Jason Anderson - Medium Cool

Jason Anderson is one of my fave local writers - his column in eye is one of the few I read every week, for observations like this:

"For all the ink spilled on Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ this year, the most topical movie of 2004 turned out to be The Day After Tomorrow. In light of December's earthquake disaster, what was once an enjoyably corn pone eco-disaster flick full of freak weather and vampiric ice wolves now seems irredeemably callous. Yet two images in the film remain remarkable. The first reversed the standard pattern of immigration on this continent by portraying cold-fearing Americans fleeing across the border to Mexico, where I'm sure they'll enjoy their new lives as nannies and gardeners. The other was of a digitally generated tsunami bearing down on Manhattan. Still a ubiquitous sight in video stores, it's a queasy reminder that we've got some sick ideas about what counts as entertainment."

Later in this article, he makes mention of Don McKellar's Childstar. I had a chance to see this at September's Toronto Film Fest. On the whole, some great moments (lots of America/Canada jokes, which went over well with the crowd), but Don's gotta learn to stop writing for himself. He's a fun actor to watch - all twitches and quirks - but he has a habit of casting himself as a lead AND writing that lead character highly unsympathetically. Twitches and quirks translate different when played by a jerk. Childstar had some great moments, but I look forward to seeing the final version. The satire could've been sharpened with a few cuts, and I'm curious to see if they were made. Probably not - this is CanCon, after all.