POP-CULTURE COLUMN: The Summer of IMAX
By Dan Brown Now that fall has arrived, the question can be asked: Who, or what, had the best summer this year in the entertainment industry? Was it Ella Langley, who’s ubiquitous number Choosin’ Texas was clearly the song of the season? Was it the suffix “-maxxing,” which got added to virtually every noun and verb in the English language during the warmer months? Was it Tomdaya, the celeb couple du jour who seemingly appeared on every red carpet on Earth? Nope, it was none of these. The hottest summer personality/event/trend/franchise was . . . IMAX. Out of all the people and things that make up the entertainment business, the one that had a better summer than anyone or anything else was a formerly obscure film format that has transcended its weird origins – this summer, it moved to the centre of the cultural conversation. If you didn’t know what IMAX was before this summer, by the end you may have been an expert. That’s thanks largely to two summer releases, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Just look at the numbers. Of the more than $1.7 billion dollars The Odyssey has grossed since it was released on July 17, $521 million of that amount has come from the sale of IMAX tickets – which makes it the highest-grossing IMAX movie ever, higher even than Avatar. Of the $360 million that Brand New Day pulled in on its opening weekend at the end of July, fully 24 per cent came from IMAX and other PLFs (premium large formats). It’s fair to say more people paid more money to see films in IMAX this summer than ever before. This column won’t go into the technical specifics of IMAX, except to note that Nolan had to have a special camera built to realize his dream of adapting Homer’s epic. Nolan has been working his way toward filming an entire movie in IMAX, previously filming select sequences in movies such as The Dark Knight Rises. IMAX has been around for decades, but it went mainstream in 2026, along with other premium formats. For a long time IMAX seemed like a curiousity that was limited to nature documentaries and the NASA space shuttle. There have even been moments when the company’s future was in doubt. It has met its moment. And you can bet, come awards season, IMAX will be getting thanked in multiple acceptance speeches. Why the mass appeal? The explanation may be as simple as, there are now entire generations who grew up watching motion pictures on their laptops and cellphones. Those movie lovers are hungering for as big a picture as possible, and IMAX is a revelation to them. The big brains in Hollywood have been trying new ways to get people back into movie houses. 3D movies were a thing for a while, but then the studios got so desperate, they even tried guilting people into watching movies in the theatre. Even before COVID-19, movie fans were shifting away from the traditional movie-watching experience. Now theatres are back, in a big way. And there is a hunger like never before for specialized formats. You might even say movie fans were IMAX-maxxing all summer long. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 34 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: How Canadians Have Enriched American Culture
By Dan Brown The United States of America doesn’t need Canada. That might be true. But in these tense times, a gentle reminder may be in order. Such a reminder could help to repair the fractured relations between our two nations by listing all the ways Canada (through individual Canadians) has enriched American culture over the decades. You can probably come up with your own list, so consider this one a starting point. It’s in no particular order. *Mary Pickford: America’s Sweetheart was born in Toronto. Hollywood’s first millionaire, she was one of the co-founders of the United Artists film studio, which was designed to be a haven for creative types where they didn’t have to answer to the studio bosses. She also helped found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which lives on to this day in the form of the Oscars. James Cameron, to name just one example, is a Canadian who followed in Pickford’s footsteps, becoming a modern-day titan in Tinseltown. Imagine how many American jobs Canadians have created in Los Angeles! *The SCTV gang: John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Rick Moranis, and others. They reflected a slightly skewed version of smalltown America – Melonville – back at American viewers, making them laugh and think about their own lives and institutions. *Dan Aykroyd, the Kingston funnyman who was on a mission from God to save the blues. The 1980 comedy the Blues Brothers came at a crucial time in the history of the blues, one of America’s truly original art forms. It helped to reignite interest in rhythm and blues music at a time when disco ruled. Aykroyd and his American partner John Belushi famously returned the royalties from their cover songs to the original artists, who had not been treated kindly by the record companies. If not for Akyroyd and Belushi, who knows how music history would have turned out. *James Naismith was born before Confederation and went on to be a McGill University educator before inventing basketball. Arguably the second-most popular spectator sport in the United States, basketball has generated billions of dollars in revenues for U.S. individuals and companies – where would Nike be without hoops? Professional basketball has now grown into a business with a global presence, inspiring leagues