Sitcom Lyrics that Look Ominous in Print
I bet we’ve been together for a million years. And I bet we’ll be together for a million more.
But I don’t know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs. They’re calling again.
Tell me why I love you like I do. Tell me who could stop my heart as much as you.
Every time I turn around, I see the girl that turns my world around. Standing there.
Charles in charge of our days and our nights. Charles in charge of our wrongs and our rights.
I’ll be there for you – and you’ll be there for me too.
EXIT’s World Premiere
Is there anything more frightening than the words “BUY TICKETS” next to the title of a movie you wrote?
As we announced last week – after keeping quiet about it for far, far too long – EXIT will soon have its world premiere at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal.
And even better, EXIT will be the closing night film of Fantasia’s Camera Lucida spotlight. Programmer Simon Laperrière has said that the first Camera Lucida spotlight was based on a question:
“What is genre cinema today? And to answer it, I said we have to look at genre film in its most iconoclastic form, in all its differences.”
Last year – the first of Camera Lucida – included Quentin Duplex’s killer tire movie Rubber and Hirokazu Koreeda’s poetic, absurd Air Doll. This year, it opens with William Eubank’s avant-garde sci-fi Love and closes with the world premiere of EXIT on August 4.
Their description of EXIT begins like this: “According to legend, there exists at the heart of the city a door that opens upon a parallel universe. No one knows its origin or where it leads.” It calls EXIT “one of the best science fiction films of the year, merging a small budget with big ideas.”
(Is EXIT a science fiction film? I think that’s a very interesting question, actually…)
You can read Fantasia’s full description here, as well as watch our trailer and buy tickets for the premiere. The director Marek Polgar and I will be guests of the festival, too, and we can’t wait.
Everything’s Better with RoboCop
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the single greatest premise for a feature I’ve ever snuck into triple j magazine. Inspired by the recent attempts to build a statue of RoboCop in Detroit, I shared a few examples of my long-held theory that every single film would be better if RoboCop was in it. My favourite example that didn’t make it, suggested by a friend, was an all-too-necessary cyborg upgrade to Pride and Prejudice. (“He could tell exactly how much there was of each! Like, 75.28% Pride, 24.72% Prejudice!”) Feel free to add your own in the comments. You know you want to.
CASABLANCA
During World War II, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) finds it increasingly difficult to stay neutral as the enemy encroaches on his prized nightclub. Luckily, RoboCop arrives and kills all the Nazis with his Auto-9 pistol. Why does Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) barely appear in the film? Because RoboCop has no time for love. Instead, he travels to Germany to murder Hitler in the sequel, Casablanca 2: Nothing Personal.
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
Teenage genius and social misfit Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) invents facebook, potentially changing social interactions forever – but can he ever win at romance? He strikes a deal with a malfunctioning RoboCop, offering to repair his programming in return for some logical lessons in respecting women. Unknown to Zuckerberg, RoboCop downloads the entire Havard database and soon hundreds of mysteriously bruised fratboys turn themselves in to police.
THE BREAKFAST CLUB
It’s obvious that the Principal (Paul Gleason) cannot control this small group of unruly teenagers for even one day of detention. The city sends RoboCop to guarantee their punishment is enforced. There is no dancing, no kissing, no sharing of heartfelt stories. Boring? Maybe. But RoboCop makes damn sure the criminal, the jock, the princess, and the basket case don’t leave the poor nerd to write the entire essay at the end of the movie.
127 HOURS
Pinned in a ravine by a boulder, Aron Ralston (James Franco) doesn’t struggle for days before deciding that the only way he’ll survive is to sever his own arm with a blunt knife. No, now all that happens in the first five minutes. The rest of the film shows how he’s given a cybernetic arm to become RoboCop’s wise-cracking, boulder-phobic partner in the war against crime.
PREDATOR
After Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his men are spooked by the invisible alien that’s hunting them, firing aimlessly into the jungle, RoboCop appears. He’s dragging the dead Predator behind him. Dutch says: “This is now the most awesome film ever, isn’t it?” and RoboCop says “Affirmative”. Then they arm wrestle while power ballads play in the background. The end.
This article first appeared in triple j magazine #49.
They’re All Cars! All Cars!
Until recently, Cars was the only Pixar feature I’d never seen. I love almost all their films unreservedly but there was something about Cars’ imagery that unsettled me. I remember having this conversation with a friend, years ago:
“They’re talking cars, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And people watch them race?”
“The spectators are cars, too.”
“What about, like, the mechanics?”
“They’re also cars.”
“But what about…”
“THEY’RE ALL CARS! ALL CARS!”
Where do these cars come from? Are they built, or are they birthed? I’m not the first to struggle with a universe entirely populated with sentient cars. (Okay – and some trains, boats, and helicopters too.) I found this hypothetical cutaway image of Lightning McQueen, guessing at the biology that could be sitting, squelching, inside his metal frame.
I find that to be the more comforting alternative, frankly. When I was visited by the Thirsty Mayor about halfway through the frenetic Cars 2, my vague suspicion of the franchise snapped into focus.
You see, Lightning McQueen is a slick racing car, without even headlights to spoil his smooth lines. But what about Mater, his dim-witted tow truck best friend? Unlike McQueen, Mater clearly has doors.
Doors.
They never seem to open, but they’re there. Are they vestigial remnants of a time before these cars came to life? Before their engines erupted with teeth and gums and flopping tongues? Perhaps there was even a moment of truce – a time when these cars could think and talk and dream, but were still happy to let their drivers inside.
Or maybe it happened in an instant. A signal was broadcast from aerial to aerial. The doors locked. The side windows fogged to grey. The windshields eclipsed with enormous cartoon eyes. From that point forward all cars would drive themselves, and the human skeletons still belted into their seats swallowed down like bad memories.