Give'r!

"If this were a real accident, you'd all be dead now! ...here are your safety certificates." --Oil worker safety certification officer.

I went out to see the Canadian Indie movie FUBAR II last night playing at the Scotiabank Plaza. I never saw the 2002 original mockumentary, and I passed up the opportunity to see it at TIFF, but the positive reviews encouraged me to drop in. Also, Tuesday is cheap ticket night.
The theatre smelled a little weird but it wasn't newfangled smell-o-vision, but rather a service dog that a movie goer brought with them.

This movie isn't quite the faux documentary the last movie was, but it is still shot in the same style and characters occasionally talk to the camera as if being interviewed. I guess the director wanted to use the same look, but didn't want to give up shots that a documentary crew could not have.

Dean and Terry are two Albertan metalheads who, upon recovery from Dean's testicular cancer scare and eviction from their Calgary home, head to Fort MacMurray to get lucrative work in the oil sands. Delightful hijinx ensue. You may have read a review in the Globe and Mail.

When you combine the film style and the subject matter, it's a lot like the Trailer Park Boys. So you can probably guess that most of the movie is them screwing around a lot while real world drama creeps back into their lives. I found this movie really funny, and it surprised me a lot of time. Also, I don't think I've ever seen a movie about either Canadian rednecks or Albertans.

Fort MacMurray looks like an alien landscape. As if instead of sprawling suburbs as far as the eye can see, it's industrial buildings. The lights on the horizon look like an orange city. Dean, (Or Terry) even refers to the orange lit smoke on the horizon as the northern lights. It's not a big part of the movie, but it sure is striking when they first arrive. Also, the West Edmonton Mall looks crazy. I should mention that the acting is excellent.

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On a less amusing note; when I returned home I was alarmed by an incident where someone was stalking around the balconies and patios of our building nine floors above the ground. One of my neighbors was getting some people to call the police, and I saw them arrest the prowler on one of the patios below my window.

I find it weird that someone could get up here without having some way down or some place to get back to, unless they were originally up here and were locked out or something. He may also have been drunk or high. (aha pun!)