Don McKellar
5 connections found
Filmography
View:
Connections, in both directions
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)
Directed by Lorene Scafaria
influenced by Last Night (1998)
Plot Themes
Before the world does in fact end, you might want to track down a copy of 1998�s "Last Night."
It also borrows (some might even say steals) a screenplay from Don McKellar’s Last Night, a 1998 Canadian indie focusing on an unlikely love story taking place amid the chaos of a planet hours away from destruction.
Hell, there was even a nifty little 1998 film from Canada called "Last Night" that saw the end of the world through a filter of bemused resignation--in one key moment, a woman entered an abandoned liquor store in search of a bottle of wine with which to toast the end of times, picked up and examined two still sitting on the shelf and then put one back before leaving with the other.
Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World covers almost exactly the same ground as Don McKellar’s beautiful 1998 gem Last Night: a middle-aged loner whiles away the last days before a calamity (unspecified in McKellar’s film; an unstoppable asteroid here) wipes out the planet.
(There have been a few, though, including a fine Canadian film from 1998 called "Last Night.")
…well, since Don McKellar's excellent, bittersweet 1999 end-of-the-world reverie, Last Night.
If only someone would have commented,“You can’t eat scenery!” as the townspeople, in a similar situation, did in Bill Forsyth’s charming and deeper Local Hero , also about a poor, scenic town, about to be destroyed, physically, by industry that will bring economic growth.
Naturally, this Frankenstein’s monster started with a dead body: 2003’s Seducing Doctor Lewis , a French-Canadian comedy in the Local Hero mold about an idyllic fishing village that pulls out all the stops to lure a doctor to town, and thus make itself eligible as a site for a new factory.
Its sentimental plot – a fishing community hatch a plan to entice an oil company to set up shop in their village that hinges on the residents convincing a city slicker plastic surgeon to take on the position of town doctor – is essentially a crude cut-and-shut of Local Hero and Doc Hollywood .
Forsyth, director of wry and subtle films like "Gregory's Girl" and "Local Hero," hasn't made a film since 1999.
All manner of shenanigans follow, and there’s more than a little of the Irish indie farce, Waking Ned Devine , in the movie’s DNA, although William Forsyth’s Local Hero and Michael J. Fox’s Doc Hollywood also factor into the equation.
Also, the film is directed by Toronto actor-filmmaker Don McKellar, whose own directing credits have veered between terrific (Last Night) and godawful (Childstar).
Also, the film is directed by Toronto actor-filmmaker Don McKellar, whose own directing credits have veered between terrific (Last Night) and godawful (Childstar).
Dr. Paul Lewis ( Friday Night Lights ’s Taylor Kitsch) is a cricket freak, so, as he arrives at Tickle Love, the wizened citizenry are having a cricket match on a hill.
And Taylor Kitsch's role is his best since his days on TV's Friday Night Lights.
Sarah Polley is an idiosyncratic actress with a number of terrific SF/horror performances under her belt - Dawn of the Dead (2004), eXistenZ (1999), Last Night (1998) - and she is equally good here.