People Tell Me I Look Like Han Solo.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
DVD Review: Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day
THE MOVIE
Ah, the Trailer Park Boys. The beloved Canadian sitcom (which was doing the faux-documentary thing before The Office) ran fro
m 2001 to 2008 (including two TV specials), spawning two feature films, Countdown to Liquor Day being the latter, as well as the official, final, no-really-we-mean-it-this-time end of the Trailer Park Boys. Countdown to Liquor Day picks up as the boys are getting out of jail, two years after being busted at the end of the hour-long 2008 special. Would-be criminal mastermind Julian (John Paul Tremblay) swears he’s going straight for real this time, while the comically stupid Ricky (Robb Wells) tells the parole board up front that he’s planning to go back do growing pot (“I could tell you guys whatever you want to hear, or I can be honest. I’m gonna grow dope, ‘cause that’s what I’m good at. I grow the best dope of anybody I’ve ever met.”), while the bespectacled Bubbles (Mike Smith) just wants to get back to his shed and his kitties. But once they get out, the Boys realize their nemesis, Trailer Park Supervisor Jim Lahey, has transformed their beloved Sunnyvale Trailer Park into a more upscale community. (He also hasn’t had a drink in two years, but the title of the movie gives you a hint as to how that works out.)
Countdown to Liquor Day is clearly meant to the wrap up the series and give the beloved characters a proper send-off. There’s almost a sadness to the movie, a sense that the viewer (as well as the cast and crew) are really saying goodbye to the characters. Trailer Park Boys has never shied away from showing how important the Boys’ family unit is to each of them, but this time it feels
like every character is more willing to come out and say it (there’s a particularly touching scene where the usually too-cool Julian tells Bubbles that he loves him. It’s fairly clear through the run of the show that Julian would do anything for his friends, but to actually have him just say it to Bubbles the way he does is oddly affecting if you’re a fan). Or seeing how furious Ricky (easily the most misanthropic of the Boys, but also somehow the most loveable) gets when he learns that Mr. Lahey and his faithful sidekick/lover Randy (whose huge gut graces the DVD cover, and remains a hilarious visual gag on its own) were responsible for shaving a chunk out of Bubbles’ hair. As much as the scene where Ricky returns the favor to Randy is hilarious (it’s really one of the funniest sequences in the movie), it’s also very clear that Ricky is avenging his friend’s humiliation. There’s even a scene where Ricky breaks down and cries, which is about the last thing I ever expected to happen (it also leads to one of the best parts of the movie, Julian’s “Grade 12 is inside of you” speech).
There’s a tangible feeling throughout the film that this is it, the final Trailer Park Boys story. It’s sort of like Mike Clattenburg (who co-wrote and directed every single episode of the show, as well as all the movies, which is actually a pretty incredible achievement) and co.’s third kick at the can – the final episode of the proper show felt like the finale, as did the subsequent one-hour special, Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys (which is unfortunately still unavailable on DVD). The extended ending of the Trailer Park Boys franchise is a little like the end of the Lord of the Rings movies, but as with the 12-hour fantasy epic, I feel like TPB has earned the right to take its time wrapping everything up.
As much as I’m a fan of the show (read my review of the whole series here), I actually found I didn’t really laugh very much watching Countdown to Liquor Day. Which isn’t really a knock; the movie is very funny, but I found the comedy to be more tonal and character-based rather than laugh-out-loud hilarious (though the movie does have plenty of moments like that as well). I enjoyed Countdown to Liquor Day purely because I got to spend time with these characters again (including my personal fave, the painfully white would-be rapper J-Roc, who steals every scene he’s in and, next to Bubbles, is probably the smartest character on the show…which is sort of sad), and I’m happy to say the movie works very well as a capper to the Trailer Park Boys.
