I caught this today on a re-run of Just for Laughs on the Comedy Network. You might recognize John Caparulo as a regular round table panelist on Chelsea Lately. This vid is from Caparulo's appearance at the 2006 Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal. Funny ass shit. Enjoy....
Until recently, I've never been much of a television watcher. I normally buy DVD sets of shows that I like and enjoy them over and over. My boy wanted me to watch an episode of Mantracker on the Outdoor Life Network (OLN). I thought the show was cool and following Mantracker I happened to catch an episode of Departures and became HOOKED.
I haven't fallen head over heels in love with a television show in a long ass time. The premise is this, two Canadian guys travel the world with their cameraman friend. Simple, yet the show is soooo much more than that. The travelers are Scott Wilson, Justin Lukach and their cinematographer is Andre Dupuis. The show has two seasons airing on OLN in Canada, as well as the National Geographic Adventure channel in other countries with the third season in production.
Departures is a travel show with some of the most amazing cinematography you will ever see on T.V. Also, Justin and Scott are very entertaining no matter what they are doing. What makes the travel show different than others is the combination of experiences of the team and the infusion of Justin and Scott's personality into it. They do the well known landmarks like the Taj Mahal (Correction: the Taj Mahal scene was deleted from the ep, but can be seen on Youtube or in the special features section of the DVD) and the streets of Tokyo, but we also get to go along with them when they live in a tipi and live the experience of a tribe of native people in Mongolia. So the mixture of exploring the city streets, as well as the out of the way places and truly experiencing other cultures, and experiencing the local nightlife, all make it great. The audience gets to tag along on the busy streets of India to hiking and camping in New Zealand to partying with a group of friends in Tokyo.
Scott would be the tour guide of the group often giving the history of the place that they are visiting or explaining local customs with Justin being the class clown of the group. The addition of their personal experiences to the show also makes it great. We see Justin going through homesickness and inner turmoil at the end of his relationship while they are on Ascension Island and Scott's dilemma about whether to continue with traveling for the show or go home so as not to lose clients for work while they are in the Cook Islands. I also love that they include real life travel difficulties such as when they show up at the Cook Islands but their luggage does not, or while they are on Ascension Island they eat a lot of spaghetti because the grocery store is too expensive given their remote location or Justin getting sick while having trouble acclimating to the altitude while in South America.
Technically the show is so well done. I have already mentioned the amazing camera work of Andre, and the show has won a Gemini (like the Canadian Emmys) to back this up. The editing is also top notch with the music being such a big part of the show that the website for Departures includes cue sheets for each episode because of the many requests for the songs. I love the use of the animated map as each of their location changes. I love Justin and Scott (the fact that they are hot does not hurt), their interactions and the occasional peek of Andre (many forums and comments I've read have fans of the show requesting "more Andre!"). I love watching them try weird foods, get stuck in the desert with their broken down ATV's, hang glide in Brazil and get drunk in the Yukon. In the Chile episode, the guys visit a very strange museum run by a very spiritual man who gives some advice in Spanish and it is so beautiful that I have to include it:
"Live life to the fullest. It's the best way. Live every moment intensely. Because life is too short, and the moment comes when we're going to die, and we'd have wished to do so many things we didn't. That's why we have to enjoy every moment. One must enjoy life. Try not to acquire so many things, but instead have experiences. Accomplish everything you want to do, no matter the effort that it deserves. Life is too short and one must relish it."
The show is available for order on DVD at their website. My only complaint is that I ordered the season 1 set two weeks ago and my order has yet to be processed. (EDIT: I have since received my DVD box set and was well worth the wait, love the audio commentaries by the guys.) Here's the intro to season 2, but you have to, I repeat, HAVE TO click on HQ to watch it in High Quality. See this show if you can, you will not be disappointed.
Special bonus: deleted scene from the Thailand episode (again, must watch in HQ):
More ramblings to come......
UPDATE: The show's soundtrack for season 1 is available at the itunes store here.