around the world. *Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Tommy Chong, and others. They all make America laugh, which is no small feat. *Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Yes, the Americans claim him, as do the Scottish, but let’s go ahead and lay claim to him anyway. The cellphone – evolving through the decades off of Bell’s origins designs – is arguably the most-used, most important invention on the planet today. Canada had at least something to do with its inception. *Justin Bieber was born in London and raised in Stratford, and went on to conquer the world of popular music at the beginning of this century! And he’s still at it! *Filmmaker Norman Jewison directed a long list of movies, becoming one of the most influential figures in 1970s America. If you zero in on just one of those films, In the Heat of the Night, you can see how he helped bridge the racial divide in the United States at a time of high tension between black and white Americans. For that movie alone, he is surely owed some props. *Lorne Michaels is one of the most powerful people in show biz. He took his idea for a late-night variety show to the TV powers-that be in the United States and turned it into an American cultural institution that has launched the careers of countless actors, writers and producers. I would love for a business-type person to try to calculate the economic impact of more than 50 years of Saturday Night Live, including the movie spinoffs the series has spawned. Honorary mentions: Neil Young (ally to one side or the other of the political spectrum), Margaret Atwood (warned against a theocratic future America), Marshall McLuhan (visionary media thinker who came up with the term “global village.”), Celine Dion (what would Las Vegas be without her?). When you look at a list like this, it’s hard not to conclude that Canada has had a bigger impact on the United States than any other country. Remember, the above are just a few examples. But who would you add? Leave your candidates in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 34 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: Reruns Left Us Feeling Burned
By Dan Brown The word “rerun” as it applies to a repeated episode of a network TV show is quickly disappearing from the English language. Yet viewers have never watched more reruns, meaning old content. There are entire channels now devoted to repeats. There was a time, in the 1970s, when viewers hated them. Cast your mind back to an era before streaming, before satellite TV, before cable, when the schedule for network sitcoms and dramas ran roughly parallel to the school calendar. The new season of a show would debut in September, there would be a Christmas episode, things would wrap up in May as summer approached. This was my childhood. Shows didn’t just start up any old time. There were no full seasons dumped at once. Back then, the unspoken contract the networks had with the audience at home was, there would be a new episode every week of a series like, say, Happy Days. For whatever reason, sometimes a new episode wouldn’t be available. Production delays was the most common excuse. One of the options available to programmers was to broadcast an episode that had previously aired. But they did so at their peril. That’s because viewers hated, hated, hated when this happened. The refrain you would hear is, “I’ve already seen this episode! I know what happens!” No one wanted to see the Fonz date the same girl twice. I do realize all of this must sound like an ancient-history lesson to younger readers who can’t imagine a time when repeated episodes were a big problem. That’s likely because the idea of appointment viewing isn’t a thing anymore, except for some reality shows. This was a period when your favourite show was on at the same time, same day, every week. And you had to be home in front of your boob tube to see it. Then a strange thing happened in the 1990s when specialty cable channels proliferated. They needed a cheap way to fill out their schedules. Suddenly, there were entire channels devoted to nothing except reruns – Three’s Company, Soap, the Simpsons, you name it. I joked at the time that we only hated reruns when they were free. Once we had to pay for them, they became a legit viewing choice. Fast-forward through the eras of grey-market satellite dishes, legal satellite dishes, and now streaming and YouTube. In a sense, everything we watch is a rerun of one stripe or another. Some of the most popular shows are old, whether it’s Breaking Bad or the Sopranos or Mad Men. The difference is, programs such as these were made with a radically dissimilar mindset. In the network-dominated television world of the 1970s, any single episode was an ephemeral thing, expected to live only for a week in the public’s imagination. These shows were made as cheaply as possible. But just look at a typical episode of, say, the Sopranos. The production values aren’t the same as when Gilligan’s Island first aired, no, the way the Sopranos was shot has more in common with a feature film than a series of old. That stems from today’s producers understanding their creations will automatically have an afterlife, even on a format or channel or service that doesn’t exist yet. I don’t know what comes after streaming. In his graphic novel The Private Eye (which L.A. Mood’s Graphic Novel Group is discussing this Saturday), set decades from now, writer Brian K. Vaughan anticipates a future format of ceiling-to-floor television called tee vee. And sure enough, in one scene there are characters watching an old episode of The Big Bang Theory on the tee vee. Maybe holograms are the future? If that turns out to be the case, be prepared to watch a lot of holograms of old shows you’ve seen many times before. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: Friendships in Pop Culture
