iTunes Exclusive Episode Begin Again

The following is a sooner orgator production.
The following is a sooner orgator production.
The following is a sooner orgator production.
The following is a sooner orgator production.
We have grown.
We have grown.
Although our love is still special.
Let's take a chance and fight with someone.
The clubhouse is open, but only on a limited basis, because it is time for another
I-Tunes exclusive that we do right here on the clubhouse podcast.
Our normal live show is every Sunday at 70's, but because you subscribe on iTunes,
we like to give you a little bit extra.
My name is Rob, I'm the executive producer and general ringmaster of this thing.
And whatever we do, one of these that only people at iTunes can hear,
it's usually because we're reviewing something.
And joining me to do so as he tends to do is a man who is a fellow of music lover.
He is the official fact checker of this show.
You may know him as fun, don't go, but his mom and name is Don Ford.
I'm going to call him Don Ford.
Thank you sir.
Good to have you.
Thank you.
I had to fight the weather, but I did it for the Empire.
On the day, on the day we're taping this, a lot of rain coming down in the Dallas Fort Worth area,
but we're not complaining because we need all that we can get right now.
I've been fairly lucky, I've either right before or right after it.
The last few days, but...
Rain all you want.
The lakes need water.
Yes they do.
We are reviewing a movie today called Begin again.
This is directed and written by John Carney, whose name you might recognize.
It's been a while since we heard his name.
But you definitely know his name from a movie called Once.
That was all over the Oscars.
Back in 0607.
Also turned into a Broadway musical as well.
I did not know that.
And this film...
Almost kind of in that same vein because it does take place in the music industry.
We'll give you the quick low down.
Mark Ruffalo plays Dan.
Dan is a guy who's a little down on his luck.
It's having a pretty kind of rough day.
Totally.
Wake up late.
Drink a little.
Pick up your daughter when you might have been drinking a little too much.
Take her to work to a meeting you're supposed to be at where you find out that the record label you founded
doesn't want you there anymore and you've been removed.
Do a little more drinking.
Not good.
Wind up at a bar.
And you hear a young lady doing a song.
And it kind of renews your faith in the music industry.
That young lady's name is Greta played by the great Kira Knightley.
That's all I'm doing.
Very late.
Very late.
So he decides he wants to make an album with her.
Because he loves this song so much.
And we go from there.
I don't even know how to start this thing.
You go ahead and start with you.
You go ahead and say it now.
I have to warn that I'm can try be unbiased on this.
We know your fascination would probably be Palmer.
I mean no bones about it.
Okay.
I have the same fascination with Kira Knightley.
She's my future ex-wife.
And if you go to our website on the Burton Review,
I even start off with that saying out Kira Knightley is my future ex-wife.
Okay.
My thing about Kira Knightley is she never looks the same.
She looks different in almost every movie I've ever seen her in.
And that's why I love about this thing.
But that's still good thing.
And these two aren't the only stars in this call.
No.
I mean you're talking,
most deaf woman, a huge fan of.
Haley Stanfield, Catherine Keener,
Adam Levine, who plays Greta's boyfriend in the beginning.
But maybe not so much as the movie goes on.
Because he is also a singer.
He gets a song on a soundtrack to a movie.
And his career takes off.
And she's the songwriter and girlfriend of five years.
Exactly.
And he can probably guess what happens after that when he hits the big time.
So let's talk a little bit about the story line itself.
What did you think of the storyline?
I really liked it because it went back and forth.
I like how it did the time lapse.
Because you start off at one point thinking,
okay, this guy, he's down on his luck.
But you know, that's probably a lot of his fault or you name it.
And you make a lot of assumptions up front.
And then you, it kind of goes back in time in a couple times in this movie,
which kind of gives you the story to see how we got to the here and now.
And how two lives, who'd by chance meet are both looking for something
who are both down on their luck.
And then they meet and they build this friendship to try to build this album.
And as a movie grows, you'll learn more and more about these characters.
And you realize that even though they're going through tough times under depressed,
that maybe some of it wasn't their fault.
Which I really found interesting in that thing.
You make some assumptions, but then by the end of the movie you're like,
oh, okay, I see you now, now it's like,
I'm not going to make that assumption anymore.
What I liked about the storyline is,
you think you know where it's going, but sometimes you really don't.
It takes some nice turns on you.
Yes, it does.
Where you kind of like, oh, I don't know if I want to do this.
Oh, wait, wait a minute, we're going to do something else with it.
Okay, I'm good now.
It's not totally 100% predictable.
Right.
It's got some really great genuine moments in it.
There's a scene that's very pivotal in the film that involves two people
listening to the same audio source at the same time on headphones,
which I found incredibly endearing.
And at the same time, I thought, why haven't I ever done that?
Okay.
Anything that's going to lead to one thing to another, and it doesn't.
It doesn't necessarily.
We don't want to bury anything.
I understand that.
But, but, you know, I mean, there was a lot of endearing
feel good scenes in a lot of, in the plot,
a lot of good relationships, you know,
a lot of relationships stories.
