Richard Crouse interviews “Daredevil” star Deborah Ann Woll
On her Daredevil character Karen Page: “She starts out quite innocent, quite sweet and a little naïve and towards the end becomes a heroin addicted porn star. It is really quite dark and a little scary. Then she gets redeemed and then she dies. It’s a very tragic turnaround. I like characters that change and have that exploration but I also feel when you do it separately, when she is just the Madonna or just the whore, it’s less interesting. What I like is when a woman encompasses all sides. For my Karen I said, ‘Alright, she’s going to have moments when she’s innocent, sweet and fun to be around. And she’ll have moments where she’s dark and a little addicted to that adrenaline rush and danger, and I want both of those things to love in her at the same time.’ Luckily we didn’t start her as innocent. We started her with a bit of a past, which hopefully, if we get to do any more of Daredevil we’ll find out about. I like that she doesn’t start super innocent. There’s something dark about her already. We’ll see what comes.”
“Outlander” star Sam Heughan on fan reaction to him and the show: “It’s been so positive and supportive. They are very vocal and I’m sure if we mess this up they’ll be the first to let us know. I love the support. There were people outside this morning when we were doing some taping and it was freezing cold but they were there, waving flags and supporting us. It is fantastic. We make it for them and for new fans as well. I’m pleased that we can give them what they want but also keep surprising them as well.
“We’ve been filming in Scotland, so we’re kind of in our own bubble. The show has only just aired in the UK so there is no recognition there, which is fantastic because we can concentrate on the job. We flew to Comic Con this past year and the reaction was incredible. We did a big panel and I’ve been in Los Angeles recently and people do recognize you. On the whole it is very genuine, very friendly. They just sort of siddle up next to you and whisper, ‘I really enjoy the show. I’m a big fan,’ and they’ll leave you to do your thing. But that sort of thing is very new to me.”
A few years ago the romantic comedy was flat lining, suffering from a seemingly incurable case of the Katherine Heigls. The once proud genre—think “When Harry Met Sally”—had surrendered to predictability with witless stories and characters who took the bus straight from Central Casting.
Director Matt Sadowski skirts around this by calling his new movie “Pretend We’re Kissing,” a non com, but make no mistake, this is a rom com, but the kind of romantic comedy that won’t make you run from the theatre suffering from saccharine overload.
Dov Tiefenbach is Benny, a pensive twenty-something who pays the rent by covering downtown Toronto with band posters. His flatmate is a nudist (Zoë Kravitz) with a worldview somewhere between Shirley MacLaine and Gloria Steinem who has crashed there for a year while looking for work.
Despite living with a beautiful, often naked woman Benny is a lonely heart. Single, until he meets Jordan (Tommie-Amber Pirie) and is instantly smitten but too insecure to do anything about his feelings. Soon a courtship begins—this is a rom com after all—but it’s not all smooth sailing because this isn’t a Drew Barrymore rom com.
“Pretend We’re Kissing” is tribute to Toronto—the Toronto Islands and the Cameron House are almost characters in the film—and a funny, occasionally sweet, occasionally cringe-worthy look at ups and downs of millennial love. More importantly it breaks the mould as to what a romantic comedy can be.
Richard will be a team captain and cheerleader at Pongapalooza to help raise money for the First Book Canada’s important literacy programming.
SPiN Toronto will once again host a night of epic ping pong on May 12th in support of First Book Canada where thirty-six teams of four will battle it out for the 2015 Scotiabank Pongapalooza Cup. Will The Pong Masters come out on top once again? Join us amidst the battlefield of swinging paddles and stray balls, where guests can win some remarkable prizes, play some recreational ping pong, taste SPiN’s amazing hors d’oeuvres and cool off with a refreshing beer.
Last year’s event, sponsored by Scotiabank, raised over $30,000 helping First Book Canada give away more than 825,000 brand new books to children in need across the country. First Book Canada is elevating the quality of education for children in need on a permanent, sustainable basis – but they cannot do it alone. Their partners in ending illiteracy represent some of the smartest, most generous organizations across the for-profit and nonprofit sectors and they want you to join them in this epic ping pong event.
Help us reach thousands of Canadian children who want to experience the joy of reading and owning their very own first book.
Can’t make the event, but would like to support First Book Canada? Make a donation HERE!
From “The Night Side with Barb DiGiulio”: On our Friday version of the Special Behind The Scenes Night, we talk to Richard Crouse, movie reviewer extraordinaire and host of the Richard Crouse Show, about his beginnings, his life as a bartender, his fight with cancer, and more!
Cut Bank director Matt Shakman has something in common with 35 mm film fanatics Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. For his movie debut the director insisted on shooting on film rather than digital.
“I’m an analogue kind of guy,” he says. “To do this movie, which is about a town that feels trapped in a distant era, it felt right to shoot it on film. We had to find a way to deal with the financial impact of it, but I found a solution to that. I gave up my salary in order to do it.
“I’ll only get a chance to make a first movie once and to make it on film feels special. I may never get a chance to do it again.”
Set in the hamlet of Cut Bank Montana, the action begins when auto mechanic Dwayne (Liam Hemsworth) accidentally videotapes the murder of the local postman (Bruce Dern). He reports the crime to the local sheriff (John Malkovich), hoping for reward money, but there are complications in the form of the suspicious father of his girlfriend (Billy Bob Thornton), a postal inspector (Oliver Platt) and a reclusive man (Michael Stuhlbarg) violently obsessed with getting his mail.
The script appeared on Hollywood’s 2009 black list of the best unproduced films and has been in Shakman’s hands for five years.
