Today’s post was written by my good friend Dave Chevalier. Dave is a former advertising executive who put down the pen and picked up a tourniquet, choosing instead to patch people up as a Registered Nurse in a very busy Emergency room while maintaining his off-colour alter ego in the real world.
I’ve heard it said before that what makes a cult movie so damned good is that almost nobody knows about it. But it must be worth watching – if not, why did someone tell you about it?
Far too often, movies in the last 20 years have been made and re-made from previous stories; in many cases, only minor details are changed for the remake. For example, James Cameron’s multi-billion dollar movie Avatar…this is not new material. It’s Dances with Wolves in space, with blue Indians. Give me a break; at least TRY to be original, Jim.
Some movies, though, thrive on the fact that they’re re-treading the tire…the classic spoof film. Some names are spoken with reverence (Spaceballs) while others go a bit too far (Don’t Be a Menace II South Central While Drinking Juice in the Hood). In fact, one immortal line from spoof film “This is Spinal Tap” states that “there’s a fine line between stupid and clever”, and one film that sits squarely on this line is the soon-to-be-legendary Black Dynamite.
Barely a year old, this blaxploitation spoof manages to hit all the right notes as it satirizes the genre from which it was spawned, while brazenly stealing all the little bits that made blaxploitation films so fun to watch. Michael Jai White (Spawn, The Dark Knight) co-wrote and starred as the titular character, who manages to take on The Man and save the day for just about everyone in just under 90 minutes. The clothes, the music, the out-of-focus camera work is utterly pitch perfect, but it’s the dialogue that truly sets this film off. Any film that can work in the line “your knowledge of scientific biological transmogrification is only outmatched by your zest for kung-fu treachery!” without skipping a beat is a force to be reckoned with.
All the hallmarks of the low-budget poorly-produced blaxploitation films are present here. Characters have names like Cream Corn and Chocolate Giddy-Up, there’s kung fu elements sprinkled liberally throughout, flashback scenes are rampant – there’s even a scene with a visible boom microphone that actually hits the actor with an audible ‘boomp’ off his Afro. The ending of the film, however, arrives far too rapidly after a long build-up, and it becomes so over-the-top that it almost breaks the magic…almost.
I’ve watched Black Dynamite three times in one week with different groups of people, and every single person enjoyed at least parts of the film, which is more than can be said for the latest Hollywood special effects blockbuster. Black Dynamite plants a tongue firmly in cheek at the very start of the film and keeps it buried there throughout. The film never takes itself seriously, and Michael Jai White is both unabashedly badass and effortlessly droll. He’s back and he’s bad, he’s black and he’s mad [note: thank you, Lethal Weapon] and he’s worth the time you spend watching him kick ass and take names. Dyno-mite!
A little while ago I was looking for some new comedies to watch that I’d never seen before so I googled “Top 10 Greatest Comedies” or something to that effect and one movie that was mentioned over and over was the 1959 classic Some Like It Hot. I went into the movie knowing nothing except that its stars were Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.
Of course, because of Grumpy Old Men I knew and loved Jack Lemmon and I recognized Tony Curtis, but I had never actually watched anything with Marilyn Monroe–which is crazy, right? Well, there are things you know and things you understand. I have always known that Marilyn Monroe was a beautiful celebrity and huge cultural icon, but I never understood why. I mean, she’s beautiful, but there are a lot of beautiful people. Beauty doesn’t mean you should be a celebrity.
I generally don’t watch old movies (old meaning anything before the 70s usually) because they depress me. I sit there and obsess over the fact that everyone in the film, while looking so young and vibrant, is probably dead or really, really close to death. In this case, all three of the leads are dead. Usually I start spiraling in to a full blown existential crisis (that can last for days), but I’m glad to report that this did not happen with Some Like It Hot–because I was instantly infatuated with Marilyn Monroe.
