On the Saturday August 10, 2024 edition of the Richard Crouse Show we meet Clare Titley, director of “The Contestant,” a feature doc, now available on Hollywood Suite On Demand. Narrated by Fred Armisen, it is an intimate portrait of Tomoaki Hamatsu, a Japanese reality TV star, nicknamed Nasubi, left naked in a room for more than a year and tasked with entering contests to earn food and clothing, while, unknown to him, millions of television viewers all over Japan watched his every move. The show turned him into an unwitting superstar, but at what cost?
Then we’ll get to know Jonathan Torrens. You know him from Taggart and Torrens, the podcast with 4 million downloads he does with Jeremy Taggart, and his work on shows like “Street Cents” and his talk show “Jonovision” and, of course, his legendary performance as rapper J-Roc on the “Trailer Park Boys.” Today we talk about his latest project, the Truro, Nova Scotia based production company Canadian Content Studios and his new show “Roll With It.”
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 Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
All iHeartRadio Canada stations are available across Canada via live stream on iHeartRadio.caand the iHeartRadio Canada app. iHeartRadio Canada stations are also connected through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home smart speakers.
SYNOPSIS: In “Longlegs,” a new psychological horror film starring Maika Munroe and Nicolas Cage, and now playing in theatres, FBI Agent Lee Harker is assigned to a decades-old case of a serial killer who targets entire families. The case turns personal as she uncovers evidence of the occult.
CAST: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Alicia Witt, Blair Underwood, Kiernan Shipka. Directed by Osgood Perkins (son of “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins and photographer and actress Berry Berenson).
REVIEW More unsettling than scary, “Longlegs” is both thematically and visually dark. There’s not a lot of cracks to let the light in. As the mystery at the heart of this occult thriller unfolds, the action happens mostly at night or in darkened rooms, lending a heavy air of foreboding to every frame of this strange film.
Adding to the film’s otherworldly vibe is Maika Monroe as Lee Harker, the FBI agent assigned to Longlegs’ case. She is Clarice Starling with a carefully defined introspective side; a sixth sense that helps to unravel her cases. “It’s like something tapping me on the shoulder,” he says, “telling me where to look.” Analytical in the extreme, Munroe, in a quiet performance, allows us to see the gears turning in her head as the clues begin to add up. Her process gives Harker a brooding demeanor that perfectly matches the film’s tense, subdued tone.
On the other end of the scale is Cage as the titular serial killer. His unhinged, chaotic work makes his other gonzo performances in movies like “The Wicker Man,” “Face/Off” and “Vampire Kiss” seem positively understated by comparison. Jame Gumb has nothing on this guy. It’s an over-the-top display and individual mileage may vary, but his Tiny Tim inflection, creepy rendition of “Happy Birthday” and repulsive leer will not soon be forgotten.
Despite Cage’s larger-than-life-and-death performance, “Longlegs” values restraint. Other than a quick flash of decomposing bodies, a gallon or two of blood and a handful of jump scares, Perkins is more interested in burrowing into your subconscious with a nightmarish story that unfolds in the dark corners of Harker’s mind. The story’s psychological underpinnings are where the true horror lies. where the discomfort comes from.
By the time the end credits roll, you’ll leave the theatre unnerved, even after they turn on the lights.
On the Saturday July 6, 2024 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet Amanda Marshall.
You know the name, but could be forgiven if you wondered what happened to her. After hits like her 1996 single, “Birmingham”, which reached number 3 in Canada and charted on the US, and diamond and certified 3× platinum albums, she disappeared from the charts and the music scene for more than 20 years.
She says the legal battle with her former manager that kept her away from the spotlight for two decades “turned out to be the very best thing that ever happened to me.” We’ll find out why in this interview.
Then, we’ll meet K.L. Armstrong is a pseudonym for bestselling author Kelley Armstrong. She has written over 40 books, including the bestselling young adult series the Darkest Powers and Darkness Rising, the YA book Aftermath, the middle-grade novel A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying and the adult thriller Alone in the Wild. Today we’ll talk about how and why she is so prolific, and her newest novel, KNOWN TO THE VICTIM, a heartstopping, propulsive, race-against-the-clock thriller that asks a simple question, How far will you go to protect the only family you have?
