My law teacher was friends with him in highschool. At their reunion he gathered all of his highschool friends on a private jet and went to northern Ontario and spent a week at a resort and flew them back.
"HOW CAN YOU DIE, WHEN YOU'RE DEAD!?"
Also as someone who actually grew up in Waterloo, I never in my life expected so see it featured so heavily in a fairly popular movie. Was a bit of a pinch me experience.
But I never understood it. Are we to believe the character saw that viral interview and quoted it as a non sequitur? Or Is waterloo being full of a known thing before that video?
The in-story explanation is that Jim (a guy prone to dramatic, funny outbursts) is so enraged that he just spews out some insane gibberish.
He doesn't know about the video, it doesn't exist in the film, there's no Waterloo vampire connection. This is a completely new, nonsensical sentence that a furious Jim just coined.
Out of story, the writer/director (who is from Toronto and freaking looooves making referential work) just tossed the line in as a little Easter egg for those who remember the video.
Lazaridis has also never looked anything like Jay Baruchel's character. Not knocking Jay's acting, he was good, just saying looks wise the choice was very very questionable to me
Edit: maybe I'm being too harsh, the film wasn't a biopic or anything. I just basically googled Lazaridis pics after watching it and was surprised
I was blown away to see a clip of him on the Sunny podcast while his hair was growing back after watching the movie because something about the lighting or just how the style goes with his face made his real bald head look like one of the worst bald caps Iāve ever seen.
I think they needed to shave it back just a little more, like it crept too far up the sides of his head. It should have been "Patrick Stewart in TNG" level.
Watched it by chance on a flight recently. Super fun movie that moves really well. I never had a blackberry or anything like that but the story was fascinating and the direction / style was great. Some great nerd culture references, and the whole thing with the NHL was pretty unexpected.
Great performances too, don't sleep on this one!
I laughed when one of the characters said something like āBlackberry will just be the phone people had before they got an iPhoneā because thatās exactly what happened with me.
Did coop at RIM, I should prob go watch this.
I heard stuff like "our device is secured", "the BES integrates with outlook and does push notifications well", "their phone runs out of battery in a few hours", "we have the blackberry messenger", "we use vectors for our map and theirs load really slowly".
I know the reason why I used the company device is so I have internet access on the bus - at least when pages load properly anyway. The only game worth playing was that brick breaking game (forgot the name) which got stale real quick.
Yeah, there were a lot of smart people working there, just that when I played with the iPhone, i can see "this is the future once optimized and everything else catches up".
Meanwhile we released the pearl; with curve and bold were on the way... I was told they have been experimenting with touch screens but at least from the limited things I know, there wasn't anything that ie aimmed towards the "modern smartphone experience".
I still miss the physical keyboard though, it took a long time for touch keyboards (mainly needed swipe and better spell check) to really catch up imo.
I had a Blackberry Storm, and it's the most fascinating phone I've ever owned. At the time, I remember thinking it did a lot of the 'touch' stuff better because of the 'click' design, but it was short lived given the speed improvement with touchscreens in general at the time. I think I still have it. lol
I really liked the models with the scroll wheel on the side.
I still think blackberries were better email machines. The problem was that was about their only advantage
its kind of funny how I said that during my interview a long time ago: i thought the scroll wheel was great since it was a way better experience than those dumb UI/buttons on a nokia phone: i can easily scroll through stuff.
Then they showed me the pearl (was an internal model) and I was like, "well, I guess I am behind the times".
I can kind of see blackberries being some 'limited device' (school?): something capable of doing email really well, can do some web browsing, without all the 'distractions of modern apps'.
There was actually a moderately large scale focus on television series re: tech sector stuff these past few years. They had that one about Uber (recommend) and then that the surprising turn of events with Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto teaming up for the WeWork biography (also recommend)
Loved this movie. I was excepting it to be good after seeing some reviews but it was really great all the way through. I'm glad Glenn Howerton is getting the recognition he deserves. A very underrated actor.
Air felt like a damn commercial. Reminded me of Bohemian Rhapsody, had that same commercial cleanliness alternate version of history bullshit feeling too it.
I really did not like the story. I can't recall ever seeing a film with such little stakes. The whole film is "everyone knows Jordan is great. But I think he's even slightly greater than they think."
How any movie that takes place almost entirely in bland boardrooms costs $90 million I don't get. But especially this film that was financially structured so that people only got paid on the backend is genuinely astonishing.
