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The Suburbanators
''The Suburbanators'' is a Canadian road movie/comedy film written and directed by Gary Burns and produced in 1995 by Burns and John Hazlett. It tells the story of bored, estranged slackers in their 20s who spend their time in suburban strip-malls, subdivisions and car lots in Calgary. The film was made for CDN$65,000. It was invited to play at the Sundance Film Festival and sold to the Sundance Channel.Melnyk, George.''One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema''. University of Toronto Press, 2004. p. 220 It is the first of what writer George Melnyk calls a trilogy which concludes with '' Kitchen Party'' (1998) and ''waydowntown'' (2000). Plot Bob and Al are passing time by driving around and looking for marijuana. In another part of town, two other young men, Eric and Carl, are also trying to buy drugs. A group of three musicians are at a Middle Eastern restaurant. They go to the suburbs to find a relative after they accidentally get their instruments locked up in an apartment. Carl sta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Road Movie
A road movie is a film genre, genre of film in which the main characters leave home on a road trip, typically altering the perspective from their everyday lives. Road movies often depict travel in the hinterlands, with the films exploring the theme of alienation and examining the tensions and issues of the cultural identity of a nation or historical period; this is all often enmeshed in a mood of actual or potential menace, lawlessness, and violence, a "distinctly existentialism, existential air"Cohan, Steven and Hark, Ina Rae. "Introduction". ''The Road Movie Book''. Eds. Cohan, Steven and Hark, Ina Rae. Routledge, 2002. p. 1 and 6 and is populated by restless, "frustrated, often desperate characters".Laderman, David. ''Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie''. University of Texas Press, 2010. Ch. 1 The setting includes not just the close confines of the car as it moves on highways and roads, but also booths in diners and rooms in roadside motels, all of which helps to create i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary Burns (director)
Gary Burns (born 1960) is a Canadians, Canadian film writer and director. Burns studied drama at the University of Calgary before attending Concordia University (Quebec), Concordia University, where he graduated in 1992 from the Fine Arts film program. Born in Calgary, Alberta, many of Burns' films are shot in Calgary, and contain references to the particularities of living in the city. The Plus 15 system becomes the habitrail of urban semi-professionals in waydowntown and the Calgary Transit, public transportation system becomes a node where lives intersect in ''The Suburbanators''. ''Radiant City'' examines the seemingly endless amount of suburban neighbourhoods that has overtaken Calgary. Burns is an alumnus of the University of Calgary's television program. Film festival acceptance His works have been very well received at Canadian film festivals. His first feature film, ''The Suburbanators'', debuted at the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival, where it placed in the to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slacker
A slacker is someone who habitually work aversion, avoids work or lacks work ethic. Origin According to different sources, the term "slacker" dates back to about 1790 or 1898. "Slacker" gained some recognition during the UK, British Gezira Scheme in the early to mid-20th century, when Sudanese labourers protested their relative powerlessness by working lethargically, a form of protest known as "slacking". World Wars In the United States during World War I, the word "slacker" was commonly used to describe someone who was not participating in the war effort, specifically someone who avoided military service, equivalent to the later term "draft dodger". Attempts to track down such evaders were called "slacker raids". During World War I, U.S. Senator Miles Poindexter discussed whether inquiries "to separate the cowards and the slackers from those who had not violated the draft" had been managed properly. A ''San Francisco Chronicle'' headline on 7 September 1918, read, "Slacker I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival has acted as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. The festival was established in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival. The festival moved to nearby Park City, Utah, in 1981 and was renamed the US Film and Video Festival. It was renamed the Sundance Film Festival in 1991. From its inception through 2025, the festival took place every January in Utah. In March 2025, it was ann ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sundance TV
Sundance TV (formerly known as Sundance Channel) is an American pay television channel owned by AMC Networks that launched on February 1, 1996. The channel is named after Robert Redford's character in ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' and, while it is an extension of Redford's non-profit Sundance Institute, the channel operates independently of both the Institute and the Sundance Film Festival. Originally, Sundance was dedicated largely to airing documentary film, documentaries, independent film, independent feature films, short films, world cinema, and coverage on the latest developments from each year's Sundance Film Festival. The channel has since incorporated both original and acquired programming and became fully ad-supported in 2013, with programming being edited for content soon thereafter. , Sundance is available to approximately 54,000,000 pay television households in the United States-down from its 2017 peak of 71,000,000 households. History As Sundance Channel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kitchen Party (film)
