Welcome to episode one of “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” a new web series where you can learn to make perfect cocktails. Today, the classic “hair of the dog” drink, the Bloody Mary!
I am Canadian, so that means at brunch I should be ordering Bloody Caesars… and I used to drink them until I met Manny Aguirre and his magic cocktail spoon. He spent decades behind the bar at Musso and Frank on Hollywood Boulevard, serving drinks to everyone from William Faulkner who would mix his own mint juleps at the bar, to Steve McQueen who used to throw back Löwenbräu there. Manny told me his favorite customers were Bette Davis and Lucille Ball, but, he said, “Just because they’re famous doesn’t mean they get any special treatment, I take care of everyone the same way.”
He’s the man that introduced me to the joys of a Bloody Mary. I was a bartender for 17 years and even with all that practice I’ve never been able to exactly replicate the nuance and beauty of his Bloody Marys… but today I’m going to try.
Take some time to join me because… it’s five o’clock somewhere!
Watch the whole thing on YouTube HERE! Or on ctvnews.ca HERE!
Check out episode twenty-one of Richard’s web series, “In Isolation With…” It’s the talk show where we make a connection without actually making contact! Today, broadcasting directly from Isolation Studios (a.k.a. my home office), we meet Dan Lyons. He’s spent much of his recent career, following jobs as a senior editor at Forbes magazine and a writer at Newsweek, examining something that is on people’s minds these days… work. Drawing on his experience at his first job outside of a newsroom, at the HubSpot start-up he has looked at how and why we work from all angles. He has been called “the Mark Twain of Silicon Valley,” and “Jonathan Swift for our own digital age.” No less an expert than money man Dave Ramsay, of daveramsey.com,” says Lyons is “the expert on the culture of work, and how it’s changing business and lives.” Today we take the conversation he started in his last book, “Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for The Rest Of Us,” and re-contextualize it for the pandemic to talk about what work will look like in the coming months and years. Come visit with us! In isolation we are united!
Watch the whole thing HERE on YouTube or HERE on ctvnews.ca!
Richard Zooms with “You Should Have Left” star Kevin Bacon. They talk about the movie’s portrayal of psychological drama, what dreams really mean and why the movie is more timely now than when they filmed it. Then Richard asks the “Footloose” star about Ontario’s recent “no dancing, no singing” on patios rule.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT SYNOPSIS: What should have been a distraction free vacation at a remote house in Wales for husband and wife Theo (Bacon) and Susanna Conroy (Amanda Seyfried) and daughter Ella (Avery Tiiu Essex), turns out to be anything but when their “simple sanctuary” morphs into something sinister.
What should have been a distraction free vacation at a remote house in Wales for husband and wife Theo (Kevin Bacon) and Susanna Conroy (Amanda Seyfried) and daughter Ella (Avery Tiiu Essex), turns out to be anything but when their “simple sanctuary” morphs into something sinister.
Susanna is a busy actor; Theo is a rich banker starting a new life and family after his first wife died under mysterious circumstances. Feeling the need for quality time, they jet off to Wales to spend a week in the country. The rental house is even more beautiful than the on-line pictures. “It’s bigger on the inside than outside,” Theo marvels as they walk into the majestic foyer. There’s no cell service and the place is stark, stripped of all the owner’s personal touches, but Ella’s bedroom has a bed “the size of Connecticut” and all seems well.
At first.
Soon, doors open by themselves and Theo discovers a hallway that appears to be a place where time stands still. Then, the strange dreams begin. Before long Theo’s nightmares spill over into his waking hours as reality and dreamland become harder and harder to differentiate. Tensions flare, and after a fight Susanna leaves to cool off, leaving Theo and Ella in the house alone overnight.
It’s then that things get really weird. The house seems to adhere to the wonky laws of physics as written by M.C. Escher. One room is five feet longer in the inside than the outside and the home’s long hallways are interconnected in ways designed to entrap and confound anyone unfortunate to find themselves stuck in their seemingly endless maze.
As Theo tries to keep Ella safe, he finds an ominous note scrawled in his diary. “You should have left,” it says in large, sloppy letters. “Now it’s too late.” What’s going on? Is he trapped in a haunted multiverse? Is the house the course of his torment or are these phenomena a product of an unhealthy mind?
“You Should Have Left” is heavy on atmosphere but light on actual raise-the-hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck scares. There is the odd jump scare moment but the movie is mainly geared toward psychological drama, the primal fear for the safety of a child or losing one’s sanity. Theo spends a great deal of time wandering the house, opening the doors that sometimes lead somewhere unexpected, sometimes lead him right back to where he started. It’s a clever way to represent the various parts of his personality and the psychological journey he is on. “The right ones always find the house,” says a townsperson. “Or is it the reverse? does the house find them?”
Director David Koepp keeps the special effects to a minimum, relying instead on the weight of Theo’s psychological crisis to carry the story. It’s like “The Shining” without a showstopping “Here’s Johnny” scene. The weird and wild stuff is mostly done with camera tricks and inventive direction, giving the haunted house scenes an organic, slightly more realistic feel.
