Movies

Compare & Contrast

Posted on by Patrick

Years and years ago we showed a film at the Evans called Hard Core Logo, a mock­u­men­tary about a punk band that reunit­ed for one last tour, and spent the bulk of the tour re-hash­ing all the rea­sons they’d called it quits in the first place. (Spoil­er: It does­n’t end real well.)

The sound­track was a “trib­ute album” to a non-exis­tent band (the epony­mous Hard Core Logo), and as such it con­tained some great com­pare & con­trast moments, where two bands with rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent sounds cov­ered the same song.

My favourite con­trast was the two ver­sions of “Son of a Bitch to the Core”:

Lugen Broth­ers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg0nte_VbL8
Headstones

I love both ver­sions. If pushed to pick a win­ner, I’d prob­a­bly give the edge to the Lugen Broth­ers’ country/roots ver­sion — their ver­sion of the char­ac­ter seems more bad-ass than the hard-rockin’ woe-is-me one in the Head­stones’ ver­sion (I think the defin­ing moment is “If you take me on, you’re gonna lose” vs. “If you take me on, I’m gonna lose”).

A Canadian vignette

Posted on by Patrick

I have this sin­gle scene for a film in my head, very Cana­di­an: a shot of a south­bound V of geese, mov­ing across a pale blue sky. The cam­era pans down to a soli­tary per­son on the ground, stand­ing in the mid­dle of the street, yelling up at them, “Quit­ters! Get back here!”

Film­mak­ers: If you’d like to use this in your film, please let me know. I’m sure we can work some­thing out.

Starbuck

Posted on by Patrick

If you have the chance, check out the movie Star­buck.  I just got home from show­ing it at the Evans The­atre, and I must say, I real­ly enjoyed it.  It’s fun­ny, it’s touch­ing, and it shows — yet again — that Cana­da can make great movies.

It’s the sto­ry of David, a forty-some­thing who I would describe as a lov­able los­er.  He’s drift­ing through life, work­ing at a butch­er shop, play­ing soc­cer, get­ting into debt.  He dis­cov­ers that, due to some shenani­gans at the sperm bank where he used to donate, he’s the father of 500+ chil­dren.  Over a hun­dred of those kids — now in their late teens/early twen­ties — have band­ed togeth­er in a class-action law­suit to find out the iden­ti­ty of their real father, known to them only as his sperm-bank code­name:  Starbuck.

What comes next?  You’ll have to check out the movie to find out. Trust me. It’s worth it.

The Evans Theatre

Posted on by Patrick

Part of the “web­mon­key” side of my pro­file:  I’ve been mon­key­ing with the Evans The­atre’s web­site, try­ing to make it look pur­ty and be use­ful. I’d like to think I’m close.

Have a look:  Evans The­atre’s new site

<nerd>It’s a hand-cod­ed Word­Press theme using respon­sive design con­cepts.  Check it out at var­i­ous brows­er widths — the images should (most­ly) scale nice­ly.  If you’ve got an iPhone or some oth­er pock­et brows­er, I’d love to hear comments.</nerd>

So?  Is it pur­ty, or what?

Movie review: Moon

Posted on by Patrick

About an hour ago, the cred­its rolled on Moon. I went into the film know­ing very lit­tle: the only trail­er I’d seen fea­tured Sam Rock­well look­ing disheveled, and had Kevin Spacey as a HAL-style AI that com­mu­ni­cat­ed via a com­bi­na­tion of even, sooth­ing tones, and smi­ley faces.

I won’t post any spoil­ers here, but suf­fice to say that I quite liked the film. It had echoes of 2001: a space odyssey, Blade Run­ner, Gat­ta­ca, and Alien. All of those films are includ­ed in what I con­sid­er the canon of excel­lent sci­ence fic­tion, which should tell you some­thing about how thor­ough­ly I enjoyed Moon.

Sam Rock­well plays Sam Bell, com­ing into the tail end of his three-year solo stint as the human over­seer at a min­ing sta­tion on the moon’s far side. He keeps tabs on the unmanned rovers that comb the sur­face of the moon for He3, the fuel of the future.

Three years is a long time to be alone, and Sam’s look­ing for­ward to head­ing home to his lov­ing wife and young daugh­ter. He’s due — per­haps over­due — for a fur­lough. He might be going just a lit­tle tee­ny bit crazy. At the very least, he’s start­ed to see things, peo­ple, that can’t real­ly be there…

The movie explores lone­li­ness, ill­ness, loss and sor­row, anger, and evil. But every­thing’s done with a light touch. Some things are only hint­ed at, leav­ing the audi­ence to fill in the gaps, trust­ing that the audi­ence mem­bers are smart enough. Even the end­ing is sneaky: you have only a cou­ple sec­onds’ knowl­edge that the dénoue­ment has come, and then the cred­its are already rolling.

Moon is a refresh­ing SF film, one that encour­ages you to use your brain, to think around the cor­ners. It requires that you watch the film with your mind in gear, instead of in neu­tral. It’s a refresh­ing change.

Moon
…on IMDB
…on Rot­ten Tomatoes
…where I saw it

Next time (prob­a­bly): » Kata at the shore