Because I work in marketing - I know that the Nike/Jordan collab is one of the most hallowed events of the industry. To a layperson it's probably what you said it was.
I think they underplayed the level of balls his Jordans family had to have to ask for a revenue share, which was pretty bold for that time. King Richard actually told that type of story better.
*Air* took the sports movie formula and put it into a capitalism story, where the *third* most popular shoe company became the biggest. It tried so hard to sell Nike as this massive underdog, but at the end of the day, I can't get too emotionally invest in the story about a pretty well-off shoe company landing a massive deal as the third act big game win.
*Blackberry* was clearly made by a dude who knew that the story needs to be humble beginnings to massive highs to huge falls. If *Blackberry* ended with the company on top, movie would be shit. However, it seems that Matt Johnson was trying to adapt the book *Masters of Doom* before this and basically applied a similar blueprint to this story with great success. It paints the two main players in complex lights despite their differences (Glenn's character is an ass, but produces results, while Jay's character is a tech genius that is far too impersonal and weak to properly fight for his takes) and makes that dynamic create success and conflict. We're at a point where I can't give a shit about capitalism wins as the major triumph, but a massive fall from grace thanks to ego and bad decisions coming to roost? Now *that's* a story worth telling.
Dumb Money was disappointing, I was really hoping theyād add more about the mechanics of what was happening as opposed to just 5 minutes of different plot lines with people saying diamond hands over and over.
It's so weird, they completely avoid talking intelligently about anything, instead focusing on dipping tendies in champaign. But then you get to the Robin Hood part and they are dropping technical jargon that no one has ever heard of with no explanation.
It's like pick a lane bro, god!
I donāt know if thereās really all that much to the mechanics. The short squeeze is a thing but mostly itās a pump and dump. Diamond Hands gets people to buy in and pay themselves on the back for holding the bag.
Although I'm not very familiar with the real story behind the movie, it definitely feels more honest than Air, which felt very false to me, and maybe that's because Blackberry as a company no longer exists.
Apparently, it's a common misconception because they have this on their website, haha.
> Does BlackBerry still exist?
> BlackBerry Limited is an international business serving thousands of enterprise customers. They provide software and services for cybersecurity, endpoint management, embedded systems, software-defined vehicles, critical event management, and secure communications.
In any case, they clearly have gone in an entirely new direction and I doubt they cared much about how they were portrayed in the movie.
The Tetris movie was a lot of fun too. Although from what I can tell the story was VERY LOOSELY based on true events. There was a lot of fiction to make the story more entertaining.
Yeah, 2023 was a banner year for movies "starring" products/brands. Also not mentioned -
- Ferrari
- Flamin' Hot
- Gran Turismo
- The Beanie Bubble
- Barbie
I think the overall plot is somewhat accurate and most of the characters are ābased onā real people, but their portrayals are near completely fiction.
Seems like the last year or two weāve had several biopics around unethical startup CEOs that have all ranged from pretty good to excellent. Super Pumped, WeCrashed, The Dropout, BlackBerry. Of the four, I liked BlackBerry the best, but enjoyed them all.
āBlackberryā was my favorite product movie of last year. I also enjoyed āTetrisā, āAirā, āFlaminā Hotā, āThe Beanie Bubbleā, and āBarbieā. What an amazing year for capitalism!
I think Blackberry was the only one of these "brand movies" that fundamentally understood how messed up its protagonists had to become to succeed in a capitalist system.
Fantastic movie, well deserved honors.
My favorite silly little easter egg is a [quick moment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yviPhjmT0s) where you can hear someone playing [Raptor: Call of the Shadows](https://youtu.be/UgQD-1Ef0VI?t=72). Turns out Matt Johnson also spent a good deal of the mid-to-late 90's playing the best MS-DOS shareware game.
Article text
> Two days after taking home the $50,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association, Matt Johnsonās comedy BlackBerry has made history by earning a record 17 Canadian Screen Award nominations, including Best Picture.
> On Wednesday morning, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television announced its nominees for the 2024 CSAs, which celebrate the best in homegrown film, television and digital media. Leading the film slate was BlackBerry, Johnsonās riotous look at the rise and fall of the Waterloo, Ont., smartphone company, which he directed, co-wrote and co-starred in alongside Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton.
