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The Fandom Portals Podcast
"Welcome to Fandom Portals—the show that explores how your favourite fandoms can help you learn and grow!" 🎙️✨
Each episode, we explore TV, movies, comics, and games to reveal how these worlds and the characters in them help us learn about resilience, courage, friendship, and more.
The Fandom Portals Podcast is hosted by Aaron Davies and Adam Brasher, two friends who are obsessed with fandoms, storytelling, and building a community where passion and positivity come first. From Marvel to Middle-earth, Star Wars to indie comics, we dive deep into the stories you love — and how they help us learn and grow. ✨
The Fandom Portals Podcast
The Nice Guys, Does the Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe Pairing Work? Exploring Eucatastrophe and Neo-Noir in Comedy
In this episode, we explore "The Nice Guys," a cleverly crafted film that intertwines humor with unexpected twists, making it a rewatchable masterpiece. We tackle the intriguing concept of eucatastrophe within "The Nice Guys," revealing how unexpected twists and comedic flair illuminate Shane Black's mastery of the genre.
We break down the film's seamless integration of 1970s aesthetics and themes, reflecting on the gritty yet glamorous world it creates. The dynamic duo of Gosling and Crowe is put to the test.
As we wrap up, the conversation turns to character depth and dialogue—a testament to the film's respect for audience intelligence. We explore Holly's pivotal role as a moral compass and how her interactions with the flawed heroes drive the narrative.
Join us in advocating for more stories that subvert expectations and entertain with brilliance.
• Discussion on the film's clever writing
• Exploration of the eucatastrophe phenomenon
• Analysis of character dynamics between Gosling and Crowe
• Insights from the Fandom Portals community reactions
• Examination of the film's 1970s setting and its thematic relevance
• Call for a sequel based on the film's reception and potential storyline.
Contact Us:
Website: https://www.fandomportalspodcast.com/
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Threads: threads.net/@fandomportals
Email: fandomportals@gmail.com
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/fandomportals
Hello everybody and welcome to the Fandom Portals podcast, where we explore fandoms that help you learn and grow. This week, we are looking at the Nice Guys. That is the 2016 movie starring Ryan Gosling, russell Crowe, and it is directed by Shane Black. Now in this episode, we are looking at how the clever writing of this movie makes it one of the most rewatchable comedies. We're looking at the phenomenon known as the you Catastrophe and we're answering questions about how this breaks the mold of your traditional kind of comedic detective story. And we're looking at the unlikely pair of Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe and we're discussing whether that works as a combination that should be in further movies. Now you guys are very vocal on this topic for our podcast, on our threads, and if you're interested in joining our threads and becoming part of the Fandom Portals community, make sure you look at the show notes below or go onto threads and find us at Fandom Portals. We hope you enjoy this episode on the nice guys.
Speaker 1:Hello everybody, it's Aaron here from the Fandom Portals podcast. I'm here with Brash Sup. How's everyone doing? Very well, thank you, brash. All right, today we are going to start off as usual with our gratitudes and growth. You can go first today, brash.
Speaker 2:What are your gratitudes and growths? I did have one, actually. No, I am grateful for my health. I've been not so struggling with my health like. I'm fine, like according to the doctor there's a horse, but fantastic.
Speaker 1:Nah, it's always good to be healthy, shit way to end the year. But you know you can only go up in.
Speaker 2:January. But the thing is like anytime there was something on, so, like my Christmas party or anything like that, I was fine and it was always. It's always the in-between yep, yep, all right.
Speaker 1:So for me, um, I'll start with my growth, and last week we talked about my sleeping pattern, how it's absolutely rubbish, so so for me, my growth, or my area of growth, is still the fact that I have a shitty sleeping pattern. I actually looked into sleep debt. I don't know if it's a real thing or not, so I looked it up. Apparently it is, um, but I got one of those tracking apps and it tracks the times where you go to sleep and it's supposed to be in the times that you get up, and I'm very consistent in when I wake up. Yeah, and I am thankful to my children for that, because they're like the best alarm clocks but the times that I go to bed, I was only consistently going to bed last week the same time, two nights in a row, so that's a plus. Yeah, this is, you know, two nights in a row, row, but it's still somewhere that I need to grow, so I'm working on it. I'm working on it.
Speaker 1:Sleeping pattern, important people. And then my gratitude for this week. I was talking to you earlier about it, but, uh, my gratitude is for our threads community um bit of a podcast gratitude for this one. But, yeah, you guys have been really awesomely commenting on a lot of the stuff that we've been putting out there, which is awesome to see. We're going to be chatting you guys out in this episode when we're talking about the nice guys, because, yeah, you guys had a bit to say about it. So, very thankful for you guys. Very grateful for you guys and, yeah, keep it coming, because we love reading them. So very grateful for the Fandom Portals community.
Speaker 2:Actually I do have. Actually, now I'm grateful for let's go. I was up early this week and I fell asleep on the couch and it messed up my shoulder, Yep, and I had to go. I went to work and it was just pain all day and then. So I'm like I'll go in masseuse and hopefully that'll help. And here's my gratitude it helped. Then here's the double-edged sword. It hurt, yeah, good, good, they know how to do their job hey yeah, so I.
Speaker 2:My gratitude is to the um, all the masseuses out there and the um physios. Thank you guys, you do God's work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but ouch yeah, I don't know how they do it. Hey, because I can like for me, I can sit and game on the couch using my thumbs for hours and hours on end, the. And the moment you have to massage something else like 15 minutes those thumbs are cooked.
Speaker 2:Gorilla grips. They must be like those squeeze, like the tension, like they should be, like you'll smash those, the squeezy hand grips just while they're driving.
Speaker 1:Without any further ado, let's get into our first segment, which is our first takes. Our first takes segment is the segment where we like to talk about how we first were introduced to this movie. Again, we are talking about the nice guys. A couple of people say you're a pretty good detective. That's a lot of work.
Speaker 2:I want you to help me with this case. My profession is very complicated. It's very nuanced. Well, look who decided to show up for class. This is a high profile case. You've seen this girl Her name's Amelia who said it for me. We can do this the easy way.
Speaker 1:Ow, we're currently doing it the easy way, dad. There's like whores here and stuff.
Speaker 2:Sweetheart, how many times have I told you Don't say and stuff, just say, dad, there are whores here, where are you going? I think this is going to work better if we split up. Wow, that's really insensitive. Emilius, run March, march, march.
Speaker 1:Alright. So the Nice Guys is a movie starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, and this segment of the first takes is where we talk about how we first discovered, or our first impressions of, the movie. It's in this segment also where we're going to start shouting out some of our threads, commenters, to get your first takes of the movie as well. So if you would like to, that is, at fandom portals definitely come and connect with us on threads when we post a what are your thoughts on this movie? Post Brash, you want to go first. How did you first discover the Nice Guys?
