwball comedies too, like right now. Oh my gosh. We've been going through a lot of those and there's so much 

Charlotte: fun.

Charlotte: The Criterion Channel has a lot of collections, and that's one of my favorite things about it. So they put together these curated collections and they have one right now called Screwball.

Charlotte: Which you think? Yeah. You know, I've seen a bunch of those, but there are so many in there that I'd never heard of and we've just been going through cuz we haven't found a bad one yet. And I think, no, 

Adam: they're all really, really 

Charlotte: good. I don't know, we haven't watched half of them yet. Maybe a third. Actually, one 

Adam: of the reviews that I wrote was about one of those.

Adam: Oh yeah. Yeah, it's called, you Never Can Tell. And that's the one about the dog that inherits, mm-hmm. a million dollars. And then he's killed off. He, he murdered. Yep. And he comes back as Dick Powell as a private investigator to find out who murdered him.

Charlotte: But not only that. A race horse comes back as a lady who plays his like assistant detective. But the great thing is, I mean, you're probably gonna say it, they, they bring all of their animalness with them in these characters. So Dick Powell's constantly doing dog things.

Charlotte: And the, the assistant, she's a racehorse, so of course she runs 

Adam: and she can run really fast because, you know Yeah. Like she missed 

Charlotte: the bus and so she starts running next to it and she's running miles. 

Adam: It's a bizarre concept. This movie would never get made today. It's so over the top. It's so weird, but really, really fun and actually very, very 

Charlotte: funny.

Charlotte: I know. And when you tell people, oh, it starts out, the dog gets murdered. Cuz that's the first thing that happens in the movie. Yeah. . 

Adam: But then they go to animal heaven and it's the weirdest thing. Yeah. It's so crazy. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Check that one out. 

Adam: You never can tell 1951. . 

Charlotte: So that's on the Criterion channel, at least it, it was when we recorded this highly recommend Criterion channel because it helps you from doing endless streaming or endless scrolling through things because you can just pick something and then, well, it's 

Adam: actually curated, which is nice.

Charlotte: Curated, which is what FilmStruck was. Yeah. We loved film. That was criteria as well around it was Criterion and TCM network. 

Adam: A lot of them have introductions too. Mm-hmm. and like Charlotte was saying, there's a bunch of well, well, special features, special features, material about the directors and mm-hmm.

Charlotte: actors sometimes about the making of the film or a special effect or something like that. Yeah. 

Adam: They put those up there. They're, they're in buckets like, you know, this director or this film movement or this subgenre. It's really well done. All right, so back to letterbox. What's your most watched movie?

Adam: I think I know what it is. My most watched movie of the year. It's gotta be, are you gonna guess? Oh yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say Dragon Slayer. Yes, it's Dragon Slayer because that's my most watched one too, cuz I watched it with you a whole bunch of times. 

Charlotte: Yeah. When you work on films, you have to watch them a whole lot over and over and over.

Charlotte: And I might not have even logged every time that I saw it. Probably 

Adam: not. No. Yeah. All right. So now, now that drops us down into genres. So what is your number one genre of the year? Why don't you take a guess? Mine was horror, so that's what I 

Charlotte: would, I was gonna guess that, oh, you didn't let me 

Adam: guess. 147 horror films

Adam: and my second bucket. Comedy. So I'm gonna say probably comedy for you. You would be 

Charlotte: wrong. No. Thriller Drama. Drama. Wow. Okay. 147 films. Whoa. In the drama genre. Wow. 

Adam: What's your number two? Is it comedy? Comedy 1 36. I got 1 35 on that one. I got you by one. And then I have Thriller as my third one though. A hundred twenty four, a hundred thirteen 

Charlotte: horror. I only watched 98 films. Okay. Those, and probably 90% of those you made me watch. Yeah. I'm pretty sure when it was your pick to 

Adam: pick. Yep. Whatever film was next. Exactly.

Adam: Whatever. She picked some great drama from the past and then it's so good. But then I put on some trashy, seventies regional horror 

Charlotte: film. And then there are those nights where you say you pick both the films and then they're just so good. and you say, man, those were really good movies. And I say, yeah, cuz I've picked them.

Charlotte: It's true . But I, I do enjoy a lot of the trash that you pick. I discovered Cynthia Rothrock last year because of your trash of the day. Yeah. It's not even weak anymore. It's just like trash, trash of the day. It absolutely is. Which I have to, we have to address something else really quick too.

Charlotte: A lot of people have asked me about this. We said in an episode we watch double features every night. We do not watch them every night. There are nights where we don't watch a movie. We're at a Well if we're, 

Adam: yeah, we're not home, we're at a concert. Yep. That happens. Dinner, 

Charlotte: sometimes dinner or somebody says, you have to watch this TV show and we're sick of hearing about it and all right, fine.

