In Search of Door-Kicker Santa: TF Watches RED ONE
Added 2024-12-24 20:48:31 +0000 UTCOur last free episode of 2024 involves Riley, Milo, and November watching the Rock in a terrible Christmas film entitled RED ONE. It’s a film in which Christmas is saved by the surveillance state, jacked Santa trains in the gym to do room-clearing and be an operator, and so much more. This is our present to you: we have suffered.
Comments
Santa Segal: I evacuated the Shah of Iran and his family in this sleigh...
David McGrath
2025-01-16 17:35:58 +0000 UTCSanta Segal: Well I'm sorry to hear that. Because now, Imma snatch every motherfucker presents.
David McGrath
2025-01-16 17:32:48 +0000 UTCUnfortunately I was forced to watch this movie by in-laws who loved it immediately after seeing this episode post. Just getting around to hearing the crew’s take now
Mark Patsy
2025-01-03 16:29:53 +0000 UTCBay of pigs in blankets
lunchpin
2025-01-01 13:22:07 +0000 UTC[Lumumba opening his Christmas CIA gifts] “toothpaste again?”
Jeffrey
2024-12-31 16:53:07 +0000 UTCOkay but, imagine Muppets Red One with The Rock as the only human.
Ingrid Havlik
2024-12-29 15:52:06 +0000 UTCThe true meaning of Christmas is hitting the gym twice a day
Mackenzie Toscan
2024-12-27 10:31:56 +0000 UTChow did November mix up Chantal Akerman and Céline Sciamma
some guy
2024-12-27 10:22:32 +0000 UTCI will not dignify this nonsense with any further response. Unbelievably, I am not the only person with this name in the world. (By the way three years ago I had never even heard of TF, of course I wasn't on their discord server)
marilyn
2024-12-27 09:59:17 +0000 UTCWhen I first heard about this movie but hadn't done further reading I came up with a better premise, which wasn't hard. On Christmas Eve NORAD loses track of Santa and sends a special forces team to rescue him. Basically Christmas Black Hawk Down.
Crispined Glover Potato Snacks
2024-12-27 05:02:30 +0000 UTCUriah—like I said this was thirty years ago. I distinctly remember Marilyn from back in the Clinton administration during the Yugoslav wars.
Elsie Hupp
2024-12-27 02:38:08 +0000 UTCNot that terrible a movie (nowhere near being good either), but podcasters have to eat so we pardon the performative movie episode. ANYWAY, the thing about Red One I found fascinating was the vestigial Hollywood "best practices" in the writing that no one followed through on. For example, The Rock is set up to hand the baton off to Captain America as Santa's top praetorian, but just decides to go back to work. Captain America never really gets cathartic closure for his childhood that the movie opens with, but again, it's set up to do just that.
Andrew Davis
2024-12-27 02:13:09 +0000 UTCMarilyn—you may not be precisely the same person who was on about that shit literally three years ago at this point, but (a) I do recognize your name from Discord, and (b) you certainly sound like them.
Elsie Hupp
2024-12-27 02:05:18 +0000 UTCUriah—Why do you think I left the Discord server? (This was all a very long time ago.)
Elsie Hupp
2024-12-27 02:01:55 +0000 UTCVal—oh hun you did nothing wrong. game knows game, and I respect a good trawl. 🫡
Elsie Hupp
2024-12-27 01:59:52 +0000 UTCHer large adult sons were her goons? I guess they weren't essential to anything.
Andrew Davis
2024-12-27 01:57:08 +0000 UTCStumbling drunkenly into the big room at the centre of The Mind Palace, discovering to my horror that the final boss is *every* historical and modern fascist group at once and they can only be defeated with Posting (the Austrofascists and the Nazis apparently worked out their differences in hell)
marilyn
2024-12-26 22:36:09 +0000 UTCThat’s not the Yoked Pope, that’s the Warhammer Pope
Uriah Wilson
2024-12-26 19:58:32 +0000 UTCspending Boxing Day baselessly accusing people on a Patreon comments section that they are “golden Dawn blood and soul Hellenic race essentialist” is fantastic work keep it up
Uriah Wilson
2024-12-26 19:56:18 +0000 UTCThis is clearly a heist movie and should have been on Kill James Bond
Noblesse Oblahaj
2024-12-26 17:54:49 +0000 UTCJake *Kasdan*? Christ, even the writer is a nepo baby
Nemo
2024-12-26 16:23:52 +0000 UTCPeople on the internet being normal challenge level IMPOSSIBLE
marilyn
2024-12-26 15:19:20 +0000 UTCI'm sorry what the fuck are you on about. I have never been anywhere near the Discord and would not touch that nazi gamer site with a barge pole of any length. I was making a dumb joke and apparently I'm now a Golden Dawn supporter...? Because of course, "girl with a resolutely not-Greek name making jokey comments on the patreon of a British socialist podcast that clearly demonstrate she has actually listened to many episodes" is Golden Dawn's natural constituency.
