Season Eight Bracket Challenge, Part 2

0:00 This episode is brought to you by Blackwood Distilling. You know, at Film and Whiskey, we love a good underdog story. Well, let me tell you about Blackwood Distilling. This all started when Guinness McFadden took a long shot and won the Kentucky Derby with Country House at 65 to one odds back in 2019. He turned that victory into Blackwood Distilling with a little help from the Justin's at Justin's House of Bourbon, and together they've made something special. Luxury toasted bourbon and the first ever triple barreled toasted rye, both at Barrel Strength. We're talking about deep, rich flavors, creamy bodies, and that classic Kentucky warmth. If you're a bourbon or a rye guy, you're going to want to check out Blackwood. Batch four of their bourbon and batch three of the rye are hitting shelves in Kentucky, Florida, Texas, Washington and Wyoming right now.

0:51 More states come in soon, so head over to blackwooddistillingco.com. That's Blackwood Distilling co.com. Hit that shop button and get your hands on a bottle. Thanks, Blackwood. On today's film and whiskey. We are wrapping up season eight as we crown the champion of all champions. This is the Film and Whiskey podcast.

1:39 Hey everybody, welcome into the Film and Whiskey Podcast. I'm Bob Book. I'm Brad G. And Brad, it is the final bonus episode of season. Eight bonus episode. Folks, if you've been listening for the last couple days, you know that we are smack dab in the middle of our bracket challenge where we take all 32 films, we put them into a Madness style bracket and we whittle them down under. The premise of every movie that loses in a matchup is thrown into the fiery abyss, never to be seen or heard from again. So this is serious business, Brad. Extraordinarily serious. As we know, Americans take competition very seriously.

2:23 And so ranking things, whittling it down, watching things get thrown into the fiery furnace, it's what we all love and adore as Americans. Fighting to the death is just in our DNA, you know? Yeah. And we have. And if that's true, then I'm pretty sure the Fugitive is going to win this year's bracket. Because what? What better exemplifies the American spirit than proving other people wrong as you fight for your very existence? So we have whittled it down to 8 films. So we're going to get through the round of eight, the round of four and then the championship. While we do it, we're going to talk about a few of the remaining whiskeys from our top five whiskeys of the season. Brad, before we even dive in, I do want to talk just really, really quickly about our number 3W of the season. So on the last episode we did #5 and #4 which were Old Poultney 12 year and Green River Foolproof whiskey #3 is the whiskey that I mentioned I don't have a sample of left. We had a really, really small sample. I believe it was provided to us by your friend Wes, and it's called Saints Alley, the Nobleman Rye. It was a whiskey that neither of us were planning to like, really, really love 'cause we hadn't heard anything about it and it freaking knocked our socks off, dude. Yeah, I, I remember this one being incredible because of how unique it was.

3:44 I I think it, it had some sort of Hungarian finish to it. Is that? Correct. It was finished in Tokai casks, which is I think only the second time we've had that on the podcast. It's, I mean, it's such a rare thing to finish whiskey's in, but man, I just had such a great sweetness and that dark grape character was fantastic. Yeah, 100% I I really enjoyed that and wish that I had much more of it. Well, while we get into the bracket, I will actually be trying the final two of our top five whiskeys and that means that I have just poured out some very expensive whiskey into my Glencairn Brad. It is the $160.00 Bardstown Bourbon Company collaboration series with Amroot.

4:27 Dude, I literally just shared this with my buddy, I don't know, two or three weeks ago and we actually did what they intended for us to do because Bardstown sent us the source material. Like we had a small bottle of amroot whiskey and so we drank that. Then we drank the Bardstown Fusion and it was just an incredible experience. This thing, I don't want to call it decadent because when I usually say decadent, it's like the sweetest of all sweet bourbons. And this is not that. It has that really great almost like a wine finish character to it from the amroot, but that maltiness from that Indian malt, it is just bread.

5:11 It's like one of the best finished whiskey's we've ever had on the show and it is like truly a special occasion whiskey in every sense of that term. Yes, 100%. If you are looking to celebrate an awesome occasion with a friend who appreciates good whiskey, this would be a great purchase. OK, we've vamped for long enough. It is time for us to dive back into the bracket and that means that we are revisiting the Nicolas Cage Memorial Quadrant to look at our match up of the number one overall seed up against the number eight overall seed Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

5:52 Would you say that it's a face off? Because of chimpanzees ripping faces off and and Nick Cage also. Nick Cage, did you get it? Yeah, I was thinking more of the apes, but I don't think this is really much of a challenge here, Brad. I had The Last Jedi absolutely dominating this whole quadrant and that's been knocked out already. Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Good film. I would still recommend you to go watch the 2nd movie in that trilogy, Brad Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 'cause it's probably the best Planet of the Apes movie ever made. Yeah, I, I'm 100% in. I very deeply want to finish that series at some point. Well, unfortunately one of the films from that series will no longer be available because it's getting removed from existence by UP.

