I saw Gary Burns’ funny/frightening meditation on suburbia, Radiant City, a few months ago but didn’t get a chance to write anything about it here. But I wanted to alert my Canadian readers to the fact that CBC’s The Passionate Eye will be presenting the film this Sunday, April 6 at 10pm (Eastern and Pacific Time) on CBC Newsworld.
It was this film that introduced me to the work of James Howard Kunstler, who can also be described as funny/frightening. I’ve just finished reading his book The Long Emergency, about our imminent post-oil future, and his weblog is just as accurate and sobering.
The film itself is not like any other documentary you’ve ever seen, and it tells us some things we all need to hear about our unsustainable addiction to suburban comfort. If you miss the television broadcast, you can buy the DVD from Amazon.ca or from Amazon.com.
This Hour Has 22 Minutes: Season One: The good folks at Koch Canada sent me the newly-released first season of Canada’s greatest political satire this week. This Hour Has 22 Minutes began broadcasting way way back in 1993 when Kim Campbell was (briefly) our Prime Minister and we were in the thick of an election campaign. Four Newfoundlanders (the impossibly young-looking Rick Mercer, Greg Thomey, Cathy Jones and Mary Walsh) attacked current events each week in a way which had Canadians spewing our maple syrup. The first season launched such memorable characters as Jerry Boyle and Marg Delahunty, and gave us a glimpse of the huge talent that the group would continue to develop over the next decade. Sadly, though the show is still on the air, most of the original cast has moved on (although Rick Mercer still has his own weekly political satire show on CBC). Much like another institution of Canadian political comedy, the Royal Canadian Air Farce, things tended to get stale after about a decade, so it is refreshing to watch these early episodes, when I’m sure they made a lot of CBC executives nervous.
If I have any complaints about the DVDs themselves, they would have to include the rather hideous menu screens and, more importantly, their absolute lack of any special features. It would have been very interesting to have some commentary from the now older and (presumably) wiser members of the group.
Season Two is also available but I’m not certain what plans there are, if any, for the rest of the show’s run. I suppose it will depend on sales. Despite the bare-bones presentation, the set is a steal at MSRP $32.99. It includes all 21 half-hour (er, 22-minute) episodes.
Buy from Amazon.ca
Wikipedia entry
(7/10)
If you live in Canada and aren’t aware that CBC Newsworld runs a lot of great documentaries, then you’re missing out. Here are just a few bits of exciting news about their upcoming schedule.
- This Sunday night, September 23rd, at 10pm Eastern and Pacific time, catch Everything’s Cool (review), a great positive documentary about climate change and people that are actually trying to do something about this scourge.
- During the week of October 7th, the network is screening five of the films from the Why Democracy? project, three of which just screened at TIFF (the other two were featured at Hot Docs earlier this year). Full schedule and more information here.
Be proud, Canadians. These are your tax dollars at work!
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