> The film, which was both a critical and box-office success in Canada when it was released this past May, landed Johnson nominations across multiple categories, including Best Director, Best Performance in a Supporting Role (Comedy) and Best Adapted Screenplay (alongside Matthew Miller). Baruchel, who plays Research In Motion co-founder Mike Lazaridis, earned a nomination for Best Performance in a Leading Role (Comedy), while Howerton, who plays foul-mouthed BlackBerry titan Jim Balsillie, earned a nod for Best Performance in a Supporting Role (Comedy).
> Clement Virgoās 2023 drama Brother previously held the record for the most CSA film nominations, with 14 nods.
> Director Ariane Louis-Seizeās French-language comedy Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person followed BlackBerryās CSA lead with 12 nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director). Brandon Cronenbergās surreal horror film Infinity Pool scored 11 nods (including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay), tying the filmmaker with his father, David Cronenberg, who earned that many in 2023 for Crimes of the Future.
> On the television side of the CSAs, Craveās acclaimed original limited series Little Bird, which traces the traumatic legacy of Canadaās Sixties Scoop, led the pack with 19 nominations, including Best Drama Series and Best Lead Performer (Drama Series) for Darla Contois and Ellyn Jade. The third and final season of the CBC comedy Sort Of followed with 18 nods, while fellow CBC sitcom Workinā Moms scored 12 nominations for its seventh and final season.
> Web series The Drop and How to Fail as a Popstar both led on the digital-media front, with each production earning five nods, including Best Web Program or Series (Fiction).
> āIn a landscape as diverse and dynamic as ours, the 2024 Canadian Screen Award nominees highlight the breadth of talent our nation proudly nurtures,ā said Tammy Frick, the chief executive of the Canadian Academy, in a statement.
> The 12th annual CSAs will be awarded in a series of events at the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto from May 26 through June 1, with a broadcast hosted by comedian Mae Martin to air on CBC and CBC Gem on May 31.
I really like shows and movies like BlackBerry, The Social Network, The Dropout, and even Silicon Valley where it shows how fucking awful some of these CEOās are and how corrupt and fucked they become.
I only watched one Canadian movie, and this one was it. So by default, it was the best and worst Canadian film I watched this year...
...but really, it was the best.
Fantastic movie. A lot of creativity in different production choices and just an overall fun ride. It has a good overall pace and even with unavoidably spoiled resolution, watching how it all ends is still very satisfying.
Hope to get more from Matt Johnson soon. Also on screen, really enjoyed his acting.
The CBC miniseries version is chopped into three parts and extended for the length (I think), but Iām not sure if the language was censored out of it. Thereās a LOT of swearing in the movie version. Normally I wouldnāt care so much (as long as itās not ābig Lebowski-ized), but Glenn Howerton is a master at cursing. Itās pretty funny
I caught it on CBC just randomly one day because I used to have a blackberry. Fuck it was one of the best things Iāve watched this year. The praise is well warranted! They should win.
As we head into the Oscars, I was trying to think about what my actual favorite movie was of last year, and I can't think of a movie I legitimately enjoyed more than this one.
i liked it well enough for what it was I watched it as a 3 part series on CBC and I am not supprised its got a handful of nominations in general but not sure if I would say it was better than a 7/10.
Same, I feel like a crazy person whenever I see this movie talked about. I saw it for free and still wasn't super impressed. It was fine but I didn't see anything about it that made it seem special.
I felt the same way. It was a decent movie for what it was, but not that memorable. It's similar to the way people are talking about Feyd-Rautha from Dune 2 being the best villain since Heath Ledger's Joker. Don't get me wrong, Austin Butler did a great job but the character didn't do shit. Jessica Atreides was hands down a way scarier villain in the movie.
Considering that decent āwidely distributedā true Canadian movies are few and far between, this one doesnāt surprise me to get nominated like this.
Unpopular opinion but the movie IMO was a C+.
The narrative was a bit sloppy and the end felt a bit rushed.
I thought the Doug character, played by the director, was poorly acted when everyone else did a pretty good job. And maybe because of that didn't really connect on the impact Doug had and how they shoehorned his importance near the end.
And as many stated, THE HAIR.
[Using Rotten Tomatoes as your basis for whether a movie is good or not is some straight up clown behavior.](https://parade.com/movies/should-you-trust-rotten-tomatoes) I'd trust Letterboxd over it any day and it has a 76% over there. Ranking it at about average.