6:39 Unless I'm really reading the room wrong here. Yeah, UP was my top film of the the season. I think that Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a great film. Really enjoyed watching it the two or three times that I have and it can go rest in peace just fine. So up is moving on into our final four. Now, I do want to say we we talked about this in the last episode. Brad and I kind of make our own lists of what our favorite films are and that helps determine our overall seating. However, just because a movie is our favorite of the season does not necessarily mean that it even wins in our own personal bracket. Everything comes down to the match ups here, Brad. And there's been a number of times where I've had like my number one and my number 3 movies going up against each other. And when it really comes down to head or heart, I've chosen the number three movie to move on in my bracket. There's been a number of times where like both of our number one films just get knocked out in the course of doing these episodes.

7:36 So just because Up is Brad's number one seed, I have no idea if you had it winning your bracket or not, Brad. But I think that it's not a foregone conclusion necessarily that that movie is going to be appearing in the finals. And that's what makes these episodes fun for me. Not at all, Bob. And I will say this, my bracket is doing pretty good so far. One of my final four is in there. So how's your bracket doing? I am over one on the final four. Now, Bob, I will say one last word about The Last Jedi. I don't think we have ever had a movie seated so low that was picked by one of us as our second favorite film from the season.

8:16 How does it feel to go from this is my second favorite film to seeing it in the 24th seed of the bracket? I guess a more appropriate way of asking that question is to say how does it feel to have a film that I genuinely really like get tanked so hard by a zero out of 10 score by my Co host? Yeah, that's a great, great. Rephrasing back, can you answer the question? It feels feels pretty Brad, not going to lie, this wouldn't have won my bracket anyway, and it didn't in reality, but I just think that movie deserves a little bit more than the overly harsh 0 out of 10 score I. Don't know if it's overly harsh, Bob. I I mean, I know that our scale is zero to 10. I I think I would have given it a lower score if possible. I actually think that is a perfect segue into talking about one of our Filmy Awards folks.

9:11 At the end of every season, we give out these fake awards. Some of them are solely based on the scores we gave the movies, and the first of those is a movie that we will call the most overrated film. Now this is where we we take the IMDb score for a film. We look at the score that Brad and I gave on average, and we determine which one has the biggest gap, specifically where the IMDb users rated it more highly than we did. Now Brad, the the caveat for this and at least one other award is that The Last Jedi absolutely ran away with it because once again, you gave it a 0 out of 10. Sure did so.

9:52 It makes for an interesting year for these awards. Excluding The Last Jedi, and I can see that you're in this document, so I think you're probably looking at it already excluding The Last Jedi. Brad, can you take a guess as to what other movie is the most overrated of the year? That is a good question. You gave End Game a pretty low score. I think I gave it close to what it's at on IMDb, but I feel like End Game would probably be my guess. Other than Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves 'cause that's a perfect film. So End Game was actually way down the list of most overrated.

10:32 We were off by 1.4 points. That has an 8.4 on IMDb. We only gave it A7 on average, but there's quite a few other ones that we had spicy takes on. None more so than the 2013 Disney animated film Frozen. Oh yeah. Freaking frozen. Man Frozen has a 7.4 on IMDb and we gave it a 5 out of 10 on average. We're pretty harsh. We really were. OK, yeah, that that totally makes sense. But. While we're here, Brad, we might as well give out one more award. And it's the one that we call most divisive. Now. This is the one where you and I in particular had the most variance in our own scores on a movie.

11:16 Once again, it is The Last Jedi, which I don't know that it's it's going to ever be possible to have more variance between my 9.5 out of 10 and your zero. Yeah, that that one will most likely go down in time as the most divisive film we have ever reviewed. Now there are two films aside from The Last Jedi that are tied for most divisive. So I want to know can you get, first of all, can you get one of them? But I'd like to see if you can get them both. End game's got to be one. No 'cause. It's not. No. Really. What did you give end game? I gave it a six. OK. And I gave it an 8 1/2.

