I can’t remember if I cried,
The day…
The music…died

I’m a little bit too young to remember the real life event that inspired much of “American Pie” (the song, not the movie).

I have a very clear memory of a cold Canadian morning when I was waiting for the school bus at the end of out long gravel driveway. I had gotten into the habit of having a quick look at the newspaper and then putting it back into the mailbox. On the day that I am recalling, the front page was announcing the death of Muddy Waters. I was greatly affected by that. The interesting thing was that I had only the vaguest notion of the existence of a man called Muddy Waters. It was weird to be introduced to a person by way of his obituary.

I didn’t cry. I am almost sure of that.

The mentioning of school buses and cold Canadian mornings has reminded me of a movie that made me cry. It is called The Sweet Hereafter. Don’t watch the following video if you are afraid of spoilers. It features actress Sarah Polly singing her rendition of Courage. The video features clips from the movie.

When I say I’m Not There, the There that I am referring to is the premiere of the new quirky Bob Dylan biopic.

I will seek it out when it comes out on DVD, but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable in the theater. I like Bob Dylan, but I don’t particularly like Bob Dylan fans. Add to that the likelihood that many Dylan fans won’t like the movie and you can almost feel the bad vibe coming back from the future to bum us all out.

If you haven’t heard about this movie, you might want to go read the EIGHT PAGE review from the NYT.

I passed up what will probably turn out to be my only chance to see Bob Dylan in concert. North American concert tours often start in Canada. With no concert reviews to go by, I was worried that he would be incoherent/unintelligible. I turns out that he put on a very good show.

I have cried at a handful of sad movies. Right at this moment I can’t think of any titles. I think my profound ability to not remember things is a key component of my personality.

LES BONS DÉBARRAS affected me and I can still clearly remember some scenes after over 25 years. I don’t remember if I cried. The fact that I watched a dubbed version might have made it less powerful. I am going to try to remember some movies that made me cry over the next few days.

Jessica Alba has her first starring role in a comedy.

I took the post title from a line in a Good Charlotte song. I am familiar with the song because back in 2003 it was constantly playing on our television and I learned to play it on my electric guitar so I could sing a parody of it. It’s important to teach your daughters that the boys that the television presents as cool are really quite lame. I don’t really like the main theme of the original, which is basically that girls are whores. Good Charlotte are whores…and so is Snoop Dog.

Jessica Alba’s movie is probably really funny.

I was just checking my PayPal balance. My Canadian Paypal account displays a USD and a CAD value. Today was the first time that I have ever seen a smaller number in the CAD slot.

I immediately went to check the REAL exchange rate. The US dollar is still worth a bit more. I have spent most of my life dealing with a Canadian dollar that was the butt of jokes when compared to the USD. For many years, Hollywood was making movies in Canada because of the savings to be had due to the exchange rate. Our governments also welcomed the influx of employment and spending and encouraged the trend with the thing that governments use to encourage stuff.

If the dollar values flip on us, will we start making Canadian movies in the US? Hollywood magic can make Toronto look like NYC or Detroit or even Chicago. I wonder how New Yorkers would feel about having the Statue of Liberty digitally replaced with the CN Tower?

If this is eventually going to happen, I think it might help to give you Americans a taste of what Canadian feature films are like…

Parental Discretion Advised

Edit: I think that ‘Pour Projection Privée Seulement’ means that you are supposed to watch this clip in the bathroom.

There are some serious film directors who use nudity to express vulnerability or to impress upon us the fact that we are hairy, smelly animals.

In a short scene on television’s The Simpsons, Bart, Milhouse and Nelson walk out of the film Naked Lunch and Bart says that it has the most misleading title ever. Bart is reportedly briefly nude in his feature film debut. He is a cartoon character.

David Cronenberg directed Naked Lunch. His new film features an extended scene in which Viggo Mortensen is completely naked in a Russian bathhouse fighting for his life against two fully clothed attackers. It is not very pretty, from all accounts.

Vanessa Anne Hudgens is an actress. She is 18 years old, but she plays a somewhat younger character in the High School Musical films produced by Disney. The Cartoon Doll Emporium has fun online dress up dolls for the major characters in High School Musical 2 including Vanessa.

There are also fanclubs associated with each leading actor hosted by Cartoon Doll Emporium.

The high school musical and dress up dolls both appeal to tween girls, so this particular corner or Cartoon Doll Emporium is really taking off. When I was checking out the IMDb entry for the original TV movie, which won two Emmy’s, I saw people in the forums asking about sequels. Number 2 is out and number three is in the works, so the fans must be happy.

So, the basic story of this movie is too close to home for me, but I think I would still be happy to take my kids to see it. I have two 13 year old daughters who have an all consuming love of animals and nature these days. If there was an orphaned dolphin in our vicinity, they would want to involve themselves with it. I have spent a few 12 hour periods being the ‘crusty’ parent, not letting the children come to the aid of a crying kitten who seems to have been abandoned by its mother. Many of of have an immediate emotional impulse to try to help animals, especially young ones. In some situations, a person with more knowledge or experience might know that interfering is not what is best for the animal.

I had to be the big meany about crying kittens because I knew that a feral mother cat might leave her litter for 12 hours. Eventually, I conceded that the kitten might be abandoned and we took it to the SPCA. Our local SPCA doesn’t put down animals that are not rehomed. We brought two abandoned kittens to the SPCA last year and they were both given good homes.

My daughters are exactly like the star of Eye of the Dolphin in that they cannot accept my reasoning when it is at cross purposes to their emotional response. I can’t tell from this trailer how this part of the storyline is resolved. The one thing that I am thankful for is that my kids involuntarily love me. Early childhood conditioning FTW!!!

Here is a chance to win free movie passes to showings of eye of the Dolphin in select theaters. Promotional materials are comparing this film to Whalerider, which had me absolutely spellbound. I think that is a valid comparison, with the major difference being that North American audiences will be more familiar with the main characters cultural viewpoint. I’m not just talking about the 15 year old girls in the audience either. The teenage experience in North America has some absolutes that haven’t changed in a few generations. The consensus about parents really sucking is one small aspect of that.

I think that having this Berkline home theater seating in my home would inspire me to make video blogs of me being a movie critic. I think the premise would involve me making scathing reviews of movies that I have never actually viewed. I can get all the relevant facts from IMDb, and I already know that if it is mainstream it sucks and if it independent and quirky it deserves my undying praise.

I might have a hard time getting the kids to move off of the home theater seating that can be purchased from BostonTables.com. They look very comfortable. These are modular, which means you can custom order the straight or curved units to precisely fit the home theater that you have, or the one that you are planning.

The trailer for the first movie coming out of United Artists after Tom Cruise took the helm is quite gripping. Besides Cruise, the film features the inarguable acting talents of Robert Redford and Merrill Streep.

I don’t want to see this movie and I don’t want to like it. This is personal. I deeply dislike and distrust Tom Cruise. He is an egotistical zealot who is being guided by the unseen hands of an evil cult. That is just my opinion, he could actually be a really nice guy.

The cumulative star power and the politically charged subject matter mean that this movie will make money. The only thing that I can preemptively criticize is the fact that they pulled their punches as far as creating characters that are analogous to the present key players in American politics. I have to admit that both of the top guys make for pretty awful movie characters.