May 11, 2006

• I'm British, so the films I consider representative are Gandhi and Clockwork Orange.
• Or the Slaughtered Lamb scene in An American Werewolf in London.
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure, I think this summarizes The U.S. to a tee... The stars are bright, and big at night...
• Okay forget Lord of the Rings for NZ - that was made in a paddock out the back of Eketahuna somewhere. The totally enzed putchuh has got to be Goodbye Pork Pie, as Vanishing Point was for er... that big place on the other side of the Pacific. It's got a yellow mini in it - isn't that enough?
• I came to Canada after seeing Strange Brew and have not been disappointed.
• There's an interesting Finnish movie, Pahat Pojat (2003) (Bad Boys). It is based on a true story of some very religious brothers who turn to a life of crime. It has some amusing bits in it too. Also, some films by Aki Kaurismäki capture the Finnish flavor of life. Or so I'm told.
• I don't know.
• Barton Fink. The Big Lebowski. Fargo. I don't know why, but pretty much all the Coen Brothers movies seem to ring true to me.
• My friend from Boise tells me Napoleon Dynamite is a terrifyingly accurate depiction of life in Idaho...GramMa, care to verify?
• And there is something about Clerks, if you are from NJ....I saw it in a Cali theater with 2 friends from joisey and there were many scenes at which only we laughed, and boy did we laugh...
• Night Of The Living Dead
• Napoleon Dynamite is scary in how much it represents southern Idaho.
• Having lived in southeastern Idaho for 4 years, I concur with Uncle and Medusa..... Napoleon Dynamite is spot on. It manages to capture the profound sense of boredom / isolation that permeates much of the region, and demonstrates the degree to which the area is cut off from the rest of the U/S. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to live in southern Idaho/northern Utah/northern Nevada, that movie should answer most questions you might have.
• Blues Brothers
• Änglagård (aka House of Angels - trailer here) is as good a depiction of small-town rural Sweden as I can think of.
• I'd agree with EdArzakh about Goodbye Pork Pie because I can't think of any more recent films that are a reasonable depiction of NZ. Mind you, Once Were Warriors' state-house, beer-heavy environment really hit home for me. It's a negative portrayal of a fair chunk of the kiwi population, but it's there. How about Priscilla, Queen of the Desert for Australia? :P
• a reasonable depiction of NZ Bad Taste? nyuk nyuk.
• The Matrix captures life in my apartment fairly accurately. At least all the wire fu bullet time stuff... Seriously, I think The Graduate does a nice job of showing life in the US.
• Withnail & I commingled with 28 Days later provides a rare education for visitors to London. It really is like that you know.
• Shunji Iwai's 1995 Love Letter is a pretty good depiction of non-Tokyo Japan. It's minus all the usual shit that most modern Japanese movies have in bucketloads. Actually has decent acting and mostly realistic situations except for the big twist to the story. And it features the lovely Nakayama Miho at her best.
• New Zealand? Some of the fucked-up-provincial-men movies of the 70s and 80s (Smash Palace, et al) really resonate for me.
• Australia = Ghosts of the Civil Dead.
• *CLAP CLAP CLAP* Deep in the heaaaart of Texas! *goes about business*
• Thanks for the suggestions all, great thread Cap'n!
• John Hughes pretty much nailed '80s suburban Chicago.
• *rolls on floor, laughing
• Another Brit here. Four Weddings, Notting Hill, and Love Actually are accurate in that there's lots of gentle swearing.
• Is there fuck.
• I once saw 4 Weddings on a plane and it had been dubbed to start: "Bugger, Bugger, Bugger ..." it lost something. "Notting Hill" does not, in any way, represent life in Notting Hill As a new resident of South East London it does seem that many people in the 'hood believe they're living in a Guy Ritchie film. I thought 'Enduring Love' had quite a lot of representative Englishness to it. Though the most English film of all time has to be "Brief Encounter"
• For some reason, Quebec is a lot easier to do than Canada as a whole. Historically, there's Black Robe. For present Quebec, The Barbarian Invasions or C.R.A.Z.Y., (now showing in France with subtitles, to help with the patois). Something like Mon Oncle Antoine is too far into cliche to be a useful depiction. For out east, I'd think Rare Birds, but I could be wrong. Out west, A Simple Curve. For Ontari-ari-ario, that's tough. Anything by Don McKellar, such as Last Night. Or who knows -- Strange Brew and Canadian Bacon are both very Canadian in their sense of humour, if the depiction itself is wildly exaggerated. Canadian Bacon especially, since half the stuff in there are inside jokes made at Americans' expense, and the other half are jokes directed at ourselves.