11:59 Let's see, you gave it an 88 out of 10. OK, yeah, I was thinking 22 is a decent gap for us. 2 1/2 is is pretty far man. What Shrek? Perhaps no man, you are striking out. Oh geez, yeah, I Bob, I honestly don't know if if those two aren't there. I know that you and I are pretty far off on those. I don't know, Men in Black, Independence Day, something from that area. Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves is one of them. I gave it a 5 out of 10. You gave it an 8. What a great film. I just kind of wonder if you got like really drunk before watching that movie, it it would be much more fun if you were really drunk. Yeah, I did not drink anything while watching that film.

12:41 I was just drawn in by Kevin Costner's beautiful locks of hair. Well, the second one is one that you also won't be surprised by, and it's Star Wars Episode One, The Phantom Menace. What a. Great film. A movie that I I gave a six, two and in retrospect is like a four and a half and I just didn't want to hurt your feelings. But now that you've given The Last Jedi A0I can, I can very easily say The Phantom Menace sucks significantly worse than a six out of 10. No, the six out of 10 is the lowest that you should ever go for Phantom Menace. Fun fact Bob, you often will come across more harsh on things, but then you consistently bend to my desires and like what you think I'm going to think about you. You should just not give a rip.

13:34 That's true. That should take the Brad G approach. Yes, that I'm telling you man, it is so much more freeing when you don't think about what others will their their response to your actions. Because you're only responsible for you, Bob. You. You are not responsible for my response. That's true. I wish I was, but I'm not. OK, Brad, we are moving down into the Jessica Chastain quadrant here where we're looking at the number four overall seed Toy Story 3 up against the number five seed American Sniper. These movies were pretty much neck and neck in our final rankings. I have already said though, Toy Story Three was my number one film of the season and it did absolutely skate by American Sniper for me in this quadrant.

14:24 Yeah, I, this is a tough one because I truly love American Sniper. I really like Toy Story 3A lot and I've always liked Toy Story 3. I I remember watching it at the drive in back in what was that, 2010 Eleven? Yeah, like I remember watching it and being absolutely blown away. I think that on my revisit, there's enough other Pixar films that are right at that elite level that I would put above Toy Story 3 that I think I'm going to move American Sniper on because I it it offers so much more within the genre of Modern Warfare films and a commentary on what it takes to operate in a in the current era of war. I I think that American Sniper is worth moving on ahead. So let me ask this, Brad, we did our Pixar tier ranking. I'm pretty sure Toy Story three was in that like S tier for us of Pixar.

15:27 But if you were just doing personal like here's my Pixar ranking, what would you have above it? Obviously Up would be above it. Yes, I would have up Toy Story. Probably Toy Story now, maybe at least Toy Story Two, maybe not the first one. Monsters Inc. I would put above it. OK. Yeah, Toy Story 3 would probably fall anywhere from 4th to 5th for me. Man. Cars two. Well, obviously. The Good Dinosaur, you know, Yeah. All right. Well, I moved on. Toy Story Three. I think that aside from Coco, it might be the best Pixar movie ever.

16:08 And so it's it's. There's another one, Coco. It's really high up there for me. At the end of the day, if this gets knocked out, I still have Coco, but I love me some Toy Story 3. So, Brad, we're going to flip a coin. Toy Story 3 will be heads. American Sniper will be tails. Go ahead and do the coin flip. Oh man, Bob. Toy Story 3 has been sniped off of its pedestal. Bradley Cooper is moving on. Not the first child that Bradley Cooper has sniped. Dude what? What a horrific scene. You sound really excited about it for being horrific. You're like, oh dude, what a horrifying thing. The the Bill Hader on SNL.

16:57 Oh yeah, it sounds. That sounds. Like you're really excited. Sounds like you're really. Excited. OK. We are moving up into the upper right quadrant, which was the The Who memorial. The the Billy Crystal. Billy Crystal, I almost have Danny DeVito. I have no idea what I'm doing. Basically the same person. You know, and we're looking at the number two overall seed, the Fugitive, up against our number seven seed, The Avengers. Now, Brad, this is where things get spicy for me because I did select The Avengers to move on here, not because I think The Avengers is a great film, but in lockstep with what you were saying about me earlier. Every time we have Patrick Williams on the show, he gets so excited about stuff and he says, he says this movie rules. And I say I believe you, Patrick. I believe that the movie does rule. I think The Fugitive is like a really, really good movie, but it's like an 8 1/2 for me instead of a 10. Sure.

