Dave Foley is going back to school for the first time in a long time, and he’s doing it with the help of some old friends. The Canadian comedy icon and member of the influential and beloved sketch comedy troupe Kids in the Hall never had any previous experience with going to university himself. By his own admission he barely had any experience with high school, let alone higher learning. But he did have a previous working relationship with once growing talents still trying to find their way in the world.

Foley, as most of you might recall, was the leading voice actor for Pixar’s second feature A Bug’s Life. He would continue a relationship with the now ubiquitous animation studio and shows up this week in the long awaited sequel Monsters University as Terry, one half of a two headed, not particularly scary monster. In this prequel to the 2001 megahit Monsters Inc. that marked Pixar hitting their stride creatively, Terry and his other vastly more manic half Terri (Sean Hayes) are one of the creatures that now find themselves roommates with then less than friendly Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) in the most derided fraternity on the Monsters University campus, Oozma Kappa.

Foley met up with us earlier this morning in a boardroom at the Disney offices in Toronto (with his very own Pixar coffee mug that I hope he got to keep) to talk about coming back to work at Pixar, why it’s great to have a film to show to his kids, rumours of Kids in the Hall getting back together, how KITH was a lot like the fraternity in Monsters University, and if he ever had any roommate troubles of his own.

You were in A Bug’s Life when Pixar was still sort of in its infancy when it came to making features, and now it has become this almost unbeatable force in animation. What was it like to come back to it now and how has it been different from the first time you guys teamed up?

Dave Foley: It’s really been an ongoing relationship over the past few years. I’ve always stayed in touch with them. I had done some other stuff with them and some Disney stuff, like Prep and Landing at Christmas time for ABC, which was overseen by John Lasseter. And, I mean, there have been some Flick cameos here and there. Toy Story 2 has a Flick cameo in it, and he pops up again in Cars when they’re at the drive-in watching movies and there’s the all car version of Bug’s Life.

The company’s definitely changed a lot since A Bug’s Life. They’ve have a lot more successes since then, that’s for sure. They have this huge new campus now over in San Francisco. But the one thing that hasn’t changed is how they make a movie, where it’s just a constant process of refining and being comfortable to tear things apart that they’ve already done and go back in and sometimes start from scratch to just make sure they are making the best work possible. They’ll follow the best ideas no matter how much work it means. That amazes me about them, and they always bring up these really talented directors from within their system.

With the advancements that Pixar has at their disposal, do you have a lot more freedom as an actor to change lines and improvise a bit?

DF: Not really, but it is easier to implement changes, and again, they never shy away from that work. When I was working on A Bug’s Life, somebody improvised something in a session with Kevin Spacey that they really liked, but they ended up having to bring me back in to re-do my previous session. Even if it was something they already partially animated, they would throw out the animation and start all over again. It was all about getting what they liked. But for the actors, the freedom was always there. They always gave you that and they took the burden of the work that it meant.

Pixar has so far failed to make a bad movie. I haven’t seen one of their films where I haven’t had a great time. It would be hard for me to pick a favourite. But you have these moments like the first 20 minutes of Up or the entire first act of Wall-E where you just recognize that these are exceptional moments in film history.

When you do a kids film like this where they can’t see you but they can hear your voice, do you get a lot of the kids recognizing you or is it more the parents?

DF: It’s usually the parents, and then I’ll startle the kids by just saying (in Flick’s voice) “Princess Atta!” (laughs) Then they just get scared. It’s like the alien from Alien just popped out of my chest. (laughs)

We’re you ever involved with the Bug’s Life section of Disney World at all?

DF: Yeah, yeah! I was. Very much so. We recorded the It’s Tough to Be a Bug 3-D film for the opening of the wild animal park in Orlando, and I was there for the opening that. And when they opened up California’s Great Adventure, they added a bug exhibit to that, and John brought me in to do some voices for that. It was kinda great getting to be involved with a theme park. It was something my daughter was very proud of, and I get some pretty sweet deals at Disneyland now.

Now that Pixar seems a bit more open to sequels, would you ever consider doing a follow-up to A Bug’s Life?

DF: I haven’t heard of anything, but I would definitely be up for it. I also wish they would do a 3-D release of Bug’s Life. I would love to see that in 3-D. I don’t think there’s any plans for it. We’re kind of a forgotten Pixar film. (laughs)

When you’re doing a film with this many comedic talents where you’ll rarely be in the same room at the same time, how do you approach and prepare for what other people might say or do if you sometimes you can’t see or hear it yourself?

DF: I generally don’t prepare at all… for anything really. (laughs) Especially when you walk into something like this, you really just have to rely on and trust the director. They have to have the full vision of what the actor has to do, what everyone else has done, and what the action is going to be and the tone of it.

On this one, I actually had the fun of being able to record with Sean Hayes. They scheduled it so that we could come in and play off each other, and improvise, and find ways to sort of talk over each other and make it feel more like that sibling dynamic that these two heads had.

When I did A Bug’s Life, I never actually met with any of the other cast on that one. There it was John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton in the room with me sitting with me and doing all of the character voices. Also, John would get up and act out the whole movie for you. I remember going to the audition for A Bug’s Life and John acted everything out for me from beginning to end just before I read. (laughs) It made me want to work with him, but I just wondered, “Who IS this guy?” (laughs)

What was it like having to be the straight man to Sean Hayes?

DF: (laughs) Well, I guess for me to be the straight man to Sean it was pretty easy. But I love working with Sean. I did five episodes of Will and Grace with Sean where I was the only boyfriend that Jack had during the whole run of the show. Actually, when I was doing that I went to Palm Springs right after doing those episodes, and I had never been more famous in my life. (laughs) Having been on Will and Grace and being in Palm Springs, which if you don’t know is kinda sorta like a gay retirement community in a lot of ways. That is THE most famous I ever was.

Is it a bit more relaxing to be in the room with the person you have to work alongside?

DF: Yeah, definitely. I think they’ve just always done it that way whenever they could. I think Billy Crystal and John Goodman did some of their sessions together, and sometimes Tom Hanks and Tim Allen would be together. But to get the supporting characters like mine into a room together was really rare. A lot of that is just scheduling issues and trying to cater to that.

 hankfully, I don’t think we did anything raunchy that could get leaked. (laughs) I think we generally stuck to the genre pretty well.

Were you actually tethered to Sean Hayes, and if so, how long do you think you could last?

DF: (laughs) No. The sound engineers wouldn’t have allowed that. I could last years. He’s a delightful man to be around.

Did you have any similar experiences with higher learning like in the film?

DF: I barely had any experience with high school! So, no. I dropped out of high school. My only ever exposure to fraternities was playing on college campuses with Kids in the Hall.

Where do you think you might have fit in on a university campus?

DF: Um, not at all. (laughs) I never would have been in a fraternity. Maybe if the kind of fraternity like Oozma Kappa existed then I would join them. But I would never fit in with frat boys very well.

Your character in the film has a lot of offbeat roommates. Have you been lucky enough to avoid such things?

DF: For the most part, I’ve never had a roommate. I’ve just had wives. (laughs)

But you never had a house full of wives, right?

DF: No, but… wait… well? (pauses, laughs) No, I’m not like Andy Dick who has several of his wives living with him at the same time.

 The only roommates I ever had were people crashing with me. I had Wally Langham from Larry Sanders and CSI living with me when he got divorced. He was there for a while and he once remarked that we were the less attractive version of Cary Grant and Randolph Scott. (laughs). John Kastner from the Doughboys also came to live with me for a bit when he first moved to LA. Those were the only times I ever really had roommates, but they were mostly just people who were living in my house. We never had to share the TV or anything.

Is it strange at this point in your career to get offered something that’s essentially a frat house comedy that’s decidedly more G-rated than your adult fans might be used to?

DF: I guess. I’m just thinking back on how un-genial some of my other stuff has been. (laughs) Yeah, but then again, I mean that’s the other side of my career. From Kids in the Hall onward there’s always been this dark side of what I do. I still enjoy doing that and doing things that even my own children aren’t allowed to see, but definitely doing something like this is great. It’s the other sort of ongoing side of my career to be able to come in and do animation and play roles I wouldn’t get to normally play otherwise. It was certainly the only way I was ever going to get the chance to play a college student. (laughs) I’m a little past that.

Monsters University has a really big competition aspect to it, and it’s kind of similar to what a lot of people have to do coming up as comics. Did you ever see any parallels there?

DF: (laughs) No, not at all really, thankfully. BUT the competition here that you see between (Mike and Sully) within the actual team was very much kind of like being on Kids in the Hall. The biggest competition we ever had was just trying to get past each other. There’s definitely that strong parallel: The fine line between competition and teamwork. I mean, with Kids in the Hall there was this bitter rivalry that came up. We were always really mean to each other, but at our best moments there was always tremendous amounts of teamwork. Once we could agree on what we were doing – which was always the hard part – everybody just worked really hard to make each other look good. That’s the message of this movie. There has to be that balance a lot of times in life between individual performance and working as a team and being responsible for each other. So, it’s a bit of a socialist theme. (laughs)

Is that balance something you often look for in your career to be able to go between projects like this?

DF: Yeah, but I just like all forms of comedy. The stuff that I usually come up with myself usually tends to be a little on the dark side, so it’s great to be able to expand that and work with other material. It’s also great to be able to do something that my kids can actually see. Also, I’m just a huge fan of animation and I have been my entire life. To get to be involved with animation has always an unexpected thrill. When I was growing up, I always wanted to be in animated movies.

Have you talked at all with the other guys from Kids in the Hall about possibly getting back together at some point?