Speaker 2:I first saw it ads on just TV, but I never actually like. The first time I watched it was yesterday. Yeah, I saw it and I was like, oh yeah, that might be alright, but then I don't think it ever caught my eye enough to hit, play, hit play, because of late Ryan Gosling for me has been absolutely amazing, everything he does Like I reckon. Yeah, so back when I was 26, I was.
Speaker 1:You weren't a film connoisseur like you are right now. No, no.
Speaker 2:The thing is I was, I used to watch everything and then but like there's just some things that I just miss Because back then, but like there's just some things I just miss, because back then, like Ryan Gosling was for the girls, yep, yep and then like Russell Crowe was in it and I was like, oh yeah, but then last time I really liked anything Russell Crowe was in was like the Gladiator. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:Ryan Gosling, to me, has gone through the same transition as Matthew McCona. Yeah, because you know how he started in his rom-com phase and then everyone was like, oh fuck, this guy can actually act Interstellar and then get to like Interstellar and stuff.
Speaker 1:I was like yeah, yeah, dallas Buyers Club, all that, but yeah, for me, when I first encountered this movie, I did not know it existed at all until I downloaded Letterboxd. And when I downloaded Letterboxd, obviously that's a social media platform for movie lovers. I added he was my only friend for a while Shout out, dylan, how you going. And one of his favorite movies, because on Letterboxd you can highlight your top four movies and it sits at the top of your profile. Yep, and one of his was the Nice Guys, which is a surprise for me because I didn't think he was into those kinds of movies. He rated it five stars and I was like I'll have to check it out because it wasn't the story for me. Yeah, and again, the pairing of Gosling and Crow two bird, last names, by the way, out of the blue, like I don't know, it's not a pairing that.
Speaker 2:I'd pick, and that's probably like another reason why I didn't really watch. I didn't think like like them two together would make enough impact for me to make it good yeah impact for me to make it good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know what you mean. Yep, all right. So the people from our threads there is a lot of positive talk about the movie. So Lizette69 said that they loved it and then Scribe31Ounce said it's a crime that we never got a sequel, and that was probably mirrored by a lot of users. Lollivitala said it's not bad, and then BillMiddleMass said, vitalis said it's not bad, uh, and then, uh, bill middle mass said it's an absolute gem of a movie should have had a sequel. But, to be honest, the best ones really don't need a sequel. So a lot of talk about sequels. Brash, did you make it to the end of this movie?
Speaker 2:I did, yeah, yep, and it kind of lines it up pretty well for one yeah, yeah, especially at the end, like, but we'll talk about it, we'll talk about it later, yeah, laney delaneyaney said that she loves this movie so much and they're ashamed that they didn't make a sequel.
Speaker 1:So again that sequel talk. Another one Old Geek Scott said that it was vastly underrated. With Lester Lee, I agree with that. They loved it and they would love to see a sequel as well.
Speaker 2:I agree with that. It was definitely. If I'd have known that I was going to like it, had known that I was going to like it, I probably would have watched it back when it first came out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So before we leave our first take segment, we always sort of frame our point of view for the talks to come. So, brash, did you enjoy the movie? Did you like the movie?
Speaker 2:I did like the movie, yes.
Speaker 1:I very much did. Yeah, so for me, when I first watched it I thought it was pretty average. But then I re-watched it and I did some reading on it and instead of me thinking that the because on initial view I watched it and I thought that the plot was really disjointed and some of the connections didn't really hit, but then when you look at it from particular point of views, it's actually very clever. So I gave it three and a half stars on my letterbox, but I'm thinking I might have to bump that up because I liked it a lot more than what I did on a second watch through and that's something that one of our threaders said as well is that it gets better with every rewatch, which is rare for a movie. So there we go. It is pretty universally liked, which is surprising because it's like it didn't do too well at the box office. But we'll get into that in my favorite segment, the fandom face-off. So it's been two weeks so far since we've started this.
Speaker 1:The Fandom Fact Face-Off is a segment where Brasher and I give trivia questions to one another. We give three each and we score each other out of three and the winner after a month. So four movies or four episodes, will treat the other to a cinema date, all expenses paid if they beat their opposing player. So the current score after two weeks is that Brasher is on four and that I am on three. So if you're doing the maths, after two weeks, six possible questions, I'm hitting a 50% and Brasher is hitting just a little bit more than that. So we'll see if we can bump those scores up, bump up those rookie numbers in this week's episode. I'm going to go first Brash, if that's all good with you. Yep, alright, I'll do this one first.
Speaker 1:So the director of this movie is named Shane Black, and they also worked on Iron man 3 and they famously wrote one other screenplay featuring a buddy cop dynamic. What was that screenplay or script, buddy cop? Hmm, very famous. I'll give you a clue. One of the characters has a famous catchphrase or line and he says I'm too old for this shit. Oh, lethal Weapon. Yes, lethal Weapon is correct Ding, ding, ding. So, yeah, his very first and most famous screenplay. He wrote all of the Lethal Weapon movies. As I said before, he also worked and directed Iron man 3. And, funnily enough, ty Simpkin, the kid from Iron man 3, also features in this movie at the very, very start, yep, yep. He plays Harley in Iron man 3. And in the Nice Guys he plays the boy who finds Misty Mountains dead on her on a rock after he's rummaging for his dad's nudie magazine. So good, good work, brash. Good point for you, good point for you.
Speaker 1:He sort of feds me with that the line yeah well, you know, we always get one hint. That's how it works, so you'll go.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the actress who plays Holly what's her country of like, what's her?
Speaker 1:nationality. Okay, so Holly is the daughter of Ryan Gosling. Her name is Angry Rice, which sounds like angry rice. Angry. I don't know her nationality, but it sounds Swedish. She's Australian. No way, yep, really, yep. I did not pick her as an Australian. Her accent is completely hidden. Yep Born in.
Speaker 2:I think she's Perth born, yep. Don't quote me on that one, though, but she was born in 19, 19, sorry, 2001. 2001.
Speaker 1:So that would have made her 15 at the or 14 at the time of shooting, 15 when it was released this movie. So yeah, you have a history of feeling like the, the families slash. Children of protagonists in movies are useless characters. So we'll see how that goes later today when we talk about it. But a score currently for the fandom fact face off brash one, me nothing, next one for brash. I always ask your box office question. So here is it for this week. This movie had a budget of $50 million. How much did it earn? I have a feeling it was underrated.
