This Post is Brought to You By The Canadian Content Laws
So...Canada seems to have some stuff going for it. Artistically speaking. I feel a little embarrassed about this, because I swear I always did know that my fellow Canucks were capable of producing greatness, but...I hadn't really bothered to check that out. I do count The Sweet Hereafter as one of my very favorite films, if only because it is haunting and disturbing and beautiful. And I wanted to do my MA or PhD in Canadian lit once upon a time, so the whole Canadian-author angle is well-covered territory. (Points for me - I'm reading Jane Urquhart right now! And maybe Margaret Atwood soon!) But because of certain internet circles I've been traveling in lately, I've gotten to see more homegrown films and TV shows than I've really been exposed to before. So,
Hard Core Logo
Right. I'd heard of this one before, and I'd thought it was a Canadian version of This is Spinal Tap, or at least a poor man's Fubar. But no. This was a film that captures the naked hostility and aggression of punk music, distills it, and makes it into one damn gritty, low-down dirty paean to lost love, lost opportunity, and all the awful way we betray the people we care about the most. The story is a simple one: infamous Vancouver punk band Hard Core Logo gets together for the first time in five years for a benefit concert. They decide to reunite for one last tour of the Canadian west, and a documentary filmmaker is on hand to capture the messy spiral of drug use and interpersonal fallout that results. This film is one of the few I've seen that makes use of the cold, dead spaces between our cities; for those of you who have seen it, it is completely accurate in the way it captures the disconnected sense of alienation and claustrophobia inherent in making the long drive from Vancouver to Calgary late at night in the winter. The Rockies, the prairies and the familiar skyline of Calgary (with its CN tower and Saddledome) seem oddly juxtaposed with the film's punk-rock subject matter, but for me it fits perfectly. If anything comes close to echoing the nihilism of punk's darkest beats, then I think it can be found somewhere on Highway 97 North at 3am in December.
The performances at the centre of the film hold everything together: Hugh Dillon (lead singer for Toronto's The Headstones, who most famously did a great cover of the Traveling Wilbury's "Tweeter and the Monkeyman" - or vice-versa) is Joe Dick, HCL's dangerously charismatic lead singer and key songwriter. Callum Keith Rennie is Billy Talent, the soft-spoken lead guitarist who jeopardizes his shot at the big time in LA when he's drawn back into his dysfunctional friendship with Joe. The other two slots are rounded out by bipolar John Oxenberger (who goes off his lithium and lets certain ugly secrets slip) and foul redneck Pipefitter. So much happens in and around these characters that I think the film deserves several re-watchings (and, okay, especially several reviews of this scene in particular, because *guh*) but the thing that struck me the most was how everything - the punk rock, the sex, the drugs, the grungy surroundings - are all just set dressing for a portrait of male socio-sexual dysfunction. I can see why the dynamic has struck such a cord with my fellow fangirls (um, is it okay to admit that Kellie Matthews' Northern Comfort had me in tears?) and I wish I'd seen this film back when we were tackling similar subject matter in my Film Theorizes Difference graduate seminar. It's making me reconsider a lot of the ways male homosocial relationships are figured in our society, particularly in the music industry, and maybe it's not something I can articulate in a LJ post, but I think I'll want to explore it from an academic angle. Anyway, rent this film if you can find it (ignaz_wisdom tracked it down at a Blockbuster years ago, so I think it's available to some degree in the States as a bare-bones DVD edition). It's worth checking out.
Double Happiness, Flower and Garnet
I downloaded these and somehow the files got cut off after an hour and a half, but I enjoyed them both. The performances in Double Happiness were great (Sandra Oh! How I love you and your sass! And CKR as an English MA student! *adores*) and I liked the early-'90s take on issues of ethnicity and race in Vancouver. Flower and Garnet was endearingly Canadian in it's oddness. I got a Sweet Hereafter vibe from it; those looming mountains (central interior of BC, right? Maybe filmed near Kamloops?) and weirdly incestuous relationships kinda creeped me out and drew me in at the same time, just like Sweet Hereafter. I'm also watching Tales of the City right now, which violates the CanCon point of this post, but it has a young Paul Gross in it, so that counts, right? I'm watching purely because of Kellie and Aukestral's Shadows Fade, but it's as good as a 1990s-produced, 1970s-set PBS miniseries can be. Plus I have a girlcrush on Laura Linney. And I'm hoping it'll pick up in the second part.
