theworstbuddhist

When I listened to that bit I thought of Stella but even more so a series called Michael and Michael Have Issues, about Mike Showalter and Michael Ian Black as rival comedy writers working on a show about themselves. Dark and hilarious and of course, dicked around by Comedy Central.

Turns out The Silence of the Lambs is part of the Tales for All series.

What a good boy. What a smart boy. My earliest memories of BNL (before I saw them live for the first and last time around 1992 I think?) is their covers of Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" for a tribute album and Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" on their original cassette. A lot of people still love the Cockburn cover (I'm not one of them) and the other one has not aged well...

One thing I don't think my fellow Canadians have pointed out about these movies (and indeed, pretty much all Canadian films and music and some other media) is the concept of "CanCon" - Canadian Content. Media companies are required to employ Canadian crews and resources in exchange for funding, grants, tax breaks, etc. Radio stations must play a certain percentage of Canadian music. TV stations and cable networks must show a certain percentage of Canadian programming. As I recall, the first Tommy Tricker film was co-sponsored by Canada Post, with kits that you could give kids to get them excited about stamp collecting (which, full disclosure, I absolutely did when I was a kid). This splendid website talks more about the Canada Post angle, and has entries on a lot of other goofy Canadian productions: http://www.canuxploitation.com/review/tommytricker.html As a result, we in Canada used to joke about how certain bands or films were "CanCon" fodder - they existed to create work for someone and maybe they would turn a profit, maybe not. "Your tax dollars at work," we would grumble. This complaint died down as the Canadian film and music industries matured and adopted American approaches to creating those media, especially once our undervalued currency started luring productions from the US to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver for films and TV series, all of which needed experienced crews and support. Those "runaway" productions gave our crews valuable experience so that now, a lot of the time you can't tell (at least, not immediately) if something was made in Canada or not, and I suppose that helped with making them exportable to other countries. There is an extra wrinkle to that when it comes to Quebec, as I mentioned in a previous post, because most of their homegrown media is in French, and they don't have the same barrage of American TV and films that English-speaking Canada does. A lot of their imported media comes from France and Belgium, and that's where they export to as well, not including subbed or dubbed series that could come and go from anywhere.

It's not related to the Wayans movies. I had somehow never heard of this until TCM showed it last night, and wow. That's Deadwood's John Hawkes as a young man going through a carnival haunted house. This movie is... it's like John Cassavetes made a slasher movie. It is so fucking weird. I think it means to be a satire but it looks like Tommy Wiseau shot it and punched up the dialogue.

You just reminded me of Ripping Yarns, so hey, something good came out of this movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpaL65TzYv8

"Draw what you actually see, not what your brain wants to autocomplete" is pretty standard art school advice for sure. It's one of the first tips in Betty Edwards' classic Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Though obviously we didn't have the word "autocomplete" back then.

I humbly recommend a much better insight into Canadian policing in this more recent and much more insane film series: Bon Cop Bad Cop!

All true. Though I think many Canadians who watched YTV in the 90s were watching Are You Afraid of the Dark? as much if not more than Goosebumps.

God, I am so tired of lazy, stupid jokes about Canada. Plenty of things are funny in and about the country. Our so-called "accent"? Our money? Fuck off. Edited to add the following now that I've listened to the rest of it: Celine Dion was a teenager in the 80s, she's a year older than me. She was already being managed by the sketchy much older guy that eventually became her husband. She was a star in Quebec, which essentially has its entire own set of celebrities that do not necessarily cross over to English Canadian stardom. It is ironic/gross to me that this weird old movie about exploited children had Celine doing the soundtrack. I remember seeing a french-language video of hers back in the day called "Trop Jeune pour Amour" - too young for love.

Nice to hear all the love for various comics like Nick Drsano's Sabrina and for the work of Matt Berry, who has been one of my favourites in comedy for a while now. If you haven't seen Snuff Box yet, or Toast of London, you should.

RIP, you crazy bastard. I quite enjoyed both Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, insofar as it is possible to do so, and honestly I would rather watch either of them again than either of Burton's. Though really, I could probably go the rest of my life happily without seeing any Batman movies ever again, except for Mask of the Phantasm, and maybe that crazy looking new one with Edward Cullen.

Not to mention summer camp movies! Little Darlings (uh, maybe hasn't aged well), Meatballs, Wet Hot American Summer, Sleepaway Camp, Friday the 13th.. hm.

Well, I suggest you remedy that ASAP. I feel like because of the obvious metaphor of summer for the prime of one's life, a lot of "coming of age" films probably also make good summer films: Stealing Beauty, Call Me By Your Name, etc.

Dazed and Confused springs to mind. And Midsommar

If nothing else, this episode reminded me to pick up a big bottle of V8 when I was at the store today.

I don't think I could even hatewatch this movie. I'd rather watch actual Nazi propaganda films from the 40s than this. How's that for a poster blurb?

So far this is the understatement of the year.

Just a heads up for anyone who cares to know that Michael Damian has brought us a sequel to High Strung called Free Dance, and it is on Netflix now (in Canada at least, so it's probably there too?) Instead of a violinist and a dancer it's a pianist and a dancer, I guess?

I haven't made a poll before, I hope this works. Please note, endorsing V8 is NOT an endorsement for Clamato.

Spicy hot! I wonder if they sell that in Canada.

This seems like an excellent day to catch up on some Unspooled, especially the episode where Spike Lee is the guest. Peace to all of you this weekend

There were so many terrible "ninja" movies in the 80s but for my money there are none worse than the tales of Ninja Master Gordon by Godfrey Ho:

Haven't had a chance to watch the doc yet but I do recall that ATCQ was famously ensared in an early case about sampling because the used the famous bass hook from Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side. They were allowed to release the song "Can I Kick It" (and arguably, launch their career) but only if they agreed to give Lou all the royalties from that song. Seems pretty harsh now but apparently that was the precedent at the time.

Shouldn't you be at work? ...Wherever it is that you work?