Traditionally, television is a one-way medium: the content is broadcast directly to you and you are absolutely powerless to change what is happening before you (other than just changing the channel, obviously). But not any longer: we’ve teamed up with 9Go! to do Big Flick Energy, where we let you use your incredible brain powers to choose between two throwback movies, the most popular of which will be screened at 9pm on Wednesday that week.
Next week the two movies in contention are a pair of oddly dark comedy films that were — in my case — seared into my brain at an inappropriately young age due to their frequent airing on commercial TV: Uncle Buck and Parenthood.
Uncle Buck is a 1989 comedy from John Hughes (the director who did just about every movie you can remember from your childhood) which sees a bunch of stuffy middle-class children placed into the care of John Candy‘s Buck, their unscrupulous, unpredictable, hard-drinking, schemes-doing uncle who loves to fuck shit up. Over time, the children learn to love the man, even though he is a huge bastard, but you bet your ass that some hijinks happen well before it. Hell, even Uncle Buck himself learns a lesson.
From that very same year, we get Ron Howard‘s Parenthood, with a massive cast including Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Joaquin Phoenix, Jason Robards, Martha Plimpton, Mary Steenburgen, and an almost egregiously young Keanu Reeves. Parenthood follows the sometimes funny, sometimes quite sad dramas of a series of interlinked families and their attempts to come to grips with, you guessed it, parenthood.
If you have a particular preference on which one of these you want to see (and would also like to force others to watch), I urge you to use your democratic power, hop over to the website, and chuck your vote in.