DF: We have! We’ve been trying for the last year to figure out some time to get together and sit down and just write and thing about what we want to do. A lot of the time it’s just a matter of sitting down to write and see what that writing leads to, whether that’s a movie – which we’ve talked about – or something else. I would love to do another miniseries. I had so much fun working on Death Comes to Town. Also, every few years we would get together and go back on the road, so that could happen. In fact, all of the guys are going to come up and do a guest spot on the sitcom that I’m doing now. We’ll get together for that, so that will probably give us some time to figure out the next project.

You’ve certainly come a long way since having a bit part in Three Men and a Baby.

DF: Yeah! That was the only time my mother was ever impressed that I was in show business, and it was because I got to meet Tom Selleck. (laughs) I was a pharmacy clerk when he goes to buy diapers, and my one line is “Down to the end and two aisles over.” Of course, growing up I was a huge Star Trek fan and I got to be directed by Leonard Nimoy. His entire direction to me was [in Nimoy’s voice] “Faster David.” So that was kind of a thrill.

It’s interesting to hear that you’re such a sci-fi fan since you don’t have very many of those credits to your name. Is that something you would like to possibly try and do more of one day?

DF: Yeah! I love sci-fi. The only things I’ve done were an episode of Stargate: Atlantis and an episode of Eureka. Those were sadly the only opportunities I’ve gotten on that front, but I would love to do more of it.

Ryûhei Kitamura likes to think that the title of his latest film speaks for itself, or so he espoused when his film debuted at Midnight Madness at TIFF last year. The horror survivalist thriller No One Lives (playing this Thursday as part of Cineplex’s Sinister Cinema series and various dates throughout the remainder of the month at the Cineplex Yonge and Dundas in Toronto) certainly aims to live up to it’s name, and it’s a point that Kitamura stresses in his crowd pleasing and profane introduction to the film.

The morning following the premiere Kitamura is sitting in a room at the Intercontinental Hotel full of really expensive wine, and he’s not as hyper, but certainly gracious and self-effacing about the WWE Films production. No One Lives is the tale of a heist gone horribly wrong, leading to a band of thieves taking a pair of hostages before hiding out in the woods until the heat dies down. After killing the female hostage, they make the mistake of leaving the mysterious Driver (Luke Evans, most recently the baddie in the summer blockbuster Fast & Furious 6) alive. This Driver is one of those seemingly unstoppable men with a special set of skills and a thirst for blood, and they just happened to kill the one person who ever meant anything to him. With the help of a woman Driver had taken hostage, the thieves have to try to band together in an effort to not get picked off one by one. Again, referring to the title, things don’t really go very well for them.

Kitamura, best known for the highly lauded, low budget modernist Samurai fantasy Versus from 2000 and the cult favourite and unjustly slept on Bradley Cooper starring, Clive Barker adapted slasher The Midnight Meat Train, sat down with Dork Shelf to talk about his hesitance to make another horror film, crafting a more character based approach, casting people in scumbag roles, his love of David O. Russell (who name checks Meat Train in Silver Linings Playbook in more ways than one), and opens up about some of the challenges he faced during the release of Midnight Meat Train.

Dork Shelf: Last night you gave one of the best director introductions to a film I had seen in quite some time, and in it you said that the script brought you to doing the film. How did this project come to you?

Ryûhei Kitamura: This was a couple of years ago now when the producer called me, and when I first saw it, I thought it was a movie that was going the wrong way and I almost didn’t want to even look at it. The first ten minutes of the film were always going to be pretty typical, you know?

DS: Plus you know from the title they chose pretty much what you’re in for.

RK: Yeah, yeah. There’s going to be lots of stalking and running around in the woods and there’s this couple travelling and there are these crazy gangsters, and then it was just capturing and the couple are getting tortured, and then one of them survives. And, I mean, that kind of movie is something that I love to watch, but to me, it’s not something that I want to work on. I always want something like that where I can add to that.

When I started reading I was surprised that right from the beginning that the character and the dialogue here was so good. I never find character, emotion, and dialogue this good when I get offered something. I usually have to add it outside of the script, so to read something like this was something I really liked and enjoyed. We reveal pretty quickly that this isn’t some kind of typical “torture porn” movie. It had this irresistible wit to it and real ingenuity to the point where a lot was done for me.

It had this really great central character at the heart of it, and it made me think back to why I wanted to do Midnight Meat Train. It was almost the exact same situation. The producer asked me to do Midnight Meat Train, and at first without reading the script I said “No, I probably don’t want to do it.” (laughs) It was a great Clive Barker story and I didn’t want to mess with that. Again, it took some convincing to get me to look at the script, but that was ultimately an easier job to get, Midnight Meat Train.

On that one, I just walked into an office on a Monday morning and it was just a general meeting, and I met with the producers, and by Friday I had the job. The only thing I ever even said about that script was that this character that Bradley Cooper played – this wannabe photographer with no money or experience – was me ten years ago. (laughs) Right before I was making Versus, I wasn’t making any money and I didn’t have any future. Only through my friends believing me and helping me did I even get to make either of those because I never thought it was good enough. That was the one thing I told to the producer. I said they never had to be worrying about the gore stuff being lacking, because that part was easy, but I never want to do just a graphically violent movie. It always has to be about the characters, and I particularly felt something for that one.

And that was a feeling that carried over to No One Lives, and this and Midnight Meat Train both have this very deeply twisted love story element to them. There’s a very deep motivation and reason for everything to be happening.

DS: When you first start watching No One Lives, there’s definitely a sort of Bonnie and Clyde element that starts off that you think is going to take hold, but then it switches gears about 15 minutes in. And then you have to talk about the absence of love in a situation where across the board there aren’t any characters worthy of audience sympathy. It’s a gang of thieves up against a homicidal maniac. Did that pose a challenge for you?

RK: Yeah, that was the challenge, and at the same time it was the difficulty of it that attracted me. Like, the only character I could really think of as a parallel to the character of Driver was Hannibal Lecter. He’s a very bad man, and he’s killing everybody, but still somehow you’re attracted to that. It’s so attractive and irresistible that it’s hard not to like him. I knew I could do something similar, but it was always going to be a challenge. Yes, he’s an evil character, but towards the end of the movie you want to just give him the free reign to just go and kill everybody. That’s twisted, but I always thought it was really interesting in a character. It was also really clever how it was set up in the script. He was always written as this cool character that could easily stand up to a group of really bad people that may or may not be worse than he is. If he was just out there killing innocent people again and again and again, he would just be like Jason Voorhees or Michael Meyers.

DS: And yet, Driver comes from that same tradition of the silent kind of slasher. He doesn’t really say very much. How do you sort of cast a group of villains to work opposite an already kind of dark and evil character?

RK: It’s kind of fun in a way because it’s always a rush to cast scumbags. These people are just human trash with no room for sympathy for anyone around them. Again, it was something I worked hard on because when I was hesitant at first with the producers to agree to come on, I said that I didn’t want just straight, cardboard cut out gangster types to slaughter. It’s so easy to line up a bunch of pieces of shit to get killed, but to create actual humans – even piece of shit humans – is a lot more complicated.

I offered it up that the main and realest villain of the film is this member of the gang named Flynn, played by Derek Magyar, but the rest of the crew is human in sometimes softer ways. They aren’t like Flynn who is always on all the time, and a lot of times Flynn’s actions lead to those around him getting killed. I spent a lot of time building the relationship between the members of the gang, and showing the actual difference between Flynn and the actual leader of the gang. Flynn had to be the guy just below the main guy who was truly evil and who thought the world belongs to him. That’s how I try to somehow still make the audience feel the pain. It was all about creating different levels of evil and what audiences feel like they could excuse. If the audience doesn’t feel at least a little bit of pain or even excitement when someone is getting killed, things aren’t working very well. It’s all about balance.

No One Lives is more of a survival film with a little dash of Last House on the Left. Actually, my greatest point of reference and influence for this one was the original The Hitcher.

DS: And it helps when you have characters that are being caught at a really interesting time where none of the members of this crew at the heart of the film seem to be on the same page anymore. This situation is just the rift that tears everything wide open.

RK: I really wanted to show the intelligence of these people. In the process of rewriting, I even deleted one of the characters, but I wanted to focus on the ones that were more interesting. I ended up combining two characters into one because this is an ensemble movie, and more characters means less lines and stories to tell all around.

DS: I don’t know if you noticed or anyone told you this, but there’s a scene in Silver Linings Playbook that takes place on Halloween where Bradley Cooper walks by a movie theatre that’s showing Midnight Meat Train and he starts having a panic attack in this kind of meta joke, but the camera also starts spinning around him like crazy like you like to do. Did you know that was happening?

RK: (laughs) No! But that’s pretty funny and pretty awesome. I love David O. Russell and I love all his movies, and I still love Bradley and all the stuff that he does, so that’s pretty flattering. I’m curious to see that now. (laughs)

DS: Do you still get a lot of people asking you about Midnight Meat Train because of what happened with the release of it? Did you ever think the ordeal of getting that movie out was ever going to hurt your chances of working again?

RK: Of course. That almost killed me for a full four years. (laughs) But you know, the worst is over and I’ll always survive. There were so many things with that one that were out of our hands and out of our control.

To be very honest, I have no idea what really happened to Midnight Meat Train. Nobody ever explained anything to me and no one ever told me anything. There was never any conversation with me about anything on that one once the film was done. All I remember was I went to see Rambo and there was a trailer for the movie off the top and I was so excited. I remember it was supposed to come out on May 16^th back in 2008, and that was always what I was told. From that exact point onward I never know what happened because no one has ever spoken up about it. I only knew that it was having the worst time with the ratings board. At one point I was all about trying to get to the bottom of it, but now I’ve kind of let it go.

I was never asked to come back to work on it, and even though you’re in a shitty situation like that, I’m just glad that the film got out there and it found an audience in the end. As a director, I’m still proud of what I was doing. A lot of people really loved that movie and because of it a lot more opportunities opened up. There are a lot of hardcore movie fans that know me all over the world, particularly because of Versus or Godzilla: Final Wars, but that was the one that really opened me up in the States and in the industry.

