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Media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously coined the term “the medium is the message,” meaning that the technologies that we use to consume media themselves are instrumental in shaping the overall experience of the media. But often we choose to shape those experiences more self-consciously in other ways, customizing them into something that goes beyond what we, for example, see on the movie screen for two or so hours. It can be as simple as watching with all the lights off at home, more ambitious such as inviting your wittiest friends over to drink beer and creating your own commentary to something so-bad-it's-good, or much more involved, such as going out to the theatre dressed as a character from the film, as fans of The Rocky Horror Picture Show do. The extreme end of this would be the Alamo Drafthouse's Rolling Roadshow, which screens films at locations where they were actually shot, brings in actors from the movies, serves special meals themed to a particular screening and other things to enhance the experience of seeing a particular a film, such as when they show Jaws to an audience floating on inner tubes in a lake.

I'm not that ambitious, but I do like to plan special nights out with friends where the actual screening of a particular film is only part of a night's experience. Usually, these are guys' nights and the movie of choice is something overly masculine and often critic-proof, such as Rambo or The Expendables. This past Friday presented the latest opportunity with The Grey. Liam Neeson playing a guy who survives a plane crash in the far north and must lead a group of men to safety while being attacked by a pack of wolves the whole time it about as testosterone-y as it gets. You can actually grow chest hair just by looking at that poster of Neeson and his piercing wolf eyes, so what better excuse to round up the men for a guy's night?

Here's how it went down. I bought movie tickets ahead of time online, which was possible because the film is playing the new Ultra AVX theatres with the reclining chairs, 7.1 Surround Sound and reserved seating. You pay $16 a pop but for something like this it's worth it not to have to get there early, line up and worry about sitting together. So, about a dozen of us met up on Friday night after work and watched this manly man's movie. It didn't matter that it suffers some crippling logic flaws (the characters choose walking into the woods with few supplies over waiting by the plane, which of course has a black box homing beacon, for starters), some of the CGI wolves didn't look quite convincing, or that the ending is a bit of a bust, as the climax doesn't live up to the promise that's made in the trailer. No, it had enough action, adventure, bloodshed, fire, improvised weapons, big ass wolves, Liam Neeson one-liners and beards to fill the toughness quotient. But that was only the beginning. Afterwards we went to Barque, a hearty meat-lovers restaurant in Toronto that has ribs, smoked brisket and all kinds of other awesome food smothered in BBQ sauce. We ate copious – nay, on a normal night embarrassing – amounts of red meat, drank beer and talked about the movie and the general manly excellence of “The Neeson." (See the included pic for evidence of the carnivore bonding ritual.) After gorging ourselves on flesh like desperate predators, we ended the night at a local drinking hole called The Inter Steer, which has big bottles of Polish beer, wood panelling, a jukebox, pool table and old, sullen drunks decorating the bar stools. Ideal ambience to be sure.

With a bit of email organizing, a few phone calls and the desire get the hell out of the house at the end of January, what would've otherwise been another trip to the theatre, became a memorable event we christened “The Neesoning.” It's an easy thing to do, have a whole night out centred around the right movie, and I know groups of women do it for films such as Sex in the City. Whatever the film/gender/reason, you have to be in the right mindset, and go into thinking that actual film itself is important to establishing the right tone yet only the thematic element of a bigger event. These days it's easier than ever to stay in and watch something on a big hi-def T.V. with theatre-quality sound, but that loses an essential element of the cinematic experience as an experience. This is one way of taking that back.

For our group of guys seeing The Grey, it wasn't so much that the medium was the message – the meat was just as important. Carpe Liam, lads.

-Dave Alexander

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences once again proved its irrelevancy with this week's Oscar Nominations. Given the hype, exposure, glitz and glamour, not to mention the fact that they've been around for 84 instalments, they're impossible to ignore. They function mainly to affirm mainstream choices and to reward those within the Hollywood industry who uphold the status quo. Work that's rebellious, challenging or made by outsiders generally isn't given a fair chance, especially when it comes to Best Picture, which was proven via this week's announced list of ten nominees, which didn't include Drive, the film that's superior to most, if not all, the ones that made the list.

From a technical, artistic and dramatic standpoint, it's a powerhouse of a cinematic achievement, yet somehow it was beat out by the cloying, sentimental Tom Hanks/Sandra Bullock 9/11 drama Incredibly Loud & Extremely Close, which is currently at a pretty weak 48% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes (making it officially “Rotten”). Drive, in comparison, is at 93%. Figure that one out.

Given past AMPAS embarrassing choices, this is no big surprise. Among the groundbreaking classics that were never even nominated for Best Picture: King Kong, The Searchers (winner that year: Around the World in Eighty Days), 2001: A Space Odyssey (winner that year: Oliver!) Easy Rider, Do the Right Thing (winner that year: Driving Miss Daisy), Boogie Nights and Psycho.