Well, perhaps not instantly, but that’s only because Marilyn doesn’t enter the film for the first (I can’t entirely recall) 20 minutes or so. I kept watching all the women because I wasn’t sure if I’d notice Marilyn or not. And now you see the level at which I truly did not understand. And then she arrived–on screen and directly into my heart. It’s not just her beauty, but her charisma. She’s intoxicating. She plays a “dumb blonde” but at the same time you know she’s so much more. I’ve never had a crush on someone postmortem. I briefly considered building a time machine. I mean, wow. The only person who might’ve even come close to Marilyn’s charisma (though in a different way) is Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
And so, as you’ve probably begun to imagine, Marilyn was the revelation for me in Some Like It Hot. Jack and Tony were fine. I could see how the movie and comedy might’ve been somewhat scandalous in the 50s, but it was pretty tame by today’s standards. Overall, I enjoyed the movie. It didn’t make me pee my pants with laughter, but it was a lot of fun to watch and to be taken back 50 years and see what made my dad’s generation laugh. And also I couldn’t stop trying to imagine what Marilyn Monroe looked like naked, so that was fun too.
Today’s post was written by Rhett Soveran. Rhett is a writer and the Web Editor of WestJet’s up! magazine. Check out his blog (and upcoming podcast): Bailing Bucket.
In the spirit of Away We Go and 500 Days of Summer, Going the Distance starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long (the “Mac” guy) is more than just a cute chick flick. It’s girl-and-guy-friendly rom-com made for the thirty-somethings about a couple who hooks up one drunken evening then struggles with their long-distance relationship.
In this movie, you get two lead actors who look like they are just being themselves, a few eighties inside jokes, a couple of randomly hilarious scenes and it all just feels really authentic. While Drew Barrymore and Justin Long have great on-screen chemistry (comedic and romantic, likely because of their on-again-off-again relationship which was on during filming), it’s the supporting cast that makes the movie. Christina Applegate as Barrymore’s older, wiser and creepily over-protective sister is brilliant. And Charlie Day plays Long’s quirky, dirty roommate. His monologue about self-pleasure with a grandma while crossing a busy NYC street is hands-down the funniest and most memorable scene in the movie.
Going the Distance is directed by Nanette Burstein who is better known for her documentary titled American Teen. This might explain why the movie feels like you’ve just been dropped into a friends’ apartment and are hanging out in their reality for a little while. It has that raw, imperfect, life-like quality about it that makes it all the more charming.
While this film is less powerful than Away We Go and less honest than 500 Days of Summer, it is probably funnier than both of them. Laugh out loud funny. So if you’re looking for something light and entertaining on the weekend (or on a plane ride), or if you are craving some eighties nostalgia (like references to Top Gun), check it out. At the very least you’ll get to hear Berlin and have a few good laughs.
Today’s post was written by Sona Khosla. While Sona cares about a lot of things like brand integrity, George Michael and a good BBC costume drama, it’s her desire to find meaning and live intentionally that inspires me. You can catch her blogging regularly at www.sonakhosla.com.
Viewer discretion is advised. Contains disturbing scenes of what’s really on your dinner plate. Do not watch this movie if you are not prepared to be changed. Don’t be frightened. Watching this film will not make you vegetarian.
Food, Inc. is the Academy Award® nominated documentary that deconstructs the business of food, starting with the meat industry then turning to the GMO controversy, starring Monsanto. It exposes the backwards practices and motives that have led to chickens that have such big breasts they can’t stand up, an upsurge in E.coli because we are feeding our cattle corn that they were never meant to eat, the loss of small farms across America to monstrous businesses who have been sanctioned by the government to own patents on food, and the exponential rise in obesity and food-borne illness in our society. This movie exposes the devolution of our food—our source of life—into just another profitable business.
