Film critic Richard Crouse, social media star Stewart Reynolds, and parent blogger Samantha Kemp-Jackson get Behind the Headlines with host Beverly Thomson. Today they discuss what happens when you leave a hit show and when weathermen attack!
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Richard appears in reporter John Vennavally-Rao’s CTV National News story on the final season of the hotly anticipated “Game of Thrones.”
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Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel’s Merella Fernandez to chat about the morning’s Emmy nominations, who was snubbed and who will win!
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Richard sits in with Marcia McMillan to discuss the upcoming Emmy Award nominations. Who will earn a nod? Click to find out!
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By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
These days Jojo Moyes is a bestselling author with a movie adaptation about to hit screens.
But before she wrote her best-known book she says, “I had not troubled the bestseller charts.”
The former journalist, who has written 13 novels, hit publishing pay dirt with Me Before You, a romance about a young woman who has a life-changing relationship with a paralyzed man.
“I was driving my kids home from school,” says Moyes, “and I heard this story on the news about a young athlete who had been left quadriplegic after an accident.
“Several years into life as a quadriplegic he had persuaded his parents to take him to Dignitas, which is a centre for assisted suicide in England to end his life.
“I was just really shocked by this story because as a human and a parent I could not envisage how a parent would agree to do that.
“I kept thinking I would fight to the death to keep my kids alive. Because I am an ex journalist, I started to read around it and read more about this young man and read more about the issue and I discovered it wasn’t as black and white as I wanted to believe. Then it got me thinking, what would I be like if I were him? What would it be like to be his mother? What would it be like to be his girlfriend?”
The book sold north of 5 million copies and is now a movie starring Games of Thrones dragon lady Emilia Clarke. The 29-year-old actress plays the relentlessly cheerful Louisa, caregiver to quadriplegic Will, played by The Hunger Games star Sam Claflin.
“I read the amazing book first,” the effervescent Clarke says. “I was reading it to see if I wanted to be in it. In the first couple of pages of Lou (I thought) this is who I am. This is so much me in every way. Then there was the story itself and the beauty within it; the heartbreak, the joy and the laughter fell on top of one another and I just said yes.
“I understand (Louisa) innately because if things ever get too dire I’m going to crack a joke. We’re going to laugh through this. In those moments, at that peak when something bad has happened, and you’re like, ‘Let’s laugh about it,’ as you’re laughing you start crying.
She also says she had a rigorous rehearsal process with co-star Claflin, so she got to know her character and their story really well.
“When you’ve got all that knowledge someone only has to say one thing and you are there because you have built her within you. You’ve built the story around you.”
Moyes says finding the right person to play Louisa was important to not only the success of the film, but also to keep the fans of the book happy.
“I felt a huge responsibility to those people because it’s not like this has only been read by 20,000 people,” says Moyes.
“This is a much bigger thing. I will defy anybody to see Emilia as Lou and not feel this is a true representation of the character.
“When I picture Lou, I can’t help but picture Emilia. That is how fully she has taken root in my imagination.”
In “Me Before You,” a new three-hankie weepie based on the bestselling novel by Jo Jo Moyes, Emilia Clarke leaves behind her “Game of Thrones” persona as Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen—a.k.a. First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons and The Unburnt—to play Louisa Clark, an unambitious former Buttered Bun waitress who takes a job that changes her life forever.
Louisa is a wide-eyed 26-year-old with no great plan for her life. After six years of serving tea and scones to the elderly clients of The Buttered Bun Café she loses her job when the place shuts down. Jobs are scarce in the village—“There are no jobs. I should know,” says her under employed father (Brendan Coyle).—and her family desperately needs the money she brings in.
Prepared to take any job she visits the local employment center where they have just the thing for her. “There’s nothing about having skills so it’s perfect for you,” says the staffer as he tells her about the position of care assistant and companion to Will Traynor (“The Hunger Games’s” Sam Claflin), a recently paralyzed man so wealthy he lives in the local castle.
For most of his life Will was Louisa’s opposite, a robust go-getter who lived life to the fullest. Now, confined to a wheelchair with a spinal chord injury, he feels so lost he strikes a deadly deal with his parents. He will give them six months to help him find happiness, and if that doesn’t happen he’s off to Dignitas in Switzerland to die with dignity and put an end to his pain and constant exhaustion. That’s where Louisa comes in. “It would be nice if he thought of you as a friend,” explains his mother (Janet McTeer), “and not a paid professional.” Her primary purpose is to convince him that life can be just as rewarding as it was before the accident. Of course, before you can say Nicholas Sparks three times really fast, they fall for one another, but is love be enough to keep Will alive?
