Canadian movies

As usual, this summer's blockbusters in most of the country are international movies. Until last week, the buzz in Québec was a homegrown comedy.

Entering its sixth week, "De père en flic" (Father and Guns) has kept the top spot for most of its first five weeks. As of August 9, the movie gathered over $8.1M in a market of 7.7 million people, more than the faster declining "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". The movie's success in the province is such that it remained in the top 10 movies in Canada during four weeks.

The Canadian box-office is a strange creature. In its 2007-2008 annual report, Telefilm Canada outlines that French-language feature films saw their share of the global market go from 17.1% to 16.2%; Canadian English-language films went from 1.7% to 0.9%. It's no wonder that Hollywood considers most of the country as its domestic market.

In 2006, it took a while for "Bon Cop, Bad Cop" to get some attention in national media. This summer's Québécois blockbuster is no different. In contrast, "Trailer Park Boys: The Movie" swiftly grabbed national media attention with less than half the entries of "De père en flic" on a similar run.

It's little things like this that trample my Canadian identity.