Christmas greetings

Hohoho! On the last Sunday of the Advent I wish you all a merry and blessed Christmas!

During the holidays I would recommend you watch 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' (if you didn't already during Thanksgiving), 'Christmas with SCTV' (DVD), 'Only the Lonely', 'Home Alone', or 'Kavik The Wolf Dog'. 'The Unexpected' from 1981, the rather grim episode of the series 'Tales of the Klondike', is a possibility too.

Please keep John in your thoughts and prayers this Christmas.

A re-imagined poster of 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' by Sam Gilbey

Sam Gilbey, a wonderfully talented artist, recently finished this beautiful re-imagined poster of 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles'. What a great composition! It really captures the spirit of this movie. For his illustrations, Sam combines various digital and analogue techniques. They have been featured on websites and television shows, as well as in books, comics and exhibitions, and also on a movie test shoot. For more information about Sam's work you can visit his website. To see details of the poster, visit this page. To order a print go here.

The poster was made for the screening of 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' today at 8.30 at the online cinema Stratford East, London Picturehouse (Picturehouse Podcast). Click here to read a post about the poster on the Picturehouse blog.

It's really good to see such wonderful attention for 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles'. Let's hope there will be even more attention next year, when the movie celebrates it's 25th anniversary.

'Cool Runnings' and deleted scenes

The above image is of a lobby card that is part of a German set. The photo on it is from a small scene in 'Cool Runnings'. At first I thought it was from a deleted scene, but watching the movie again refreshed my memory. As I said the scene is very small and easily to be forgotten, because in the movie much of it is seen on a small television screen. However, it did make me wonder once more why we have never seen deleted scenes from any of John’s movies as extra on a DVD other than ‘Airplane Food’ on the 2009 special edition of ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’. And this scene wasn’t even new to everyone because it was part of a television version of the movie. Let's hope future DVD releases will include deleted scenes as extra!

Canadians in Hollywood

In the March 2005 issue of Reader's digest you can test your knowledge about Canadians in Hollywood. Sorry, there's no prize..... but I have some great shower curtain rings on discount!

Tribute 1989 - Uncle Buck

For the June/July 1989 issue of Tribute, Jim Slotek had an interview with John on the set of ‘Uncle Buck’ in Chicago.

At the very start of the article is written that “John Candy has tended to come off as a Hardy-without-Laurel in recent years”. I guess John took that as a compliment, especially when you take into consideration that he mentioned Laurel & Hardy as two of his inspirators in an interview in Boxoffice of March 1991.

John praises John Hughes, the director of the movie ‘Uncle Buck’, and tells something about the title character. The interview also takes us back to the SCTV years and mentions ‘Radio Candy’ the comedy radio show John had just started. On the page next to the interview is an ad for 'Uncle Buck'.

Videomania 1985 - Brewster's Millions

Here's another nice item from my collection; an issue of Videomania from fall 1985, Canada's Number 1 Video Magazine.

Besides the wonderful photo of John on the cover, this magazine offers an article on the movie 'Brewster's Millions' to promote the MCA Home Video Release. For the most part it concentrates on Richard Pryor's career and the movie itself. However, John definitely gets positive attention in a paragraph too. He is praised for his work in 'SCTV' and his moviework. A wonderful photo of Richard and John accompanies this article.

61 years ago today...

61 years ago today our beloved John Candy was born. He left us much too early on March 4, 1994. Since then the world has become a less funny place.

Let's hope the interest in John will continue to grow. He deserves it, being a comedian and actor on par with all the other greats.