theworstbuddhist

The Oscars used to really frustrate me, and they still do, but I don't care as much now I guess. They have their little show where they pretend to be virtuous liberals and then go back to the work of making the next awful live action Disney film or whatever they think is going to sell. There are different branches of the academy for different types of film, and one that has been problematic for literally as long as I can remember paying attention to it - something like 30 years, thanks to watching Siskel and Ebert complain about it - is the Documentary branch. I remember S&E like clockwork complaining about omissions from that category. So I guess that's still happening. The only awards I truly cared about this year were for animation. I contend that not only is Into the Spider-Verse the best animated film of 2018, it's the best film of 2018 period, and possibly of this century so far. It is certainly up there. So needless to say, I was glad it won its category. It would have been kind of insane if it didn't, but sometimes that's how the Oscars roll, so I'm glad I didn't have to kick the TV in. I was even happier that a young Asian-Canadian woman won the Oscar for her short animated film Bao. I kind of enjoyed the "hostless" broadcast. Can Bradley Cooper go back to being a clean-cut douche instead of mid-career Kevin Costner? FFS.

Hands up if you want to see David Lynch and David Byrne make a film together. Maybe they already have. They could get Dave Foley, David Spade, David Hayter... (They all have their own hands, but they come from different moms.)

Story of my life. I'm old, I remember seeing True Stories when it came out and enjoying it quite a bit. I wasn't a mega-fan of the Talking Heads but I did like them and still do. So many great character actors in this film, including the late Spalding Gray. Now I want to watch it again. And Swimming to Cambodia. Also, for those of you who are into the background music, you really oughta check out Byrne's solo records, his collaborations with various world music luminaries and Brian frigging Eno, and the other Talking Heads' members projects, like Tom Tom Club and Casual Gods. But especially the Byrne/Eno records.

So did I, and I still feel ripped off. *rimshot* But if it makes anyone feel better, I do periodically subscribe to the Hallmark channel's portal for their movies. This one was pretty bad, but not in the ways I expected. It has some weirdly nice moments, like where Camilla and the Queen are supportive. It's one of those films where the actors are solid but they don't have a great (or even good) script to work with. It is also surprisingly sexual, so I am curious to hear Jason and June's reactions especially, assuming June was available. There's also a lot of weird, kind of offensive and also kind of sad stuff about Africa, colonialism, the late Lady Diana Spencer, and Meghan's parents. Her dad comes off as suspiciously reasonable, I'm guessing he was paid to consult on it. Just to throw in my Canadian two cents (that's about $.015 USD, $.012 Euro) about Girl Scout cookies, as far as I know we only have two varieties up here: the mint ones, which I hate (nothing to do with the cookies themselves - just hate mint in almost all forms), and the chocolate and vanilla creme filled ones, which are adequate and would probably pair well with an evening of legal cannabis.

"Beloved" is a strong word for Tim Horton's. I suspect the answer to all of your questions lies in the budget of the film, which I'm guessing was about a week's worth of tips at that Starbucks.

Bilson shouldn't have been surprised, she knew he was a jumper when she met him.

I really hope that just like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Little Italy gets a sequel where the two dummies from the first film are now married and running a hugely successful joint restaurant in TO - so successful that they decide to expand to Montreal, perhaps taking over the former Club Super Sex location downtown. The twist: it puts them in the Bon Cop Bad Cop universe. I'm starting to see potential for a shared universe of Canadian films uniting those with Goin' Down the Road, Ginger Snaps, Going The Distance (the Shawn Roberts one, not Drew Barrymore), Goon, One Week, Men With Brooms, Les Boys, etc.

I'm so glad I found this topic. One of my favourite films is a Jacob's Ladder scenario- actually, two of my favourite films are now that I think of it. And those films are STAY, starring Ryan Gosling, Ewen MacGregor, and Naomi Watts; and the Soderbergh/Clooney version of SOLARIS. What I want to know from everyone else is: what is your favourite JLS film?

Except for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

I was just remembering Hayden Christensen's old tv series that used to be on YTV all the time. It felt like that show was on for years but it turns out it was only 22 episodes repeated endlessly. It was called Higher Ground, and apart from pre-Star Wars Hayden C. it featured Jewel Staite from Firefly as a troubled goth girl and Benita Ha from Street Cents. I don't really have a point here. I guess I was just thinking of his career versus that of, say, Ryan Gosling or even Tyler Labine from Breaker High.

