aerovian

I stumbled onto this show quite by accident on the 'net a couple of weeks ago, as I don't have Discovery Canada in my cable TV lineup. As a Western Canadian who's driven the Coq countless times -- but never in winter -- I've been fascinated to see what a zoo it becomes when the snow flies, particularly for the semi drivers who must push through with their loads year-round in every kind of weather. Jamie and his crew are a pretty likable bunch who put up with demanding working conditions themselves, and unlike the similarly situated Ice Road Truckers series (another of my faves) there are no grindingly obnoxious characters to irritate. Just real guys doing real, honest, hard work and not being unnecessarily bitchy about it. Of course, their biga$$ trucks are fun to watch in their own right! I've just heard that the show has been picked up for a second season and am well pleased to hear it. Despite the show's very simple premise and lack of any serious twists and turns, it never seems to get boring or stale. This is just plain good entertainment for any fan of big vehicles and big men doing big jobs in the big outdoors.

I am a 100% anglophone who stumbled along with Parisian french for a few years in high school, so I am not fluent but I 'get' a fair part of the dialogue (I've actually been using this show to improve my comprehension and learn the Quebec idioms and accents.) I have to say this is a really delightful family sitcom, and while it is basically a series of short gags as another reviewer pointed it, it's thematically cohesive and extremely well done in all regards. And, it's very funny in a pretty wholesome kind of way (though granted some of the subject matter and dialogue would raise a few eyebrows in prime-time English-language TV.) All the actors are very capable, but Daniel Briere and Anne Dorval are particularly adept at portraying the challenges of parenting in a very realistic yet humorous way.

It's amazing what Quebec television industry manages to turn out with what I assume would be a fairly limited budget due to its relatively small audience -- particularly since you rarely ever see any more than the series' five main actors in the majority of the episodes. English Canadian TV producers could definitely take a lesson or two from Les Parent.

I'm in my fifties and have watched enough television programs and movies that nearly every fictional story I see is repetitively and transparently predictable. I know how it's going to turn out before the halfway point, because Hollywood just keeps regurgitating the same story lines and scripts ad nauseam. But when I watch Breaking Bad, I find virtually ZERO predictability. I am completely locked-in through every episode because the plot always manages to deviate from the expected. And yet it does so, for the most part, without seriously challenging rational beliefs. I think this show is an absolute masterpiece, and the kind of gem that is too rarely encountered in the garbage-filled thousand-channel morass that is television today. Breaking Bad should be considered the absolute benchmark for serial dramatic programming.

Although some of the script and action in this movie really stretch the bounds of "suspension of disbelief", I found myself pretty much engrossed throughout because of its fast pace and a reasonably well crafted plot with plenty of twists and turns. The cast lineup is excellent for the over-30 demographic, the production values are remarkably good, and the soundtrack just rocks with an eclectic lineup of tunes that really put a person in the mood for action. And after all, Clive Cussler is all about pure, escapist action -- no more, no less. Steve Zahn gives us lotsa larfs to boot. So guys, sit back with a tall one of your favourite beverage, hit the mute button on the discerning part of your brain, crank up the audio, and enjoy a great 2-hour ride with Sahara.

I stuck with turkey for six episodes, waiting for it to take flight and get interesting. After all, it's Canadian, and I always try to give homegrown fare an even break. Unfortunately it seems nothing really worth paying attention is likely to happen in the video annals of Buffalo Airways.

