Day 110: Kick-Ass (2010)

I headed to campus this morning around 5:45 to stand in line to apply for CLA. When I got there, there were already 75 people in line. Thankfully they take 120 people, but I should probably haven't gotten there a bit earlier. In order to kill the 2 hours until 8 when the doors opened, I brought along this movie. I saw it in theatres earlier this year, and bought it a few weeks ago when it came out on DVD. I divided my attention between watching the film and chatting to people, but it still counts.

Not going to go into too much detail, as I saw the film recently. It's a great film, a lot of fun, and just as much fun to watch the second time around. I can easily see this being a film I watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I am anxious for the sequel.

Day 109: Neighbours (1952)

Tomorrow is the first day of classes in law school. It's also the day to apply for a position with Community Legal Aid (CLA), and in order to get a spot, you need to line up early. This meant that I had to head to bed early, so decided a short film was in order. Neighbours is one of my favourite short NFB films, and so much fun.

You can watch it online here. The film was revolutionary for its use of stop-motion with people, and is always good for a laugh. If you haven't yet seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it now. It's only 8 minutes.

Day 108: Mysterious Skin (2004)

As I was checking out the DVD collection in the univeristy library I caught the glimpse of Joseph Gordon-Levitt on this DVD cover. A film he'd been in that I hadn't heard of? Figured it was worth a watch.

The film tells the story of two boys who were sexually assaulted as children, and how this effected their lives - with one becoming a male prostitute, and the other not remembering the event and believing he was abducted by aliens. The film presents the events in a very raw and graphic way - there is no attempt to sugar-coat the events. The film is very moving, troubling even, and often hard to watch. It is one of those films that you'll never forget, never want to watch again, but feel better for having seen. Both leads, Brady Corbet and Joseph Gordon Levitt, were terrific. Not for the weak-hearted, but for those who can stomach it, well worth seeing.

Day 107: Weird Sex and Snowshoes: A Trek Through the Canadian Cinematic Psyche (2004)

Being the nerd that I am, I spend the first break I had all week from classes investigting the school library. First week of law school and I'm already volunteering searching the university's library. I was somewhat shocked to find that they have quite an extensive video collection (including the entire Criterion DVD collection). I spent a good 30-mins walking back and forth down the aisles trying to decide on something to borrow, when I noticed this film. Weird Sex and Snowshoes is a book on Canadian film, and I managed to get a copy late last year (it's out of print and therefore less than easy to get) and I've been slowly reading it ever since. I was unaware that a documentary based loosely on the book had been made, and so I was intrigued. As I borrowed it, they stamped it with the return date (three day loan period) and I noticed that someone had borrowed it already this week with a return date of today - meaning someone else on campus went to the library during the first week of school and rented a documentary on Canadian film. Someone else here is just as a big film nerd as me. If only I had a way to meet this person.

The documentary touched lightly on a lot of the issues raised in the book, mainly trying to define what makes Canadian Film. I spent a whole course in my undergrad trying to answer that question, and ultimately we found the question to be unanswerable. It's pretty much the same answer that the film comes up. The film raises a lot of themes that are present in Canadian films, and accompanies this with various dialogue from Canadian filmmakers on both their own films and the Canadian film industry. The film was enjoyable to watch, though I didn't learn anything new. Though I did get the name of a number of Canadian films I hadn't heard of which I will now have to check out. The film would provide a good introduction to a film course on Canadian film, or as an introduction to someone completely unaware of what Canadian film looked like, but beyond that initial introduction it lacks any real depth.

Day 106: The Pink Panther (1963)

As I stood scanning my shelves of DVDs, I was stuck by this film. I remember when I was a kid, my father rented a number of films in the Pink Panther series to watch, and being a fan of the Pink Panther cartoon I was intrigued. Having no real recollection of the film aside from it being about a jewel theft and an incompetent police detective, I decided it was time to shake off some of those mental cobwebs and watch it again.

Sidenote: I just want to comment on how I hate Hollywood's remaking of films. There is nothing wrong with this film that needed to be perfected in the 2006 relaunch. What irks me even more is that the 2006 version is not even a direct remake, but a "relaunch" of the franchise. If you are going to relaunch a franchise, at least have the common decency not to use the exact same title. This recent trend to reuse film titles for two different films in the same franchise (or the also popular dropping of the word "the" from a previous title to make a new one) is infuriating! Two different films with the same exact title in the same franchise is possibly the most absurd thing ever. I can't even explain how faulty and backward-thinking this logic is. It needs to stop.

Peter Sellers is a fantasict comedian, and steals the show as Inspector Clouseau.

Day 105: Fargo (1996)

Somehow this classic Coen brother film escaped my radar for quite some time, but this is exactly one of the reasons I started this challenge in the first place. It provides me the chance to finally see all those movies that I should have already seen.

Truth be told, I've been sitting here for 20 minutes staring at this blank post trying to find someway to contextualize my thoughts on the film, with no luck. I enjoyed it.
It is a simple story, with simple characters, and this simplicity is truly delightful.
I know this a rather poor excuse of a post, but it'll have to do.

Day 104: TiMER (2009)

My friend Hayley suggested I watch this film, and while I'm not a huge fan of rom-coms, she assured me that there was enough sci-fi in it to make up for it being a romantic comedy.

The concept of TiMER is a simple, yet unique, one: what if you could have a timer installed on your arm that will tell you the exact day you will meet your soulmate? Once you get your timer installed it starts counting down to midnight the night before you'll meet your soulmate for the first time, and the following day when you meet your soulmate the timer beeps. Of course, the timer will only start counting down once both people in the soul-match have a timer, so if you're "supposed" soulmate hasn't gotten around to getting one yet, your timer will remain blank. This is the issue that plagues the film's protagonist Oona. Her sister, Steph, has a different issue with her timer - the countdown is over 20 years in the future. They live together and deal with trying to have relationships in which you know the person you're dating isn't the one before you even meet them. It's a very weird concept, and, sadly, doesn't get explored enough.

Some questions that bothered me throughout the film concerning the timer were:
1) Can you not die until after your countdown has run-out? Presumably the timer, if it can see the future to know when you're going to meet your soulmate, it would know if you were to die before you were to meet your soulmate.
2) What if your soulmate lives in some other continent where the timer isn't used yet?
3) What if you are never "destined" to meet your soulmate?
4) What if your soulmate has no arms? They make the point that the timer can only function when placed on the wrist of your dominant arm (it doesn't even work on your other wrist).
5) Assuming that for thoughts 2-4, the timer just doesn't flash a time. This is the same result if your soulmate doesn't have a timer installed yet. So someone with a flashing timer will spend their whole live searching for someone that they might never find. Isn't it better to find someone and be happy with them even if they aren't "the one" then spend your live looking in vain?

The film deals with this last issue. The issue of wether it's better to "settle" and be happy, or to keep waiting and hoping. While it's definitely the key issue raised by the notion of the timer existing, the whole film is far too predictable to create any real thoughts on the matter. Oona, the flashing timer owner, meets and falls for a younger guy who she believes has 4-months left on his timer. She knows its a meaningless fling, and in four months he'll move on. When she discovers that he actually doesn't have a timer and has a fake one instead, she starts to question her feelings for him. When, at the same time, a man enters her sister's Steph's live with no timer, it doesn't take a genius to realize where the story is going to go.

I found the idea of the timer and all its possible meanings much more enjoyable than the film itself. The film had charm and a sense of quirkiness that can only be found in indie films like this one, but this charm and quirk is brought down by the lack of depth to which the timer is dealt with.