On the flip-side, sometimes the Academy does get it right and films that truly deserve to win Best Picture take home the prize. Some of the best examples: Casablanca, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Godfather II, The Deer Hunter, The Silence of the Lambs, The Unforgiven and The Hurt Locker.

But we're here to be critical, so below are the five worst Best Picture winners of the past 25 years that exemplify how the award is a joke.

Forest Gump (1995)

This Best Picture winner by the very mainstream Robert Zemeckis is as stupid as its main character. Gimmicky, cheesy and downright irritating, it still beat out the brilliantly game-changing Pulp Fiction. Tarantino's film is a hyper-violent, foul-mouthed, celebration of guns, drugs, murder, gangsters and pop-culture that probably the offended a chunk of the voters, who went Gump over gimp on this one.

Braveheart (1996)

The next year, Mel Gibson's overblown, overlong try-hard historical epic took the prize, leaving better films in its wake, including Il Postino. That year's winner really should've been Leaving Las Vegas, though, which wasn't even nominated. Perhaps Gibson's pariah status for being a xenophobic, abusive addict who co-starred in that movie with a beaver puppet is the universe righting itself.

Gladiator (2001)

Ridley Scott has proven himself an excellent filmmaker with pictures such as Alien, Blade Runner and Black Hawk Down, but this one is pure Hollywood mediocrity. A nice looking historical action-drama with a cringe-inducing hyperbolic ending, it won over the superior Traffic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the not-even-nominated Sexy Best. It should've fell upon its own sword instead.

A Beautiful Mind (2002)

The year after Gladiator, a true Hollywood hack took Best Picture. Ron Howard is a true Academy Golden Boy who make super-populist films with about as much edge as a lump of oatmeal. This particular paint-by-numbers (even the poster is mind-bumbingly boring), shameless Oscar grab can't hold a candle to any of the other nominees for Best Picture that year, particularly Robert Altman's mature and studied Gosford Park and Peter Jackson's beautifully crafted epic The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Rings. Fact: every time Ron Howard makes a movie an angel dies.

Crash (2006)

So manipulative and calculating in the way it played the voters' heartstrings all the way to Best Picture, this is the kind of movie the Academy loves, an “important” message film that's so obvious it calls for an aspirin after watching, just to counteract the pain of being hit over the head for two-and-a-half hours. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain was the obvious choice that year, but a simplistic piece about racism trumped a challenging, layered narrative about homosexuality. Weighty but safe seems to be the mindset, along with major studio over independent.

Hollywood... it's the kind of place where Ryan Gosling, a fast car and a team of very talented filmmakers still can't outpace Hanks, Bullock and crass sentimentality. Bleh.

-Dave Alexander

The line between manly and gay is anything but, er, straight when it comes to tough guy movies. Anytime you get sweaty, muscular guys shoving, punching, wrestling or generally grabbing at each other in the absence of women, oftentimes while holding phallic weaponry, someone's gonna call homoerotic on it.

I like a lot of “dumb” guy action flicks, which includes pretty much anything starring Stallone or Schwarzeneggar, and not only have female friends taken much delight in pointing out how hetero-straining the flicks are (the camera often lingering on the gleaming muscles of the hero), so have a lot of people on the internet.

Let's investigate the correlation between homoeroticism and action movies further through a comparison. Below are twelve sets of names. One of them is the name of a character played by Steven Seagal in a movie, while the other is the name of a gay porn star. See how many you can guess correctly.

Answers are at the bottom.

1.

A) Tom Steele

B) Wolf Hudson

2.

A) Simon Ballister

B) Logan McCree

3.

A) Clay Maverick

B) Jonathan Cold

4.

A) Casey Ryback

B) Mason Wyler

5.

A) Blade Thompson

B) Matt Conlin

6.

A) Tyler Saint

B) Austin Travis

7.

A) Colton Ford

B) Harland Banks

8.

A) Ray Dragon

B) Mason Storm

9.

A) John Sands

B) Tyson Cane

10.

A) Orin Boyd

B) Tober Brandt

11.

A) Hal Rockland

B) Frank Glass

12.

A) Gino Felino

B) Antoine Mallet

Steven Seagal Characters:

1(A), 2(A), 3(B), 4(A), 5(B), 6(B), 7(B), 8(B), 9(A), 10(A), 11(B), 12(A)

If you got most of the answers right, you clearly watch a lot of Seagal movies, a lot of gay porn, or both. Regardless, some of the most masculine made up names out there seem like they could easily swing both ways.

-Dave Alexander

Given his small, portly stature, huge glasses and Eraserhead-like hair, it was easy to forget that Kim Jong-il was truly evil man. After being mocked endlessly in Team America – where the marionette version of him sings a song about being “whonely” – the image of the North Korean dictator was more angst-ridden teddy bear than iron-fisted tyrant, at least in North America. The 2009 documentary Kimjongilia, which takes its title from a strain of begonia created for the former leader in honour of his 46^th birthday – is a reminder that life for the average person in North Korea can be brutal.