In the beginning he simply loved the twisty-turny story. “Then,” he says, “I [became] like a dog chasing a rabbit at the track. You get these tantalizing elements that start to make everything feel more real.
“When someone like John Malkovich signs on it is so helpful for so many reasons. One, the pleasure, personally, of getting to work with one of my heroes. Two, he certainly helps tell other actors that this is a party worth coming to and the third thing is just the business reality of having a person in the film who can help you with financing.”
Shakman says he knows after the film’s theatrical run “a lot of people will see Cut Bank on their iPads,” and while he prefers the communal experience of watching movies with an audience, he knows times are changing. “They’ll also watch Breaking Bad [on their tablets], so the line has blurred very much between the two kinds of content. It’s all just become stories and where you choose to find them and how you want them delivered.”
Novelist Nicholas Sparks is the current king of romance writers. His flowery prose even gives Harlequin a run for their money in the three-hanky tearjerker department. Who else could write a line like, “Love is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it,” with a straight face?
He is to romance writing what Buckley’s cough syrup is to a tickly throat. They both get the job done, but leave a sickly sweet aftertaste.
His best-known novel adaptation is The Notebook, a cross-generational love story that spent over a year as a New York Times hardcover top seller. Inspired by the story of his wife’s grandparent’s sixty-year marriage, the novel became a 2004 movie starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. The tale of love and Alzheimer’s is emotionally manipulative—writer Gary Panton called this passionate weepie “mushier than a mushed-up bowl of mushy peas that’s just been mushed in an industrial-strength mushifier”—but opening weekend it surfed a wave of tears to the box office top five.
Sparks, a former pharmaceutical salesman writes tales of love and loss, of mighty obstacles overcome and lip-locks galore, which he defines as “dramatic epic love stories” along the lines of “Eric Segal’s Love Story or The Bridges of Madison County… But you can even go all the way back. You had Hemingway write A Farewell to Arms, the movies of the forties—Casablanca, From Here to Eternity—Shakespeare, and that’s the genre I work in.”
He caught some flack for comparing himself to Shakespeare—one writer said, “If Sparks is like Shakespeare, then a housepainter is like Picasso.”—but the fact remains that his unconventional love stories, his parcels of passion, have made his name synonymous with the romance genre.
This weekend prepare for another flurry of Sparkisms—tearstained romantic letters, lines like, “Love requires sacrifice but it’s worth it,” and passionate make-out sessions—as The Longest Ride hits the big screen.
This time around “Two stories separated by time, connected by fate,” get Sparksified as the lives of a young couple, played by Scott “Clint’s son” Eastwood and Britt Robertson and older love birds Alan Alda and Oona Chaplin, interlace. “I wish I could tell you it’s all happily ever after,” says Alda’s character, “not everybody gets that.”
Expect unexpected poignancy.
Critics haven’t always warmed to Sparks’s stories on film—Safe Haven with Julianne Hough as “a young woman’s struggle to love again” has a paltry 12% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes while The Best of Me starring Michelle Monaghan and James Marsden as high school sweethearts reunited after two decades sits at a miserable 8% rating—but audiences can’t seem to get enough of his weepy tales of unrequited love, lost love, mature love and love in a time of trouble. Ten of his books have already been adapted for the movies, with one more, The Choice, scheduled for 2016.
His style of romance has caught on, but don’t call him a romance writer. “I write dramatic fiction. If you go into a further subgenre, it would be a love story, but it has its roots in the Greek tragedies. This genre evolved through Shakespeare. He did Romeo and Juliet. Hemingway did A Farewell to Arms. I do this currently today.”
One night, two events. Richard hosted two events on Thursday April 9: the POV 3rd Street Gala and “King John” Q&A.
ABOUT POV 3rd STREET: Established in 2007 by members of the film, TV, and commercial production industries who were interested in increasing access to employment in their community and broadening its diversity. We are dedicated to assisting at risk young adults (18-25) gain the skills and experience needed to secure jobs and have long-term careers in the media industry. We run four programs: The Media Training Program, The 3rd Street (Critical Thinking) Program), The Job Placement Program, and the Alumni Support Program. Learn more HERE! Telling their stories at the POV 3Rd Street Gala were directors Sudz Sutherland, Jennifer Holness, Warren P. Sonoda and actors Zoie Palmer, Ennis Esmer, Tara Spencer Nairn, Katie Boland and Natalie Brown.
ABOUT KING JOHN: When the rule of a hedonistic and mercurial king is questioned, rebellion, assassination and excommunication ensue, culminating in a chilling attempt to commit an atrocity against a child, whose mother’s anguished grief cannot atone for her blinkered ambitions for her son.
Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see Shakespeare’s King John, in a magnificent production by the renowned Stratford Festival, North America’s leading classical theatre company, whose HD production of King Lear, directed by Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino and starring Colm Feore, opened to rave reviews last month.
With commanding performances by Tom McCamus, Seana McKenna, Graham Abbey and Patricia Collins, King John was directed by Tim Carroll, whose recent Shakespeare productions of Richard III and Twelfth Night were the toast of Broadway.
Filmed in spectacular HD under the direction of Barry Avrich, King John will be in cinemas across Canada on Thursday, April 9, and throughout the U.S.on Wednesday, April 8. The Canadian encore screening is on April 12. U.S. encore dates vary. For more information click HERE! Richard hosted a Q&A with director and Tony nominee Tim Carroll, Stratford Festival artistic director Antoni Cimolino, actor Tom McCamus and film director Barry Avrich.
Richard Crouse interviews “Daredevil” star Deborah Ann Woll
