Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Merella Fernandez to talk about the necessary ingredients of a great Christmas movie: A great Christmas movie needs warmth, as in “Come to the Stable,” an entertaining storyline as in “It’s A Wonderful Life;” holiday relevance as in “Miracle on 34th Street;” originality in “A Christmas Story;” and a great cast as in “The Bishop’s Wife.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the Emma Stone/Ryan Gosling big screen musical “La La Land,” Fences” with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis and “Why Him?” starring Bryan Cranston and James Franco.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the Christmas weekend movies, the Emma Stone/Ryan Gosling big screen musical “La La Land,” Fences” with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis and “Why Him?” starring Bryan Cranston and James Franco.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“La La Land” reinvents the traditional big screen musical by playing it straight. The original songs and new story feel like something Gene Kelly would approve of but not quite recognize as the form he helped perfect in Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Aspiring actress and barista Mia (Emma Stone) and serious jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) can’t help but meet cute. He honks his horn at her during a traffic jam. She flips him off. They meet again in a restaurant. She’s about to compliment him, he’s rude to her. Worse yet they bump into one another at a pool party where he’s playing with a 80s cover band, playing a-ha covers for be-bopping drunks. Third time is a charm and they finally connect, for real. Flirting, dancing and singing they build a relationship as they construct careers in modern day Los Angeles.
The real and the unreal collide in a film that values naturalism in an unnatural genre. Mia and Sebastian burst into song, dance on city streets but do so in the most unaffected of ways. It looks and feels like an old-school musical—the camera dances around the actors and it’s always magic hour—but Stone and Gosling are very contemporary in their approach to the material. Woven into the romantic, joyful script are real comments on the setting—“That’s LA, they worship everything,” says Sebastian, “but value nothing.”—a sense of the pleasure and pain that accompany passion, whether its for a person or a career and melancholy when things don’t quite work out. It’s a movie that dances to it’s own beat. By times bright and garish or atmospheric and moody, it’s never less than entertaining.
Gosling is a charming leading man and equal match for Stone whose remarkable face and expressive performance give the movie much of its heart. Director Damien Chazelle is clearly smitten with his leading lady, allowing his camera to caress her face in long, uninterrupted close-ups.
From a trickily edited opening song-and-dance number in a traffic jam to a spectacular dance among the stars to heartfelt human feelings, “La La Land” doesn’t just breathe new life into an old genre it performs CPR on it, bringing its beating heart back to vibrant life.
“Fences,” August Wilson’s rumination on race, masculinity, betrayal and dissatisfaction, won four Tony Awards, including best actor for James Earl Jones, when it first played on Broadway in 1983. The 2010 revival was also lauded, winning Tonys for Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, who now reunite in a big screen version of the popular play.
Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, Washington (who also directs) is Troy Maxson, a former Negro League baseball player now working as a garbage man. Each Friday he turns over his $76 weekly paycheck to wife Rose Maxson (Viola Davis) before his co-worker and best friend Jim Bono (Stephen Henderson) blow off some steam with a bottle of gin. Troy drunkenly tells wild stories about beating up the Devil and lectures about the virtues of self-reliance and responsibility to himself and his family. Always teetering on the edge of a blow-up, he’s a thin-skinned man in a world that is changing rapidly around him, who builds a literal and metaphorical fence between him and the outside world.
Troy has a combative relationship with Lyons (Russell Hornsby), his son from a previous marriage, and a strict, disciplinarian rapport with Cory (Jovan Adepo), his youngest who still lives at home. Tension builds as Cory decides he wants to take a football scholarship in favour of learning a trade.
It’s tempting to suggest that “Fences” doesn’t have a plot. Certainly it presents a slice of Troy and Rose’s life that isn’t necessarily driven by story in the strictest sense, but the through lines from scene to scene create a loose narrative that paints a vivid picture of a man whose resentments and bitterness will soon have a palpable effect on everyone around him.
