Check Book: Quizzer

Our first look at DIGGER + Marie's first custom Sporcle

Blank Check, Marie Bardi, and JJ

Jul 13, 2026

IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:

THE BARDI PARTY REPORT

Huge news this Monday morning - we’ve got our first REAL look at Digger, both the man and the film.

The Man:

First reactions - wow! He looks like Tom Cruise if Tom Cruise just aged naturally as a man in his mid-late 60s! I also am continuing to enjoy the midcentury branding identity of the film. Digg. Or Die. What a tagline!

The Film:

Okay, wow. A lot to process. Tom Cruise has a weird looking cat. Tom Cruise with a weird southern accent. Tom Cruise talking weirdly about his dick. Tom Cruise wearing a Coogi cardigan. Tonally, it feels like it’s trying to be Dr. Strangelove. Visually, it looks like a Roy Andersson film. Seems like John Goodman has a real showcase, Sandra Huller seems to be having fun, we got one shot of ginger Jesse Plemons, and Riz Ahmed is doing something VERY different from what I’ve seen of him. Is he doing a voice? I can’t tell. All in all, this looks like the craziest major release of the year. It will make $4. I am expecting a few thinkpieces comparing it to Project Hail Mary.

I still don’t love Iñárritu and this looks really…broad? But I will continue to fight the good fight re Tom Cruise getting another Oscar nomination. The Academy rewarded The Whale. They can award The Digger.

ON ANOTHER, COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE:

I made my own custom Sporcle quiz! My first one! I play Sporcle every day, but this was my first time venturing into the creator lab.

BLANK CHECK: FRAME GRAB on SPORCLE

Making excellent use of my Shotdeck membership, I’ve selected one frame per main feed filmography (including Star Wars, not including stealth McQuarrie series). Griffin got 40/46. Let me know how you do. ALSO - feel free to make your own versions and send ‘em to me. I love these kinds of quizzes!

Also - apologies to UK users. Imgur isn’t available in the UK, apparently, so the visuals won’t work. Maybe I’ll set up a UK only version later.

MONDAY FUNNIES BY JOE BOWEN

LET’S CRACK OPEN THE DOSSIER

The Beckoning Sea

In a previous newsletter, I wrote that part of the appeal of WALL-E for director Andrew Stanton was that it was so different from his first film, Finding Nemo. “I spend four years on these movies,” Stanton told Variety in 2008. “I don’t want to do them twice.”1 In January 2009, Stanton stated his aversion to directing any sequels even more bluntly. “I also have this artistic pride,” he shared with Newsweek. “I don’t want my grandson to go, ‘Grandpa, did you make “Nemo 1” or “2”?’ That would just kill me.”2 The answer, of course, ended up being both.

While promoting Nemo’s sequel, Finding Dory, in 2016, Stanton offered other explanations for why he initially shut down any talks of a directing—or even making—a second film. “I thought it was a closed circuit,” he told IndieWire. “[Nemo] was everything I had wanted to say.”3 In Variety, he offered a challenge: “I spent four years with fish, you try that.”4 To Film Journal, simply, “I had moved on, I went to do robots, went to Mars, did all this other stuff.”5 But the sea, it’s been said, has a tendency to call us back home.

Back in the Bottle

The highlight of Finding Dory—in this humble researcher’s opinion—is its big final action set piece, in which a fucking octopus drives a damn truck. But, Stanton revealed to BFI, the film almost had another big action set piece:

For almost two years, there was an entire storyline where Marlon and Nemo got separated from Dory early when the squid chased them, and they didn’t even know where she went. They got stuck in the container yard, you know, the container graveyard, and they bumped into the tank gang, all stuck in one water bottle, sealed. Like, how the heck did that happen? And it turned out we made them this crack Mission: Impossible team. Once they got out of their bags, they went everywhere. They went over the DMZ, they had done everything. And they helped Marlon and Nemo, through all these crazy adventures with flying fish and everything, make it and find her. And it was really funny…6

The sequence was removed, Stanton said, to help center the film’s emotional arc on its protagonist: “[E]very time we were with them, we were forgetting Dory’s agenda. And it was diluting you caring about her as you went through the movie.”7 The IMF, it turned out, was for the Birds, and not the Stantons. (Let’s see if this makes it to publication.)

