Scoring Alfred Hitchcock / Old Line Spirits

0:00 Today on the Film and Whiskey Podcast, we'll be scoring out director Sir Alfred Hitchcock on the only measure that he ever could have defined himself by the Film and Whiskey Metric. Then we'll be trying 3 new American single malts from old blind spirits. This is. The Film and Whiskey podcast. Welcome into the Film and Whiskey podcast. I'm Bob Book.

0:42 I'm Brad G. And we are coming at you with another special bonus episode. Bonus episode. And it is the last of these scoring a director bonuses for the season. Brad for eternity. Yeah, for. Hopefully we think we've done like 20 of them now, but we're we sure have. We're ending with a bang, appropriately, with Sir Alfred Hitchcock. I think it's it's more of a scream and a stab. Yeah, and a strangle. Something like that. Strangle. Lots of. Strangulation in these Hitchcock movies this time around, Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if he had like some sort of accidental, you know, partial strangulation as a child, because he seems very obsessed with it.

1:22 I think there's something about like the the intimacy of like squeezing. Somebody that he was like, you know, it just hit all of his weird fetishes. Yes, one of the strangest people to ever be regarded as the greatest of his, of his, you know, work. Listen, the man knew how to make a movie and and what he did in his personal life is outside of our our purview. So with that said. Brad, we're going to run him through this metric that we've developed. We're only thinking about the five movies of his that we watched for this season. So in order, I believe those were Notorious Rope. What was the third one?

2:04 Shadow of a Doubt. Shadow of a Doubt, The 39 Steps and Dial M For Murder Now we have watched four other Hitchcock movies in prior seasons. They are his four. You know, quote UN quote masterpieces. We're not considering them what we're doing today. The exercise is, you know, if the aliens came down and we gave them these five Hitchcock movies to understand how to direct a movie, how would the aliens score out Alfred Hitchcock. And we have a 5 point metric for figuring that out. Brad, I've been talking for too long already. Will you walk us through the metric? I sure will. We are talking about performances, cinematography, editing, which includes sound and visual cohesion and uniqueness. Yeah, and with editing too, we're we're talking about the rhythm, the flow of the movie.

2:50 Is it paced well with cohesion. It's more about how does this hang together in terms of the director helping to build out a believable world, even if the movie is set in the real world. A movie like I would say, like Rope or Shadow of a Doubt is kind of a heightened version of reality. And does Hitchcock do a good job maintaining that throughout? And I guess that's a question that we'll answer now, Brad. Question Mark. Yeah, we sure will. Yeah, let's get into it. Let's talk about performances. This is for me, I think a really up and down category for these five films there. There are certain high parts. I I think that Joseph Cotton and Teresa Wright and Shadow of a Doubt are great. I think that Rope has some great actors, even if we don't love Jimmy Stewart's final scene.

3:39 I think The Dial in for Murder has incredible performances. So overall, I think outside of Notorious, I think I I am pretty solid on all of the performances from the other four films. Yeah, I'm in a weird spot with this one because, you know, Hitchcock famously had that quote where he talked about at actors being like cattle and having to be kind of rounded up and put in their place. And and I think that in a lot of Hitchcock movies, the actors serve a function. But they're not necessarily spotlighting that actor's abilities. You know what I mean? It's like, yes, you're here to do a job and to help me put the audience in a spirit of suspense.

4:20 And in that regard, I think every single one of these movies does what it's supposed to do. I didn't even really like Notorious that much. And I think that Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant are very good in that movie. I think that the three main actors in Rope. Are all fantastic. I think that the main actors in Dial In for Murder are all fantastic. I loved Robert Donat in The 39 Steps, so there's a part of me that's like if they all work this well, is it a 10 out of 10? I think I'm just going to give him a nine here, partially because while the performances all do what they're supposed to do, I don't think any of them are really stand out performances. Yeah, I mean it, it makes me think about on our shadow of a Doubt episode, when you talked about how Hitchcock liked storyboarding more than he liked actually filming a movie. And I I think that you see that in the performances that Hitchcock sees the actors for their flaws and how they're not living up to his storyboard version of what's happening. And and you you kind of get that vibe that that like you said the the characters or the actors are just there to to illustrate what he's trying to do more than to be actors and and bring their own essence to the movie.

