Japanese Game Show [ja-pan-ez | gay-mn | sho] noun. 1) An event that provokes a contestant to endure something outrageous for an unfulfilling prize.

i.e. “I just won this snap bracelet by wrestling a panda bear in a pool filed with Jello on a Japanese Game Show.”

Today we remember Canada, our little brother to the north.

On this day in 1867 Canada united four provinces into a single country.  As a young boy growing up near the maple leaf border (I was separated by Wisconsin, but for the sake of the story bare with me) we often celebrated July 1 by wearing some type of Canadian athletic attire, drinking Labatt Blue, and watching Strange Brew.

If you are not familiar with this movie, it is the greatest film concerning Canada and a brewery that stars Rick Moranis (Honey I Shunk the Kids).  Dave Thomas is the co-star but please do not mistake him for “Dave Thomas” the Wendy’s guy: he is an American icon.  I charge you to go forth and dawn a Toronto Blue Jays jersey - toast a Labatt Blue - and watch STRANGE BREW.

I caught this flick on a pre-screening many months ago.  After the credits concluded I turned to my friend with a big proposition: this would be 2009’s big Sundance movie.  It would seem that Sundance gives us one giant film a year.  The type of film that starts small and builds steam through word of mouth.

Napoleon Dynamite

Little Miss Sunshine

Once

Slumdog Millionaire

Let me introduce you to (500) Days of Summer.  My pick as the next big Sundance movie.  This is such an original script, unique storytelling, and humorous tale.  This is not a love story.

The new iPhone records video, and now everyone that has a cell phone is a filmmaker. Since the dawn of video, filmmaking has been watered down by anyone who has a piece of ground glass between their eye and a subject. This frustrated me. I am sure that musicians feel the same way about the boy who buys a $100 guitar and learns American Pie from guitar tabs online.

Film is art, and although I am quick to point the finger at cell phone cinematographers – it is really Hollywood that has perverted the integrity of the art form.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has been called a two and half hour action sequence with no story. As a collective audience we have become enthralled by explosions and surround sound, we have forgotten what film as art can look like

Maybe we should pay more attention to the cellphone filmmaker? They probably do a better job of capturing raw joy and emotion than Michael Bay. At the end of Hearts of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola makes a strong statement, an almost anarchy declaration against the Hollywood system:

“The great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff comes around, some people who normally wouldn’t make movies are going to be making them. Suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart. And make a beautiful film with her little father’s camera recorder and for once this whole professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever. And it will really become an art form.”