Tag Archives: storm porn

Thoughts and Themes from Whistler Film Festival

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Whistler Film Festival’s slogan is “Inspiring and Connecting Stories that Matter”, which is so generic I had to look it up even though it is attached to the pre-movie montage at every screening and we’ve seen ten movies in the last four days. But in the spirit of WFF’s slogan, here are some thoughts and themes inspired by our time here at the festival.

1. Consistently great Canadian movies

At least half of the movies we saw were Canadian or co-Canadian productions, and they were consistently good.  Canadian content rules have conditioned me to see Canadian movies as filler and nothing more, but I need to get over that notion and Born to be Blue, How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town, The Legend of Barney Thomson, and my favourite of the festival, River, are helping me ease into that new mindset.

2. Real-life storm porn

It’s a good thing we brought an umbrella.  The local weather forecast called for 110 inches of snow this week.  I didn’t bring my ruler, and most of that snow had turned into rain by the time it reached the village (which is 5,000 feet below the mountain peaks) but I think for once thwitnere meteorologists got it right.  Even the rain was pleasant, though, and the thick, fluffy
snow capped off the idyllic experience in this beautiful mountain town (or more accurately, “resort municipality”, because it doesn’t seem that anyone actually lives here).

3. Technical difficulties

From long, unmoving lines in an empty 8 theatre cinema, to lines that were permitted to mhqdefaulterge when they should have been kept separate, to triple viewings of the same commercial, to cancelled screenings, to reserving more than half the seats in a theatre for patrons who never showed, the Whistler Film Festival was an utter mess.  This topic deserves its own article, so stay tuned!

4. Australians

There must be more Australians in Whistler than anywhere outside Australia.  It’s absolutely insane that their accent here is more common than ours.  Whether you’re in the gondolas, hotels, theatres, coffee shops, pizza places, box offices, restaurants, equipment rental places, or grocery stores, in Whistler there is no escape from talk of dingoes eating babies.

5. Uncircumcised penises and other gratuitous nudity

I lost count of the number of penises I saw this weekend.  It was a lot.  And I think there might have been even more times when I thought, that woman is only naked because the director/screenwriter/executive producer wanted the excuse.  omg-gross-roger-rabbit-censored-1

Then again, this whole art instead of porn approach is one I can get on board with!

That’s all I’ve got for now but we have a five hour plane ride coming up so that will give us lots of time to come up with more to say.

San Andreas – not the Rock’s fault!

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I just liked the title, it’s not a knock on this movie.  San Andreas was actually surprisingly enjoyable.  I am biased because as you may know I like when things blow up.  Well, the sheer amount of destruction on screen here probably tops 2012 (the movie not the year).  Which of course was centred around the Mayan apocalypse.  This is just two little states getting smashed, but my god, so much smash!

I go into these movies expecting cliches and this movie has all of them.  Including one I could have done without, the scuzzy new boyfriend of the ex of the male lead.  And he is super scuzzy, Mr. Fantastic he is not.  I felt like he was included just so we could get behind some of the disaster, like maybe if he dies it will be easier to forget the thousands more that are swept away with him.  You be the judge I guess.  For me, I always just assume everyone else died at the end of these movies, even though they tell us in cliched news footage that most were okay.  In San Andreas, it did not seem like anyone except the Rock and his family were walking away at the end.  The other CG rag dolls just added to the triumph.

I liked it.  Every ludicrous minute.  Critics drive me nuts when they give a movie like this a one star review.  You know what?  This is not Oscar material.  We came here to see some shit get torn up.  And San Andreas delivers to a fault!!!!

I give it a score of 31,250 atom bombs out of 40,000.

Into The Storm

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This no-star cast makes a movie with a recycled script and boring, unformed characters, but if you’re in it for the storm porn, there’s plenty of that.storm

Sean and I saw this at the drive-in this summer and even on a peeling outdoor screen that’s older than my grandfather, the visual effects were dazzling. Back before it was forgettably titled Into the Storm, it was known as the “found-footage” tornado movie, and yes, the tornado scenes really are that seemless. When you are taken alllllll the way the funnel of one these suckers, and then come crashing down, you’ll feel like you’re on a roller coaster.

But only a movie this dumb can actually drum up romance between intense bouts of almost-dying. Twice. When the film pits twister vs people, you sometimes wonder if you shouldn’t just root for the damn tornado, especially when two doofuses looking for Youtube fame continually pop up in what I can only assume is a bid for comic relief, just minus the comedy, and the relief. The plot basically consists of “Oh no, here comes another one!” and the second the wind dies down, the film just flops around like a fish out of water.