By Dan Brown I think the world of my friends. So it won’t surprise you to learn there are many pop-culture friendships I love. Harry and Sally. R2-D2 and C-3PO. Holmes and Watson. Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy. Falstaff and Prince Hal. What can I say? I get so excited seeing friendship expressed on the screen or page. I love hearing the merits of a friendship vocalized with sincerity in a pop song. There’s something so beautiful about friendship – two or more people who aren’t related, coming together out of common interests or shared circumstances. Whether it’s the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, the Golden Girls, or Rick Blaine and piano player Sam, I take an unreasonable amount of joy from depictions of friends enjoying each other’s company. Maybe that’s why my favourite movie of all time is Dazed and Confused, which follows a bunch of different friend groups on the last day of school in 1976 in small-town Texas. It was about a million years ago (long before streaming) that director Quentin Tarantino revealed in an interview whenever he was in an unfamiliar city, he would find a video store and rent Dazed and Confused. It made him feel less lonely, he explained. Me, too. Whenever I read old Peanuts collections and I find a cartoon in which Snoopy calls Woodstock “little friend,” I end up crying. Snoopy doesn’t even understand his bird buddy most of the time but loves him just the same! As I’m often telling my wife, they have one of the most beautiful friendships in human history. And the friends don’t necessarily have to be unrelated. Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter Rory are best friends in spite of their shared blood. There are generations of women who dig their closer-than-close relationship, watching and re-watching The Gilmore Girls even years after the series went off network TV. Like every other dude, I have a special appreciation for male friendships. Probably the gold standard in that regard is the film version of M*A*S*H, which revolves around a bond forged in a nightmare situation – the Korean War. Hawkeye and Trapper John are kindred spirits who help each other stay sane under the most trying circumstances humans can experience. Nor will it surprise you to know some of my favourite tunes celebrate friendships, like You’ve Got a Friend, Thank You For Being a Friend (a soundalike became the theme to Golden Girls!), She’s My Best Friend, and Waiting on a Friend. I must have written the lyrics to Lou Reed’s My Friend George in every classmate’s yearbook at the end of Grade 13. Naturally, one of my favourite Bible verses comes from the Book of John: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” I loved how the supposedly blasphemous motion picture The Last Temptation of Christ showed Harvey Keitel’s Judas didn’t want to betray Christ, his close friend, but was almost forced to do his part to fulfill God’s plan. All these examples sustain me. They inspire me. And they make me love and appreciate my small circle all the more. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: The Joys of Summer Reading
By Dan Brown The summer of 2026 has officially begun. And I can’t wait for the best part. No, not drinking a frosty beer on a sunny patio. Not driving up to Grand Bend for long weekends. Not even the freedom of wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts. I mean the truly greatest part, better than any of those pleasures. Summer reading. I’m not talking about beach reading, but about the feeling of satisfaction you get from crossing off titles on your summer reading list. If you’ve never heard of such a list before, let me catch you up. I got the idea from my Grade 13 English teacher, Evan Pike, who taught at the old Strathroy District Collegiate Institute. Our paths crossed in the mid-1980s when I was a snotty teen. Pike would often refer to reading lists. He would mention a book in one of our class discussions and ask me (or a classmate) if I had ever read that particular volume. “No,” would come the answer. “Add that to your summer reading list,” he would respond, not in a joking way. For him, I’m guessing, this wasn’t a theoretical thing. My bet is that when he was in school, either as a kid or later in life, my mentor was actually assigned books to read over the warmer months by his teachers. You gotta remember, he was old-school. Pike came of age when they were still teaching Latin in high school. I think the first time I had a summer reading list, maybe in the 1990s, I wasn’t even really aware of it. I just started reading novels by Ernest Hemingway then and by August I had gone through every tattered title I could find in places like City Lights Bookshop or the Coldstream Library. It may have been when the next summer arrived that I said to myself, “Well, what am I going to read now?” I had picked up the idea taking English in my last year of high school and it was growing into a conscious habit. Fast-forward to today, and at this point I’m older than Pike was when he taught us. And each time my favourite season rolls around, I make a scratchy list on a yellow Post-It