Speaker 2:I actually couldn't tell you. I'm going to take a. How much did it earn? I have a feeling it was underrated. Mm-hmm, I actually couldn't tell you. I'm going to take a stab. So it cost $50 million to make. Yes, I'm going to say it probably at least matched what it costs or over what it costs, but not by much. So I reckon maybe $100 million to $125 million, $125 million is very generous.
Speaker 1:It actually only made $71 million from a budget of $50 million. Not by much, so I reckon maybe 100 million, 125 million, 125 million is very generous. It actually only made 71 million dollars from a budget of 50 million dollars. The Angry Birds movie actually outperformed this one and it's considered one of the reasons why it didn't perform well at the box office so the thing is I've actually watched Angry Birds movie so, but yeah, that's actually kind of just one, so I think I read this.
Speaker 1:The director, Shane Black, originally wanted this movie to be a TV series.
Speaker 2:That's right he did, but they were worried it wasn't going to go anywhere. So they turned it into a movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know what that's like not encouraging If somebody says to you we don't really think that you have the plot or the direction to make this into a you know a 10 part or 12 part Long series.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's make it into a movie instead.
Speaker 1:All right, glad they did, though, because it's now finding appreciation nowadays as our threads community and you and I both both sort of have figured All right. Your last question so Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe both accepted their respective roles in this movie? For what reason? Ooh, surely it couldn't be just like, uh, ooh, surely it couldn't be just like because they liked the script. Well, they did, but that wasn't. That wasn't. That wasn't the reason.
Speaker 2:That wasn't the reason uh was it, did they do?
Speaker 1:it as a favour? No, they didn't do it as a favour. Russell Crowe had already been in talks with Shane Black to have signed on for the movie, and Ryan Gosling signed onto the movie because he knew Russell Crowe was going to be in the movie. So they signed on because they wanted to work with each other. So that was the story. Do you have one question left? I do.
Speaker 2:Here we go when Misty Mountain is on the rock. Her last words to the boy was the title of the film they made. What was the title of the film?
Speaker 1:Something, something, something, big boy. That's what she said. She says Do you like my car, big boy? Yes, yes, there it is Very good. Yeah, so when she's dying on the rock there, I thought that was really that sort of gave you the vibe of the movie, wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Because that was weird, because it took him a hot minute to figure out that she, like she wasn't just saying oh, because I was like sort of like. I sort of thought like, oh yeah, I saw the name of the film that they made. It's only then that I clicked it. Oh shit, she was trying to give the kid a hint. Yeah, yeah, it was like a light bulb moment, that's when the Detective should have clicked on.
Speaker 1:That's what she was saying. Yeah, what were her last words? This was the last word. Yeah, yeah, that didn't click to me until the second watch as well. That's what I mean when I say that this movie is kind of clever and you pick something new up every single time. Very good. So currently for our fandom fact file segment, we have myself sitting at five points and Brash are sitting at five points after three weeks. So sitting at five points after three weeks. So next week will be the final and it will also decide who shouts the movie date. So we'll have to wait and see Brash, have to wait and see All right, so let's get into our next segment.
Speaker 1:All right, our next segment of the show is the most valuable takeaway, and this is the main sort of segment of the show where Brash and I talk about the thing that we liked the most from the movie. Whether it be a particular scene, it could be a life lesson that we've learned. It could be something that we can apply to our own lives to help us grow. It could be an educational fact. It could be something in the cinema, uh cinematography of the movie, that we really liked, or it could even be something from a character that we really want to employ, improve our own lives with. Um. So yeah, this could be really anything that really just sort of stuck with us for this movie. I have one or two for my MVTs this week, brash, what about yourself?
Speaker 2:I have one.
Speaker 1:You have one, one main, so I might go first for this one. Mine is more of a cinema sort of themed learning takeaway for me, and it encompasses a phenomenon known as the eucatastrophe. Have you heard of eucatastrophe before? No, okay, so the eucatastrophe was a term coined by JRR Tolkien, who obviously wrote Lord of the Rings my most famous fandom of all time and it refers to a sudden and favorable resolution of events in a story, often bringing a moment of joy or hope amidst despair. So if you think of Lord of the Rings, it could be the moment where Frodo and Sam make their way all the way up to Mount Doom, having encountered lots and lots of turmoils along the way, lots of hardship, lots of bad luck. Eventually, when they get to Mount Doom, frodo decides not to throw the ring in but, in a great turn of events and fate, gollum steals the ring from him and then, when he's celebrating, he slips and falls into the fire of Mount Doom, and that is a really happy coincidence. Yeah, so it's usually associated with those sorts of moments that bring joy out of despair, and it's usually like an unexpected coincidence, pretty much that occurs, and I found that this movie was absolutely rife with you catastrophes. Uh, when I watched it the first time, I was spoken speaking to you earlier about how the plot seemed a little bit disjointed and every time something happened it happened in a manner that you didn't really expect it to, or it had a lot of similar tropes in this sort of neo-noir genre and you expected the movie to go a particular way. But then in other scenes it kind of didn't pan out the way that you wanted it to.
Speaker 1:The scene that comes to me the best built-up joke in the whole movie, in my opinion, was when they were being faced down by Tali in the room the femme fatale, which is a neo-noir theme, the femme fatale in the room. They were held at gunpoint. Russell Crowe's character and Ryan Gosling's character were there and you know the scene was progressing in a manner that saw them. They were basically stuffed like they were at gunpoint. And then it clicked over in Ryan Gosling's mind, in Holland March's mind, that he would stall and go for an ankle gun. So he ducked to the floor. He immediately started grasping at Healy's legs and then when he did that, he realized that the ankle gun wasn't there and he had dreamed it up in the first place because, thematically, 15 minutes before he had been shown an ankle gun in the car by Russell Crowe's character as Healy.
Speaker 1:But through that process of events, obviously it got more and more fantastical as that scene went on and they were eventually in the car with a giant bumblebee and he crashed the car. So it's that awesome moment of filmmaking and film telling for me, where Ryan Gosling was sort of figuring it out as the audience was figuring it out, because it wasn't fully apparent that that was like a dream sequence or a fantasy, or that he'd fallen asleep until the bee arrived. And when you're introduced to the ankle gun, it was still almost in that foggy phase of is this real or is it not? So it was perfectly timed, perfectly placed, and then 15 minutes later, which I think is like the perfect amount of time to build up for a joke, because any more and you would have forgotten about it any less and it would have been too soon, and I just found myself laughing my guts out at that actual scene. And then it continued even further with the trope of somebody calling for room service, holly calling for room service, and then, when she called for room service, you expect at that moment for Holly to come in, initiate the distraction and then the heroes bust over Tali, but then that didn't happen either. It was almost like these series of events that were occurring that weren't occurring in a manner that was predictable, and then the thing that gets Tali in the end was the fact that she slipped on the coffee and knocked herself out. Yeah, and those were all throughout the movies. These eucatastrophes were all throughout the movies and the more that I looked at it, the more I found that was.