About half of the action revolves around the numerous mechanical failures that will inevitably go hand-in-glove with trying to operate an airline around a fleet of flying dinosaurs (so maybe buy some newer planes, already???) Then, to run out the clock, the producers drop in a bunch of filler footage that attempts to trump very routine and mundane workaday challenges into some sort of high Arctic drama. (The airport is fogged in, so a cargo flight is delayed, so a shopkeeper in a remote settlement gets a tad antsy about his shipment of cabbages and Cheetos. Riveting stuff.) The one time we saw the potential for some real drama -- when an isolated community a couple thousand miles off the power grid suddenly found itself in desperate need of a replacement for a failed diesel-electric genset -- our heroes, unsurprisingly, muffed the job. While the intrepid Buffaloons -- apparently not learned in the ways of the tape measure -- fumbled around on the tarmac for hours trying to insert a too-large generator through a too-small aircraft cargo door, a rival carrier flew to the rescue with another generator unit and saved the community from the cold and dark of the Arctic winter. (Candidly, I'm amazed that a capital-L-Loser incident like that made it to air. The producers must really have been strapped for enough material to fill their contracted number of episodes.) There seems to be an unspoken intimation that we should somehow equate the company's squadron of junk-jockeys with Canada's legendary bush-pilots, whose courage and persistence helped to open up transportation and communication lifelines to the farthest reaches of our huge country seven, eight, nine decades ago. That's more than a bit of a stretch, though, as Buffalo's pilots work short hours in heated cockpits with (surprisingly) modern navigation equipment at their fingertips, and they get to enjoy with warm beds, hot meals, plasma TVs and Nintendo when the wheels are down. And if conditions outside are a tad too nasty for comfy flying, well these guys can just sit around til the sky turns a bit bluer.

The show's name makes it plain enough that this is an attempt to cash in on the success of Ice Road Truckers; however a cloned TV series -- like warmed-over pizza -- is rarely very tasty. The generous helping of unblanked profanity served up in each episode only serves to underscore the fact that this series will probably only have any significant audience rating by appealing to the lowest common denominator. You'll be better served watching reruns of Trailer Park Boys instead, because if nothing else that series was at least original.

(I give this show two stars instead of one only because the narrator sounds good and does his gallant best to create a bit of drama and suspense where none exists.)

I've seen a great many movies in five decades of life in this "age of media", and I've seen quite a pile of IMAX 3D features as well. Within the latter domain, this movie is really nothing special. I mean, yeah, it's VERY cool if you've never seen live-action IMAX 3D before. All around me during the screening I could hear the new initiates in the audience experiencing the giddy delight that strikes so many of us on our "first time." But what was very apparent to me as a seasoned IMAX aficionado was the difference between the live-action scenes and computer-generated ones. Though still spectacular by virtue of the sheer screen size, CGI 3D still has a long way to go to rival what IMAX cameras can do.

That said, the tale itself is simply wonderful. Yes, as other reviewers have remarked, it's an old and well-worn storyline. But then, as many film reviewers have pointed out time and again, there are really only a couple of dozen different basic story lines in existence to begin with, so if you've been around the block a few times as I have, they all look pretty familiar in one way or another. However, what sets Avatar apart is that it an essential parable for our times . . . and if you are TRULY willing to look and listen, you will find it resonating within you at a level that goes far, far beyond the messaging of messaging of even the best of Hollywood's standard film-fare. Cameron has a way of reaching to an emotional depth in the sapient viewer's soul that nobody else in cinema comes close to. And upon this power he overlays a subtle yet vital message to which we simply must pay attention. For that reason alone, Avatar is an absolute must-see for all.

Well, I just finished watching this movie, and while on the entertainment scale it's nothing but pure C-grade matinée pulp, it certainly was educational. As a Canadian kid growing up in the 1960s I spent quite a bit of time south of the border, and was always baffled by the bizarre perceptions that so many Americans had of their northern neighbours at that time. It's much less of a mystery now . . . the picture of life in contemporary Canada painted by Pierre of the Plains must truly one of the most stunning examples of Hollywood's willingness to throw any semblance of reality out the window in favor of a (perhaps) interesting story.

It's 1942 and Canada is still chock-a-block with buckskin-clad, singing French trappers ambling through the forests on horseback, American bootleggers trading furs for whiskey with the Injuns. Log cabins and clapboard shacks are still the architectural order of the day. The police are still relegated to upholding the law on plodding steeds -- though nearly everyone else seems to have graduated to the latest sedan or roadster. And the nearest bastions of culture, business and civilized society in general are yet thousands of miles away in Montreal. Mon dieu.