My favorite aspect of Countdown to Liquor Day is sort of subtle (but not really; it’s actually fairly important to the plot), and it marks a definite change in the Trailer Park Boys universe. As in all sitcoms, there’s a status quo to TPB to which things invariably return at the end of if not ev
ery episode, every story arc: Ricky grows dope and is a screw-up, Bubbles lives in his shed with his precious kitties, Mr. Lahey’s a drunken mess, and Julian is an ostensible small-time criminal mastermind who always has a plan and is generally looked up to by everyone in Sunnyvale. But Countdown to Liquor Day begins by flipping one very important part of that premise: now, after years of ridiculous failures that have landed himself and his buddies in jail numerous times, just about everyone in Sunnyvale views Julian as a loser. It’s remarkable how much this changes the dynamics of the characters, as now virtually nobody in Sunnyvale has any time for Julian or his latest scheme (which is admittedly probably his dumbest plan yet), whereas before, practically everyone in the park would be lining up to work for him. Countdown to Liquor Day has reality beginning to seep into Sunnyvale.
This is definitely more than an hour-and-a-half episode of the show; Clattenburg adds enough small touches to Countdown to Liquor Day (shooting in lots of different locations, the use of music cues like “I Fall to Pieces” when Randy breaks up with Mr. Lahey, a romantic subplot for Bubbles) that it feels like a larger-scale TPB story. The climactic bank heist/shootout/car chase is easily the most elaborate setpiece in Trailer Park Boys history. (Also, it has Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson in a cameo as a cross-dressing undercover cop.)
More than anything, Countdown to Liquor Day feels like a victory lap for fans (and I mean this in the best possible way). As much as you don’t really need to have seen the show or previous movie to appreciate the comedy (context isn’t really that important to the gag at the beginning that sees Ricky and Julian walking out of jail, sneaking off the prison bus and immediately stealing a corrections van and robbing a liquor store after swearing to the parole board they’re going straight), most of the humor comes from familiarity with the characters and their relationships with each other. If this is your first introduction to the Trailer Park Boys, most of it will probably be lost on you. But if you’re not a fan and any of this sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend you seek out the show. It’s fantastic.
GRADE: A-
THE EXTRAS
All the Trailer Park Boys DVDs have lots of extras, and Countdown to Liquor Day is no different. There’s great a collection of deleted scenes, as well as an alternate ending that I daresay is actually better and funnier than the one in the finished film. There’s also a decent-sized mak
ing-of documentary and featurettes on the car chase and Randy’s haircut.
The only real disappointment is the commentary track. In previous Trailer Park Boys DVDs, Clattenburg and/or the cast (sometimes in character, sometimes not) almost always provide commentary, but here they elect to let some fans from a TPB fan forum provide commentary. I can understand if after hours and hours of commentaries, Clattenburg feels he has nothing more to say about the franchise, but the resulting track amounts to little more than boring people laughing at and pointing out jokes. It’s really, really bad, and not interesting at all.
Overall though, Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day is a very solid DVD for a hilarious movie that caps off one of the best – and most important – shows in Canadian television history.
Ah, the Trailer Park Boys. The beloved Canadian sitcom (which was doing the faux-documentary thing before The Office) ran fro
m 2001 to 2008 (including two TV specials), spawning two feature films, Countdown to Liquor Day being the latter, as well as the official, final, no-really-we-mean-it-this-time end of the Trailer Park Boys. Countdown to Liquor Day picks up as the boys are getting out of jail, two years after being busted at the end of the hour-long 2008 special. Would-be criminal mastermind Julian (John Paul Tremblay) swears he’s going straight for real this time, while the comically stupid Ricky (Robb Wells) tells the parole board up front that he’s planning to go back do growing pot (“I could tell you guys whatever you want to hear, or I can be honest. I’m gonna grow dope, ‘cause that’s what I’m good at. I grow the best dope of anybody I’ve ever met.”), while the bespectacled Bubbles (Mike Smith) just wants to get back to his shed and his kitties. But once they get out, the Boys realize their nemesis, Trailer Park Supervisor Jim Lahey, has transformed their beloved Sunnyvale Trailer Park into a more upscale community. (He also hasn’t had a drink in two years, but the title of the movie gives you a hint as to how that works out.)Countdown to Liquor Day is clearly meant to the wrap up the series and give the beloved characters a proper send-off. There’s almost a sadness to the movie, a sense that the viewer (as well as the cast and crew) are really saying goodbye to the characters. Trailer Park Boys has never shied away from showing how important the Boys’ family unit is to each of them, but this time it feels