As the most repressive, closed off and militarized nation in the world, the country continues to fascinate, even more so since Kim Jong's death last month. The world is waiting to see what will happen with the succession of his 27- (or possible 28 or older – no one really knows his exact birthday) year-old son, Kim Jung-un, who shares many of the cartoonish features of his father and is rumoured to be less of a tyrant. Will he make changes, will he be ousted, or will it be business as usual?

To better understand the situation under which he's assuming power, Kimjongilia is an intimate snapshot of a life under the regime, as told by those who have escaped. That several of the subjects in N.C Heiken's film refuse to be fully shown on camera, makes it pretty clear that they aren't kidding about still fearing greatly for their safety and the lives of the family they left behind.

Kimjongili gives us the basic timeline of how North Korea came to be a communist state after defeating their Japanese colonizers, giving rise to the ascension of Kim Jong's father, Kim Sung-il, and his death in 1994, which ushered in the era of Kim Jong. With much of the economy dedicated to supporting the military and the elite, North Korea relies heavily on prison camp labour, thus any offence can get one's entire family thrown in prison, including being reported for criticizing the government. More serious offences, including trying to escape the country, result in public execution. We also learn that the regime has a “three-generations policy” which means anyone who's found guilty of an offence has three generation of his or her family punished. It's also standard to be executed in front of family members, including children.

One woman interviewed saw her parents starve to death in a camp, her husband taken away (to this day she doesn't know what happened to him), and her children either given up for adoption, killed or tortured to the point of becoming severely handicapped.

A prison camp escapee who was born in a camp, describes the relentless hard labour in coal mines, factories and fields, the rampant starvation and how he finally fled into China through an electric fence that killed the man he escaped with.

A former military officer (pictured) travelled by ocean into South Korea, dodging North Korean warships, which he notes probably didn't have any fuel to give chase. He describes how the soldiers routinely starved, particularly after the famine and floods of the mid-'90s, which then caused a huge problem of tens of thousands of rotting corpses that couldn't be disposed of quickly enough.

The suffering in North Korea is horrific, and we get glimpses of it here in still photos of starving children and satellite images of the scores of prison camps through out the country. Heiken's film, which is barely over an hour, gives us glimpse into this world, but also a bunch of filler in the form of some rather schlocky interpretive dance sequences and cloying music meant to add weight. It's unnecessary, as the stories can stand on their own.

It would've been much more effective to juxtapose the suffering of the everyday people with the excesses of Kim Jong's government. A few examples: the dictator had South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok kidnapped in order to make films for the government, including Pulgasari, a giant monster movie meant to compete with the Godzilla franchise; according to this jaw-dropping article written by his former personal chef who escaped, the leader had one of the largest alcohol collections in the world and would spare no expense to get lavish ingredients for dishes; he maintained a fake propaganda city; and, wel..., that's only a fraction of the bizarre excesses. It's these absurd things that paint the full picture, but Kimjongilia gives us modern dance instead.

Given the recent death of the great leader – who was depicted in the state-run media as essentially a superhero who didn't defecate, was born under a double rainbow and could control the weather(!) – I was particularly interested to hear what the escapees predicted for the country after his death. One predicted chaos, while other expected a huge change that would allow them to return safely to their homeland. So far, it seems on the surface to be business as usual there as Kim Jung is being given his official leadership appointments, but it's hard to believe that the government could continue to have such as grip under the circumstances outlined in the film.

One survivor of North Korea describes its citizens as “bound by wires, like plants.” For a man whose image was as carefully cultivated as the flower that bears his name, appearance was everything for Kim Jong. Kimjongilia (available on Netflix and DVD), despite its flaws, shows the suffering that men like him foster. May he rest in hell.

-Dave Alexander

It's probable that there are more 2011 Year End lists online than there are films that were released last year, yet I feel like some sort of capper on the past twelve months is in order. So, I've put together my survey of 2011 in film that will include a few obvious categories, but mostly (I hope) look at the year from a slightly different angle that avoids the same content you can find on hundreds of other lists, and maybe give you a few laughs and few titles to track down that slipped off your radar. Feel free to express agreement, derision, outrage or suggest your own in the comment section below.

JUST GO SEE IT ALREADY

Drive

(Hands down the best direction, performances, cinematography and score)

BIG BUDGET HOLLYWOOD AT ITS BEST

Super-8

(Hitting most of the same notes of those classic Spielberg movies of the '80s)

BIG BUDGET HOLLYWOOD AT ITS WORST

Cowboys & Aliens

(Clunky, disjointed and downright stupid filmmaking by committee)

MOST UNDERRATED

Harold and Kumar Save Christmas

(Unapologetical, crass, random and totally hilarious if seen not sober – the egging scene alone is worth the price of admission)

MOST OVERRATED

Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol

(Why is this more-of-the-same movie with unintentionally laughable scene such as Tom Cruise's hand-sketched mug shot and robo-gloves 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes?)

