iTunes Exclusive Episode City Of Ghosts

Welcome, Empire member and or members.
If you are hearing the sound of my voice, it means the following conditions have been met
at least once in your lifetime.
You have listened to the Clubhouse podcast.
You are one stop shop for all things pop culture live every Sunday night, seven Eastern
for Pacific.
It also means you check us out on your favorite podcast app because it is time for another
iTunes exclusive number 306 is where we sit greetings.
My name is Rob, I am the executive producer of the Clubhouse podcast and I will enjoy
a documentary on you every once in a year.
But I'm not alone for this particular episode joining me across the desk as he tends to
do is the official fact checker of this show.
And if I'm not mistaken, this will be the first edition of this show that he can claim
to be a married man.
You may know him as fondongo, but his mama name is Don Ford, which I can verify because
I've now met her.
You can call him Don Ford.
Welcome, sir.
Yes, I am married.
Yes, I met the mama.
I did.
The mama.
I did indeed.
There are real people.
I know.
I never said they weren't.
It was weird hearing them call you Donald, though.
I know.
I can't get used to that.
When I go back home, it clicks off, but it's just weird, but it is what it is, but we've
met the mama.
So yes, congratulations, sir.
Welcome to the institution of marioness.
Yes, sir, of marriage.
Whatever we do, one of these, it is to review something and this is no exception.
What we're reviewing for you in this particular episode is a documentary that got away from
me at the Dallas International Film Festival this year, but it has come back around that
I got to check it out.
And Don and I are going to talk about it.
It is called City of Ghosts.
For which are this whole thing?
Yes, sir.
Are you seeing?
Ready.
Alight, in the grand and marketing.
Got to thank Melissa, the whole crew.
We love them.
Our best friends.
Such big fans.
And they got to let us see this so we can check it out for you.
Here's what you need to know.
This is by the guy that directed Cartel Land that you checked out a couple of years ago.
You very much enjoyed if I remember correctly.
That was a very serious topic.
This is a very serious topic.
This revolves around the Iraqi village of Raqqa, R-A-Q-Q-A.
In the beginning of it, they are overthrowing the Assad regime, celebrating in the streets.
Everybody's happy.
This oppressive regime has ended.
Well, the problem with that is is what they leave themselves kind of exposed and before
they know what ISIS has moved in.
Here comes the radicals.
They come in, they start recruiting people, death, threats, public executions the whole
nine.
A handful of guys are able to get out of the city and cross borders.
And they formed something called RBSS because there's no media covering any of what's going
on in their town.
Really?
RBSS stands for Raqqa is being slaughtered silently.
And what they do is they work with people inside the city who film and document everything
that's going on there.
And they send it to these guys who are outside the country in safe houses.
They use the power of social media to publish these things.
They've been, their stuff has been used by media outlets all around the world, including
places like CNN.
Really?
So basically they get this footage sent to them.
And then they get sent it off to the social media goes to the social media and basically
it all goes viral.
It goes to the world.
But the majority of us about the story of them getting that footage to people.
It's everything.
It's very comprehensive.
At one point, ISIS decides they're going to make a law that bans all satellite dishes
in Raqqa.
So they're tearing them down to try to prevent this message from getting out.
It shows them recruiting children into their cause.
Meanwhile, they're showing this footage of people that are lined up 50, 60, 100 deep
just with buckets just trying to get soup so they can survive.
And these guys, they're under death threats.
Yeah.
They're caught there.
They're there are bounties on them or the people with this organization out of the city
absolutely.
So they end out because the people that are setting this stuff, they're completely covered
up so they don't expose themselves.
This documentary is riveting.
I will say this up front.
It's real.
It's rated R for a reason and a good reason.
Quite a bit of it is subtitled because they're speaking in their own language.
This is man.
Like I can't the only word I can use and I use this word in my written review currently
located at www.theclubhousepodcast.com which is our website.
It's real.
It's in your face.