like every character is more willing to come out and say it (there’s a particularly touching scene where the usually too-cool Julian tells Bubbles that he loves him. It’s fairly clear through the run of the show that Julian would do anything for his friends, but to actually have him just say it to Bubbles the way he does is oddly affecting if you’re a fan). Or seeing how furious Ricky (easily the most misanthropic of the Boys, but also somehow the most loveable) gets when he learns that Mr. Lahey and his faithful sidekick/lover Randy (whose huge gut graces the DVD cover, and remains a hilarious visual gag on its own) were responsible for shaving a chunk out of Bubbles’ hair. As much as the scene where Ricky returns the favor to Randy is hilarious (it’s really one of the funniest sequences in the movie), it’s also very clear that Ricky is avenging his friend’s humiliation. There’s even a scene where Ricky breaks down and cries, which is about the last thing I ever expected to happen (it also leads to one of the best parts of the movie, Julian’s “Grade 12 is inside of you” speech).There’s a tangible feeling throughout the film that this is it, the final Trailer Park Boys story. It’s sort of like Mike Clattenburg (who co-wrote and directed every single episode of the show, as well as all the movies, which is actually a pretty incredible achievement) and co.’s third kick at the can – the final episode of the proper show felt like the finale, as did the subsequent one-hour special, Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys (which is unfortunately still unavailable on DVD). The extended ending of the Trailer Park Boys franchise is a little like the end of the Lord of the Rings movies, but as with the 12-hour fantasy epic, I feel like TPB has earned the right to take its time wrapping everything up.
As much as I’m a fan of the show (read my review of the whole series here), I actually found I didn’t really laugh very much watching Countdown to Liquor Day. Which isn’t really a knock; the movie is very funny, but I found the comedy to be more tonal and character-based rather than laugh-out-loud hilarious (though the movie does have plenty of moments like that as well). I enjoyed Countdown to Liquor Day purely because I got to spend time with these characters again (including my personal fave, the painfully white would-be rapper J-Roc, who steals every scene he’s in and, next to Bubbles, is probably the smartest character on the show…which is sort of sad), and I’m happy to say the movie works very well as a capper to the Trailer Park Boys.
My favorite aspect of Countdown to Liquor Day is sort of subtle (but not really; it’s actually fairly important to the plot), and it marks a definite change in the Trailer Park Boys universe. As in all sitcoms, there’s a status quo to TPB to which things invariably return at the end of if not ev
ery episode, every story arc: Ricky grows dope and is a screw-up, Bubbles lives in his shed with his precious kitties, Mr. Lahey’s a drunken mess, and Julian is an ostensible small-time criminal mastermind who always has a plan and is generally looked up to by everyone in Sunnyvale. But Countdown to Liquor Day begins by flipping one very important part of that premise: now, after years of ridiculous failures that have landed himself and his buddies in jail numerous times, just about everyone in Sunnyvale views Julian as a loser. It’s remarkable how much this changes the dynamics of the characters, as now virtually nobody in Sunnyvale has any time for Julian or his latest scheme (which is admittedly probably his dumbest plan yet), whereas before, practically everyone in the park would be lining up to work for him. Countdown to Liquor Day has reality beginning to seep into Sunnyvale.This is definitely more than an hour-and-a-half episode of the show; Clattenburg adds enough small touches to Countdown to Liquor Day (shooting in lots of different locations, the use of music cues like “I Fall to Pieces” when Randy breaks up with Mr. Lahey, a romantic subplot for Bubbles) that it feels like a larger-scale TPB story. The climactic bank heist/shootout/car chase is easily the most elaborate setpiece in Trailer Park Boys history. (Also, it has Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson in a cameo as a cross-dressing undercover cop.)
More than anything, Countdown to Liquor Day feels like a victory lap for fans (and I mean this in the best possible way). As much as you don’t really need to have seen the show or previous movie to appreciate the comedy (context isn’t really that important to the gag at the beginning that sees Ricky and Julian walking out of jail, sneaking off the prison bus and immediately stealing a corrections van and robbing a liquor store after swearing to the parole board they’re going straight), most of the humor comes from familiarity with the characters and their relationships with each other. If this is your first introduction to the Trailer Park Boys, most of it will probably be lost on you. But if you’re not a fan and any of this sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend you seek out the show. It’s fantastic.