Speaker 1:My big takeaway from this is how clever Shane Black actually initiates these comedic elements in combination with neo-noir film stereotypes. So you expect the ankle gun to be there and you expect them to shoot Tally. In any other movie that would have happened, not in this one. You expect the hot coffee to scold the villain and the distraction to occur. Big shootout, bang, bang in any other movie would have happened in this one. No, it didn't. So that you catastrophe element for me was so surprising and I learnt a little bit about it for this week. So that was mine damn damn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, another moment was when you know how, how Ryan Gosling Healy or not Healy, sorry, colin March is going through the porn star's party and he goes and he tries to impress that woman and as he does, he falls off the balcony and in falling off the balcony he actually stumbles upon the dead body, which initiates their quest or their detective journey Healy, healy, healy.
Speaker 2:Healy, come on, come down here. What the fuck are you doing down there?
Speaker 1:get down here like it's that kind of happy accident, that eucatastrophe, that drives the whole film. Yeah, lots of happy accidents. Another one, and probably my second favorite one, was when they were in the elevator and they were going up to see the lead. And then they got all the way up there. They poked their heads out of the elevator and they see that John Boy's already just eviscerating everybody with the guns, and then they go straight back down the elevator. You know, they did all the work. They did all the work. They went up the stairs and then they're like nope, ducked out Straight back down, got in the car and then the eucatastrophe happens because Amelia the girl that they've been looking for, played by Margaret Hawley she jumps onto the car.
Speaker 2:What are we doing? I can't just leave why. She just leave, why she's in danger, man, we have to do something about it. She's dead. What do you mean? Come on, she's not dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all these eucatastrophes that happen, these happy coincidences. You look at it and you think that was really convenient. But then you think, oh, wait a minute, this is a movie somebody actually wrote for that to happen, and that's what started to make me think that this movie was actually really clever. So that's mine. Yeah, go back and watch it and see about all the happy coincidences. I reckon you'll find a few.
Speaker 2:So many yeah, like even Blueface getting hit by the van.
Speaker 1:Yes, yep, a hundred percent. And things you don't expect to happen, like when March is driving the red sports car in chase and he's just going a hundred miles an hour and he does that wicked looking skid. I an hour and he does that wicked looking skid. I was like, oh, this is a movie, he's going to do this awesome skid. Stop, shoot out the car. That's how it's going to happen. But he did this skid and he hit the tree.
Speaker 1:It just does it like it's and then he can't get to Holly and that in time because the car is stuck on the tree and it takes him a while to get the car off the tree yeah, that's exactly it and you know it's that kind of timing, that comedic timing, and everybody always says, you know, comedy is timing and it takes a lot for a movie to make me laugh, really, because I find that all of the lines and the attempts at witty dialogue and things, they're really hit and miss for me. But this kind of unexpected eucatastrophe coincidence, it didn't. It subverted my expectations in terms of what I thought would happen in a movie, which was good for me, because I'm notoriously bad for trying to predict how a movie goes, and when I watched this one, it was really good to be surprised, yeah. So I really liked it. It was good.
Speaker 2:Mine is their um, their devotion to the theme or, for the, a theme around the seventies, yep, Um, how you like.
Speaker 2:There'll be scenes where it'll cut in and it's filmed like it was filmed back in the 70s, like rough, yeah, yeah, rugged, and then like, then you see, it's just it just like smooth, slowly transitions into like, and I'm because I don't like where they did that.
Speaker 2:They did that at the four-star party when they first when they had the band playing, and then it was like all 70s, like, looked like it was filmed in the 70s and then it cut. And then when they walked in through the door, it sort of changed, yeah, into like the cutaway shots were really good, um, and they did that a few times. When they're at the towards the end, when they're at card, like sale dealership convention, um, same thing like when they're showing all the cars and that show girls was all filmed like, filmed on an old school, yep, old school camera, and it just looked vintage. And then they just cut straight through again, yeah, and then just like it, just what it looked back at the day and then it sort of cuts into sort of their perspective yeah, and even down to the, the themes in terms of the stuff that they decided to depict.
Speaker 1:So one of the big themes of like neo-noir movies is like an urban decay sort of theme. Where the city is, it looks really glamorous, like the city of LA looks really glamorous, but it's literally showing us the underbelly of that city, the way people live in terms of drugs, hitmen, porn stars, that kind of thing. But it's all colorful and glitz and glamour and that's how they depict it as well, in that sort of 70s vibe. I really enjoyed the way that they did that and the way that even the music and the soundtrack all fed into that 70s aesthetic as well.
Speaker 1:The whole plot was centered around like a conspiracy and there was lots of people throughout the movie that distrusted the government, which was a theme, a cultural theme that was rife through the seventies with, you know, watergate scandal and all that kind of thing which gave rise to like private investigators, which is what this movie centers around, with Ryan Gosling's character of of March being a private investigator, pro being an enforcer. Yeah, I just I think that seventies vibe just worked for this movie. I think I read something about Black wanting to make a neo-noir movie or a noir movie. And a noir movie is like an old detective style movie and usually it's made in a post-World War II sort of situation and it encompasses very flawed characters, which this does Usually very cynical characters. They usually end in ambiguous ways and it also sort of entails that that urban sort of sprawl and decay. So I liked the way that they they meshed all that together.
Speaker 2:But Shane Black sort of said you know, I don't want to do it in the forties and fifties, I want to make it in the seventies or the sixties and seventies, and I think that made it like that well, I don't know if you noticed, but when there was a shot at the very start which is the cameras coming over the hollywood hills, you see this, the sprawling city back in the 70s, but it still looks glamorous and everything like that. But then if you look at the hollywood sign, the hollywood, the back of the hollywood, graded, got graffiti all over it. It's all like like some of the like, the actual letters are starting to break apart and it just looks like uncared for. Yeah, so. So you see this big sprawling city, but then you see the back of, like, the Hollywood sign it's all done, grungy and dirty.
Speaker 1:That's such a good metaphor.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so it shows like on the, on the, it looks great. But if you look behind the scene, yeah, if you look that a little bit deeper, and I love that they've.
Speaker 1:I didn't even notice that, but the fact that they put that right at the start of the movie for people like yourself to sort of notice, you're just like here's this beautiful, pristine city, but if you look a little bit closer, you see, in the end there behind the scenes it's a bit dirty and like it sort of, and that sort of shows with the characters too.