FIVE AWESOME UNDER-THE-RADAR FILMS YOU NEED TO TRACK DOWN ON DVD/BLU-RAY

Attack the Block

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Red State

Super

Trollhunter

FIVE FILMS I RATHER PUT IN A BLENDER AND EAT THAN HAVE TO ACTUALLY WATCH

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

Green Lantern

Real Steel

Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1

MOST WELCOME COMEBACK

Tie:

The Muppets, in The Muppets

(A hilarious Muppet movie for grown-up Muppet lovers)

and

Rutger Hauer as the title character in Hobo With a Shotgun

(His first starring role in years, as an armed 'n' homeless bad ass with a heart of gold, was priceless)

LEAST EXPECTED RETURN

Johnny English in Johnny English Reborn

(Apparently these films do well overseas... but why?)

HAT TRICK

Ryan Gosling for Drive, Ides of March and Crazy, Stupid, Love

(This Canuck knows how to pick 'em)

THREE TIMES THE HARM

Olivia Wilde for In Time, The Change-Up and Cowboys & Aliens)

(Apparently she's trying to end her movie career before it starts)

MOST ORIGINAL CONCEPT

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (released in 2010, played in Canada in 2011)

(Werner Herzog's uses 3-D to show us stalactites, stalagmites and ancient cave paintings, and the result is jaw-dropping)

BEST REVAMP OF A CLASSIC

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

(A compelling story, great pacing and excellent computer animation for the win)

WORST REVAMP OF A CLASSIC

The Smurfs

(So obnoxiously crass that you'll root for Gargamel)

BEST FILM MADE BY A CANADIAN FEATURING PETER STORMARE

Small Town Murder Songs

(Ed Gass-Donnelly's subtle, Cohen Bros.-like murders mystery features a simmering performance from Stormare and some great tunes from The Bruce Peninsula)

WORST FILM MADE BY A CANADIAN FEATURING PETER STORMARE

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

(Director Kevin Munroe was hopefully just a victim of studio meddling in this inept comic book adaptation featuring Stormare as the head of a werewolf clan)

BEST SEQUEL

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

(The epic ending to an epic franchise did not disappoint)

WORST SEQUEL

Hangover II

(If you had deja vu watching this, it's because it's neary the same damn story as the first one)

MORE, PLEASE

Kristen Wiig for writing and starring in Bridesmaids

(Now check out her out on Saturday Night Live for more of the funniest woman currently working in show biz)

JUST GO AWAY

Adam Sandler for Jack and Jill

(This is the kind of career decision making someone with a bad drug habit would make)

BEST TRAILER

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (teaser)

(No surprise here; the music video punch of this one could get anyone excited about the film)

WORST TRAILER

The Double

(It gives away the big twist in this Richard Gere/Martin Sheen thriller, thereby eliminating the need to watch it)

GOOD TRAILER, BAD MOVIE

Battle: Los Angeles

(Promised us an epic, moving invasion film but gave us a video game-style ad for the American military)

BAD TRAILER, GOOD MOVIE

Red State

(The film changes tone and genres several times to great effect, but the trailer makes it seem like a mediocre cable movie)

A POSTER THAT REALLY HELPED SELL THE FILM

The Muppets

(It's colourful, it's fun, it's got all your favourite characters; this one makes you want to start the music and light the lights)

A POSTER THAT DID NOTHING TO HELP SELL THE FILM

J. Edgar

(There's nothing like being promised a moviegoing experience in which your dad is going to yell at you for two hours)

BEST FILMMAKER EVENT (THAT I ATTENDED)

In Conversation With... Guillermo del Toro at the Lightbox Theatre in Toronto

(The guy is so smart, funny, passionate and full of stories about the film industry, you could listen to him talk all night and never get bored)

WORST FILMMAKER EVENT (THAT I ATTENDED)

The Toronto International Film Festival screening of Twixt with director Francis Ford Coppola and star Val Kilmer in attendance.

(It was both awkward and a little heartbreaking to see the director of some of the greatest American films be so enthusiastic about his amateur, confusing piece of crap vampire/serial killer/murder mystery teen comedy-fairy tale)

MOVIE THAT YOU HAD TO SEE IN THEATRES

Tie:

Tree of Life / Cave of Forgotten Dreams

(Both of these movies need a big screen, with the former also needing big sound and the latter needing 3-D, to work properly as larger-than-life cinematic experiences)

BEST MOVIEGOER NEWS

The Alamo Drafthouse takes a stand on people who text during movies, with this PSA featuring an angry voicemail left by some imbecile who was thrown out of the theatre.

WORST MOVIEGOER NEWS

Some crackpot in Michigan decides to sue the makers of Drive being because the film's trailer is misleading and the film is “anti Semitic” – no, for real!

(Uh... WHAT?!?)

-Dave Alexander

Sometimes the new year sneaks up on you, and sometimes it jumps out from around a corner and thrusts a sword at your neck – especially if you spend January 1 watching ninja movies. That's what I did, and I'm pretty sure the world's a better place because of it. How could it not be with a double feature of Enter the Ninja and Ghost Warrior? Bring on the Shadow Warriors!

