Posts Tagged ‘Geoff Pevere’

RICHARD AND GEOFF PEVERE TO HOST SCREENING OF “DON’T LOOK BACK”!

2008_02_19_Rep_CinemaOn January 25th at 7 pm Richard and Geoff Pevere will host a special screening of Don’t Look Back, 1967 documentary film by D. A. Pennebaker of Bob Dylan’s 1965 concert tour in the UK at the Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles Avenue,(416) 531-9950) in Toronto.

Geoff Pevere is one of Canada’s leading pop culture commentators and movie critics. Geoff was a former host of CBC Radio’s Prime Time program, a movie critic with the Toronto Star for ten years, a TV host and a lecturer on film and media and is currently a movie columnist with the Globe and Mail. He is the co-author of the national bestseller Mondo Canuck: A Canadian Pop Culture Odyssey, his books include Toronto on Film and Donald Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road, his latest book is Gods of the Hammer – The Teenage Head Story. Geoff will be signing copies of Gods of the Hammer! If you don’t have your own copy you can pick one up at the Revue before and after the screening.

Richard Crouse is the regular film critic for CTV’s Canada AM, the 24 hour news source CTV’s News Channel and CP24. He is a frequent guest on many national Canadian radio and television shows. His syndicated Saturday afternoon radio show, The Richard Crouse Show, originates on News Talk 1010 in Toronto. He is the author of six books on pop culture and writes a weekly column for Metro newspaper.

Join us on January 25th at 7 pm when Geoff and Richard long-time friends and television co-hosts discuss music and film before screening Geoff’s all-time favourite music film Don’t Look Back.

More info HERE!

Another Stellar Line-up for Entertainment Extra on NewsTalk 1010

photo copyBe sure to listen in to Entertainment Extra on Saturday afternoon from 4 to 5 pm on NewsTalk 1010 in Toronto and worldwide on the web! This week comedian Sean Cullen, Gods of the Hammer author Geoff Pevere and Teri Hart and Richard discuss many mind numbingly exciting topics!

More info HERE!

LEVITY

I hate it when actors that I really like appear in terrible movies. On paper Levity sounds like it might have something going for it. Billy Bob Thornton, an actor who in 2001 alone handed in three very good but very different performances in The Man Who Wasn’t There, Monster’s Ball and Bandits. He’s versatile and not afraid to take risks. Morgan Freeman is a journeyman who is always good, even when the material is beneath him. Director Ed Soloman is best known as a comedy writer, having made us giggle with the Bill and Ted movies as well as the first Charlie’s Angels film. Why then would he step out of his field to write and direct a painstakingly earnest movie about an ex-con’s search for redemption? And how is it possible to take two actors that I really like, Thornton and Freeman and make them almost unwatchable? This is what happens when an inexperienced director decides to make an art-house film. Don’t be fooled by the title, there isn’t a laugh in sight. The inappropriately named Levity limps along for ninety minutes, with the only compelling action happening just seconds before the credits roll. To paraphrase my co-host Geoff Pevere, the only thing this movie did was bring me 100 minutes closer to my death.

This is an excerpt from an interview Geoff Pevere and Richard did on Reel to Real with director David Cronenberg. It was trabscribed by”Ashley” on Row Three.com:

cronenberg2Richard Crouse: You know there’s a long list of films, and it’s interesting to hear you talk about how A History of Violence could have been probably a much different film if it had been made by an American. There’s a long list of films that you’ve said no to, that I’ve read about.

Geoff Pevere: How different a film Flashdance might have been.

Richard Crouse: Absolutely.

David Cronenerg: It would have been a failure!

Richard Crouse: Geoff and I were talking about this earlier, Geoff said someone quoted to you the idea that there would have been a whole alternate world of blockbusters had you directed Top Gun, and Flashdance, and Beverly Hills Cop, and some of the other films you were offered and said no to. You’d probably get offered many many things.

David Cronenberg: Well, Witness was one of those, and it actually was the first movie that Viggo Mortensen was in.

Richard Crouse: That’s right.

Geoff Pevere: Oh, that’s right.

David Cronenberg: He played an Amish.

Geoff Pevere: One of the Star Wars movies too. Weren’t you offered one of those?

David Cronenberg: Uh, yes. Yes, I was. I got a phone call from somebody from Lucas Film, and they said “we’re thinking of you for doing this third Star Wars movie.” I guess it was Return of the Jedi, and I said “well, I’m not used to doing other people’s material.” And I think there was a hang-up after that. I think they were looking for unbridled excitement, and instead they got hesitation, and that was it. Anyway, you have to know what to turn down. Those movies wouldn’t have been hits if I had done them. I would have somehow screwed them up because what they needed was that full on … I mean I certainly remember very definitely why I turned Witness down, because I could see the structure of that movie demanded that you sort of idealize the Amish. And to me they were a very repressive, sort of cultish group that I didn’t have much affection for, and I knew that I couldn’t do that kind of idealizing that the script required, because that was paradise, and life in the big city was “bad.” And I just didn’t believe it. So that was as it often is with me, a philosophical problem. People think because I’ve done horror films, they send me things like Constantine, with demons and stuff. And I say “I don’t do devils. I don’t do the Devil. I don’t do demons. I don’t do angels. I don’t do ghosts. I really don’t. And that’s because it’s a philosophical question. All of those things presuppose an afterlife, which I don’t believe in. And therefore I don’t, even metaphorically – I mean, I suppose if there were an approach were you could really say all of those things were metaphors for something else, then maybe it would work – but mostly it’s not. I can watch The Exorcist and see why it’s effective, and enjoy it. But I couldn’t make it.