“Me Before You” is a fairly standard tearjerker with a lineage that can be traced back to ”Love Story” and beyond. The thing that elevates it above the usual sob story is the effervescent Clarke in the lead role. Her relentlessly upbeat charm—she has a smile so broad director Thea Sharrock almost needs a wide-angle lens to capture it—coupled with the character’s complete comfort in her quirky skin shows a much lighter side of Clarke than is ever evident on “Game of Thrones.” She proves she doesn’t need to command dragons to hand in a commanding performance.
Clarke has good chemistry with Claflin. He’s solemn enough to pull off a line like, “I sit and just about exist,” and gushy enough to breathe life into stilted dialogue like, “I just…want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.”
Good casting makes “Me Before You” an engaging enough romance that subtly deals with larger issues like class and assisted suicide. Unfortunately by the time Ed Sheeran warbles, “Loving can hurt… It is the only thing that makes us feel alive,” in the long, drawn out final section, the movie gets a little too on the money. The “you only get one life and it is your duty to live it as fully as possible” message isn’t quite as original as the movie thinks it is, but certainly, writer Moyes and Company have their hearts in the right place.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
In polite society no one would dare ask a stranger about his or her father’s violent death, but celebrity culture is not polite society.
Over the years I’ve heard interviewers ask questions ranging from the innocuous — “What are you wearing?” — to the silly — “How do you keep your bum in such great shape?” — but rarely have I heard anything as unnecessarily meddling as the query aimed at Charlize Theron during a press conference I hosted several years ago.
A reporter asked the actress about seeing her mother shoot her abusive, alcoholic father dead when she was a teenager. But instead of breaking down Theron said, “I’m not talking about that,” with an icy finality that made everyone freeze.
I admired her for not over sharing, not spilling the intimate details of her life à la the Kardashian Klan. She’s careful what she says to the press, avoids scandal and damage controls the ones that inevitably pop up in every celeb’s life. For instance, recently she said, short and sweetly, “We both decided to separate,” when accused of “ghosting” on her romance with Sean Penn.
She understands some things should only be spoken about when and where she chooses and not at the behest of an aggressive reporter looking to dredge up painful memories for the sake of “good television.” Theron is media savvy so I was surprised a few weeks ago when she caused a media hurly burly with comments about the burden of being beautiful.
Chatting up her new film The Huntsman: Winter’s War with British GQ she said, “How many roles are out there for the gorgeous, BLEEPINGing, gown-wearing eight-foot model? When meaty roles come through, I’ve been in the room and pretty people get turned away first.”
She is a beautiful woman, that is as clear as the perfectly positioned nose on her face, but is she intimating that being beautiful has harmed her career?
Turns out she wasn’t, or so she claims. Alleging a misquote, she later apologized, saying that playing “deconstructed characters” appeals because, “how many characters really are there out there for a woman wearing a gown? You have to play real people.
The mea culpa was unnecessary. She works in a business where beauty is a commodity.
The problem with her earlier statement is that publicly acknowledging one’s own looks carries with it a hint of arrogance, a suggestion that winning the genetic lottery somehow makes you superior, but she simply said something others already have.
Keira Knightley claims she almost lost the role in Pride and Prejudice because the director thought she was too pretty and Jessica Biel says being Esquire’s 2005 Sexiest Woman cost her work.
Theron may have missed out on a job or two because of her looks, but it’s also an element of what made her a star.
That and talent, and just as you wouldn’t apologize for skin colour or having red hair or being tall or short, she doesn’t need to say sorry for being beautiful.
Once upon a time there was a movie called “Snow White and the Huntsman.” Starring Hollywood princesses Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron, it was a dark reimagining of the classic story that played like the love child of the Brothers Grimm and “The Hobbit” with two compelling characters, warrior Snow White and the villainous Ravenna.
Another film was inevitable, but how do you make a sequel when KStew busy making art films and Ravenna didn’t make it to the end credits? Easy, you rehire Theron, play mix and match “Frozen” and “Game of Thrones” and hope for the best.
