Film Junk Podcast Episode #335: Contagion

Posted by on September 12th, 2011   Filed under: Featured, Film Junk Podcast

0:00 – Intro
4:00 – Headlines: Eddie Murphy to Host the Oscars, Mel Gibson to Direct Judah Maccabee Movie, Back to the Future Shoes Released (Without Power Laces)
20:05 – Review: Contagion
40:30 – Other Stuff We Watched: Our Idiot Brother, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Duel, Attack the Block, Penn & Teller: Fool Us, Rebirth, Roseanne’s Nuts, The Office: Season 7
1:02:50 – Junk Mail: Rental DVDs without Special Features, Blu-ray Scam, Favourite Moments of Actors Showing Emotion Without Words, Zurich Film Festival
1:17:15 – This Week’s DVD Releases
1:20:50 – Outro
1:24:25 – Spoiler Discussion: Contagion

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  • Indianamcclain

    One of my favourite moments of an actor showing emotion without speaking was Jeff Godlblum in The Fly. The expression on his face when he finds out what’s happening to him is really scary.

  • anton

    what about Caesar in the rise of the planet of the apes. some good moments with his face, especially in that ape concentration camp place..

  • Greg

    I give Contagion 4 stars.

  • So Greg specifically asked to be part of the second DVD podcast, and you still left him out?

  • I’d bet that Nike tried to make the self-lacers, but that it wasn’t that good or it was just too impractical so they scrapped it and just went with the look-only sneaks.

    Also, I hate Nike and they must be stopped. They are ruining all uniforms they touch in sports.

  • It wasn’t a malicious decision to exclude Greg, it’s just that he was in Toronto and we wanted to still record something. We actually weren’t sure we were going to bother with the regular podcast but we all saw Contagion so we just did a shorter one.

  • bard

    My Sunshine deal was incredible, I forgot I even sent that in.

    Also, I was almost certain that when Jay mentioned Dumb & Dumber for that question about silent emotion in films, he was going to be talking about when Lloyd sees Harry and Mary at her house and he silently takes his hat off and almost vomits from the pain of sadness and betrayal.

  • Isn’t the best solution to just wait a week when Greg will be back? I mean, it’s one week.

  • YOU WAIT A WEEK, I NEED MY FILMJUNK EVERY DAY!!!

  • the all time non verbal movie is Being There, watch it and be amazed at Peter Sellers mastery.

    also Cinema Pardiso
    or Eraserhead
    or Unforgiven
    or The Reader

  • Greg

    @rjdelight – To be fair, Sean texted me and asked if it was cool if they did it. I am at TIFF and they wanted to get a show up and it made sense to do the DVD one as well at the same time. We try very hard to get something up every week. I don’t even buy DVDs or Blu-Rays. I don’t even own a Blu-Ray player.

    Plus, the next show will be the TIFF show, I think and it’s going to be a monster.

  • “I don’t even buy DVDs or Blu-Rays. I don’t even own a Blu-Ray player.”

    Lol,that’s why I wanted to hear you on the special.

  • Is Jay drunk?

  • Glendon

    I hope one day Jay will film as cinematically as possible the film junk crew playing Settlers of Catan.

  • mattTO

    When I saw the podcast was only 1.5 hours, I was like “aww, man.”

    Then Sean said they were recording the DVD manifesto part 2 right after, and I was like “Best day.”

  • ButtonMan88

    Emotion without dialog.

    The scene in Heat where RdN debates the fateful decision to either skip out with his girl and have the rest of his life to live or go to the hotel where the DB who sold his crew out is currently in witness protection. As he approaches the off-ramp for the hotel, the internal struggle conveyed purely with his facial ticks is truly great cinematic acting

  • Jonny Ashley

    Jay sounds like he’s on horse pills

  • Best scene of emotion without dialog:

    Mark Wahlberg stoned out of his mind towards the end of Boogie Nights, staring into space while Jesse’s Girl plays and an Asian boy lights off firecrackers. It’s a solid minute of just his face not reacting to anything at all.

  • Kasper

    No Greg on the episode = Food Junk needed!

  • sansho1

    Love me some Greg, but the manifesto is letting Jay and Frank delve deep into their OCD, and I’m digging it hard as is. Having Greg there would be like Danny McBride pulling up a chair halfway through My Dinner With Andre. Great guy, wrong movie. No offense, I hope.

  • Yeah, it is pretty funny to hear them go off on the organizational stuff unchecked without a person that ISN’T as crazy about that stuff keeping them grounded.

