On this week’s Richard Crouse Show Podcast we meet David Pevsner. Over the course of his 35-year career in show business, David has done it all. He’s acted on Broadway, off-Broadway, in independent films and on numerous TV network shows including Grey’s Anatomy, Modern Family and Criminal Minds.
Now he has added author to his resume… Damn Shame is his new memoir. It is a passionate and poignant look at one journey from a thin, shy boy ashamed of his body and sexuality to a defiant, fearless person exploring his erotic desires.
David Pevsner joined me via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles.
Then, stand-up comedian K. Trevor Wilson stops by. You know him as the long-winded Squirrely Dan on Letterkenny. Or maybe you’ve seen him do stand up on the Jimmy Kimmel Show or perhaps you’re a fan of his acerbic jabs on Roast Battle Canada… today he stops by to talk about his latest project, LOL: Last One Laughing Canada. It’s a six-part competition series on Amazon Prime where 10 of the best comedic talents from Canada are pitted against each other in a celebrity showdown. As the clock counts down their objective is to eliminate others from the house by making each other laugh, while not laughing themselves.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Ethan Hawke, director Brad Bird, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Roberts, Brian Henson, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. “The most interesting man in the world,” and best selling author Linwood Barclay.
Listen to the show live here:
C-FAX 1070 in Victoria
SAT 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM
SUN 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
CJAD in Montreal
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
CFRA in Ottawa
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 610 CKTB in St. Catharines
Sat 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1010 in Toronto
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
NEWSTALK 1290 CJBK
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
AM 1150 in Kelowna
SAT 11 PM to Midnight
BNN BLOOMBERG RADIO 1410
SAT 8 PM to 9:00 PM
Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed!
Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Jennifer Burke to have a look at new movies coming to VOD and streaming services, including the animated “The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild” on Disney+ and two on VOD, the shoot ’em up “One Shot” and the grim “Two Deaths of Henry Baker.”
For better and for worse the “Ice Age” franchise seems to have been around longer than the actual Ice Age. With the latest entry, “The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild,” starring the voice of Simon Pegg on Disney+, number six in the series, the movies are starting to show their age. The characters and the voice work are still fun, but the animation doesn’t have the same pop as the earlier movies.
The action begins in Snow Valley, home of unruly possum brothers Crash (Vincent Tong) and Eddie (Aaron Harris). The possums are restless, bored with life in the sleepy, icy dale. They want to experience the world, away from the over-protective eyes of their make-shift family, woolly mammoths Ellie and Manny. “It’s time for us to move out and make our mark on the world.” By fluke, they wind up in the Lost World—“We came here to live a life of adventure.”—a massive underground cave and land of danger that might be too extreme, even for them.
As Ellie and Manny fret—“If we don’t find them, I’m going to kill them,” says Manny.—an unlikely “superhero” comes to Crash and Eddie’s rescue, a one-eyed weasel named Buck Wild (Pegg). Together they form a team to defeat the dinosaurs who live in the Lost World. “It’s time to get buck wild.”
For better and for worse the Ice Age franchise seems to have been around longer than the actual Ice Age. With the latest entry, number six in the series, the movies are starting to show their age.
“The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild” has a distinctly direct-to-streaming feel about it. The above the title voice cast from the other films—Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Queen Latifah—are gone, replaced with soundalikes. Not that young kids will mind, or even notice. But older kids who grew up watching these movies—they’ve been around for twenty years—may feel this one isn’t a movie as much as it is an inexpensive, extended version of the television series that was spun off the films.
Like all the “Ice Age” movies, this one has good messages for kids about the importance of family—”The only thing that stays the same is the love we have for one another. That’s the thing about a herd, you’re a part of it, even when you are apart.”—and embracing change—“Change is scary but it is the way of the world. It can help us grow into the people we’re meant to be even if that takes us to new places.” Nothing ground breaking, just solid morals from a story that should appeal to kids who haven’t already heard those platitudes a hundred time over.
The title of “One Shot,” a new action movie starring Scott Adkins, Ryan Phillippe and Ashley Greene Khoury, and now available on VOD, is a double entendre of a sort. The adrenalized action heroes at the heart of the film have one shot to quell an attack, and director James Nunn has cleverly filmed all the action in “real time,” using camera tricks to make it look like this was shot in one, long continuous take.
