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Aisles and aisles of demented discs.
When I was a kid, Drew would drag me up and down every aisle at Blockbuster, endlessly in pursuit of the strangest films they offered. Drew, innocent freckly Drew, in his own world, he'd have us in there for hours. I'd envy the normal families. The ones who got in and out of the store in minutes.
Browsing the virtual aisles of DiabolikDVD almost makes me feel like Drew's kid brother again. Only now, I have a wallet, an opinion, and an unhealthy nostalgia for getting lost in the aisles with Drew, begging him to just pick a fucking movie already.
A few titles from their shelves
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The results are in from last week’s poll.
When watching a foreign language film, 86% you prefer subtitles instead of dubs. Which is the correct answer, by the way.
Submit a film to our sci-fi watchlist.
The community watchlist category is sci-fi movies. Submit a movie for a chance to win our annual mystery prize.
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What it is.
Two bandmates accidentally travel back to the year 2008 while trying to secure a show at a famous local venue.
If you like these things, then you'll like the film.
→ Back to the Future. The crescendo of references and copyright limbo is at once hysterical and awe-inspiring.
→ Goofy humor. Just a couple of silly, goofy boys being silly. And goofy.
→ Canada. It’s a Canadian film, based on a Canadian TV series, which was based on a Canadian web series. I haven’t seen either, and you don’t need to in order to like the movie.
→ Hidden camera gags. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie combines fiction with unauthorized filming and unsuspecting, non-actor participants. Given its time-travel premise, it is a marvel that Matt Johnson was able to make it work. The creators have been cagey in interviews about certain aspects of the shoot in order to protect themselves legally.
What I think.
We’ve written up eighty-four editions of Tuesday Night Movie Night. Not a single one of the films we’ve covered remotely resembles Matt Johnson’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.
Here is a movie where two grown men who make up Nirvana The Band never, not once, acknowledge that there is an actual band called Nirvana.
Here is a movie that features an elaborate skydiving stunt off the CN Tower, and also a myriad of improvised hidden camera gags on the ground.
Here is a movie that faithfully recreates the year 2008 to land a few crude jokes about who was famous back then and the things we used to find funny.
Here is a movie that makes a dangerous habit of teasing whichever IP lawyers are currently charged with protecting an American classic, Back to the Future.
Here is a movie that is uproariously funny and also unflinchingly committed to its emotional thesis, that succeeding alone pales in comparison to failing together with your best friend.
Ironic as it is given its premise, here is irrefutable evidence that movies can still serve up bizarre, unpredictable, and entirely new experiences. Evidence that, no, not everything has been done already.
| oh, neat. |
A fact or two about the production that makes you say "oh, neat."
→ No, that’s not the actual score from Back to the Future. Lifting Alan Silvestri’s score from the sci-fi classic wasn’t protected under fair use law. Jay McCarrol created a full sound-alike score to circumvent copyright issues while retaining the clear nod to the original.
→ The CN Tower scene was unwittingly filmed by the tour guide. He had a GoPro on his helmet (used to provide tourists souvenir footage from their ascent). In Matt Johnson’s words: “We’re getting this guy to look and move exactly where we need him to in order to create the beats of that sequence without him even realizing he’s doing it…”
→ The trolley sequence was purposefully filmed on the same day Taylor Swift stopped by for the Eras Tour. Johnson says this “means that there’s so much chaos in the city that whatever we’re doing is not going to compare. Matt [Grayson] tries to set up our shoots as often as he can with that type of defense mechanism.”