Much of the inspiration for the insipid Duddley Do-Right franchise seems to have derived directly from this movie . . . Many of the characters and settings could quite easily have been pulled either intact or as amalgams from Pierre of the Plains, and the Inspector Fenwick of Jay Ward's animated series appears to be virtually a straight copy of Frederick Worlock's portrayal.

This film really should have been a compulsory part of the curriculum of Canadian schools in the '60s and '70s. Even now, it would be instructive for any student of sociology, cultural anthropology or geopolitics interested in seeing firsthand how Canada's world image has come to be shaped more by external forces than internal. (While there are, of course, dozens of other very inaccurate American portrayals of Canada captured on celluloid, they all pale in comparison to this one.)

Despite its inanity, I give this movie three stars just for the pure kitsch value and for giving me and excuse to make a bowl of popcorn and curl up in front of the TV when I should have been preparing for a business meeting. Unlike commentator glen_esq, I cannot give a bonus star for John Carroll's rendition of "Saska-TCHEE-WUN" because notwithstanding the handicap of a born-and-bred Louisiana accent, it surely could not have been THAT hard for him to learn to pronounce the name of the province properly.

Like another reviewer I looked forward to the debut showing on CBC with much anticipation -- only to be horribly let down. For it to have been any more low-budget they'd have to have shot it in a Wal-Mart parking lot. (The producers apparently couldn't even afford to have the shoulder-patches properly sewn onto immigration agents' uniforms, for heaven's sake.) The mostly unknown actors all seem to be doing their best but it's nowhere near adequate to overcome the unseemly directing that focuses too much of the action on all the wrong things. There are many huge gaps in the storyline, and candidly I am mortified to think that there could have been as little communication between Canadian officials and airline flight crews, and between our federal government and people in Gander, as this movie appears to suggest. The sequencing makes local officials look like complete boobs (e.g., the mayor and his minions rushing around madly to local fast-food outlets, ordering massive quantities of burgers and fried chicken to feed the throngs of passengers -- many hours before they were even permitted to begin disembarking from their planes.) I certainly hope our national broadcaster didn't waste too much money on this bomb, because it does no service to Canadians who should expect a potentially very interesting story to be properly told.

I had always been baffled about why this shot-in-Canada show, which I'd heard was such a big deal in the US and overseas, never aired on any of the Canadian networks. Then I got around to picking up a season one DVD set on eBay and the mystery was quickly solved. If you've ever done any serious winter driving on any of our worst stretches of highway (e.g., Calgary to Revelstoke at night with road conditions rated "poor") you've already experienced white-knuckle driving that's at least as scary as anything you'll see on this show. For the average Canuck, this series is about as exciting as watching people drive to the supermarket (in fact in most cities that's more likely to be a lethal proposition than is a trip up the Ice Road.) One thing I did appreciate, however, is that -- notwithstanding the stereotypical ice-and-snow motif that forms the obvious foundation of the program -- the producers give Canada a very fair, balanced, and generally positive portrayal. This is one of those rare occasions when we come off more as a modern economic powerhouse that just happens to have some very cold bits, rather than a nation of backwards, mostly frozen eh-sayers living in a 19th-century wasteland denominated primarily by beaver pelts, maple syrup and lumberjacks.

Awful dusters like this are the key reason so many people hate the genre. It's the cheapest pulp imaginable ... manna for the addicted, but utterly unpalatable for the rest of us who expect intelligent story-telling in whatever kind of movie we may choose to watch. In this tiny town -- and really that's being charitable; hamlet is more appropriate -- there are but a handful of inhabitants and only three apparent businesses (saloon, store, and undertaker), no court or jail, no regular transportation services, no communications, no government offices of any kind, no mayor, and no law enforcement, yet a busily occupied lawyer? The citizens - despite possessing a good cache of weapons - come out to the street and stand around helplessly as a drunken psychopath goes on a slow and relaxed killing rampage interspersed with ample rest periods and ample opportunities for him to be ambushed. If you have an IQ in three digits and expect a plausible story, don't waste even a moment of your time on this piece of rubbish.

