I appear on “CTV News at 11:30” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the Charli XCX mockumentary “The Moment” and the return of “The Muppet Show” on Disney+.
Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 35:11)
I sit with Deb Hutton on NewsTalk 1010 to go over some of the week’s biggest entertainment stories and movies playing in theatres. We talk about Will Arnett’s love of Harvey’s hamburgers, the Oscar Mayer’s Wienermobile race, big changes at Wordle and I review the Charli XCX mockumentary “The Moment.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the teen horror of “Whistle,” an amorous “Dracula” and the mockumentary “The Moment.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” to talk about the “Melania” documentary, the Kennedy Center revamp and I review Charli XCX’s mockumentary “The Moment” and tell you about some cocktails top help bring out your inner brat.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to slam the door! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the teen horror of “Whistle,” an amorous “Dracula” and the mockumentary “The Moment.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: “The Moment,” a musical mockumentary about pop star Charli XCX sees her grapple with fame and her first arena tour. “I just want this moment to last forever,” she says.
CAST: Charli XCX, Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, Isaac Powell, Alexander Skarsgård. Directed by Aidan Zamiri.
REVIEW: Fans of Charli XCX should know that “The Moment” isn’t a concert film. The satirical mockumentary could best be described as a film about a concert.
Set on the eve of the stressed-out singer’s first headlining arena tour, it’s meant to be a poke in the side to a music business who take innovative artists and suck them dry of authenticity.
Folks unfamiliar with Charli XCX may want to check out her songs, like “Von Dutch’s” brash electronic pop, and her Wikipedia page or otherwise be baffled by references to Brat Summer and the color lime green.
In short, the movie takes place in the aftermath of Charli XCX’s sixth studio album “Brat.” Not just a title, it was a state of mind that celebrated a messy, unapologetic, hedonistic, party-girl lifestyle through bangers like “Girl, so confusing” (featuring Lorde).
“The Moment” begins as Charli XCX is having her moment. As she prepares for her biggest tour ever, the singer grapples with her record company’s expectations, exhaustion and loss of creative control. She feels the authentic cultural impact of Brat Summer is being commodified, or worse, might be slipping away. “Everybody’s waiting on the moment I fail,” she says.
The movie captures the Brat vibe. It’s messy, audacious, unapologetic and flawed.
Playing a heightened version of herself, Charli XCX finds some humor, humanity and a healthy dose of vulnerability in the tortured artist syndrome. She hands in a credible lead performance as a woman at a career crossroad, balancing the demands of her record label, a pushy film director (Alexander Skarsgård) and her management. She effectively portrays the fraying effect of fame as her creativity is commercialized and she is increasingly treated like a product rather than artist.
Her performance is aided by director Aidan Zamiri’s extreme up-close-and-personal photography. Her expressive face reveals much in these close-ups, particularly the pressure she feels to be effortlessly cool. The framing provides an interesting look at the woman behind the image and the work that goes into propagating the “Brat” image and allows the singer to let down her guard and reveal the often-insecure person behind the party image.
Skarsgård’s obsequious take on the director of the film-within-the-film provides several memorable, funny moments and raises obnoxiousness to stratospheric heights. His role of manipulative foil to Charli’s creative authenticity pushes the movie’s themes of artistic compromise to the fore.
Unfortunately, that is about as deep as “The Moment” gets.
Director Aidan Zamiri’s fondness for cinéma vérité style jiggly camera requires a dose of Dramamine as the story meanders repeatedly through the same plot points of artist manipulation and the stresses of leveling up.
“The Moment” is a movie with lots of extreme style desperate to say something about what happens when pop culture turns its eye on an artist, but the message gets bogged down by its own Brat style.
SYNOPSIS: “Dracula,” a new take on Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel, now playing in theatres, is a love story about a 15th-century prince who spends four hundred years searching for the reincarnation of his late wife.
CAST: Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoë Bleu, Matilda De Angelis, Ewens Abid, David Shields, Guillaume de Tonquédec, Raphael Luce. Directed by Luc Besson.
REVIEW: This isn’t Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” It’s maximalist French director Luc Besson’s “Dracula” with all the good and bad that implies.
A love story and an origin tale, the movie begins with Prince Vladimir of Wallachia (Caleb Landry Jones) i.re. Vlad the Impaler, renouncing God after the death of his beloved wife Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) at the hands of the Ottomans.
Now called Dracula, he spends the next four hundred years drinking blood to stay “alive,” and using a specially formulated vampire perfume to entice women as the lovelorn vampire searches for the reincarnation of his late wife.