Food Inc. is not a feel-good movie because, well, that just wouldn’t rouse the type of change we need. Instead it’s an eye-opening film that exposes the disturbing facts about the food that’s on your plate. But it’s not all Debbie-downer-doomsday either. It also serves up a lot of fascinating insights and practical alternatives to the mainstream food choices we make; they even have a great website that offers tips and petitions you can sign. For those of you who have a passion about marketing and branding like I do, you’ll love the segments on how big brands are buying up small brands that stand for something natural and communal. They know sustainable products are profitable products. For example, Kellogg’s owns Kashi and Colgate owns Tom’s of Maine. For those of you who are animal lovers, there are some scenes that will certainly be difficult to watch, but trust me, watch them. The one in particular that has stayed with me was the look in a cow’s eyes as she was hauled off to slaughter. The look of fear and anxiety in her eyes was familiar to me; I’ve seen it in my dog’s eyes before. Just that connection made me feel for the animals that are so unnecessarily treated as beef when they are still cows. It actually opened my heart to all animals who are a critical part of our eco-system and a sustainable future on this planet. Strangely, I even love my dog more.
After watching the film, I was certain that it would only be a matter of weeks before I fell back into my old habits and beliefs. I was wrong. So wrong. If anything, it has had the opposite effect. I am increasingly motivated to live a changed life. It’s been a little over six months since my husband, Bruce, and I watched this film together. Since then we have only purchased meat for our household twice (it was organic and locally raised), started grocery shopping at a small local grocer (Sunnyside Market in Kensington) and started seriously lamenting the lost connection between humans and the natural world.*
If you truly absorb everything this movie has to offer, you will be changed and changed for the better. If not, it will at the very least give you some food for thought. Just don’t be a jack-ass and not watch it because you are afraid of change.
*Not to freak anyone out, but watching this movie has prompted some very serious discussions between Bruce and I about our future and where we want to live. We’ve come to the still unbelievable decision that we want to live closer to the land, so have decided to minimize the scale of some much-needed renovations to our inner city home so we can save to buy some property outside of the city in the next ten years or so.
Today’s post was written by Sona Khosla. While Sona cares about a lot of things like brand integrity, George Michael and a good BBC costume drama, it’s her desire to find meaning and live intentionally that inspires me. You can catch her blogging regularly at www.sonakhosla.com.
I’m not really a stand-up aficionado, but there are some comedians I love so much that I try to watch and listen to any of their work I can get my hands on. Louis CK is at the top of that list, and right next to him is Patton Oswalt.
One night a few weeks ago, Neil suggested we watch The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie on Netflix. All we knew was that Patton Oswalt would be in it with some other comedians, but that was enough for me. What I didn’t know until we started watching it is that it’s a documentary, not a comedy show. Sure, there are sections of comedy shown within it, but that’s not the bulk of it. This is a look behind the scenes of Oswalt’s tour with Brian Posehn, Maria Bamford and Zach Galifianakis.
The excerpts of their stand-up are great and most moments where they’re interacting are also well worth watching. Unfortunately the documentary is cut weirdly, with in-between montages and moments that are overly long and seem to serve little purpose. That isn’t enough to make this movie fail for me, but it brought the experience down from where it could have been.
Is it worth watching? I guess that depends on how interested you are in seeing behind the scenes of a comedy tour. If that’s your thing, then by all means check it out because there is plenty of that in there. But if you’re really just looking to see stand-up by any of those four comedians, then I would recommend passing on this and just looking for one of their specials or, even better, try to see them live.
I didn’t know King George VI had a stammer until I heard about The King’s Speech, but it wasn’t until I saw the film that I learned just how crippling the defect was. The film opens with the then Prince Albert (Colin Firth), about to deliver his first speech in 1925 at Wembley Stadium. His father has sent him to do it, he doesn’t want to, and his panic is clearly showing. He was right to be afraid: it’s a disaster, and heartbreaking to watch.