Charlotte: We'll watch an episode before we can actually say it now. We didn't like this. 

Adam: So, or then we watch Yellow jackets and it's so freaking good that we, you know, watch the whole thing if 

Charlotte: we don't get into too, too much TV shows around here, but occasionally we do. Yeah. 

Adam: I mean, there's some you can't avoid cuz they're so darn good.

Adam: But I would say Mandalorian 

Charlotte: over half of the week. Four, four days? I 

Adam: would say four to five. I mean, what is our average? I don't think we can get that granular 

Charlotte: letter box. We need to know how often we watch double features. . Yeah. But come on, three to four days a week and that's probably a low thing.

Charlotte: We are watching double features. Well, and 

Adam: in the other thing is that some nights we only have time for one movie. Some nights we watch three movies, but then like yesterday I watched five movies, so that happens, you 

Charlotte: know? Yeah. And we've recently put a treadmill in the back so we can watch movies and work and work out while we're doing it 

Adam: All right. So I'm going to skip past. They break down the languages, which is kind of interesting to look at. Yeah. You know, 

Charlotte: but, but mine aren't that varied. Yeah. So it's not that interesting. 

Charlotte: I like the breakdown that shows the amount of 2020 releases you watch versus older.

Charlotte: I watch more older than new. I've got more, 59% of the films I watched last year are older, what they consider older. 

Adam: Yeah. Mine was 55.7, 

Charlotte: so it's a pretty good balance. 

Adam: Yeah, it's, I mean, that's roughly 50%. 

Charlotte: So roughly 50%. It's not bad. Okay. Now we have to go to one of the, the most fun. in 2022. Who was your most watched star?

Charlotte: I'll give you one guess. 

Adam: Cynthia 

Charlotte: Rothrock. You know it is it really? It was eight films. . Well, we did watch a bunch of 'em. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't even see all of 

Adam: them. No, I don't think you saw all of 'em. I was watching the Tiger Clause ones on my own, so I watched all three Tiger Claws movies. Yeah, I think you came in on three.

Adam: Yeah, I would say card. Like she's this, she's kind of a badass. 

Charlotte: Do you know who my most watched star is? 

Adam: It's not Cynthia Rothrock. No. Then maybe Courtney Cox. No. 

Charlotte: It is a tie 

Adam: between Roy Rogers and Trigger.

Adam: Oh, . Whoa. Trigger is as listed as 

Charlotte: an actor. He even has his own little thing, which in a lot of 'em, . It was trigger or trigger, junior playing trigger. Wow. 

Adam: Well, yeah. He's always credited as trigger, right? Always trigger. Yeah. No, that's hilarious. Of course, it's Roy Rogers. Yay. That makes sense.

Adam: Singing Cowboy. It really does. We haven't done a singing cowboy episode yet. Yeah, that probably will be coming. Or maybe just a, a highlight on Roy Rogers would be kind of interesting. Maybe. Who knows? Since you have that personal connection. 

Charlotte: You know, we teased Burt Lancaster last season and we never got to it, 

Adam: but we'll get to it eventually.

Adam: It'll happen. Yeah. Eventually. We got a whole nother season here. All right. This one's gonna be much longer too. All right. Directors. Well, what's your number two? 

Charlotte: It's a tie between a lot of people. Mine is too. So, well, it's all the people in Scream because we went back and we watched all of them, 

Adam: all the screen movies leading up to the newest one.

Charlotte: Yeah, yeah. Because we hadn't seen him in a while and 

Adam: been a long time. No, it was fun. Fun. It was fun to do that. But yeah, that's the only reason Courtney Cox and David Arquette made my top, 

Charlotte: but the one who's not in there, Brad dif. 

Adam: Yeah. Five films for Brad Durif. Yeah. Oh. One of them is a Cynthia Rothrock film Swarm to Justice.

Adam: I remember that. Do you remember that scene? I do. Yeah. And then the one where he played the gun toting preacher, final Judgment. Remember that? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yep. And of course, one Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Yep. He's great. In that Five stars. 

Adam: I also had Lance Hendrickson in my top. and BOLO Young. 

Charlotte: Yeah. And I had Christopher Lee and Gabby Hayes. So nice. There we 

Adam: go. All right, let's go on to director. What do you got? Number one for me is Wes Craven because of that thing that we did. 

Adam: What about number two for you, Paul Schrader? Yeah, me too. And then Peter Jackson. That is my number three. Mm-hmm. , 

Charlotte: because we always rewatch Lord of the Ring. Yeah. 