18:04 And I think it's a little inflated in our final scores. I think I gave it a nine and a half on the episode. So I, you know, I just, I think I'm trying to course correct here a little bit. If I had to choose one to just watch forever, I think I'd probably pick the first Avengers. It's a good movie and it's a really good superhero movie. So I'm speaking my truth and I'm moving on The Avengers. Yeah, you are. Let's go, Big Daddy speaking your truth. I think The Fugitive is just the better film. Yeah, I. I like I, I think within the world of cinema, like sure, Avengers is a really fun, really competently made, exciting action adventure film, but I think I think the Fugitive tells the better story.

18:47 It has better characters, it has just a more fun, exciting, suspenseful adventure that you go upon. I, I really love The Fugitive. I, I think especially the way that they tell the story, starting from a place of you barely know anything about Harrison Ford's character and then you slowly learn more about him as you go on the chase. It's just an incredible film. So I I'm, I'm moving the fugitive forward here. All right, so once again we are at odds. That means the Fugitive is going to be the number two seed and heads and The Avengers as the seven seed will be tales. Brad, flip that coin.

19:38 Man, Bob, you are not doing well right now. The fugitive is going to be moving on. I don't know if I have ever cared less about the four films going into the Final Four. Like regardless of what wins this next bracket, that, you know, the next quadrant I like. They're all good, yeah, but I don't feel like passionately about any of these. I'm pretty sure you feel passionately about nuclear explosions off the coast of Florida. I was going to say, of all the movies, I kind of feel like I like True Lies the best now. Like it's just it's so fun and I think that it would be a fun season champion. So I might be stumping for True Lies down here in the Audrey Hepburn Memorial Quadrant as our number three seed going up against the number six overall seed. Pirates of the Caribbean, a film that we established last time. You like significantly more than I do. Like it's a good movie, but I remembered it being kind of a game changing swashbuckler and I went back to it this time and I found it to be a a very above average, competently made fun movie.

20:49 I just don't think it's like transcendently great. Yeah, Pirates of the Caribbean is not a 10 out of 10, but for me, I think it's probably one of the greatest period peace action adventures ever created. I I think the script is airtight. I think the acting is phenomenal. You, you get so many great character actors who chew up scenery just enough. Like none of them ever push it to the point of completely overtaking the film and you just move so quickly scene to scene and you feel as an audience member propelled upon this mysterious adventure on the high seas.

21:38 I, Bob, I I'm choosing Pirates of the Caribbean here. It it's a film I've loved since I was a kid. It's a film that I think does what it wants to do best out of so many other movies out there. So you picked it to advance past True Lies. I did, yeah. And I, I looked back at my personal rankings and I think I ranked it one spot ahead of True Lies. Like Pirates of the Caribbean was fifth and True Lies was 6th. So I, I just, I just win this one. I just give me one entry in the final four. I don't care what happens from here on out, but my gosh, dude. Bob, that's not up to me. That is up to the coin of Destiny. I'm sure it is OK.

22:20 So True Lies will be heads as the three seed. Pirates of the Caribbean will be tails as the six seed. Things have not been going my way. Brad, flip that coin. Drop the coin, try it again. What is it? What is it on the floor? Oh, no, that at my gaming tables, I always have a rule that if the dice coin, whatever you're flipping does not stay on the table, it's an extra planar role. You have to redo it. All right, All right. Oh, man. Bob, are you doing OK, man? No, no. How badly do you want me to fudge this for you? Is it pirates?

23:04 It sure is. Oh my gosh, how do you I'm three in a row. I'll do it for you, man. No, no, no, no, I, I lost like seven in a row last season. Thank you very much. Dude. You have really stacked the deck for up to take the crown here 'cause I'm looking at it and I'm like, I guess it's up. I don't know what else it could be here. So folks, for perhaps the first time, Oh no, we don't have the four seed in here, but we do have in our final four, the number one overall seed up the number two overall seed, the fugitive, the number. Well, the number three got knocked out too. So we have 125 and six six seed Pirates of the Caribbean and the five seed American Sniper.