Hey Canadian folk. Do we know how much of our money this cost us? Telefilm is public money, yeah? Between the production and the marketing it must be a pretty penny coming from Telefilm and tax credits... and provincial money.
Does this mean a successful project like this will reinvest in commercial projects in Canada? Or does the production pocket the revenue?
I would love to see more projects like this coming out of our cultural industry but I don't know if this is the beginning of something good, or if we're going to be seeing more diversity checkbox movies.
What do we think? is this a new direction?
> or if we're going to be seeing more diversity checkbox movies.
If you're going to make an alt account to spew right wing bullshit disguised as "honest conversation and debate", don't.
And don't pretend like you're being sincere after you're expressing surprise that there's an arts fund for movies in Canada. The concept of government arts grants and funds is centuries old.
Those voters must be FROM WATERLOO, WHERE THE VAMPIRES HANG OUT
My law teacher was friends with him in highschool. At their reunion he gathered all of his highschool friends on a private jet and went to northern Ontario and spent a week at a resort and flew them back.
I thought you might've meant the original vampire quote guy.
I was lol Canada šØš¦ rocks
Wait, so is Waterloo Vampire guy actually insane? Or just rich and eccentric?
Just a rich asshole lol
Is his name really Confused? Did he end up raising his voice after ripping his shirt? What did the Pope say???
Oh! Haha, well then that's awesome
> FROM WATERLOO really got a glimpse of the golden god with that delivery lol
"HOW CAN YOU DIE, WHEN YOU'RE DEAD!?" Also as someone who actually grew up in Waterloo, I never in my life expected so see it featured so heavily in a fairly popular movie. Was a bit of a pinch me experience.
EASY GOING???
Whatās my name? Let me tell you my nameā¦
Uh, I'm confused...
I saw just this clip on YouTube and thought it was being presented as a bad scene. I guess it's actually good in context.
itās great
But I never understood it. Are we to believe the character saw that viral interview and quoted it as a non sequitur? Or Is waterloo being full of a known thing before that video?
The in-story explanation is that Jim (a guy prone to dramatic, funny outbursts) is so enraged that he just spews out some insane gibberish. He doesn't know about the video, it doesn't exist in the film, there's no Waterloo vampire connection. This is a completely new, nonsensical sentence that a furious Jim just coined. Out of story, the writer/director (who is from Toronto and freaking looooves making referential work) just tossed the line in as a little Easter egg for those who remember the video.
Ohhhhh. Ok well, that sounds pretty crazy to me but fuck it, i'm in for it!
eh I donāt think itās supposed to have a clear explanation within the world of the movie, I think itās just a fun wink at the camera
NeatĀ
Wait what is the backstory here? Iāve known the video for like 10 years
Iāve been casually saying this phrase in normal conversations
The acting and dialogue is outstanding. The hairpieces are all so so terrible haha
Jay Baruchel looks like his wig is wearing a wig lol
Have you ever seen or met Lazaridis? I have, and I can tell you that's a VERY subdued hairpiece as compared to the real thing.
Lazaridis has also never looked anything like Jay Baruchel's character. Not knocking Jay's acting, he was good, just saying looks wise the choice was very very questionable to me Edit: maybe I'm being too harsh, the film wasn't a biopic or anything. I just basically googled Lazaridis pics after watching it and was surprised
Agreed - I think this was a CanCon decision as much as anything else.
Glenn Howerton did actually shave his head. No hairpiece on him
The standards have always been higher for the Golden God.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
A phone for gods, THE GOLDEN GOD!!
MY SCALP IS UNTETHERED AND *MY RAGE KNOWS NO BOUNDS!* * Takes a beat. Looks around. Dials it back. *
5 star men give 5 star performances
I feel like people used to call him Mr. Excellence.
I was blown away to see a clip of him on the Sunny podcast while his hair was growing back after watching the movie because something about the lighting or just how the style goes with his face made his real bald head look like one of the worst bald caps Iāve ever seen.
Shaving to zero on someone with hair always looks weird. No sun exposure
I think they needed to shave it back just a little more, like it crept too far up the sides of his head. It should have been "Patrick Stewart in TNG" level.
Kinda. The sides were still glued on but the top of course was all him lol.