If you were a boy growing up in the '80s, your life was greatly influenced by ninjas. They were everywhere. Both The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joe characters Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes were on T.V, in comic books and in toy stores; you could play Ninja Gaiden, Shinobi or Streetfighter at the arcade (or on your Nintendo, eventually); Kawasaki was selling Ninja motorbikes; and, of course, there were scores of ninja movies at the local video store.

While ninjas haven't gone away entirely (ask anyone who plays Fruit Ninja on a smart phone), those pyjama-wearing warriors reigned supreme in the VHS era. Having been a video store card-carying kid in the '80s and early '90s, I was spinning like a shurukin when I saw a couple of ninja-y '80s titles recently on DVD for the first time as part of MGM's manufacture-on-demand (a.k.a. MOD) collection. (That means they're not available in retail stores, but can be ordered as no-frills DVDs on amazon.com, here and here, but not from amazon.ca, sadly.)

First up, Enter the Ninja, a Cannon film starring Franco Nero (Django), Susan George (Straw Dogs, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry) and Shô Kosugi (the real life karate master who starred in a whack of '80s ninja flicks). This one was a staple of video store shelves back in the day and one of those movies produced for the North American market which found a way to have a white guy be the ultimate ninja warrior.

Here, a heavily mustachioed Nero plays Vietnam vet Cole, who finished his ninja training in Japan (actually Manilla standing in) by fighting a bunch of red ninjas, defeating a black ninja (Kosugi) and “beheading” his master (not really, it's a prop head – sneaky teacher!). He then visits an old war buddy, who has a drinking problem, as well as a sexy wife named Mary-Ann (George) and a conflict with a businessman named Charles Venarius (Christopher George), who's trying to run him off his oil-rich land by any means necessary.

And by “any means,” I mean hiring thugs, lots and lots of thugs. Luckily, Cole uses his ninjitsu skills to off dozens of 'em, plus some who aren't even thugs, but just security guys just doing their jobs. Eventually, Venarius ups the ante by hiring the black ninja, who already has a hate-on for Cole because he's not Japanese. Things play out pretty much exactly as you expect them to, with a final showdown between the ninjas, in a fighting ring, as a kidnapped Mary-Ann looks on.

Enter the Ninja may not be the filmic masterpiece and blueprint for my adulthood that I thought it was when I was nine, but that doesn't mean it's not entertaining. Being a Cannon film, it's gleefully crammed full of goofy sexism, entertainingly two-dimensional characters, wanton violence and an unapologetic disregard for human life. Nero struts around like the Italian Tom Selleck, his character kicking Mary-Ann to the ground the first time they meet, then bedding her a couple days later (it's cool, he got his buddy's drunken permission first). In addition, the henchmen are hilarious '80s cliches, and Chris George gives his character the greatest death face ever recorded on film (you need to see it here).

Or... you can simply read the synopsis on the back, which features a shot of Nero looking like he's crapped himself, and the following sentence fragment as a synopsis: “The absorbing martial arts film that exposes Ninjitsu, the lethal, little-known 'Art of Invisibility'...which includes the use of hypnotism, explosives and super-human fighting skills.”

(Note: there is absolutely no hypnotism in the movie whatsoever!)

The film was helmed by Menahem Golan, who also directed The Delta Force, starring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin, and the Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling, um, epic Over the Top. Half of the famous Golan Globus production team who bought Cannon in 1979 (read more about it here), Golan was behind a staggering number of action films that shaped the '80s. Aside from making numerous ninja films (including the American Ninja series), they made the Death Wish sequels, a bunch of Chuck Norris flicks, and launched Jean-Claude Van Damme's career. There is simply no one better to deliver a schlocky action film about ninjas.

Of course, in the schlock department, you've also got notorious C-grade movie producer/director Charles Band, who was behind the other half of my double feature, producing and taking an “original idea” credit. Perhaps it should be no surprise then, that despite the silhouette of a sword-wielding, throwing star-clutching, pyjama-clad figure on the cover, Ghost Warrior isn't a ninja film. There are no throwing stars in the movie, as it's about an ancient samurai warrior who's found frozen in a cave, is brought to the U.S. and revived, only to escape and run afoul of violent gangs, the scientists trying to recapture and kill him, and the cops. He's aided by a female scientist, played by Janet Julian (best known for playing Nancy Drew in the '70 TV show), who's only one of the people not particularly surprised that you can revive a human frozen for 500 years.

There's a little bit of sweet sword action here, butoverall it's a pretty boring film with such amusing budgetary deficiencies as a hospital room that's clearly just a room in someone's house (hence the carpeted floor!). Ghost Warrior could've taken a few lessons from Cannon when it came to entertaining an audience. Never promise a ninja movie unless you've got the nunchukas, smoke bombs and throwing stars to back it up. Man simply cannot live on Japanese swords alone, after all.

 Have a great 2012, and watch out for blowdarts.