23:47 How do you feel about that role? How do you feel about the dude broingness of this final four? I'm a big fan dude bro. I was to say. Turns out I am a dude and a bro. This episode is brought to you by Blackwood Distilling Folks. You've heard us talk about Blackwood. You've heard us talk with their brand ambassador, our friend Zach Johnston. This company is doing big things. We're so excited to see them grow. Blackwood Distilling was born in 2020 after Co founder Guinness Mcfadden's big win at the 2019 Kentucky Derby. With the help of the Justin's from Justin's House of Bourbon, Blackwood created a luxury toasted bourbon in America's first triple distilled toasted Rye. By using toasted barrels from Kelvin Cooperage, Blackwood created an Indiana Rye whiskey like no other. Blended from five to seven-year old barrels, both the bourbon and the rye are bottled at barrel strength. Batch four of the bourbon and batch three of the rye, along with single barrels of each are now available in Kentucky, Florida, Texas, Washington and Wyoming, with more states coming soon.

24:54 Get it in Ohio, guys. Visit blackwooddistillingco.com. That's Blackwood Distilling co.com and hit that shop button to get yours today. All right, man, so we will get into this final four in just a moment, but before we get there, we need to go ahead and finish up our Brad G awards for the season we have I'm. So excited for this. We have one more filmy to give out that is based solely on the scores we gave the films in the moment and that is our most underrated. I really like finishing with this one because it doesn't make us seem like cynical bastards. Brad, this is the one that the general public did not like as much as you and I did. And in this case, there was a huge boost from the IMDb score to our average score.

25:40 Can you guess what that movie might be? Oh man, I remember being surprised by how low Chronicles of Narnia was, so I'm going to guess that one. No, that is actually way down the list. Chronicles of Narnia has a 6.9 on IMDb and we gave it a 7 1/2 average. OK, so we're only what, .6 off there? Man, this is actually kind of a tough. One. Well, let me, let me help it out, Fugitive. It's the one that you just eliminated from existence, Brad. It is James Cameron's True Lies, a film that got a 7.3 on IMDb but a nine and a half in our hearts.

26:29 Damn, that's really? Fun dude, that's a huge gap. Yeah, 2.2 points like that's that might be the biggest one ever. Moral of the story, everybody should go watch True Lies and then give it a high rating on IMDb. Absolutely. You have to reclaim it out of the ashes of the furnace that Brad just threw it into. But. Yeah. OK, let's get to these filmies, the Brad G Awards. Now we have 2 that are very nebulously defined, the first of which is most unexpected. Now this is just basically whatever Brad's definition of his expectations are. It could be I was expecting a completely different movie than what I got. It could be I was expecting it to suck, but it was really good.

27:12 So what is the most unexpected film of season eight for you, Brad? I I think I'm going to say true lies. Maybe Prince of Thieves, I thought you were going True Lies. No, I, I think that I went into Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves thinking like, oh, this is just going to be a crappy movie. And then I entered into this transcendent masterpiece of filmmaking that I was, I would never have expected going into it. I I mean that movie rocked so hard that everybody needs to go watch it immediately.

27:56 It's absolutely not true, but hey, there you go. Kevin Costner. We're sorry about everything that's happening with your Horizon films, but in the meantime, you can come collect your Most Unexpected award from Brad G. Now the flip side of Most Unexpected is biggest let down. This is pretty self-explanatory. Whatever Brad's expectations were set at, this movie drastically underperformed those. So Brad, what would you consider the biggest let down of Season 8? This is honestly a tough one because so many of these films I had seen growing up, especially from like 2019, 99 through the end of the season like a lot of these movies I've seen. I think I would say that Independence Day was the biggest let down for me.

28:48 Man, now are you? Are you basing that solely on it being your first time watch? Yes, like I went into that with these expectations of this is Will Smith's transcendent performance and it's this incredible space invasion movie that like is just the most America thing you've ever seen and and the the greatest action film of all time. And like, those were kind of the the stories I heard about Independence Day. And like, to be honest, the the cover of the thing I like I, I it sticks out to me. The cover of the VHS box you would see at Blockbuster of like this alien ship, you know, over hovering over the White House that there was so much expectation going into it that for me to walk away going like, yeah, that was fine.

29:41 What was pretty disappointing? Wow, well now I'm disappointed. I shouldn't have ended on biggest let down. That was a bummer. Do you want to have a Brad G Award? Do I like for myself? Yeah. Well, no, I'm not going to give you 1 Bob. We usually have it where I make up an award and I am. So ready. I'm pretty sure last season it was like person, we want Arnold Schwarzenegger to punch in the face the most, Something like that. Something about fighting. It had to do with Arnold, which we could resurrect this season because we have an Arnold movie right here. But we do. If you have something else in mind, now is the time. Well, we can both give this award out, Bob, but this award is movie that would be most improved by having a tank unexpectedly breakthrough a wall in the film. Now obviously Goldeneye is disqualified because it already has a tank breaking out of a wall. I'll let you go first look over this list, Bob. What?