• Hmmm....so many films filmed in San Francisco, but no shining representatives of the city are coming to mind. Maybe The Rock Pacific Heights? When I was younger, I thought the premise was stupid, but with an adult understanding of the San Francisco housing market and the nutbars that occupy it, it no longer seems far-fetched. For a very current scattershot perspective of the city, try 24 hours on Craigslist, which has a film crew chasing down as many posts from a single day as they can. It's pretty good at showing the incredible range of people that live in the Bay Area - meth addicts and generous hippies and musicians of all sorts and over-consumers and psychos and the most adorable couple ever (I heart Mike and Lee!). People with stories, basically.
• How could I forget Sneakers? It preceeded the dot-com boom, but really expressed the camraderie people were looking for (and often found) in small start-up companies, with people from diverse backgrounds coming together to apply their skills in a niche market (fake bank heists). Probably the mafia and espionage portions of the movie were a little less relevant to the whole 'Silicon Valley in the 90's' feel, but they rounded out the plot nicely.
• Ah yes, the dot-com days. *snif* *Pours 40 on the curb*
• The Beachcombers
• Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London pretty much nails it.
• Canadian Bacon is completely useless - Michael Moore says nothing about Canada except to use it as an opposite mirror for the US. He depicts Toronto, which is 53% non-white, as being all blond and blue eyed. Even as I found the movie funny, I found the depiction of my own country offensive. There is so much depiction of America on the screen, and so little of Canada, and even this "progressive" film kept up that balance. Though I did like the overly bureaucratic mountie. There are other shows which play off the squeaky clean Canadian stereotype - esp Due South - but they play with it knowingly and subtly. But it seems that everyone and their brother has seen Canadian Bacon and feel all Canadian -- but so many fewer have seen the much funnier and truer Canadian Conspiracy. I don't really know for Toronto (I won't speak for anything other than urban, English central Canada, because that is what I know) - ENG (a newsroom show) was alright, so was Street Legal. The Newsroom (like the Office, but older) was much better, but much blacker. Riverdale might have been good, but the acting and writing were so atrocious. There are lots of short films - I remember seeing one on dating with Mark from Kids in the Hall in a bit part which just captured what Toronto feels and looks like (anyone seen this? I've been trying to find it again). Kids in the Hall itself is is pretty good, although of course in an exagerated comic fashion. Politically, This Hour has 22 minutes. But all of these are television shows you usually can't get outside of Canada. I can't think of that many good Kitchen sink dramas/comedies for Canada - but I bet they are out there. islander - I'm glad you say Beachcombers - not being an islander, I would never know if it was realistic or not. Same with how I really like North of 60, but I can't know if it's realistic at all, never having lived in the North or on a reserve. There is also a Canadian sitcom, something about a rural gasstop?, which is funny, and seems sort of real, but I can't tell. That said, as someone with several generations from PEI and Nova Scotia (and a good sense of social history), Anne of Green Gables is actually very historically accurate to the attitudes and feeling of the time and place. But only the first mini-series/movie, which is based very closely on the book. The subsequent sequels and the television show Road to Avonlea are all how Kenneth Sullivan thinks LM Montgomery ought to have written stuff, and reflects 1990s urban Canadian (and American) attitudes and culture, but only the bits that would be saleable to Disney.
• the movie/television productions of roddy doyle's barrystown trilogy (the commitments, the van, the snapper) depict a dublin that was familiar to me growing up. oh, and darby o'gill and the little people.
• When I first visited Australia a few years back there was a wildly popular series on ABC called "Seachange". Shortly after I returned to Canada the series was broadcast here, much to my delight. I can't say how accurate a description of Aussie society it portrayed but it had some genuinely funny moments. Do any Aussie monkeys remember it?
• "There is also a Canadian sitcom, something about a rural gasstop?" That would be Corner Gas, which is quite funny in a feel-good, quirky kind of way. What is riotously funny in a spit cola through your nose, mega-quirky kind of way is Hatching, Matching & Dispatching, which, if ever exported, would be a smash-hit if people could just understand Newfies.
• The Kevin Smith oeuvre covers much of working/middle class NYS as well as Jersey in its accuracy. I've known many Jays and Silent Bobs. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? pretty much sums up my family history. But we'll have to wait for the big-screen version of Dallas to see a truly realistic depiction of life in these United States.
• in france dallas had lyrics set to its own theme song. i don't remember any words right now, but i find this fascinating. at some point, a french television exec (or perhaps a french-canadian television exec) said << this series about the texan oil family is great, but it lacks something... that's it, there are no lyrics to the theme tune! you there, go write some lyrics! >>
• Though film snobs may howl as they still haven't gotten over the fact their beloved David Lynch made a G-rated Disney film, his Straight Story nailed certain aspects of the Midwest and American life with uncanny precision.
• Thanks, BearGuy, that sounds like one I might enjoy.
• This David Lynch fan loved it.