Tea Party Convention

[Kathryn]

Les carottes sont cuites with all this French!

 

[Smoke]

Looks like a bilingual Quebecois deal, like Good Cop, Bon Cop. (No, I don't expect you to have seen that. It's good, but only people who have lived in Quebec would think so. Les filmes bilingue sont souvent crap mais ils get the funding).

What does this tell me about Canada?

In October 2006, Bon Cop, Bad Cop's producers claimed that the film had become the highest-grossing Canadian film domestically, surpassing the $11.2 million teen comedy Porky's earned in Canada in 1981. (from Wikipedia)
​

 

[Smoke]

J'aime les films francais, donc il y a une chance que j'aimerai celui-ci.

See if you can find Gerard Depardieu's Le Comte de Monte Cristo. It's a miniseries, but it's very good. You could just think of it as a loooong film.

 

[Alceste]

What does this tell me about Canada?

In October 2006, Bon Cop, Bad Cop's producers claimed that the film had become the highest-grossing Canadian film domestically, surpassing the $11.2 million teen comedy Porky's earned in Canada in 1981. (from Wikipedia)
​

Lol. It tells you we don't have a lot of funding for films. The deck is seriously stacked against Canadian film-makers. All of our mainstream theatres are owned by American companies and as a rule only show American movies. Canadian films go to festivals where they have to compete with all the other "foreign" productions. Quebec is an exception, what with being basically a whole 'nother country with its own "domestic content" legislation, its own culture and language and a lot of arts funding.

Here's what they told me in film school: you can't attract investors unless you have secured distribution (with an American distributor), and you can't attract a distributor without a star attached to the project (an American star), and you can't attract a star unless you have a few million dollars worth of surplus funds, which you can't get unless you have investors. So we've contented ourselves to produce nature documentaries, embarrassingly unfunny publicly funded sitcoms (to fulfill "Canadian content" television requirements) and pornography. And of course privately funded indie films with no stars in, like the one I'll be working on in May.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

If you really study American history, you may be surprised to find that the British government wasn't totally "the bad guy." Some would say that our Founding Fathers overreacted - and certainly all of them did not have sterling motives. Heck, they didn't all even agree with each other on the approach, the forms of protest, and certainly not the war with England.

All the British government did was treat the American colonies as economic outpost. What the Founding Fathers wanted was fair taxes. "No Taxation without representation." And there were some very ridiculous taxes, such as the stamp tax. Most people just wanted to be represented in the British government if they were tax paying citizens. Then Thomas Paine had "Common Sense" published, and then the mind set went from tax reform to going to war for total independence.

We're alarmed at the national debt, and by the persistent recession and unemployment rates - and we want our representatives to listen to our ideas regarding economics and our very valid concerns and suggestions about how to regain our economic strength.

The recession and unemployment are not totally within the government's grasp though. While the government can certainly manipulate them to a degree, total control is outside of their control. Many experts are already predicting the job market will not recover until 2016. So does this mean that if Obama doesn't win re-election, this person will be doomed to fail because the free market people want won't be able to heal it's wounds for several more years? And then what of the winner of the 2016 campaign? Will this person be a hero because the job market, if predictions are correct, will return to a acceptable levels?

I also don't believe most people realize that Capitalism has it's own extreme form. Most are aware the more extreme form of Socialism is Communism, but it seems most do not realize we are in the extremes of Capitalism, and have moved to a Corporatacrocy. The free market allowed for one group to get so rich, that they have more power than the government.

 

[dust1n]

Lol. It tells you we don't have a lot of funding for films. The deck is seriously stacked against Canadian film-makers. All of our mainstream theatres are owned by American companies and as a rule only show American movies. Canadian films go to festivals where they have to compete with all the other "foreign" productions. Quebec is an exception, what with being basically a whole 'nother country with its own "domestic content" legislation, its own culture and language and a lot of arts funding.

Here's what they told me in film school: you can't attract investors unless you have secured distribution (with an American distributor), and you can't attract a distributor without a star attached to the project (an American star), and you can't attract a star unless you have a few million dollars worth of surplus funds, which you can't get unless you have investors. So we've contented ourselves to produce nature documentaries, embarrassingly unfunny publicly funded sitcoms (to fulfill "Canadian content" television requirements) and pornography. And of course privately funded indie films with no stars in, like the one I'll be working on in May.

Very enlightening.. poor Canada. =[

 

[Magic Man]

C'est un film Quebecois, pas francais.

Oui, je sais, mais J'aime les films non-Americains en general.

 

[Kathryn]

Les Francais sont pretentieux et de se prendre trop au serieux! That's my story and I'm sticking to it anyway. Though I do like some French films - especially "The Eighth Day" and "French Kiss."

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

All the British government did was treat the American colonies as economic outpost. What the Founding Fathers wanted was fair taxes. "No Taxation without representation." And there were some very ridiculous taxes, such as the stamp tax. Most people just wanted to be represented in the British government if they were tax paying citizens. Then Thomas Paine had "Common Sense" published, and then the mind set went from tax reform to going to war for total independence.

OTOH, the British had just emptied its coffers during the very expensive Seven Years' War, much of it fought in North America defending the colonies against the French. The British Parliament's thought was that if the colonies were going to benefit from that defense, they should pay for some of the expense incurred on their behalf.

I think the British view was that American businesspeople (including the Founding Fathers, for the most part) were treating the colonies as their own economic outpost, and that they wanted to shirk their financial and moral duty to King and Empire in favour of their own self-interest.

Edit: IMO, the root cause of the American Revolution wasn't a struggle between a tyrannical government and freedom, even though that's how it was spun. It was a struggle between government interests and corporate interests.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Edit: IMO, the root cause of the American Revolution wasn't a struggle between a tyrannical government and freedom, even though that's how it was spun. It was a struggle between government interests and corporate interests.

A light bulb just went off in my head: I think this may point to why the Revolution was successful in the American colonies but didn't spread to Canada. In the US, the big money-making industries (and therefore the big money) were all private. In Canada, the big moneymaker was the fur trade, where the big business entity, the Hudson's Bay Company, was closely allied with the British government.

If the revolution really was about individual freedom, then it should've taken hold in Canada as well... after all, the Canadian colonists were just as much individuals as the Americans. However, what the American colonies had that Canada didn't was a much higher concentration of business moguls.

Now... whether this is a parallel situation to the modern "Tea Party" phenomenon... I'll leave that question unanswered.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Edit: IMO, the root cause of the American Revolution wasn't a struggle between a tyrannical government and freedom, even though that's how it was spun. It was a struggle between government interests and corporate interests.

Given the many economic views of "Common Sense," I agree that is a plausible theory.

 

[Magic Man]

A light bulb just went off in my head: I think this may point to why the Revolution was successful in the American colonies but didn't spread to Canada. In the US, the big money-making industries (and therefore the big money) were all private. In Canada, the big moneymaker was the fur trade, where the big business entity, the Hudson's Bay Company, was closely allied with the British government.

If the revolution really was about individual freedom, then it should've taken hold in Canada as well... after all, the Canadian colonists were just as much individuals as the Americans. However, what the American colonies had that Canada didn't was a much higher concentration of business moguls.

Now... whether this is a parallel situation to the modern "Tea Party" phenomenon... I'll leave that question unanswered.

Yup, and the Civil War wasn't fought to free slaves either.

 

[dust1n]

Yup, and the Civil War wasn't fought to free slaves either.

Yup, and WW2 wasn't fought to spread democracy or end Fascism.