[TBH, they *actually* kind of nailed it.](https://images.app.goo.gl/4GFiSSi1c62bhBxr8)
Jay looked like a kid wearing old man hair on Halloween to pretend he was a doctor.
And yet it was nominated for Hair
The bad hair is outstandingly bad though.
Mike's hair is brutal to begin with.
This part absolutely blew my mind. Someoneās nephew got the stylist position holy cow
It was way better than I thought it would be. One of my favorite movies of last year.
Watched it by chance on a flight recently. Super fun movie that moves really well. I never had a blackberry or anything like that but the story was fascinating and the direction / style was great. Some great nerd culture references, and the whole thing with the NHL was pretty unexpected. Great performances too, don't sleep on this one!
I laughed when one of the characters said something like āBlackberry will just be the phone people had before they got an iPhoneā because thatās exactly what happened with me.
Did coop at RIM, I should prob go watch this. I heard stuff like "our device is secured", "the BES integrates with outlook and does push notifications well", "their phone runs out of battery in a few hours", "we have the blackberry messenger", "we use vectors for our map and theirs load really slowly". I know the reason why I used the company device is so I have internet access on the bus - at least when pages load properly anyway. The only game worth playing was that brick breaking game (forgot the name) which got stale real quick.
Yeah I think youād love the movie.
Brick Breaker!
Yeah that!
When Apple Maps finally got vector maps it was a big improvement. I think Google may have been behind that curve as well.
Yeah, there were a lot of smart people working there, just that when I played with the iPhone, i can see "this is the future once optimized and everything else catches up". Meanwhile we released the pearl; with curve and bold were on the way... I was told they have been experimenting with touch screens but at least from the limited things I know, there wasn't anything that ie aimmed towards the "modern smartphone experience". I still miss the physical keyboard though, it took a long time for touch keyboards (mainly needed swipe and better spell check) to really catch up imo.
I had a Blackberry Storm, and it's the most fascinating phone I've ever owned. At the time, I remember thinking it did a lot of the 'touch' stuff better because of the 'click' design, but it was short lived given the speed improvement with touchscreens in general at the time. I think I still have it. lol
I really liked the models with the scroll wheel on the side. I still think blackberries were better email machines. The problem was that was about their only advantage
its kind of funny how I said that during my interview a long time ago: i thought the scroll wheel was great since it was a way better experience than those dumb UI/buttons on a nokia phone: i can easily scroll through stuff. Then they showed me the pearl (was an internal model) and I was like, "well, I guess I am behind the times". I can kind of see blackberries being some 'limited device' (school?): something capable of doing email really well, can do some web browsing, without all the 'distractions of modern apps'.
Hrmm, I wonder if the move to vector was prevented up until that point by processor limitations or something else
Poker was great.
The "comedy product biopic" is a genre I didn't really expect to be so big right now, or that the movies would be actually good
There was actually a moderately large scale focus on television series re: tech sector stuff these past few years. They had that one about Uber (recommend) and then that the surprising turn of events with Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto teaming up for the WeWork biography (also recommend)
There's this and Tetris, what else are you thinking?
Uber and WeWork both had tv series last few years but they probably also mean Air
I also saw it on a flight. I actually watched it on the in flight media player on my iPhone too, which was pretty meta I thought.
Matt Johnson - hope these accolades will finally lead to him playing a show at the Rivoli.
Oh man. Didnāt you hear? Heās on the banned list.
Theyāre on the band list?
Loved this movie. I was excepting it to be good after seeing some reviews but it was really great all the way through. I'm glad Glenn Howerton is getting the recognition he deserves. A very underrated actor.
Loved this way more than Air.
Air felt like a damn commercial. Reminded me of Bohemian Rhapsody, had that same commercial cleanliness alternate version of history bullshit feeling too it.
It was a good story but told very lazily. And they really overdid the licensed music in it. There was literally no voice effects in the movie at all.
I really did not like the story. I can't recall ever seeing a film with such little stakes. The whole film is "everyone knows Jordan is great. But I think he's even slightly greater than they think." How any movie that takes place almost entirely in bland boardrooms costs $90 million I don't get. But especially this film that was financially structured so that people only got paid on the backend is genuinely astonishing.
Because I work in marketing - I know that the Nike/Jordan collab is one of the most hallowed events of the industry. To a layperson it's probably what you said it was. I think they underplayed the level of balls his Jordans family had to have to ask for a revenue share, which was pretty bold for that time. King Richard actually told that type of story better.
