Film Junk Podcast Episode #164: Leatherheads

Posted by on April 15th, 2008   Filed under: Film Junk Podcast

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0:00-02:40 – Intro
02:40-27:35 – Headlines: Uwe Boll’s Marketing Genius, Casting for Oliver Stone’s Bush Biopic, Is Horton Hears A Who Sexist?, Are Movie Critics Irrelevant?
27:35-56:55 – Junk Mail
56:55-1:09:00 – Stuff We Watched This Week: Sharkwater, The 11th Hour, Autism: The Musical, Manda Bala (Send A Bullet), Operation Filmmaker
1:09:00-1:19:48 – Review: Leatherheads
1:19:48-1:26:46 – Trailer Trash: Quarantine, American Teen, Battle in Seattle
1:26:46-1:29:10 – This Week’s DVD Releases
1:29:10-1:30:52 – Outro

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  • Goon

    the Police Academy character was named Sweetchuck.

    I’m part Belgian, I think.

  • Itchy-Finger

    Great episode.

    I am really starting to love the Jay hates bloggers segment. I hope next week Sean snaps and yells out “blogging is beneficial!!!!!” (5 exclamations) and jumps across the table and proceeds to stab Jay in the neck with his pen/pencil. As Greg sits there and gives a loud belly laugh.

  • Greg

    That would be funny.

  • rot

    soooooooo… I guess there is no film in the works? I kinda thought the speech from Jay a couple episodes ago suggested that his whole purpose for existing was to make movies.

  • Hey Rot,

    Your email read as though you were jokingly suggesting that we make, or are making, a Film Junk movie. We are not, of course. However, I’m open to the idea of doing a Wayne’s World fan film.

    As for the project I’d mentioned on a previous podcast, I’m hoping to get it going once the other things I’m currently working on are finished.

  • Italy and Spain were big on post-dubbing everything with the original actors sometime, sometimes not.

    Of course, Darth Vader, Abe from Hellboy, etc. are constructed from dubbing.

    That being said, if it isn’t an animated film, dubbing is usually done quite badly and on the cheap, and it brings down the film somewhat. I obviously prefer subtitles, even as I do acknowledge that a fair bit of nuance and point-of-focus on the screen is changed….

    Subtitles is the lesser of two evils…

    (Disney of all companies does dubs of Hayao Miyazaki’s films quite well – and the French Dub of Porco Rosso has Jean Reno doing Porco. Sweet.)

  • Fat Milo

    A funny example of Dub vs. Subtitles in recent memory for me is The Host. I watched this the first time in English audio with the English subtitles also because I had an ear infection. There was a huge difference between what was being said and what was in the subtitles. It was hilarious. The audio track seems to have been “cleaned up” because it was like the guy who did the subtitles had Tourrets.

  • At the risk of being overly narcissistic, in recent of a recent tiff that I had with Mr. Campea, I am NOT Bert…which curiously rhymes with Kurt.

  • While still on subtitles, The Miramax release of Avalon (Mamarou Oshii’s pretty swell VR film) features the curious practice of “Dubtitles” wherein a film is shown with the original language track using subtitles made from the ‘dubbed’ version of the film. Pretty lazy I guess, this is probably the worst of both worlds.

  • Goon

    subtitles vs dubbed… i guess it depends. in most cases i’d rather have subtitles, but say something like Rumble in The Bronx: the movie isnt the same without the dubbing.

  • Nightwatch/Daywatch is what subtitling should aim for.

    Dubbing has come a long way in the past decade or so merely because far more talented actors are finding they can have highly successful careers simply as voice actors. Mark Hamill is a pretty obvious example, as his Joker is probably the best ever to appear in any Batman franchise. But even with all the improvements, I’d still take subtitles over dubbed films.

    Also, I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With is pretty fucking bad. I reviewed the DVD for UGO and struggled to make it through the movie.Even die-hard Sarah Silverman fans would be hard pressed to find anything to like about the movie, as she is barely in the film.

  • rot

    @Jay

    Yeah I can see the misunderstanding. Did not mean Film Junk Movie literally, rather that the creators of Film Junk would have some new film on the horizon. So all you can say is that it is a horror film?

  • Sorry. Yes, I’m a snob, but dubbing pisses me off for the most part. Yes there are exceptions like Leone’s stuff, Darth Vader, etc. But generally actors that do the dubbing are inferior to the performer and something is lost there.

