 Hello, my testing one, two, three. Hello. Hello. How was they? I was, I was, I forgotten. I was already a block up block. You were a what? I was it a block call? I've completely forgotten the header monologue. It's not a surprise. What was that three years ago? It was a long time. Hey, we'll go back to our studio director Corbin. You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter for more juicy content. Thank you for watching Patreon. Follow us Twitter account, subscribe and the like button. Speaking of header, did you see my story? Yeah, that's right. Did you see my story I did where it was pick your six films that really if you want to know who I am, these six films. Yes. And I did two rounds of it because I couldn't just pick six. Yeah. But I got few messages from people who were taking exception to the fact that I had put Hamlet in there, but I didn't put header. Because I put Gully Boy and PK, but I didn't put header. I did contemplate it. But my my rationale, you don't have header without Hamlet. So not that specific Hamlet. That's true. That's true. But I mean, truly, this was about I mean, and I have a lot of I didn't understand the question. It was basically, I didn't even know if it was your favorites. No, like that to get you know your style, or is it to get you know your personality? I took it to mean getting to know me personally. Like if you want to know my DNA, if you want to know how I think, if you want to know the films that have made me who I am, versus not just your favorites, films that have impacted me and shaped who I am as a person. That's how Andrani and I took it. So what would you choose? Hankerman, Barney, or Alvin and Chipmunks, the squeakle. We'll go back to our stupid regs. We just did that. We just did a second intro. It was way too long. Yeah. Today we're doing a series review. I don't know what that was. And it's we it's the new Netflix mini series, I guess you would call it the Railway Men. That just came out this year. Starring Madhavan, K.K. Menon. Jewichella. I don't know if it's starring her, but well produced by her. I would say it was starring Madhavan either. Say his. Oh yeah, Divyandu Sharma, y'all would know him as Babel Khan. Yeah, obviously it's starring the your main stars K.K. Menon, but all those others are supporting in this. And it's obviously about the 1984 gas leaks in Bopal, right? Bopal? Nice, yeah, Bopal, which most of the time I think we even said it was Bopal, but yeah, no, my wife correct me. I believe Bopal, outside of some references and maybe Family Man, because I think they were referencing this in Family Man. Is that what is that what they were referencing? I don't think it was something like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. It's something like the gas leak in Family Man. I think it's the first time we have really learned about it. Though I think people call it the worst industrial tragedy of all time. Yeah, like, which surprised me because if someone had asked me that before I heard about this, I would have said Chernobyl, which is understandable. Yes. But this is the worst, actually. Anyways, it just came out on Netflix, but since it's a series, I say just go watch it and come back. We're going to do 100% spoiler review this way. 100% spoilers for the rest of the episode. It's only four of them and you've seen it, yeah. So you can go and also... It's a quick watch. You don't really need to... The spoilers are if you know about the story. I mean, there's other spoilers that are in the story that aren't related at all to the event, but I mean, yeah. Overall, just watch the series. It's four only four episodes. Very quick watch. And then come back if you don't want to be spoiled. Yeah. Rick, your initial thoughts of Railway Men. I want to start off with the pros and then the cons. The pros for me were, first and foremost, the most standout thing for me are two things. One is production design. I thought production design was exemplary. I feel like everybody did their homework and really went the extra mile to try to be as accurate with everything and also to create a tone to the feel of it that gave you a sense of not just the time of 1984, but gave you a sense of what it felt like in the moment. So I thought the production design was top notch as was for the predominant amount of everybody in the cast. I thought everybody in the cast did a good job and it speaks volumes when people are doing a good enough job that there's certain characters you want to revisit and go back to and wish were on screen some more. No shock with KK. No shock with KK as well as... We'll talk about them all. Yeah, we'll talk about them all in a second. But my ultimate takeaway is unfortunate that it has, for me, far more cons than it does pros, particularly things that pertain to some of the narrative and the storytelling having too many sub-plot points that I felt were completely unnecessary as well as some things, and this won't surprise you if you've been around, some things that had to do with facts that were... When you're telling a true story, I understand artistic license, but I also don't appreciate when you just say things that aren't true. So my ultimate takeaway from was it that if you were to ask me did I like it, I would tell you I didn't like it. No, I definitely liked the series, but it wasn't a love. There was... I love... And it would be interesting to see if you feel the same way in terms of just about the entertainment value of it. Any time KK and that main cast, KK... Say his name. Yeah, Divyendu. And Bupil. That section of the thing was on screen. I was really into it. Any kind of the... And I know they're not really sub-plots because it's part of the story of how it happened, but it just... The way it was filmed and the people that were doing the acting in it. No, I'm not talking about Monhaven. I'm more talking about everybody else in it. In the really smaller sub-plots. Like in terms of the political aspects of it. Yeah. In terms of some of the smaller side plots. Those were just not as interesting to me. At least the way they were filmed. I was like, okay, can we get back to KK and his... I really wish... That's what the trailer gave you the opinion of. I really do wish one of the things I would have pounded the table for in changing would be, please, can we just stick with KK, Bupil, and Divyendu at the train station? