Midweek Mention... Isle of Dogs

Isle of Dogs

Dan: Isle of dogs.

Sidey: Aisle

of dogs. Yes. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. It sort of sounds like they're saying I love dogs, doesn't

Sidey: it? Yeah, it does do that. Yeah. Would you

Reegs: I don't know,

Sidey: would you say that Wes Anderson has a style Yes.

Reegs: Yes.

Dan: Even with stop animation? Yeah. You don't love dogs? No.

Reegs: I'm no

Dan: Catman

Sidey: Pete

Reegs: yes.

Pete would've

Sidey: would've

yes.

Pete would've simultaneously loved the dog hating content in some of this and then hate at the end where it's pro dog. 'cause dog Pete is a massive dog hater.

Reegs: Yeah. I think I'm, I'm coming round to dogs, but, you know,

Dan: different breeds or you just don't like 'em? All

Reegs: dogs. Yeah.

I,

I, I'm getting, I'm coming round to him.

Dan: Right. Okay. I think I'm more of a dog man than a, a Catman. Yeah. But I'm not a massive fan of pets altogether, to be honest. Anyway. Aren't I grumpy shit? And, and res as well.

Reegs: Yeah. I've

Sidey: I've

got a dog.

Reegs: You do?

Dan: Yeah. he's really sweet and kind, isn't he?

Sidey: she's, she'll

Dan: Oh no, he, she's horrible. Yeah.

Sidey: This gives us [00:01:00] sort of brief thousand year history of dog human relations.

Reegs: Yeah. You get a little disclaimer I think first No telling you about the Japanese characters talking without subtitles. And the dogs barks have been rendered into English for us which is nice.

Dan: stuff lost in translation. But,

Reegs: And this was his second animated feature after Fantastic. Mr. Fox. And it's straightaway, there's just an astounding level of detail, like in every frame of every scene.

Yeah. And a real obviously clear like visual style. And his movies with live actors are kind of got this animated feel, the way that he moves, the sets around them and that sort of thing. So it doesn't feel weird at all to see his voice coming through with this

Dan: You soon forget it's animation, to be honest,

Reegs: Yeah. And you just settle into the story. Although it is astonishing all the time.

Sidey: There was quite a few times when I was looking at what was on the screen and the scene may have lasted just a couple of seconds and I was thinking, fuck me.

The amount of fucking detail in, [00:02:00] you know, everything in that shot and it's on the screen for almost no time at all.

Reegs: anytime a dog's on the screen, if he, even if he's staring completely blankly at the camera, every hair is individually moving and anyway.

Sidey: Yeah. Quite incredible. So yeah, the thousand year history, it's the Cohi Klan.

Yeah. Are

Reegs: the Cobi Yahi Maru?

Sidey: Yeah, they are. How do we, how do we say this? They're not fans.

Reegs: They, yeah, they're, they're, they're not fans of dogs at all. No.

Sidey: But someone rises up. A young Samurai and Beheads, the head of the Cobra actually

Dan: But they love

Sidey: Yeah. They're pro catt. Yeah. It's a very binary choice.

Cat or dog. Yeah. And so they, they're kind of overthrown and then the dogs become the dominant pet.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: And this was all hundreds, if not thousands of years ago.

Sidey: There's loads of shots of Japanese art, which I'd imagine I recognize the giant wave. The great wave, but I'm sure there's other stuff in there that's like classic art where they've sort of repurposed it with dogs in it.

Dog. Yeah. D well, it's

Reegs: Well it's like a mishmash of everything.

[00:03:00] Like Japanese that Wes Anderson's ever seen, basically just up on screen, isn't it? Yeah.

Dan: And so we, we go further into the future and there's

again, a,

Reegs: well, it's COVID

Dan: problems.

Reegs: let's not fuck about the bush. There was COVID, wasn't it? This movie was, was started conceived in 2015 and so started production then and was released in 2018.

But I mean, this is all about dog flu. Yeah. A pandemic that grips them and a sort of scary totalitarian regime that comes in the descendants of Kobayashi now, the mayor

Sidey: mayor of Meki. Yeah.

Dan: and

he, he hates dogs and he wants them not to be, vaccinated by a guy who's and another party who's confident that the scientific party's confident that he can develop a vaccine.