-Dave Alexander

As cockle-warming as it is to watch classic Christmas movies such as It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story or Die Hard 2, it's always nice to have new holiday films to watch. Thing is, most Christmas movies are awful – calculating, overly sentimental, shallow Hollywood pap. That's why I was ecstatic to discover Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale this year. Finnish brothers Jalmari and Juuso Helander made this holiday horror feature, based on two short films that they wrote/directed in 2003 and 2005.

The concept: Santa Claus is actually a gigantic demon-monster buried deep in the mountains of rural Finland. When a scientific team begins to unearth the horned behemoth from its burial mound, it releases its minions – super-creepy naked old men with long white beards – to kidnap children and generally wreak havoc. At the centre of the action is a boy who lives with his father, a reindeer hunter, in a small village near the dig. When the local men find a herd of reindeer slaughtered, the boy uncovers a disturbing story about Santa Claus in an old book, a bunch of his friends go missing and a very strange old man is caught in an animal trap by his father, the boy must put on his hockey helmet, round up the locals and save Christmas from a supernatural evil. If he can convince everyone what's really going on, that is...

One of the most original holiday films ever made, Rare Exports takes the adventurous, kid-focused tone of a Steven Spielberg flick, darkens it and applies it to a very specific place and culture we don't often see in the movies, making for something weird and wonderful that's audaciously entertaining. It also does away with that saccharine sentiment of the average Christmas movie and focuses and delivering a helluva good time. Oh, yeah and it has plenty of full-frontal old man nudity, because what's funnier than a horde of skinny old men with dirty beards running through the snow with their jingle bells jangling about?

Just released on DVD and Blu-ray by Oscilloscope Laboratories, in a gorgeous cardboard package, Rare Exports includes making-of featurettes on the concept art and special effects, behind the scenes photos and the aforementioned short films (which you can also see on YouTube, here and here). Or you can purchase it online to watch as a digital download, etc., etc. Just get your hands on this one for a Christmas movie experience you'll never forget. As the trailer says, “Forget everything you know about Santa. It's all lies.”

-Dave Alexander

He's created monsters, killed dozens of people and made a teenaged girl pregnant during his 23 years in the business. Makeup effects artist Toby Lindala, the man behind B.C.-based Lindala Schminken fx inc., has a resume that includes creating the famous Flukeman for The X-Files (in the episode titled “The Host”), some of the gnarliest gore effects in the Final Destination series and the pregnancy apparatus that Ellen Page wore in Juno. His six-person, 4000 square-foot studio outside of Vancouver also has credits on Supernatural, X-Men 2, Fantastic Four, Slither and The Butterfly Effect. While he was in Toronto recently to promote the DVD/Blu-ray release of Final Destination 5, and show off some of his work (including a head prop with a massive wound in it from the latest FD movie, pictured below), he sat down to chat and give me a window into one of the most fun and creative careers in the film industry. This is what he had to say.

How did you develop a love for movie effects?

“When I was really young, I was intrigued by a lot of the Hammer films, and the Universal films like Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, even the ones with Abbot and Costello – I just loved monsters. I was really sensitive to it, really affected by [those movies], and that made me more curious. I wanted to know how those things were done, and how you could affect people like that, so I got on the other side of it.”

Your first credit on the IMDb is Xtro 2, the creature feature starring Jan Michael Vincent. What do recall from your intro into the film world?

“I was so excited to be on that show. I came in essentially as a volunteer for a couple weeks for a small pittance. That's all they could afford, but I really wanted to stay on, so I volunteered for the remainder of the shoot. It was pretty insane, pretty guerrilla-style. We were working with urethane foam without a lot of knowledge of the toxic nature of it. We made this behemoth of a creature that was suspended from the rafters on these pulleys. Really big challenges, really big wishes, not a lot of planning.”

Tell me about an effect you created that you're particularly proud of.

“I was very lucky to get hooked up with the X-Files when I was 22 – I worked on the pilot. ... Flukeman was huge for me, and that was really neat because it was a let's-make-a-monster episode. We got to see a lot of [the creature], there was a lot of it, and it had a neat backstory. I really had a chance to run with that one.”

Generally, what's the first step when you're approached to do an effect?

“Yes, it generally starts with a few script pages and, hopefully, a discussion with the producer or director. But quite often we'll just jump right into illustrations. It's more and more digital these days – Photoshops and composites.”

How has the use of digital effects changed the industry for you?

“It's really come a long way, where we're working closer and closer together [with the computer effects artists], and it's nice. We're getting a better understanding, I think. I've been on shows in the last few years where I've got a better idea of what the visual effects team is capable of, and they've got a better understanding of what's possible from us. I see it really working both ways. It's funny, it seems like more often in the early stages of a production, I'm thinking, 'This would be really cool if we could do this, and the visual effects guys can do this part of it!' And the visual effects guys are going, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we could do this and the makeup effects guy could do this part of it!'

Was it always that easy to work together?

At first, it seemed like it was really part of an ego battle and I felt like we were losing a lot of really good opportunities for makeup effects. But now we've grown into a place where the overall possibilities are that much cooler. I think science fiction and horror have moved leaps and bounds because of that collaboration, and become more popular because the images are getting stronger, crazier and that much more wonderful.”