    “Persepolis” was just re-released in these parts dubbed in English. I haven’t seen it (nor will I), but I am pretty certain it’s not as well done as originally intended in the language it was intended to be spoken in. All these people that now rush off to see it because “oh, now we don’t have to read” just angers me. I consider dubbing to be “Idiocracy” in action.

  • Yes, sometimes the dubbed version is a lot of fun (e.g. Italian exploitation films as Jay mentiones), however, therer are so many elements which go lost by dubbing a movie. I think that subtitles are the best solution. Last saturday and sunday, for example, I attended the Fantasy Film Festival Night in Stuttgart where they screened every film in its original language with subtitles (the English speaking films wihtout subtitles) — that is why you can also reach a brighter (international) audience.

    Anyway, I think that the German audience is one of the world’s few which cannot watch movies in their native language. Do the Americans have a problem with foreign language films? No. Do the French have one? No. Do other European countries have one? No…

  • And yes, ‘Dubtitles’ are the worst solution of all. Anyway, nice to see that people give so much thought about this topic. :)

  • “Do the Americans have a problem with foreign language films? No.” I think that’s open to debate.

  • Well, let me specify the question: “Do the Americans have a problem watching foreign language film with subtitles?”

    I think not, because none of the recent films coming to cinemas (e.g. PAN’S LABYRINTH) has been dubbed. The attitude of the moviegoers is a total different one than the one we Germans have – if a movie is not dubbed, the movie will suck at the box office (remember, this is all hypothetical, because ALL [even a documentary like SUPER SIZE ME] films coming to cinema are being dubbed). A studio would never release a film which hasn’t been dubbed in the target language, because they kno that it would suck big time.

  • I would love to co-direct Sean, Jay & Greg in a filmjunk movie along with Goon, but he doesn’t like me! I think it’s a given that any FilmJunk movie should contain a wrestling match between Goon and Greg though.

    There is something to be said for explaining WHY you think something is or isn’t shit though. Otherwise, what is the point of even talking to eachother? But I do agree that most fat 30year olds on the internet need to grow some pubic hair and not flip out when people don’t agree with their (mainly) pathetically shallow opinion of film. Unfortunately, the internet is more or less the cesspool of the debating society – apart from a few good sites like FilmJunk.

    Nothing is dubbed in Danmark, fortunately. But dubbing does create thousands of jobs for actors in Spain, France and Germany, so it’s not something they will let go off easily.

  • Nothing is dubbed in Danmark, fortunately. But dubbing does create thousands of jobs for actors in Spain, France and Germany, so it’s not something they will let go off easily.

    Well, that’s probably the only reason PRO dubbing, neighbor Henrik. ;)

  • I was glad but surprised to hear Jay’s opinions on subtitles vs dubbing. I always thought I was a member of my own private minority on this issue.

    My opinions about dubbing vs subtitles where formed in the early nineties when I was a big fan of illegally imported Hong Kong cinema. I saw all manner of questionable translation jobs and by no means is it a reliable rule of thumb that subtitles are usually better than dubbing. In (rare) instances where they get the original actors dubbing jobs can be really good.

    What’s funny is that American audiences will often reject dubbing jobs even if that’s what the director originally intended.

  • swarez

    First time listener and reader. Fucking funny stuff.

  • Thanks for listening swarez. Stick around.

  • Christian Voigt

    Rusty James has a point. I was a big fan of miami vice, the tv-series. i watched it here in germany on tv, so the whole show was dubbed. A few years ago i thought,why not by the original dvd’s and enjoy this stuff in its original language… Oh my god, i never thought that the dubbed version would be so much better. Don Johnson’s voice is just terrible… The dubbed ones are much better. So is the dialog.

    But thats about the only one i can think of where i am pro-dubbing.

  • Reed Farrington

    I think the majority of Canadians and Americans don’t like to read. That’s why they won’t watch a movie that is subtitled.

    Actually, I prefer reading to listening. Have you ever watched something and not quite caught what someone has said? (Sometimes in theatres, you even get the annoying couple with one of them asking periodically, “What did he/she say?”) I’ve solved this problem by always turning on the subtitles for the hearing impaired.

    I wish there was an option on DVDs to only mute the dialog.

  • Jay, why don’t you use your connections with the movie blog to propel your directing career since campea has so many connections in hollywood.

  • rot

    I’m inspired by the Primer story of making a movie of that kind of polish, paid for by credit card. What one needs is talent more so than money. Maybe I’m naive but I think it would be fairly easy to break in so long as you have the right story, the right people.

    Unless Jay is eyeing up doing Transformers 2, then whore away.