5:38 So I'm going to give him an 8 here. I'm a little bit cooler than you, still some really great, solid performances. All right, moving into cinematography now again, I feel like we give this disclaimer every week but or every time we do these bonuses, but. We know that Hitchcock is not the editor and is not the credited cinematographer on these movies, but he also has a very particular visual style. He knows that he wants to move the camera and to Brad's point, they storyboarded every movie he made essentially once he got to America. So the visual look of this movie can really be chalked up to Alfred Hitchcock, and I think this might be his strongest category of the five when we look at these five movies.

6:20 Brad. Rope is an experiment through and through in cinematography, and a very successful one I think. Even movies like Notorious have some really incredible technical merits to them. That shot that starts weighing up in the upper balcony of the room and kind of cranes all the way down into a close up on Ingrid Bergman's hand. Incredible stuff, and I don't really know of anything. I I guess the only real downside we talked about was there's some. Rear projection stuff in Notorious that looked a little fake and that happens in a few of his early Hollywood movies but from an actually like framing the shot, shooting the movie, moving the camera standpoint.

7:02 I think it's a 10 out of 10 man. Yeah, I I don't really have much to say outside of that. I I think that he is a master of the camera. You know, for me, I think about a lot of the shots from Shadow of a Doubt when you see Teresa Wright framed by the doorway and everything is darkness and she is light the the train coming into the station and blowing up the smoke, that there's just so many incredible shots throughout this series of five films. I don't think he's perfect here, but I'll give him a nine and a half. All right, editing is one that. See, I always try to give the caveat about editing and cohesion, because when something's not working about the movie. I really have to run it through this filter of OK, is it the pacing of the movie, is it the editing, or is it the world building isn't working for me. And in a film like Notorious, it's kind of a little bit of both.

7:55 But I think at the end of the day, the editing is where that movie really suffers. There's just some really huge pacing issues for me, and I know that the other four movies didn't work for you, Brad, as well as they did for me. But if there is anything I can knock Hitchcock on with these five films, it's there is always the occasional pacing issue in almost every one of these films. This is by far the lowest category for me. I'm only going to give him, I was going to say 7 1/2. I think I'll give him an 8 here because for me they ultimately work, whereas I think some of them didn't work for you. Yeah, this is definitely something that I struggled with for Hitchcock. I think that his pacing in a lot of the movies just doesn't always make sense to me. Even in in thinking about Dial M for Murder, the the movies an hour and 45 minutes long and about an hour and 25 minutes of it work like like incredibly like that. It's flows so smoothly.

8:56 But man, those 1st 20 minutes are rough. I think that especially if you compare them to his four greatest works, if you will, his pacing just isn't my favorite among directors, and so I'm going to give him a 7 out of 10 here. Yeah, I think this is always in some ways the most unfair to the director, because this is also where we kind of take into consideration structures with the like problems with the structure of the scripts as well. And so a lot of these movies, it's like. Why did you put a 15 minute dialogue scene at the beginning of this movie before we were introduced to anything else? Like, it's it's just very static and incredibly boring at points. And so that's a script problem.

9:39 But it also does become a Hitchcock problem because as a director, you then have to realize where the lulls are in the script and figure out how do I keep the audience engaged in this. And there are moments in some of these movies where he just doesn't do that. So yeah, I think this is his weakest category. And we're going to go to cohesion now, which is again, how does the movie hang together? Does the world that Hitchcock is trying to build visually make sense? And in light of what we just said in editing, I do think I'm going to give him a much higher cohesion score. I don't really like Notorious that much. And it's, you know, the idea of like the Nazis living in South America thing is a played out kind of trope at this point, but.

10:20 It makes sense in the context of that movie and I think that the whole Claude Rains living in his little mansion thing, it all makes sense once you get into the film. So I'm going to bump my score all the way up to an 8 1/2 here for him, I'll bump it up to an 8. I think that he creates really interesting, funny, quirky little worlds, even if some of them are are not totally believable. I think that notorious and shadow of a doubt are the least believable worlds of the things that are happening there. But then you get to something like Dial M for murder and I think that that is a 10 out of 10 cohesion movie, you know what I mean?

11:00 And so I'll kind of balance it out, give him an 8 here. I think he does a really good job of world building. But like you said, the scripts sometimes detract from his ability to keep it all going. And I think that when we get to our last category, uniqueness, I think for me this is my highest category. Like, yeah, the dude is wildly weird and funny and has dark humor and is always forcing the audience into uncomfortable positions. I just don't know if there's any other directors doing that as well as he is in the 40s, thirties, 40s and 50s. I have seen other suspenseful movies outside of Hitchcock, obviously, but there is something about the way that he's so meticulously lays out the entire plot in front of you and then can just pull that. You know that thread, that rubber band and stretch out the tension for minutes and minutes and minutes on end. And you know, we said in our dial in for Murder episode, the entire movie is that tension.