“I’m just a poor soul condemned by God and cursed to walk in the shadow of death for all eternity,” he says, “and sustain myself on fresh blood. Human blood is recommended.”
During real estate negotiations Dracula discovers that Mina (Zoë Bleu again), the wife of Parisian solicitor Jonathan Harker (Ewens Abid), is the woman he’s been searching an eternity for. Tracking her down, he convinces her that she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta and offers her eternal life.
“I would recognize you in another lifetime, entirely in different bodies, different times, and I would love you in all of them until the very last star in the sky burned out into oblivion.”
Meanwhile, a Vatican-sponsored vampire hunting priest (Christoph Waltz) is on the hunt for Dracula and his deadly disciples.
Luc Besson has never been known for a light touch. His films, like “The Fifth Element” and “Léon: The Professional,” are crowd-pleasing, style over substance movies that entertain the eye with high concept visuals and high energy action. Unafraid of spectacle, his films are often bold, often cheesy and often sumptuous.
“Dracula” is all those things. Besson’s study of eternal love has philosophical undertones, but, true to form, excess is the name of the game here, not metaphysical discourse. A scene in the court of Versailles, for instance, where Dracula tests out his special perfume is both lovely and lurid, but another sequence in which Drac repeatedly tries to kill himself in the wake of his wife’s death doesn’t have the intended pathos. Instead, it feels like an outtake from one of Abbott and Costello’s horror comedies.
Gorgeous costume and set design set the stage for Besson’s flashy gothic romp, distracting from a distinct lack of chemistry between the star-crossed soulmates. Landry is more convincing as a monster than lovelorn creature of the night, even if his 400-year-old-man makeup is a little rough. If this pair met in a singles bar, you wouldn’t think they had enough of a spark to make it to the dance floor, let alone inspire a lusty 400 yearlong journey.
Despite flaws that would put a stake in the heart of many other films, “Dracula” is entertaining, if only because Besson shakes up the familiar story to focus on the amorous rather than the murderous.
SYNOPSIS: In “Whistle,” a horror film starring Dafne Keen, and now playing in theatres, an ancient Aztec Death Whistle harkens the demise of a group of high school students. “If you hear the whistle scream, dying is not a choice.”
CAST: Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang, Jhaleil Swaby, Ali Skovbye, Percy Hynes White, Michelle Fairley, Nick Frost. Directed by Corin Hardy.
REVIEW: With a healthy dose of nostalgia “Whistle” looks to the teen horror films of the 80s and 90s for inspiration and thrills.
The story begins with Chrys (Dafne Keen) moving to a new town, and a new school following the death of her father. As rumors swirl through the hallways about her dark past she is treated like an outsider by everyone, except Ellie (Sophie Nelisse), her smart, friendly classmate.
When Chrys discovers an ancient Aztec Death Whistle in the shape of a skull, left behind by a former student in her locker, she doesn’t realize that blowing into the artefact will summons the future deaths of anyone in earshot and hunt them down. “Our future death is hunting us.”
“Whistle” is an effective, nasty slasher that delivers a new riff on the “Final Destination” blueprint, finding inventive and entertaining ways to send its characters to the afterlife.
What separates “Whistle” from some (but not all) of its teen predecessors is the attention to character detail. Director Corin Hardy, working from a script by Owen Egerton, ensures the characters aren’t just disposable teens. They have backstories—someone them might even have futures—and they are a little more fleshed out than your run-of-the-mill slasher. When they start disappearing, you feel it.
But that doesn’t mean Hardy goes easy on them. The kills are grotesque and often quite juicy—I’d love to know the film’s fake plasma budget—which should be a bonus for gore hounds.
“Whistle” leans into its nostalgia for teen popcorn horror, but filters it through a new, modern lens.
Is reality TV trash…or is it secretly one of the most powerful storytelling tools we have?
In this episode of Entertainment Is Broken, the podcast I host with and reality-TV scholar and Big Brother Canada winner Sarah Hanlon dive deep into the past, present, and future of reality television — just as Canada Shore lands in Kelowna, BC and The Traitors Canada proves the genre is having a full-blown renaissance.
We unpack where reality TV really began (hint: it wasn’t Jersey Shore), why shows like Survivor, Big Brother, The Traitors, Canada’s Drag Race, Love Island, and The Great British Bake Off keep pulling us in, and whether reality television is cultural junk food…or a machine for empathy.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@EntertainmentIsBroken
Listen: https://pod.link/1855097197