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I would have done. I get that there's sub-plots. I didn't need them actually. Me too. I would have been like, okay, now I can go learn about what happened, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they weren't strong enough. And they could have covered... I mean, there's so many things that could be told about this tragedy and this aftermath that you have to make some choices when you're doing a story that's only going to be four episodes. And when you call your film The Railway Men, let's just stick to the actual events that occurred with The Railway Men in the event. Episode one was so good for me that I brought Andrani in with me to watch episode two. And then we got through episode two. I was still engaged, but then by the time episode three started, it went pun intended off the rails for me. There was one thing about episode one that I didn't like, that I didn't like throughout the whole thing, and it won't surprise you. Yeah, I know who you're talking about. I supposed to be said who. I will talk about that in a little bit. But yes, let's talk about the positive first. Yes, I want to accentuate more the first and foremost my favorite parts. Like I said, if they would have taken everything, I think you probably could with the cut that they had, taken everything else out and just had only the stuff at the station and it would the station and the factory just right there and the surrounding turmoil of just the hours of that night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you could have done a cut and it had been so, so, so good because that part of it was riveting. No shock, KK Men and one of the greatest actors acting alive today. I will put them up there with Gary Oldman's and the people that I hold at the highest esteem of their craft. God, he's amazing. And he's so different in this. I concur. I concur. Because like he, same thing with like Pankaj and that he could be the sweetest man. Yeah. But he can also flip and be like the evilest person. He's an extraordinarily versatile actor and subtle. There's literally, it must be so fun when you're thinking about things that you could put him in because I can't think of anything that I don't think he could do well. I mean truly. No, there's nothing. Put him, any role that you're thinking of that falls within the age range he's portraying and he'd probably pull it off. Oh, easily. Yeah. I get it. It's not even a question. No, he's that good. And he brought such obviously emotion, vulnerability in this. Also, just weight and intelligence and like there's so many nuances to this character. And we didn't have a bunch of a backstory of him. No. But you didn't need it? Well, you don't when you have someone as good as KJ. Yeah, because he brought a lot of that. He's like, I can see your past almost by what you're giving me. That's the benefit of a great actor is that you have a script that's a bit light. And this was, you have a heavyweight embodying the character who you said it. You can see the history. And I think you can see the history in the way that they're doing everything they're doing. I think he's actually done a film about this subject before and I think it was very early on in his career in the 90s. Oh really? Something about Bopal something or something? Something Bopal. And so like this second time he's kind of revisited this whole tragedy. And the constant challenge that all of the actors had to face who were in the sequences consistently like the three we're talking about was the challenges that they had to do with demonstrating the physical aspects of what they're dealing with as well. The cough and the eyes burning and maintaining that especially in some of the longer dialogue scenes when they're in the station and everybody's inside there now and they're talking about what they're going to do. Everybody had to remember without indicating and making it play acting. Everybody had to remember their symptoms. And I thought everybody did a very good job. And it's not this kind of thing with there's so much going on in terms of physically to people in this movie. Obviously the way film and television is filmed you're going to be waiting around for a few hours and then you have to remember where you were emotionally, where you are physically, you have to be like you're exhausted from emotional and physical stuff going on to your body then you have to turn it on. You are there where you needed to be in the scene. Correct. There's an evolution of the character that takes place at every dimension of their being and you have to know on any given moment you're shooting because it's out of sequence predominantly. Where is my character at this point? The hat's off. And the other two that I'm going to talk about specifically and I'll get into Mahavna because I think you did a good job. But the three main cast. Yeah. Divyendu. Divyendu. I think the second time you've seen him since. Pretty much. Yeah. I