marilyn
2024-12-26 15:05:19 +0000 UTCcousin what are you talking about i never implied that contemporary Greeks are interchangable with or indistinguishable from historical Greeks 1700 years ago. my intention was to point out that applying ethnic labels to historical figures based on what nation-state currently controls the territory in which they live is historically inaccurate. fuck greek nationalism and fuck turkish nationalism. нет войны
Val
2024-12-26 14:50:43 +0000 UTCDoesn’t Ded Moroz usually wear blue? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ded_Moroz
Elsie Hupp
2024-12-26 14:12:56 +0000 UTCCounterpoint: the modern Greeks are not the same people as the Ancient Greeks, because 800 years of cohabitation invariably involves intermarriage. TF fans secret Golden Dawn supporters confirmed! (Actually I do remember you [edit: Marilyn] being all Golden Dawn blood-and-soil Hellenic-race-essentialist on the Discord server way back before you got banned. Glad to see you haven’t changed!)
Elsie Hupp
2024-12-26 14:09:53 +0000 UTCSo who plays Ded Moroz? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ded_Moroz
Elsie Hupp
2024-12-26 13:54:18 +0000 UTCControl referenced again! 🔺
ACC
2024-12-26 08:52:41 +0000 UTCMink Tier where you record from Aruba and Milo has to stay in the toff accent >>>
Shivvy
2024-12-26 04:18:55 +0000 UTCResolutely owned by zoomers
Mulloy
2024-12-26 03:32:08 +0000 UTCshe got your ass
Shivvy
2024-12-26 03:10:31 +0000 UTCi can’t believe i’m only now hearing this correct shen yun take
Shivvy
2024-12-26 03:09:33 +0000 UTCwould
Shivvy
2024-12-26 03:09:00 +0000 UTCliterally listening again while cooking to see if I can learn anything about this movie
Shivvy
2024-12-26 03:08:12 +0000 UTCOk so how about a movie called “The War on XMAS” and it’s pretty much the Expendables but they rescue Santa from North Korea. It has Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan as leaders of North Korea
MCL
2024-12-25 22:56:35 +0000 UTCThe biggest personal mark against this movie: bringing in Gryla as a villain and completely disregarding her husband, cat, and especially her 13 sons. This movie could have been improved a letter grade by the fucking Yule Lads being there doing their various Deals like stealing meat, slamming doors, or annoying sheep.
Lay-Tex-Lips
2024-12-25 18:44:27 +0000 UTCListening to this, my boyfriend was like "wait, isn't this just the origin story of robot Santa from Futurama? Too many people on the naughty list?" And he's right for saying it. Also, isn't Cirque du Soleil basically Quebequois Shen Yun?
Page Chase
2024-12-25 14:49:57 +0000 UTCA couple years ago India put a lander on the fucking MOON and the cost of the entire program including the rocket was less than half of what it cost to make the movie red one
GG Allin Dulles
2024-12-25 13:45:54 +0000 UTCYes but assuming I'm playing the part of the rock, I need 6 other people to operate puppets of Chris Nolan, Chris Nolan's wife, Jake kasdan, the credulous reporter, a pimply teenage movie theater usher, and the rock's abs (closeup). And it's gonna cost 285 million dollars.
GG Allin Dulles
2024-12-25 13:34:21 +0000 UTCthis movie sounds like it has all the hallmarks of a scientology production, but I am wrong
MI
2024-12-25 12:58:58 +0000 UTCNormally they need at least three weak examples to manufacture a moral panic.
Cate Kneale
2024-12-25 12:51:16 +0000 UTCI think we should make 2025 the year in which podcasters only watch good films. If you ask work together then you can defeat this slop. For instance, Riley was slightly disparaging towards the movie where Nicholas Cage plays himself but it's delightful and Pedro Pascal does not phone it in.
Cate Kneale
2024-12-25 12:34:06 +0000 UTCI would probably do that instead.
Cate Kneale
2024-12-25 12:05:02 +0000 UTCI had to watch this movie in a theater for work and I'm glad that I'm not alone in suffering through it
Tessa Siddle
2024-12-25 07:42:39 +0000 UTCThe "There's no film critics at the Lamborghini dealership" came from a rare unguarded Hugh Jackman after being asked if he missed being regarded as a leading musical star or being in non-Wolverine roles
John Leavitt
2024-12-25 05:21:00 +0000 UTCHis performance in Spy carried that movie. The bit with The "Face Off" machine. Gold.