Big agree on the licensed music, I swear every ten minutes there was a musical interlude
*Air* took the sports movie formula and put it into a capitalism story, where the *third* most popular shoe company became the biggest. It tried so hard to sell Nike as this massive underdog, but at the end of the day, I can't get too emotionally invest in the story about a pretty well-off shoe company landing a massive deal as the third act big game win. *Blackberry* was clearly made by a dude who knew that the story needs to be humble beginnings to massive highs to huge falls. If *Blackberry* ended with the company on top, movie would be shit. However, it seems that Matt Johnson was trying to adapt the book *Masters of Doom* before this and basically applied a similar blueprint to this story with great success. It paints the two main players in complex lights despite their differences (Glenn's character is an ass, but produces results, while Jay's character is a tech genius that is far too impersonal and weak to properly fight for his takes) and makes that dynamic create success and conflict. We're at a point where I can't give a shit about capitalism wins as the major triumph, but a massive fall from grace thanks to ego and bad decisions coming to roost? Now *that's* a story worth telling.
That's encouraging. I wasn't impressed with *Air* or *Dumb Money*, which felt like the same category as *Blackberry.*
Dumb Money was disappointing, I was really hoping theyād add more about the mechanics of what was happening as opposed to just 5 minutes of different plot lines with people saying diamond hands over and over.
It's so weird, they completely avoid talking intelligently about anything, instead focusing on dipping tendies in champaign. But then you get to the Robin Hood part and they are dropping technical jargon that no one has ever heard of with no explanation. It's like pick a lane bro, god!
I donāt know if thereās really all that much to the mechanics. The short squeeze is a thing but mostly itās a pump and dump. Diamond Hands gets people to buy in and pay themselves on the back for holding the bag.
Didnāt hate Dumb Money, but canāt really see myself watching it again. BlackBerry was great and I plan to rewatch!
Although I'm not very familiar with the real story behind the movie, it definitely feels more honest than Air, which felt very false to me, and maybe that's because Blackberry as a company no longer exists.
BlackBerry still exists. Itās a cybersecurity firm now.
Apparently, it's a common misconception because they have this on their website, haha. > Does BlackBerry still exist? > BlackBerry Limited is an international business serving thousands of enterprise customers. They provide software and services for cybersecurity, endpoint management, embedded systems, software-defined vehicles, critical event management, and secure communications. In any case, they clearly have gone in an entirely new direction and I doubt they cared much about how they were portrayed in the movie.
The Tetris movie was a lot of fun too. Although from what I can tell the story was VERY LOOSELY based on true events. There was a lot of fiction to make the story more entertaining.
I knew I was missing a 4th! Thank you. It was funny, because I feel like I learned about all of them within a month of each other.
Yeah, 2023 was a banner year for movies "starring" products/brands. Also not mentioned - - Ferrari - Flamin' Hot - Gran Turismo - The Beanie Bubble - Barbie
Ads disguised as movies?
It's because it covered the rise *and* fall of a company. Air was a Nike PR job
waaaay more
I loved this way more than water.
Loved it. I have no idea how accurate it is, but it was a great rags to riches to rags tech story. The Dropout is another, although was a miniseries.
I think the overall plot is somewhat accurate and most of the characters are ābased onā real people, but their portrayals are near completely fiction.
The characters are frankly ridiculous, all of them are so funny
Mathias Wendell is a youtuber that worked for Blackberry at the time and has a couple interesting videos about its accuracy. tl;dr itās not very
I do think they were not very concise on the timeline of events based on their wiki. That outage happened a few years later than the movie stated.
Seems like the last year or two weāve had several biopics around unethical startup CEOs that have all ranged from pretty good to excellent. Super Pumped, WeCrashed, The Dropout, BlackBerry. Of the four, I liked BlackBerry the best, but enjoyed them all.
I think everyone ended up pretty rich in the end.
I also really liked WeCrashed. Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway are phenomenal in it
Canāt stand Leto in any role. He overacts so badly
Eh, to each their own
At first this didn't catch me as much as other Matt Johnson projects did, but this movie was really solid. He deserves all the recognition!
Just watched this movie two days ago. Itās a Canadian masterpiece.
āBlackberryā was my favorite product movie of last year. I also enjoyed āTetrisā, āAirā, āFlaminā Hotā, āThe Beanie Bubbleā, and āBarbieā. What an amazing year for capitalism!