Reegs: Dr. Wabe, he, he, he does this big speech and impassion 'cause even though it is this like authoritarian regime they have, like, they go, oh, we, there's room for a dissenting

Dan: They wait, they wait, don't they? They, [00:04:00] they put their hands up and they say, no, no, no. We, we,

Reegs: we'll give air to a dissenting voice.

And they wheel him out and he says, so whatever happened to man's best friend gets you right there in the

Dan: and he's got a small. Pocket of people who are supporting him, students mainly who, who shout their approval, but he goes to a vote and what's gonna happen is they're gonna send all the dogs to an island and it's gonna start with Trash island. Trash island. It's gonna start with the, the dog that lives in the mayor's household.

He's gonna show exactly. How dedicated he is to the cause by sending his own dog in, or what we think is the, the, his own dog.

Reegs: He has these distinctive blue eyes.

Dan: blue eyes. Yeah. The the paper get work gets stamped in front of everyone, it gets put into a cage and we see spot getting dropped to Trash Island.

Reegs: We also see the population willingly accepting this complete subjugation immediately of the dogs just on order from the government,

Dan: Yeah, they're all [00:05:00] scared of the flu that it's. Breeding has got outta control. You see the dogs all scratching and itching. It doesn't look good. Yeah, they're getting them out.

Reegs: So they ship all the dogs off to Trash Island and they're all really ill. The dog flu pandemic just takes them over. They all get like thin

Sidey: or, yeah, man g or

Reegs: or

Dan: or well spots in his cage and it becomes apparent that spot can't get out of his cage.

It doesn't spring open the door. It's actually you know, he's just gonna stay in there and there's another dog that comes to visit but he can't get him out or anything, and spots just says nothing. And he's just like thinking, oh, I'm not used to this. He's got that look. And they, they're brilliant.

The animations in it because they, the dogs have that look of, you can tell what they're thinking.

Reegs: Yeah, absolutely. We meet a pack of dogs Headed up by Chief

Sidey: Yeah, you can start playing, you can start playing guests, the voice actors at this point.

Reegs: Yeah. You've got [00:06:00] Jeff Goldblum in, Norton. Ed. Norton.

Dan: Bill Murray.

Bill

Reegs: Murray. And is that it in the main pack?

Duke King.

Dan: Scarlet Johansson turns up a little bit later,

Reegs: Meg. Yeah. I, I love it when we meet them for the first time. They're chasing off another pack and there's like a garbage, they're, they're lining up to fight and they've just deciding. You know, is it worth fighting and

Sidey: like, well, should we find out if it's worth fighting or not? And they're like, yeah, it is.

Dan: we up?

Reegs: They unzip it and he is like, oh, it's like maggots and all this stuff. He's like, I'm in. They just go and

Sidey: And the fight animation's

Reegs: amazing. It's just like this whirlwind of like cloud. Yeah. Cloud and arms coming out and

Sidey: wall. It looks great. And it, it happens time and time again in the film. And I loved it every time it was on screen. Yeah.

Reegs: So

Dan: and, and that's it. They, they win this fight. They rip an ear off another dog who some rats come and take that and they have their little feast because that's the only other living.

Animals on trash island are, are the rats. And then as they're devouring this [00:07:00] prize that they've won, a plane goes down and they rush over to see what it is. And it's a young boy who has flown over to see.

If he can find his dog. Yeah. He's the only one that's done this from the as seen now months, maybe years of dogs being put onto the island.

Reegs: wasn't sure on the timescale. And they do sort of flash forward and flashback in this story quite a few times, so, yeah.

Dan: But it's a 9-year-old boy and it turns out he. The, the nephew of the mayor. Yeah. He is under the guard of the, the mayor because his parents have been killed. And the

Reegs: was it in a train crash?

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. But a bullet train,

Reegs: bullet train crash. The, the parents were killed and he is the sort of nephew of Kohi, the mayor is then taken as his ward.

And given this dog spot, there's quite a touching scene when they're introduced for the first time as his bodyguard in the aftermath of Think of the accident,

Sidey: Yeah,

Dan: that's right. And he's got a translator

Reegs: got a thing in it. Yeah. And he, he says, I can hear you.