I guess I think now because of Midnight Meat Train in a lot of ways people started to think of me only as a horror director, but really that was the ONLY horror movie I did! (laughs) I mostly did action movies, and really, I’m capable of doing anything and you kind of have to be. I was avoiding all of the low budget horror movies and cheap sequels that came my way for such a long time. I had the chance to direct Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, but I even turned that down in the end. But with Midnight Meat Train and this film, they had elements that I thought I could elevate.

If you’re a fan of Bill Willingham’s amazing Eisner award-winning comic book series Fables, then you’ve probably heard the recent announcement that the DC/Vertigo series is being developed for the silver screen. Directed by Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair), written by Jeremy Slater (The Fantastic Four…hmm), and produced by David Heyman and Jeffrey Clifford (who brought Harry Potter to the big screen), Fables focuses on the gritty lives of fairy tale characters who have been booted out of their universe and come to live in ours. If you didn’t already know that, do yourself a favour and pick up the first volume of Fables immediately.

Even though I’m sure Arcel won’t be knocking on my door for advice any time soon, I couldn’t help but start to dream up who I’d want to see in the role of each of my favourite Fables characters. Here’s my list of dream casting for the upcoming Fables movie!

Snow White = Sophie Wu

The twin sister of Rose Red, romantically linked to both Prince Charming and Bigby Wolf, Snow White is a great balance of both brash and beautiful. With both Scottish and Chinese heritage, Sophie Wu embodies everything I imagine Snow to be aesthetically, and could pull off both sides of her personality beautifully.

Pinocchio = Asa Butterfield

A three hundred-year-old man perpetually cursed into the body of a boy, Pinocchio has a complicated relationship with his father Geppetto and his inability to grow up. I think Asa Butterfield would be able to portray the age/experience dichotomy that Pinocchio struggles with to a degree that not many child actors today could.

Bigby Wolf = Richard Armitage

Perhaps better known as the “Big Bad Wolf,” Bigby is the cigarette-smoking sheriff and detective of Fabletown – and also a werewolf. After his recent turn in The Hobbit as Thorin Oakenshield, I have no doubt that Richard Armitage could take up Bigby’s gruff and shaggy mantle with ease.

Prince Charming = Matt Bomer

Don’t let his good looks and great personality fool you; Prince Charming is Fabletown’s resident womanizer, pathological liar, and serial husband. If you really can’t tell why Matt Bomer would make a good Prince Charming, just look at him. Yeah. That’s what I thought.

Cinderella = Yvonne Strahovski

Cindy is one of Prince Charming’s ex-wives, owner of her own store (the Glass Slipper, of course), and secretly works for the Sheriff of Fabletown as a spy. When I think of ass-kicking blondes, my mind immediately goes to the incredible Yvonne Strahovski – who you might remember as super-spy Sarah on the show Chuck. No one can kick butt and look good doing it like Yvonne.

Briar Rose = Camilla Belle

Also known as Sleeping Beauty, Briar Rose is Prince Charming’s second wife, incredibly wealthy, and cursed to immediately fall asleep anytime something pricks her finger. Camilla Belle has the poise and grace to play this small but important role in the Fables universe, and would probably look gorgeous even when sleeping (lucky).

Goldilocks = Jaime Pressly

Political agitator, gun nut, and all-around villain, Goldilocks loves power and lives to incite revolution. Jaime Pressly has the ability to throw on a pair of glasses and braids and let her crazy eyes shine through; I’d believe she was coming to kill me any day.

Jack Horner = Joe Dempsie

Fabletown’s resident rogue, sometimes-sociopath, and creative con-artist, Jack Horner is always a bit wild and looking for schemes to earn him some quick cash. Joe Dempsie of Skins and Game of Thrones fame would be amazing in this role; he has the ability to make you sympathetic towards his characters while simultaneously acknowledging that you perhaps shouldn’t always like them – but you just can’t help yourself.

Rose Red = Karen Gillan

Though she starts out as a party girl extraordinaire, Snow White’s twin sister Rose Red does eventually find her own path towards redemption and purpose during  the course of the Fables timeline. I think it would be great to see Karen Gillan in a role so far removed from Doctor Who’s Amy Pond; but, as my favourite ginger, I really couldn’t pick anyone else for this part.

Frau Totenkinder = Maggie Smith

Leader of the Fabletown magicians, Frau Totenkinder is an amalgamation of many of the evil witches who appear in fairy tales across the ages. Also, her name means “child killer” in German. We already know Maggie Smith can play an awesome witch (Professor McGonagall, anyone?), but wouldn’t it be amazing to see her as the enemy instead?

Do you agree with my choices? Want to suggest more? Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter, @SamMaggs!

One of the best films of the year plays tomorrow at a single theatre in Toronto for a single screening, and the best part is that it’s free, which means there’s little to no excuse to not see it. Writer and director Chad Hartigan’s warm and thoughtful American indie This Is Martin Bonner screens at the Revue at 9pm as part of the Refocus series, which is equally a perfect fit, a major coup for the series, and also in a backhanded way a damn shame. Like many entries in the series, this one deserves a full theatrical release and distribution in Canada. Hopefully high attendance at the screening will make someone stand up and take notice.

Martin Bonner (Paul Eenhoorn) has recently packed up his life in Maryland and transplanted himself to the chilly desert of Reno, Nevada with no support system in place, launching headlong into his first job in three years. A volunteer coordinator for a Christian themed program looking to place former inmates both into jobs and the church, Martin starts a friendship with Travis (Richmond Arquette), a recent entry into the program who just finished serving a long stint following a DUI. Both men are struggling to reconnect to the families they have left and adjust to their new, almost shared loneliness.

Hartigan has made a rare film about the nature of loneliness and absence without feeling monotonous or tiresome. These are weary people, but they’re believable and still fully worthy of love. Despite talk of religion and the characters’ crises of faith, it isn’t a standard redemption narrative being told. It’s not so much about redemption as it is about not being able to move forward following life’s sometimes crushing (and often self inflicted) setbacks.

There’s a real quiet elegance and a staggering believability to these characters and situations. These are real people with real and tangible concerns, and Hartigan never for a moment resorts to melodrama, but he also doesn’t create a stagnant mood piece. Gorgeously shot and effortlessly paced, details about the lives of Martin and Travis are meted out in small, but intimate detail. Neither man is an open book, but neither is a cipher for something else. There’s no wallowing in their isolation, and neither seems particularly hopeful (although Martin puts on a happy face quite a bit more often) or closer to understanding their own lives, but they’re nothing if not deeply contemplative characters.

As the titular figure, Australian actor Eenhoorn plays Martin as a man learning to find happiness where he can and on his own terms. His daughter might try to set him up for awkward speed dating sessions and he’s still learning to deal with the rejection he sometimes faces at his job, but he finds comfort in little things like acting as a soccer referee or trolling eBay and auction shops for antiques. He always puts a smile on, but there’s never a sense that Martin has forgotten all the things that have went wrong in his life. He’s perfectly friendly and it’s easy to wish him success, but his setbacks are easy to see and cuttingly relatable.

The real stand-out here, however, is Arquette, who’s mostly known for his genre work and showing up in bit parts in David Fincher films. It’s a performance of staggering nuance that will leave an indelible impression on the viewer long after the film ends. His Travis is a man of low tones who has found his entire life blunted by his own actions. While Martin is a kindred spirit in many respects, there’s no way for him to relate to Travis’ problems in every possible way. Travis is a sad man who looks constantly on the verge of tears, and even his most confident moments find him punctuating his sentences almost always with question marks to underline just how uncertain he’s become of everything. A meeting with his estranged daughter (an also excellent Sam Buchanan) over lunch that ends up causing a rift between Travis and Martin is one of the best scenes in any film this year thanks to Arquette’s work. It’s a performance that demands recognition this year.

Together, Eenhoorn, Arquette, and Hartigan have made a special film full of feelings that most filmmakers can only elicit from audiences through disingenuous or heavy handed means. It’s hard work to make on-screen emotions translate to the audience in a low key drama about human interaction and stay true to a realistic bent, but This is Martin Bonner has heart and charm in spades. This might be your only chance to catch it, and while I sincerely hope it isn’t, you should probably carve out some time in your schedule this week to check it out.

Happy Monday everybody! Let’s kick off the week with a contest celebrating the arrival of one of the most acclaimed documentaries of the year on DVD and Blu-Ray. Enter for a chance to win one of five copies of THE GATEKEEPERS on DVD, courtesy of Dork Shelf and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Charged with overseeing Israel’s war on terror – both Palestinian and Jewish – the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service is present at the crossroad of every decision made.  For the first time ever, six former heads of the agency agreed to share their insights and reflect publicly on their actions and decisions. The Gatekeepers offers an exclusive account of the sum of their success and failures.  It validates the reasons that each man individually and the six as a group came to reconsider their hard-line positions and advocate a conciliatory approach toward their enemies based on a two-state solution.

The Gatekeepers is available on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 9^th, but here’s how you can win a copy of your own! Simply email contest@dorkshelf.com with THE GATEKEEPERS in the subject line. Please only one entry per household. Multiple entries will be deleted. Contest open to all Canadian residents. For additional chances to win, simply like the contest announcement on our Facebook page and/or re-Tweet the announcement from our Twitter! Deadline for entries is 11:59pm on Tuesday, July 9th.

Good luck and remember to stay tuned to Dork Shelf for all the latest news, reviews, interviews, features, and more great contest to come!