This experience is followed by scenes of him visiting speech therapists, including one who makes him try to speak with a mouth full of marbles because it helped Demosthenes many hundreds of years prior. The Prince refuses to see any more therapists, but his wife (Helena Bonham Carter) wants to check out one more, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian failed actor turned therapist who comes highly recommended despite his unorthodox methods.
When meeting privately with Logue, Elizabeth lays out the rules even before revealing her husband’s identity. Lionel has a couple of his own: her husband must come to him and they must be on a first-name basis because their equality is crucial to the process. Even when he finds out who his new client will be, he won’t bend the rules, calling the Prince by the family nickname “Bertie” when he does finally start treating him.
The movie spans almost 15 years, moving past the Wembley incident quickly into the 1930s. His father, King George V (Michael Gambon), dies and his brother King Edward VIII (Guy Pearce) takes the throne and abdicates within the year so he can marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson. This leaves Bertie exactly where he doesn’t want to be, having to take the throne and become King George VI. Kings have to give speeches, but he can’t speak. The film ends brilliantly with his speech at the outbreak of WWII.
Alongside Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech is the best film I saw in 2010. The performances from all three principle actors are fantastic, but Colin Firth really stands out with his sensitive portrayal of the king and his struggles to share his voice and make himself heard. And more than being a movie about overcoming adversity, it’s also a powerful story of friendship.
Thankfully Canada smartly rated this PG. In the United States it was given an R rating for language because there are a couple of scenes, one in particular, with a few strings of cursing (and to say that The King’s Speech deserves the same rating as the Saw franchise is ridiculous). I think this is a film that would be great for anyone to see over the age of 12 or so and I can’t recommend it enough.
Every year my family watches movies on Christmas Day. This year, we decided to cue up something that brought together a little of India and a little of Canada: Cooking with Stella. It was well pared with our Indo-Canadian Christmas dinner (cauliflower soup and homemade rolls with lentils and roti as our main dish).
Starring the beautiful Indo-Canadian actress Lisa Ray and directed by the brilliant Deepa Mehta’s
brother Dilip Mehta, Cooking with Stella has all the right ingredients for a great Bollywood/Hollywood movie. The movie is about a young Canadian diplomatic family that moves to New Delhi for a term and is greeted by a small mafia of larcenous house help led by the scheming, ring-leader slash cook, Stella (a great performance by Seema Biswas). She’s been serving on the high commission’s compound for 30 years and has made a business of pilfering, overcharging and selling stolen items. Meanwhile Michael (Don McKellar), the “diplomatic housewife,” asks Stella to be his guru and to teach him how to cook flavourful South Indian fare.
Think Julie & Julia in India: scenes of mouth-watering fish curry, dosas and steaming basmati rice. Think Slumdog Millionaire without the slums: memorable shots of India’s bustling streets. Think Cairo Time: innocent Canadians abroad seduced by wily locals. While Cooking with Stella draws on aspects of all of these great movies, it doesn’t measure up to any of them. The moral of the story is that there are no morals for the poor in India and it almost goes so far as to champion deceit, thievery and manipulation. Maybe I’m addicted to movies that teach “good” values, but I couldn’t digest the lessons in this movie.
I can’t lie though, it’s not like the movie’s unrealistic or un-entertaining. My sister, mother and I laughed as we remembered all the things that went “missing” when we visited our family in India. Earrings, walkmans, jeans, perfume. The colourful scenes of busy food markets and freshly cooked curries put a faint smile on my mom’s face as she remembered growing up in New Delhi. And the humour was distinctly Canadian and Indian, so there were many laugh-out-loud moments. But if I weren’t Indian and I didn’t have a personal connection to India, Cooking with Stella would have just been a strange blend of genres (comedy, drama and foreign) that left me feeling not so good about being Canadian, Indian or a Canadian in India.
Today’s post was written by Sona Khosla. While Sona cares about a lot of things like brand integrity, George Michael and a good BBC costume drama, it’s her desire to find meaning and live intentionally that inspires me. You can catch her blogging regularly at www.sonakhosla.com.