What's your best example of practical and digital effects successfully collaborating on one of the films you worked on?

“I really like when the illusion works. There was a wonderful moment in Final Destination 3 where this girl falls back on a nail gun and gets these nails spiking through her head and basically stapling her head to her hand – and that's what takes her out, obviously. We did a duplicate of the actress in silicone, as a puppet – a mechanical jaw, a mechanical neck – and then on rods with these little pneumatic pistons that had the ends of them tooled into the nail heads, so they'd actually come through the silicone face and hand, and they were rigged with fake blood. I love to take something like that and incorporate some really solid artistry to make it look absolutely believable that it was her. The director of photography was concerned that it was going to look like a dummy head, but he was really blown away by it and ended up getting this super screaming close shot. The detail was perfect down to the skin texture. And if he bought it, then the audience would buy it. Getting back to what we talked about before, the digital effects came in and added a blink, just to give it that little final touch, which made for a great moment.”

You also worked on a couple Steven Seagal movies. What was he like?

“I feel for the directors that work with him because we would block these sequences and Steven would come in, after it was already worked out with body doubles, and say, 'No, it's going to be like this!' and run through the scene in a completely different way, and everyone has to adjust in the moment. But then you see him do it and you appreciate how long this guy has been doing this stuff and really good at it he is. He'd be flipping knives around and doing this graceful little ballet; he was consistent with it and it was pretty awesome to watch him in action. Getting there was a little painful, but once there, it was really cool.”

What's one important thing that aspiring makeup effects artists need to know?

“The schools out there are wonderful, and great for anyone who wants to get into the craft, but the first thing I tell people is, go destroy your bedroom, go wreck your kitchen, do some of this stuff at home. You really have to just want to do it, and do it. The hours are gruelling and the demands are crazy – unless you're doing it for the love of it, it's not a job you just want to walk into.”

-Dave Alexander

Click HERE, if you dare, and watch the trailer for the Farrelly brothers' latest, The Three Stooges.

OK, so are you done not laughing?

Well, know that you're not alone. Look in the comments below the trailer find you'll find remarks that are scathing by even YouTube standards. But the dislike for the film's trailer has grown beyond just the usual online snarky comments. I was first directed to the trailer from Boingboing, which embedded it (postage stamp-size to really mock it) in a post titled “Hollywood locates barrel's bottom” that links to a John Kovalic cartoon on Wired.com called Dork Tower that proposes a new site called Kickstopper, which does the reverse of Kickstarter by soliciting crowdfunding to stop a project from being made. Furthermore, over at the IMDb, message board threads include titles such as “Talk about lowered expectations” and “this is gonna suck!”

People seem to be bonding over their shared hatred of a film based solely on its trailer. The reasons are pretty obvious, given what we're shown. Mainly, it's not funny. Slapstick should be timeless, which is why Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton silent shorts holds up. Seeing someone get hurt in an outrageous way never stops being absolutely hilarious, so although the Stooges themselves (Sean Hayes as Larry, and Canucks Will Sasso and Chris Diamantopoulos as Curly and Moe, respectively) seem to be nailing the essential screwball natures of the characters, why not just watch the original Stooges do the pure form of the schtick instead?

What are we gaining here? I guess Larry having his Little Larry parts pinched by a lobster in his pants is an update, but (as is also explained here, in this great acerbic breakdown of the trailer) the original Stooges would never go there. Similarly, the sexy nun in the bikini habit is more a Farrelly gag than a Stooges gag. Those are two worlds that just don't mix. This movie is designed to be a lot less adult than the films the brothers are known for, such as Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary and Me, Myself & Irene, yet it's more adult than a Stooges pic, so who's it for? Who do you know that both likes a Snooki joke and watches the The Three Stooges? Throw in the iPhone gag and the film is dated before it comes out.

According to Wikipedia, the movie has actually been in some form of development since before 2000, with numerous, bigger name, actors, such as Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, attached at various stages. Audiences have become even more jaded with remakes and re-purposed properties since then, and the scatalogical humour that was popular in the late-'90s has become tiresome. The bodily function gags that were such a hit in the Austin Powers movies (1997-2002), for example, just came off as forced and dated in The Love Guru (2008). Those classic Farrelly Bros. movies from the late-'90s, such as Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary, really feel like they're of a different era in terms of tone.

But wait, getting back to the new Three Stooges trailer, there are a few chuckles in some of those sight gags, such as the church bell falling off a roof and onto a nun. That type of slapstick really is timeless; you can bet that the first instance of a caveman braining himself after slipping in mammoth poop was told and re-told around the campfire.