The story begins with a squad of Navy SEALs led by Lt. Blake Harris (Adkins) airlifting junior CIA analyst Zoe Anderson (Khoury) to a remote Guantanamo Bay-esque prison to a “United Nations of terror” suspects. Anderson’s job is to extract Amin Mansur (Waleed Elgadi), a British national who pleads his innocence, but is suspected to be a mastermind of a 9/11 style dirty-bomb attack on all three branches of the American government.
Deputy Site Manager Tom Shields (Phillippe) stalls the prisoner’s release, inadvertently allowing time for the ruthless terrorist Charef (Jess Liaudin) and his insurgents to overrun the place, freeing captives and trying to kill Mansur before he can spill the beans on the plot to bring down the government.
“One Shot” isn’t about the characters, political subtext or even the siege story. It’s all about the “one shot” gimmick, wall-to-wall video-game style gunplay and a sense of urgency.
For the most part the gimmick works, although, if you’re like me, you’ll be taken out of the story as you try and see where the subliminal edits are. It’s a distraction that fades as the running times passes because director Nunn choreographs the action expertly, creating a sense of unpredictable immediacy. You never really know who is around the next corner or hiding behind a pile of sandbags. It’s edgy you-are-there filmmaking, aided by cinematographer Jonathan Iles, that makes the generic story and stereotyped characters somewhat interesting.
The relentless violence, however, becomes tiering after a while. The first gunshot happens around the 19-minute mark and the bullet ballet continues pretty much nonstop for the rest of the running time. There are breaks in the action, usually as someone tends to a wounded person, but they are few and far between.
“One Shot” is a b-movie with efficient brutality and some edge-of-your-seat scenes, but the script is as riddled with clichés—”Sometimes it is harder to save a life than it is to save one,” intones Anderson when the going gets tough.—as the characters are with bullet holes.
A study in toxic masculinity, greed and the sins of the father, “Two Deaths of Henry Baker,” a new thriller starring Gil Bellows now on VOD, is a pale imitation of neo-noir-westerns like “Hell or High Water.”
The action begins in a flashback to 1958 as young Henry Baker and his father hide a fortune in stolen gold coins. Cut to thirty years later. Henry, now played by Gil Bellows, is all grown up and ready to retrieve the cash. With young son Hank (Gunnar Burke) in tow, things go sideways. Henry kills his own brother (also Bellows) and gets arrested.
Decades pass. As Henry is about to be sprung from prison both his son Hank now played by Sebastian Pigott and his nephew Sam (Joe Dinicol), the son of Henry’s murdered brother, anxiously await. Everybody wants a taste of the gold, Sam wants revenge while corrupt Sheriff Ron Capman (Tony Curran) wants it all.
“Two Deaths of Henry Baker” is an ambitious movie that falls slightly short of its goal.
There are some nicely realized action set pieces and moments of tension, but those plusses are done in by slack pacing from director by Felipe Mucci. The movie’s machinations crawl along, which make some of the story’s leaps of logic even more noticeable than they might have been in a film with a quicker pace.
Having said that, the story of cross-generational toxicity resonates. Violence begets violence is not a new idea, but the handing of the baton from fathers to sons is nicely illuminated here and aided by the performances from Bellows and Dinicol.
“Two Deaths of Henry Baker” may be the feel bad movie of the year so far. Heavy on the nihilism, it’s a gritty portrait of intergenerational violence but doesn’t dig deep enough into the psychologically of the story for the characters to resonate.
Richard, social media star Stewart Reynolds, and parent blogger Samantha Kemp-Jackson get Behind the Headlines with host Beverly Thomson. Today they discuss the trucker’s convoy, the Boston Hospital won’t give a transplant because the patient is not vaccinated and the first flying car cleared for take-off.
Twelve years ago tonight, at the 2012 Canadian premier of The Woman in Black a young woman yelled, “I love you!” as Daniel Radcliffe and I took the stage to introduce the film.
“I love you too,” he replied with a smirk. “But I think we should see other people.”
The audience laughed but probably missed the double meaning of his comment. For ten years Radcliffe was the face of Harry Potter, one of the biggest grossing movie franchises ever. Potter ended in 2011 (for Radcliffe, anyway) and the actor has moved on, and hopes his audience will follow along.
Radcliffe has perspective on where he’d like his career to go, but what about the fame that came along with playing Harry Potter? The next day after The Woman in Black premier I asked him about the screaming fans that greeted him and what that does to his ego.