12:05 No one can do it like him. It's a 10 out of 10. Yeah, 10 out of 10 here for you. Uniqueness. Hitchcock is just such a unique director and I I really enjoy watching his films. Even the movies that I didn't quite vibe as much with, they're they're at least entertaining. And so I I I like what he did here, Bob, I am coming out lower than I expected. Well, lower than I would have expected coming into the five movie series. I'm at a 42.5. I'm at a 45.5 which takes our average to a 44 out of 50. And this is really interesting, Brad, because we have acknowledged these are not his most well regarded films. This is movie 5 through 9 for him and even that's kind of debatable.

12:51 And yet we're still coming out with one of the highest scores of the year. So I think we had a somebody had a 46, let me check on who that was. So Stanley Kubrick had a 46, Kurosawa had a 44 1/2, and that means that Hitchcock is tied for third with Christopher Nolan right now. I just have to say, first of all, let's be honest here, Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest directors of all time. But I think it really underscores that when you're looking at movies that are universally acknowledged to not be his greatest movies and he still came in 3rd place on the season for us. Yeah. And and it's not like he was up against some slouches either. Like the the level of talent and directors that we've watched this year is really incredible.

13:36 And Bob, I have to say I have had so much fun these last two seasons taking larger chunks of a director's work and examining them together and against each other and and I don't know it's it's a fun way to watch cinema and and more often I would encourage people like take a few weeks and you know every Friday night watch a movie from a director and just kind of get a vibe for for who they are and how they how they see the world. Before we get to our whiskey for the day, we do want to say starting next week we are finishing out season seven with our bracket challenge where we put all 32 films from this season into a Madness style bracket and crown the champion of season seven. Now you can find the bracket on our website. You can find it posted on our social media accounts. We would encourage you follow along. Pick your winner for the season.

14:29 Brad, I'm not going to reveal the bracket here today. But I do want to ask you, like as you look through the list of films from this year, what do you think are some favourites? And what do you think are some dark horses that might do some damage? I think, I think that you're going to push Unforgiven further along than we might think. I think that one, you've mentioned that movie like at least seven or eight times this season. Honestly, I think Dial In for Murder is one of my favorite movies from the season. Yeah, I liked rope a lot too. I feel like we might be at odds with those two, but it would be kind of fun to watch them come up against each other. I was going to say, of course they're going to hit each other in like round two somehow. I think one of the things I've really loved about this season is that we've both had movies with almost every director that we're like.

15:18 This is a perfect example of what this director can do, and they're very rarely the same movie. So I see a lot of passion from both of us with wildly different films, and I think it's going to lead to a lot of coin flips, if I'm being honest. Yeah. Or it it might lead to dialing. M, you never know. All right, man, let's get to this whiskey. What do you say? Let's get to it. All Right, so today we are checking out three new American single malts from our friends over at Old Line Spirits a couple seasons ago. Now, Bob, Brad, was it. Was it two seasons ago? One season ago we had, I was, I was about to say their single malt that they sent us was chefs as truly, like, like impeccable. I think we tried the 114, what they now called Navy strength version of their American Single Malt. And they were kind enough to send us 3 new samples to try. One of them is an unfinished whiskey. I don't want, you know, I don't want to say unfinished, but we've got two that are finished in other kinds of barrels and one that is a a normal.

16:27 Whiskey. Yeah. What do you say? Here It's their bottled and bond boring, run-of-the-mill. It's their bottled and bond version. Then we're going to be trying from their Double Oaked finish Series, A Madera finished and a Port finished American Single malt as well. I'm scrolling their page right now, Brad, because they've got so many different kinds of finishes. I see Saturns, I see Arman Yak. Like we've got many episodes to come, hopefully from old lion spirits. Yeah, 100% man. I I love what they're doing over there, even like the the labeling. I think that they have such a cool logo. Like, I'm looking at their bottled and bond logo right now, and it's just this really cool. Almost like like impressionistic art, these waves going by. So each of these three whiskeys is clocking in at 100 proof. I think, Brad, let's start with the Bottled and Bond version because I've I've sampled all three of these and the finished ones have some pretty heavy flavor to them. So I actually drank them in the completely incorrect order. I think I went from the most heavily flavored 1 down to the least.