8:00 Flo @ The Gladstone Ballroom

9:00 Rachel Sage and the Sequins @ The Monarch Tavern

10:00 The Beaches @ The Rivoli

11:00 Nightmare Air @ The Boat

12:00 Dessy Di Lauro @ The Gladstone Ballroom

1:00 Krystale @ Czehoski

3:00 Wannabe @ BLK BOX
If you’re still alive and kicking at 3am and in the mood for some 90s nostalgia, you can head over to BLK BOX for this Spice Girls Tribute band I guess…

If you’re a cult figure known for cranking out small projects routinely denied mainstream success and suddenly make the third most successful movie of all time, what do you do next? If you’re Joss Whedon the answer to that burning question is apparently: make a zero budget Shakespeare comedy in your house with friends. The king of the geeks apparently had a secret Shakespeare obsession for years and would stage readings of his favorite plays in his house with friends. Then, inexplicably when he was given a brief break from the punishing Avengers schedule, he decided to turn one of those wine-drunk house parties into a movie in twelve days rather than taking a vacation. It sounds like the ultimate example of a self-indulgent vanity project, and yet with Whedon being Whedon, it’s actually an incredibly charming little movie routed in everything that his big old blockbuster wasn’t. Sweet, small, goofy, and surprisingly accessible, this edition of Much Ado About Nothing probably ranks as one of the most breezily entertaining Shakespeare adaptation ever splattered all over a big screen. The flick obviously won’t have the billion-dollar appeal of his last project, but the audiences wh­o it’s made for should walk out of the theater with the same dumb grin on their faces as the comic book geeks wandering out of The Avengers in a daze to buy their next ticket.

The cast was cobbled together from friends that Whedon made on various projects like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Dollhouse. Their experience with Shakespeare varied from lead actor Alexis Denisof who spent time in a Shakespeare theater company to an extra who charmed Joss on The Avengers. Their collective experience (or lack there of) is exactly what gives Much Ado About Nothing it’s charm. This isn’t a handsomely mounted Kenneth Branagh project filled with stars and stage veterans acting their guts out to commit their ultimate poetic recital to film. Instead everyone involved plays the dramatics down.

The play itself may be beautifully written, but it’s ultimately a trifle: a romantic comedy before the likes of Katherine Heigl gave the genre a bad name. The dialogue is performed in a loose, almost tossed off manner. The actors play it as if it were a contemporary comedy in prose and somehow it works. Filled with subtle slapstick around the edges and sardonic line deliveries, the centuries old comedy feels like something new and fresh. Sure there are moments where dated presentations of household power and shivery sit awkwardly with the home movie aesthetic, but rarely is it ever distracting. Those moments tend to only serve as cues to the source for viewers who might easily forget they’re watching a Shakespeare adaptation once their ears adjust to the language.

Plot summaries seem pointless given that most folks who stuck around English classes beyond middle school probably sucked this up at one point (or at least the Coles Notes). Two stubborn perpetually single types are tricked into falling in love, two star-crossed lovers are deceived by staged infidelity, silliness ensues, and they all live happily ever after. It’s all classic stuff, cause you know, this is where the conventions were formed. Whedon shoots in black and white on 5D consumer cameras to create an aesthetic both beautifully designed and sweetly tossed off. He’s got a pretty nice house, so beauty shots pop up, but for those most part he just sits back to let the actors run the show and they’re all more than happy to do so.

Amy Acker and Denisof do most of the heavy lifting as the cynical leads tricked into hopelessly head-over-heels warm fuzzies and deliver refreshingly modern spins on the old types. Acker feels like she wandered off the set of a particularly well-written Nichole Holofcener movie and spits out her monologues with such enchanting comedic ease that it would make her a star with contemporary language. Denisof plays his stubborn buffoon role with such naturalism that all other iconic performances disappear from memory and he delivers several slapstick beats far funnier than they have any write to be.

That duo essentially are the whole movie, but everyone around the edges delivers their own little surprises. Jillian Morgese’s innocent Hero will seduce anyone with a pulse. Clark Agent Coulson Gregg proves his scene stealing chops aren’t limited to Marvel productions. Nathan Fillion mines so much comedy out of Dogberry that no one will notice his security officer sequences take place in a barely concealed basement. Sure, there’s an awkward line delivery here and there and not everyone is as comfortable wrapping their lips around the Shakespearian English, but so much of film’s appeal comes from its homemade qualities that these breaks in consistency only add to that charm.

Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing really shouldn’t have worked. The film should have been a private party and a DVD Christmas gift to the cast that perhaps popped up on the internet for his most obsessed fans. But, making a movie as successful as The Avengers means that pretty well any follow up project will land in theaters and thankfully his tossed off Shakespeare experiment is good enough to deserve all the added attention. If you’re someone who despises Shakespeare (in which case, what’s wrong with you?) perhaps it’s worth avoiding and there’s a good chance that some of Whedon’s fans will be disappointed by the lack of vampires, spaceships, and explosions. However, the fact that someone has made a Shakespearian comedy that will move and tickle audiences beyond the knowing, pipe-smoking academic set is somewhat of a minor miracle. It’s still a very small movie and more of an experiment amongst friends than a big theatrical release, yet with those standards in mind it also works infinitely better than it has any right to. It will probably be the most effective romantic comedy of the summer, and to pull that out of an ancient play with a budget comprised of loose change and IOUs is a no less impressive achievement than juggling five iconic superheroes in an earth-saving battle. Just, you know…smaller.       

Anthony Lemke is one of those guys you probably know by face and try to remember what it was you saw him in. Canada is full of those guys, and Lemke has been around for his fair share of time and has had one heck of a wide ranging career when you look back on it.

The Ottawa raised Montreal based performer probably got his biggest break in the miniseries RoboCop: Prime Directive (playing the son of the original half man, half cop) back in 2000 and it blossomed into quite a career doing tons of television on both sides of the border. He had prominent roles on Queen of Swords, The Listner, Blue Mountain State, and most recently on the beloved cult hit Lost Girl.

Chances are you’ve seen the naturally charming, gracious, and laid back man who was just chilling out on a couch with me in the TIFF Bell Lightbox Lounge once or twice before, and in the next coming weeks, you’ll get to see him twice more.

Lemke takes the lead of the two part sci-fi miniseries Exploding Sun (part two of which airs on SPACE this coming Monday at 9pm, with part one replaying Sunday morning at 9am and Sunday night at 8pm). He plays Dr. Craig Bakus, an astrophysicist behind the creation of the first ever craft to take passengers to the Moon and back to Earth in a matter of hours. However, a spike in solar radiation throws not only the ship’s crew into peril, but the world as well as a series of events have triggered a massive, unstoppable storm system that could wipe out all of humanity. Lemke’s character is the only man who can really stop this and get everyone back safely, but he has to first make peace with his ex-best friend, Don (David James Elliott), a hotshot NASA pilot currently married to Craig’s ex-wife.

Later this month, you’ll also get to see Lemke in smaller role in the summer blockbuster (and Montreal shot) White House Down, as one of the special agents caught amid an attack on the White House that only Channing Tatum’s secret service agent and Jamie Foxx’s president can stop.

Between chatting about sports and our respective days, we talked to the affable and very funny Lemke about the challenges of learning scientific dialogue, why the role of Craig Bakus was a dream for him, a little bit about RoboCop, and what it’s like being on the set of a Roland Emmerich directed extravaganza.

Dork Shelf: Let’s talk about Exploding Sun first, since we’re right in the middle of it now. It’s an interesting role for you to play because it’s one of those that actors love to play, but with an interesting twist on it. You get to play the guy who is always right about everything, but at the same time, he’s a guy whose confidence has hit an all time low. What’s it like trying to play that kind of role where the smartest guy in the room doesn’t seem to realize he’s the smartest person there?

Anthony Lemke: It in a lot of ways was kind of a dream role, to be honest. It’s that kind of baggage that character brings that’s a lot of fun to play as an actor. If you’re talking about typical sort of disaster movie things, there’s usually this redemption story. Pick really any of these kinds of films and the key to it is always this sort of personal redemption of the lead character. That’s what this is, but what’s neat about this is that it’s kind of a buddy flick, too. Me and David James Elliott have that really deep relationship and past here that sort of turned irrational back in the past and spun us off to this place where his character has to run in on the white horse to try and save things. Not me! (laughs) It’s a really unique dynamic between the two guys. It was just a hell of a lot of fun to play.

DS: That dynamic is pretty universally relatable in any kind of story and in real life, as well, where you often have to come back and solve a problem alongside someone you have a deep history with. What’s it like crafting that very, sort of, lived in dynamic?

AL: Well, as an actor that relationship is often crafted by the screenwriter. In this case I think our writer, Jeffrey Schechter, did a really great job. He created this relationship that we could sort of step in and play. We didn’t really have to do that much work. We just had to really follow the text and trust what he had written on the page.

Then, of course, you have your own personal toolbox, and so does Dave. Him coming in was almost the perfect thing to do, because our personal lives are almost the same kind of analogous situation. He was this big star from LA who lives down there and works on JAG and things like that, so he’s already got those qualities that he brings with him. He’s got that for free. He’s a big, strong, confident guy who wears his success very easily. And then I’m just a working actor from Montreal, which I can kind of laugh off, but that’s a serious kind of difference already. Right away there’s this sort of dynamic that exists between the two of us. I think it influenced in a lot of ways the on screen relationship for the best. It ended up being a really cool one when you look at it on camera, and part of that was coming out of our own situations, which is great because I’m not actually an astrophysicist. (laughs) He also never married my ex-fiancée.

DS: One of the things that’s always fun and challenging about these kinds of sci-fi epics is that you have to cram a lot of scientific dialogue into these rapid fire moments where you have to make it look like you absolutely know what you’re talking about. How do you keep all of that straight and be able to say that all in a single breath and sound like an authority on the subject? Because like you said, you aren’t actually an astrophysicist.

