PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 903

Crimes Of The Future 2022 Written and directed by David Cronenberg.

David returns to his love of body horror for the first time since 1999s eXistenZ. The film he made seems to me to be very much in that world and made in that era. I'm not a big fan of eXistenZ and I didn't find COTF to be even as entertaining as that film. Over the years I've come to see Eastern Promises and A History Of Violence as my favorites of all his films. I doubt I'd need to see it again.

The Spine Of Night 2021 Written and directed by Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King.

It took 7 years to make this rotoscoped fantasy adventure. It seems to take a long time to play out it's 93 mins. There's a decent but unoriginal story about creeps seeking power and the people who rise to stop them. It plods along at at one point it was nearly putting me to sleep, I wasn't the only one. I sure don't think I'll need to see this again.

Seaway 1965-1966

Seaway 1965-1966 Created by Abraham Polonsky. The series had 31 episodes that aired on the CBC.The Wikipedia says it was the most expensive show produced in Canada at that time, costing $3,000,000 which is about $11,200,000 today. It did well but it was in B&W and it didn't make a sale to the US because of that.

Steven Young and Austin Willis were the two main stars. Steven was a ship owner's agent and investigated crimes that involved the owner's ships. Austin was an agent for the Department of Transport. The action took place along the St Lawrence Seaway with several of the shows filmed in Toronto and Montreal.

I remember seeing this as a kid and liking it. I found a few episodes on YouTube and watched them. They were about average but watchable. There's some action, some drama and a bit of humor too. I put the link to YouTube in the title above.

Corner Gas Animated Season 4

Corner Gas Animated Season 4 Created by Brent Butt, written by Jennifer Siddle, Meredith Hambrock, Brent Butt, Andrew Carr, Dylan Wertz, Erica Sigurdson and Kyah Green, directed by Stephen Evans, Sean Janisse and Nathan Carey. This is the last season of the show, the 13 episodes aired July through November 2021.

There's  quite a bit going on in the episodes, usually several things are happening around the town as characters interact with each other. I enjoy their silly activities and I'll miss new stories. I guess I can watch the live show and animated show all over again. That'll have to do.

The Kids In The Hall Season 6 2022

The Kids In The Hall Season 6 2022 The Kids return to TV in a new 8 episode series for Amazon Prime. It's created and written by the Kids: Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson. They have some other writers: Garry Campbell, Mike Watts and Jennifer Goodhue. Mike and Jennifer join the Kids in front of the camera in some sketches. The episodes were directed by Kelly Makin and Aleysa Young. I'd just seen one of Kelly's first films, Tiger Claws, just the other night.

Many of the sketches are callbacks to past characters: The Hotel Rut with Francesca Fiore and Bruno Puntz Jones, the headcrusher, Gavin, Gordon and Fran, the Eradicator, the Police Department with a totally naked Dave and Kevin, willies a wavin'. It might be the time to get out your crushing fingers. I was pleased to see the return of Bellini in his towel, Buddy Cole, and Kathie and Cathy with their fax machine. I was quite pleased not to have seen The Chicken Lady, I watched each episode with a slight sense of dread. The sketch from the old series that introduced that character is excruciating to watch. I feel so for her unsuspecting blind date.

There are some new characters, like the restaurant staff in the Foodies sketches, Super Drunk, The Patrol, Friends of Kids In The Hall, the Doctor with the low drop average, the Doomsday DJ and more.

The guest cast includes quite a few people I recognize: Colin Mochrie, Kenneth Welsh, Mark Hammill, Jay Baruchel, Eddie Izzard, Fred Armisen, Martin Kaye, Will Forte, Kenan Thompson, Samantha Bee, Catherine O'Hara and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee.

The Kids have managed to recapture the feel of the original series fairly well. The old series always had a nice level of surrealness to it and so does the new show. Some sketches are quite funny, some are quite weird. I laughed when it was funny, occasionally out loud, and waited for something funny when it wasn't. I'll try to watch it again. If they put out a DVD I'll get one. I kind of doubt that's going to happen but you never know.

The Return Of Tommy Tricker 1994

The Return Of Tommy Tricker 1994 Written and directed by Michael Rubbo. Sequel to the 1988 film Tommy Tricker And The Stamp Traveller. Both are part of the Films For All series. This is the last of 4 kids films that Michael made for the series, the other two were The Peanut Butter Solution and Vincent & Me. I haven't seen the latter film. Stopped making films, bar two documentaries, after this came out.

Sadly the sequel is much less appealing when compared to the first film. Tommy Tricker takes center stage for most of it and he's even more of a douche bag than he was in the first film. He lies and cheats and steals all the time. Really disliked having to look at his smug face. The kid who played Tommy Tricker in the first film didn't get to play Tommy, he got a small part, don't know why. There are a lot of changes in the characters and situation from the first film, hard to believe when it's supposed to be set immediately after the first film.

The main plot is about trying to rescue Charles from the Bluenose stamp. The attempt brings a young girl from the past and she starts to age. They pack up and go to the south seas to try to find a cure. None of it makes much sense but the scenery of New Zealand and the Cook Islands was very nice. Disappointing in the end. Doubt I'd bother watching it again.

The Peanut Butter Solution 1985

The Peanut Butter Solution 1985 Written by Vojtěch Jasný, Andrée Pelletier, Louise Pelletier and Michael Rubbio, directed by Michael Rubbio. Severin has a kid's line, this is their first kid film.

Michael is the director of Tommy Tricker And The Stamp Traveler. I saw that not long ago, when I looked him up I saw he'd also directed this film. I had already purchased it, based on a guy's recommendation, but I hadn't seen it yet. I had no Blu-ray for a while and I'm not keen on watching them in the summer anyway. The old Plasma TV I have is rather hot, nice for this time of the year when it's bloody cold, not so nice when it fights the air conditioner in the summer.