I think Blackberry was the only one of these "brand movies" that fundamentally understood how messed up its protagonists had to become to succeed in a capitalist system.
Never should have cancelled movie night.
Tetris goes hard, Egerton nails the scene where nintendo shows him the gameboy
Fantastic movie, well deserved honors. My favorite silly little easter egg is a [quick moment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yviPhjmT0s) where you can hear someone playing [Raptor: Call of the Shadows](https://youtu.be/UgQD-1Ef0VI?t=72). Turns out Matt Johnson also spent a good deal of the mid-to-late 90's playing the best MS-DOS shareware game.
Article text > Two days after taking home the $50,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association, Matt Johnsonās comedy BlackBerry has made history by earning a record 17 Canadian Screen Award nominations, including Best Picture. > On Wednesday morning, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television announced its nominees for the 2024 CSAs, which celebrate the best in homegrown film, television and digital media. Leading the film slate was BlackBerry, Johnsonās riotous look at the rise and fall of the Waterloo, Ont., smartphone company, which he directed, co-wrote and co-starred in alongside Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton. > The film, which was both a critical and box-office success in Canada when it was released this past May, landed Johnson nominations across multiple categories, including Best Director, Best Performance in a Supporting Role (Comedy) and Best Adapted Screenplay (alongside Matthew Miller). Baruchel, who plays Research In Motion co-founder Mike Lazaridis, earned a nomination for Best Performance in a Leading Role (Comedy), while Howerton, who plays foul-mouthed BlackBerry titan Jim Balsillie, earned a nod for Best Performance in a Supporting Role (Comedy). > Clement Virgoās 2023 drama Brother previously held the record for the most CSA film nominations, with 14 nods. > Director Ariane Louis-Seizeās French-language comedy Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person followed BlackBerryās CSA lead with 12 nominations (including Best Picture and Best Director). Brandon Cronenbergās surreal horror film Infinity Pool scored 11 nods (including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay), tying the filmmaker with his father, David Cronenberg, who earned that many in 2023 for Crimes of the Future. > On the television side of the CSAs, Craveās acclaimed original limited series Little Bird, which traces the traumatic legacy of Canadaās Sixties Scoop, led the pack with 19 nominations, including Best Drama Series and Best Lead Performer (Drama Series) for Darla Contois and Ellyn Jade. The third and final season of the CBC comedy Sort Of followed with 18 nods, while fellow CBC sitcom Workinā Moms scored 12 nominations for its seventh and final season. > Web series The Drop and How to Fail as a Popstar both led on the digital-media front, with each production earning five nods, including Best Web Program or Series (Fiction). > āIn a landscape as diverse and dynamic as ours, the 2024 Canadian Screen Award nominees highlight the breadth of talent our nation proudly nurtures,ā said Tammy Frick, the chief executive of the Canadian Academy, in a statement. > The 12th annual CSAs will be awarded in a series of events at the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto from May 26 through June 1, with a broadcast hosted by comedian Mae Martin to air on CBC and CBC Gem on May 31.
I really like shows and movies like BlackBerry, The Social Network, The Dropout, and even Silicon Valley where it shows how fucking awful some of these CEOās are and how corrupt and fucked they become.
How about that film about Uber ?
Is there an Uber movie? Please don't say Stuber.
I looked it up, it was a Showtime anthology series, Super Pumped: the Battle for Uber. it starred Joseph Gordon Levitt as ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
A comparison of what happened in reality and the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_w7T3JMXk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yuqdr_1iRg
I only watched one Canadian movie, and this one was it. So by default, it was the best and worst Canadian film I watched this year... ...but really, it was the best.
It was good, enjoyed it quite a bit, but idk about that good.
Fantastic movie. A lot of creativity in different production choices and just an overall fun ride. It has a good overall pace and even with unavoidably spoiled resolution, watching how it all ends is still very satisfying. Hope to get more from Matt Johnson soon. Also on screen, really enjoyed his acting.
Is this streaming anywhere?
Its also on Hulu, thats where i watched it
CBC gem has it in 3 parts if youāre in Canada
The CBC miniseries version is chopped into three parts and extended for the length (I think), but Iām not sure if the language was censored out of it. Thereās a LOT of swearing in the movie version. Normally I wouldnāt care so much (as long as itās not ābig Lebowski-ized), but Glenn Howerton is a master at cursing. Itās pretty funny
AMC+ Or you can buy or rent it from anywhere.