Speaker 2:Like Russell's co-character, he wants to do right, but then his character he's been shat on a bit, yeah, and he goes around, he beats people up for a living, yep. He beats people up for a living to be a nice guy, yep. And then the same with Ryan Gunsley. He'll go and do his detective work and like, sometimes probably does it, but for the most part he's just trying to get as much money out of this possible and try to get out as much as possible.
Speaker 1:The scene that I remember from that one is when he's sitting in front of the old lady and she says I haven't seen my husband since the funeral and he goes I'll do the best I can, exactly, and then he'll go off and he'll investigate for a couple of days.
Speaker 1:Come back and be like oh your husband's died, yep, but he takes the money off anyway. Yeah, and that's another theme of that noir sort of style is they have like the characters are very morally ambiguous. Where we see Ryan Gosling character of Holland March being I will use this term lightly but a functioning alcoholic. Colin March being I will use this term lightly, but a functioning alcoholic, that's his flaw. And then we might get into this a little bit with the Real Deal segment. But Russell Crowe's character of Jackson Healy is a reformed alcoholic. Yeah, it's just like the two different sorts of flaws that they play in that and the way that they develop throughout the film is really kind of brilliant in that sort of noir 70s style. So, yeah, I love your MBT this week. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:All right, we are on to our real deal segment and this is where we take some of the elements from the movie and we rate it as being either good or bad and we use special terms that we coin ourselves in order to call them good and bad, and we get a generator to tell us what things we're going to be talking about, and this could be anything from the themes of the movie or it could be something from the actor's chemistry, it could be the cinematography, it could be the director's vision, it could be the cultural impact of the movie. The real deal is a way for us to sort of review a movie without going from top to bottom. It's kind of like a gamified way that we do it. So for this week, brash, if we think something is good, we're going to be calling it healy's hits. Give me your left arm. Huh, your left arm. Give me your left arm. This one, no, yeah, come on you cut yourself I'm dealing with an injury right.
Speaker 2:Look. When you're talking to your doctor, just tell you have a spiral fracture of the left radius. No, no, deep breath, no.
Speaker 1:Because they knock it out of the park as Russell Crowe does a lot of the time in the movie you see him absolutely flossing people, including Ryan Gosling's wrist spiral fracture. That scream is just awesome too, and then, if it's a bad point, we're gonna call it an ankle gun. You nervous at all me no, I got insurance.
Speaker 2:This baby right here, an ankle gun because it wasn't really there.
Speaker 1:Let's get our generator to pick what we're talking about this time. All right, so the first one that we've got from our generator at the first part of our real deal segment is going to be climactic buildup slash villains.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think that's to me. This is ankle gun, ankle gun. Okay, I felt the whole way through the whole way through it sort of built up and then it just sort of like fizzled fizzled at the end, yeah like there was no an unsatisfying ending.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like to any sort of like to most of their confrontation. Yep, like it. They just sort of like. They usually just like end. But from what you said earlier it sort of makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with the coincidences and everything like that. But even still, like the last scene when they're both at the bar they got John Boy, they got John Boy. There's an assassin going around just absolutely messing people up. And then the last scene you see they're having a shootout, russell Crowe's chasing him and they're trying to get away with the film and all these security guys come to try and take out John Boy and he's just flipping them over and just beating the crap out of them, killing all these guys, just taking everyone out. And then Russell Crowe pretty much handedly just kicks his ass. Yep, and it's like this dude's like a proper assassin who takes like ease in killing people. Yeah, and Ruffles, he sort of just barely even lays a hand on Russell Crowe's character yeah, it was kind of convenient as well.
Speaker 2:But it goes back to that thing. We were talking about how the coincidences occur like pulls a grenade and he throws the shirt down and lands on the guy about to shoot his character and explodes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very full of coincidence and even to the like, to the point where we're talking about even more coincidences when when Ryan Gosling's character, march, falls off of the building with the villain the villain, yeah, happily in the pool. But in that regard as well, I kind of liked the way that that that John Boy the character was represented in terms of him being a very proficient user of violence, splattering bodies wherever he went, and then throughout the movie, healy, although he's an enforcer, and March as a private investigator. Traditionally in these neo-noir movies or these noir movies, the investigator is supposed to be really competent. They're supposed to be really together. They can hold themselves up in a fight.
Speaker 2:This guy can't like Ryan Gosling's character is absolutely, even though, even though um he's meant to be um army, ex army.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah, so maybe we know why he was discharged. But yeah, I really liked how John boy was this this perfect pro and Gosling the whole way through. Putting that together, it's just like these characters are absolutely stuffed.
Speaker 2:You'd expect them to, yeah, but I think that's the, I think that's the thing that, because all of them were like, yeah, coincidentally they were able to get the upper hand. Um, russell Crowe's probably a bit more efficient in his ability to fight than Gosling, but yeah, I just feel like at the end, and especially because Russell Crowe goes to kill him at the end, don't do it, don't do it, yep. Um, especially because Russell Crowe goes to kill him at the end, don't do it, don't do it, yep. But like I would've, it would've been more impactful if he had of, because when they break into his apartment and he's like, oh, it would've been fine if he had come in, messed up the place and left. Then he started messing with my fish and made me angry, yep.
Speaker 1:And then that's like gets all hyped up, this thing, like, yeah, like the dude's trying to kill him, but going off what he said earlier, that's what he would expect and he would get that upset about it exactly, and I think that's another one of those times where it builds up to the thing you expect to happen and then it doesn't do the thing that you want it to do, but I would have liked more.
Speaker 2:So like to do something to hurt Holly. And then he does something heroic, yep, and then falls into that line where he's about to kill him, holly's like no, don't do it, and that sort of like, and then Oscar has to go, like he was about to hurt you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so then it's more of that moral conflict as he's and it builds up that sort of tension there as the character build up as well. So so ankle gun for you. For me I'm probably going to give it an ankle gun as well, just because I do understand that the noir genre usually has ambiguous endings and I do like, at the very end, how it's sort of. It's a very sort of sad ending really when gosling and and crow's character of march and healy are in the bar, March being throughout the movie a complete alcoholic and all throughout the movie Healy refusing drinks and then being just completely wasted at the end of this movie, fallen off the wagon, gone back to his old ways In a way. He's gone through all this character growth and then for you to see him back in the bottle. You're just like that's a little bit anticlimactic and that's what I thought too. No growth here.
Speaker 2:But again, and that's what I thought no growth here, um, but again that's sort of that, yeah, unexpected twist, but see, and I don't think it was necessary, like for him to be wasted, yep, like I would have thought him, especially with him and holly, and then, um, I thought that would have helped him because it didn't seem like alcohol, anything was his issue, was his issue with, like, if he sees a threat, he'll end that's yeah, violently, yeah, and like he'll take out that threat.
