By the river.
Happy Canada Day y'all. We planned to hit the beach today but clouds finally reappeared and we changed our plans, relaxing at home instead. It was a good thing too, since I received a call from quite far away, from one of my dearest friends, currently serving with the marines in Iraq. Sounds like we'll have a lot of catching up to do when he makes his way home.
This evening, Yeji and I hit the theatre. We just came back from seeing War of the Worlds. I guess I enjoyed, it but not as much as I had hoped. Too many plot points seem either unconnected or just airdropped in to wrap stuff up. Aliens change behaviour between extremes for no apparent reason (from full-on genocide to capture and radical agriculture), and the final outcome of the invasion, while we see it occur in the movie, is only explained in the closing dialogue. I liked the CGI. I liked the sound effects and John Williams' music. Overall, the atmosphere was great-- except when Dakota Fanning's character (Rachel) interspersed her screaming with lengthy discussions about her own neuroses, allergies, psychological hang-ups, opinions on parenting... Please just let the kid scream and then shut her up. Also, the whole deadbeat dad subplot thing is completely irrelevant once the aliens start killing people and our heroes are left to escape together. You can't develop a story arc like that if the antagonists (mom and her new hubby) only appear at the beginning and end of the movie. Will this experience make Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) a better father? Who the Hell knows!?
But I have an even bigger gripe after tonight. Before the movie, one of the advertisements was the new one for Alpine Lager. Now it's odd to see a beer commercial before a movie, but what's worse is that it was NOT one of the new ads with the hot supermodels Samira and Perla. It was the one sponsored by Tourism NB, and now that I've seen it I am seriously... SERIOUSLY thinking about moving to anywhere but here.
See, the original concept by Alpine was to advertise that they had taken some international awards at a beer competition in New York, at which point the province steps in and thinks that this would be a great angle to take in showcasing our province to the world. After all, if our beer is world class, maybe the world would take some of our other attractions seriously. Linking provincial tourism campaigns to beer commercials apparently worked in Quebec, so the province offered a substantial amount of cash to Moosehead to include NB tourism hotspots in their newest commercial.
What you get, is a bar scene with two guys singing "New York, New York" against images of the Hopewell Rocks, King's Landing, etc. The award is mentioned at the end of the ad. Now I know there's a New Jersey, New Brunswick (and ironically a New Brunswick, New Jersey) but I've yet to find a place in this province named New York. Yep, we've now gotten so pathetic and unimaginative that we're using someone else's image and mystique to sell ourselves. Maybe this is why European tourism is up. I half expect a bunch of Belgians or Italians to stop me on the street and ask me for the quickest route to Manhattan.
Perhaps the next New Brunswick commercial could start with "Farewell to Nova Scotia" followed by Gordon Lightfoot's "Alberta Bound". At least that would help preserve New Brunswick's place as "Canada's Drive-Through Province".
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96ZbSD The best blog you have!
4:27 AM
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