Watching shows on Netflix falls into a few categories for me. Under the ‘Shows that I enjoyed the trailer for but never summoned enough energy to go see in the theatre or seek out for rental’ category is (500) Days of Summer. This was one that Tara and I watched together. Like most people, I think, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has only really come onto my radar as an actor to watch over the last couple years. I never watched 3rd Rock From the Sun, and enjoyed Brick but not enough so that I remembered it fondly as anything other than the film Tara and I went to on our first non-date. Same goes for Zooey Deschanel to an extent, although I don’t feel the same interest growing in her career that I do for Gordon-Levitt. The last film I remember seeing her in was M. Night’s terrible attempt at a B movie, The Happening.
There’s something to (500) Days of Summer that had us talking about it for a few days after. As the narrator explains, this is a story about love but not a love story. And it’s a very important distinction to make. What this movie turns out to be is a solid criticism of the overly manufactured romantic imagery we’ve experienced from a very young age. Our ideas about love versus the mechanics of genuine romantic human interaction. So much of this movie is about perception, and how the idea of being in love and what that should look like blinds a person to what is going on around them and messes with their sense of expectations.
There’s a great scene towards the latter half of the movie where Gordon-Levitt’s character is going to meet Deschanel’s character for a party that she invited him to and the screen splits in two. On one side is what he imagines this meeting will mean and what it will bring for him. He’s constructed this elaborate fantasy that will become immediately familiar for an audience member who has witnessed many such stories. On the other side of the screen we get what actually happens. It’s a great scene because it manages to communicate an experience I can relate to. That creation of the event before we walk into it. Imagining what sort of day we’ll have at work, imagining how a date will go, an exam, an anything. The fiction that is created that either calms us down or freaks us out, and how that’s never the way it happens.
(500) Days of Summer has some interesting things to say and it works hard to say those things. Check it out if you’re able.
Calgary author William Neil Scott is married to Tara and will be blogging about the shows and movies he’s watching on Netflix during the free trial month. You can also catch him blogging at www.williamneilscott.com.
Today’s post was written by Sona Khosla. While Sona cares about a lot of things like brand integrity, George Michael and a good BBC costume drama, it’s her desire to find meaning and live intentionally that inspires me. You can catch her blogging regularly at www.sonakhosla.com, where this post originally appeared.
Anyone who knows me, knows I’ve always had a funny thing about kids. I love ‘em, but I don’t want ‘em. If I’m totally honest, freaked is the most accurate way of describing my personal feeling about having a baby.
But somehow when a few pregnant friends recently suggested we watch a documentary called Babies that had no dialogue, I was intrigued. “I’m in,” I said, which is the most affirmative statement I’ve made about children in my life thus far. My husband looked at me with a scowly face. He did not want to watch the babies, but the tape was already rolling.
80 minutes of Babies An 80-minute documentary about four infants raised in four different parts of the world, Babies by French director Thomas Balmès, is a pure joy to watch (especially with pregnant women). You will laugh, you will be horrified, you will be surprised, you will be confused, you will coo, you will say “ew.”
Who’s really rich? My personal experience of watching Babies There’s a lot of amazing scenes in the movie, but what struck me most was how rich Baby Africa’s first year of life was in contrast to Baby North America, whose life was surrounded by wealth. Baby Africa was left to experience the natural world herself with support from the community of children and women around her. She was never alone, but she independently explored the natural world around her. There was always someone there to gently guide her from poking at other children’s private parts, eating dirt and yanking the dog’s jowls. Her mother was present to nurse her and love her. She learned by experience with an intimate connection to nature and family.*
My pregnant friend at one point said “I feel so sorry for my kid” because it was so obvious at how contrived, controlled, simulated and over-stimulated Baby North America’s upbringing was. You see Mom reading a book called “How to Become the Parent You’ve Always Wanted to Be” (or some such title), baby is constantly being occupied so Mom can get her housework done, and baby is doing most of her learning from books and classes.