And there's stuff you just do not take advantage for this,
or, you know, you think it's going to be the standard norm,
and it doesn't end up being that way.
What I like about it is,
it doesn't ever feel forced.
Now, the chemistry we're going to talk about that here in a minute.
But it's, it's just, it's got such a genuine feel to it.
That is, I love the way he tells the stories.
And it feel good movie, too.
Oh, absolutely.
And you always, it was kind of like that,
the movie chef, what you reviewed.
Oh, yes, we did.
You're looking for the, where's the big,
caboom gonna be?
There really wasn't.
There didn't have to be.
And that's what it's something I enjoyed to go,
okay, there's something has to go wrong here.
Where's the point where something goes wrong?
And I mean, I identified it on a deeper level, too,
because I am a musician.
I am a vocalist.
I do play an instrument.
Music has always been something that's been part of me.
Always.
Since I was a little bit of a baby, my mother would play the guitar
and sing to me.
And it instilled a love of music in me that will probably carry me
for the rest of my life.
And when he, there's a speech where he talks about how music changes
everything and a perception.
And the scene we're talking about,
where they're walking around together,
walking all over New York City, plugging into the same
iPhone, listening to music.
And you sit there, and you don't even think about it.
You know, there's times where I'm out somewhere,
the headphones on, and I'm listening to music,
and trying to drown out the rest of the world.
But the point of even what you see changes
when you take the ambient noise away,
and you put the music on that you love to hear.
One of the things you mentioned,
and I mentioned to you, is this thing going to have a soundtrack?
It does.
It releases July 1st.
So I just looked it up on Amazon.
So it's out there.
And then there's here tonight we does her own singing.
Which surprised me.
During the film, I, we were watching it.
And there's a lot of singing in this film.
A lot of music in this film.
And when I was watching it,
I was going, is she,
you could tell it wasn't live on that film.
Right.
So it's the studio and she lives in whatever.
But was that someone else?
Just currently sound like that one.
And the credits.
And the credits.
She's the one that sings all that.
And another thing that kind of got me to was
a lot of the songs were co-written by former 98-degree singer slash
husband of Jessica Simpson.
Nicholashay was very involved in the writing of the music in this film.
You know, of course Adam Levine's going to do his own singing.
See low green has a small but pivotal role in the film.
I, I just, I really enjoyed how there was a naturalism to it.
Now for me,
the very beginning,
I was worried from a chemistry standpoint.
I just didn't see,
I felt like Ruffalo might have been trying too hard.
And I'm a big Mark Ruffalo fan.
But what I realized is the way he was playing the character is you don't,
you didn't,
they didn't need to have chemistry right off the bat.
As we get into the acting part of this.
That chemistry had to organically evolve.
And it,
it just clicked with me about halfway through the film.
It runs about an hour 45.
And about halfway through the film,
I was like, okay, I can see what they're going with now.
That they didn't need to be just chummy,
pali, hey, how you doing right off the bat.
That friendship had to evolve.
So there had to be that awkwardness and
almost that rigidness between them
for the friendship and the business relationship
to evolve like it did.
I want to add on that that,
you know,
characters, nightly character Greta.
You know, she gets burned.
You see they can be at the beginning.
And when he first meets her that night,
and he's trying to do the spiel saying,
you know, I heard that song,
we can make something incredible.
You know, she was very apprehensive.
It's going, this guy's a con man.
I probably heard this 20 times.
I just got burned, don't even think about it.
You know,
so there was no trust up front there.
It wasn't even no friendship on front.
When they,
within the first night,
when he's trying to get her to,
you know, go in with this kind of idea.
She didn't trust him.
And it ends up, you know,
building like you're saying,
building more and more and more of a friendship.
And it just evolved incredibly,
I thought.
So overall, by the end of the movie,
I thought they had, you know,
good chemistry together.
Absolutely.
Katherine Keener playing his,
estranged wife always great.
Of course.
You've got,
you know,
you've got a big stand-field playing his,
his daughter violet.
Who I thought played it just about right.
She wasn't dead on,
but she was just about very good.
Kind of an unsung hero in this thing to me,
is going to be James Corden.
A young man
who plays Steve,
Greta's best friend.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I think that he's going to be one of those.
I mean,
he's been in the business a long time,
but he hasn't really made an impact in this country yet.
You know,
I,
I really enjoyed his performance in the film.
And he was real funny.
Yeah, there's a lot of good comedy.
Great comic relief.
A lot of good comedy.
A lot of good singing.
A lot of feel good moments.
In a lot of,
where you really get,
I thought,
I really got into this relationship.
I really did.
And of everybody,
of how everybody's kind of networks out
and with the,
even with the band members that they put together,
you,
I really saw a good kind of friendship of some,
a lot of good people trying to do something good here.
And it really,
like you said,
it's a good feel good movie.
John Carney's direction of the film.
You know,
he's already done a movie about musicians and songwriters.
So he's kind of in his element a little bit.
I think he captured the passion and he captured.
For lack of a better term,
the corkiness of musicians,
because we're not a normal breed.
