Today we have a boat that gets swarmed by an army of killer fish and the seafaring humans must defend themselves… by eating those same delicious fish. Or something like that. Maybe it’s closer to “They realize there’s a lot of fish around and that will make it easier to find lunch” but I’m still pretty sure that the swarm of fish is, in fact, attacking. Either way, it ends with one of the dudes reporting back to Royal McFancypants that “We got lots of fish.”

I can give this one no more than Two and a Half Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. While I can (and often do) quote the “Oh Sire, until the end of time!” line, that is pretty much it. Apart from that, this one is actually much less eventful than I remember. With the swelling music and the dramatic angles, I suppose they were trying their best to work with a pretty limited story here, but being a well-made commercial isn’t what I like these things for. Between this and the Maple sugar one, I guess any time that the commercial ends with a report back to a monarch, I can assume the plot of the piece is just not strong enough to stand on its own.

Some things of note: The look on the king’s face as some guy pointlessly shows him a map in the middle of the sailor guy’s report (surely they would have already known the area the guy was discussing. Or did that guy just barge in and start talking without explaining himself?), and I certainly can’t blame the sailor guy for being wrong about the infinite number of cod that, as far as I know, still haven’t recovered from our overfishing. But I can blame all of you for eating all those fish. I don’t eat seafood, so it wasn’t my fault. It was all of you.

Final thought: Someone on that boat likes the sound of his voice too much. He yells “Captain! Over here! You must see this!” even though one guy had clearly gone specifically to get the captain already. And then the “Heave-ho”-ing when they pull up the bucket. It’s one small bucket of fish. Save the heave-hos until you have something heavy, guy.

This one is interesting. We’ve got dapper John Matheson standing in a dark void, struggling over how to convince Canada to agree on a flag. That is pretty much the entirety of the thing. His speech in the void. We’re told, in the end, that Canada does eventually agree, but that is just an afterthought. And it is weird, if you think about it too much. Which is exactly what I do.

At first we could suppose that he’s just having a soliloquy in the Flag Committee Room, but it isn’t so. John is talking to someone in that void. It’s possible that he is talking to us, via a breaking of the fourth wall, but he says when the other politicians walk in “I was just talking about you” and I doubt he’d have said that if he was talking to himself. This indicates that either his special awareness of the medium is already common knowledge, or there actually is someone in the void with him. In either case, he then demonstrates another magic ability: Whichever flag he is thinking of forms from the ether just by saying “this” and making a simple gesture of his head for the benefit of the person he was speaking with. What I’m saying is John Matheson was probably a wizard. In real life.

Also, he’s doing an awful lot of walking around in the void. Just saying.

Anyway, to business. I have made a big deal about the ability to quote them being the biggest factor in my liking of a Heritage Moment, but this one kinda goes against the grain. A few lines are pretty good (“But blue is not an official Canadian color*” and “Prime minister AND Mr. Diefenbaker…”), but really they don’t stand alone as well as examples from, say, the Superman minute. Does this work against this one? I’m going to go with “no”. You know why? Because this whole monologue is so strong that if I had the mental capacity, I would commit this whole commercial to memory and quote it in its entirety whenever I felt like it. And that would be sweet.

Apart from quotability, I have to say that looking at all the Alternate Earth Canada Flags is kinda fun. I bet this was one of the cheapest and easiest Heritage Minutes to make, but it does not suffer for it. And looking back at this from my present times, I can add that the “I wonder, I wonder” also reminds me of the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which is another plus for this Canada History Commercial. I am fully willing to give this one Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System cake. It’s simple, magical, and I like it.

*And yes, I’m still gonna spell “color” the way I prefer even though the speaker would have spelled it another way. This is how the Nation of PDR rolls.

So, for two weekends in a row I have tried to see Captain America in movie form, but it has not worked out. And now it doesn’t seem to be playing on my side of town. I would not be surprised if the movie isn’t even around next weekend, so I may have missed my chance. Alas.

However, Kiiip and I did go see Fright Night tonight. I enjoyed it enough that I’ll give this movie Three and a Half Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. I like to see vampires treated as threats individually instead of as being chumps mowed down en masse by an Action Hero like Blade or Buffy (though I like both Blade and Buffy, those are the examples I’m giving here). While this movie is still more action movie than horror movie, that’s what I expected from it, so that was okay. David Tennant was in here. I like that. There could have been more of him, but all in all, if you’re willing to enjoy this kind of movie, this is the kind of movie I think you’ll enjoy.

It is worth noting that apart from the two of us, there were four other people in the theatre. This breaks the low-times record previously set at six when Marq and I saw Tenacious D. Granted we went to an afternoon showing because Kiiip loves making me wake up early and this is kind of a night-time movie, but it still can’t be good to have six people in a theatre on any showing on an opening weekend.

Oh, man! Here we go. This one starts with grown men doing science with kites (Kites were so useful to Old Timey Scientists. Modern scientists would benefit from more kites, I think.) Since this is in Newfoundland there are obviously hordes of unattended children wandering around with absolutely nothing to do. These children laugh at the men doing science, but when the science is successful the men are so happy that they forget the children’s rudeness and show them how they just got wireless technology off the ground (if you will).

Quotewise, there’s a couple worth loving. The interplay “Do you know where England is?” “Sure, it’s over there.” is fun and, in my opinion, quotable. But the real clincher that makes this Attempt To Make Canada Feel Good About Itself a classic is Marconi’s reading of “Through the air, across the ocean, the first time ever.” Presumably the man had an Italian accent when speaking English, which is to be accepted, but that line is not spoken in an Italian accent. That line is spoken in fluent Robot. That is fact. That is sweet, beautiful, glorious fact.

This one gets Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. Wireless technology is something I consider great in my daily life, and Marconi talking like a robot is something all Canadians should remember fondly.

This one is boring. It bores me.

This time we’re looking at some Natives who are gathering maple sugar from some maple trees when some white folk come along and are all like “Wha happen?” so the Natives share their syrup secrets and the newcomers profit.

I guess there’s some stuff to like in there. There’s that one kid who totally hides behind a tree for no apparent reason. I like the one guy who is like “hoo hoo!” And there’s some doggies. And is it me or does that one woman toward the beginning totally look like she’s thinking “Oh, there’s those European people. I guess we have to explain this to them now.” That’s amusing.

There is no fun quotes in here though. And that’s the bottom line. I like maple. It’s one of my favorite flavours (even though I’ve never done the whole Syrup on Snow thing), so I’m glad to see it put on a pedestal. Nonetheless, I can only give this one Two out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.