Dan: so he can [00:08:00] understand. And he's, he just whispers. He

Sidey: Well, he is told he's not a pet, isn't he? That he screamed at his Domo. He said, Domo says, no pet. And he's like, ah, fuck that. He's gonna be a pet.

Dan: Well they, they, you can see that there's a, a love between dog and, and young boy instantly.

Instantly. And that's the reason he's gone there. He's gone to find Spot, which was his dog, the first dog that got sent over and. He has a bit of a, a problem with his plane. He has a problem.

Reegs: He hasn't got any wings anymore.

Dan: he hasn't got any wings anymore. He also has a problem with his helmet in, in the fact that there's a piece of metal that's going into his head

Reegs: lot lodged into his brain. It

Dan: And he takes that out and collapses again. The dogs are deciding whether to eat him. Chief is really up for it. The rest of them

Reegs: a chief chief is as stray. A chief has never had an owner all the other dogs talk of their owners and their masters. That's right. and wanting to see their masters again, whereas obviously [00:09:00] chief the alpha of the pack although they say there is no alpha, don't they, that that's their, that's their thing, but he is the leader.

They look to him for leadership. And he's astray so he doesn't understand the bond and is still well up for eating

Dan: well. Yeah. But they do understand that he's after spot and lead him to spot's cage.

Reegs: Yeah. This is so dark.

Dan: all, all we see is bones there. As, as we knew that spot wasn't able to

Sidey: get, they say, oh, we weren't able to open it.

And he pulls out a key and they're like, oh, okay.

Reegs: it. Yeah.

And then the big tear just goes right down his cheek, like, oh

Dan: yeah. And and he gets on his plane and he goes back home. But just as he did, bill Murray's character, which is called I forget which dog he, he is

Sidey: Aita,

Dan: a Aita. He has taken the, the chain that was around spots.

Neck 'cause he liked it. He just thought, oh, that's a nice kind of medallion to have. [00:10:00] And they notice it says sport not

Reegs: That does happen a bit later. But they reveal they, they show you it and it's got a bit covering the end of it. And

Dan: But they stop the plane from taking off, don't they?

Reegs: Oh yeah,

Dan: And and then he goes. It's the wrong dog. It's the wrong dog. And the the, the boy understands. So then begins the epic adventure that they go on to go and find out where and who might know where spot actually is.

Reegs: Yeah. Meanwhile, in Mega City there has in fact been a serum, A true A-A-A-A-A Cure invented.

It was really one of my favorite visual elements of

Sidey: in the lab.

Dan: Oh, the lab.

Reegs: they do the cure, it was fantastic. All these different techniques of spinning and lights and pulsing and

Dan: pictures of viruses kind of spinning

Reegs: And then the last one, they drink it all up, don't they?

Dan: Yeah. Come by.

Reegs: So yeah, they've invented a cure, but Kobayashi is not interested in, in fact, has him assassinated, doesn't he?

Sidey: Poison sushi. Yeah.

Reegs: And that was another great scene where you see him [00:11:00] prepping the sushi, the still alive fish as he guts it and chopping the legs off the crab and stuff. Remember that?

Dan: that? Yeah. Yeah. It was quite, quite dark. And he puts the tiniest little bit of sushi to his, his tongue

Reegs: poisoned wasabi, wasn't it?

Dan: it? And that's it. Yeah. The, the wasabi does him. And nobody knows, of course this is assassination, but it does give the mayor full control and the ability to shut down this, this vaccine.

But they also have sight now. I think that the little boy is, 'cause that's the other story that's going on, on the, on the news that this boy has. Flown over to, to trash island and they're trying to kill that story as well. But they come over, don't they? And, and try to capture him. And there's another big fight and there's another big cotton wall sort of scene with the, the, the robot dogs and everything that, that come on.

So. What the mayor wants is more functional [00:12:00] dogs that can be also dogs of war literally, and robots of war. And they can behave themselves and roll over, but they can also show some very sharp teeth

and

Reegs: They can control them and put them in a different

Dan: AI dogs,

Reegs: and they've got these like frill things that come out that make them look like Velociraptors a bit scary.

Dan: They all have a massive fight. Chief gets elected to fight the robot while they go and save the boy. The robot is as well. It's hard as nails. And chief puts up a, a good fight and they all end up winning that fight. And at that point. He, they're, they're celebrating and they're in some kind of sacky bottle house that has been made from all the trash.