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 Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
All iHeartRadio Canada stations are available across Canada via live stream on iHeartRadio.caand the iHeartRadio Canada app. iHeartRadio Canada stations are also connected through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home smart speakers.
LOGLNE: The documentary “Brats” skims across the surface of 1980s popular culture to present a breezy portrait of a group of very famous young actors who came-of-age while appearing in coming-of-age films. Labelled “The Brat Pack” in a 1985 New York Magazine cover story, they appeared, in various combinations, in decade defining films like “Pretty in Pink,” “16 Candles” and “St. Elmo’s Fire.” In firsthand interviews with fellow Brat Pack members, director Andrew McCarthy looks back at the effects of youthful stardom, and being labelled a brat in the press.
CAST: Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Timothy Hutton, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Lea Thompson, Jon Cryer, Lauren Shuler Donner, Howard Deutch, David Blum, and in archival footage, Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson.
REVIEW: There’s an old saying that sums up McCarthy’s approach to “Brats”: “Within every challenge lies the hidden treasure of self-discovery.”
As director and host, he spends a great deal of the film, pushing the idea that being labeled, at a young age, the Brat Pack, has been limiting to the careers of all the actors involved. Directors, producers and studios, he asserts, didn’t take them seriously and wouldn’t hire them to appear in anything other than films aimed at teenagers.
For McCarthy, at the film’s onset at least, the premise appears to be an existential crisis. The subsequent interviews, with various pop culture experts like Malcolm Gladwell, and McCarthy’s fellow Brat Packers, feel like therapy for the actor; a way to understand his complicated relationship with a cultural moment that had a profound personal impact on his life.
For the most part, the interviews are interesting. Rob Lowe (who reminds McCarthy that they had a pretty good time at the height of Brat Mania) and Demi Moore (who uses words like “againstness” in her passionate replies of McCarthy’s questions) are the stand-outs, but all the conversations have a warmth born out of old friends reminiscing about a shared experience. There’s also a heaping helping of nostalgia—loads of great 80s hair, fashions and film clips—but the strongest whiff of wistfulness comes from McCarthy himself and his conflicted feelings regarding how his career intersected with the public and professional opinion of the Brat Pack.
“Brats” does become repetitive as McCarthy rehashes the same point over-and-over again but beyond the film’s self-indulgence comes a hidden treasure of self-discovery. I don’t know if McCarthy will ever truly accept how his life was shaped by his Brat Pack association, but by the time the end credits roll, he at least seems to realize that the advantages of being a Brat Packer far outshone the burden.
With so many Canadians choosing to travel within Canada this year, I thought we’d contact people from across the country and have them describe an unusual attraction in their hometown or home city. This week we’ve talked about the World’s Largest Kielbassa Sausage in Alberta, the Giant $2 Coin in Campbellford, Ontario and Magnetic Hill in New Brunswick.
Today we boldly go where… well many have gone before. We take you to Vulcan, Alberta, the Official Star Trek Capital of Canada. Joining me to talk about Vulcan is the town’s Community Services Manager, Chris Gaultier.
Comedian James Mullinger joined me for “Ask a Comedian Anything” on last night’s NewsTalk Tonight.
We talked ablout the hand-to-hand combat of English comedy clubs, living in New Brunswick and why “tea kettle” is funnier than “tea pot.”
James is an English-Canadian alternative comedian based in New Brunswick. Though primarily a stand-up comic, Mullinger has held a number of roles in other media including a presenter of “Blimey! An Englishman in Atlantic Canada,” and co-writer and co-producer of The Comedian’s Guide to Survival. In 2022, he published his memoir, “Brit Happens: Or Living the Canadian Dream,” with Goose Lane Editions.
I joined CBC Radio Noon Quebec with Shawn Apel to talk movie manners and tell a story about a guy who not only spoke during the movie, lectured the audience as he stormed out.
