Your favourite books/TV/films from your country

Feel free to expand on the categories. I thought it might be interesting to see what people's favourites are from the country they reside in (or native country) -- co-productions that involve other countries are fine.

Me, CANADA. And I'm just doing one for now as I'm short on time (could add lots of films easily as I'm a fan of Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and Don McKellar, and in TV, well there's LEXX....And in books, Mordechai Richler),

Book:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003) (it's the first book in a trilogy)

amazon wrote: The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.

Film:

Jesus of Montreal (1989) directed and written by Denys Arcand:

rotten tomatoes wrote: A modern-day Passion Play becomes a reenactment of the life and death of Jesus Christ in more ways than one with this critically acclaimed drama from Quebec filmmaker Denys Arcand. Lothaire Bluteau stars as Daniel Coloumbe, an intense young actor in Montreal who is hired by church fathers to restage and update the city's annual Passion Play, which over the course of the past 40 years has begun to seem hidebound. Daniel hires a group of struggling young actors that become devoted to him and his creative vision as he devises an extremely avant-garde production that takes Christ's rebellious teachings literally. Revolving around set pieces reflecting passages from Christ's life rather than a traditional re-creation of events, Daniel's revisionist work also incorporates blasphemous ideas about his subject, questioning his true nature. Daniel's play is a critical smash and wows mesmerized audiences, but greatly disturbed church officials order the labor of love dismantled. Real life begins imitating biblical events as the actors become cast-outs and Daniel smashes up an audition in which the actress portraying his Mary Magdalene (Catherine Wilkening) is asked to disrobe by a prurient producer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLfINF6ln4c

Television show:

The Newsroom (1996 and various other years), created by Ken Finkleman:

wikipedia wrote: The Newsroom is a Canadian television comedy-drama series which ran on CBC Television in the 1996–97, 2003–04 and 2004–05 seasons. A two-hour television movie, Escape from the Newsroom, was broadcast in 2002. The show is set in the newsroom of a television station which is never officially named, but is generally understood to be based on the CBC itself. Inspired by American series The Larry Sanders Show[1] and similar to such earlier series as the British Drop the Dead Donkey and the Australian Frontline, the series mined a dark vein of comedy from the political machinations and the sheer incompetence of the people involved in producing City Hour, the station's nightly newscast...

Edited by Logan - March 07 2018 at 23:07

U.S. book a tough choice but I guess Norton Juster for The Phantom Tollbooth.  And of course Maurice Sendak for anything

Film probably JFK

TV show gotta be the original Star Trek , and Wild,Wild West a personal favorite.

I've got a thing for film & tv of the 50s and early 60s, probably because they were all in reruns when I was a kid and were so much better than anything new in the 70s & 80s.

Hope not quoting still renders this easy followable for browsers.

Jean: I like all of those films too, The Tin Drum and Aguirre... being particular favourite films of mine. I've liked many Herzog and Schlöndorff films. As for one of Schlöndorff's with English, I found his The Ogre featuring John Malkovitch excellent. As for the Gunther Grass Tin Drum novel, it's one of my favourite novels. It's very unusual for me to love a film adaptation of a book I like so much, but I adore the film. I actually enjoy his whole Danzig trilogy (The Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse and Dog Years). I must read The Meeting at Telgte.

David: Haven't heard of that novel, intrigued, will research. I also like Wild Wild West and Star Trek a huge amount. If I were to choose but two favourites, I'd go with the classic Twilight Zone and Outer Limits (great writing and stories, and so creative) -- for me those shows have never been bettered.

Kendall: Mielenkiintoinen , voisin vain käyttää Google Lähetä Artikkeli otsikot .

Thanks, Jean, even if I don't get the references, it sounds like something I'd really like. The next one of his I want to locate is The Rat.

I'm doing a second list now from Canada:

Book:
Robertson Davies - Fifth Business (1970)
Like with Atwood, before I have chosen the first book of a trilogy cause good (and bad) things come in threes (well, not so much good with films in my experience)

amazon wrote: Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.

Films (since I said that co-productions are okay, a multinational fave of mine directed by a Canadian icon of cinema):

Dead Ringers (1988) - David Cronenberg

My favourite film he directed, and I like lots of his.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xmheE3L19c

Rotten Tomatoes wrote: Based extremely loosely on a true story, Dead Ringers stars Jeremy Irons and Jeremy Irons. You read right--Irons essays the dual role of identical twin doctors, who frequently sub for each another professionally. The twins also capriciously share one another's lovers, priding themselves on that fact that their subterfurge has never been detected. Enter Genevieve Bujold, playing a popular actress. Courted by both twins, Genevieve selects the shyer of the two. The more aggressive sibling takes offense, setting the stage for the ruination of the brothers' relationship and careers. The split-screen and travelling-matte work in Dead Ringers is well nigh undetectable, but the film's "highlight" is a rather gruesome dream sequence involving severed skin (a favorite device of director David Cronenberg).

TV Show:

LEXX started in 1997 (a co-production, I like the initial mini-series particularly)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWNTtlSbyVg

imdb wrote: "Lexx" is the tale of a group of misfits who inadvertently steals the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes: the Lexx, an enormous, sentient insect genetically modified for space travel and planet-destroying capabilities. Although they have no real authority, they travel through hostile and chaotic universes, having a variety of adventures.