A very fifty-something-looking Mimi Rogers cast as a thirty-something college prof is just the FIRST of many absurd incongruities that make this film hard to stomach. Much of the script and action are so completely inane that suspending disbelief enough to enjoy the story for its timely dramatic premise is just not do-able. For example, we cut in one scene to the lead (Mimi Rogers') character's teenaged daughter sitting forlornly in front of her school, which -- despite its rather formidable-looking concrete and steel construction -- has just been torn to shreds by a not particularly strong tornado. Even though mom arrived minutes after the tornado hit (and had to evade a police roadblock to do so) the daughter -- who had, by the way, ignored an earlier cellphone message from weather-guru mom warning of the impending twister -- tears a strip off mom, apparently for not being there with her while the school was being torn apart ("Where were you? I was here by myself! I was sooooo embarrassed!")

Although only a few episodes into the series I've grown quite interested in this show. It's real, it's Canadian, and it's as unvarnished as a Kiwanis Club picnic. It has quickly come to feel as comfortable as my favourite old pair of jeans. THIS is what reality TV should be! The closest the Americans have come would have to be those spousal-swap shows, which unfortunately must exploit the fish-out-of-water concept to a ridiculous degree to have any appeal. By contrast, TWTWW is based on a brilliantly simple premise that's very well executed, enabling us to sit back and enjoy without having to dial-down our IQs into two digits for the hour. Kudos to the families of Hardisty, Alberta, for baring all for the cameras and letting us check out the gritty details of their ordinary lives, and kudos to the producers for making those throwing just enough chaos into those ordinary lives to make for some truly entertaining television, without stooping to the level of US-style theatrics.

This is one of the most satisfying films I've had the pleasure of watching in quite some time. Russian cinema is notable for its stark and unvarnished portrayal of life, and this piece is true-to-form. (Disney this ain't!) While it is very difficult to take in the conditions under which dozens of adorable, abandoned children must get along day-to-day in the grim confines of a Russian orphanage, it is absolutely enthralling to witness one little boy's fierce determination to find his true place in the world. Ostensibly this film was "inspired by true events" and while it is of course difficult to know just how much fact ultimately found its way into the screenplay, it's easy to imagine that the real-life orphan who boldly set off across-country in search of his birth mother must have had incredible strength-of-character, particularly for one so young. The producers did a wonderful job of balancing the elements of what could easily have become a rather depressing and hard-to-watch movie. The heavy tension of the boy's constant struggle against huge odds is beautifully broken up with little snippets of humor and compassion. With the exception of a single character who necessarily functions as the lightning-rod for the viewer's outrage, the antagonists are portrayed not as stereotypical villains, but as humans who are doing their best to eke out their survival in very difficult circumstances. Above all, we never forget that little Vanya -- tough and resourceful though he is -- is still a small and vulnerable child. Remarkably, never once during this film did I feel I was being served up anything contrived or absurd . . . in fact, at no time did I find it necessary to engage in the usual "suspension of disbelief" that so typifies the viewing experience for Hollywood films. While this movie will do little to entertain those who crave hormonally motivated plot-lines and adrenaline-charged action, it's definitely very worthwhile for drama-lovers in the 30+ crowd.

