It’s hard to tell the difference between news and entertainment these days. Some movies focus on serious issues, while the entertainment value of current events grows daily, almost to the point of slapstick.
Movies and TV shows from the past are often remade to reflect more up-to-date situations. Recent events provide rich fodder for that approach.
To further blur the line between news and entertainment, here are some proposals for art imitating life imitating art.
• Two clumsy and inarticulate men blunder from one ridiculous situation to another, leaving behind them a trail of laughter, rage and widespread head-shaking. Watch for the remake of Dumb and Dumber, starring a certain Ontario municipal politician and his brother, whose names we won’t mention because, frankly, most of us are sick and tired of hearing their names.
Still, it would make an gripping movie, falling under the “we just couldn’t make this stuff up” genre.
• Here’s a tale of vast proportions, a saga of being endlessly adrift on a vast ocean, not entirely sure of where the journey will take you, accompanied by a beast that could eat you at any moment. Decades in the making and coming within the next 10 years to a theatre near you, it’s The Life of Poo, starring the Core Area Wastewater Treatment Commission.
• A zany sendup about three hapless characters who can’t seem to do anything right. Instead of poking each other in the eye, though, they save most of their pokes and slaps for the Prime Minister’s Office. It’s The Three Stooges Get the Boot, starring Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau.
• Life seems to have come to a standstill; time has no more meaning; progress is measured in centimetres. Illegal texting and checking of email is rampant, because there’s not much else to do. From Here to Eternity, an in-depth examination of the Colwood Crawl, bears much promise, but that promise is dampened by its painfully slow pace.
• The original of this classic game show featured a person of some fame and two impostors trying to match wits with a panel of celebrities. The 2013 version is filled with all sorts of impostors trying to fool everyone and, in the end, fooling no one. Don’t miss (as if you could) To Tell the Truth, starring Stephen Harper and a revolving cast of PMO senior aides.
• An earnest group of reformers searches the universe from one end to the other in hopes of finding a visionary leader who can manipulate time and space, bringing back the glory days and saving the world from the evil influence of the rampaging Christyclarkians. It’s Doctor Who? starring the B.C. New Democrats.
• Residents of the quiet and tightly knit community of Cobble Hill flee in terror as truckload after truckload roars over the Malahat carrying kitchen scraps bringing the stench of decay and the reek of South Island politics in The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, a gripping account of how Greater Victoria municipalities wrestle with the collection and composting of kitchen scraps.
• Intrigue, romance, betrayal and motorized mobility scooters figure largely in this Vancouver Island version of one of the more popular daytime soap operas. Ask your cable TV provider to include The Old and the Listless in your bundle.
• One big metropolis or three medium-sized municipalities? Or 13 independent fiefdoms, perhaps, that can register rusting freighters and issue collector postage stamps? The beginning of provincehood for Vancouver Island, complete with bridges to the mainland? One police force or seven? You’ll look at amalgamation in ways you never thought possible after seeing Plan 9 from Outer Space.
• Familiar faces abound in The Castaways, a tale of isolation and the fight for survival after B.C. Ferries cuts back on sailings to Gulf Islands.
• Will up-Island commuters ever be able to avoid the Malahat? Will rail-based transit ever return to the Island? You’ll find out in A Streetcar Named E&N.
• Two classic movies come together as the stun-bolt-toting hero battles to save yard and garden greenery from rampaging ungulates in Rambo Meets Bambi, a fast-paced thriller set amid the bucolic landscapes of Oak Bay.
Real life, unlike movies and TV shows, can’t always be written with orderly plots and happy endings, but it will never cease to be entertaining.
