Film Junk Podcast Episode #553: The Witch

Posted by on February 23rd, 2016   Filed under: Featured, Film Junk Podcast

podcast553

0:00 – Intro
17:55 – Review: The Witch
46:45 – Headlines: Pete’s Dragon Trailer
55:40 – Other Stuff We Watched: The Witches, David & Lisa, Chi-raq, Rock the Kasbah, Cries & Whispers, Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, 11-22-63
1:40:30 – Junk Mail: Death Threats for Disliking Deadpool, Pretending to Like Movies to Avoid Being Labelled a Hater, How to File Creed on Your Shelf, Where to File a Bond Box Set on Your Shelf, Blu-rays That Are Sold in DVD Cases, Mad Men, TV Doesn’t Suck
2:17:40 – This Week on DVD and Blu-ray
2:20:50 – Outro
2:24:00 – Spoiler Discussion: The Witch

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» View the show notes
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  • Indianamcclain

    We need a moratorium on trailers showing people jumping off something then cutting to black. Refer to the Revenant, Civil War, and to a certain extent Pete’s Dragon trailers to see what I’m talking about.

  • devolutionary

    Premature Evacuation?

  • Indianamcclain

    What? Haha

  • DestinationThreshold

    It is most definitely pronounced “shy town.”

  • J.C.

    Come on Frank…The Witch and The Village…really? Other than the (SPOILERS FOR THE VILLAGE) “fake” time period that The Village takes place in there aren’t really that many similarities. I mean even the title The Village lets you know that you’re dealing with a village. The Witch is a single isolated family in unsettled territory. The sense of isolation was one of the many things that I loved about The Witch. Although I’m not going to argue that The Witch is a wholly original film because it isn’t, but the comparison to The Village seems to be purely on a surface level. Sorry Frank.

    P.S.-You’re telling me you can’t get down to some of this while you’re playing Disney Infinity Frank?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQLFMwR201g

  • Sam

    The Witch definitely aspires to be like The Village!

    Don’t give the originality to The Witch because The Village came first.

    Not The Crucible, or Day of Wrath, but The Village!

    Love ya Frank.

  • devolutionary

    The sound design was amazing on the film. Definitely contributed to the eeriness and suspense. Korven seemed to be channeling Dead Can Dance here.

  • devolutionary

    Don’t you know? It’s refreshing when movies are only original if they’re the first things Frank has seen.

  • Essie

    I love Film Junk more than almost anything but I have to admit I am starting to sour on Frank bullying everyone for the things they like. I of course know he is turning the volume up to 11 for the sake of the show but it does stunt civil discussion. Every time someone likes something that isn’t a mainstream post 1995 release they are accused of liking it for being old, foreign, on a certain blu ray company, for being drama for the sake of it, etc, etc. I love what Frank brings to the show but I miss it when he wasn’t attacking every opinion without a pause.

    Cries & Whispers is one of my least favorite Bergman films but still a pretty moving piece (to me). And I generally find Haxan to be a chore with some memorable spots throughout.

    Do you think there is a chance we could get a Disney animated premium? I need an excuse to revisit some childhood favorites! :P Thanks a lot for the show.

  • Davey

    Haven’t listened yet, but seeing “How to File Creed on Your Shelf” in the notes has me excited. Can’t wait for the next installment of the Manifesto.

  • Len F.

    Spike Lee premium please!

  • Jonny Ashley

    Fabulous episode, men.

  • J.C.

    I can’t get enough of Jay’s voices and impressions. I’m pretty sure that my co-workers thought I was crazy when I just busted out laughing every time that Jay did his impression of the father from The Witch!

  • J.C.

    I second this!

  • Sam

    Not a huge Spike Lee fan, but I could see this being solid. Maybe:
    She’s Gotta Have It
    Do the Right Thing
    Malcolm X
    25th Hour
    Inside Man

    Would be a decent place to start I’d say. Maybe He Got Game, Bamboozled?

  • devolutionary

    It got mixed reviews but Summer of Sam has some interesting parallels with Fincher’s Zodiac.

  • Indianamcclain

    Jay was asking for a show that I was moved by, and changed my viewpoints. For me the answer would be The Wire. That’s the only show I’ve watched where I came out on the other end feeling enlightend for watching it, and wanting to do something to change what I saw on the show.

  • LordAwesome

    blu-ray.com are the fucking worst. They wouldn’t know picture quality if it bit them in the ass. They gave junk like the original release PATTON and Criterion’s compression disaster MULHOLLAND DR. 5/5. They gave the DNR’ed slathered old masters of BACK TO THE FUTURE TRILOGY 4.5/5.

    They gave Arrow’s majestic release of BLOOD AND BLACK LACE 3.5/5

    What a bunch of fucking goons.

    Stick with caps-a-holics.com and doblu.com

  • Falsk

    Whoa guys–FunOfficePools.com is still around! But for whatever reason they aren’t hosting the Oscars. (I’m guessing legal reasons.)

