A great movie doesn’t need big bucks, but chances of a great movie are enhanced when there exists a whole industry making movies with big bucks.
That’s true, but it’s because of the concentration of talent in one place, not because you spent $200 million on the picture. There are a lot of multi-million dollar crap movies.
But… the British seem able to make movies of astounding quality despite being a lot closer to Canada in size and wealth than they are to the USA. “The King’s Speech” won Best Picture just two years ago; it is a British film about British people starring mostly British actors; the one primary who isn’t British is an Australian playing an Australian. But American audiences loved the film and the American film industry awarded it its highest honor. And with good reason. It was a perfectly crafted film; well written, well acted, well directed, and technically proficient. The cost of the film? About $15 million.
That was a fluke, though… oh, wait. The year before, Slumdog Millionaire, a British film set in India about Indian people, won Best Picture. Budget; $15 million.
And one of the most successful long-running series of all time is Doctor Who. In its early years, the special effects were beneath laughable, but the writing and the acting was what kept the series interesting. The 21st Century Doctor Who series has vastly improved the special effects, but has wisely kept the quality of the writing and of the acting consistently high.
I would venture to say that Paul Gross in ‘Passchendale’ convinced the producers that they had a saleable name to the film. I can’t comment further, as I’ve never got around to seeing it. The thing is, not everything Hollywood produces is a commercial or an artistic success, and it’s rare when a film is both. For better or worse, we in Canada have tended to try for artistic success, and we have produced a strong body of work. We have had fewer commercial successes, and I’m not sure we’ve ever produced anything that was universally regarded as both.
Still, I’m very proud of such Canadian films as ‘Atanarjuat’, ‘The Sweet Hereafter’, ‘Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould’, ‘Jesus de Montréal’ - to name the first four that come to mind.
Thanks for mentioning it Muffin, I didn’t want to be the one to do it but yes Quebec has great movies, even got one last year nominated for an Oscar!
Well, sure. But the UK has a depth of talent that Canada lacks in this area. Having London helps, as a world-class city attracts talent moreso in this type of indistry than the rather more decentralized Canada, with three major cities all competing for creating a movie-making industry with tax incentives and the like (but nothing on the scale of London, New York, or LA).
Again, obviously in movies as in life not having major money doesn’t prevent greatness - but having money is an advantage. Combine money with a centralized pool of talent and a history of producing drama, and chances of greatness are, well, greater.
Good point, but..
I present as Example B, Australia, a country similar to Canada but actually smaller and more remote. Yet Australia has produced a number of quality and commercially successful films; Muriel’s Wedding, Mad Max, Gallipoli, Dead Calm, Crocodile Dundee, Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge!, Ned Kelly, and others.
Why Canada (and I’d say, specifically, ENGLISH Canada; Quebec is a different cinematic culture) can’t seem to tell its own stories in a commercially successful way, I do not know. We have some directorial talent here; Atom Egoyan’s been up for Best Director, though he seems resolutely determined to make his films as depressing as possible, so there’s that. Canadians have made some fine films, but few have managed to combine quality with commercial success a la “Mad Max” or “Moulin Rouge.”
Toronto certainly does not lack for skilled people or facilities. It baffles me.
Hope you didn’t spend it all in one place! Seriously, good on you; that must have been fun. I’ve been an extra in Westerns out here in Alberta; but as an adult, I’ll tell you that they keep us around for much longer than they keep the kids. I’m exhausted at the end of a 14-hour filming day; I’m sure you didn’t have to go through that.
How does Australia fund its films? Or does it? (Not arguing, Rick; I honestly don’t know.)
Ah, Atom Egoyan. He’s a little bit of an artist (at best) or a little bit of a nutbar (at worst). I’ve met Mr. Egoyan. He got in touch with me after reading one of my stories that was published in a Canadian literary journal. It was a fairly straightforward story; not too different from the kind I have written for Le Ministre’s story contests here on the SDMB. Anyway, he wanted to make it into a movie; and I (under the terms of the publishing agreement between the publication and me) held all rights. I still do.
