(Incidentally, do you like how the way I think is becoming more Australian? Instead of saying "What are you talking about?" Australians say "What are you on about?")
This is one of those superficial posts where I make an observation about four similar contemporaneous movie titles -- which is also kind of like yesterday. But I wouldn't be writing the post at all if it didn't allow me to recount a story from my youth, one of those moments you remember because something you said got everybody laughing.
First the banal observation: There are four movies either out in theaters now, or very soon, whose title structure is "_____land." The titles are Greenland, Nomadland, Dreamland and Summerland.
Now, the story.
I was on a school trip to Canada and we went to this cheap-o amusement park, which Canadians probably thought was great, but which struck us as lame by comparison, as New England had a couple really good amusement parks when I was growing up. They might seem terrible now (I'm not even sure if they still exist), but at the time, they were a hell of a lot of fun. This one was not.
The park was segmented into "lands," and I'm sure these weren't their actual names, but for example, they had "Forestland" or "Arcticland" or "Sandland." In fact, if any of those were the actual names I'd be very surprised, as I don't even remember what the park's overarching theme was. But you get the idea.
Some friends and I were looking for a bathroom or an ATM or a gift shop or whatever. (Did they have ATMs when I was that age? Did I have any money?) So we went up to one of the people who worked at the park to ask directions to something, which he was not giving us very clearly.
In an effort to cut through his waffling instructions, I asked, "Is it in this land?"
My friends cracked up and even the employee was stifling guffaws. He was someone who seemed to value his professionalism, so it was all the more telling.
After I originally posted this, I realized it may not be clear why everyone thought this was so funny. So at the risk of ruining a joke to explain why it's funny, it was something about the way I said it. It was kind of like "Is it in this LAND?" So I was essentially taking this silly convention they'd established to segment their park -- which everyone knew was silly -- and using their own terminology to cut to the core of what I wanted to ask. Anyway, I was hailed a comedic genius in the moment.
Was it worth writing this post just so I could tell you this story? You be the judge.
Okay so I'll also at least talk about how excited I am to see Nomadland, Chloe Zhao's new movie, which may have the most critical acclaim of any movie released this year. (And it's actually getting released this year, thank God, not debuting in January or February to take advantage of the extended Oscar deadline. It's opening at Cinema Nova on Christmas, anyway, even if IMDB doesn't have it opening until February in either Australia or the U.S. If any year is a year not to trust the IMDB release dates, it's probably 2020.)
Anyway, I was a huge fan of Zhao's The Rider, which rounded out my top ten of that year. This seems to be getting more hyped than that was, which maybe isn't a big statement, since that film wasn't all that widely seen. (It did earn her a gig as director of a Marvel movie, though.)
I wasn't as big of a fan of Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Yada Yada Yada, and just from appearances this might find her in a similar mode. But I can get past that.
Greenland is a new disaster movie starring Gerard Butler. There are meteors showering from the sky in the poster. 'Nuff said.
I don't know anything about Dreamland or Summerland. Okay, Margot Robbie is in Dreamland, which looks on IMDB like a sort of generic mid-century period piece. Though this is certainly an interesting tagline: "A teenager's adventures as a bounty hunter take an unexpected twist." I would have thought the teenager being a bounty hunter was the unexpected twist.
Summerland stars the always interesting Gugu Mbatha-Raw and the always uninteresting Gemma Arterton, and that averages out to a semi-interesting period piece -- also mid-century -- synopsized thusly: "During World War II, an Englishwoman opens her heart to an evacuee after initially resolving to be rid of him in this moving journey of womanhood, love and friendship."
I'll be at Nomadland on one of its first nights out, but as for the other three, I might give them a miss.
Yep, still trying out those Australian phrases.
If you are an actual Australian reading this, you can see Dreamland in cinemas now, Nomadland at Christmas and Summerland on January 7th.
According to IMDB, Greenland came to Australia on August 13th, but I don't remember that happening, though I must say our cinemas here in Victoria were closed at that time. It might have played in the other states. It just got released in the U.S. on Friday on HBO Max, in any case.
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