As a director Washington doesn’t do much to open the story up. It takes place on a handful of sets and feels very much like a play, but when the words are this good there isn’t a need to spice it up with flashy production work. Washington focuses on the script and the performances, allowing the power of Wilson’s ideas carry the movie. “Fences” may be set in 1957 but the Troy’s sense of fighting against almost constant injustice feels as timely as it ever has.
Towering in the center of all this is Washington’s performance. His Troy is beaten down but not beaten. He’s hardened to the cruel realities of his life, that integration in baseball came just a few years too late for him to make a go of it, that hope is for dreamers too lazy to get a real job. He settles into the character with remarkable ease, erasing any residual memory of his big movie star turns in films like “American Gangster” or “Flight.” It is as though we’re seeing him for the first time, and yet, to many his story will feel all too familiar.
He finds his equal in Davis who brings a quiet dignity to the often put upon Rose. Her transformation from stay-at-home wife to independent woman as she realizes the eighteen years spent with Troy have not meant what she thought is as remarkable as it is subtle.
As Mr. Bono New York stage and screen actor Henderson rounds out the main cast in a performance brimming with wit and wisdom.
As a showcase for ideas and performances “Fences” hits a home run, offering fodder for Oscar talk and intellectual discourse. As a movie going experience, however, it feels a tad overlong. As much of a pleasure as it is to watch Washington, Davis and Henderson interact, the film loses steam as it enters the final third.
“Why Him?” takes the concept of “Meet the Parents,” flips it on its head, updates it to include a Silicon Valley millionaire and wrings more laughs out of another of James Franco’s now trademarked flaky characters.
Ned and Barb Fleming (Bryan Cranston and Megan Mullally) are a typical, mid-Western couple. They had their first date at a KISS concert, run a small business and have high hopes for the daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch), a brilliant young woman studying at Stanford. It comes as a bit of a shock when they find out their precious Stephanie has been secretly dating dot com millionaire Laird Mayhew (James Franco). When they arrive to spend the holidays at his ultra modern Palo Alto mansion they’re horrified to discover he’s ten years older and over sharer who compliments Mrs. Fleming on her “tight body,” calls Mr. Fleming “dude,” talks about “sloppy car sex” and swears a blue streak.
The happy young couple have been living together for a year in Laird’s swanky pad and now he wants to ask for her hand in marriage. “On Christmas Day I’m going to ask Steph to marry me,” he says to Ned. “I know how tight you are so I really, really want your blessing.” Determined to win Ned over Laird continues, “Give me a few days to win you over in by Christmas day I guarantee you’ll be calling the sun and I’ll be calling you dad.”
What follows is a war of wills—Laird doing everything possible to ingratiate himself to Ned while dear old dad remains unimpressed. Absent in the equation is the one person who really matters, Stephanie.
“Why Him?” is a generation gap comedy with several very funny performances. Cranston and Franco are a classic buddy pairing. Laird has no filter and strange taste in art—a moose preserved in its own urine dominates the living room—while Ned is a buttoned down fuddy duddy who laughs at his own dad jokes.
Franco has tread this territory before but this doesn’t feel like a rehash or a greatest hits performance. Laird may be a handful and a little over enthusiastic—before he even meets the family he has their holiday card blown up and tattooed on his back—but he is genuine. Behind the wide toothy grin is a heart of gold and it makes the Laird more interesting than Franco’s run-of-the-mill on-screen stoner dude.
Cranston revisits his “Malcolm in the Middle” days with a father-knows-best character with a twist. Ned is hopelessly lost in Laird’s world. He doesn’t understand the lingo, the home’s fancy paper-free toilets and, as a print and paper company owner in a high tech world, he especially doesn’t get Laird’s business. It’s a role we’ve seen a thousand times but Cranston works it hard, wringing every laugh out of every pained facial expression.