The Casting Chair

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, producer Lindsey Collins revealed a method used to cast voiceover actors in animated films: “[T]he editors … find obscure clips from TV shows and try to cut them together with other characters to see what they would sound like.” This job proved exceptionally simple on Finding Dory, per Collins: “But because it’s Ellen [Degeneres], we’d be like, ‘Well, what does she sound like with Ty Burrell? I’m sure she’s interviewed him five times.”8 Now, see for yourself if you would have made the same decision.

MJ Renderman (Let’s See If This Makes It to Publication)

I’m going to come clean: while I have picked up quite a bit about film production—and even traditional animated film production!—over the years, my knowledge of how digital animation works suffers in comparison. But if you want to learn about all the new—er, ten-year-old now—tricks employed on Finding Dory, give some clicks to the links below:

“Ocean Odyssey” in Film Journal

“Director Andrew Stanton Brings Dory Back” in D23

“How Pixar Pulled Off ‘Finding Dory’” in IndieWire

WHAT IS THE TEAM INTO THIS WEEK?

Ben Hosley, Producer: “Recently went to see Tenet on 70mm at Lincoln Center with a group of friends including past and future guests BenDavid Grabinski, Patrick Willems and Siddhant Adlakha. I had not revisited since BC rented out a sketchy Jersey theater during the peak of the pandemic. And goddamn does it still fuck! But what really hit this time is Ludwig Göransson’s score. I have since been listening on repeat. This shit will PUMP [clap hands] YOU UP! I recommend you throw this soundtrack on and then perform a temporal pincer movement.”

David Sims, Host: “My Hammer rec of the week (almost done with the box set 😭) is Taste of Fear, also known as Scream of Fear, a tight little thriller about an heiress returning to a spooky estate who can’t stop seeing the spectre of her father on the grounds. Is she going loopy?? Is the helpful staff actually not so helpful?? It’s directed by a journeyman called Seth Holt but it looks SO good and lush!! Starring Lee Strasberg’s daughter Susan!”

Griffin Newman, Host: “With the amount of terrible Netflix standup specials getting endless press coverage for their awfulness recently, I thought it would be good to spotlight one that’s actually good! Ryan Hamilton’s THIS JUST HIT ME is a phenomenal, much delayed follow up to 2017’s similarly excellent HAPPY FACE. The reason for that delayed is because Hamilton was hit by a bus in 2022, which serves as the main subject of this incredibly tight hour. You will not believe how many hard jokes he’s able to squeeze out of this incredibly traumatic accident without once veering into maudlin “this is what I learned” one-person show territory. Another great special from a great comedian who isn’t actively destroying culture!”

AJ McKeon, Associate Producer: “Orange Vanilla Polar Seltzer”

JJ Bersch, Researcher:

Alan Smithee, Pseudonymous Editor: “I’m recommending Robert Coover’s 1968 novel (copy and pasting the title here) “The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.” While it is objectively kind of a bummer, it is also a book that explores the question of what it would be like if an entire universe existed just so that people could play baseball in it, and that was a question that I was interested in exploring over the course of a novel.”

THIS WEEK ON THE PODCAST

Have you seen Dory? We have! Zach Cherry joins us to talk about 2016’s Finding Dory, a film that made a kajillion dollars and set off a run of four Pixar sequels in a row. In this episode, we’re talking about Ellen DeGeneres, animating characters without mouths, and the success of Modern Family.

CRITICAL DARLINGS
On this episode, three Minions neophytes try to make sense of Minions And Monsters, where the round yellow ones land in 1920s Hollywood. among Chaplin, Keaton, and all of Gen Alpha’s favorite silent film stars. For two of us at least, it worked!