30:41 What movie do you think would just be, you know, infinitely more awesome if it had a tank just randomly breaking through a wall with the main character driving it? I mean, there's only a couple real contenders in my mind, Brad. Rain Man would be tonal whiplash. So we got to exclude Rain Man. Although doesn't Hoffman in a tank? That's that's what I'm saying man. Don't dismiss it so quickly. I think Frozen probably would have been improved by a tank, but not enough to make it matter that much. There is only one real answer here for me, Brad. As much as Macaulay Culkin driving a tank would be cool, I think you have to go with Sister Act. I think seeing Dame Maggie Smith ride to the rescue in a freaking tank to takedown Harvey Keitel and the bad guys would have been the perfect ending to that film.

31:38 Yeah, 100%. I think that sister act is an incredible choice here. I went a very opposite direction. This is strange, partially just because it actually could fit into the universe. Do you remember an American Sniper? When, Matthew, do you remember in American Sniper when Bradley Cooper is kind of like, F it? I'm just going to go clear houses. Yeah, how much? Better would it have been if he said F it and then it just cut to him in a tank rolling through house after house. I think it would have underscored the themes of the movie significantly better. I don't think.

32:20 I don't think people could really justify his actions much longer after they see him demolishing homes, you know? It would have been incredible. It would have been truly a cherry on the top of that ice cream cone. Well, I I'm not going to touch that statement at all. So there are our awards, including the Tank Through a Wall award, the first and last time we'll see that one given out on film and whiskey Brad, it's time to get into our final four films here. And that means that we are looking at number one overall seed up against American Sniper, the number five seed now featuring a tank. I don't think this is that much of a conversation, dude.

33:01 I liked American Sniper a lot. I think it's a a vastly misunderstood film. Up is just better a. 100% yeah. UP follows an incredible storyline with really great characters and I and I just, man, I absolutely love Up. I'm moving it on to the final two. Now I will say Up is a movie that I gave an 8 1/2 to, and even on the episode we were talking with our guest about how there are like some limitations to the way that story is told and how it kind of drags in the middle. So I'm not as high on UP as you are Brad, but at the end of the day, the 1st 10 minutes of UP is better than any stretch of American Sniper. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

33:48 The, the staying power of that first 10 minutes of up is incredible. Like I I can see a world where 100 years from now it it's still regarded as one of the best sequences of all time. OK, so UP is our first entrant into the championship round, and that means that we're going over to the right side of the bracket for a face off of Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp and Brad. If that happened in real life, I know exactly who would win that fight. Harrison would beat the living. Car just absolutely wreck Johnny Depp dude. Oh, man, yeah, Johnny Depp is one of the, for me, he's like the epitome of weirdness that Hollywood represents, where you just don't kind of know what happens to people when they get famous, but they definitely get weird. They sure do.

34:44 And then you got Harrison Ford, who's just like I I just, I'm going to be grumpy. I'm going to smoke weed and I'm going to ask for you to leave me alone. I I was going to say, he's been grumpy like since he was 20 I'm pretty sure. I'm with it, man. I'm grumpy. He's the patron St. of people like me. OK, so it's The Fugitive up against Pirates of the Caribbean once again. I think The Fugitive is like slightly less good than we made it out to be on the episode, but it is leaps and bounds better than Pirates of the Caribbean to me. This was this was one of the most difficult match ups for me because I did not grow up watching the fugitive. I I didn't see it until I was probably like 2224.

35:30 So not it not even quite a decade ago. I I love the fugitive. Pirates of the Caribbean has staying power for me. Oh my. Gosh, dude, come on. What you doing all right there, Bob? Dude, don't tell me that you did. Come on. Don't tell me what, Bob, just put it out. There. Did you move Pirates on, Brad? OK, I'm just trying to play it out and talk about, you know, the choice a little bit air, you know, gas up the conversation. But sure, no, we'll just not talk about anything, Bob. I'm so sorry to step on your dramatic reveal. I don't. I didn't mean to do that.