In the supporting category it’s Keegan-Michael Key as Gustav, Laird’s right-hand-man, who almost steals the show. He’s the Cato to Laird’s Inspector Clouseau, a faithful handler who runs the house and randomly attacks his boss to train him for potential threats. It’s funny stuff, the kind of thing he perfected on his sketch show “Key & Peele” and while he’s a character who would seem most at home in a short skit he never outstays his welcome here.
“Why Him?” balances raunchy humour—an awkward electronic toilet sequence rivals anything from the Adam Sandler canon—with actual heartfelt storytelling resulting in an enjoyably bawdy holiday pastime.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
On a film set the weather is frightful;
But on screen it’s so delightful;
And since snow in July is a no go;
Let it fake snow! Let it fake snow! Let it fake snow!
Are those beads of sweat on Santa’s brow? It just might be. Movies set at and released during the Christmas season are usually shot when most people are wearing bathing suits, not parkas.
So how do you make it look a lot like Christmas? Fake snow — i.e. cellulose flakes, snow sheets, snow blankets, acrylic icicles — and lots of it. Here’s a look at how Hollywood creates sleigh ride in summer.
1. Snow Business Hollywood, a leader in providing fake snow for film production, says they have 168 products used to create screen snow. What’s the advantage to filmmakers of using artificial snow on a film set? “You can control it,” says owner Roland Hathaway. “Also, you’re never dealing with the cold weather.”
2. To create the sound of swirling snow heard on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, Foley Artists recorded surf sounds and tinkered with the sound by raising and lowering the volume. The Empire Strikes Back was shot at Elstree Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England, the same film studio where The Shining was made. As a result, much of the fake snow used for Kubrick’s film was also used for the Hoth scenes.
3. Asbestos was often used as fake snow in Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s. The White Christmas sequence in Holiday Inn — showing Bing Crosby singing the classic tune amid the falling snow — exposed the cast and crew to asbestos fiber.
4. The “snowy” maze near the conclusion of The Shining consisted of 900 tons of salt and crushed Styrofoam.
5. Fake snow was also used during the uncharacteristically snowless Denver shoot for Die Hard 2. Huge air fans had to be brought in to replicate snowstorm conditions.
6. Fake snow is obvious in The Santa Clause when a SWAT officer slips and falls on a set of steps, causing the snow to warp. It’s obviously a snow blanket and not snowflakes, either real or fake.
7. It’s a Wonderful Life was shot in the sweltering heat of a Los Angeles summer in 1946, necessitating the need for fake snow. Instead of using cornflakes painted white — which was loud when stepped on — director Frank Capra and RKO studio’s head of special effects Russel Sherman invented a quiet — and sprayable — version by mixing foamite with sugar, water and soap flakes to create the winter wonderland of Bedford Falls.
8. The usually snowy Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport was chosen as the location for the field and terminal scenes in Airport but the film’s producers had to use bleached sawdust as a supplement, to make up for the lack of falling snow, until a snowstorm hit the Twin Cities area during the production of the film.
9. A “beginner” model movie snow machine will set you back about $1,584.02.
10. To create blowing snow for a scene, throw laundry soap flakes or instant potato flakes in front of a powerful fan. Be warned! Soap flakes can make the set slippery. To make a snowy ground, mix 1 1/3 cups of liquid starch, 4 cups of laundry soap flakes and several drops of blue food colouring. To add a sparkling effect, add glitter.
Richard sits in with Erin Paul to have a look at the special Wednesday releases, “Passengers” with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, the videogame flick “Assassin’s Creed” with Micheal Fassbender and the animated sing-a-long “Sing.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with Beverly Thomson on their weekly CTV NewsChannel panel Behind the Headlines. This week two time Olympian,Bronze Medalist (2012) with Canadian Women’s National Soccer team Karina LeBlanc and Ben Kaplan from The National Post join us to discuss the internet as an essential service, winter whiners and drone use.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