GRADE: A-
THE EXTRAS
All the Trailer Park Boys DVDs have lots of extras, and Countdown to Liquor Day is no different. There’s great a collection of deleted scenes, as well as an alternate ending that I daresay is actually better and funnier than the one in the finished film. There’s also a decent-sized mak
ing-of documentary and featurettes on the car chase and Randy’s haircut.The only real disappointment is the commentary track. In previous Trailer Park Boys DVDs, Clattenburg and/or the cast (sometimes in character, sometimes not) almost always provide commentary, but here they elect to let some fans from a TPB fan forum provide commentary. I can understand if after hours and hours of commentaries, Clattenburg feels he has nothing more to say about the franchise, but the resulting track amounts to little more than boring people laughing at and pointing out jokes. It’s really, really bad, and not interesting at all.
Overall though, Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day is a very solid DVD for a hilarious movie that caps off one of the best – and most important – shows in Canadian television history.
Labels: Canadian cinema, comedy, DVD review, Mockumentary
¶ 10:14 AM 1 Comments
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
DVD Review: Trailer Park Boys: The Complete Seasons
THE SHOW
It’s great being Canadian. Free health-care (eat it, America!), good beer (have another taste!), a national sport not plagued by substance-abuse controversies, and a Tim Hortons on every corner. And The Trailer Park Boys. For those unfamiliar, Trailer Park Boys is a Canadian sitcom about a trio of small-time criminals who live in a trailer park in Nova Scotia, where they hatch a series of comically inept schemes that j
ust about always end up with one or more of the boys in jail by the end of the season. It ran for seven seasons here in Canada, and evolved from being a beloved cult hit into one of the country’s top-rated homegrown shows. (It also ran on BBC America at some point, if I’m not mistaken, though I have no idea if it’s still shown in the U.S.; either way I understand it has a cult of fans in the States as well.) It’s a really funny show that did the fake-documentary thing before The Office did (the U.S. version anyway; TPB debuted the same year as the British Office bowed in the U.K.), and the entire seven-season run has been collected into one set by Alliance Films.
Trailer Park Boys is a pop-cultural institution here in Canada; mention the names Ricky, Julian or Bubbles to most Canadians and they’ll almost immediately know who you’re talking about. While the show isn’t about Canada by any means – aside from a couple of tossed-off references to the U.S. border or places like Dartmouth, the fact that the show is set in Canada is pretty much never mentioned – it’s filled with swearing and drug references, and is otherwise filled with precisely the sorts of thing that would make U.S. censors blanch (the boys sell – and smoke – copious amounts of pot and hash), and an overall scrappy, blue-collar aesthetic that we hockey-loving Canucks can really get behind.
The show itself follows three petty criminals who grew up together at Sunnyvale Trailer Park: the endearingly dim-witted Ricky, who specializes in growing dope and hilariously mispronouncing words; Julian, the would-be mastermind of all their schemes, who is literally never without a rum and coke in his hand; and Bubbles, their good-natured, kitty-loving, bespectacled sidekick who’s probably smarter than the other two put together. Together the boys hatch a series of season-long scams to try to scrape together some money (often with the goal of making enough money to buy the trailer park, so that they can continue to run their scams with relative impunity) while trying to avoid Sunnyvale’s trailer park supervisor, the drunken Mr. Lahey, an ex-cop kicked off the force for his excessive drinking, and his own sidekick (and lover), a former male prostitute-turned-assistant trailer park supervisor known only as Randy. Throw in an assortment of suitably quirky supporting characters (like the wannabe-rapper J-Roc and Ricky’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Lucy, also the mother of his daughter, and the boys’ loyal lapdogs Corey and Trevor), and you’ve got a wonderfully off-kilter sitcom.