AL: (laughs) Well, I’ll tell you that the old trick about that for an actor is to learn just as much as you can about what you’re saying so it becomes more than just words on a page that look Greek to an outsider. Go to the internet. Just do the research and find out from that what of this stuff is real and how much of it is invented, because this is a sci-fi element to the movie.

You know, surprisingly little of the show is actually fictional. (laughs) Sure it takes place in space against this backdrop, but a lot of this stuff exists, man! The technology to go to Mars in 30 days is right around the corner. Okay, fine, so they’ve stretched it a bit to say you can go to the sun in a day or two, and we’re definitely not there yet, but Mars in 30 days is a spectacular achievement when you do the calculations. And the technology that they talk about when talking about that kind of stuff is what you can tell the writer here kind of used as a springboard. So when you have that as an anchor, then it becomes kind of easier because then you can kind of play like you do know what you’re talking about. You know the physics behind it and how the general dynamics of these sorts of things work. You just have to figure out what was invented thing is and how it works into the stuff that really does exist, and it makes it all that much easier to say that.

DS: But when you figure out that an element of what you’re saying was made up, do you ever stop as an actor who has done his research to just turn around and say, “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

AL: (laughs) Right! “Get someone else to dub it! I’m not saying that!” (laughs) No, and what’s fun about that stuff is that if you’re within your own world with a character, as long as it’s internally consistent, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying. There’s an architecture to any science fiction piece that the writer puts a lot of time, thought, and effort into, and sometimes what will happen during revisions when a producer or a director will change either this, that, or the other, is when you’re reading through it you’ll be able to find those new inconsistencies and point it out as being against the actual architecture. You can explain what’s consistent at any given moment and what needs to be changed. And yeah, it’s all fictional and made up and whatever, but that’s the reality of that particular story that really needs to get out to the audience.

DS: Is it strange for you right now to be in two disaster type movies back to back that both include the White House as part of their story?

AL: (laughs) That’s a great point! I actually never really thought of it that way. It was probably the only reason I was cast in White House Down! (laughs) The White House was a part of what I was already working on. It’s like they looked at me and said “Oh, good, you’re the White House, guy.” (laughs)

But if we’re being serious, White House Down is a huge Hollywood production coming through, so they brought most of their guys in from LA to do that in terms of actors. While people will call it a big, Hollywood feature and they do it so much better than anyone else, but what’s strange about talking about it and how well it’s done, it’s because everything on it has this international feel to it. Roland Emmerich is German and a lot of the key members of this production are all international. One of the things that these big productions do best is that they kind of bring in the best people from around the world to work on them. Plus, they shot it in Montreal so the team is largely from there. It’s really this culmination of artistry from all over the world. I mean, the story is definitely American and the top ten or fifteen characters are all American, but there’s so much international flavour to that movie.

I think, once again, though, that what makes these same kind of good disaster movies good is that they give you personal stories, and it’s one that they’re never afraid of retelling. That same kind of redemption story, and it’s just genius. Sure, things are always exploding and there’s all this spectacle, but they’re usually redemptive stories that tie back into family, and that’s exactly what White House Down and Exploding Sun are. They’re similar arcs overall, even though I’m a lead in Exploding Sun, and I’m a liiiiiitttllle further down the call sheet on White House Down.

DS: What does your character do in White House Down?

AL: I play a really cool character that ends up being pretty pivotal to the story. He’s a Pentagon official, so a lot of my scenes are with Maggie Gyllenhall. He ends up having to make a really tough personal decision that could very well have implications on the plot. I can’t wait to see it. I think it’s going to be a whole hell of a lot of fun. That was a nice little gift to have at the end of the year to play that last year.

As a Canadian actor, this kind of thing isn’t your bread and butter. These things roll into Montreal every now and then and I’ve gotten to do a few of them, but I’ve made my career in television mostly, and not so much in American features, so it was really cool to be able to do that.

DS: Here’s a big question: Do people still recognize you from RoboCop on TV?

AL: (laughs) You know, every once in a while I get it. That was right in the beginning of my career, and it was really freakin’ cool. I was huge fan of RoboCop as a kid, and to walk on set and see the suit was awesome. And it was that same suit! Not from the current kind of Dark Knight look of it, but, like, the actual first RoboCop suit. It was the real thing that all the stuntmen put on and used it for the show.

The best thing about the wonder of film is that you look at it up close and you see that it’s made of plastic and you ask where the real metal RoboCop suit is. Then you wonder how they would ever make it work, and then you see how it’s filmed and how much actually comes from the sound being used for it. When you see it in real life, it looks like a plastic mock-up made for a sci-fi convention, but that was the real thing! It was really amazing. Thankfully, I didn’t have to actually wear it, though. (laughs) It was tough on a lot of the guys who had to put it on.

DS: Were you at all bummed out that you got passed over for the reboot?

AL: (laughs) Nooooooooo. But that’s one of the decisions you have to be comfortable with when you make the decision not to go to LA and stay in Montreal is that you have to be comfortable with the notion of where you are in the industry and what you can bring and what you have to offer. That’s a multibillion dollar LA based project, and sure, with them shooting it up here it would have been great to be a part of it, but you have realistic expectations with what you come to expect as a Canadian actor. There are a couple of doors to go through, and then you choose one, and there are different opportunities behind them, but then you close another.

Robert Pilichowski is a director that seems a lot less larger than life than the subjects of his latest film, the break dancing documentary All Out War, premiering this weekend at NXNE as part of the film program. He’s remarkably polite (like so many others raised in Toronto) and down to Earth as we talk over lunch at Canteen on King Street the day before his film is set to debut.

It’s a remarkable contrast since his film follows around a group of street dancers trying to make it in an almost unwinnable and tough game. He does a great job of capturing the swagger of such superstars of the cardboard and polished plywood circuit, despite not having very much of it himself. Maybe it’s that soft spoken and down to Earth nature that made it easy for him to get a more personal take on these people, all of them preparing for a vital and high profile one-on-one dance battle competition known as King of the Ring. There’s Alien Ness from the Bronx River projects, who’s very open about having done time and his willingness to do it again. There’s Machine, a consummate professional from San Francisco always trying to hone his craft. Casper’s a Vancouver born, LA living youngster on the verge of breaking out despite familial difficulties that include a homeless father. Dyzee is a former addict from the T-Dot who found strength to move beyond drugs with his moves.

Despite some of them hailing from beefing crews in a sometimes dangerous game where other dancers constantly accuse rivals of biting their styles, Pilichowski gets to the heart of the people behind the blistering moves, showing not only the dedication, but the steps it takes to get to even to the middle of the dance game on your own.

We chatted with Pilichowski about how he got hooked on filming these people, how he picked his subject, the original plans for the film, and never getting in the middle of beef,

Dork Shelf: What made you want to tell the more personal side of the people who make up street dance crews instead of going the same route that films and TV shows usually do, which is to show how their crews actually come together?

Robert Pilichowski: I think I was just so enamoured by the dance itself and how dynamic and incredible it all was, but I just kind of wanted to know more about the pain that went into it and just that drive and that passion that they had for it. That was what I wanted to get across. Most people don’t get to see that side. Even in a lot of films both fictional and not that have come out previously you really only get a taste of it. But to truly understand it, I think you need to get a lot closer to it and to build that rapport and to have people let you into their lives.

DS: Most people probably don’t realize that the people you are focusing on really see what they are doing as a job and a potential means to an end. Were you at all surprised by that or was it a quality that you were actively looking for when you were looking for subjects to focus on?

RP: Yeah, but I guess I didn’t realize to what extent I was looking for that when I started. It’s a lifestyle, and it’s nothing that you can just sort of wander in and out of. These guys, they live it. It’s their culture. It’s non-stop for them. That was sort of eye opening because it’s hard to think about things in those terms from outside of a given culture.

DS: At what point did you build everything in your film around King of the Ring? Was it so you could best choose subjects for the film or was that always your intention?

RP: (laughs) It never was the intention. That King of the Ring battle was just something we were going to film anyway. It was just one of many battles that I had been filming as I was following some of the key subjects in the film. It wasn’t until one of them ends up (doing really well) that we realized that it was kind of major and it ended up becoming a huge part of the climax of the film.

DS: Did you film a lot of other dancers that really didn’t make it into the movie if that’s the case?

RP: No, actually. Pretty much all 34 people we talked to made it into the film and all of the major characters are the ones we always intended to be the major ones. The only thing we never knew was the outcome or what was going to happen. Some of them were really keen on talking about these things and trying to make it as far as possible in that battle, and all of them ended up going to that battle so it all worked out.

DS: Some of these people, like Alien and Casper, have pretty rough lives that you think they might not want to talk about openly. What was it like trying to get these people to open up about more than just the dancing?

RP: It was really surprising to me how candid they all were, but it really depended on who I was speaking to what I was going to get. Some of the guys took longer than other, but that’s to be expected. But with someone like Alien Ness it was easy. That rooftop interview that I get most of my footage with him from was actually the first interview I did with him. He was just incredible, like he was a complete open book. That’s what’s really great about him. You can love him or you can hate him, but he’s always very straight up about things. He’s the real deal.

DS: How long did it take you to put this film together? From the look of it and the time period it takes place in it seems like this was a really long term project for you.

RP: Yeah. I started filming it, actually, in 2003, but the focus only started to come through about these four particular B-boys much later on. I was originally trying to focus on two specific crews, and that didn’t pan out, because, again, I was trying to show that dynamic that crews had and those rivalries. Also there are just so many members of some crews that it’s really hard to get to know any one of them. That’s when I started to film these four individuals. Dyzee was from one of those crews, and he was from Toronto. Then the other guys I met kind of organically as I followed Dyzee.