“The Huntsman: Winter’s War“ begins its confusing journey as a prequel. Ravenna (Theron) is alive and well, a Grand Guiginol vision of a fairy tale Queen. Despite her best efforts sister Freya (Emily Blunt) refuses to embrace their evil birthright, choosing instead to start a family. When tragedy strikes the formerly good-natured princess finds her wicked power, morphing into the Winter Queen, whose icy glare can freeze kingdoms. The only things missing are Olaf and a show tune or two.
In her frigid northern empire she raises a child army of orphans called the Huntsmen (even though they’re not all boys or men). Elsa’s… er… Freya’s warriors are forbidden to love. They must let it go. “In my kingdom there is one rule do not love,” she says. “It is in a sin I will not forgive.” When Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and Sara (Jessica Chastain) fall hard for one another and plan to elope, Freya goes to extraordinary and cruel lengths to ensure they live happily never after.
Cut to seven years later. The movie is now into sequel territory. Snow White (who is glimpsed only briefly) has defeated Ravenna and now needs Eric to locate the Magic Mirror and ensure it is never used for evil. Cue the goblins, a few hi ho hi ho’s provided by Nick Frost, Rob Brydon, Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach and more CGI than you can throw an enchanted mirror at.
I’m not sure what to call “The Huntsman: Winter’s War.“ It’s not a sequel or a prequel and yet it is both. Officially I suppose we’re supposed to call it a “sprequel”; I call it bloated, confusing and worst of all, dull. You would think that any movie featuring Emily Blunt riding a polar bear would be great fun but you’d be wrong. From the half hour of narration that opens the story to the cavalcade of CGI and bad accents—Hemsworth and Chastain easily beat Kevin Costner for worst-ever cinematic British Isles burrs—to sloppy storytelling, this is a grim, not Brothers Grimm tale.
Bad accent aside Hemsworth brings some swagger to the role of Eric, Chastain tries to keep a straight face and sidekicks Frost, Brydon, Smith and Roach create a badly needed sense of fun to the proceedings. Blunt isn’t given much to do, aside from her rather stunning entrance in the polar bear but Theron actually disappoints. In the first film she’s a hoot, a bundle of bad intentions gathered up in one pretty package. Here she’s not the same figure of malicious amusement but oddly disconnected and not nearly as much fun.
Over long “The Huntsman: Winter’s War“ drones on for almost two hours until the narrator (Liam Neeson) reappears. As his dulcet tones close the movie with something to the effect of the story may be over “but fairy talks never end,” it doesn’t seem so much like an ending as it does a threat that they might make a sequel to this mess.
“The Witch” is the kind of horror film that is not content to simply say “Boo!” There are few, if any, jump scares in the film. Instead, it’s the kind of puritanical folk tale that slowly burrows itself into your brain, leaving you queasy and uneasy.
Set in New England, 1630 the movie centers on Christian settlers William, Katherine (Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie, both of “Game of Thrones”) and their five children, a family banished from their church and community to eek out a life on the outskirts of town. Bordered by an ominous forest, their remote new home offers little in the way of comfort, spiritual uplift or sustenance.
Plagued by grinding poverty and crop failure, the devote family is rocked when their baby son baby son is stolen while under the care of eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy). The disappearance is chalked up to something satanic—perhaps a witch from the woods—and a pall of distrust and fear envelops the family, tearing away at the very core of their lives—their faith.
“The Witch” is a slow burn (in hell). Screenwriter and first time director Robert Eggers takes his time building up to a bewitchingly strange climax, toggling between paranoia and illusory (or are they?) elements to allow the dread to mount.
He creates a compact but complete and complex world for his characters to inhabit, chock-a-block with interesting details. Much of the dialogue was borrowed from contemporary trial transcripts and journals and comes heavily laden with religious fervour and the wilderness provides a gloomy backdrop, providing with creepy sounds and the possibility of evil. Everything, every creaking tree branch, every image seems to take on meaning as the hysteria increases.
As William, Ineson is a stern, austere man ruled by his religion, even if it means denying his daughter. The real revelation here is Anya Taylor-Joy as the put-upon daughter whose tests the family’s ideas of faith, loyalty and love.
“The Witch” won’t be for everyone, and certainly not for casual horror fans. There’s no Freddys or Jasons in sight, just pure terror.