Speaker 1:His growth was well, maybe there's another way, maybe, instead of like judge, jury, execution and do you think that that end scene where he was back at the bottle, do you think that kind of cuts that character growth?
Speaker 2:I think it does because now he's an alcoholic. Well, well, now he's gone back to drinking again. Everyone knows what drinking can do to someone.
Speaker 1:I agree, and maybe that's why some of our threaders thought, and why we all think as well, why this sort of deserved a sequel. Obviously, there's lots of other reasons with this being a clever movie, the pairing of Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling being awesome, but it does kind of leave that ambiguous ending open where the characters still have room to grow. Yeah, um, so some people might see that as like a very clever way to end the film. It's very, uh, genre specific in the noir sort of genre. But yeah, for me it was an ankle gun and the build-up as well toward that ankle gun for you as well.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get another one generated, all right. So this one being generated is the actors' performances. So this is where we talk about how the two leading actors or actresses, depending on the film connect with one another, how great their performances were throughout the movie. So for me, on this one, this was a Healy's hits, especially Ryan Gosling. Looking at his filmography, he can do anything Like this. Man worked very seriously in a movie called Drive. He has done sort of character-based comedy when it comes to Barbie when he played Ken, and in this movie he's almost like he's blending all kinds of common performances like.
Speaker 1:I spent a good moment in my second watch through just watching what Ryan Gosling did with his eyes throughout scenes and you'd see how he would just raise eyebrows or open his eyes really wide at the perfect moment to hit that comedic timing.
Speaker 1:That sort of physicality is something that isn't in a script for him to do and that is really amazing to watch as a viewer because he's physically reacting to the scene. The most famous scene and my favorite in this sort of vein, showing how great Ryan Gosling is at comedic acting and slapstick, was when he received the case. And think about how every other detective movie would have shown a character receiving a case. It would have been briefed dossier across the desk, very formal talk, maybe across a computer screen. Ryan Gosling, holland Marsh, gets his case in the toilet and he's there. You know, magazine cast, gun in one hand, cigarette in the mouth, and then you know the door just flies open and shut as he's just really offset by Healy walking in there and then he drops the cigarette into his pants as he's going through, like imagine trying to be a Russell Crowe keeping a straight face in that film, but then also Ryan Gosling trying to put that set piece together.
Speaker 1:Just for me that was just a perfect combination of combination of slapstick comedy with like comedic timing and also just dialogue, the way that he was delivering it as well. There wasn't a thing that Russell, that Holland Marsh, ryan Gosling's character, could do in this movie that I did not like to the point where he's supposed to be. This really, you know, tough and stoic private eye private investigator which is the impression that Healy gets of private eyes when he comes in he says you just gave up your contact and he goes yeah, so I don't care. And he thought that was supposed to be tough. He's like are you going to fight back? He's like no, no.
Speaker 2:I love that game and then he keeps trying to like fake him out. But like he's just so, like he's just obviously there, yep, and russ is just basically watching him just fumble across, like yeah, fumbling across the floor like that, like he kicks him.
Speaker 1:He's just like we're gonna play a game. The game is called um, when I'm talking, you're not, or something like that. He, he enacts that scene where, yeah, basically he, he submits completely to the character of healy, and that kind of just performance, just in Ryan Gosling's case alone, for me, made this a Healy's hits. For me, ryan Gosling was just stellar. What about you? What do you reckon for the actors' performances?
Speaker 2:I have to also agree with Healy's hits. Yeah, ryan Gosling. One of the most famous things that's still going around on TikToks and reels at the moment is the scene where he's at the rooftop by the end and the guy's like oh, do you like a drink? He's like no, um, like it's pretty what you want. He's like does it double take? Yeah and like yeah, and that that goes. That goes around talking instagram still all the time. Yeah, but um, I liked, um, both Russell Crowe and or Rose and Bryce's oh, angry Bryce, yeah, oh Dynamic yeah, yeah, they're.
Speaker 2:Dynamic um with Holly and with um Jackson, almost like Jackson's was sort of taking pity on Holly, but then Holly was also like bitch, I'm the adult, yeah pretty much she was mature beyond her age and bitch I'm the adult here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was mature, beyond her age and and then so, yeah, but um, I like and I like, and how their sort of friendship was like sort of both. It's unexpected on and off. Yeah, so when, like their first, their first meet, she like offers them a drink and um, then she obviously finds out that, um, he beat the crap out of her dad and broke his arm. And then, when they but then they meet and she was like angry at first, was like oh, you're the guy who beat up her dad. And then, when she finally what she did, she's like how much would it cost for you to beat up my friend?
Speaker 1:and then she's like how?
Speaker 2:much money, how much money you got. She's like, oh, 70 bucks, yeah, and then sort of like, but then, like later on after that she's like I don't like you, and then yeah, and then just progressing through, like they form some sort of like weird bond or connection. When he goes and talks to her out and where their house burnt down, where mum died in the house fire, they sort of have like that other sort of like bonding moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah she was like his moral compass or his grounding point, I think, because he'd also gone through heaps of trauma through the movie. Another one of my favourite scenes is when he's monologuing and he talks about how his wife has left him. Yeah, that was so funny. I was so abrupt. Exactly, oh man.
Speaker 2:It's like I'm doing a lunch, he's just taking a drink and she's like I'm sleeping with your dad and he just spits all his water out and it just cuts away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's another thing when I watch the scene where it's like, okay, this is a flashback, he's drinking wine in this scene and now he's refusing drinks, I'm like, oh, maybe that's kind of the problem area, like he's trying to avoid that kind of emotional emotionality again because he's been hurt before. But yeah, and also he's talking about buying houses, like when you're married, he's just like he's buying a house for someone you hate. So he's that jaded character. But that girl, holly, just sort of brings him, brings back his humanity through the innocence of hope that she has. So, yeah, I think he's the antithesis of her character in that regard. So am I right in assuming, brash, that this is a character that is a child of a main character that you actually feel?
Speaker 2:like belongs in the film. Yes, well, there we go. To be honest, holly was probably my favorite in this entire, but, to be fair, that's why I picked this movie. To be fair, brian Gosling's character is a terrible father.
Speaker 1:Oh, 100% and I wouldn't even call him a family.
Speaker 2:She was more looking after him more than he was looking after her. Yeah, but but his like you know, like the old detective movies, like the assistant yeah, the assistant, actually he's like just an assistant, pretty much exactly just with like a little bit more of emotional tie yep, yep, no, I agree.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get our next one going up, all right, and the next one, that is uh generated, is character development, which we've kind of talked about before, but in the space of dialogue. So if we talk about dialogue and the way that it's crafted in scenes, I can start off with this one, when, when you were just talking about uh holly being the grown-up in the situation, I I feel like the writer, or the script writer of this movie has done a really great job of doing something that we do in the teaching world we ask our students to write in a manner that is a show don't tell. So there's lots of like. When we did Red One, we talked about how Chris Evans' character was the what does that mean? Character. So the characters would throw something out and then one character would say what does that mean? And then it gives the other character a chance to give exposition so the audience can know what's going on.