I actually saw this at a matinee a few weeks ago the weekend it came out. However, it being movie night with the girls, we had to pick one to go see. I had been wanting to see Year One because the trailer made it look hilarious. However, after perusing the movie review section of my paper, it seemed like a whole lotta people thought it sucked, plus my friend, Rox, dismissed it with a "it looks dumb". I'd rather see a good movie twice than a sucky one once. So to The Hangover we went.
The film is produced and directed by Todd Phillips (writer/director of Old School) and co-written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. The premise of the film is hilarious. A group of friends go to Las Vegas to celebrate their friend Doug's upcoming wedding. They wake up the next day hungover, not remembering a thing, and without their friend Doug. They must find Doug because the wedding is the next day. Hilarity ensues.
I don't want to give away too much else of the plot, because the events that unfold are great and even funnier if you discover them along with the characters. Starring the hot ass Bradley Cooper as Phil, Doug's handsome and carefree schoolteacher friend, Ed Helms as Stu, Doug's conservative, uptight dentist friend, Zach Galifianakis as Alan, Doug's strange and soon to be brother-in-law and Justin Bartha as the groom to be, Doug. Also featuring Heather Graham, Jeffrey Tambor and Mike Epps.
I loved this film. It was extremely funny and made me want to go back to Vegas. The humour is super raunchy, though, with some unexpected nudity (male nudity), so it might not be for everybody. However, our theater was laughing almost the entire time. I also love the way everything unfolded and how we didn't see what happened that night, we get to discover it along with the characters after the fact. Everybody was very well cast, especially Galifianakis as Alan, who was the funniest of the bunch. I highly recommend it, especially if your humour is on the raunchy and low brow side. Every other funny quote I can think of to add is a bit of a spoiler as to what happens in the film, so I will leave you with a quote from Alan's toast at the beginning of Doug's bachelor party, which he reads from a handwritten note on foolscap......
Alan: How bout that ride in? I guess that's why they call it Sin City... ha ha ha... You guys might not know this but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one man wolfpack. But when my sister brought Doug home I knew he was one of my own. And my wolfpack, it grew by one. So were there... there were two of us in the wolfpack. I was... I was alone in the wolfpack, and then Doug joined in later. And 6 months ago, when Doug introduced me to you guys, I thought, "wait a second could it be?" And now I know for sure, I just added two more guys to my wolfpack. Four of us wolves, running around the desert together in Las Vegas. Looking for strippers and cocaine.
My map on the side has just archived itself, so I lost all my pretty dots. So I figure I better start posting again so I can get some more! Plus, I've been, you know, neglecting this thing. It's pretty sucky of me, too, considering I've seen quite a few movies in the last few months, some of them even pretty good. So I had a free afternoon and checking over the listings playing at the Rainbow, decided to check out the nature documentary Earth.
Any of you that know me or read my blog know that I'm a big fan of documentaries, so I was looking forward to seeing this. Apparently, this film is a feature length version of the television nature documentary series, "Planet Earth", according to IMDB. Released by Disney, the film is written and directed by Alistair Fothergill and Mark Linfield and follows the migration path of four animal families.
After looking at the IMDB for the film, I was wondering if I saw a different movie. The 7.9/10 rating, the user comment proclaiming it a "masterpiece!" and I just can't agree. I read that the film production lasted 4, 000 days and had a $40 million dollar budget. It was somewhat depressing at times and I know that the film crew is just there to document, but there were times I wanted to yell at the screen, "for God's sakes, put down the camera and help the baby elephant!!"
The film was sometimes educational but to me, it seemed to drag on too long. I had a hard time making it through the whole film and so did other people in my theater. A man left halfway through and even the two little, old, blue-haired ladies in front of me left before it was done. The biggest gripe would probably be the ever present, sometimes cheesy voice over narration by James Earl Jones. Sometimes it would have been nicer to just enjoy the visuals. Overall a bit of a disappointment.