“The thing you have to remind yourself is that it’s not about me. It’s about the fact that I played this character who became beloved. Anyone who took on this character would be getting this reaction. When I’m home, smoking a cigarette and it’s cold and I’m eating half a pizza. You have to take a picture of yourself then and play it to yourself when you’re on the red carpets and go, ‘Yeah, you’re not all that.’”
Radcliffe is not being modest when he says “it’s not about me,” just realistic. He understands his role in bringing the iconic character to life. The actor’s mix of vulnerability and strength won him the part and imprinted the journey from young kid to powerful wizard in the imaginations of millions of people. Had he not been cast as Harry he may or may not have found fame in some other way and someone else would likely be getting all the attention instead of him. That is the luck of the draw.
Eventually he’ll be able to walk down the street again, perhaps pick up a slice without being mobbed by eager fans but when we hosted the Woman in Black event in 2012 that tide had not yet turned.
After we introduced the movie we made our way back to the greenroom. A young woman, unaware of that Radcliffe was in the building, spotted us. Her reaction has stayed with me. Agog, she was a mix of disbelief, excitement and raw nerves. She was the definition of the word verklempt come to life. Unsure why Harry Potter was standing in front of her near the concession stand, she burst into tears and ran toward him with arms extended. He sidestepped her, while still acknowledging her excitement, and we quickly hoofed it to safety, doubtlessly leaving the young Potter fan to wonder whether she was hallucinating or not.
In the greenroom I asked him if that happens all the time. It does, he said, and then detailed some of the tricks he’s learned about not making eye-contact and how a hoodie can be an effective disguise for a late-night convenience store run. In the post Potter phase of his career Radcliffe plays a waiting game, confident in the knowledge that a burning match does not stay hot forever. He’s learned to deal with the attention and is able to cope with it because knows that it will pass.
Acceptance and understanding of situations, whether it is an excited fan tackling you or wanting to smoke when you’re trying to quit or great personal loss or business collapse, can help you find the solutions that will help you deal with whatever’s troubling you.
The lesson here is whatever happens in life, whether it is international stardom or any other of the more mundane things that touch our daily lives, the feeling is likely transitory.
Many of us live in the moment. Beautiful times are amplified. Conversely, bad stuff often feels permanent, as though it will be like this forever. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment but taking time out to think about what’s really happening is the great leveller. Perspective allows us to deeply enjoy the good times and, in bad times, reassures us that it will not always be this way. As classical pianist Arthur Rubinstein says, “there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”
Radcliffe accepts his life but understands that fame does not define him. “I think it’s very important,” he told The Independent, “especially when you become famous young, to work out who you are without fame and without that as part of your identity, because that will go. Fame does not last forever. For anyone.”
He’s right. I recall doing a junket in Los Angeles for an unremarkable coming-of-age story with a gangland twist called Knockaround Guys. It’s the story of four sons (Vin Diesel, Seth Green, Barry Pepper, and Andrew Davoli) of Brooklyn mobsters bond together to reclaim a quarter of a million dollars lost in a small Montana town. Dennis Hopper plays cigar chomping mob boss Benny “Chains” Demaret.
Hopper’s appearance is little more than a cameo, but casts a big shadow. Here was an Actors Studio alum who made his first television appearance in 1954. He’s legend who helped do in the studio system by directing Easy Rider, appeared alongside James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant and was legendarily stoned on the set of Apocalypse Now.
On the day of the junket I sat with the other interviewers, largely lifestyle reporters, waited in the hospitality room waiting to be called. A publicist rolled into the room, clipboard in hand. “Jane Doe,” she said, “you’re on deck to interview Mr. Hopper.”
“Who?” said Jane. “I’m really only here to talk to Seth Green.”
Almost half a century of work, awards and thousands of column inches in the tabloid press shunted aside for the guy who created Robot Chicken. Radcliffe is right. Fame is fleeting.
Radcliffe breathes rarified air and reportedly enjoys a substantial bank account but the questions he grapples with maybe different than you and I but awareness of life situations is crucial to all, whether wizard or muggle.
Richard joins CKTB morning show host Tim Denis to talk about two Ana de Armas fans who are suing a Hollywood studio over a ‘deceptive’ trailer for the film “Yesterday.” She was featured in the trailer, but was cut out of the final movie.
On this week’s Richard Crouse Show Podcast we meet David Pevsner. Over the course of his 35-year career in show business, David has done it all. He’s acted on Broadway, off-Broadway, in independent films and on numerous TV network shows including Grey’s Anatomy, Modern Family and Criminal Minds.