The kid in the movie is called Michael, on the way home with his friend Connie he stops to sneak into a recently burnt mansion to look around. He gets a big fright and all his hair falls out. The man and woman who died in the fire were homeless, it's their ghosts that scared him, and it's their ghosts that give him a magical formula to regrow his hair. Michael doesn't deal with his baldness very well and he doesn't deal with his new hair very well either. He's got more reason to complain on the backside, his magical hair grows way too well, inches an hour, all day. It's annoying enough that the school kicks him out. It was Michael's own fault, he added too much peanut butter.

Michael's art teacher is a bully and a kidnapper. He kidnaps Michael for his magical hair and he kidnaps 20 other kids to make paintbrushes from Michael's hair. Connie and Michael's sister Suzie do some investigating but before they get too far Connie gets kidnapped too. Eventually Suzie figures out where they are and brings her dad and the police. Michael's hair growth is arrested and everything gets back to normal when Michael's mom returns from Australia.

It was alright though I didn't care for Michael that much. I liked Suzie and his pal Connie. The boy who played Connie is Siluck Saysanasy, he was born in Laos and moved to Canada. This was his first film, he next role was as Yick in 64 episodes of Degrassi High. He didn't act a lot after that but he did become an assistant director working on Degrassi: The Next Generation and some interesting films like Hairspray, Resident Evil: Afterlife, RED, The Thing, Pacific Rim and Robocop.

Glad I bought the movie, I'll want to watch it again sometime.

Murdoch Mysteries Season 14

Murdoch Mysteries Season 14 aired January to March 2021 and there are only 11 episodes this season. There were no Halloween or Christmas episodes this year.

The character's typically complicated lives get a real workout this season. Murdoch finds out he has a son, the Inspector finds his younger son is in big trouble, the black lady coroner dates a white man in a very racist society, Constable Higgins brother in law creates his own sovereign nation in Pimlico, people find out about the Inspector's black daughter, Detective Watt's is revealed to be gay at a time when it's illegal, Constable Crabtree loses his girlfriend, again.

Murdoch, Dr Ogden, the Inspector and Constable Crabtree get tricked into a deadly escape room by an insane woman who was manipulated by another of Murdoch's enemies. There seems to be a steady stream of returning characters this season. Mostly a pretty good season. I'll have to wait for the 15th season to hit Blu-ray this summer, hopefully, I've no streaming service that has it. The incomplete season is up on YouTube but the image is often too poor to watch.

Murdoch Mysteries Season 13

Murdoch Mysteries Season 13 aired at the end of 2019 and into 2020, the show is currently near the end of broadcasting the 15th Season. I got the Season 13 Blu-ray some time ago and finally got around to watching it. Like the previous Blu-ray sets the picture is fine. There's little by way of extras, a short Q&A with Yannick Bisson and Daniel Maslany, that was recorded from a live stream by Acorn TV. Nice enough but nothing special there really.

There are 18 episodes and they still maintain a high quality of writing, there's some good amount of mystery in the murders, some humor, some serious personal drama, scads of social commentary and a good bit of delightful wackiness.

Detective Murdoch and Doctor Ogden get stalked by a monster in the Halloween episode, George Crabtree has his new book published and goes on a book tour, Doctor Ogden gets arrested for murder, the Inspector goes on a fox hunt that starts with a dead body and Murdoch gets arrested for murder. Some of those stories deal with morality but it's not heavy handed enough to be bothersome. I enjoyed the episodes, especially the more humorous ones. I look forward to Season 14, that's up next. It's a show that I can binge several episodes in a day.

The Silent Partner 1978

The Silent Partner 1978 Based on the novel Think Of A Number by Anders Bodelsen, screenplay by Curtis Hanson, directed by Daryl Duke. A Canadian movie shot and set in Toronto.

Elliott Gould is a bank teller who discovers a hold up note on a deposit slip. He suspects someone is going to rob the bank and got scared away. Turns out he was right, Christopher Plummer, working as a mall Santa, has the plan. It works too, he gets a bag of money from Elliot and gets away. Christopher is really pissed when he finds that Elliott has glommed onto a large chuck of cash and blamed it on him. A big part of the movie that follows is devoted to Christopher trying to convince Elliott to part with the cash. Elliott refuses and things get ugly, Chris turns out to be a violent psychopath. After hearing the cash info on the news Christopher beats up a young woman for no reason.

Another chunk of the movie is devoted to Elliot's love life and the goings on among the bank staff. Many of the characters are morally ambivalent, there's a lot of cheating going on in their lives. Soon the two streams mix and people start to die. It becomes a fight to the finish. The cast was fairly good, Susannah York does alright as Elliott's main romantic interest, John Candy has a tiny part, as does another SCTV alum, Tony Rosato. The script was fairly decent in moving all the characters around but I found some of their personal melodrama to be a bit tedious. The film plods along using 106 mins to tell the story. It does pick up in the last act. My lack of interest in the characters only makes it slightly above average for me. It might have been a more effective thriller in 1978 though I don't think it's better than Marathon Man which came out a couple of years before. That's a much more tense thriller. I bought the Blu-ray and I might want to watch it again someday. 

Saskdutch Kid

I've been enjoying the farm videos of Saskdutch Kid. He's Jan Kielstra and his family have been farming near Saskatoon Saskatchewan since 1996. You can read more about Jan here and see his YouTube videos here. The woman in the picture is Jan's sister Neline, she works on the farm and has her own YouTube Channel. Between them you can learn a lot about dairy farming.