Speaker 1:Whereas this movie, it really respects the audience in the way that it was written, because it asks you to fill in blanks, like we don't know for sure that healy is an alcoholic and we don't know for sure that we're pretty sure, but we don't know for sure that marsh's character is an terrible father. But we are shown that throughout the way, by different ways that this is written and the way that the dialogue occurs. So, for example, you were talking earlier about how holly talks to healy about how her mother died. Uh, earlier on in the film, at the porn star party, we find out that march can't smell. And then later on, through the course of events, naturally it occurs that holly and healy have a conversation where it is discussed that her mom died in a fire and it was a gas leak, and then the audience can put together okay, maybe ryan gosling's character feels like he's responsible for that death because he didn't preempt it happening, because of his sense of smell. Okay, that then explains the drinking. That then explains the ineptitude. Okay, we are introduced to this character when he's lying in a bath with a bottle of scotch next to him, and then the answering machine buzzes. And in any other movie you would be able to pick up the fact that the daughter's kind of the boss or in charge or mature beyond her years, because they'll tell you through exposition. But in this movie the answering machine buzzes and you through exposition, but in this movie. The answering machine buzzes and the last line she says on the message is oh, and don't forget, you have work today. Yeah, and just from that line alone you can tell, okay, the dynamic here is not normal and it doesn't fully go into it and it lets you figure it out on on your own. Yeah, and that's what I respect that movies do. And yeah, even to the point where Healy's a little bit of an alcoholic, you can see as it goes on. It's really sort of dropping the hints for you to be able to pick this up and work it out.
Speaker 1:Another awesome piece of dialogue that I remember is when Healy's trying to teach Gosling or when Healy's trying to teach March a little bit of a lesson about how you have to look at things from a different perspective. Gosling's character on March just says why didn't you just say that? Gosling's character or March just says why didn't you just say that, which is again subverting those expectations. But that's just really clever back and forth dialogue and the witty banter that the characters have I think drives through the movie because the plot if we were analysing the plot I'd probably give it Ankle Gun because there isn't much to sort of tie it through, but the character dynamic and the way that they're developed in terms of dialogue. I'm going to give this a Healy's hits. What about you for dialogue?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm also going to give it a Healy's hits, because and this is why I think Holly was my favourite character, because she was really the driving point of this entire movie Like, I believe if it wasn't for Holly, they would never have even got close to the outcome that they were looking for. So, like, even like when they um were, or when ryan gosling's character, he uh, march, um, when he tells, well, when um, he's gonna go to the airport to try and track them and he's not gonna say anything, they walk out. But holly is the one that sort of provokes march into switching on his detective brain by saying you're a terrible detective, and sort of marshes like, then goes and then explains his thing, reasoning of it it's not the airport, yeah, it's a. It's a hotel, it's a hotel, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then it's like I love the way that played out too. That's very clever dialogue, also when when you're talking about him and that's a detective movie trope as well in the noir where the detective will outline how this piece of evidence leads to the next piece of evidence, and then they get there and it's a vacant lot. This hotel was pulled down two years ago and they find out that it is.
Speaker 1:It is that hotel, but just airport hotel so I agree, I think that that was really really clever, the way that Holly kind of.
Speaker 2:But Holly sort of does it throughout the entire movie like without her being at the porn star mansion and being there with all the rest of them when she came out of the boot that got me too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, came out of the boot, but like, and she stays there, she's the one that finds what's her name Audrey, amelia, amelia, amelia, amelia finds Amelia and pretty much keeps Amelia safe for the most part by saves Amelia's life, initially by closing the door on Blueface's arm with the gun, causing him to miss and shoot the arm of the bellboy, I think, instead, but actually this is not part of it. But I also thought it was pretty funny. Whenever the guy goes to shoot one of them, he ends up shooting someone else. So when he goes to shoot Healy in his apartment, he ends up shooting some random woman across the way, like it's just so real, she's like she's sitting in a chair and just gets shot. And then the same thing like he goes, he gets closed, the door closes on his arm, he ends up shooting the bell like some random bellboy instead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah, I didn't really. I picked that up a bit later on. I'm like he just keeps shooting other people, like just he's just get shot, yeah, but yeah, going on with Holly, yeah, holly, she always is sort of, she's always the one that's like in the right time at the right place, yeah, and she's always the one who says sort of the thing that motivates the others to actually do something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's definitely the anchor, even to start working together. Yeah, exactly, I think her character is designed to prompt growth in March and Healy, but also connect them as a trio throughout. And I think, yeah, as you said, she's written really well. Her dialogue sequences are done really really well also. So what is it for you? Is it Ankle Gun? Healy's Hits oh, healy's Hits. Very good, all right, so we have one more. We'll do one more. All right, let's generate.
Speaker 2:All right, more, we'll do one more. All right, let's generate, all right. So the last one that we've generated is humor. Uh, humor. Well, we've pretty much touched on this the whole way through. Yeah, um, like the like the humor, like some of it's like boldface, like right, funny, and some of it's more nuanced, more subtle humor.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, I do find that the humor in this was very uh, like ryan goslingling when he was asking March sorry, when March was asking Healy about his past, about the diner, and then so he goes into the story about how a guy came into a diner with a shotgun and pretty much saves the day. But then he also saves the day in his flashback. He gets the guy's gun and just beats the shit out of him like probably kills the guy's gone and just starts beating the shit out of him Like probably kills the guy. Yeah, but yeah, like he doesn't sort of say he kills the guy, he just pretty much says he saves the day. And that's why he wanted to do be like the nice part, do good things for people, to help people, and he found purpose in that the best day of his life, yeah, best day of his life. And it was killing it, killing a dude.
Speaker 1:But then, to add on to that, it cuts back to the reality of the situation, and Ryan Gosling's character is there just to sleep on the dark and then they go to bring up the next day and he's like, remember, I told you about that.
Speaker 2:He's like, oh, I don't know. He's like, yeah, you fell asleep.
Speaker 1:No, I like how it's so self-aware and that is such hard comedy to write and you've got to respect it, because it's a mixture of slapstick, it's a mixture of dark comedy, it's a mixture of physical comedy, it's like ongoing gags and then, as we talked about earlier, with the eucatastrophe stuff, some of the jokes and the punchlines are 15 minutes apart and that's just. It's quite a genius level really when you think about it. It's laying quite a genius level really when you think about it. It's laying in a Because the ankle gun situation, that was a nothing point. The ankle gun in the transition could have just left that out, but you know that was them setting up something for the future, like a joke for the future, and it's that kind of layered element of comedy that makes it not feel forced, because everything sort of flows onto another.