The most important thing to note about The Trailer Park Boys is that it's just really funny. Every episode of the show (as well as the two TV specials and the pair of feature films) is directed by series co-creator Mike Clattenburg (the show is very improv-heavy, and most of the key actors are credited as writers as well), and having one guy behind the camera for every episode lends the show a uniform look and feel. Clattenburg and company stick pretty dutifully to the fake-documentary angle, and the lack of a laugh track and more traditional sitcom trappings make Trailer Park Boys unlike almost any other TV show.
One of the things that struck me while rewatching the entire series (the seasons run from six to 10 half-hour episodes in length) is how much heart the show actually has. Not unlike the early days of The Simpsons, it’s easy to focus on the sleazier (or as the boys themselves would say, the greasier) aspects of the show and miss the fact that the boys really do care about each other. Julian and Ricky often go to great lengths to cheer Bubbles up when he’s down (or, worse, when he's facing jail time because one of their schemes has gone awry), and Julian and Bubbles consistently make personal sacrifices for the sake of Ricky and his relationship with Lucy and their daughter, Trinity. Even Mr. Lahey and Randy put aside their differences with the boys late in the series when Sunnyvale itself is threatened by crooked cops (sort of like when the X-Men and Magneto have to team up against a common foe). It sounds cliché to say the park itself is a character, but Sunnyvale is at the center of many of the stories, so it’s a case where the cliché is actually accurate.
The only drawback to the The Trailer Park Boys: The Complete Seasons collection is that it doesn’t include the hilarious Christmas special (which is available separately as a standalone DVD), or the TV movie that wrapped the series’ run, Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys. It’s just the show itself. Which is great, but I can’t help but think an even-more-comprehensive Trailer Park Boys DVD collection that includes the two theatrical films (the latter of which is due in Canadian cinemas this fall), as well as all the two TV specials. Until then though, this set will have to do for TPB fans, and speaking as one myself, it’s pretty awesome.
GRADE: A-
THE EXTRAS
The Trailer Park Boys: The Complete Seasons is just the individual two-disc season sets collected in an admittedly awesome little cooler emblazoned with the TPB logo and a marijuana leaf. It's pretty sweet.
The upside is that the sets themselves all have pretty nice extras. There’s commentary on select episodes across the seasons (some with the boys in character, some where they’re just themselves, the actors), and the featurettes strike a nice balance between being informative (each season has a behind-the-scenes mini-documentary about the creation of that season) as well as just silly (outtakes and bits like a collection of all of Ricky’s pratfalls that season – one of the show’s better running gags is Ricky’s propensity to fall down at random times). Overall these are great DVDs, and a collection of the entire show will be a welcome addition to the DVD collections of Trailer Park Boys fans. If you already have all the DVDs, wait for the bigger set presumably bigger set coming in the future. If you haven’t checked out The Trailer Park Boys yet, this collection is the perfect place to start.
It’s great being Canadian. Free health-care (eat it, America!), good beer (have another taste!), a national sport not plagued by substance-abuse controversies, and a Tim Hortons on every corner. And The Trailer Park Boys. For those unfamiliar, Trailer Park Boys is a Canadian sitcom about a trio of small-time criminals who live in a trailer park in Nova Scotia, where they hatch a series of comically inept schemes that j
ust about always end up with one or more of the boys in jail by the end of the season. It ran for seven seasons here in Canada, and evolved from being a beloved cult hit into one of the country’s top-rated homegrown shows. (It also ran on BBC America at some point, if I’m not mistaken, though I have no idea if it’s still shown in the U.S.; either way I understand it has a cult of fans in the States as well.) It’s a really funny show that did the fake-documentary thing before The Office did (the U.S. version anyway; TPB debuted the same year as the British Office bowed in the U.K.), and the entire seven-season run has been collected into one set by Alliance Films.Trailer Park Boys is a pop-cultural institution here in Canada; mention the names Ricky, Julian or Bubbles to most Canadians and they’ll almost immediately know who you’re talking about. While the show isn’t about Canada by any means – aside from a couple of tossed-off references to the U.S. border or places like Dartmouth, the fact that the show is set in Canada is pretty much never mentioned – it’s filled with swearing and drug references, and is otherwise filled with precisely the sorts of thing that would make U.S. censors blanch (the boys sell – and smoke – copious amounts of pot and hash), and an overall scrappy, blue-collar aesthetic that we hockey-loving Canucks can really get behind.