Crispined Glover Potato Snacks
2024-12-25 04:54:48 +0000 UTCApproximately $1.5 million per minute. Meaning, for every minute “filmed,” you could pay the average New York rent ($1779, according to US census bureau) for approximately 84 months.
Joe
2024-12-25 03:42:34 +0000 UTCMy daughter heard me listening to this and said I have no Christmas spirit then gave me tiny plastic hands so I must announce i now like this movie
Mulloy
2024-12-25 03:01:13 +0000 UTCI don't know why but there have been several prior examples of the hosts describing Anatolian Greeks as Turks, seemingly collectively forgetting that the Turks didn't really arrive in Anatolia until the second milennium CE and that there were still millions of Greeks in Anatolia until the Young Turks reached for the big red genocide button. TF are secret Kemalists confirmed
marilyn
2024-12-25 01:41:24 +0000 UTCCan you explain that using puppets?
Grumpy Bowlart
2024-12-25 01:14:41 +0000 UTCJason Statham can do pretty solid deadpan serious acting for obviously comedic films, he should've been cast for the Rock's role instead!
Overzealous Euthanasiast
2024-12-25 01:14:07 +0000 UTCi gotta point out that St. Nicholas wasn't Turkish, he was a Pontic Greek.
Val
2024-12-25 01:08:12 +0000 UTCWas it Rachel Jake
Shivvy
2024-12-25 00:52:13 +0000 UTCAdmittedly, I’m doing computer tasks while listening but this entire ep bounced off my brain and it’s completely USMIL Santa movie fault. I forgot to submit a Q but mine is, has Riley decided on a Girl Name
Shivvy
2024-12-25 00:33:50 +0000 UTCHonestly kind of surprised that the TF SPAC/oil company/etc doesn’t have an Aruba office.
Ryan
2024-12-25 00:16:34 +0000 UTCI lost my virginity at Shen Yun and they made sure it was to a person the same race as me
Kapjak
2024-12-24 23:44:17 +0000 UTCSurprised you guys didn't catch wind of this insane article where the rock talks about how he was inspired to make this movie by watching Oppenheimer in the imax theater where Christopher Nolan watches his movies and asked Nolan's wife if he could sit in chris's seat, and later he texted the director of red one a picture of his bare chest as an example of a thing that would be cool in imax https://variety.com/2024/film/news/dwayne-johnson-red-one-imax-inspired-oppenheimer-christopher-nolan-1236209576/
GG Allin Dulles
2024-12-24 23:42:40 +0000 UTCThis movie just sounds like Violent Night but worse
John Her
2024-12-24 23:28:26 +0000 UTCI WANT THE RUSSIAN SANTA SHIRT!
Rae Rae
2024-12-24 23:11:55 +0000 UTCI will never be able to stop mulling over the phrase "Battle Pope" now, thank you
marilyn
2024-12-24 22:56:59 +0000 UTCBeing very into space stuff at the moment, the phrase "Krampus has a bunch of orbiters" gave me a very different impression of where the Next Location was going to be
-Kris-
2024-12-24 22:15:00 +0000 UTCNot sure if he was yoked (his portrait suggests otherwise), but Pope Julius II is probably the closest thing to it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Julius_II “Nicknamed the Warrior Pope, the Battle Pope or the Fearsome Pope”
Cat Mara
2024-12-24 22:10:26 +0000 UTCI don't know if I'd say Red is part of the joint chiefs, but I'd bet in this universe the North Pole is part of Five Eyes.
-Kris-
2024-12-24 22:00:27 +0000 UTCWell of course Santa is enmeshed with the American surveillance apparatus. How else would he see you when you're sleeping and know when you're awake.
marilyn
2024-12-24 21:53:11 +0000 UTCExcuse me but I was reliably informed by the guardian dot com that this film's lack of success was due to some very profound reasons related to What ~We~ Truly Desire At Christmas, I will NOT accept being told that it was just a really bad film thank you very much
marilyn
2024-12-24 21:44:30 +0000 UTCPerhaps they call JK Simmons "Red" because their regime change managed to successfully oust Tim Allen, but failed to assassinate him, thus allowing him to maintain a role of Santa-in-Exile in Moscow
-Kris-
2024-12-24 21:43:25 +0000 UTCThis is a weird Fuller film.
Isaiah John
2024-12-24 20:53:23 +0000 UTC