Speaker 1:I've watched this screenwriting video and it's from the creators of South Park where they talk about don't use, and then in your screenplays, use but or therefore, and in doing that it sequences a cause of events that seem connected. So, for example, march hallucinates and sees that Healy has a ankle gun attached to himself. Yeah, therefore, later on, when he is confronted by Tally, he believes that that ankle gun is there. Yeah, so it's that cause and effect and that flow on from using but or therefore in that comedic writing that really makes it clever. And from watching it for a second time and seeing that I can't wait to watch it a third or a fourth time just to see what else is there. I would definitely give the humor element of it a Healy's Hits for me too, yeah, healy's.
Speaker 1:Hits, I would definitely give the humor element of it a Healy's hits for me too. Yeah, all right, now we'll move on to our final segment, all right? So for the final segment of our fandom portals podcast, we have been placing the movies that we're looking at on the fandom portals on a board. You can find our on a board on our letterbox, which is at fandom portals, and each week we look at the movie that we're talking about and we place it either above or below, uh, the movies that currently sit on there. So, uh, currently our honor board is very, very small, having only uh reviewed two or so movies together. The first one in the uh chamber being venom the last dance, is sitting first. Having sat there for a total of one week, it dethroned red one. Having sat there for a total of one week, it dethroned Red One, having sat there one week as well previously.
Speaker 1:So now is the time where we kind of discuss does the Nice Guys sit above or below Venom the Last Dance? And if we agree if Brasher and I agree then that's just where it is placed, but if we disagree, then the vote will go out to the community and we'll place that's just where it is placed, but if we disagree, then the vote will go out to the community and we'll place it wherever the the hung vote is tallied. So brash for yourself. Where do you think this lies?
Speaker 2:oh, 100 below red one. No, no, no, I literally quick take no this is definitely number one.
Speaker 1:I think so too. I this. Just the cleverness of it, even just the rewatchability of it, oh yeah, and you know some movies you rewatch and you can sit there and you know everything that happened. But this one, you rewatch it and you can pick different things up every single time, just for that alone. Yeah, it's just such a clever movie. It's such a clever in terms of a screenwriting perspective or even just like a comedic perspective. I wish more people knew about it and, as our threads community talked about, I wish we could get a sequel or at least something else.
Speaker 2:I think that's what's the ending Like for me, like the very end, like when he starts drinking again. That was probably the worst part of it. And I think yes, because maybe that's what was played into the next part, where they're actually now a buddy detective.
Speaker 1:So Yep, yeah, I think that'd be good and it gave both characters like a buy-in and a purpose and you get the trio with Holly there as well. I think that these, the three of them, should come back for another one before they they age out of the role. But I also read that you know Gosling Crow and also Shane Black, the Crowe and also Shane Black, the director. They're all keen to do another one and the only thing that's holding them back is obviously the studio. Go ahead With a box office price like what it got, probably going to be very difficult to sell. Yeah, I hope just some second love and some community sort of voice brings this about for us, because it definitely deserves it. You don't get much comedies like this anymore. So for me, I'd like to thank my brother, dylan, for putting this on your top four movies on your letterbox, because it made me see it and made me really appreciate the genre and it made me very much appreciate the talent of Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. All right, so with that, our new leader of the fandom portals on a board will be the nice guys made in 2016. You can go and check that out on our letterbox, which is at fandom portals on on a board will be the nice guys made in 2016. You can go and check that out on our letterboxd, which is at fandom portals. We also have some monthly challenges going on there. Currently, we have eight movies, uh that we're watching through the month of january four picked by brash, four picked by myself, and they are just some watch list uh titles that you might see us uh review or or talk about on the Fandom Portals podcast, some we might just watch for fun. It's just a way for us to talk on our socials about some common movies and media. Talking about our socials, you can also find us on Instagram and you can email us. Those are all in the show notes below.
Speaker 1:The platform where we talk the most on, though, is Threads, so if you're a person that uses Threads, it's at Fandom Portals. On Threads, we do shout out a lot of the people that comment on there on on the posts, and that's where a lot of our community involvement comes from, so definitely go and check that out as well. Again, all in the show notes below. We do have coming out uh some more of our fandom shorts episodes that come throughout the week, just to fill the gap between the times when we do the episodes, but otherwise you will see us on every Wednesday dropping a new episode of the Phantom Portal podcast.
Speaker 1:So make sure you do that thing. I'm going to ask you to do that thing that all podcasters do make sure you go out and tell a friend about this, share, like and subscribe, do all that kind of stuff. And yeah, if you feel kind enough, feel free to go and leave us a review at either Apple podcasts or, uh, if you don't have that much time, you can just go on the Spotify app. Um, five stars would be good, but honest reviews also good too. And yeah, let us know what you think, because it all helps small podcasters like us get the word out there so we can keep doing what we're doing. So, thank you very much, and that is.
Speaker 2:and yeah, thanks everyone for listening and, yeah, as Aaron said, leave a comment. And, yeah, be honest, because criticism is the only way that we can grow and get better. So, yeah, just tell us your thoughts, your feelings and hopefully we can, yeah, improve as we go absolutely.
Speaker 1:Thanks, guys. Thank you very much. Alright, we'll see you next time. Hey everybody, it's aaron here from the fandom portals podcast. Thank you so much for tuning into that episode.
Speaker 1:Frank, our amazing leader from the geek freaks network, has allowed me to give you guys the opportunity to win a fandom portals exclusive t-shirt. That's right, you can wear your fandom portals pride on your person by entering this giveaway. So big thanks to the Geek Freaks Network and to Frank specifically for allowing us to do this. Now, the way that you enter this giveaway is if you go to our social media on Instagram and you share any of our posts and you tag us at Fandom Portals, then you will have an entry into this giveaway. Now, this giveaway will last all the way until the end of January, so make sure in the month of January, you are sharing as many fandom portals posts as you can on Instagram. Every time you tag us using that at code of at fandom portals, you'll earn yourself one entry point for the giveaway.
Speaker 1:The giveaway will be drawn on our social media and you'll find out the winner on the social media as well. And if you want to have a look at the t-shirt, the picture of it will be on our social media as well. Lots of benefits for being a part of our instagram. So that's it, guys. All you have to do to win this amazing fandom portals t-shirt is go into our social medias and share a fandom portals post throughout the month of January. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you so much for your listenership and, as always, be good, stay safe and we'll see you later.