''Kitchen Party'' is a 1997 film written and directed by Gary Burns ('' The Suburbanators''). The movie cast a number of then-unknown young Canadian actors, including Scott Speedman, Laura Harris, and Tygh Runyan, and was released on September 8, 1997 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Plot In the bored suburban atmosphere of a Canadian city, Scott (Scott Speedman) decides to throw a celebratory get-together with friends in his parents' home. Unfortunately, there's a catch: Scott's parents happen to be particularly anal about the direction the carpet fibers lay and the distance from doily to table-edge. This means that the only part of the house that is safe, that is, the only part of the house with no carpeting and therefore no potential mess, is the tiled kitchen. The festivities begin once the parents go off to a party of their own, leaving Scott and his buddy, Wayne (Tygh Runyan), with a house that would be entirely empty but for Scott's mysterious brother lurking ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waydowntown
''Waydowntown'' (stylized as ''waydowntown'') is a 2000 Canadian film directed by Gary Burns and starring Fab Filippo, Don McKellar, Marya Delver and Michelle Beaudoin. The film is a dark comedy that explores office culture and its effects and often uses surrealism to achieve its thematic goals. The film is set in Calgary, Alberta, where many downtown buildings are connected by the Plus 15, an extensive network of indoor skywalks. Because of this network, the hustle and bustle of the traditional "main street" has been replaced by recirculated air, food courts, and fluorescent lights. The result is a bleak and often humorous dark comedy about Canadian corporate culture. Plot The film centres on a group of office colleagues in downtown Calgary, Alberta, who bet a month's salary on who can last the longest without going outside by using the system of covered walkways that connect the buildings. The film takes place over one lunch hour on day 24 of the month-long competition. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Generation X
Generation X (often shortened to Gen X) is the Demography, demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort following the Baby Boomers and preceding Millennials. Researchers and popular media often use the mid-1960s as its starting birth years and the late 1970s as its ending birth years, with the generation generally defined as people born from 1965 to 1980. By this definition and United States Census, U.S. Census data, there are 65.2 million Gen Xers in the United States as of 2019. Most of Generation X are the children of the Silent Generation; Xers are also often the parents of Generation Z. As children in the 1970s and 1980s, a time of shifting societal values, Gen Xers were sometimes called the "Latchkey kid, Latchkey Generation", a reference to their returning as children from school to an empty home and using a key to let themselves in. This was a result of what is now called free-range parenting, increasing divorce rates, and increased maternal participation in the workforce b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1995 Films
This is a list of films released in 1995. The highly anticipated sequel '' Die Hard with a Vengeance'' was the year's biggest box-office hit, and ''Braveheart'' won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Highest-grossing films The top 10 films released in 1995 by worldwide gross are as follows: Box office records *The ''Batman'' franchise became the fifth film franchise to gross $1 billion with the release of '' Batman Forever''. **''Batman Forever'' is released in theaters and surpasses '' Jurassic Park'' for scoring the highest-opening weekend of all time, generating a total of $52.8 million. Film records * '' Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge'' has been running in theaters for 27 years, becoming the longest running film in theaters Context The theatrical box office of 1994 achieved record grosses, with nine films earning more than $100million and the highest attendance (1.29billion) since 1960 (1.3billion). By 1995, however, the average cost of making and marketing a film ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canadian Drama Road Movies
Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''Canadian''. Canada is a multilingual and multicultural society home to people of groups of many different ethnic, religious, and national origins, with the majority of the population made up of Old World immigrants and their descendants. Following the initial period of French and then the much larger British colonization, different waves (or peaks) of immigration and settlement of non-indigenous peoples took place over the course of nearly two centuries and continue today. Elements of Indigenous, French, British, and more recent immigrant customs, languages, and religions have combined to form the culture of Canada, and thus a Canadian identity and Canadian values. Canada has also been strongly influenced by its linguistic, geographic, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English-language Canadian Films
English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that migrated to Britain after its Roman occupiers left. English is the most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations) and the United States. English is the third-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English is either the official language or one of the official languages in 57 sovereign states and 30 dependent territories, making it the most geographically widespread language in the world. In the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, it is the dominant language for historical reasons without being explici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Films Directed By Gary Burns
A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, since the 1930s, synchronized with sound and (less commonly) other sensory stimulations. Etymology and alternative terms The name "film" originally referred to the thin layer of photochemical emulsion on the celluloid strip that used to be the actual medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion-picture, including "picture", "picture show", "moving picture", "photoplay", and "flick". The most common term in the United States is "movie", while in Europe, "film" is preferred. Archaic terms include "animated pictures" and "animated photography". "Flick" is, in general a slang term, first recorded in 1926. It originates in the verb flicker, owing to the flickering appearance of early films. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
