Saturday, July 15, 2006

Gorging on Canadiana

My brother pointed out that you can view some of The National Film Board of Canada's animated shorts on their website, including a couple of my favourites, The Cat Came Back and The Big Snit ("stop shaking your eyes at me!"), plus The Sweater (or, since I first saw it in junior high school French class, Le Chandail), Juke-Bar, George and Rosemary, and Blackfly, to name a few.

Also available online are the Heritage Minutes (now apparently rebranded Historica Minutes), those often cheesy, sometimes interesting spots TV stations would use as filler to count towards their Canadian content requirements. The website cleverly has the Superman vignette on the home page right now, with a teenaged Joe Schuster describing his new superhero to a friend, Lois.

The best part about the Heritage Minutes? Comedians spoofing them. There's one in the Rick Mercer Report archives (November 8, 2005: Our Shame-based Heritage).