Corner Gas

Director:  Brent Butt
Length:  30 min.

Stand-up comedians seem to enjoy turning their one-liners into thirty-minute episodes of laughs.   Brent Butt penned a sitcom based in his home province of Saskatchewan, where he imagined he would still be pumping gas if he hadn't become a successful stand-up comedian.  The show features a cast of eight, centered around a gas station and a cafe. Without all the usual drama of most shows, Corner Gas focuses all its efforts on snappy one-liners, idiomatic expressions both in and out of context, and quick repartee between its characters.  It's like doing a comedy routine with a whole cast of sidekicks, straight men and dummies.  Every character is both well-rounded and exaggerated. Famous Canadians make cameo appearances in many episodes.

Corner Gas was an amazing success in Canada (where a show rarely lasts more than 100 episodes), survived for five seasons, and was exported beyond Canada. Some of the actors were well-known before the show, but for most Corner Gas was their biggest gig. The show was so successful that they made a feature-length film in 2014, though it was not as big a hit as expected.  

The gas station and diner set so popular as a photo-op for people driving through Saskatchewan that the fake buildings remained up long after originally anticipated. The set (in Rouleau, Saskatchewan) was finally destroyed in 2016, because it was no longer safe for the public to be near.


   

Wilby Wonderful

Director:  Daniel MacIvor
Length: 99 min.
Released: 2004

  

Quirky towns always make popular settings for films.  Wilby Wonderful follows a group of characters and interwoven characters through a single somewhat ordinary day.  Wilby is a small town, on a little island where residents view anyone not born and raised on the island as a foreigner.  The story is set in Canada, but the conflicts within the film are so universal that it could take place anywhere.  Canadian actors populate the film, and a few who have become very famous in the US (Sandra Oh and Ellen Page).  As in many stories, each character evolves over the day and becomes a better and more whole member of the community.  The well-written screenplay brings Wilby to life, and even though the entire film takes place in only one day, we have lived something with the characters.  Wilby Wonderful challenges its characters to move beyond themselves in order find their place and purpose within the community.  The fact that the title sounds like "we'll be wonderful" is another fringe benefit of an already good title, presented in the film as a banner for an upcoming town festival which was printed backwards.  Quirky music fills the soundtrack.  Wilby Wonderful is a gem.