DS: You really make it known that these crews can have legitimate beef with one another that could end up in someone getting jumped or beaten down physically. Were you ever wary about getting in the middle of that since your subjects were from different crews?

RP: There was definitely that element to it because that animosity was always there. Dyzee and his crew Supernaturalz have a lot of long standing beefs with other Toronto crews, so I think that my being from here kind of played into that, because he’s been the one of them that’s really been on the map and in the spotlight. I think he gets a lot of flack for that, but I think it’s also because a lot of rival crews think that he’s been taking some of his style from other people and getting famous because of that. I think it all goes deeper than that and there’s a lot of history that these guys experience or have to deal with.

DS: It’s something you have to tread lightly on because the stealing of moves is tantamount to treason in this kind of thing and you were able to see them rehearse. Were these crews open to letting you see that even though they knew you would be talking to other crews?

RP: Yeah, and again, that sort of trust took a long time to build. I liked to be as unbiased as possible when making this film; to show that there’s always two sides to the story. But that’s really hard to do when one side doesn’t want to tell that story. It’s kind of why when we focus on Dyzee, but we don’t get so much from the other end.

It’s funny because they would let me go to their practices, though. They let me film their warm-ups and all those things, but at the same time I don’t know if I ever necessarily saw everything that they were working on. I think there were times where they probably held back. Even the opening to the film where everyone is there, that was filmed the day before King of the Ring. Everyone was invited and as many as could show up made it into the opening, but you have to remember that these are also the same guys they are going to be competing against the next day. You definitely got the sense that they weren’t showing everything that they had. They’re very cautious of that, for sure.

I am setting a timer right now. I am giving myself ten minutes to write about The Great Chameleon once this introductory paragraph is done. It’s a film that somehow manages to top the worst of the worst in local cinema this year in an already rough year for it. I’m incredibly angered that it wasted 97 minutes of my time that I could have been doing literally anything else short of an emergency surgery that would have been more pleasant. It’s further proof that local theatres need to stop giving theatrical runs for any asshole with a chequebook who thinks they have a movie. I’m openly ashamed to even be in the same room as this thing. Giving this shit even ten minutes of my time is fucking generous.

And go…

Joel Murky (Victore Altomare, who also wrote), a master of disguise and life long con artist has been sprung from prison to help with the investigation looking into the kidnapping of his niece. It might have been as a result of his past, it might not. Who cares? He’s aided by the officer who sprung him (a truly awful Monique Zordan) and his flamboyantly gay, right hand man (poor Stacy FUCKING Keach, who is thankfully doing the bare minimum and still managing to be the best thing in the film). They uncover a deeper sort of corruption all tied into the same Asian mobster.

I…I’m just staring into space right now. I just wasted five minutes trying to put into words how much I hate this movie. And hate is the right word, since this might be one of the most ugly and hateful films to be released in quite some time, and that’s almost the only way to properly respond to such a piece of trash. Thankfully no one will see it, but it’s so noxious and obnoxious that it borders on something that should be picketed. The comedic stylings of Altomare are non-existant (not to mention that he doesn’t have a single disguise that’s remotely credible or would fool everyone since he still drops countless tough-guy F-bombs regardless of what his character is supposed to be) can be summed up very simply. Adopt a stereotypical Italian accent and say (and I am sort for even writing this, but this is seriously what you’re in for if you see this with it being nearly every line of dialogue): “You know what’s fuckin’ kooky? Those fuckin’ Indians, fuckin’ gays, Jamaicans, and the Chinese or whateva the fuck they are. But you know what’s fuckin’ hilarious? Pants shittin’ fucking retards. (pause) You know what I do like though? Vaginas.”

These are the objects of derision are never skewered gently or in any remotely funny manner. It’s not boundary pushing. It’s ignorant. Flat. Out. Ignorant. It never rises above asinine in its finest moments. This kind of thing could have been funny in the hands of anyone with actual talent, but under the guidance of the staggeringly talentless Altomare and the hack direction of Goran Kalezic, it’s a null set of offensiveness that goes absolutely nowhere interesting or even all that dark. It’s a string of profanities and useless set pieces punctuated with inept sleaze. It made me whistful for Andrew Dice Clay stand-up routines, which deal with this kind of misanthropy with almost infinitely more nuance.

My time is up. I made a promise to myself. This review is fucking done. I actually broke my rule to finish that last paragraph and this one, meaning I am simply wasting more of my time. Way to go, Great Chameleon. You’ve actually won this round. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to try to enjoy the rest of my day and the rest of my life. We’re done here.

Oz: The Great And Powerful (Sam Raimi, 2013) – As one of the most iconic movies ever made wraps up, the great Wizard Of Oz we were all promised is proven not to be a giant floating green head made of magic, but a sad little man just pretending he had those abilities. Weirdly, that scene feels like an appropriate metaphor for Disney’s new decades late prequel about that very wizard. The studio spared no expense on their $200 million recreation of Hollywood legend and brought in almost $500 million worldwide for their troubles. This version of Oz is massive and candy colored with cute creatures crammed into ever corner of the expensive frames (even popping out at the audience in 3D from time to time because that’s still a thing that blockbusters do). The trouble is that it’s not a genuinely magical Oz picture. Nope, it’s just an average-at-best family blockbuster pretending to be a classic. There’s definitely a disappointment felt in discovering the man behind the curtain in this turkey, but I suppose that’s what we should have all expected. The wizard was always a charlatan folks, how could his movie be anything else?

A particularly dazed and confused James Franco steps into the wizard’s shoes for an origin story of sorts that introduces the wicked witch and other iconic characters because that seemed like the thing to do. It’s overflowing with references to the original without ever eliciting a fraction of wonder, laughter, and joy from the audience that the 74-year-classic can still achieve. The film is a sad wasted opportunity from director Sam Raimi, who previously had no problem cramming movies full of exciting spectacle, in jokes, and memorable characters in his Evil Dead trilogy, Darkman, and the first two Spider-man pictures But here, Raimi seems stifled by a tired script that’s driven more by merchandising opportunities than storytelling opportunities. Acting is wooden and jokes are tiresome from the black and white opening to the CGI factory finish. The whole thing is about as impersonal and technically driven as Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland and should have the same quick journey from theatrical hit to forgotten obscurity. To be fair, it’s not a total disaster featuring some remarkable effects and sequences. The trouble is that combination of talent and source material should have lead to something magical rather than something so predictable. Ah well, at lest Return To Oz still exists.

On the plus side, Disney remains one of the best studios for home video release and the disc is at least treated with the love and care that the script deserved. The transfer is absolutely gorgeous and suits the blue screen/CGI overload aesthetic better than theaters since HDTVs are more forgiving to digital manipulation. The special feature section is also quite robust. Things kick off with one of those IPAD second screen behind-the-scenes tracks that don’t quite work as well as they should just yet. The standard making of doc is replaced by a 20-minute video journal by James Franco featuring candid interviews with the cast and crew that is actually more amusing and in-depth than the usual EPK fluff piece. Then there’s a ten-minute doc about Walt Disney’s obsession with Oz with some wonderful archival footage of Walt staging Oz scenes with The Mickey Mouse Club and a few of ten minute docs about Danny Elfman’s score, the Oz design team, and the wicked witch make up crew that are all a little too brief, but well produced. Finally there are some particularly dull bloopers if you feel like watching Zach Braff giggle and that’s it. There are certainly some missed opportunities on the disc like not including a track from audio commentary master Sam Raimi, but overall it’s a pretty fantastic Blu-ray package. In fact, if you felt like being cruel you might even say it’s a better package than the movie deserves. That is a bit harsh…too bad it’s true.

Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969) – The trouble with making a movie that’s topical and perfectly captures a specific time and place is that it tends to age almost instantly and can often unfairly slide into obscurity as a result. Such was the case with Medium Cool, a groundbreaking mixture of documentary and fiction made by legendary cinematographer (Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Wolf, In The Heat Of The Night) and documentary filmmaker Haskell Wexler, who shot the movie in the blazing hot Chicago summer of 1968 that peaked with infamous police riot at the Democratic convention. Wexler was commissioned to make a feature film about an impoverished child, but once he arrived in Chicago and smelled blood in the air, he shifted tactics to make a movie of the moment that peaked with an unforgettable climax that shoved his characters into the disgusting chapter of American history. Revered at the time, Medium Cool slowly disappeared into obscurity in the ensuing decades with politically indifferent audiences gradually losing interest and music rights disputes preventing any consistent home video release. Now Criterion has rescued Medium Cool for an unexpected Blu-Ray release and while the film doesn’t quite stand up to the drooling praise critics slathered all over it at the time, it remains an undeniably fascinating and unique project that will likely never be matched in it’s fascinating fudging of truth and fiction.

The great Robert Forster stars as a TV news cameraman willing to go anywhere and do anything for a shot. The film opens with Forster and his soundman shooting a bloody car accident, careful to get as much clean footage as possible before bothering to call the police. From there, Forster moves onto interviewing activists, impoverished Chicago residents, gun nuts (cue hilarious Peter Boyle cameo), and most chillingly the national guard practicing riot control techniques and being taught to dole out violence. There’s not much of a plot there since pretty well all of the subjects are real, but it all boils towards a scene where Forster discovers his footage is being given to the FBI and quits in a rage of journalistic integrity. While that plot chugs along we’re also introduced to Verna Bloom’s impoverished single mother who moved to Chicago to start over. She meets Forster and they do the love dance, but her son (the excellent Harold Blankenship in his only screen role) catches them kissing and runs away. Bloom sets out to try and find the boy and ends up in the middle of the 1968 democratic convention, just in time to see the peaceful protest explode with police brutality.