with a black Sharpie of the titles that will comprise my latest reading project. One summer it was Terry Brooks, the fantasy author. Another it was all the books I’d been read at storytime at Valleyview Elementary School, so Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Charlotte’s Web and Where the Red Fern Grows and so on (and yes, as an adult I cried at the tear-jerker endings that moved me so much when I was a boy). One year it was books by the sci-fi author John Morressy. He’s so obscure, he barely has a Wikipedia page. I may be his only fan. But that didn’t stop me from devouring his written work. And so the summers went. Now it’s become a personal tradition. Pike is long gone, but summer reading still makes sense to me – if you have some extra time, the pressure of work is off, why not use the hiatus to enrich your brain? I don’t even get summers off, like my old teacher did, so I make the time. I like to think he would be pleased that his reading advice to me has outlived him. You may be wondering what I’m reading right now. Even before June 21, I had been going through a number of biographies and memoir. Now it’s time to kick the summer reading into high gear. I’m currently working my way through Lives of the Stoics, a collection of mini-bios of philosophers, and I’ve got a stack of books on the table beside my bed – like a collection of Vincent Van Gogh’s letters to his brother, as well as Andre Agassi’s much-praised life story. I finished cartoonist Gabrielle Drolet’s Look Ma, No Hands in the spring to get an early start. So what about you? What will you be reading in the weeks before fall arrives? If you’re new to the concept, take some time to think about the titles you’ve been meaning to catch up on. Perhaps there are important books from your past you want to re-read. It’s all good. When you’re done pondering, draw up a list, then get started. Would love to hear all about what you’re reading in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: I Hate To Say It, But Spaceballs Isn’t Funny
By Dan Brown As you may have heard, there’s going to be a sequel to Spaceballs, the Mel Brooks Star Wars parody that debuted a long time ago in 1987. Brooks and the cast (a mix of old hands and newcomers) have been doing publicity to drum up interest in the upcoming film, dubbed The New One, which will land in theatres April 23 next year. Providing movie theatres still exist. I suppose, as a sci-fi fan, I should be eagerly anticipating The New One, which promises to bring more Star Wars jokes and new pop-culture references to the big screen. But can I let you in on a secret? I don’t find Spaceballs funny. It might be familiar. It might even be fun to watch. But it ain’t funny. You likely have fuzzy memories of the gags written into the Spaceballs script. For instance: *Pizza the Hutt, the alien glutton who finds himself delicious.. *Barf, a half-human, half-dog alien hybrid who is his own best friend. *Dark Helmet . . . a villain played by Rick Moranis who has a giant helmet. *Daphne Zuniga’s Vespa is a Druish princess. *The Yoda figure is called Yogurt. *The Schwartz is a mystical power derived from merchandising dollars. And so on. Jokes like these are fine. Some of them even bring a half-smile to my face. But not a one of them is hilarious. Spaceballs has certainly achieved a kind of cultural staying power. Somewhere on this planet, on some channel or network, Spaceballs is playing right now. And by dint of ubiquity, it is one of those so-so motion pictures that we convince ourselves is remarkable. Like the Austin Powers films, it achieves influence just by enduring. But it’s not a comedy that achieves greatness. It’s not even the greatest Mel Brooks comedy. It doesn’t break new comedic ground like, say, Blazing Saddles. There’s nothing in Spaceballs to compare to the Blazing Saddles campfire scene where cowboy after cowboy farts until the joke is beaten into the ground, then they let more farts rip and it becomes funny all over again. Talk about audacious for the times! The Star Wars spoof also lacks a weirdly intense lead character, like Gene Wildern, who turned in such a great performance in Young Frankenstein. Besides, if Brooks had been itching to take on Star Wars, he wouldn’t have waited until four years after Return of the Jedi appeared in theatres. By then, the George Lucas trilogy was already retreating from the public consciousness. (Spoiler for younger readers: Star Wars came back!) It’s certainly not the greatest Star Wars parody, either. In fact, you could argue that the definitive comic spin on Star Wars still has yet to be made. There’s been a long history of attempts. The 1978 short film Hardware Wars was the first try, followed when the internet was in its infancy by the 1997 online short Troops. The slam against Lucas is that he takes his space opera too seriously. Look at the fact he never mocked his own creation the way the Star Trek brain trust does with its animated series Lower Decks. At least Trek’s producers realized the comedy potential of poking fun at themselves. (Granted, Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville beat Lower Decks to the punch by three years) Of course, some crusty Star Wars fans would likely say the Book of Boba Fett itself was an inadvertent self-parody! There’s no shortage of Star Wars material to work with, so how about it, Hollywood? Just mocking The Phantom Menace on its own could inspire so many laughs! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