With a more realistic storyline this movie would have been only about ten minutes long, as the marauding and obviously very lawless Gates brothers would almost certainly have murdered the entire group of newly arrived intruders during one of their earliest encounters. The idea that they would even allow -- let alone ask -- ask Mrs. Mainwaring, her children, and a family friend to depart peaceably for the mainland after murdering her husband in cold blood is utterly ludicrous, particularly given the remote and isolated offshore setting in early-1700s Carolina. The other factor that prompted me to hit the "Stop" button on my PVR about fifteen minutes in was poor sound. With the exception of Brand, who delivers his lines with relatively forceful clarity, the male cast members largely mutter their lines; as a result I found that following the dialog was nearly impossible, even after trying to compensate with every possible adjustment to my audio system's equalizer and noise reduction settings. This is one utterly forgettable B-grader best left in the vault.

I was able to hang in for only the first twenty minutes of this low-budget movie. The most glaring absurdity was that while the American inmates in a North Korean POW camp are all supposedly suffering from severe deprivation of food and medicine, going without bathing, shivering in flimsy and filthy parkas, and sleeping on bare floors, and - let's not forget enduring torture - they always manage to sport impeccably coiffed hair. With the exception of a suitably austere-looking Harry Morgan as an army Major, the casting and acting are simply awful. Ronald Regan cannot seem to stick to portraying a single character and instead creates a rather schizophrenic amalgam of past roles. A mostly Caucasian cast portraying the North Korean camp officers might have been forgivable, but when supposedly Russian officers acting as advisors to the Koreans strut around wearing re-badged Nazi uniforms complete with jodhpurs and jackboots (obvious costume-department recycles from WWII flicks) and speaking with accents like General Burkhalter from Hogan's Heroes, well, that's just six kinds of silly. Don't waste your time on this one.

This was one of the least enjoyable films to which I have subjected myself in some years. (I say "subjected" because it took me four tries to get past the first ten minutes, yet I held to my rather masochistic determination to see this movie through to the end.) The plot meanders and backtracks and ultimately goes absolutely nowhere. Although those inclined toward European cinema might find the entire offering moderately satisfying, I believe the average North American will only finish up wondering, "What was THAT all about?" Despite apparently being shot in Taiwan, Drifters is clearly little more than anti-western propaganda in the service of the regime of mainland China.

I give this film a "3" score strictly on the basis of its interesting editing and superb camera-work; however those elements still will not justify your expenditure of time or money on seeing this film unless you have a deep cultural (or political) connection to the setting and circumstances of the story.

Brent Butt and his crew have achieved near-perfection in creating a show that finally captures the essence of the Canadian psyche. And they've done it entirely without relying on scripts or characters that are crude, nasty, profane, or just-plain-stupid. I have to admit it took awhile for this show to grow on me . . . I think it all stemmed from my being so fundamentally shaken by the idea that a sitcom could air without a laugh-track (soaking up American television from childhood has a way of conditioning a person to believe that something is funny when other people tell you it's funny.) I used to think that only the Brits were capable of really brilliant and stimulating TV humour; thank heaven CTV had enough faith in Mr. Butt's concept to give it legs, and enough apprehension of the Canadian audience to realize they had a winner on their hands long before the first episode went to air. It will be interesting to see how the first mass U.S. audiences respond to Corner Gas when it begins airing on Chicago's Superstation WGN this fall. Personally I'm more than a little pessimistic, yet I'm hoping that WGN's leap-of-faith commitment to an 88-episode buy is proof that they, like CTV, know a little more about their audience than it knows about itself.

This show is extremely well done. The range of products showcased is broad and interesting, and the amount of detail presented for each segment strikes the right balance between thoroughness and conciseness -- particularly given the short attention span of today's TV audience. The finished product is slick and technically excellent, which is particularly remarkable given just how few people put this show together (take a moment to watch the end credits sometime -- you'll be surprised!) I was unimpressed by the work of the male narrator they used in some early episodes, but apart from that I've found little to fault and have been a devoted watcher pretty much since day one. Unreservedly suitable and entertaining for all ages, and superb for family viewing.