The actual plot of Medium Cool is fairly meaningless. The moment to moment realism of the scenes and performances is impressive, but Wexler seems to get bored with the material as the film wears on and turns his attention increasingly towards the documentary material (he essentially discards the characters in the end, which is fair because he never could have predicted the extremity of the riot footage and no tied up fiction could top it as a conclusion). Understandably so, that’s what gives the film its power and prescience. Watching Bloom in her vibrant yellow dress wandering through the destructive riot is one of the most haunting and unique images in cinema history and the overall portrait of Chicago in the summer of 1968 is remarkably insightful. With Forster playing a cameraman onscreen, the door is open for exploration of media ethics and the value of turning life into infotainment, which then feeds back into Medium Cool itself. Wexler wisely offers no comfortable conclusions to the questions he raises, instead turning his camera on himself in the conclusion to suggest all forms of visual media are subject to the same critique. It’s a film more intriguing than enlightening, but the fact that the issues raised and the fact/fiction games played are often just as relevant today and have not been matched or topped by other filmmakers in the ensuing decades speaks to just how special Medium Cool really is.

Criterion presents Medium Cool with a gorgeous transfer above and beyond any other release the film has received. Obviously Wexler’s natural light, documentary shooting techniques lead to grainy, shaky images so the film will never pop on Blu like Fast Five, but that’s almost irrelevant. This is how the film is supposed to look and it’s gorgeous. The only unfortunate issue is that Criterion was not able to reinstate the Wild Man Fischer song that was originally on the soundtrack due to rights disputes with the Zappa estate, so like the previous DVD the Harlem Globetrotters theme is inserted instead and it’s just as distractingly out of place as it was before. The disc comes with two audio commentaries, one imported from the previous DVD with Wexler, editor Paul Golding, and actress Marianna Hill, which is filled with information and sadly plenty of silences during a few crucial sequences worthy of discussion. The second commentary comes from historian Paul Cronin who expertly puts the film within historical context in a track that is vital listening for those unfamiliar with the time and events the film explores.

Want more extras? Don’t worry Criterion’s got your back. First up is an hour of footage from the brilliant BBC documentary Look Out Haskell, It’s Real that is filled with fascinating insights about the production (including the fact that the title line seemingly shouted at the director when actual tear gas is launched at the camera was actually dubbed in later, further complicating the film’s relationship between truth and fiction). Unfortunately that doc has also been truncated due to rights issues, but what included in no less interesting. Next up is about 15 minutes of footage from a documentary about the long lost child star of the movie Harold Blankenship, a new interview with Wexler, and perhaps best of all Wexler’s 30-minute film Medium Cool Revisited, which he shot last year at the 2012 Nato summit that chillingly shows just how many of the issues and explosions of police brutality depicted in the 1969 film are still playing out today.

Overall, it’s one hell of a package (it is Criterion, so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised) that finally offers up a genuine lost classic for new audiences after ten years in out-of-print limbo and stacks the deck with piles of fascinating special features about one of the most unconventional film productions in history. With digital cameras becoming increasingly beautiful and easy to conceal, there’s a chance that someone else might be lucky and talented enough to pull off a fact/fiction mix like Medium Cool again in the future. But for now, this is one of the few genuine one-of-a-kind movies that exists and it’s hard to imagine anyone creating doc/fiction mix as powerful as what Haskell Wexler managed to pull off in the tumultuous summer of 1968.

 National Lampoon’s Vacation: 30^th Anniversary Edition (Harold Ramis, 1983) – Christmas Vacation might get more play on cable around Christmas, but for anyone who cares or pays attention the original National Lampoon’s Vacation remains the finest and funniest entry in the awkward adventures of the Griswolds. Made on for a low budget by a National Lampoon film wing that was desperate to recapture the success of Animal House, Vacation came out with small expectations and terrible reviews, yet somehow still launched a franchise. Made by a collection of genius comedy minds hitting their creative peak, Vacation remains one of the great American comedies despite some cringe worthy sequences that haven’t aged well. It’s a perfect mix of universal observations about family BS from John Hughes and the vaguely radical comedy of a young Harold Ramis who delighted in tearing down American values with movies that half-heartedly and satirically confirmed them. Plus it has that scene where Chevy Chase promises the family will have “so much fucking fun you’ll be whistling ‘Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah’ out of you’re assholes,” and that’s pretty great too.

So if you haven’t heard, the Vacation movies are that Chevy Chase franchise where he plays an overcompensating geeky super-dad for whom no good deed goes unpunished. In the first chapter he promises to take the family to a barely concealed Disney World stand in Walley World and somehow manages to commit infidelity, get his son drunk, crash a car, kill a dog, kidnap John Candy, and tie an old woman’s corpse to the roof of his car along the way. Yep, there was a time when John Hughes was a subversive comedy voice and National Lampoon’s Vacation was the peak. The family values and good times vibe that defines the franchise is very much there in the original, but times were different and Harold Ramis also smuggled them into an R-rated romp taking the piss out of family and American values along the way. Chase has never been better, Beverly D’Angelo has never been more charming or naked, Anthony Michael Hall never had more pronounced braces, Eugene Levy and John Candy delivered two of their greatest cameo roles, and even Randy Quaid’s iconic Uncle Eddie had a sad, dark, and possibly incestuous core. If you’re used to edited cable TV broadcasts of Vacation, it might come as a bit of a surprise just how subversive the film actually is. But at the same time, it’s only as dark as any comedy featuring John Candy making funny faces on a rollercoaster can be.

You wouldn’t think that National Lampoon’s Vacation would be an ideal choice for a Blu-Ray release and yet this is the second time the movie has made it on an HD disc. The transfer for this disc is identical to the 2010 release. It’s nice, but Harold Ramis’ early movies weren’t exactly renowned for their visual experimentation. He shot in a fairly straightforward style that put performance first and his flicks were always funnier for it. Granted Vacation is a little better in HD then say Caddyshack given that the road movie set up and amusement park finale does feature a handful of postcard beauty shots, but it’s not exactly the reason to buy the disc.

The special features that have been kicking around on Vacation DVDs for a decade remain including a hysterical, if scattershot audio commentary featuring Harold Ramis, Chevy Chase, Randy Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall, Dana Barron, and Matty Simmons. That’s a lot of voices on one track and can get just as confusing as you’d imagine, but it’s also a group of people who clearly like each other and enjoy a good josh or three, so it’s a funny listen.

The big new addition on the disc is a 90-minute documentary about the making of the film commissioned by A&E. Even though restrictive TV editing prevents much discussion about the R-rated aspects of the film, virtually everything else is covered from the original ending that was deleted for sucking all the laughs out of the theater and the day that Chevy Chase got so fed up by the desert heat that he kicked a suitcase at Harold Ramis in the middle of a shot. It’s a pretty hilarious and info-packed doc that reveals plenty of behind the scenes details about the film that have never been out there before. I’m not sure if it’s reason enough to buy the Blu-ray again if you already have the other version. But certainly if you’ve never picked up a copy of Vacation the awesome doc makes this the disc to get. As the sweat stains currently under my pits confirm, summer is officially here and National Lampoon’s Vacation is one of the great summer time comedies. If you’re lucky enough not to have to face the horrors of a family car trip this summer, the movie is a nice blast of nostalgia. If you will be forced into that fate, it’s a nice way to ease the pain. Either way, this sucker is a comedy classic for a reason and if you’ve never seen it, you’ve clearly been wasting your life (ok, maybe that’s too harsh. But you should see it. It’s funny, I swear!)

Safety Last! (Harold Lloyd, 1923) – Film buffs might still explode into rounds of sweaty rage debating whether or not the heartfelt Charlie Chaplin or the death wish stunt specialist Buster Keaton was the true genius of the silent comedy era, but sadly Harold Lloyd has been lost in the debate. In some ways it’s appropriate that the perpetual big screen loser has been tossed aside all these years later, but it’s a mistake to simply dismiss the silent slapstick specialist in favor of his more famous contemporaries. Thankfully Criterion have continued to do their lords work of film preservation and given Lloyd a little overdue love with a gorgeous Blu-ray restoration of his 1923 masterpiece Safety Last! Orson Welles once dubbed the movie “an impeccable piece of comic architecture” and he wasn’t talking trash. Known mostly for the iconic image of Lloyd dangling off of the hands of a clock face (constantly referenced in flicks like Back To The Future), the film is a perfect work of silent slapstick silliness that can still get plenty of laughs out of anyone willing to giggle without sound.

Harold Lloyd stars as a country boy who moves to the big city to make it big, but ends up as little more than a cog in a department store machine. Of course, his gal back home doesn’t know that. Lloyd keeps sending her letters bragging about how successful he is and she decides to take the train into town to see him. So, as you’d expect that leads to a bunch of ridiculous lies and misunderstandings in an attempt to keep the ruse alive. Eventually Lloyd ends up having to climb to the top of the building in a publicity stunt, additional silliness ensues, la la la, happily ever after. It’s pretty simplistic stuff like all silent comedies. The genius is in the execution. Lloyd as director does a remarkable job of executing a simple set up that pays off with endless gags. The plot is as much a collection of joke payoffs as it is story beats and the laughs come furiously. When the big building climb comes, the death defying stunts Lloyd pulls off still pack a nausea-inducing punch. It’s insane that Lloyd was willing to put himself on the line and go that far for a laugh and the even the Jackass crew should be jealous. The life threatening stupidity was certainly worth it though. 90 years later the movie still holds up as one of the greatest big screen comedies ever made.