    For anyone wanting to do the pool, please refer to the Reddit page for more info on how to sign up and play! It’s needlessly complicated but still doable! :D https://www.reddit.com/r/filmjunk/comments/474ema/film_junk_2016_oscar_pool/

  • Falsk

    Also, I hope Sean goes back and edits his picks as he still has 600 points left to bet and is trailing the rest of us right at the get-go…

  • Sam

    Shhhh… Sean just wants to live dangerously.

  • Andrew Dixon

    Classic Jay: talks about the vagina blood in Cries & Whispers and then gives some great insight about silent cinema.

  • Andrew Dixon

    I love Frank as well, but this is starting to sound like he doesn’t understand other people don’t share his shit taste. Also, modernitis.

  • Sean

    I’m all in. Ready to fully embarrass myself.

  • Charles Palentine

    Straw Dogs! I watched it just last night at the New Beverly Cinema here in LA, and there’s definitely a bear trap involved.

  • Adam

    During your spoiler discussion their seemed to be a bit of confusion as to what happened within the shed during the third act of the film.

    *******SPOILER********

    When the old woman appears inside the shed that Thomasin and the twins are boarded up in we see a long shot of the old womans back while she’s sitting next to the goat. As the camera pushes in toward her we get a quick cut to her creepy old face laughing, then a second quick cut to a medium shot of Thomasin turning from right to left (as if she’s watching the woman quickly move from the goat towards the twins) through this and and through the sound design used within that sequence it is implied that the woman does in fact move from the goat to the children and attacks/kills them. The twins screams blend with Thomasins own screaming as she watches the attack unfold. The camera then cuts away to the mother getting her biggin’s pecked at by the crow back inside the main cabin.

    Following that we see the morning after when the father comes outside and sees what has happened during the night. Thomasin is seen to be asleep on the ground, presumably she had fainted from shock of what she saw when the twins where killed.

    This shows that the witch was an outside force acting upon the family and that at this point Thomasin was not a witch but rather an unfortunate victim. It happens quickly and can easily be missed but it did happen and in my opinion demonstrated her victimization in a fairly clear manner.

  • Samb

    Huh. I have to say I didn’t get that vibe at all from Frank this week, or at least no more than usual. He does have a high tolerance for Hollywood “product”, but I’d argue they all do, at least for the sake of the podcast. Personally, I’d rather hear 30 minutes on Cries and Whispers and a two-minute aside on Deadpool, but I understand that’s not going to drive traffic. They manage most of the time to entertain me, though, even on topics I can’t take seriously.

  • Len F.

    Yeah, nice. He has a good mix of genre and quality in his filmography, so it should lead to some interesting discussions. Would also force me to watch some of his stuff that I may have skipped along the way.

  • Essie

    my issue isn’t at all with the content. i like discussion on blockbusters and art films alike (i find their dicussions on blockbusters to be more well thought out actually, and to be closer to the mark). i just wish frank wasn’t playing it up so much lately. and you’re right, this episode wasn’t so bad. i had just been catching up on a few before and it really stuck out. i love film junk and the boys all the same though, don’t get me wrong.

  • traynor

    I love Frank just the way he is. Frankie, don’t change!

  • Nobody

    “Cowboy Bebop” jumps out to me as the kind of special TV show Jay described. It’s an anime series, so that’s probably enough for Jay to assume I’m a fucking idiot, but it’s a show that works for me in a way no other series has before (I’m not a die-hard Japanimation fan, either). It consists of a compact 26 episodes and while the character arcs/backstories are woven throughout, I’d say a majority of the episodes work as stand-alone stories that employ various styles and tones. There’s an episode titled “Pierrot le Fou” that’s infused with a sense of dread and horror as well as some excellent action sequences, while another one is a kind of comedic take on “Alien,” with a foreign entity terrorizing the characters on their space ship. There was a movie, but I would agree with the consensus that it doesn’t really touch the show. If I was just comparing it to other acclaimed Japanimation, I wouldn’t hesitate to put it higher than anything Studio Ghibli has ever produced. It’s also the only TV show that I can actually re-watch all the way through, the same way I can re-watch a great movie.

    Surely there are a couple others who have witnessed the majesty that is the “Ballad of Fallen Angels” episode:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=insvUi_eWXQ

  • Rob

    Some advice for the people that are struggling with “how to honestly deliver negative reviews to popular movies”

    Start with what you liked. Moments you liked, aspects you liked, etc etc. Pretty much every film has positives of some kind (especially blockbusters which are designed to be so consumable), no need to lie. Then ask them questions like “Hey what did you think of (topic you didn’t like).” Turn it around on them, and question their opinions instead of directly giving your own.

    Even if you hate the film, approach with enthusiasm, because I feel like the excitement of the conversation is more important to those people than what you’re actually saying. You’re not talking about “film” like art, you are – like Jay said – having a water cooler conversation.

