everything's gone green:
Douglas Coupland's been a busy man. Besides releasing his 21st century follow-up to Microserfs (jPod) and two Canadian memoir coffee-table-and-yet-so-much-more books (Souvenirs of Canada 1 & 2) and turning them into a movie -- he's been busy writing his first screenplay! (I think he also has a new book coming out soon.)
Everything's Gone Green will be making its American debut at the highly-touted SXSW festival in Austin, Texas next month, where all good things indie gather to show the world that there are still such things as good music, good musicians, good films, good film-makers & good managers & producers for such good things.
But! EGG made its way to little ol' Kingston on Thursday night at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival. And I was fortunate enough to have been volunteering that night! at the Empire Capitol theatre for the KCFF to be able to see it for FREE. Mmmmmm free tastes so good. (Ironically, the whole time I was watching the movie, my head kept pounding from not eating for 9 hours.)
Alas, Mr. Coupland was obviously not at hand. But I'm pretty sure the director & producer & someone else with this VIP air about them were there, doing the Q&A at the beginning. And the short at the beginning was pretty Canadian (a silly, simple, animated, hilarious short called The Official Guide to Watching a Saturday Night Hockey Game (For Intermediates)).
The movie was good. The story was simple, and it wasn't overly kitschy. It was bland at the right moments, and funny at the right times. The main character, Ryan, was too naive to be believable though. The lead actress, who plays Ming, is Chinese & gorgeous. (So Ming must be the typical Chinese girl name of choice? Both Douglas Coupland and Vincent Lam have used "Ming" as the name of their lead female Chinese characters.) Her Mandarin-speaking, traditional grandma is typically hilarious. Once again, that Yellow Fever theory about the white guy going for the Asian girl & vice versa holds true. Set in Vancouver - the beaches & the ocean & greens & blues all make me want to move there. Typical bizzaro Coupland-esque scenes (aliens & fake palm trees wandering on the suburban streets of a neighbourhood), and of course, the 20-something lead character is in a yuppie-type office job, and there are the outlandish anonymous strangers you come across in suburbia (biker gang leaders, Japanese prostitutes, knife-wielding grandmas, basement-weed-growing parents) with Coupland-esque comments on Canadian surburbia being overshadowed by our neighbours below (Ming is paid to make Vancouver look like Phoenix, or some other desert-like American city where UFOs are prone to land). A beached whale on the shore is the crossroads where the 2 lovers meet.
I loved that photo montages were used to portray the anonymous strangers. Ryan is dumped by his yuppie girlfriend before landing a job photographing lottery winners and eventually each winner is portrayed to undergo decline & degradation until they are much worse than they were before they won.
It's a movie about being content with mediocrity. It's also about the search for what's real in life. There are so many scams & cover-ups & general ugliness that rumble underneath & ripple waves on the quiet calm surface of suburbia. The movie traces the journey of the before, the during & the after - gaining (what you think is) your heart's desire, revelling in it, the realization & the aftermath. It is only when you look beyond the superficial and consciously move away from the superficialities of life that you can find what you hold to be authentic. Then you can grapple with what's normal, as average or boring it may seem to be. But one thing I hold to is that noone's boring - everyone has quirks, idiosyncracies, habits & pre-formed notions that set them apart from everyone else - and these differences make everyone weird and funny and grant someone else the right to say "Oh really?!"
Of course, in the end, Ryan chooses what's right. And so the movie & the story end neatly. And satisfyingly. Which is atypical of Coupland.
The soundtrack was purely Canadian & pure goodness. Jason Collett, Final Fantasy, Golden Dogs, Black Mountain(!).
Green is a representation of money and meaning. And weed.
Also ironically, after watching the movie, I read this news article.
Ahahaha, oh dear, its an underground weed jungle infiltrating suburbia. It strikes me as funny.
I'm volunteering again tomorrow night. Whee.
Everything's Gone Green will be making its American debut at the highly-touted SXSW festival in Austin, Texas next month, where all good things indie gather to show the world that there are still such things as good music, good musicians, good films, good film-makers & good managers & producers for such good things.
But! EGG made its way to little ol' Kingston on Thursday night at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival. And I was fortunate enough to have been volunteering that night! at the Empire Capitol theatre for the KCFF to be able to see it for FREE. Mmmmmm free tastes so good. (Ironically, the whole time I was watching the movie, my head kept pounding from not eating for 9 hours.)
Alas, Mr. Coupland was obviously not at hand. But I'm pretty sure the director & producer & someone else with this VIP air about them were there, doing the Q&A at the beginning. And the short at the beginning was pretty Canadian (a silly, simple, animated, hilarious short called The Official Guide to Watching a Saturday Night Hockey Game (For Intermediates)).
The movie was good. The story was simple, and it wasn't overly kitschy. It was bland at the right moments, and funny at the right times. The main character, Ryan, was too naive to be believable though. The lead actress, who plays Ming, is Chinese & gorgeous. (So Ming must be the typical Chinese girl name of choice? Both Douglas Coupland and Vincent Lam have used "Ming" as the name of their lead female Chinese characters.) Her Mandarin-speaking, traditional grandma is typically hilarious. Once again, that Yellow Fever theory about the white guy going for the Asian girl & vice versa holds true. Set in Vancouver - the beaches & the ocean & greens & blues all make me want to move there. Typical bizzaro Coupland-esque scenes (aliens & fake palm trees wandering on the suburban streets of a neighbourhood), and of course, the 20-something lead character is in a yuppie-type office job, and there are the outlandish anonymous strangers you come across in suburbia (biker gang leaders, Japanese prostitutes, knife-wielding grandmas, basement-weed-growing parents) with Coupland-esque comments on Canadian surburbia being overshadowed by our neighbours below (Ming is paid to make Vancouver look like Phoenix, or some other desert-like American city where UFOs are prone to land). A beached whale on the shore is the crossroads where the 2 lovers meet.
I loved that photo montages were used to portray the anonymous strangers. Ryan is dumped by his yuppie girlfriend before landing a job photographing lottery winners and eventually each winner is portrayed to undergo decline & degradation until they are much worse than they were before they won.
It's a movie about being content with mediocrity. It's also about the search for what's real in life. There are so many scams & cover-ups & general ugliness that rumble underneath & ripple waves on the quiet calm surface of suburbia. The movie traces the journey of the before, the during & the after - gaining (what you think is) your heart's desire, revelling in it, the realization & the aftermath. It is only when you look beyond the superficial and consciously move away from the superficialities of life that you can find what you hold to be authentic. Then you can grapple with what's normal, as average or boring it may seem to be. But one thing I hold to is that noone's boring - everyone has quirks, idiosyncracies, habits & pre-formed notions that set them apart from everyone else - and these differences make everyone weird and funny and grant someone else the right to say "Oh really?!"
Of course, in the end, Ryan chooses what's right. And so the movie & the story end neatly. And satisfyingly. Which is atypical of Coupland.
The soundtrack was purely Canadian & pure goodness. Jason Collett, Final Fantasy, Golden Dogs, Black Mountain(!).
Green is a representation of money and meaning. And weed.
Also ironically, after watching the movie, I read this news article.
Ahahaha, oh dear, its an underground weed jungle infiltrating suburbia. It strikes me as funny.
I'm volunteering again tomorrow night. Whee.