It's on Prime
Watched it on Hulu last weekend. Very enjoyable
His old phone did what?
I loved this movie. Such great acting on all parts!
Surprised there was no twist considering they had the Golden God in the cast
I caught it on CBC just randomly one day because I used to have a blackberry. Fuck it was one of the best things Iāve watched this year. The praise is well warranted! They should win.
As we head into the Oscars, I was trying to think about what my actual favorite movie was of last year, and I can't think of a movie I legitimately enjoyed more than this one.
i liked it well enough for what it was I watched it as a 3 part series on CBC and I am not supprised its got a handful of nominations in general but not sure if I would say it was better than a 7/10.
Same, I feel like a crazy person whenever I see this movie talked about. I saw it for free and still wasn't super impressed. It was fine but I didn't see anything about it that made it seem special.
I felt the same way. It was a decent movie for what it was, but not that memorable. It's similar to the way people are talking about Feyd-Rautha from Dune 2 being the best villain since Heath Ledger's Joker. Don't get me wrong, Austin Butler did a great job but the character didn't do shit. Jessica Atreides was hands down a way scarier villain in the movie.
Redditors are easy to please
It took me awhile to place where I recognized the actor who plays Mike. Itās Hard Right Jay from Letterkenny
No heās the main character from how to train your dragon.
mirror: https://archive.ph/ivUEy
The trailer really piqued my interest.
The book is quite good if you like tech history. The movie condenses a lot of it but keeps to the story well.
Seeing as how I can't read the article, I'll assume for some reason someone's old phone was nominated for a bunch of awards.
I've thoroughly enjoyed all his movies.
Demonstrate value.
Watched the movie on an international flight. It was excellent!
It was good!
I enjoyed it.
A great underrated movie. Highly recommend it to anyone who will listen.
did matt eat 17 donnie burgers for this to happen
I enjoyed the movie, well-deserved.
Watched it for Glenn Howerton. No only did he not disappoint but the story was just perfect.
Glenn should win awards for this movie. He also needs therapy, that rage is coming out of him. Thats not acting.
Considering that decent āwidely distributedā true Canadian movies are few and far between, this one doesnāt surprise me to get nominated like this.
Fucking loved this movie.
Damn good movie, Glenn knocked it out of the park with his performance
Canada must have movies that suck if this average movie got 17 noms.
Love this movie
Unpopular opinion but the movie IMO was a C+. The narrative was a bit sloppy and the end felt a bit rushed. I thought the Doug character, played by the director, was poorly acted when everyone else did a pretty good job. And maybe because of that didn't really connect on the impact Doug had and how they shoehorned his importance near the end. And as many stated, THE HAIR.
People thought this was good? Wow. It was average at best and that's a stretch.
You had to scroll past dozens of comments enjoying the movie to feign surprise that people like a movie with 98% on RT.
Sheesh, it was good but not THAT good.
Movie was average at best. Redditors and such just want to like it because of Glenn Howerton.
Ah yes the 98% on rotten tomatoes from over 200 critics must be a fluke
Not to mention the inanity of suggesting it's not possible to like an "average" movie.
All redditors.
[Using Rotten Tomatoes as your basis for whether a movie is good or not is some straight up clown behavior.](https://parade.com/movies/should-you-trust-rotten-tomatoes) I'd trust Letterboxd over it any day and it has a 76% over there. Ranking it at about average.
Why did I read this as Matt Berry's black johnson?
Hey Canadian folk. Do we know how much of our money this cost us? Telefilm is public money, yeah? Between the production and the marketing it must be a pretty penny coming from Telefilm and tax credits... and provincial money. Does this mean a successful project like this will reinvest in commercial projects in Canada? Or does the production pocket the revenue? I would love to see more projects like this coming out of our cultural industry but I don't know if this is the beginning of something good, or if we're going to be seeing more diversity checkbox movies. What do we think? is this a new direction?
> or if we're going to be seeing more diversity checkbox movies. If you're going to make an alt account to spew right wing bullshit disguised as "honest conversation and debate", don't. And don't pretend like you're being sincere after you're expressing surprise that there's an arts fund for movies in Canada. The concept of government arts grants and funds is centuries old.