The transfer Criterion whipped up for the disc is pretty impressive. Sure there’s some grain and print damage, but for a flick this old what do you expect? Still, the depth and clarity is remarkable and given all of the crowd scenes and cityscapes on display in the building clinging finale, there are plenty of wonderful scenes that take full advantage of the HD presentation. The film has never looked remotely close to this good before and Criterion deserves a round of applause and a few rounds of drinks for pulling it off. On top the feature, Criterion also cleaned up and included three classic Lloyd shorts as well in Take A Chance, Young Mr. Jazz, and His Royal Slyness. The shorts aren’t ambitious or carefully restored as Safety Last, but they are pitch perfect works of silent comedy choreography and nice way to introduce viewers to ever more of his sadly forgotten body of work. Ontop of that are a sweet introduction from Harold’s granddaughter/preservationist Suzanne Lloyd, a wonderfully informative audio commentary track from Leonard Maltin and Richard Correl (one of the most detailed film historian tacks Criterion has ever produced), a documentary by John Bengtson describing how the stunts/effects were achieved, an interview with conductor Carl Davis on his 1989 Safety Last score, and an excellent two-part 1989 documentary about Lloyd’s life narrated by Lindsay Anderson. Overall, it’s an incredible Blu-ray package that not only provides an impressive archive for Safety Last, but also the life and work of Harold Lloyd himself. It’s an invaluable disc for silent movie buffs is frankly also a damn entertaining watch for those who have never dabbled in that particular brand of old timey entertainment before (just read the dialogue cards out loud if it bothers you that much).

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (Charles B. Pierce, 1976) – As Shout Factory continues its bid to usurp Blue Underground as the definitive horror movie Blu-Ray label, they’ve started to inch their way into genre movie deep cuts. It’s not enough to keep horror fans happy by just releasing Halloween sequels and Tobe Hooper joints. Nope, you’ve got to dig a little deeper than that into the cult movies amongst cult movie fanatics. And so we come to releases like their latest, The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

This 1976 serial killer picture was something of a proto-slasher movie, offering up elaborate kills bordering on the surreal and a masked killer practically begging to be an icon (in fact, he would kind of become one when the folks behind Friday The 13^th Part 2 practically stole the costume wholesale for the first version of Jason). It’s definitely a movie that anyone who adores horror should see at least once. However, it’s sadly not a forgotten masterpiece. The Town That Dreaded Sundown is as flawed as it is influential, but at least worth a look for one scene alone.

Loosely based on a true story, the film is about a hooded serial killer known as “The Phantom” who terrorized a small Arkansas in 1946. A handful of people were murdered and all of the children were actually sent away for a few years out of fear that they would become the next victim. Of course, that’s not really in the movie. It’s actually more of a police procedural following Andrew Prine’s small town deputy struggling to deal with the murders, while Western Hollywood legend (The Wild Bunch, The Last Picture Show) pops up as an out of town ringer brought in to track down the killer.

The movie flip flops from being pure drive-in sleaze to something more serious, often from scene to scene. At times an awkwardly serious voiceover explains the characters’ backstories in an attempt to add a sense of reality and gravity to the tale. Then there will be scenes when the killer stages elaborate slasher kills like stabbing a woman to death with a knife attached to a trombone (actual scene, not a joke). The result is a bizarre flick that is neither art nor trash with as many intriguing sequences as laughable tossed off sequences of B-movie silliness. That’s part of the movie’s considerable charm and also the primary reason why the film isn’t a universally beloved classic. It’s earned a deserved cult status for being ahead of it’s time in the horror genre, but probably won’t ever extend to an audience much farther than genre movie obsessives due to it’s undeniable flaws. 

Shout Factory did treat the movie like a classic though and the fans should be thrilled. The transfer is surprisingly clean and clear, which is a bit of a miracle considering how difficult it must have been to track down the elements for the long lost exploitation movie (although the added definition doesn’t do one particularly distracting mistake involving an onscreen cameraman any favors). Andrew Prine and director of photographer James Robinson contribute some nice in-depth interviews filled with love for a movie that was significant in their early careers and are visibly delighted n’ shocked that it is still remembered. Actress Dawn Wells pops up for a five-minute interview to tell an amusing story about a pitbull in her death scene, but offers little else. Then there is an essay about the actual killer, a trailer, still galleries, and an commentary with two film scholars discuss the making of the film and how it departs from the actual events.

The best addition by far comes on the second disc, a DVD of The Town That Dreaded Sundown director Charles B. Pierce’s 1979 horror follow up The Evictors. Mixing haunted house and slasher conventions, its tale of a housewife stalked by a prowler in a dilapidated Southern house. Until the silly finale, The Evictors is an entirely worthy follow up with some great scares and strong performances from cult movie stalwarts Jessica Harper (Suspiria), Vic Morrow (The Twilight Zone), and Michael Parks (From Dusk Till Dawn). That’s got to be one of the most pleasant surprise special features in ages and turns this Bluray into one hell of a package. The film itself might not be quite as strong as it’s reputation suggests, but it’s a worthy addition to any 70s horror lover’s collection and with an extra movie tossed in as a bonus feature…well, how could you not want to pick this thing up?

Airheads (Michael Lehmann, 1994) – Some movies age and some movies date. It’s pretty well impossible to guess which option you’ll end up with, but somehow Michael Lehmann made two flicks in the latter category over his sadly shortened career. In the late 80s he made the pop culture defining Heathers, which pushed the shoulder pad teen sex comedy into a dark n’ twisted world of suicide and bombings that would be unthinkable today. Then in the 90s the man turned in Airheads, a fairly innocuous, but funny comedy at the time that now looks like a relic of a bygone area. It’s a virtual museum piece of 90s culture featuring grunge, hair metal, shock jocks, Michael Richards, Nerf, an Adam Sandler with cult appeal, crash test dummies (the actual dummies not the band), toy guns that look like the real thing, Chris Farley, Stretch Armstrong, and radio stations/record companies who actually had the power to make or break careers. Watching the movie as someone who didn’t live through the 90s must feel like watching a science fiction fantasy of alternate world. I have no idea how it would play to that crowd beyond utter confusion, but for those ho survived the 90s in tact, Airheads is an amusing blast from the past that actually holds up fairly well as a comedy even if seemingly every element on screen is intensely dated.

The plot is fairly threadbare, a struggling/stupid rock group (Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, and Adam Sandler) decide to take drastic measures to jump start their career by taking a radio station hostage to force their demo on the air. It’s the type of high concept script that sold like gangbusters in the 90s, filled with all the generically snappy dialogue and half-hearted social commentary that implies. What makes it work comes down entirely to the cast. Back when he was still allowed to make movies, Michael Lehmann had a knack for casting and fills the movie with comedy talent who can deliver the laughs that aren’t always there in the script. The central trio isn’t exactly Spinal Tap, but they are more than capable: Brendan Fraser has always been fairly underrated as a bonehead lead, Steve Buscemi is an expert of angry whiny comedy, and Adam Sandler was still trying to create surreal comedy goofballs at the time. They charm up a storm, but some of the biggest laughs come around the edges from Joe Montegna’s Mamet-rant infused Shock Jock to Michael McKean’s sleazy (and hilariously ponytailed) radio station manager, Judd Nelson’s slick record exec with one of the most hysterically inappropriate soul patch wigs in the history of cinema, Chris Farley doing his loud-quiet spaz routine as a young cop, Beavis And Butthead making an unexpected cameo, and of course Michael Richards doing what Michael Richards does (a.k.a. Kramer routines).

The story can feel a little tiresome, but at least it’s unpredictable and filled with some amusing attacks on the formerly powerful record industry. Essentially, you’re watching the movie for the performances and those guys deliver (good thing too, since the faux rock hits don’t exactly rock). Other than that, it’s just amusing to see how many hilariously dated 90s references slip in (insert White Zombie and Stuttering John cameos here). Airheads is not a cult classic like Heathers for a reason. This isn’t an edgy dark comedy masterpiece. It’s a movie that movie executives decided kids would find cool in the 90s and everyone involved was just lucky that they hired a director and cast who could overcome the limitations of the script and still charm the pants of audiences all these years later.

The new Anchor Bay Blu-ray boasts a nice, clean transfer that’s leagues above any of the shoddy DVDs released over the years. And sadly that’s absolutely everything on the disc. There aren’t even menus or the music videos and in character promo-doc from the ancient Fox DVDs. That’s a shame, since it would be entertaining to hear what everyone thinks of the movie all these years later. But if you’re a fan of Airheads or 90s nostalgia, there’s no home video presentation of the movie that’s come remotely close to this before. So that’s something.

9:00 Wordburglar @ Sneaky Dee’s
First up is East Coast rapper (now Toronto resident) Wordburglar. One influencing factor of geek culture becoming mainstream (apart from us) is how it’s been adopted by hip hop culture, and nobody does this better than Wordburglar. With songs like “Dude, Where’s My At-AT At?” and his ode to comic books “Drawings With Words” (below), his rhymes are fast, funny, and fitting for this site’s readership.

10:00 D-Sisive @ Sneaky Dee’s
After Wordburglar it would definitely worth your while to stick around for some more local flavour courtesy of D-Sisive. While he may not look the part, D-Sisive has been at this for almost 20 years and has earned a ton of respect in the rap community. Humorous at times, touching at others, he approaches every song with a perfectionist’s wit.

11:00 T Nile @ The Monarch Tavern
Just down the street from Dee’s is little tavern that goes by the name Monarch where West Coast beauty T. Nile will be demonstrating her unique brand of pop infused folk (aka electro-folk). I’ve only listened to a handful of her songs, all of which have an ethereal quality which should be highlighted by the intimate venue.

12:00 Union Duke @ Magpie
Just when you thought there was only one Toronto-based alt Country band that ends in ‘Duke’, along comes Union Duke. It’s not just their name that sounds like Cuff the Duke, but their music as well, but with a much stronger blue grass element. Always a sucker for banjos and slide guitars, I’ll give these guys a shot. If I get bored I’ll be taking over/under bets on how many plaid shirts I count.

I’ll be calling it a night after this one and saving my energy for the weekend. If you have any recommendations for the remaining days you’d like to share please email noah@dorkshelf.com