It pulls no punches.
There is footage in this film that will haunt you.
Like I can't even go into it and we can go into it off the air.
But it's it's raw.
It's powerful.
It's real.
You see the struggle of these and these guys are recognized by the American, some assembly
of journalists in 2015.
They were given a special award and up until that point are probably a couple of months
before it.
They hadn't even shown their faces and that's part of it.
They're actually kind of the reason if you remember some of the old video messages that
ISIS would send out kind of look kind of grainy.
These guys are kind of the people that made them up their game and made them go where
they're using high-diff cameras and doing all this stuff and you see the plights that
they go through where they worry about their families.
Some of them have their families with them.
Some of them don't.
It is I can't even say the words that I want to think of because the words aren't coming
to me.
This is unbelievable.
Gritty tough brutal.
It's all of those things.
Yeah.
It's all of those things.
I hear the courage of these men and women to even be allowed themselves to be filmed much
less in this fashion.
This is one of those films that I will not be surprised if this is not in the best documentary
long-form Oscar category next year.
Yeah.
It's that good.
It's that real.
It's that raw.
Powerful is the only word that even comes close to what I'm trying to say.
I mean, this shows executions.
This shows the whole torture, the whole game.
It pulls no punches in any way.
Oh, there's no way.
No, there's no punches pulled here at all, sir.
And this is the added stuff you see on CNN.
This is the un-edited.
They do show like some of the footage that CNN shows.
Yeah, of course, yeah.
But no, they show their own footage, too.
And you see the pain that these guys deal with as they're trying to sometimes, in some
cases, try to locate people that they know that they're not even sure.
They're alive.
Exactly.
They get caught.
Because like these people filming this stuff in that city, if I Saskatches them, see you
later.
Have a good bye.
Yeah.
Go see Allah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like your heart breaks watching this.
I totally, I have an utmost respect for the courage that these people show, but I feared
for them at the same time all the way through this time.
It's like one of those movies that I keep on the edge of the seat, but this is real
alive.
And it's right out of now and a half.
I mean, it's standard documentary length.
Visually, it's, it's as slickly produced as it can be for a documentary.
Like it doesn't look like it was shot on somebody's phone.
Like some of the footage was.
Yeah.
Of course.
Yeah.
But the documentary itself is shot very well.
It's not very, it's not too intrusive.
It gives the subjects enough space so that the story can tell itself.
It's no question.
Now, some of these documentaries, huh?
They get preachy sometimes.
Not at all.
Not this.
It's not a bias piece.
It doesn't, it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know when it comes to things
like the plight of some of the people there.
It's more about this, this group of men and women getting the message out that their
village is getting destroyed.
Their city is being destroyed.
And they had to take it upon themselves to get that signal out because the press wasn't
getting in.
There's no way the press, there's no way the press could get in.
I don't think there is.
Yeah.
Unless the military comes first.
I mean, these guys are putting their cameras like in bags and they're writing motorcycles
and the cameras sticking out of the bag without their filming.
They're having to make sure that as soon as they send the information that it's completely
deleted off their phones or off camera so they don't get caught, it's like you said it's
absolute edge of your seat entertainment.
But and it's incredibly informative.
You know, some of these documentaries, they're biased, they're one sided or they're
preachy.
This was not that.
I didn't see it.
As biased in any way, I saw it as just honest and real.
You know what I mean?
This was what a true documentary should be is what you're saying.
Absolutely.
Not a point of view thing, not a something like that.
Not like a, you know, as an example, Michael Morse or a and culture kind of thing.
This is, all right.
Now what would one thing you didn't like about this?
To say I didn't like this, I'm having to did kind of deep or what would you change?
I don't know that I'd change anything.
It's just really, really graphic in some places, but it has to be.
It's not violent for the sake of violence.
It's realism for the sake of information.
It's not like, it's not overly like, oh, look at everything.
It's like, we're showing you this because we have to show you this.
Yeah.
Talk value.