36:10 I just couldn't even entertain the idea of you putting Pirates of the Caribbean in the championship. Bob, my goal every single bracket episode is to get you to this point, so you're welcome. Film and Whiskey Nation, you have received another exasperated Bob special. I'm looking at my personal bracket that I filled out before we started this. Brad and I had exactly zero of my Final four in the Final Four. What? What were your final four Bob? It was The Last Jedi, Toy Story 3, The Avengers, and True Lies. Oh wow, A. Set of four. I mean, you don't like The Last Jedi, but like, aside from that, a good set of films, sure.

36:55 Not as good as my final four, which was up The Fugitive, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Phantom Menace. Oh, Phantom Menace made it to your final four. Wow. Sure did. Man, well, thank God we avoided that. All right, so our championship is set. It is up versus the fugitive. And we have one more thing to do before we get there, Brad, and that is to reveal our #1 Whiskey of the season. Now, when it comes to four of these top five, they all broke the 40 mark and the fifth one was almost there. But this was only one point higher in our final score than the Bardstown on route.

37:35 It was really, really close and we actually drank them on back-to-back weeks. And our number one of the season is Barrel Vantage. Dude, what a great whiskey. Barrel Vantage is labeled as a blend of straight bourbon whiskeys finished in Mizunara French and toasted American oak barrels. So three different kinds of oak that they used for this. The blend on this is just absolutely spectacular. It's 114 proof. It does not drink like it. It was about half the price as the Bardstown Amroot. So we said, hey, you know, you're in the $80.00 range. It's not an everyday drinker, but it's like you, you don't mind sharing it so much as you do the $160.00 Bardstown product.

38:19 And I kind of love that price point, Brad. Like you've got your $3040 whiskies and then you've got your, hey, when I have a friend over, I'll pull this out. It's it's good to share and to be a nice whiskey and it might be one of the best whiskey's we've ever had at that price point. 100% man this one I remember it was just sweet and spicy in all of the right ways. There was so much complexity here that all made it a a greater sum than what it's parts would imply. That there's incredible stuff coming out of barrel constantly and this really is one of the best. Yeah, Brad, if you had to pick, you know, looking through our list of whiskeys from the season, obviously I can see what your scores are.

39:11 Are there any that continue to stand out to you? I mean, it could just be the one we just talked about, but like, what would you kind of have as your prized possession on your shelf from the whiskey's we drank this season? I would probably say the Bardstown am route, the Green River foolproof mostly because of its price and the and the barrel vantage. The those three just really stuck out to me as really incredible whiskeys. I'm trying to think if there's any other ones that really stuck out to me. But the those three especially, man, we, we went on a really great run there three weeks in a row. I think the the whiskeys, I just said we drank 3 weeks in a row. So that was just.

40:02 Maybe the best stretch of whiskey that we have ever drank on the Film and Whiskey podcast. Yeah, dude, I'm with you there. Because especially we factor in value. So you've got the Green River Foolproof at about $40, you've got Barrel Vantage at about $80.00, You've got Bardstown. I'm rude at 160. It's like, here's all three whiskeys that you ever need at all the price points we could probably recommend things at if we just brew a $20, you know, Rebel 100 in there. There's your whiskey shelf folks. Get those 4 bottles and you're good to go. Yeah, 100%. Here's here's something that's wild, Bob. I was just looking at our scores for the whole season and you, you, our pallets may have merged because your average score for every single whiskey was a 35.19 and mine was a 35.20.

40:56 We did it pallets. Our pallets have become one. That's crazy dude. Let's look at our movie average. I gave our movies for the season an average of a 7.22. You gave them a 7.44, so you were a little bit higher than me. The crazy thing is the IMDb averages were a 7.32, so they were almost exactly what we worked out. To in the middle, Yeah, that's really funny, man. Look at us, men of the people. Recommending $160.00 whiskey. All right, dude, let's get to this championship. It is a Brad G championship this season, folks. I'm I'm sure that he is very excited for this one. We've got the number one seed up going against the number two seed, the fugitive.

41:45 I've done a lot of talking today Brad. I want you to walk us through this match up. I think this is a more difficult match up than you'd think because this really represents like very distinct eras of filmmaking. But like we're talking about the dominance of Pixar and what it has done in the animated realm versus like almost like we talked about Rain Man, like the Fugitive is a past era of filmmaking. It looks different, it sounds different, it tells stories in a different way than what we get nowadays. So I, I think we're really trying to work through just two vastly different types of film, two different eras of filmmaking. I, I don't know, Bob, where, where are you? Where are you going when you look at these two movies against each other?