And Chief goes out and meets Nutmeg, doesn't he? He sees this girl who's been on the top of the trash pile and they're all wondering how she keeps her fur. So sort of pristine and pretty, and it's Scarlet Hansen. And even as a dog,

Reegs: did, you wanted to [00:13:00] fuck her even as a dog, didn't you?

Dan: She's really hot.

Reegs: really hot.

It's true. And occasionally she'll 'cause she was a show dog.

Sidey: Yeah. He's like, can you show me a trick? And she's like, maybe if I get to know you better. No, I'm not. I'm not like just performing clown for you. Yeah. And then she does do a trick at the end.

Reegs: after their romance. Yeah.

Dan: Can you imagine? There would be a bowling ball and five bowling rings on top air.

And he goes, I can

Reegs: Yeah. Very good.

Dan: It's quite an epic adventure. They go and almost Lord of the Rings

Sidey: Well, it's a big reveal coming up, isn't it? Because Akira, what is that, his name, if I got his name wrong? Atari. Atari has to give Chief, is it a bath? Yeah. He's got this like in where's Anderson style? This like kit where you can.

Do all this stuff. And actually, first of all, he gives him a biscuit. Yeah, he gives him half. He, he says, I can't have that. That's for your dog. And he says, well, I'll give you half. And it's like the first time he's ever been given a treat. And then he gives chief some grooming and a bath and whatever.

Reegs: He's never really been cared

Sidey: not a black dog at [00:14:00] all. He is looks very similar.

Reegs: He does well, he also had those piercing blue eyes, right? And they keep showing you, there's one bit really early on where the camera like deliberately pans down to someone looking at a picture of him at the same time. So

Sidey: yeah. And he looks, he does look a lot similar, a lot, a lot like spots.

Reegs: He does. Yeah. And he's already talked about having an a being worried about being the runt of a litter that he was in with others that were taken away for great things.

Dan: And he also confesses to actually not always have been astray that once upon a time he did have a family, but he, he lashed out and bit the little boy and he didn't really understand why he

Sidey: He doesn't know why. Yeah.

Dan: But

on

their epic journey, they get split up. So, chief an Atari, the little boy head off together and the other

Reegs: Yeah. What was the other dog's plan? I didn't understand this at

Dan: they were gonna meet somewhere, so they were gonna meet at the, the area where they ended up meeting, where this kind of [00:15:00] mine shaft ended.

Reegs: separated by those cable car things and

Dan: right. Yeah. And so because they didn't get chance to make another plan, that's what they're doing. They're heading to this area and eventually they. All meet up again. But the mayor's army has come as well around this same time with about 40 more of those dogs.

And there's a huge kind of divide between one side of the bridge a bridge and another. And on the other side of the bridge, there's a dog that looks very familiar.

Sidey: Yeah. There is

Dan: It's spot. It's spot. We can't believe it at this stage, can we?

Sidey: because they've implied that there's a, a, a cannibalistic tribe of dogs and they think that he might have been captured by them

Reegs: Well, and we meet them, right? They, he's got, one of them's got het chromia or whatever it's called, where you've got different colored eyes.

So,

Dan: and well we, we've gone through like the Oracle first, haven't we? This dog who's who can understand television. Yeah,

Reegs: yeah, yeah.[00:16:00]

Dan: So they

know what the weather's gonna be like, and they go, I think it's gonna be raining or it's gonna and it is a dog that seems to know much more than all, all other dogs that can't understand television. So they know to, to head this way and this big giant dog as well, wasn't it? It was like a.

A St. Bernard or something and a little pug. Yeah. Who is the Oracle. And once they're able to navigate this kind of final jump, they, they meet this cannibalistic tribe and actually hear from spot and realize he is part of this tribe.

Sidey: He's the leader.

Dan: story. Yeah. And how

Sidey: lab dogs, aren't they?

Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: How they, they managed to pull him out of. His cage or drag his cage over, open the cage. And then he from there has, has kind of developed a whole world where they just wanted to keep themselves to themselves and stand at a radar. But now it looks like they brought this attention to him and he was always missing [00:17:00] his, he's got responsibilities there now with all these other dogs, but

Sidey: not

Dan: he always missed his master.

