Richard joins Ryan Doyle and Jay Michaels of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show to talk the origins of the Dark ‘n Stormy cocktail and what movies to enjoy while sipping one on the weekend!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard finds the perfect cocktail to enjoy while having a drink and a think about “Golden Arm,” the laugh-out-loud charmer about self-discovery and female friendship.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Golden Arm,” now on VOD, isn’t a Gen X remake of Otto Preminger’s gritty, Academy Award nominated drug drama “The Man with the Golden Arm” or a remake of “Over the Top” minus Sylvester Stallone.
Instead, it’s a laugh-out-loud charmer about self-discovery and female friendship set against a backdrop of women’s arm wrestling.
Comedian Mary Holland is Melanie, a recently divorced owner-operator of a failing bakery. Her customers are rude, she’s going broke and she really needs a break.
Meanwhile, Melanie’s best friend Danny (Upright Citizens Brigade Theater’s Betsy Sodaro) takes on Brenda “The Bonecrusher” (Olivia Stambouliah) in an arm-wrestling match and, true to form, The Bonecrusher breaks Danny’s wrist. In a cast and unable to compete in the Women’s Arm-Wrestling Championship, Danny wants revenge. “We need a ringer,” Danny says.
When it turns out that years of running the bakery by herself has given Melanie natural arm strength, Danny asks her to sub in for her at the tournament. “I’m gonna have you fill in for me at the nationals,” she says.
Melanie doesn’t have the killer instinct of an athlete but the fifteen-thousand-dollar prize money would solve many of her problems so she agrees. But first they must train under the tutelage of legendary arm-wrestling coach, Big Sexy (former “Glee” star and fifteen-time world arm wrestling champion Dot-Marie Jones).
“Golden Arm” is a feel-good sports movie that, like all good sports movies, it isn’t really about the sport. There’s loads of time spent talking about arm wrestling and we learn that it takes to win—“Be quick and explosive, you want to get the jump,” and that it takes eight pounds of pressure to break a humerus, the bone that runs from the shoulder to the elbow—and, of course, there is a showdown at the film’s climax, but this is a movie about a personal journey, female friendship and empowerment.
It’s also laugh out loud funny, sometimes vulgar, sometimes sweet. Sodaro is like a female Jack Black, a brash performer who takes chances and can deliver a line. Balancing her out is Holland, whose arc extends from meek-and-mild to badass in ninety minutes. They are the heart and soul of the movie and, with a colourful supporting cast, provide enough laughs and emotion to make “Golden Arm” a winner.
“Greener Grass,” a new comedy from the Upright Citizens Brigade writing-directing team of Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, is a portrait of the suburbs as seen through a surrealistic lens.
Set in an unnamed Midwestern Stepfordian suburb, the place looks familiar but feels like an alternate universe. There are no cars, (everyone gets around by golf cart), the adults all have braces (although none of the kids do) and the couples dress in complimentary pastel colors. Strange? Yes, but no weirder than the opening scene when passive aggressive Lisa (Luebbe) convinces her best friend Jill (DeBoer) to give hand over her newborn baby Madison. Like forever. “Take her,” Jill says. “We’ve had her since she was born.”
It sets the heightened tone of what’s to come. Later Jill’s son Julian (Julian Hilliard) turns into a dog, husbands are swapped and, because why not?, there’s a killer on the loose. A look at the idealized lives we try to present to the world with happy, smiling faces, “Greener Grass” mines the absurdity of keeping up with the Jones for searing social commentary on materialism and our perceptions of success and even the media (check out what happens to the boy who watches a TV show called “Kids With Knives”).
DeBoer and Luebbe keep things lively with surrealistic and awkward humor, never straying from the absurd tone established in the film’s opening moments. Imagine a mix of David Lynch’s soft suburban underbelly and the fearlessness of John Waters and you get an idea of the brand of satire on display. It occasionally feels like a series of skits strung together by theme but even then, it’s so refreshingly unusual, so grounded in the world DeBoer and Luebbe have created and so smart, it earns a recommendation, particularly if you are a fan of midnight movies.