17:34 But I think as we introduced them to our listeners, maybe let's start at the Bottled and Bond. Yeah, I I think that's totally worth it, Bob. And having drank all three of them, you know previously to this moment, I really like the Bottled and Bond. It's really good, man, and I love Old Line's website. They walk you through the entire distilling process. You know it's 100% malted barley. They use both column and copper pot stills and I think that gives it that little bit of funk that you need having it in the copper pot still. So it's labeled as bottled and bond. I assume that means that it is at least four years old. As we know the requirements for bottled and bond in bourbon. It is a non age stated product, so it's possible that the malt in here is more than four years old, but we at least know the minimum age.

18:16 Brad, what are your tasting notes on this one? This one? As I got into the nose, there's some really nice orange zest. There's caramel, there's like a a little bit of fruitiness going on and and I also got some like freshly baked bread that was really nice. It's got a really pleasant nose here. Yeah, I totally agree. It's funny, 'cause this was the last one I drank, and so I think my notes got shorter and shorter as I went because there's a lot of commonality, obviously, between these three samples. So it they're very sweet. I think that's something that I'm surprised at because American single malt. Has a really distinct character to it, Brad, and I don't know if it's because in a lot of cases they're aging their single malt in a new charred oak barrel, whereas Scotch companies, Irish whiskey companies, typically age and used barrels. But there's a there's a sort of like, I don't know what the word is it, it tastes younger than it is a lot when you're drinking American single malt.

19:13 And it's a lot more like earthy, a lot more herbal and sometimes bitter to me. And so, like, there's a little bit of that. Youthfulness that you get with American single molt underneath this, but I was shocked at how much vanilla there was on the nose and on the taste of this one. I think on the finish. For me, the malt finally takes over and it almost became like, once in a while we'll get a whiskey that reminds us of like a really hoppy beer, like an IPA. And I got a little bit of that on the back end of this one. Yeah, I I think for me, the thing that stood out was the sweetness. I got a note on the palette of like, strawberry nerds. Like it was a really distinct, like artificial strawberry kind of feel that as I sat with it.

20:00 I was like, I think that those are like, like nerds like, like it had a crispness, A crispness to it that was very compelling. I I really liked this. The finish was great. It was oaky leather. It kind of got weedy at the end for me. I think Bob, if I was scoring this out of 50, I'd probably come to like the 3840 out of 50 range. I thought this was really, really solid. I think this one's sitting around A35. For me, this is actually of the three. This is my least favorite and Brad and I were chatting right before we press record. I think we might have polar opposite favorite to least favorite lists here. Brad.

20:41 So I think that might be the case. With with that said, let's move into the second one for the day. This is their double oaked port finish, which I believe is finished in the second barrel for like a year and a half. At least that's what it says on our Madera finish as well. So I'm assuming that it's at least a similar time in the barrel. This is a 5 year, A5 year aged product that is then finished for you know, over a year. I really do love my port, finished Whiskeys. Man. There's something about the the dark, sweet character of Port that I think translates really well to malt. Yeah, I mean, I literally my first note on the palette for this one was Darkness in My Soul. Like it's just it is so incredibly deep and dark and like like really stone fruity.

21:30 Kind of cherry I I got grape juice and dark cherry on the nose. It it kind of leaned into a little bit of an anise territory that I wasn't a huge fan of. The The finish, though, is super fruity. It's very a lot of vanilla. As it sat on my palate for longer that that came forward, I was really high on this one. I think I'd be like just barely a step below the bottled and bond, but I'm probably at like a 3738 out of out of 50 here. Yeah, this is funny because, you know, I started with the Madera, finished one when I was sipping through them. So I went Madera port, bottled and bond. And all of my notes are like in comparison to Madera.

22:13 But the first note I took was like, this is way darker, dark, Dark Molasses was the first note that I took it. I mean, it's like if I got brown sugar on the Madera, this was like straight molasses. In the glass it had a much more bourbon Y character than the Madera finish. And I would it's also say the bottled and bond. It's really oak forward, but it has those those notes of caramel and brown sugar and vanilla. This one just absolutely exploded on my palate, tons of oak, some sawdust. It had that kind of like, you know, the the dusty floral notes that I get on like the Willet funk. There was some apple, there was some citrus like it. It had a lot going on for an American single malt, really bourbony, and I really liked it. As a result, I thought that the finish was like just a little bit sour.