The show itself follows three petty criminals who grew up together at Sunnyvale Trailer Park: the endearingly dim-witted Ricky, who specializes in growing dope and hilariously mispronouncing words; Julian, the would-be mastermind of all their schemes, who is literally never without a rum and coke in his hand; and Bubbles, their good-natured, kitty-loving, bespectacled sidekick who’s probably smarter than the other two put together. Together the boys hatch a series of season-long scams to try to scrape together some money (often with the goal of making enough money to buy the trailer park, so that they can continue to run their scams with relative impunity) while trying to avoid Sunnyvale’s trailer park supervisor, the drunken Mr. Lahey, an ex-cop kicked off the force for his excessive drinking, and his own sidekick (and lover), a former male prostitute-turned-assistant trailer park supervisor known only as Randy. Throw in an assortment of suitably quirky supporting characters (like the wannabe-rapper J-Roc and Ricky’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Lucy, also the mother of his daughter, and the boys’ loyal lapdogs Corey and Trevor), and you’ve got a wonderfully off-kilter sitcom.
The most important thing to note about The Trailer Park Boys is that it's just really funny. Every episode of the show (as well as the two TV specials and the pair of feature films) is directed by series co-creator Mike Clattenburg (the show is very improv-heavy, and most of the key actors are credited as writers as well), and having one guy behind the camera for every episode lends the show a uniform look and feel. Clattenburg and company stick pretty dutifully to the fake-documentary angle, and the lack of a laugh track and more traditional sitcom trappings make Trailer Park Boys unlike almost any other TV show.
One of the things that struck me while rewatching the entire series (the seasons run from six to 10 half-hour episodes in length) is how much heart the show actually has. Not unlike the early days of The Simpsons, it’s easy to focus on the sleazier (or as the boys themselves would say, the greasier) aspects of the show and miss the fact that the boys really do care about each other. Julian and Ricky often go to great lengths to cheer Bubbles up when he’s down (or, worse, when he's facing jail time because one of their schemes has gone awry), and Julian and Bubbles consistently make personal sacrifices for the sake of Ricky and his relationship with Lucy and their daughter, Trinity. Even Mr. Lahey and Randy put aside their differences with the boys late in the series when Sunnyvale itself is threatened by crooked cops (sort of like when the X-Men and Magneto have to team up against a common foe). It sounds cliché to say the park itself is a character, but Sunnyvale is at the center of many of the stories, so it’s a case where the cliché is actually accurate.
The only drawback to the The Trailer Park Boys: The Complete Seasons collection is that it doesn’t include the hilarious Christmas special (which is available separately as a standalone DVD), or the TV movie that wrapped the series’ run, Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys. It’s just the show itself. Which is great, but I can’t help but think an even-more-comprehensive Trailer Park Boys DVD collection that includes the two theatrical films (the latter of which is due in Canadian cinemas this fall), as well as all the two TV specials. Until then though, this set will have to do for TPB fans, and speaking as one myself, it’s pretty awesome.
GRADE: A-
THE EXTRAS
The Trailer Park Boys: The Complete Seasons is just the individual two-disc season sets collected in an admittedly awesome little cooler emblazoned with the TPB logo and a marijuana leaf. It's pretty sweet.
The upside is that the sets themselves all have pretty nice extras. There’s commentary on select episodes across the seasons (some with the boys in character, some where they’re just themselves, the actors), and the featurettes strike a nice balance between being informative (each season has a behind-the-scenes mini-documentary about the creation of that season) as well as just silly (outtakes and bits like a collection of all of Ricky’s pratfalls that season – one of the show’s better running gags is Ricky’s propensity to fall down at random times). Overall these are great DVDs, and a collection of the entire show will be a welcome addition to the DVD collections of Trailer Park Boys fans. If you already have all the DVDs, wait for the bigger set presumably bigger set coming in the future. If you haven’t checked out The Trailer Park Boys yet, this collection is the perfect place to start.