Sounds good so far, but Mr. Egoyan wanted to do this to the story, and take that liberty with the plot, and do something to the protagonist (that I never wrote), and include a flashback that indicated that the protagonist was such-and-such, and so on. In the end, I declined Mr. Egoyan’s offer to buy the rights to my story. In fairness, I’ll mention that this was 1983, and he wasn’t yet well-known.
Now, of course, I’m kicking myself. But the fact remains that he wanted to take a fairly straightforward story, the kind that could easily be told without special effects or mega-stars; and turn it into some kind of artistic thing (for lack of a better word) that I just did not want my name associated with. True, I would have got a credit such as “Inspired by a story authored by Spoons,” but given his plan for my story, that almost made me shy away more quickly.
Well, it’s actually good that Atom Egoyan has a grip on the fact that he’s best at films that are ‘as depressing as possible’. Do you really want to see an Egoyan caper flick? Or a David Cronenberg rom-com? (A friend of mine once asked for a film recommendation around the time that ‘Dead Ringers’ came out, and I raved about Cronenberg to him. A day later, he said that he should have specified that he was looking for a recommendation for a first date. I gather it didn’t go well…)
The thing I’d just like to throw out about Australian films - we don’t seem to see any of their dogs. I am told that if you live there, there is a lot of crap that nobody bothers bringing over here.
Canada has unquestionably produced a whole mess of films that fall into the “critically acclaimed” category, so there is some talent on this side of the border. However, if Canadian cinema ever gets a notion to bring the Canadian perspective to a mass audience – an audience that includes more people than critics and movie snobs – we have to find a way to produce a few movies that the salt of the earth movie fans will go to. I don’t know if that means somehow convincing Jim Cameron and Lorne Michaels to collaborate on an action-comedy loosely based on the FLQ crisis or what, but until we, as a nation, can find a way to meet that challenge, we’re just going to have to settle for the world getting Ben Affleck’s version of Canadian history.
Hobo with a shotgun: best movie ever.
Stompin’ Tom is dead?!? 
Breaking news - Stompin’ Tom Connors has died at 77. God needs to put a piece of plywood down in heaven now. 
ETA: You scooped me, you bastard! I knew I should have tripped you when you ran off past the couch!
I win the thread! 
R.I.P. Tom Connors
That’s a pretty cool story itself. 
Kind of, yes.
I guess I do have to give US Americans credit where credit is due; when Hollywood manages to get out of their own way, they do make entertaining entertainment.
Shit. RIP Stompin’ Tom. A Canadian legend.
A man with truly big spuds.
We went to see a comdedy show last night. Husband kept calling out “Stompin tom died!” throughout the set whenever it was appropriate. He really wanted to go to Karaoke and sing Bud the Spud after the set, I wanted to go home and sleep. I won.
Actually Muffin, Tom’s stepdaughter runs the bar in Geraldton. The one with the uh… “architectural features” that women of few clothing dance upon.
I’m not sure what the mystery is. It seems to me there are several key differences between Canadian film production and that of the UK or Australia.
-English Canada isn’t as culturally distinct from the US
-Simply due to proximity, a higher portion of Canadian talent will pursue their careers in the US as compared to Aussie or Brit talent
-Much Canadian production is actually US production, i.e., the film and television scene in Vancouver is mostly funded by and produced for US concerns
With those factors, it’s hardly a surprise that there isn’t a lot of first-rate specifically Canadian production.
Gorsnak posted what I was going to say. It’s precisely because Australia is so remote that it has a better domestic film industry. Here, creative people can easily migrate to the US to work - haven’t there been articles about that Los Angeles is one of the largest Canadian cities, based on the number of ex-pat Canadians who live there?
…and even if it is distinct, there’s a temptation to play down those distinctions in order to sell shows to U.S./international markets.
I thought this article about the boom in Canadian children’s cartoons was interesting.