think this is the second time we've seen him in something since Mirzapur. And I'm trying to remember what was the other thing that we saw him in because I do remember something else we saw him in. I don't remember. But you guys can tell us what it was. I thought you did a very good job. I thought having to be in a bunch of scenes with K.K. Menon. I mean he had to be in a bunch of scenes with Pankash. Right. Another heavyweight that he's had to act opposed to. And he did a very good job emotionally on certain scenes and obviously there was a lot going on with this character in terms of what the that aspect I'm wondering do you know if it was true or not. It wasn't. It was that part of it. Yeah and it wasn't needed. That for me. I really liked. He was a thief. I liked Divyendu his performance but in the story and the character it was a complete fabrication. It had nothing to do with actual events and it was completely unnecessary and I felt utterly distracted from the salient message of what we really wanted to focus on which was the saving of people in this catastrophe. Yeah. I thought he did a very good job though. He brought the he's a very good actor. He's seen it multiple times now and it's very different from his character in Miesepur. And I thought he brought some very emotional scenes along with KK Menen. Yeah. I believed him. It was great. That's the penultimate goal of when I'm watching an actor. Do I believe you? Yeah. Yeah. I believed him. And then Bapal. Bapil? Yeah. I believe it's pronounced Bapil. Please help us so that we can respect the proper pronunciation of his first name. Irfan's twin. God. Good Lord. One just his body is identical to his father's and there's so much reminiscent in the eyes. There is. So much reminiscent. Do you think that the part that's not there in the eyes might get there when he gets older? Maybe. Irfan's eyes are a little more sunken than I had said but I think that might come with age because if I'm remembering Irfan younger they weren't as sunken. No, no, no they're gonna sink and he's gonna be like like a spitting image of his father but onto his acting. Dude. We are about to get, I don't want to say Irfan too, that's not fair to him. No. He has the talent. Yeah. I, I, it excites me so much to see any young talent come up whose parent is a legend in what they do and I mean any talent. So Ken Griffey Jr. when he was playing. When you're, when you're watching somebody in the music industry come up whose dad like I felt so bad for John Lennon's son who you know he was trying to do music and it's like you're in the fo, your, your father is John Lennon and we saw him for the first time I believe in Kahlo right? Yes. Yeah. And loved him. Ugh. And so number one, man I wish we had more of his character. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my favorite moments were him and KK together. Oh yeah. And it excites me so much to see this actor who clearly comes out from underneath the shadow of one of the greatest actors of all time and is paving a way on his own has a natural unaffected way. I'm, I promise he feels a sense of pressure. He may not admit it. I may be wrong, but I, I don't know how you don't feel a sense of pressure of wanting to at least match and honor the legacy of your dad. Yeah. In the craft. Yeah. But to be able to set that aside and I see it, to set it aside and just focus on what's important is me being the character. I'm not important right now. What's important is the story and this character. And I, I loved every second he was on screen. Can't have a better teacher. No. Because he also has that effortlessness. He does. About him. In terms of, I, I, he's way ahead of his years. I'm sure he'll never admit everything that his father taught him, no, because then he probably wants to keep that special of, you know, what, what he got from his father, right? Yeah. And what makes me extremely mad, I think he and his mom and family were at the premiere we were out of in Greasy Medium. Oh, really? But he hadn't acted yet. Like, so we didn't. Yeah, we wouldn't have known. We wouldn't have known. Yeah. But he, I pretty sure his family was there from what I remember. That wouldn't surprise me. But you know, he, his, his, his depth at his age reminds me you may not like this comparison. You may. Um, he reminds me, and this is a high compliment, this room, he reminds me a lot of Timothy Chalamet. I can see what you're talking about. In his capacity. Yeah, I can see what you're talking about. Yeah, because I, I consider Timothy Chalamet to be a way ahead of his years actor in terms of his emotional depth and his presence on screen, especially his youngest, his younger first starting out work. Yeah, I, I think he has more range. He may. Timothy Chalamet. He may. Word on the street, by the way. I mean, it's first looks when it's a lot of its publicity, but word on the street is he's charming and wonka. I still don't believe it. I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I know I'm with you. I'll see it, but if, if it's a good, I'll see it on OTT. I'm not spending my money on that. I'm rooting for Mr. Khan and he's, hey, I think he has more, he's a really good actor. He has great emotional availability. Really good actor. He, that, like I said, that entire, anytime either it was KK and Devyendu or devil KK and Babil. That was my favorite train station. I was riveted and I was so interested in, and obviously learning about this awful tragedy was, um, I don't want to say wonderful, but it was very intriguing because of how awful it is, like any kind of natural or tragedy film, right? Yeah. You don't know if you're like, oh, this is awful. Yeah. Multiple