Labels: Canadian cinema, comedy, DVD review, Mockumentary, TV on DVD
¶ 11:58 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Hard Core Logo sequel(s)
In my review of Bruce McDonald’s unique drama The Tracey Fragments, I spent a paragraph gushing about how much I love his 1996 “rock n’ road” movie Hard Core Logo. It’s one of my all-time favourites, though don’t let the marketing lines referencing Spinal Tap on the American DVD cover fool you – it’s not a comedy. True, it’s a “mockumentary” about a rock band, and there are parts in it that are incredibly funny, but the film is really about things like friendship, betrayal, anger and the family-like bond between bandmates. It’s a brilliant little movie, one I love dearly, so I was pretty stoked when I read that McDonald is planning a sequel, which he hopes to start shooting next year. (I should mention that there’s some spoiler-type information about the original in the article.) And not only one; McDonald is hoping to create a four- or even five-film “juggernaut” out of it.
One sequel to Hard Core Logo would be awesome enough, but three, possibly four? Granted, they may not live up the first, and with the careers of lead actors Hugh Dillon and Callum Keith Rennie currently in high gear – Dillon currently stars in two Canadian TV dramas, and hosts a third show about comic books on IFC Canada, and Rennie is a regular on Battlestar Galactica – McDonald says making sure everyone’s schedule matches up will probably be a challenge. But hey, if George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford can get back together for another Indiana Jones movie, this should be easy. And I’m sure McDonald could make four kickass Hard Core Logo sequels for about the same amount they paid Ford's stand-in on the Crystal Skull set.
Below is the original trailer for Hard Core Logo. If you’re into rock movies, it's worth your time. It’s the best one I’ve seen.
One sequel to Hard Core Logo would be awesome enough, but three, possibly four? Granted, they may not live up the first, and with the careers of lead actors Hugh Dillon and Callum Keith Rennie currently in high gear – Dillon currently stars in two Canadian TV dramas, and hosts a third show about comic books on IFC Canada, and Rennie is a regular on Battlestar Galactica – McDonald says making sure everyone’s schedule matches up will probably be a challenge. But hey, if George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford can get back together for another Indiana Jones movie, this should be easy. And I’m sure McDonald could make four kickass Hard Core Logo sequels for about the same amount they paid Ford's stand-in on the Crystal Skull set.
Below is the original trailer for Hard Core Logo. If you’re into rock movies, it's worth your time. It’s the best one I’ve seen.
Labels: Bruce McDonald, Canadian cinema, Mockumentary, Movie news
¶ 11:41 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
A Grand Old Time
This isn't a proper DVD review, but every now and then, in my travels through the world of cinema geekery, I come across a cool or weird (or in this case, hilarious) little movie that I feel the need to go on about, and The Grand is such a movie. It's a mostly-improvised comedy about a winner-take-all Las Vegas poker tournament with a cast that I wouldn't really describe as "all star," but there were very few actors who passed through the frame that I didn't recognize from somewhere.
As an improv "mockumentary," there are lots of similarites between The Grand and Christopher Guest's improv comedies like Waiting For Guffman and A Mighty Wind, something director/co-writer Zak Penn was apparently going for, or at least so sayeth Wikipedia. It's not as good as those brilliant little masterpieces, but it had me laughing my ass off for most of its running time. Check it out if you're looking for something to chuckle at. It co-stars acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) as The German, an intense, uh, German who has to kill a living creature once a day (he travels with several bunnies and other small animals) to maintain his edge, which, believe me, is a crazy enough thing to type, let alone watch.
Also, I'm sorry about the title of this post. I know I'm better than that.
As an improv "mockumentary," there are lots of similarites between The Grand and Christopher Guest's improv comedies like Waiting For Guffman and A Mighty Wind, something director/co-writer Zak Penn was apparently going for, or at least so sayeth Wikipedia. It's not as good as those brilliant little masterpieces, but it had me laughing my ass off for most of its running time. Check it out if you're looking for something to chuckle at. It co-stars acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) as The German, an intense, uh, German who has to kill a living creature once a day (he travels with several bunnies and other small animals) to maintain his edge, which, believe me, is a crazy enough thing to type, let alone watch.
Also, I'm sorry about the title of this post. I know I'm better than that.
Labels: improv, Mockumentary
¶ 2:12 PM 0 Comments
