LJ friends...

Various people have posted this - jkluge, maaseru, amberite, for example - and I like the sentiment, so I repeat it:

If there are one or more people on your friends-list who make your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

I can't help thinking this goes without saying, but then, many things that go without saying should still be said.

There are also many people hear whom I fear I would fall out of touch with if they didn't have LJs, or if I didn't. People I've known for many years, but who live far away, or whom I would normally only see every few years at cons, or who simply have busy, divergent lives. They are important to me and I'm glad to have this chance to make contact at whatever level is practical for any of us.

And then there are the chance-met LJ people whom I found because of some random shared interest (listed on their info page), or because they wrote a story that stuck in my mind, or because their art is striking. Some of them I feel I know personally (if virtually) and others I possibly never will, but all of these people have enhanced my life.

This is what puts the 'friend' in 'flist'.

(no subject)

Someone on the LMB list posted a link to a webcomic that I really enjoyed - called Galaxion by Tara Tallon. Nice echoes of Bujold, good art, and a charming story.

Bon Cop, Bad Cop...

Bon Cop, Bad Cop is a Canadian movie. It's so Canadian it hurts. It's a comedy-thriller starring Colm Feore (whom I just saw live in Stratford as a very sexy Coriolanus) and Patrick Huard. Patrick Huard wrote the story and starred in it; not only that, he's gorgeous. Who knew there were such impressive Canadians around?

Among other things, the movie is a crash course in swearing in Quebec. It's funny - I don't think you'd have to be Canadian to get the jokes. It's both violent and silly. It's a comedy-thriller about a cop from Toronto, Martin Ward (Feore), and a cop from Montreal, David Bouchard (Huard). They are direct opposites in personality and culture, and don't want to work together - but when a corpse is dropped on the Ontario/Quebec border sign, they have to. Turns out a hockey-crazed serial killer is murdering hockey magnates involved in selling Canadian hockey players and teams to the U.S. They come to like each other's families, save each other's lives, and eventually to solve the case.

There are other delightful characters too - the Montreal cop's over-the-top boss, the loquacious lab technician. And delightful scenes, like Bouchard's daughter's ballet recital, and a dramatic scene of a burning house.

This made me realize how many movies I see - most of them - that are about cultures that aren't quite my own. And how few I see that are my own. Even if I'm not into hockey, the closing credits looked like the local phone book. I was surprised, though, that they translated some French terms as "motherfucker", which sounds American to me. I'd have just made it "fucker".

One mystery remains: which was the bad cop, and which was the bon cop? I thought they were both (hilariously) bad. Police procedure in this movie doesn't just go out the window, it gets trampled in the mud and annihilated.