times we sit, me and Steph were watching, we're like, oh my god, this is terrible. And I, I am grateful for the fact that this brought it to the, my attention and because I don't just accept things at face value, I research to find out if what I'm being told is true. I mean, I've, I've, truth matters to me. That shouldn't be a surprise to anybody, but I don't take anybody's word for it. Um, I, if somebody says something, I want to verify and see those things. So I am grateful to find out about this tragedy and I could do my own homework. What I, what I don't like and I'm not going to pound the table, but I would, I really dislike how much stuff in this was not accurate. It is, it is a, the last time I felt this upset was when we watched the, the movie about Epstein, the, yeah, the Rajkumar Rao one, where it's just you're, you're just saying stuff. I don't think Epstein is correct. That, no, no, the, yeah, the, the journalist. Yeah. Epstein's the, the pedophile. Oh yeah, but there's other people with the last name Epstein. I thought it was a different E. I may be, I may be wrong, but I thought it was, but anyway, the, the, the American journalist. There's so many things in this that are inaccurate that it's just, it, it sucks because in the very beginning there was so much that was accurate and the way that it started and one of the things that was really horrific was hearing all of the animals in the first episode. Yeah, yeah, hearing them all screaming in pain because if you read the records, there was a mass thousands upon thousands and thousands of not just dead people, but thousands and thousands of dead animals, it's, it is an, it is an ecocide. It literally was not just genocidal in terms of it killing a lot of people, but it completely decimated the totality of the ecosystem there for so much so, and they didn't even get into this aspect of it because there's so much to tell. There was a, a reporter who had done, it was around 2009 who had gone to see because there were rumors that there was still some bad stuff going on the factory and in 2009 the photographer went in there and was then put in the hospital for a week because of contamination from just the dust that was still in the factory. Oh, wow. Yeah, but there's, there's, there's so many things in there that were fabricated inaccurate and wrong that I could never recommend this if it's like, if you want to know about this tragedy, you really need to just go look up all the articles and things about it to find out the truth because there's, there's people in this and again subplots, the whole thing on the train where I understand what was going on with the Sikh community in 1984, but that was, that was irrelevant to the telling of the railwaymen and my, my, what was going on on the train. I didn't need to, the whole, okay great, Madhavan and Juhi Chawla were once married. I didn't care, that was all distracting from the salient points. The factual things for me, should I even go into them? I mean, you can look it up yourself, but there's, there's a lot of stuff in this that's just inaccurate to the point of how did people in production not, why didn't somebody stand up and go, guys, that's not true. Do you not think that you can make something based off of an event and do it solely so people can get interested, but do it primarily for an entertainment value? Yeah, you can. However, if you're saying that you're depicting an untold story about a particular tragedy, which is what this is called, the railwaymen and untold story. Example, it would be like someone making a story about the COVID-19 pandemic and making up things about it that just never happened. That would, I would hope, that would bother people because when it comes to truth versus entertainment, there's a line example. There's a great film that had to do with World War II and the director said, this scene that you're watching, I saw this at a Q&A, said this scene in the movie that you remember when they're sitting on the park bench, that didn't take place on a park bench. That actually took place with them writing letters to one another, but we felt a justification in putting it as a park bench talk because it helped move everything forward in a way with the narrative. That kind of thing I understand for entertainment value and artistic license, but when you say things like they had an antidote, that's factually not true. When you see somebody laying on the ground who's been on the ground for hours upon hours just getting up and being okay, that is actually impossible because the concentrations of this gas were heavier on the ground. Children died first because they were shorter and smaller. I have a long list that I don't want to go on to a diatribe about, but it's enough so that it really was off-putting to me because if you want to know about the tragedy, this is not the thing to go to for facts. Just is it? Another thing outside of all that, obviously, that was just awful was the white actor that they put in charge of the American in charge of the company, basically, right? Whatever U.S. company. The bad guy? Yeah, yeah. He was terrible. I don't need to go over white actors in Indian cinema, but he was so bad. It so hurts. He was doing stuff. He was like, oh, this is going to be so cool. The way I'm going to say this, he was awful. Every single part that he was in, you could have cut. I could have gotten all that information in a different way. You could have said it at the end. Who's responsible? Blah, blah, blah. And it wasn't just his performance, which I agree with you, which was- Writing was awful, too, man. The writing for anybody who was coming across as the antagonists, it