This movie is everything that a light-hearted slice-of-life comedy should be. Auteiul and Depardieu turn in a respectable performances, but it's really the writing and directing that make this a class-one side-splitter. Granted, the storyline is a bit weak and filled with improbabilities and inconsistencies, but the gags are so brilliant and so well carried-off that it's tough to care. I can't remember when a movie has had me hee-hawing like this. It's certainly not for homophobes, francophobes or similar fascisti, but just about everyone else will be hard pressed not to fill a full year's laugh quotient in 90 minutes of Le Placard.

This is not a commentary on the actual movie, but on the RUSCICO DVD release for North America. I don't know if there have been different releases and updates, but the disks we rented had a 2000 copyright on them, if that means anything. Anyway, the sound mixing on these DVD's was absolutely horrible. The levels often yo-yo-ed up and down; when the scene cut to a battlefield panorama, the orchestral track would thunder so loudly that I didn't know which would blow out first -- my eardrums or my speakers. When it was time for dialog, the volume would usually drop to something barely audible. Occasionally, the orchestra and Foley-work would stay loud while the dialog was superimposed at a much lesser level. My wife and I found that the only way we could watch this movie at all from these DVD's was if one of us kept a hand on the remote to continuously modulate the volume. And, like another user has already commented, when we selected English audio the dialog kept switching back and forth between Russian and English; and occasionally when the characters spoke in French on the native track the dubbing was in Russian, so you're SOL if you understand neither. Ultimately, we gave up watching after the first disk. Before you fork out $50+ for this movie on DVD for your own library, I'd heartily recommend getting your hands on a rental copy to see whether you can really enjoy this epic flick when burdened by such bad sound, particularly if you've never read the book and really want to understand the storyline.

Unlike many, I don't find the premise or theme of this show the least bit offensive. Its execution, however, is another matter entirely. Like so many B-minus movies, all the decent gags appear to have been spliced into the trailers. For most of the 22-or-so minutes we sit in waning anticipation any morsel of real humor. Or at least something to keep one from fidgeting with the remote or counting carpet fibers. With a couple of exceptions the acting is awful; the comical over-emoting and gesticulating of some cast members might be well suited to a late-night infomercial, but not a primetime sitcom (even a Canadian one.) Notwithstanding the admittedly original cultural angle, I cannot help but think this is mainly a misfired shot by the CBC to replicate the success of Corner Gas. Unfortunately, they got the tone -- and the script -- completely wrong for the prairies. The final insult is that they apparently couldn't even afford to have the location work done in an actual small town (Why? are they so hard to find in Saskatchewan?) Did they think the audience would be fooled by the downtown Regina exteriors? As a proud Canadian I hope this thing goes away soon, and that the rest of the world, primed by the CBC's publicists, quickly forgets this colossal embarrassment of a sitcom.

As I watched this film I was reminded constantly of the sideshows that used to accompany touring amusement midways back in my early childhood in the 1960s. Back then, people with unfortunate deformities and medical conditions were recruited by unscrupulous shysters and exploited -- at pitiful wages -- for the public's amusement. I found the storyline of this movie to be thin and weak, and have a very difficult time seeing it as anything other than a feeble rationale for a cinematic freak-show -- the evidence of which, I think, can be derived by simply tallying the amount of screen time devoted to exhibiting those unfortunate human beings pulled from the streets of Bucharest, albeit in quasi-fictitious scenarios. (I would dearly love to know, BTW, how well these people were compensated for placing themselves on display for the benefit of well-heeled western audiences, and just how much their involvement has enriched their lives compared with the pampered North American actors.) Some have stated that the merit of this film is its gut-wrenching appeal to the emotions and call to the viewer to assess one's own morals, however, sapient adults do not need to graphically examine through a cinematic microscope the harsh circumstances of the despondent and destitute to accept the existence, or understand the variances, of man's inhumanity to man. Claims of promoting social conscience are equally spurious, as the viewing of such rude exhibitions from the comfort of one's easy-chair or in an air-conditioned theater does absolutely nothing to remedy such gross inequities of human existence in a very unfair and unjust world -- no matter how much we might like to pretend otherwise.