Okay, Back to your regularly scheduled programming. I have to do a new dS rec for crack_van, so that needs to get written up soon. I'd like to go for something short and funny, so any recommendations would be appreciated. I've got five or six long angsty things picked out, but I don't want to be a one-trick pony. Any ideas, fangirls?
Alrighty, off to bed. No more waxing poetic about HCL. But again, this scene. Jesus.
Hard Core Logo
Right. I'd heard of this one before, and I'd thought it was a Canadian version of This is Spinal Tap, or at least a poor man's Fubar. But no. This was a film that captures the naked hostility and aggression of punk music, distills it, and makes it into one damn gritty, low-down dirty paean to lost love, lost opportunity, and all the awful way we betray the people we care about the most. The story is a simple one: infamous Vancouver punk band Hard Core Logo gets together for the first time in five years for a benefit concert. They decide to reunite for one last tour of the Canadian west, and a documentary filmmaker is on hand to capture the messy spiral of drug use and interpersonal fallout that results. This film is one of the few I've seen that makes use of the cold, dead spaces between our cities; for those of you who have seen it, it is completely accurate in the way it captures the disconnected sense of alienation and claustrophobia inherent in making the long drive from Vancouver to Calgary late at night in the winter. The Rockies, the prairies and the familiar skyline of Calgary (with its CN tower and Saddledome) seem oddly juxtaposed with the film's punk-rock subject matter, but for me it fits perfectly. If anything comes close to echoing the nihilism of punk's darkest beats, then I think it can be found somewhere on Highway 97 North at 3am in December.
The performances at the centre of the film hold everything together: Hugh Dillon (lead singer for Toronto's The Headstones, who most famously did a great cover of the Traveling Wilbury's "Tweeter and the Monkeyman" - or vice-versa) is Joe Dick, HCL's dangerously charismatic lead singer and key songwriter. Callum Keith Rennie is Billy Talent, the soft-spoken lead guitarist who jeopardizes his shot at the big time in LA when he's drawn back into his dysfunctional friendship with Joe. The other two slots are rounded out by bipolar John Oxenberger (who goes off his lithium and lets certain ugly secrets slip) and foul redneck Pipefitter. So much happens in and around these characters that I think the film deserves several re-watchings (and, okay, especially several reviews of this scene in particular, because *guh*) but the thing that struck me the most was how everything - the punk rock, the sex, the drugs, the grungy surroundings - are all just set dressing for a portrait of male socio-sexual dysfunction. I can see why the dynamic has struck such a cord with my fellow fangirls (um, is it okay to admit that Kellie Matthews' Northern Comfort had me in tears?) and I wish I'd seen this film back when we were tackling similar subject matter in my Film Theorizes Difference graduate seminar. It's making me reconsider a lot of the ways male homosocial relationships are figured in our society, particularly in the music industry, and maybe it's not something I can articulate in a LJ post, but I think I'll want to explore it from an academic angle. Anyway, rent this film if you can find it (ignaz_wisdom tracked it down at a Blockbuster years ago, so I think it's available to some degree in the States as a bare-bones DVD edition). It's worth checking out.
Double Happiness, Flower and Garnet
I downloaded these and somehow the files got cut off after an hour and a half, but I enjoyed them both. The performances in Double Happiness were great (Sandra Oh! How I love you and your sass! And CKR as an English MA student! *adores*) and I liked the early-'90s take on issues of ethnicity and race in Vancouver. Flower and Garnet was endearingly Canadian in it's oddness. I got a Sweet Hereafter vibe from it; those looming mountains (central interior of BC, right? Maybe filmed near Kamloops?) and weirdly incestuous relationships kinda creeped me out and drew me in at the same time, just like Sweet Hereafter. I'm also watching Tales of the City right now, which violates the CanCon point of this post, but it has a young Paul Gross in it, so that counts, right? I'm watching purely because of Kellie and Aukestral's Shadows Fade, but it's as good as a 1990s-produced, 1970s-set PBS miniseries can be. Plus I have a girlcrush on Laura Linney. And I'm hoping it'll pick up in the second part.
Okay, Back to your regularly scheduled programming. I have to do a new dS rec for crack_van, so that needs to get written up soon. I'd like to go for something short and funny, so any recommendations would be appreciated. I've got five or six long angsty things picked out, but I don't want to be a one-trick pony. Any ideas, fangirls?
Alrighty, off to bed. No more waxing poetic about HCL. But again, this scene. Jesus.