Adam: That's one of our Christmas traditions we always watch. I think last year we did the Hobbit trilogy, and this year we did the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Adam: Yeah. Sometimes we do all six, sometimes not this year. Always extended guts though. Always 

Charlotte: have to, which are over three hours 

Adam: long each.

Adam: All right. Here's a fun thing. What is your most obscure film that you watched this year? 

Charlotte: My most obscure is one that I worked on called Cuban Fireball with Estolita Rodriguez. Oh, 

Adam: cool. And is that because it's probably not available anywhere?

Charlotte: Probably. It has, it's Does it have any 

Adam: reviews 

Charlotte: or anything? It has zero reviews. It's on 11 list. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Est Alito was one of Republic Pictures leading ladies. . So what is Cuban 

Adam: Fireball even 

Charlotte: about?

Charlotte: It's about a sort of a small town girl that inherits money. Also a common theme in Republic. Picture Money. . She wants money. No, she inherits money and she goes to the big city to collect. Also sort of mistaken identity things happen. Another common theme for Republic Pictures, it's, you know, it's, it's just an average little programmer feature. And I really like Estolita. I think she's not as well known as she should be.

Adam: No, I agree. Yeah. I, I don't think many people know about 

Charlotte: Esto Rodriguez. No. And she has kind of a sad story. She didn't work for too long and she died really, really young. 

Adam: She's a great performer. Like a lot of the musical segments that you've shown me are really, really good.

Charlotte: Yeah. She's in a lot of films with Roy Rogers. And is that 

Adam: where she got her start is in those then that's kind of like a second or third banana. I guess so she, is she the love interest in those films or 

Charlotte: . She's usually not the love interest. She's maybe the love interest for the sidekick or kind of the goofy character.

Charlotte: At least in the Ray Rogers films, when she's in the lead, then of course she's, yeah. Yeah. She's the love interest. Right. But she's just adorable and she's just got this spark about her that you just can't stop watching her. And when she sings, she sings with her eyes. And I don't know, she's just, yeah.

Charlotte: She has a lot of energy. She does. And she's really cute. And she was actually Cuban, and she's in Cuban Fireball, so how about that? Oh, that's great. No, she, oh, it's not known. She died really young at the age of 37. Wow. And the, they found her on the kitchen floor of her North Hollywood home, and they have no details.

Charlotte: Oh, that's 

Adam: sad. Yeah. Oh, that's funny. She lived in North Hollywood. That's right next to where Republic Pictures was located too. 

Adam: It's currently CBS Radford. That's the Old Republic Studios.

Adam: All right. Well that's a really cool one. Yeah. And I think we should write a review for that so that there's a review up there. Yeah. For that film. You want to know what my most obscure is? I would love to, it was a little documentary called Marras from the Mediterranean, the Macab Magic of the Spanish Zombie Film.

Adam: Oh, that sounds pretty good. Yeah, it was really cool. It was a good doc. And it talked about how the zombie films kind of reflected the Franco regime, and the extreme violence in those films was them acting out against that fascism.

Adam: It was really, really good. They focused on a couple different periods the output I think it was on the Tombs of the Blind Dead disc which is a fantastic film by Armando Diorio. It's about these Templar nights that come back from the dead as zombies, but they're not like zombies as we know zombies, 

Adam: and they just attacked a bunch of people in this small village and they made four movies in that series.

Adam: Well anyway, so that was a fun little diversion. We kind of wanted to bring it back to Letterboxed. It's the way we started. It's the way we ended last year. So we're starting this year again. . It's a lot 

with 

Charlotte: letterbox. Letterbox, yeah. We like it in case you haven't noticed. Yeah, it's fun. If you don't have it, I mean, it's free app.

Charlotte: You can log what you watch. 

Charlotte: People say, Hey, what'd you watch? Or what, what's that movie called that you were talking about? And like, what movie that I was talking about? I've talked about a bunch.

Charlotte: You can look it up in letterbox and find it. Anyhow, thanks for joining us. We do, we wanna tease some of the stuff we have coming this season? 

Adam: Sure. 

Charlotte: We have some special guests coming 

Adam: up. Yeah. Some really special guests. I'm really excited about the people we have lined up this year.

Adam: Mm-hmm. already. Mm-hmm. . 

Charlotte: Yeah. Some fun little talks. Bunch of two Parters. We're gonna talk about a power couple that you probably have never heard of. One of the first power couples, I think in Hollywood. Yeah. Hollywood Power Couple. That's quite a juicy story. . Yeah. That's another one that the more we've read about it, the more into that story we've got.

Charlotte: So I'm looking forward to sharing that one with all of you. 

Adam: Somebody forgotten. 