42:39 It's sometimes it's best to just go with your immediate gut reaction and my gut would say up when I start thinking about it though and I am known to be an overthinker. No. I I see the case for the Fugitive. It's a really good movie, dude. It's not my favorite Tommy Lee Jones. It's not my favorite Harrison Ford. But you're right in that it is. It's a relic, but it's also like the kind of template that we should get back to with our action films, with our thrillers. It's just a great manhunt movie. And there's part of me that just wants to make it a coin flip. You know what I mean? Like I, if we both land on up, I, I feel like that really deflates the competition here because I'm with you in that it is a much closer competition than we might let on, Brad.

43:31 Yeah, 100%. I'm looking right now. I don't think the Fugitive is in the IMDb top 250. It is not, which is a little bit wild considering that up is the number 100 and 12th. So it's movie #112 on the IMDb top 250 Bob. I think I'm leaning towards up as well. Like I, I truly usually with my seasons, I do pick a winner, but my my top two, I think I always come into it open for either of them winning. Now usually I don't have that that luxury when we hit the top two because you do not you've whittled it away this year, like up in the fugitive were my two top choices.

44:21 So I at this point, I, I get to just sit back. Bob, I'm OK with either of these. Do you want to make it a coin flip? Like, do you think you're cheating up if we just make it a coin flip here? Oh, I think I'd be disappointed if UP didn't win. OK, well then I think we have settled folks in a very amicable way. We are not going out with a bang but with a whimper. 2 movies that feature guys falling from great heights off of a waterfall. Man, it's you. What a what a great pairing. This is the Let's make it a double of the season, folks. It really is. It would be a very tonally whiplash night, but I think you'd have a great time. I think UP is the season 8 champion. Man of the 32 years of filmmaking, would you have expected up to reach the heights that it has? Absolutely not.

45:34 I think I had up getting eliminated in like the Sweet 16, so I clearly did not imagine that happening. But I also was banking on The Last Jedi winning a whole bunch of coin flips to get there, so who knows? You know, who cares what I have to say? Yeah, it it was, it was fighting an upward battle, that's for sure. I'd, I'm glad you brought up The Last Jedi. I'd like to take one last chance to like spit on it as it falls into the fiery inferno. That movie has destroyed the most beloved franchise in cinematic history and I am so more excited than I am for Up to win. I am excited for it to be gone from the existence of the film and Whiskey podcast.

46:17 You know what else is gone Is your beloved Phantom Menace. So I guess we can't have everything, can we? Yeah I I love Phantom Menace, but I definitely hate the Last Jedi more. All right folks, there you have it up is our season 8 champion. Did we get it right? You can let us know what one your personal bracket by finding us on any of our social media accounts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Brad's favorite LinkedIn at Film Whiskey. I just don't know why we're on it. I mean, why not? It doesn't cost us anything, you know. Oh, I love it, man. If you want to join the conversation, if you want to let us know what your winner was, jump onto our Discord. Join the conversation.

47:01 You can find a link to our server at the end of every single one of our show notes. Folks, over the next few weeks, you'll be getting some bonus episodes to tide you through the offseason here. We're taking a month off from recording, but we've worked ahead a little bit and we've got some bonus episodes to plug in, some of them featuring some pretty spectacular guests. At least one the preview of season 9, which, spoiler alert, we still haven't landed on our theme for season nine. So it is as much a surprise to us as it is to you. We're really excited to continue doing the film at Whiskey Podcast. Brad. I don't know that I ever would have expected that we would have made it through eight seasons of this thing. Yeah, I, I still remember finishing season one and being like, man, this is like a really fun little hobby. I, I'm glad that we got this started and here we are basically five years after that.

47:51 I am blown away by a how much fun this has been to, to watch it grow, to see the audience grow. And I'm just so thankful that we have this opportunity to show the world that you can disagree on movies and still be friends. You can disagree on whiskeys and still be friends. That there is a place where it is safe for all of us to have our own wrong opinions. And on that note, folks, we're going to sign off for the Season 8. Once again, we do want to say thank you to Blackwood Distilling Company. They have sponsored these last few episodes and guys, if you haven't checked them out yet, go get yourself some Blackwood Distilling Company whiskey because it is truly incredible. We'll be featuring more of Blackwood in the coming months, especially as we have in many, many seasons passed by bringing on their global ambassador, Zach Johnston as a guest host. So stay tuned for more of us.

48:49 Stay tuned for more of Blackwood. We will see you guys in season nine. So signing off, I'm Bob Book. I'm Brad G. And we'll see you next time.