Sidey: He's, he's gonna be a dad, isn't. He is. Had a litter with

Dan: He's gonna be,

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: No, she's pregnant. They've not, she's not had the,

Reegs: she has the dogs near the end, the

Dan: So there's it ends up going back to mega city. They end up needing to ensure that the one serum, because we've had these students who have been Yeah, big. Anti-government protestors and a reporter is one of them. She's found that there is a serum and that it's still the covered the, yeah, the research partner to the guy who got assassinated.

She's totally, yeah. She's, she's

Sidey: who They re dubbs in the Japanese

Reegs: as Yoko by Yoko Ono

Sidey: and re dubbed in the Japanese version, which seems bonkers.

Dan: Yeah. Dunno why that was. But yeah, Yoko and she, she's kind of [00:18:00] heartbroken that the, the scientist has died. But this, this student says, look.

His work can still live on, it can still help all these dogs.

That's the big story here. That can be his legacy. And so all these dogs coming back at the and, and the little boy Atari at the center of a big conference where they're going to,

Sidey: It's his reelection. Yeah. Like confirmation that he's won by a landslide of 98.7. Yeah. Senate of the vote and the science party had 1.3

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: and this whole bit is narrated by Francis McDormand in the like control booth.

He's telling everyone what's going, because obviously they're speaking Japanese

Reegs: and isn't he elected on a promise of like total genocide of

Sidey: orders. He's got a kill button. He's basically got a kill switch where they're going to give the order to poison gas The. I love dogs and get rid of all the dogs once and for all.

Reegs: That's it.

Sidey: But Atari gets up and gives a speech.

Reegs: It's the haiku, [00:19:00] isn't it? 'cause he's been talking about this haiku that,

Dan: Can you remember the haiku?

Reegs: I can't. If I'd have had the time, Dan, I

Sidey: It ends, it ends the, the third line of the haiku is about the cherry blossom and we see it all animated and Kobe Actually's got his, he is facing away from the crowd, but you can see it's actually, it's moved him.

Yeah. And he realizes he's been a bastard. So he goes, he does a full pivot and he is not going to kill, but Major Domo, who's a really creepy looking, almost like Frankenstein monster to like really outta place with everyone else. He looks like a proper villain. He is. He is. You can see he's like the, the Steven Miller of all this.

He wants them killed and he's like fighting with him to get on the kill switch. He does actually press it and we get the animation of the, I'm looking at the wire on your headphones. The, the, the signal going through the wire and through the whole set and up through the machinery. Yeah. And out to our dogs.

And then you just get past a computer where it says, hack successful. And one of the protest group has hacked the signal and,

Reegs: brought down the dogs. Yeah. And the drones as well. They start taking them down,

Sidey: It seemed like [00:20:00] they gassed their soldiers. 'cause they all had their Yeah. Hazmat suits on and you just see their hazmat suits filled with the poison gas you like.

Fucking hell. They killed a lot

Reegs: pretty brutal

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: And that's the way it goes.

Sidey: And so, it turns out that, that either. Is just found guilty on the spot, or he sort of confesses to all the conspiracy about the anti dog stuff. Yeah. So he's thrown in jail and there is a sort of legal loophole where the, the person who would take over would be the next of kin.

Yeah. Which is Atari.

Yeah.

Dan: So the, yeah. Atari, this 9-year-old boy is now, he's 12,

Reegs: I think he is, but still, still, it's not a lot better.

Dan: He's in charge of Mega City, but he's got at least a bit of heart about him and he's being quite,

Reegs: were already some troubling aspects of the new world order that he was bringing in, I thought at the

Sidey: has a family with greta Wig. It's like that little comic strip. Love is they're like fucking children. Yeah. And she was a student. Yeah. So, and he was very young. Anyway the loose ends are that spot [00:21:00] stays with. Peppermint. They have their litter and family, and he gives the blessing for chief to replace him

Reegs: Yeah. Chief learns to be Atari's.

Yeah. Support dog.

Sidey: Yeah. And everything kind of goes back to how it was the, the dog that lives with the, the the, the dog food manufacturer goes there.

Dan: Yeah. 'cause they've all had stories.

Sidey: Bill Murray was the, the mascot. He goes back to that one and they get, they get pummeled by someone, I think. And it's all kind of like mega happy ending.

