International Perspective: Hollywood North
Posted By Dave Howlett on January 16, 2013
Greetings and salutations! My name’s Dave Howlett, and I’ll be reviewing new movies here at NerdSpan. Living in Canada as I do (Halifax, Nova Scotia, to be precise), I’ve been asked to say a few words about my non-American perspective on the gig. We’re such close neighbours that I don’t often think of my perspective as being international, but I do need my passport if I want to visit you. Plus, I just spelled neighbours with a “u”, which is kind of a dead giveaway.
Frankly, my geographical perspective on the things this site is concerned with isn’t really all that different, especially when it comes to release dates for things like movies, books, comics, and music. We get most of the same TV shows as you guys, but it can depend on how much we want to spend every month on our cable package (or how comfortable we are with downloading. I’m gonna plead the Fifth on that one).
But like Jules Winfield says in Pulp Fiction, it’s the little differences. Like how our DVDs are often released with bilingual packaging. For instance, did you know that the Robert Evans documentary The Kid Stays In The Picture is titled Je Me Fais Mon Cinema in Quebec? That actually translates to I Do My Cinema, which is not really the same thing at all. Go figure. There are occasionally weird rights issues regarding the availability of certain titles in Canada—for whatever reason, you can’t just walk into any store here and buy The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension on DVD. Which is practically a crime, since everyone needs to own a copy of that movie. Our Netflix selection is much more sparse than yours (again, rights issues). But that can be gotten around too. Sometimes our box office results are slightly different, which can be confusing when a TV spot touts something as “The Number One Movie In Canada!” after it opened in third place in the US. Also, you guys have Crunchberries cereal and we don’t. But I’m told that we got last week’s episode of Criminal Minds a whole day before you did, so it all evens out.
At the end of the day, we’re really not so different—at least when it comes to our entertainment choices. We both probably know that, no matter what George Lucas wants us to think, Han shot first, not Greedo. It’s likely that we both think that Die Hard is the greatest Christmas movie ever to be captured on film. And it’s almost certain we can all agree that, while Back To The Future is clearly the best of the series, anyone who doesn’t own the entire BTTF trilogy can’t really be considered a true Marty McFly fan. So instead of talking about how different our money looks from yours, or how we say aboot rather than about, let’s focus on our similarities. Let’s be cool, like a bunch of little Fonzies–just like in Pulp Fiction. Or Fiction Pulpeuse, should you ever happen to visit Quebec.
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