“You Should Have Left” is part psychological thriller, part morality tale. At just ninety minutes it feels a hair long and a late stage dramatic point between Susanna and Theo feels forced but Bacon keeps the portrait of a man trying to understand what is happening around him intriguing.
Blended families can be complicated, messy ecosystems particularly when tragedy is involved. There are a ton of movies about divided loyalties in the face of divorce or death but “The Rest of Us,” the new Heather Graham film, now on VOD, is different. Rather than milking the relationship between first and second wives for heightened drama, it focusses on empathy and compassion.
Graham plays illustrator and author Cami, mother to Aster (Sophie Nélisse) and ex-spouse to Craig. Ten years previously he cheated on her with Rachel (Jodi Balfour), leaving his first family behind to start again with the younger woman. “She’s almost young enough to be your daughter,” says Aster. When he dies in the tub the two women have a chilly reunion at the funeral reception, which happens to be in the house Cami shared with Craig.
Days later the two women meet again and some shocking truths about Craig’s financial state arise. “He hasn’t paid the mortgage for six months,” Rachel tells Cami. “It’ll all go up for auction. The furniture, the house, everything. We can keep a few clothes and things.” Moved, Cami offers Rachel and daughter Talulah (Abigail Pniowsky) a temporary place to stay while she waits for the insurance money to come in. Rachel declines but when the house is foreclosed on, her hand is forced.
With the four living on Cami’s property secrets are revealed, tensions vented and grief and anger over the passing of the man who connects them is shared.
“The Rest of Us” has plenty of reveals. Truths are uncovered at an astounding rate but there are never fireworks, just well calibrated moments that expose the complicated dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Director Aisling Chin-Lee never overplays or rushes those moments even though the film has a scant eighty-minute running time. Instead she allows the strong performances from each of the players—particularly from Nélisse—to do the heavy emotional lifting.
Sharp writing keeps “The Rest of Us’” unusual premise from becoming too pat, even if one of the big reveals is telegraphed early on. Still, it’s a lovely testament to the power of empathy and forgiveness.
“Mr. Jones,” a new drama starring James Norton and Vanessa Kirby that comes to VOD this week, is a period piece set in the years leading up to World war II but the themes it explores, fake news and media corruption are just as timely today as they were in the 1930s.
The action in “Mr. Jones” begins in 1933 after idealistic Welsh journalist Gareth Jones (James Norton) used his connections as foreign advisor to prime minister David Lloyd George to score a sit-down with Adolph Hitler. The resulting story, warning of Hitler’s ambitions, costs him his government job, leaving him free to explore his next story, a proposed interview with Joseph Stalin to discuss the truth of the Communist Party’s five-year plans for the development of the national economy of USSR. “The Soviets have built more in five years than our government can manage in a hundred.” He’s determined to find out how the poor country is funding such large scale technical and military achievements. What is being sacrificed in return?
Upon arrival in Moscow Jones is stymied at every turn. With no access to the leader the journalist, although a teetotaler, dips his toe into Moscow’s hedonistic nightlife scene where he meets the decadent Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Walter Duranty (Peter Saarsgard), a man as blind to the truth as Jones is open to it.
His search leads him to train, with a Communist minder, bound for Ukraine. Slipping away, he escapes into Stalino (now Donetsk) to uncover the unimaginable horrors of the Holodomor, a famine that killed at least 7.5 million people between 1932 and 1933. “They are killing us. Millions, gone,” says one townswoman. “Men thought they could come and replace the natural laws.”
What had been portrayed in the press as “the breadbasket of the world”—”Grain is Stalin’s gold,” says Duranty. “The 5-Year Plan has doubled the output.”—is in fact a hellscape of death where bodies are stacked on horse carts, abandoned houses dot the landscape and families eat tree bark and resort to cannibalism to survive.
Upon his capture he makes a deal with the devil to ensure the safety of six engineers arrested by the Russian state. As long as he promises to return to England and “tell the truth about what he saw;” to tell stories about the “happy and proud farmers and the remarkable efficiently of our collective farms,” and ensure the world that any rumors of a famine are just that. Rumors.
Back in England Jones says, “I do have a story but if I tell it six innocent men will die. But if I write the story millions of lives may be saved.”
“Mr. Jones” is an unevenly paced but haunting account of one man’s search for truth. At the center of it is Norton who effectively portrays Jones’ steeliness and his frustration at not being able to do his job but it is his time in Stalino that resonates. The long section, shot in desaturated black and white, with very little dialogue, allows the actor to portray the true horror of his surroundings. For the most part he keeps his revulsion internal, there are no hysterics here, just the soul crushing realization of the savagery of the surroundings.
Director Agnieszka Holland is no stranger to this subject matter or time frame. “Europa Europa” and “In Darkness” are compelling examples of her documentation of the worst events of the 20th century. She brings a similar gravitas to “Mr. Jones” and her unwavering sense of outrage at the atrocities is undiminished. It makes for forceful filmmaking but there are other choices that siphon some of the film’s power.