This brings us to the biggest problem of a Three Stooges re-vamp: the nature of slapstick itself. Slapstick as we know it in film, really developed on the stages of vaudeville. Due to the very physically demanding nature of the gags, it was performed in short numbers. This transferred well to silent shorts, which could present episodic gags, make the most out of exaggerated gestures and add to the jokes through basic special effects. But even if the performers can be seen doing slapstick for extended periods of time on screen through the magic of editing, the viewer gets exhausted watching pratfall after pratfall, and nothing quite has the effect of the immediacy of the single take anyhow.

Then there's the violent nature of the gags. Slapstick is as physical as it gets, so while a bell falling on a nun's head is funny, we know that it's an animated bell and there's no real physical violence there. Maybe that's a dark comment on human nature, but it's simply less funny.

There's a whole level of dangerous thrill to the slapstick from the silent era. Watch some Lloyd, Keaton or Keystone Kops shorts and you'll see some breathtaking stunt work. A man hangs from a clock hand, another falls from windows and off ladders, and wild chases can end up with near-collisions with trains. You can't do that kind of stuff now due to safety regulations. Slapstick really hit its apex decades ago. When the original Three Stooges arrived about the time of the sound film (the act was developed on vaudeville), they combined that physical immediacy with plenty of puns and other wordplay to broaden the scope of the humour.

So,the formula that makes The Three Stooges work is very much locked in the past, and the Farrellys would've been much better off doing a straight biopic. The filmmakers' hearts may be in the right place, given the amount of effort that seems to have been expended to bring The Three Stooges to theatres, but do we need this reboot?

Nyuk that.

-Dave Alexander

Too many people think that the service industry is the servitude industry, and the employees who work there don't deserve respect. Well, the customer is not always right, satisfaction cannot be guaranteed for everyone all the time, and sometimes the squeaky wheel should get the door, not the grease. If you think that because a person wears a name-tag that makes him or her your doormat, you're wrong.

We see this kind of behaviour all the time, which is why we love hearing those stories about employees who get fed up and take action, such as the Jet Blue flight attendant who told off a passenger who was abusing him, grabbed a beer and left the plane via the emergency slide. Similarly, this past week, a jury refused to indict a former New York City McDonald's employee on assault charges after he took a metal object to two women who screamed at him, slapped him and crawled over the counter because he believed they were trying to pass off a counterfeit $50 bill.

Of course, these types of incidents are rare; most of the time employees just suck it up, but you can bet that sometimes they get their revenge, and once in a while they become filmmakers and turn those experiences into comedy. Kevin Smith most famously did this with Clerks, which is centred around abused and jaded video store and convenience store employees, and its sequel, which features a fast food joint. Inspired by Smith, writer/director Rob McKittrick made Waiting... (2005), about working at Shenaniganz, one of those kitschy chain restaurants that are a staple of every strip mall in North America. You know the ones, they've got nostalgic junk all over the wall, the menus are big but middle-of-the-road, and servers in ridiculous vests are forced to sing wacky renditions of happy birthday several times per day.

If you find the whole thing soul-sucking, like I do, Waiting... is your kinda flick.

The film's huge ensemble cast features the likes of Ryan Reynolds, Justin Long, Anna Farris, Luis Guzmán, David Koechner, Jordan Ladd and Andy Milonakis, who all play quirky characters in the Kevin Smith vein. Reynolds is the super-confident jerk, Long the under-confident employee who yearns for greener pastures, Guzmán the pervert chef (who delights in a game where the en of Shenaniganz try to trick each other into looking at their genitals), Koechner is the unlikable manager, and so on. There are crushes, meltdowns, freak-outs, relationship problems, plenty of scatological humour and sweet revenge against deserving customers.

The toughest scene to sit through sees a particularly rude and demanding shrew of a woman send her order back to the kitchen, where it goes “around the world,” getting a little bit of bodily fluid in it from the kitchen staff before being sent back out. Given that McKittrick wrote it while working at one of these restaurants, you can bet there's more than a few grains of truth in the revenge scenarios. Waiting... will make anyone think twice about making trouble for the people who prepare and handle your food, or possibly going out to eat EVER AGAIN.

As a comedy, it's got plenty of Smith-style laughs, including a hip-hop video by Milonakis' character during the credits, and for that alone it's worth watching. If it wasn't for Reynolds' annoying alpha male character, too much Smith-style potty humour and too many characters in general, it'd probably be a bonafide classic.

It did do well enough for a sequel, thougha, which was again written by McKittrick, but directed by Jeff Balis, who co-produced Waiting.... Still Waiting... (2009) features a few returning characters, including the ones played by Guzmán, Milonakis and Koechner, as a different Shenaniganz is forced to compete against a Hooters-style restaurant in the same strip mall, called Ta-Ta's. This time it stars John Michael Higgins (best known as one of the regulars in Christopher Guest's movies) as a manager desperate to get promoted, laid and accepted by his staff. Similar, um, shenanigns ensue, but again there are too many characters and the gags aren't as clever this time 'round. It's worth a watch only if you dig the first one.

Both movies are on Netflix, so if the holiday season customer experience has already got you down, the Waiting... movies should definitely be on your menu. More importantly, be nice to your server... real nice.

Dave Alexander