Anyone else want to share their cultural treasures (I use that term loosely, especially since I listed Lexx ;) )?

Canada Makes Formal UN Apology for Lexx



Edited by Logan - March 07 2018 at 23:11

Damn, that's such a shame. I was really hoping you'd post here; would have loved to see your picks.

Thanks, those look good. Definitely going to watch all of that first one at some time.

I want to share two films, both of which I would have included in my first post had I decided to do more than one of each (saw both in the theatre when they came out and both had a big effect on me).

Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7w-dPZI_LY

The trailer sucks, maybe I'll remake the trailer one of these days. They did a poor job with the trailer, but it is a very moving and powerful film. Like my Cronenberg choice, it is something of an oddity in these people's oeuvres. Egoyan, like Cronenberg and Arcand, is a huge name in Canadian cinema. The movie takes place in BC (my province). Like Les Revenants which I do go on about, it involves a bus accident with children. It's based on a novel that I haven't read.

amazon.com wrote: In synopsis "The Sweet Hereafter" may sound like a devastatingly unpleasant downer, but don't be discouraged. The real subjects of this luminous picture (adapted by director Atom Egoyan from Russell Banks's novel) are hope and renewal--avoiding the cheap emotions suggested by those clich?©d terms. Like other Egoyan films ("Exotica", for one), it's an intriguing sort of mystery, a puzzle in which the big picture is not revealed until the very last piece is in place. A metropolitan attorney (Ian Holm) travels to a small British Columbian town where 14 children have been killed in a school bus accident to prepare a class-action suit. With sensitivity and empathy, he approaches relatives with promises that the suit will give focus and closure to their grief. And as he investigates the circumstances of the accident, he not only uncovers a few local secrets, but dredges up some painful pieces of his own past. Slowly, deeper mysteries are revealed--eternal mysteries at the very heart of human nature: Who is to blame for a tragedy like this? And why do people feel such a need to assign blame? Is that how they give meaning to otherwise inconceivable events? How does one reassemble a shattered life? "The Sweet Hereafter" is too honest to offer bromides, but it shows how a few people struggle, as best they can, to answer these questions for themselves. "--Jim Emerson"

And from Don Mckellar, Last Night (1998)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0skcGu6A01w

google wrote: In this Canadian drama by Don McKellar, various citizens of Toronto anxiously await the end of the world, which is occurring, for reasons explained, at midnight. While widower Patrick Wheeler (McKellar) braces for his fate, he meets Sandra (Sandra Oh), the wife of a businessman, who is intent on committing suicide. Meanwhile, Patrick's friend Craig Zwiller (Callum Keith Rennie), embracing a hedonistic approach to the apocalypse, decides to have as much sex as he can while there is still time.

Speaking of Don MCKellar who has made some other great stuff as well as been involved with lots of great stuff as an actor and or/writer such as Road Kill, Highway 61, the Red Violin, Blindness (not a great adaptation of what was one of the best novels I've read in recent years to be honest), was in Existenz (Cronenberg) and Exotica (Atom Egoyan) -- so these guys work together. He also starred in and wrote some of Bruce McDonald's (another leading light in the small world of English-speaking Canada) Twitch City (1998 to 2000 -- strong years here):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_upgJ-RYWbA

Then there's Made in Canada which was a highly enjoyable show, but I had a very negative experience with it (and it's far too late to deal with those issues now).

As for book: was going to go with a Mordecahi Richler, but I'll go with the American/Canadian William Gibson. He moved to Canada to escape the draft as a conscientious objector (or draft dodger to some). Going with Neuromancer (1984 which won the Philip K. Dick Award, the Hugo award, and the Nebula award ):

amazon.com wrote: The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus- hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace . . . Case had been the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction. Hotwired to the leading edges of art and technology, Neuromancer ranks with 1984 and Brave New World as one of the century's most potent visions of the future.

Edited by Logan - March 07 2018 at 23:10

I thought of what the best Danish album might be after listening to Burnin' Red Ivanhoe w/ Povl Dissing - Elefantskovcikadeviser today. It is certainly up there for me, but then again there's also Steppeulvene - HIP, Kim Larsen - Værsgo' and Povl Dissing's own debut album Jeg Er En Tosset Spillemand....all of which probably goes waaaay over foreign heads and ears - especially Dissing's vocals that to the untrained ear sound awfully close to an astma patient on the wrong meds.

Edited by Guldbamsen - July 03 2016 at 13:14

TV shows that I'm following on network and cable...

Atavachron wrote: U.S.  I've got a thing for film & tv of the 50s and early 60s, probably because they were all in reruns when I was a kid and were so much better than anything new in the 70s & 80s.

Same here David.

My favorites from the US

Movies
-Harry and Tonto
-Nashville
-They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
-Network
-One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest

"A Catcher in the Rye" - I mostly read biographies - Mort Sahl, Marlon Brando, Bill Hicks, John Cassavetes are interesting.. I should mention Frank Capra - who is probably the best director from here.

TV -- "The Larry Sanders Show".. I am curious to see how "Roseanne" will be when it re-boots this month.