I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

A PLACE THAT I HAVEN'T BEEN LATELY...

The line-up to see a movie at the cinema.

My big-screen-movie-watching drought has lasted five months. The last movie I watched at the theatre was actually Happy Feet, on opening weekend in November. Since then, I've been tempted to see some movies, such as Casino Royale, A Night at the Museum (mainly because my brother worked on it in some small capacity), and Ghost Rider, but not enough to gain enough inertia to not just wait to rent the DVD (and I still haven't even gotten around to renting Casino Royale).

I was ready to break my movie drought last weekend for one of three movies.

Unfortunately, the powers that be decided that Ottawa isn't a big enough market in which to release either the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres, even though the cartoon is a mainstay on Teletoon's Detour schedule in Canada, or Redline, which I know is almost certainly total crap as a narrative but, as "car porn", it's the first such film in quite a while to feature exotics (re: Ferrari) instead of just import Japanese "tuners".

(And, yes, I'm aware that Eddie Griffin totaled a Ferrari Enzo, perhaps intentionally, perhaps by accident, as part of a charity event-slash-publicity event for Redline, and that sucked, though, since it's only the front of a rear-engined car that was damaged, I doubt it's a total write-off. Most of the damage seemed to be the front panels, which can easily be replaced. He didn't split it in half as did Stefan Eriksson, that shady executive of the failed Gizmondo handheld game system. And Ferrari offered to repair that one, even though its parts were scattered all over a California highway, so I don't see why they wouldn't repair an Enzo where the damage is mainly cosmetic.)


Meanwhile, one movie that is playing in Ottawa is Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino's "double feature", Grindhouse. I can take or leave Robert Rodruiguez as a filmmaker... From Dusk to Dawn was a lot of fun, but the most recent movie of his that I've seen, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, I found to be just numbing, soulless violence despite the presence of Johnny Depp. But I'd pay to see it just for Quentin's half, Death Proof, which some people liked a lot less than Rodriguez's zombie and machine-gun-legged woman half, Planet Terror because there was too much talking and not enough gore in Death Proof to truly be called Grindhouse, but if it's more tongue-in-cheek than it is over-the-top violence, all the better for me as far as I'm concerned. And Kurt Russell is always cool, no matter what film he's in. Unfortunately, I haven't quite gotten around to seeing it yet because it's so long that the total theatre turnover time between showings, taking into account the amount of time it takes to clean the theatres and show trailers, is a whopping four hours, and all of the showings in Ottawa are either a bit too early (4 p.m.) or too late (8 p.m.) for me. 8 p.m. doesn't sound that late, but, since I'm reliant on the bus for transportation and there's no night bus to my part of Nepean, it's much too risky. A 6:30 to 7 p.m. starting time would be ideal, but no Ottawa theatre has such a time scheduled.



This upcoming weekend, my movie drought is going to end, as the first movie of 2007 that I've honest-to-good been anticipating for a long time, Hot Fuzz, from the creators of Shaun of the Dead, is opening in North America. I know it's probably not going to be quite on the same level as Shaun of the Dead, simply the best horror-comedy I've ever seen, as slapstick cop comedies are a much more trodden sub-genre than are zombie-comedies so there's less they can do that hasn't been seen before already, but I have faith in Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright that the film won't be disappointing.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 4:06 AM