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Trailer Park Boys return

B atman vs.
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Boys are back The Trailer Park Boys are back, this time with Snoop Dogg. Photo submitted

Batman vs. Superman is still the biggest movie showing at the Village 8 and, judging from the two-page photocopied list of Christian YouTube videos a couple of non-threatening ladies in dependable shoes handed me last weekend, those guys are false prophets and if you like that movie you're probably going to hell.

And so am I, because all comic books, The Beatles, Wonder Woman and Frodo Baggins didn't make the list either. Although I will agree that the Rolling Stones are sympathetic to the devil. (It might have been their hit song "Sympathy for the Devil" that tipped me off.) But does this explain why Keith Richards is still alive despite all odds, and is probably the happiest person on earth?

In all seriousness, I've found it's stupid to write about religion (see, for example, that time I mentioned there was a Scientology movie coming out) because every belief is valid to the person holding it and part of what makes this world nice is we are each allowed to believe what we want so long as we aren't hurting anyone else.

But no one told that to the characters in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, which is available for legal download this week and features two hours and 47 minutes of all the worst bits of humanity crammed together in a snowed-in haberdashery for a whole lot of talking, tension, gunplay and carnage. It's self-indulgent, menacing and all kinds of awesome. All of Tarantino's films have an element of the Western genre in them (exhibit A: Mexican standoffs) but after two subsequent "dusters" it will be interesting to see where he goes next.

In other streaming news, the entire Season 10 of Trailer Park Boys just dropped on Netflix and judging from the trailer it is gonna be fantastic. For one, Snoop Dogg makes an appearance and one can't help but wonder if 2014's Pemberton Festival, which featured Snoop and the Boys as separate performers, played a role in making this stoner dream a reality. Otherwise it looks like more illegal liquor, gunplay and piss and cock jokes with all the favourite cast members.

Hopefully Lucy (Lucy DeCoutere) is there too, but in any case this will be time well wasted and a nice high-water mark for Canadian culture to help us forget things like the corrupt role B.C.'s government and business communities played in turning our homes and housing into a commodities market, and the way our national justice system treats abuse victims.

On the silver screen, the only new flick at the Village 8 this week is Race, a play-it-safe biopic about African American track star Jesse Owen and that time he went to Hitler's Olympics in 1936 and kind of crushed the idea of a superior Aryan race by winning four gold medals including the much-coveted 100-metre dash. What drives the story is how Owen has to decide whether to boycott the Games as a protest against the atrocities of Hitler's global racism, or go there to show the bastard up. Add in the fact that as a black athlete he is faced with plenty of racism at home and the makings are there for a compelling film.

Sadly, the script and character development aren't really up to the task and Race lacks the three dimensionality that would elevate it beyond standard-sports-biopic terrain. It's still worth watching, even just as a reminder of how not-far we've come on racial harmony, but Race spends too much time on training montages and not enough on post-race denouement. What happens once Owen returns home as a champion still living in a racist society? This movie ain't telling.