    Personally, I organize my stuff so that OTHER people can find it. It’s mostly just alphabetical (with numbers first, unless the number is spelled out like “Seven”), and then chronological by series/franchise (the Nolan Batmans directly follow all the Batman films from before), with the TV stuff in it’s own place. If someone’s browsing, they know they can probably just jump ahead if there’s something specific they’re trying to find.

  • @ sansho1

    Ahh, yes but you forget about the Year One episode with the infamous “S.O.S. Fantômes”. Jay and Frank delved deep into their OCD on that ep, which was HILARIOUS. But Greg was equally as hilarious as he defended the french writing on the DVD covers. Yin and Yang.

  • sansho1

    Solid point, and I’m sure I’d enjoy it either way. My Dinner With Both Andre and Danny McBride would deserve to be judged on its own merits.

  • Every good movie should be able to show emotions with minimal use of dialogue. Still, some of them go the extra step to present an actor in a raw performance. The best example I can think of right now is Jack Nicholson at the end of About Schmidt. If you saw the film you know what I’m talking about.

    The Israeli film Footnote which plays at TIFF right now has an amazing opening scene with a man listening to a speech while the camera stays on him for almost ten minutes… I can’t really describe it, but it’s fantastic.

    And it’s not really an “actor”, but since it was in the news just now, Darth Vader at the end of Return Of The Jedi, watching the Emperor fry his son while being tormented by indecision (excluding the Blu-Ray version, I guess).

  • Greg

    “Having Greg there would be like Danny McBride pulling up a chair halfway through My Dinner With Andre.”

    This, by far, is the best thing ever written about me on Film Junk.

  • For some reason I love the idea of Frank disgustedly watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks at home alone.

  • @fatbologna Same here. Hands over his mouth, teeth gritted, mumbling, “Get to the fuckin’ Namboobu, buddy…”

  • kyri

    about the self lacing shoes..

    There was a very interesting episode in “this american life podcast” about Patents.

    Basically what the show proved is that patents nowadays work more or less like scam-vehicles for companies that do not produce anything but sue others who do produce just because they claim that they own the rights to a certain “idea”. They basically buy the rights of patents from “inventors” in order to extract money from people who do produce what they claim that they own the rights to produce and distribute, but they don’t. For example the idea to update a program from the internet. or ..the idea to upload images to the internet via a server..
    Crazy stuff.

    Patents are actually so broad that cover practically ANYTHING and basically destroy innovation instead of protecting it. or promoting it. It’s basically IMPOSSIBLE to create a new idea over the internet and make money without being destroyed by one of those companies.
    Nike probably patented just the IDEA. not an actual product just to be sure that no other company will EVER produce self-lacing shoes.

    it makes you think..

  • @kyri, that makes bunches of sense. Now I am off to the patent office to patent the idea of coming up with the next big idea that makes bundles of money, that way the next time someone comes up with something that makes them a ton of money, I will sue them and make bundles of money.

  • Napalm

    Wow.. this has to be one of the shortest episodes in a while.

  • Kyri

    I would bet actual money that they already patent that as well..

  • Mason

    Director Wim Wenders’ movies seem to have good scenes with the actors’ faces conveying emotion silently. I can think of some scenes like that throughout “Paris, Texas” and “Wings of Desire”.

  • el ohroy

    I also thought Jay was drunk. Or it might be a tumor.

  • rot

    Contagion spoiler*** Sean is wrong with regards to the idea that a doctor would never do what the doctor does in Contagion, making herself sick to try the cure… they actually say it in the film itself but I knew of it before, there is a real world case where the doctor injected himself with the virus, I think it was a stomach virus used himself as the experiment and cured it.

    I caught Contagion first day and thought it was ok but I don’t know, you guys talking about it has really made me reevaluate, think the rewatch I will find better.

  • I do remember them mentioning the real world case but I was under the impression that it wasn’t a life-threatening virus. Maybe I’m wrong there. Either way, I just think it’s a stupid move… maybe not entirely unrealistic though.

  • You need to spend more time with Reed – its classic Hero stuff. She forsaken herself for others and knew that she could shorten the testing process by injecting herself. It was nicely foreshadowed by showing the San Fran scientist disregarding protocol and working on the virus after being told to destroy it.

  • Yes, but what I’m saying is it’s not all that heroic because she could have killed herself, which would have set the whole process back significantly and actually screwed over a lot of people due to her irresponsibility.

  • “not all that heroic because she could have killed herself” – that is the very definition of self sacrifice, movie / cultural heros, i.e. Joseph Campbell. There is no heroism without risk Sean

    she isn’t the only scientist at the CDC, or the world, working on a vaccine, but the film does kind of make it look that way. If you believe she is that valuable then it looks stupid, in reality she is replaceable.