The opening moments, as Jones warns about Hitler’s threat, feel like something out of Masterpiece Theatre but quickly lead to more captivating material. It’s the inclusion of passages from George Orwell’s 1945 political satire “Animal Farm” that help bog down the film’s final forty minutes. Orwell was influenced by Jones’ reporting but didn’t write the book for a decade after the events portrayed in the film and his inclusion feels wedged in.
Despite some slack pacing “Mr. Jones” is an absorbing history lesson with a timely message for today. It’s a rejection of fake news and those who belittle the life-saving value of journalism.
The title “You Don’t Nomi” is a pun based on the name of the character played by Elizabeth Berkley in the notorious movie “Showgirls.” A new documentary by Jeffrey McHale, now on VOD, digs deep into a movie “New York Times” critic Janet Maslin called a “bare-butted bore” in 1995 but has since been given a critical reassessment. “I don’t think we’re done with it,” says writer Haley Mlotek, “because I don’t think we know what it means as a film.”
For the initiated “Showgirls” is a big-budget “erotic drama”—one writer called it a “$40 million stag party”—penned by Joe Eszterhas and directed by Paul Verhoeven, the team behind “Basic Instinct.” It’s the tawdry tale of Polly Ann Costello, a.k.a. Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley), a young drifter who will do almost anything (or anyone) to become a star as a Las Vegas showgirl.
It was meant to be Berkley’s move to adult roles after finding fame on the squeaky-clean kiddie sitcom “Saved by the Bell.” Instead, the over-the-top film was savaged by critics, dismissed as misogynistic by audiences, protested by LGBTQ groups as it became an albatross around the Berkley’s boa clad neck.
Using clips aplenty from Verhoeven’s film and the disembodied voices of film critics and academics, “You Don’t Nomi” aims to reexamine the perceived wisdom about the film. Is it a terrible joke, a campy “All About Eve” or is it a misunderstood masterpiece?
The truth is that it is probably somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. “Showgirls” superfan and critic Adam Nayman offers up a compelling breakdown of Verhoeven’s visual style dispelling early criticism of the film as a poorly made exploitation flick. It may be exploitive, but it is not poorly made. Other voices chimes in, some dissenting but most leaning toward the film as an exercise in maximal cinema. One critic suggests that if we brush aside any expectation of realism or naturalism and the movie takes on a new life as a hyper-stylized kind of filmmaking.
Poet Jeffrey Conway likens the film to camp classics like “Valley of the Dolls” and “Mommie Dearest,” movies that are “impossibly bad and impossibly thrilling at the same time.”
As a clever assemblage of clips and opinion “You Don’t Nomi” is entertaining and may make you want to revisit the film’s sleazy milieu, but it feels more like a DVD extra for a new, deluxe “Showgirls” release than a feature doc.
To celebrate twenty episodes of “In isolation With” we’re having a look back to the highlights of the first batch of shows. We talk about stress reduction with Timothy Caulfield, how to properly clean your food with Olunike Adeliyi, how to bridge the political gap with Steve Earle and why being an actor is such a grave responsibility with Clarke Peters. And, as if that wasn’t enough, Julie Eng does a mind-blower of a magic trick and Gordon Deppe of The Spoons does a live, solo performance. Even in lockdown, it’s been a wild ride. Come spend some time with us!
Watch the whole thing HERE! Or on CTVnews.ca HERE!
For our June 20, 2020 encore presentation of “Pop Life” we welcome the #1 New York Times bestselling author of “Tuesdays With Morrie, Mitch Albom. “Finding Chika,” the intimate and heartwarming memoir about the young Haitian orphan whose short life changed his life, is his most personal story to date. Then the “Pop Life” panel, publisher, broadcaster, philanthropist Denham Jolly, musician Egbo Egbo Thompson and Jen McCain, Entrepreneur, granddaughter of McCain Foods Limited co-founder Wallace McCain, discuss giving as a way of life.
Here’s Albom on the man who inspired his best-seller “Tuesdays with Morrie” and helped him find a different path in life:
“I was a very ambitious ‘type a’ sports writer working 90 hours a week in television, radio, newspapers, and then all of a sudden I happened to catch a TV program where my old professor Morrie Schwartz was on it, talking to the host Ted Koppel about what it was like to die from Lou Gehrig’s disease. And this man who I’ve been very close with in college and then because of my ambition, lost touch with, I found out 16 years later was going to die, and didn’t have much time left to live and I called him up thinking would be one time phone call. He kind of guilted me into coming to visit him I thought to be a one time visit, and I ended up going back every Tuesday every Tuesday and every Tuesday and being just stunned and stopped in my tracks by this 78 year old man who was dying from this worst type of disease where your body needs to be carried from place to place, and yet he had such an amazing attitude about life and he seemed 10 times happier with his life than I did. And I kind of started wondering what’s wrong with the path that I’m on here.”
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s exciting talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including rock legends Sting and Meat Loaf, musicians Josh Groban and Sarah Brightman, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actors Danny DeVito and Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
Welcome to episode one of “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” a new web series where you can learn to make perfect cocktails. Today, the classic “hair of the dog” drink, the Bloody Mary!