  • Jr

    I agree with Jay. I could cite a few shows as “great” or having a real affect on me but these still don’t come close to the experience of a great film. Anyway, my examples would be True Detective (s1) and Seinfeld.

  • B.J.

    Ingmar Bergman?? Frank Perry?! German Expressionism?!?
    Thank you Michael Bay Premium for fucking Jay in the ass so hard with abysmal corporate trash that he seems to be starving for real genuine movies made by actual real filmmakers.

  • Six Feet Under is my most influential TV show, it dealt with everything and did it amazingly, but I can’t name many others that did more than just entertain me either by comedy or suspense or action.

    I think I understand why movies are more life-affecting than TV… if you allow yourself to be moved by a film you can always just sit down for 2 hours or so and get that re-affirmation vibe of whatever it does to you. If a TV show does that to you it’s pretty daunting to re-watch an entire series & even in cases like True Detective is pretty damn difficult to do in a day, let alone one sitting. Sure you can watch an episode or two to scratch an itch but if the series had a full arc you miss out on that.

    Even with binging a show it’s near impossible to get that ‘gut punch’ that a movie can give you as you watch a 2 hour story play out, so I think it’s easier to weave philosophical ideas into a film instead of TV.

  • Bizzaro Nate

    Hey Jay, you gotta check out this week’s interview on WTF Maron. He’s got William Friedkin. It’s worth a listen just for hearing him pronounce “Blue Ray” – it’s like Blue..: Ray. Loving it!

  • Lior

    Took the words right out of my mouth. Six Feet Under is the only show I can think of that left an impact on me as much as movies did. I don’t think anyone who watched the season finale for Six Feet Under will ever forget it.

  • Matt the Kiwi

    Regarding the ‘TV Sucks’ conversation I’m really surprised that nobody on the show has watched ‘The Knick’. Everything about it is at a cinematic level: production, cast, tone and in particular, the directing – no surprise given it was Steven Soderbergh. I started watching it simply because it seemed like the setting was unique for a TV series (a hospital in the early 1900’s). The best thing about it now – everything gets nicely wrapped up by the end of season 2 so you can rest easy knowing you’re not necessarily committing yourself to something that could go on indefinitely. To answer Jay’s question, there were definitely several episodes that affected me in ‘deep bowel’ kinda way.

  • Captain Morgan

    Not sure if this has been addressed or not, but guys, PLEASE make sure the window for buying the USBs is wider than 24 hours. Simply put, I don’t check the site everyday, and I’d be seriously gutted to miss out on a USB drive for the second time.

    Based on what you’ve said about getting them out to as many people as who want them, please give us a decent window to submit our requests. If I don’t get one this time, I, along with I believe may others, will only end up hounding you guys to do more in the future. So please!

    Thanks, keep up the excellent work as always :)

  • Captain Morgan

    Seconded. The best anime I’ve seen by far. Any other recommends?

  • Sean

    I watched the first few episodes and it didn’t totally grab me but it’s on the ever expanding list of shows that I will give another chance to eventually.

  • Sean

    We’ll leave the orders open for a week or so and we’ll be sure to mention it on various social networks so people don’t miss it.

  • FRANK. I submitted a change to the IMDb regarding the title for “The VVitch.” It should be spelled with the Vs, not a W. The opening credits of the film have it spelled that way as does the marketing of the posters.

    IMDb specifically says they use the title as it appears in the opening credits. And there, it is THE VVITCH.

    So it goes towards the end on your shelf. Next to all of the other films that start with two Vs.

  • Frankie Knuckles

    Thank you sir … I applaud your efforts.

  • This. I don’t understand why nobody is watching The Knick. I have a hunch it’s because people can’t handle the “ickiness” of many scenes. I also think it’s a little too experimental for casual TV viewers. That score is amazing but I think it feels a little off for many people.

    It’s one of the best shows on TV. Though I still say that Fargo Season 2 was the best thing I watched last year. Period.

  • gibson8

    Thinking that blind people experience improved senses on account of them losing one is fucking ignorant and incredibly arrogant. If you lose a sense you lose a sense. You have to adapt and find other sensory modes to process your surroundings but you do not automatically gain in other areas.
    You make disability sound like video game AI which reflects your fundamental impediment as a human being.

  • gibson8

    Here’s a tip: When Jay is criticising/analysing/summarising your inanity why don’t you try to actually show that you are not the cunt he portrays..

  • The end

    @filmjunk:disqus – should help you with the correct danish pronunciation ;)
    https://translate.google.ca/#da/en/slut

  • lol

    sloot

  • Nobody

    I don’t think I’ve seen much that isn’t already well-known. I really loved how dark and sinister “Monster” was. I think “Evangelion” is a must-see and its crazy production issues just make it more interesting. Also, “Trigun” and “Fullmetal Alchemist.” “Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo” sucked me in, but I remember it not sticking the ending for some reason.
    You?