This bizarre documentary about a Northern Ontario inventor who is determined to produce a grizzly-bear-proof suit is one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year. What makes it funny is that there is no spoof involved. The man really exists, and he has devoted his life and fortune to developing a product which is not only absurd in conception, but completely useless. With a circle of friends, some doubtful, some indulgent, some caught up in his vision quest, he submits his prototypes to a series of extreme tests. He develops a fire-proofing coating for the suit, in which one of the active ingredients in the formula is diet pepsi. One of the drawbacks of the suit is that you can’t walk in it if there is a slope or a rough surface, and you can’t get up if you fall over. However, you will be safe from bears.
Category Archives: D - VIEWING - Page 26
(Lynch 1996) Project Grizzly
FILMS APRIL-JUNE 2007
(Jones & Upton 1999) Wild Europe: Ep.6 ― Wild Cities
(Chow 2004) Kung Fu Hustle
(Vicente, Chasse & Arntz 2004) What tHe βLєєP Dө wΣ (k)πow!?
(Gold 1987) Inspector Morse: The Remorseful Day
(G. W. Pabst 1929) Die Büchse der Pandora [Pandora’s Box]
(Sales 1990) The Silk Road: Khotan, Oasis of Silk and Jade
(Zauberman 1993) Moi Ivan, toi Abraham
(Davis 1997) Nova: Curse of T. Rex
(Grint 1984) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Crooked Man
(Proyas 2004) I, Robot
*(Boyle 2007) Sunshine
Read more »
(Wilcox 1956) Forbidden Planet
How many times have I seen Forbidden Planet? I’m not sure, but it is one of my earliest childhood memories. Despite much that is quaint and embarrassing, it still holds up as one the few films with the essential “sense-of-wonder” component central to literary Science Fiction, but almost always absent from SF on film.
Some trivia about the wonderful, pioneering electronic score by husband and wife team Louis and Bebe Barron: The film’s producers originally wanted Harry Partch to score the film. The Barrons were only supposed to make a few effects. But the first sample they produced convinced the producers to go with them for the entire film. During the film’s preview, when the first electronic “tonalities” came on, the audience broke out in spontaneous applause. Many people at the time found the quite terrifying. Unfortunately, the musicians union would not recognize what they were doing as “music”, and the Barrons never did another film score.
(Jarmusch 2005) Broken Flowers
My friend Skye Sepp brought this film to my attention. I’ve been burnt a few times by movies starring Bill Murray. But he is perfect in this one. The film is a character comedy. It isn’t a “romantic comedy”, since there is no successful romantic resolution. It has a very contemporary feeling. The characters and setting are definitely now — that is, the United States as it really is in 2005, and not some behind-the-times facsimile generated by writers and film-makers who have lost touch with the culture. Jim Jarmusch wrote and directed the film, and it’s obvious that he keeps his eyes and ears open, and knows his own society. Any American who knows how to use Ethiopian pop music in a film, in a way that shows a little respect, plainly has his finger on the pulse.
FILMS JANUARY-MARCH 2007
(Sweete 2002) Timothy Findlay’s Elizabeth Rex [tv play, w. Diane D’aquila, Peter Hutt, Brent Carver]
(Resnais 1955) Nuit et brouillard
(Fisher 1959) The Hound of the Baskervilles
(Guillermin 1978) Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile
(Sales 1990) The Silk Road: In Search of the Kingdom of Lou-Lan
(Lambert 1992) Pet Sematary
(Freundlich 2004) Catch That Kid
(Carpenter 1978) Halloween
(Heston 1993) Needful Things
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(Judge 2006) Idiocracy
Mike Judge’s Idiocracy seemed reasonably funny to me, though this may have been influenced by the herb partaken while seeing it. It’s more or less a science fiction satire in the manner of an old L. Sprague deCamp story. A man awakens from cryogenic storage to find that the U.S. has bred itself into idiocy. Though himself selected for the cryogenic experiment because of his astonishing averageness, in this brave new world he is the smartest man in the country. He saves the nation from famine by determining that crops should not be irrigated with Gatorade. Most of the comedy is in sight gags embedded in the set design. Anyway, rent this for some stoner party and stock up on taco chips to go with it.
(Sweete 2002) Timothy Findlay’s Elizabeth Rex [tv play; w. Diane D’Aquila, Peter Hutt, Brent Carver]
Timothy Findley (1930–2002) was one of Canada’s finest novelists, but he began as an actor before turning to writing. He was part of the original Stratford Festival company in the 1950s, acting alongside Alec Guinness. His lifetime partner, William Whitehead, his inseperable other half from 1951 until his death, was an actor and director, responsible, among other things, for over a hundred episodes of the groundbreaking science series The Nature of Things, and the extremely intelligent radio series Ideas. They occasionally collaborated on screenplays. So it should come as no surprise that Findley wrote a fine play, as well as familiar novels like The Wars and The Last of the Crazy People. Read more »
FILMS OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2006
(Armstrong 1999) MidSomer Murders: Ep.9 — Blood Will Out
(L’Ecuyer 2004) Prom Queen
(Gaudreault 2003) Mambo Italiano
(Asquith 1952) The Importance of Being Earnest
(Ratushniak 2004) Iron Men, Wooden Ladders
(Hitchcock 1955) To Catch a Thief
(Asquith 1948) The Winslow Boy
Read more »
(Perelman 2003) House of Sand and Fog
This is a good film. It’s based on a novel by Andre Dubus III, which I haven’t read*. It was the first feature film of Canadian director Vadim Perelman, who had made a reputation with music videos and commercials. Apparently, novelist and director worked together intimately. The cast, Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Ron Eldard, Frances Fisher, Kim Dickens, and Jonathan Ahdout, find every subtlety possible in the characters. This was possible because the characters are well conceived, multi-dimensional, and real. The story is pure Shakespeare. Two people have equally just claims to owning a house. Nothing special, just an ordinary little house with a view of the sea. One is an Iranian immigrant, played to perfection by Ben Kingsley, who desperately needs the house to hold his family together and retain his much injured pride. The other is a lonely woman who has both isolated herself and been isolated, and in the course of the struggle earned the love of a psychologically fragile cop. What begins as a low-key dispute gradually builds in tension and complexity, and unfolds with the inexorable steps to tragedy that Shakespeare perfected, and few dramatists since have learned.
*[I read it the next month]
(Wallace 1990) Stephen King’s It, Part 2
My friend Isaac and I howled with laughter throughout this long and absurd film. Children in a small town are menaced by evil cosmic forces in the form of a leering clown, played by Tim Curry. When they grow up, they have to do it all over again. The cosmic forces, apparently, can be defeated by group hugs.