Any kind of artist is not a normal breed.
We see the world differently.
And you kind of see that through them.
You know,
I think that,
if I've got to say something that the film
could have improved on,
I think I would have liked to have seen more
of that side of Greta,
that creative side.
Yeah.
The artist side.
I mean,
like you could see it in Rufflow.
Like you could see his mind just go with,
yeah.
With her,
I would have liked to have seen a little bit more of that.
But I think the surrounding cast,
especially the band members and stuff,
they kind of made up for it.
You could see that they were,
they were enjoying making art.
And the concept of making an album,
not in a studio,
outside all over the city of New York,
where the city becomes part of the album,
I think,
that was genius.
And where she,
if being is like a songwriter,
she goes,
I'm not a songwriter.
I'm a songwriter.
I'm not a songwriter.
I'm not a musician.
You know,
and I thought one of the best incredible scene I thought
was when she leaves the voicemail.
And that's all I'm going to say.
So I'm going to spoil it.
That was a very incredible idea.
It made it really even put more into it.
And then when you heard the voicemail,
you're like,
okay,
yeah.
Yeah.
So I was impressed on that part.
Really, really enjoyed this film.
We're going to go ahead and go to final analysis there.
I want to say this.
When I left that film,
we were with a bunch of critics during this.
We were.
We were.
And I didn't hear any really negative bad words about this from about any of the other critics walking out.
I haven't heard anything bad at all.
Right now,
it looks like the IMDB rating is a 7.4 out of 10.
So that's not bad.
Not bad at all.
Of course, the movie has not released as the time of recording this.
Yes, of course.
So, of course, that number will fluctuate once it releases.
The final analysis,
the way we do it on this show.
We don't give you a number.
We don't give you thumbs up thumbs down.
We don't give it a letter grade.
We're going to let the people that.
Really don't have as much imagination do that.
The way we rate movies is real simple.
It's a two-prong question.
The first prong says,
would you see this film again?
The answer is no,
then we're done here.
If the answer is yes,
then the question becomes,
okay,
how would you see it again?
Would you pay full price?
Would you pay a twilight?
Would you pay a matinee?
Would you pay early morning?
Would you wait for it in second run?
Would you rent it on DVD or blue ray?
Or would you wait for it on cable?
Don't I pose the question to you?
Would you see this film again?
Definitely.
Definitely.
Okay, good.
So that's one more on the second question.
What would you be willing to pay?
To see this film again.
For me,
it would be theater.
Okay.
Probably twilight,
but I could even recommend it to the uncing eyes
as possibly even a full price.
This is an app for me.
I would definitely see it again.
It's absolutely a date night movie.
You know,
if I can get my wife to go to the movies,
which she doesn't like to do as much as she used to,
but I would love to take her to see this.
I think this is a great.
It's,
I'm not going to call it a romantic comedy because it's really not.
It's,
and I wouldn't call it a dromity.
I don't know,
because I, I couldn't call it pure comedy,
but I couldn't call it pure drama,
but I couldn't call it both.
It's one of those films that's really close to the bond.
Relationship comedy.
You know,
and it's, it's one of those that you're not going,
you know,
neither one of you's going to leave
Matt at the other one.
You know,
you're going to leave with a good feeling.
You're going to leave talking about this film.
You're going to leave with a smile on your face.
And I felt,
I left more in love.
Hey,
that's you did.
That you definitely definitely did.
But we have to give a shout out to our friends and ally
in the great marketing.
Kelsey,
Dana,
Ashley,
Josh,
and they always do a great job,
and they're,
they put up with our shenanigans.
So we greatly appreciate
their best friends in the whole world.
Go see this film.
By the time you hear this,
it will be an a theater near you.
If you don't have one near you,
there's a thing called the internet,
where you can find a theater that's playing it,
so you can go see it.
Begin again as a name of the film.
Directed by John Carney,
Kira Knightley,
Mark Ruffalo,
Adam Levine,
Haley Stanfield,
Most Deaf,
Catherine Keener.
It's just one of those movies.
You've got to see.
And the music is incredible in this thing.
Oh, I don't think we said enough.
Now,
there was another guy that had a very small role in the film,
but I don't know if you caught it.
Do you remember the guy that,
the kind of slimy CEO guy that they already knew?
He was like,
Oh, I didn't want her on the record.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That was Rob Moro from Northern Exposure.
Oh, really?
Yep. Okay.
So yeah.
But again, go see this film.
We loved it.
We think you'll love it.
And you can take our word for it.
It's good for work.
Trust us.
Even though it's rated R,
it's good for a lot of the family.
Absolutely.
I mean, like you got teenagers and stuff like that.
And it raised to me the R reading was just the language.
And it really wasn't that bad.
And my personal opinion.
Oh, not at all.
All right. Let's do the plugs.
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So until next time that we talk,
for Don, for the Empire,
I'm Rob.
The clubhouse is now closed.
And you could have had Brittany Palmer
been like a bartender or something.
That would have been awesome.
The preceding was a sooner or
greater production.
Why?
Because I have to.