African rearing in a Canadian household I started to wonder how you could have a child in this culture, watch this movie and not feel guilty for the sterile, unnatural and overwhelming world you are bringing a baby into. Then, I visited my friend across Canada and watched her play with her children.
She held her five-month-old in a Snugit close to her chest so the little baby could hear her heartbeat and rest peacefully while she was present with her two-year-old as they played with wooden blocks for hours on the living room floor. She let her two-year-old daughter roam, touch, experience and even use a pizza cutter on the wall while gently guiding her away from more dangerous situations and kitchen utensils. She was raising her children just the way I saw the African mother in Babies just weeks earlier. Present, loving, connected. And no, she didn’t learn it from the movie. This gave me hope (and relief).
So curious My husband and I have talked for weeks now about the things that struck us about this movie. From the emphasis on survival vs. success, learning in life or learning from books, from being alone to being together, from present mothers to absent fathers. There’s just so much jam packed in this short documentary. So, I’m curious. What struck you?
*I’m trying not to get overly romantic about this simple way of life, but as you’ll learn in an upcoming blog, I’m increasingly drawn to a more natural and connected life. So I want to point out that I know I sound like I am idealizing it, but trust me, it’s hard not to the more you see people truly living it.
Chronologically speaking, I probably should have started watching the James Bond movies here rather than with Casino Royale and then carried through and watched Casino Royale in its proper place. Then I could have talked about how it fit with the rest of the movies that had been created by that point and how it played off of them, but I didn’t. I still think I made the right decision by getting the silliness out of the way so I could have a consistent run with the canonical series (although I’ll still watch the Lazenby film in its proper place).
Dr. No is a standard Sean Connery James Bond movie. That’s an obvious statement, but I was surprised by how much it felt like the rest of the Connery run because the first time I saw Dr. No, which was several years ago, I was bored to tears. I didn’t think it was as fun as Goldfinger or Thunderball, despite having most of the same elements.
In Dr. No, James Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the death of a local British Intelligence agent. Sleeping with women along the way, his investigations eventually lead him to Dr. No, Chinese-German scientist and SPECTRE agent (clearly played by a white guy) who has a radioactive mine and plans to disrupt an American space launch with an atomic-powered radio beam.
Because it’s a James Bond movie, you already know how it will end, but the journey is fun. It has Ursula Andress’s iconic moment when she comes out of the water in a white bikini and some hilariously 60′s moments like Bond looking at his watch to make sure he has enough time for sex (twice!). It also has some uncomfortable issues around race portrayal like Miss Taro, the Chinese woman he sleeps with who is very obviously played by a white woman with extra dark eyeliner to make her look exotic, or Quarrel, the Caymanian black man who is afraid of the VERY REAL “dragon” (aka, tank with a flamethrower), is lazy and likes to get drunk. Dr. No was released a year after Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which had similar race portrayal issues with Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese man, so it makes sense but still made me uncomfortable in parts.
All in all, it’s a fun movie, but I’m happy to move on to the next. I’d recommend checking it out if you want to see all of Bond flicks or if you’re looking for all of the references that ended up in the Austin Powers movies, but maybe skip it otherwise.
Barely a year old, this blaxploitation spoof manages to hit all the right notes as it satirizes the genre from which it was spawned, while brazenly stealing all the little bits that made blaxploitation films so fun to watch. Michael Jai White (Spawn, The Dark Knight) co-wrote and starred as the titular character, who manages to take on The Man and save the day for just about everyone in just under 90 minutes. The clothes, the music, the out-of-focus camera work is utterly pitch perfect, but it’s the dialogue that truly sets this film off. Any film that can work in the line “your knowledge of scientific biological transmogrification is only outmatched by your zest for kung-fu treachery!” without skipping a beat is a force to be reckoned with.