Listening to Paul and Jason speculate about how weed would affect you was an unexpected bonus. As a Canadian with access to legal weed that I sometimes cook with, I can say that grinding up weed and then putting it on a pizza is very unlikely to get you high. The THC that makes you feel high has to be activated with long low heat. It would have been much more believable to have a pizza sauce made with cannabis-infused oil. Just eating raw cannabis or cannabis that was under high heat for a short period is unlikely to turn out well.

As a Canadian I want to apologize to everyone that you had to watch one of our homegrown movies. We do have some great directors making great original films, but we also have become specialists in making brain-dead romcoms. We make approximately 2000 Hallmark movies a year alone. This one is really just a slightly better than usual cast, but it's a boilerplate Hallmark movie. If you want to see a really great Canadian-made romcom set in Toronto, please watch The F Word, also known as What If? depending on where you live.

I was randomly searching YouTube tonight and discovered that there is a treasure trove of ABC Movie of the Week and similarly cheap films available there. William Shatner and Patty Duke in The Babysitter; Kay Lenz and William Holden in Breezy; but the one that takes the cake has to be Sean Connery, Karl Malden and poor Natalie Wood in Meteor, a mind-numbingly awful disaster film that makes Armageddon look like Deep Impact. Enjoy.

Oh, Streets of Fire! I saw it when I was a kid in the theatre and I remember liking it at the time, and listening to the soundtrack a lot, especially the Dan Hartman song "I Can Dream About You", which was a big hit on the radio. I'm guessing someone at the label made them tack on the song by The Fixx ("Deeper and Deeper") over the credits.. it doesn't really fit the movie in any way. The Steinman songs, Stevie Nicks and The Blasters were all suitable, and Ry Cooder did a great score. Anyway, my wife and I watched it the other night; she was not born yet when the film came out, so she had no idea what she was in for; she called it "a piece of hot garbage" and I have to agree for the most part. Michael Pare was great in Eddie and the Cruisers and a passable Vinnie Barbarino in The Greatest American Hero, but in this it's like someone game him a copy of Sylvester Stallone's F.I.S.T. and told him to be that guy. Rick Moranis clearly wanted a dramatic role for a change and instead comes off as a raging dickhead. Young Diane Lane is beautiful but the script gives her nothing to do. Like the movie, she only comes to life during the musical performances, and for a film that is supposed to be a musical - sorry, "Rock and Roll Fable"- there isn't a lot of time spent actually performing music. They should have hired leads who can sing and just doubled down on being an actual musical; if they did they might be enjoying fat Broadway royalties right now. The art direction on the picture is bonkers, in a good way, and so is Willem Dafoe, who was going nowhere but up from here. The following year he was another memorable villain in a much better movie (To Live and Die in LA), and after that, Platoon etc. Bill Paxton is fine, the great Robert Townsend is in the Sorels, Ed Begley Jr. has a weird short scene, EG Daily is Diane Lane's friend who DOESN'T sing, Amy Madigan as the Lesbian Who Must Not Be Outed... pretty great supporting cast really. A 14 million dollar movie with a ten cent script. It didn't occur to me until watching it again this week, but Streets of Fire fits in pretty well with a group of films that I remember fondly and which would all probably make good episodes of HDTGM: failed action franchises of the early 80s. We're talking Remo: The Adventure Begins, Hal Needham's Megaforce, Ice Pirates, Buckaroo Banzai (I know, it sort of had a sequel with Big Trouble in Little China), the appalling superhero musical The Return of Captain Invincible with Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee, and so on.

Yeah, The Vanishing is what sprang to mind for me. Great original, terrible remake. The king of bad French-to-English remakes, by far, has to be Luc Besson (though they don't usually have the same directors, at least).

So, here's a bit of a mystery. I was curious about the guy who sings "The Day My Baby Died" - apparently he is an actor named Russell ("Rusty") Buchanan. He did a lot of voiceover work. But check out this gem, where he has a small role: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1508662/?ref_=nm_knf_i3 Look at that DVD artwork. LOOK AT IT. And then look at the name of the writer/director; Bob Clark! But.. not the same Bob Clark?! http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1162535/?ref_=tt_ov_dr Weird. Also, amusingly, the IMDb claims that people who like Rhinestone also like F.I.S.T.