It's nothing like that.
It's because it's real.
And there were moments that I got a little uncomfortable.
Yeah.
But in those moments, it was because it needed to be, it needed to make me uncomfortable
to get its message across.
Okay.
The question.
Watch cage.
Probably about halfway through.
About 45 minutes.
45 minutes.
Mm-hmm.
What was the rest of the, this was at the press screening, right?
When I said San Antonio.
Okay.
What was the rest of the press thing after that you saw, the talk, the chat?
I really didn't hear any chatter because I was just kind of focused.
Okay.
I did talk to a couple of people that were just like, yeah, it's really good.
I talked to a couple of people that saw the diff that were just like, you got to see this.
You got to see this one, but it's been more available.
I mean, it's just, it's riveting, totally.
All right.
Well, yeah, let's get to the final analysis.
The way we do the final analysis on the show, we're not going to give you thumbs up, thumbs down.
We're not going to give you letter grades, numbers, anything like that.
We're going to ask two questions.
Question number one is, would you see this again?
The answers know we're done here.
The answer is yes, then it's going to be, how would I see this?
From the best of the best of the worst of the best, here's how it goes.
Full price of the theater.
We go down from there to twilight, down to a mat name, maybe an early morning screening.
From there, we go to first run, our second run of the dollar theater, down to red box,
down to Netflix, down to cable.
Rob.
Yes, sir.
Would you see this film again?
See, this is the weird thing.
Is it like me with Gleason?
I loved this film.
I don't know that I could sit through it again.
It's that intense.
Like me with Gleason.
Yeah.
Where I loved it and made my best film of the year.
It did.
But I said, I probably can watch it again.
It's one that is an important film and I think people need to see it.
Okay, let's do this.
How would you recommend it?
Let's be fair then.
I would say this being a documentary is going to be hard to say, find it in first run
because it's going to be a very limited run.
I would say get your hands on this anyway you can.
Whether you're streaming it, whether you find a way to see this film, it's an important
film.
It's incredibly well done.
It's absolutely, like it grabs a hold of you and it doesn't let go.
And by the end of it, you just, you just, you just exhale.
But be warned.
Oh, it's incredibly graphic, yeah, it's incredibly graphic and it has to be, again, it's not
for shock value.
It's because it has to be to get its message across.
So you recommend it regardless, absolutely.
If you can handle the subject matter, I strongly recommend it.
If it's the kind of subject matter that you can't handle, I get it.
Yeah.
All right.
It is city of ghosts.
For we have this whole thing, again, ready to sing.
And I'm in a great amount getting some of my favorite stuff everybody, the whole crew,
we love them.
All right.
Let's do the plugs.
Visit our website.
It is known as www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
Find out everything you need to know and some stuff you don't.
Check us out on social media, Twitter is clubhouse show.
Everything else is at the clubhouse podcast.
All three words in that order or you will wind up somewhere else.
You can follow me on social media if you would like.
Everything is yes to that rob urban that has spelled E-R-V-I-N.
My normal co-host for this show is Chad Womack.
You can follow him at Chad and PG-69.
And I'm about fun.
Don, go and you can email me at Don at theclubhousepodcast.com.
Email Don for information on how we can come do a live show for you.
We love doing live shows and hang out with the empire.
You can email me, questions, comments, concern, or something to go pound sand.
I'm rob at theclubhousepodcast.com.
Chad is Chad at theclubhousepodcast.com.
Charlotte Parker is on Pinterest.
Jules Walmick's probably where Chad is.
It's kind of how the marriage thing works.
Don knows now.
And faith.
And faith.
And remember, faith is doing for me.
That's right.
We got that faith in you.
Remember, we're live every Sunday night, 7 Eastern for Pacific.
You're one stop shop for all things pop culture or just keep subscribing on your favorite
podcast app.
And you'll get all the cool stuff like this.
So until next time for Don and the Empire, I'm Rob.
Clubhouse is closed.