was so shallow and hollow and it won't, I haven't looked it up, but it will not surprise me if the writing contributions were inexperienced writing contributions, because the characters for the most part, I mean, KK's character and Bebill's character and Divyendu's character, were as rounded out as they were, we said this earlier on, not because of the script, but because of the capacity of the actors. And also, they didn't actually have a lot of dialogue. No, they didn't. And I mean, there was so much ancillary things that just were unnecessary and again, the guy who goes to bribe Jui Choua, not only is that unnecessary at that point, there's other ways you could have factually told, because there is an extraordinary amount of government corruption. Oh, my star is beyond corruption. And political and business, I mean, what Union carbide did and didn't do. And the antidote, for example, there's no antidote for the stuff. There is none. There still isn't an antidote for MIC. What there is is a particular kind. They mentioned it at the end of the thing. They put up the name of sodium thiosulfate. What the sodium thiosulfate does is it can help with cyanide poisoning and it can help remove cyanide from the bloodstream, which is one of the compounds in MIC that was fatal. It would have saved lives for those who were able to be treated with it who hadn't already reached a place of toxicity that was definitively lethal for them. But if you had gotten it to enough of them, what they discovered was that that particular thing could take cyanide out of the body through the out of the bloodstream and into the urine and reduce the toxicity in your body so much that it might not cause you to die if they got to you soon enough. So could lives have been spared? Absolutely. When did it come? It came about five days after the fact and the government just said it was a legal thing because the moment it became something that was internalized in the body, it was a completely different legal ramification for union carbide. They didn't want the people knowing that this was something that could be internalized and helped with that medicine and if that medicine was used, it had deeper legal problems. They made it appear as if they had the cure and purposefully withheld it and everybody could have been saved. And that's patently false. Got you. Got you. Yeah, but yeah, overall as well as some things that just weren't believable like people like particularly at the wedding, she laid on the ground and was there for a long time and then suddenly got up and was okay. That just nothing like that would have ever occurred. They did say multiple times that people that were pronounced dead got. There were some of those things that happened. Yeah, so I'm guessing that's what they were referencing. Yeah, but when yeah that so I think it put them into like a coma like steak basically. There were some that they dropped their heart rate enough with it's not recognizable. Yes. And obviously that's what they were referencing. Obviously, whether it's those specific instances, whether it's cinematically, you can believe that I understand. But obviously that did happen. So that's what they were referencing. What's astonishing because the toxicity at this place, there was a study in 2002 that found toxins still being found in breast milk of moms there. And in 2004, a water study was done revealing toxins were 500 times higher than the maximum limits allowed by the World Health Organization. That's in 2004. Wow. Yeah. And the one of the most heartbreaking visuals of this was actually that that shot of the baby on the mom's breath. Yeah. And that was that did work. That was a great visual that did work. Yes. Yeah. But yeah. Overall, I enjoyed it. I think it could have been way better in terms of well, actually, if you just cut it down, get rid of all the subplots like just to do it, the railwaymen, this is just their story. This is not about the politics. This is not about we don't need to know about the seeks on the train. We don't need to see the bad guy in carbon, you know, and you need carbide. Just make it about them saving the people. And it would have been so much better. Agreed. And I really wish they had done that. And been more forthright and honest in the telling and really been accurate with more of the things rather than just, you know, we didn't need a train robber who wasn't even there as much as I like him in the role. Yeah. I think that was just one of those things I didn't need to know he had a change of heart and put the money back. What the hell does that have to do with this tragedy? Yeah. It just didn't distracting for me. Yeah. Very distracting. Yeah. Let us know you thought about the Railway Men if you liked it, if you didn't like it and what should be the next how many have we got to this year? Series? I know we've missed some guys. Yeah, we have missed some series, but we did guns and gulabs. Yes. We've done the Railway Men. I think there's like two others. I think there are two. What were they? We watched. Oh, Shahid's. Shahid's. Yeah. Farsi. Farsi. And I think that was great. Which was great. Is that it? Speaking of KK Menon, a smaller role in Farsi, but it was spectacular as was Kubra. There's one more. I feel like there's one more. Yeah. I feel like there's a fourth that we're anyway. Forget it. Oh, of course. The one about the the film industry. Jubilee. Jubilee. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And there's ones that I know we missed. Like we still haven't gotten to Rocket Boys Season 2. Correct. And stuff like that. Yeah. But let us know with the next series we should review or do a watch along of is down below.