Your favourite books/TV/films from your country

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

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

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 .

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.

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