Author: Peter

Preview: Be Kind Rewind

I dare you not to laugh when the song plays, and double dare you not to when you see where it goes.

I can definitely see a similar attitude to parts of writer/director Michel Gondry‘s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, although I suspect it’s not going to live up to that film (which Gondry co-wrote with Charlie Kaufman). My hesitation also comes from the fact that Be Kind Rewind is being released at the end of January, which can be a sign it’s not going to live up to its trailer; check out the movies in IMDb’s list of historical box office openings to see the sort of stuff that’s released in the dead of winter.

Peter J.’s Top [mumble] Movies Circa Now-ish

Jeez, these guys are organized; I’m not sure I could come up with anything like a top 20 list, especially one that ranks the movies relative to one another. I do have an informal list of films that I’ll re-watch, though, and a fairly representative excerpt follows:

  • Annie Hall
  • The Iron Giant
  • Lola rennt (aka Run Lola Run)
  • Magnolia
  • Citizen Kane
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • La vita è bella (aka Life is Beautiful)
  • Contact
  • Monty Python and The Holy Grail
  • TRON
  • Wag the Dog
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey

I’m a little surprised at the number of flicks listed on the other two lists that I haven’t seen: The African Queen, In the Name of the Father, The Cider House Rules, Fearless, Lone Star, Schindler’s List and Wonder Boys. Apocalypse Now and Young Frankenstein would’ve been on that list until about a month ago; neither cracked the re-watch list per se, although I might check out AN: Redux out of curiosity.

Update: Looks like Kimota94 posted another list while I was writing. Add 12 more movies to my haven’t-seen list and one (The Godfather) to the just-seen.

John Woo’s Once a Thief

  1. Mac: Smart as Einstein, legs to die for…
  2. Victor: …and her own stun grenades.
  3. Mac: The total woman.

Yup, it’s been a decade since John Woo’s Once a Thief was on the air, but thanks to Showcase Action it lives again. Based on the movie of the same name, it’s a likable, campy, funny show that combines noir with martial arts to a Tarantino-esque music soundtrack.

Sandrine Holt and Ivan Sergei play Li Ann and Mac, former thieves/lovers who leave a Chinese “Triad” family known as the Tangs. They’re partnered up with disgraced cop—and Li Ann’s new fiancé—Victor (Nicholas Lea) to form a team that performs white-hat operations for “The Director” (Jennifer Dale) under the aegis of a mysterious, unnamed government agency. Add in the sadistic senior agent Dobrinsky, spoiled society girl Jackie Janczyk and the decidedly odd assassins/cleaners Murphy and Camier and you’ve got a stylish action comedy drama that’s often just plain weird.

Once a Thief only had a single-season run of 22 episodes, but it’s definitely worth checking out. Only the two-part pilot and first episode have aired on Action so far, so it’s not too late to get into it. It’s shown on a somewhat irregular schedule that I believe is supposed to resemble 7am and 6pm every Saturday and Sunday, but set your PVRs to be sure.

London Fringe Festival awards 2007

Since they haven’t appeared on the London (Ontario) Fringe festival site yet, and the forums (where I posted the information previously) have been shut down already, here are the awards as I was able to hear them at Club Fringe on August 6:

Best VisualFringe Artist
Janice Johnston
Most Daring Performance
The Medium
Funniest Show
Fully Insured
Spirit of the Fringe
The Truth According to Morro and Jasp
Producer’s Pick
Stand Up, Monkey Poet
Best Solo Performance
Poofy Du Vey in “Burden of Poof”

There was at least one more award, but I can’t remember it at the moment.

Astute readers will notice the presences of Poofy and Morro and Jasp in the list of award winners, which just happen to be two of the shows I recommended. To that recommendation I now graciously add: told ya so!

One last bit of Fringe-y goodness: Poofy Du Vey (aka Courtney Cunningham) just posted the Edmonton Journal’s four-star (out of four) review, which matches the five-star (out of five) one from the London Free Press.

Say, aren’t you…

(This is a post from The Studio Has a Few Notes, as are most of the entertainment-related ones from the last few days.)

Stretching the mandate of the blog once again, I’ve recently met two people who remind me strongly of movie and TV actresses.

First is London singer-songwriter Karla Rexer, who I initially (and still) think could be Rosalita Whyte‘s twin. When I saw her the other night, though, I realized that there’s another striking similarity, which Matt will appreciate: she’s got the same crooked smile as Tina Fey. (Who, by the way, wrote the script for Mean Girls, a movie which featured London-born actress Rachel McAdams, who I once met walking along Queen Street West in Toronto while I was there to see Lenni perform and stupidly didn’t think to invite to the show.)

(Whew, all the name-dropping and run-on-sentencing has tired me out!)

Second, as I mentioned in an earlier comment, I met Holly Rancher this evening. It doesn’t quite come out in this picture, but she could easily have doubled for Kirsten Dunst in the Spider-Man flicks.

Dear Harvard

My friend Claire Jenkins has placed three songs from her upcoming album, Crow’s Nest/Nid de Pie, in the pilot of a program called Dear Harvard. According to sources it’s a riches to rags drama about a privileged New York high school girl whose life falls apart when her father is arrested for insider trading. I haven’t been able to find much more online except for casting notices, a note that Danny Gerber will play Carter, and the information that it’s being executive produced by Anne Jarmain. I’d guess a network like CW is the likely target… and it just so happens there’s a Veronica Mars-sized hole in their schedule….

Speaking of CW, a few months ago I sang with—okay, near—Claire and James Carrington, whose song Ache appeared in a sixth-season episode of Smallville titled Noir. You can’t hear the result yet, though; that’s not because the song is on Claire’s unreleased CD, but because it’s on Lenni Jabour’s! Until you can listen for yourselves, remember: don’t go hustling people strange to you, even if you do got a two-piece custom-made pool cue.

Movie scripts

Dave Shea has found a number of typography + motion experiments on YouTube and elsewhere. Of the whole set that Dave links to I think the two movie clips are my favourites, because they’re not just about making the words move, they’re about telling the story with the type. (Note that the Brazil one isn’t related to the movie, which is disappointing; I’m sure there’s a “What does Marsellus Wallace look like?” scene that could be re-visualized to good effect.)

Slings and Arrows

Slings and Arrows was a 2003 miniseries about the goings-on—the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as it were—at a Shakespearean theatre festival which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Ontario’s long-running Stratford Festival. In a rare occurrence for a Canadian television series, particularly one with such a “highbrow” premise, it turned out to be popular, so much so that it was revived for two more six-episode runs.

Why do I mention it? Well, because it was cleverly written (by Mark McKinney, Susan Coyne and Bob Martin) as a darkly-comedic drama, well-acted by Paul Gross, Martha Burns and Stephen Ouimette, as well as a host of other talented Canadians including Rachel McAdams, Don McKellar, Colm Feore, Sarah Polley and William Hutt… and because the third-season DVD arrived in my mailbox today. Joy!