23:02 Like it it it reminded me of toasted oak a little bit instead of charred oak. But man, if I wouldn't be approaching a 3940 on this Brad, like it's it's really good. Yeah, I I was very impressed. I I think that I like the bottle and Bond a little bit more, but these are two vastly different whiskeys from each other and I love them both for what they are offering. OK, finally we're at the Madera Cask finish. This one for sure was aged for five years and then finished for 1.5 years in Madera casks. This is by far my favorite one of the three. Brad, you said this was your least favorite one of the three. I don't know that that means that you didn't like it, but.

23:44 It was your least favorite one. I'd love to hear why. Before I start praising it, I think that of all the finished whiskeys we've ever done, like, you know, Madera is a fortified wine. And this for me. And maybe it's because I drank them. You know, bottled and bond, port, and then this. This one tasted more like fortified wine than any whiskey I've ever had. Like, I don't know how to describe it, but the nose, the taste, everything about it was just it didn't taste enough like whiskey for me to be a huge fan of it. Got it. Yeah. And I think that's part of why I really liked it. Honestly.

24:25 I thought that it didn't really have like the actual viscosity, like the the legs on it weren't any different than the other two whiskeys, but it smelled and kind of tasted so much more potent that the the note I kept taking was syrupy. Like, it is incredibly syrupy on the nose. I got Maple, I got figs, I got like really dark grapes, almost like a Concorde grape. And then it had a very particular flowery finish That is what usually is what we get when we try like Amberana finishes. And it that was in here and I was like, I know a lot of people are like sick of Amberana at this point. I love it. And so I was, I was all in on the nose on this. And then my tasting note was just, oh man. With four HS on the word O multi herbal Maple syrup finish and this like.

25:17 Honestly, it reminded me of when you make yourself an Old Fashioned and you use Maple syrup instead of like, you know, a demerara or something just Canadian Old Fashioned. Yes, there's just layers and layers of brown sugar and Maple on this for me. I thought it was exceptional. Man, I think I'd be close to like a 45 out of 50 on this bread. Oh wow. Yeah, we are way off from each other. I I thought it was very earthy. I think that like the your notes about like the darker fruits definitely stood out. But to me, like, I don't know if you've had like I've had fortified wine a few different times, a few different varieties and it's just never struck me as a good marriage of like wine and clear liquor. I I just, I don't know it it's never been something that I've enjoyed and I think that this tasted like that more than it tasted like whiskey.

26:09 And so I actually, I'd probably be in like the 30 out of 50 area on this one. I I would not recommend the Madera finish which is sad for me because I genuinely loved the bottled and bond. I loved the double oak port finish and to go back to the very first sample they sent us, that dude, there's single malt, 114 proof. I gave it to one of my friends. We were drinking it together and he looked at me like, Brad, have you been holding out on? Yeah. It's like like this is some of the greatest stuff I've ever had. So, so don't take my Madera finish as a as a blatant, you know, I don't like old line. I think old line is incredible.

26:51 I think they take risks. I think that they move the the whiskey brand forward as a whole. I I love the stuff that they're putting out. Bob, we've tried American single malt from, I don't know, 5-6, seven distilleries now and I I think that the cream has risen to the top a little bit. Brad, like there are three producers now distillers that if they send me a bottle, I'm like this is going to be really good. And McCarthy's was really, really good when we had them. I think that Westland, we had that solem a few months ago. That was like next level stuff, old line is. I think right now it might be my favorite American single malt distiller.

27:31 Like, I've never disliked anything I've gotten from them and it really seems like they, like you said, they're on the the cutting edge of this. They're pushing the industry forward. I cannot say enough good things about Old Line. Yes, I Dude, Old Line is incredible. They're making incredible whiskey. Go spend your money on Old Line. This is not a paid advertisement. All right, Brad. I think that wraps us up for the day. We've talked about Hitchcock. We've talked about whiskey. So a reminder, Next week we're kicking off our bracket challenge. You can find the bracket on our website. You can find the bracket on all of our social media accounts. It's a really fun time. Follow along with us and debate with us as we eliminate movies and pick the best film from season seven. We will see you next week for that one. But until then, I'm Bob Book.

28:19 I'm Brad G. And we'll see you next time.