It's good.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: That

all that happens. So

Dan: So I, I, I think that's pretty much all that happens. So we've saved anybody from watching it. But if you would like me recoil. With these. Cartoons basically, and, and these and think, no, this isn't for me, but you know, it was Team America. I remember when we talked about that, I thought, this is gonna be ab, I can't watch this puppet thing.

And we had watched another puppet one earlier before. I [00:22:00] can't remember exactly what

Sidey: that was the,

Dan: Didn't get on with that one too well. But this was fantastic. I mean, it the level of detail, the storytelling itself, the voices, the comedy, the comedy the adventure of it all. I thought this was absolutely brilliant.

I really enjoyed this

silence

from everyone else, but I enjoyed it.

Sidey: Thanks.

Reegs: Yeah, I really like this as well. I wish I'd had a bit of a, but you know, the, I had a bit of a fragmented viewing experience, sort of stop you starty and it is quite dense and there's quite a lot of weighty themes in it as well.

There were, I, I thought it looked amazing. I really enjoyed it. It, it, you know, kept me engaged the whole way through. There were some allegations, weren't they, that it was a bit racist because Yeah. That it was a sort of mish, it was like somebody just. Mish mashing, everything Asian that they knew and

Sidey: you can clearly see an affection for the source, not,

Reegs: yeah, exactly. That's, that's, I know it didn't occur to me until, like if

Sidey: someone that's a bit of a reach, I [00:23:00] think from

Reegs: I well, I wouldn't want to like, say to anybody else's experience if you were Japanese and you felt it was like

Sidey: a

Reegs: of your culture or something up on screen. I didn't feel that when I was watching it.

I just, like you say, a lot of love for, for what was going on and a great story.

Sidey: Yeah. I really liked it as well. And like we said earlier, and there's so many bits, you could just pause it and look at it and there's somewhere there's hundreds and hundreds of figurines that when they're doing the, the politics bit where there's just people in a great recall and I thought, have they just made a couple and then sort of like copy pasted, you know?

Yeah. It's some sort of clever. Computer way or have they meticulously made every single fucking thing. I mean, every shot must take it man hours, fucking

Reegs: And The

planning, yeah, the planning. That must go into it

Sidey: I think that with all of these films, the way that, like you said, the way that the camera sort of moves through the set all the time, how it's, you know, it must be meticulously planned.

Yeah. It was released in 2018, which is the which is the Chinese Zo Jack year of the dog. yeah,

Reegs: that makes sense. The,

Dan: makes sense. The, the. The [00:24:00] connection between his, his real films, you know, his film, his movie films, and this and his style. It just runs through more than any other director.

I, I think you can just tell straight away, but even like watching a cartoon, you can tell it's him.

Reegs: him.

It's not as big a leap from his normal aesthetic to an animated film as it is would be for say, fucking, Martin Scorsese.

Sidey: Yeah. Whereas gangster stuff or Tarantino violently, whatever his stuff, his is like almost an exaggerated style that he has, you know, all of his own.

I really like it. But if, you know, if, if you've watched other films of his and it hasn't landed, then the same will apply to this.

Dan: I think kids will like it. I think

Sidey: Yeah. I didn't watch it with my daughter, but she did catch the end when I was watching it, so, I will watch it again with her. I think

Reegs: I think actually you, if you don't like him, try his animated

Sidey: movies.

Yeah, because

Reegs: there's something about the, like if, because his movies are so artificial in the way that they look and acted basically when, when, when the, [00:25:00] when animation's

Dan: sits a little bit better. Yeah,

Reegs: yeah. Sits a bit better for you maybe.

Yeah.

Sidey: The real story is exactly the opposite, that it was not a cat loving k Ashi dynasty.

It was actually someone who loved dogs. Talk goer. Sun Yoshi 1646 to 1709, known for instituting animal protection laws, particularly for dogs. Oh, so there was a bit of something in there. And or, you know, all his frequent collaborators are in this and have continued to be, and the film's subsequent to it.

So they all like working with him.

Reegs: cast is great in this and there's so many of

Sidey: They must work for budget because there's so many of 'em. It would cost a fucking fortune, in other

Reegs: Yeah. Strong.

Sidey: Strong. Recommend. Strong.

Strong

Dan: recommend.