Charlotte: Mm-hmm. gonna get into some geeky stuff. Talking about the 1950s, we've got some more stuff within that decade that we're gonna talk about. A couple topics actually.

Adam: Technology. Mm-hmm. based things. Mm-hmm. , we have very special guests for that one. We do. . So that'll be a lot of fun. Mm-hmm. . I think we're gonna get into some of those episodes we teased last year. Like Burt Lancaster, like the single person ones. Yeah. We should do that. 

Charlotte: Around here, Burt Lancaster is pretty big , 

Adam: highly thought of.

Adam: Yeah, he is. Our collection is really big too, of Burt Lancaster films. It's an entire shelf. 

Charlotte: We, we actually the last thing I'll say about that, we started a blog back in. It was like 2011, maybe something like that. Maybe even before then where we were trying to watch every Burt Lancaster film that had ever been released.

Charlotte: And at the time, trying to find those movies was really difficult. So we would constantly have updates about how we went to Ameba records and we found a bunch of VHS tapes that haven't been released on DVD or Blu-ray 

Adam: or we got bootlegs from 

Charlotte: Europe or, or we went to Eddie Brandt's video store, Eddie Grant, which was this video store in North Hollywood that you could borrow films that weren't officially released.

Charlotte: So they would have maybe a recording from a TV showing of some movie that's not available anywhere. And that was really the only way you could see it. So you would rent a movie that you could legitimately rent and then he would let you borrow. They would let you borrow. Yeah. Cuz 

Adam: it was a membership. A members only 

Charlotte: kind of thing.

Charlotte: Yeah. And it's not around anymore, which sucks. No. 

Adam: Tarantino now owns the entire collection. 

Charlotte: Great. Anyhow, so that's what we got coming up this year. We hope that you guys will be back. Join us for some fun topics. We just wanted to share our stats from last year.

Adam: Yeah. And may and maybe share a sing some more for you. next week. 

Charlotte: You know, I don't, it's Santa Jaws, it just brought the music out. I don't know. It You couldn't, you couldn't control yourself. I couldn't just say the words. I mean, it's like a Christmas song, , you get a, you know, you just, you just start singing it.

Charlotte: I don't know. 

Adam: I think I've sung on this before. I don't think you have. I, so I know that's a first right, though. 

Charlotte: So I, I, you know, and I did have that in mind and I thought, all right, I haven't done the 1920s voice. I haven't, yeah, you haven't done that yet. I haven't broken down in tears. No. . I need to step up my game.

Charlotte: You really 

Adam: do. So I feel like I'm giving my all for this thing. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Well, , you got so much to give . . Anyhow, thanks for joining us. If you wanna get ahold of us, you can send us an email. We are perf damage podcast gmail.com. We're on Twitter at Perf Damage. You can also follow us on letterbox. We update every week.

Charlotte: Adam puts together a list of all the films that we mentioned in every single episode. So if you're trying to remember some film that we talked about and you don't wanna have to fast, you know, go find it in the episode, you can just go to the list in letterbox and 

they're 

Adam: all there. Everything we ever 

Charlotte: referenced.

Charlotte: Yeah, everything. Sometimes it's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna try to post some more stuff on Twitter this year. We gonna do that? Yeah. We gotta really up 

Adam: our Twitter 

Charlotte: game because I know we, we mentioned a lot of stuff that sort of needs a visual and the whole idea at first was let's try to put those on, you know, these things and then we just kind of forgot about it because, I dunno about you, but I got so focused on just the talkie content that I wasn't thinking of the other content Well, in the research.

Charlotte: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, we'll try to be better about that this year. No promise. . Yeah. But I can promise you that we'll be here weekly, except for when we're not . And 

Adam: now we'll be here. Yeah, we'll be 

Charlotte: here weekly, but I'm not gonna rush to put out an episode just to put it out. I wanna make sure that we have something that I would listen to or I'd be proud of.

Charlotte: So, hey, we all got lives, , you know, we got no sponsors here. We're doing this for free. Yeah. In our spare time. We're, and 

Adam: we're not here to talk, just to talk, so, oh, maybe you are. Well, sometimes I do. Yeah, I know. Talking to talk. Hey, you're the one that brought Santa Jaws up, 

Charlotte: not me. I did. 

Adam: All right. Well, all right. Thanks for joining us here on Damage. Damage.

Adam: Yeah, thank you. Till next time. Thanks for joining us. Whoa. You sound like a world watch here on proof damage. Is that how it goes? I don't even remember how it goes. How's it go? Thanks for joining us. On perf damage is that this is crazy that you not listened to 

Charlotte: our podcast at all.

Adam: I mean, I haven't listened to it over a month. In about a month, and you never listened 

Charlotte: to it in like a month.