This week on “Pop Life” Richard chats with Jay Baruchel’s about where his love of the Habs came from. The Canadian “How to Train Your Dragon” actor and author speaks about this and more.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
“Goon: Last of the Enforcers” is about as subtle as one of Doug the Thug’s brutal uppercuts to the jaw. A foul-mouthed celebration of hockey rink sluggers directed by Jay Baruchel, it paints the ice with so much blood it makes the raunchy classic “Slapshot” look positively Victorian in comparison.
Six years since the original “Goon,” Seann William Scott returns as Doug Glatt, enforcer for the Halifax Highlanders. Imagine the love child of Tie Domi and Lloyd Christmas; a hockey bruiser with a heart of gold. The pro teams have been locked out and all eyes are on the Highlanders. As Captain and enforcer Doug is the team’s ticket to the playoffs until he comes out on the wrong end of an on-ice brawl with rival Anders Cain (Wyatt Russell). Beaten and bloody, Doug is forced into early retirement and Cain is recruited to take his place.
As Cain bashes heads on ice and off, Doug provides for his pregnant girlfriend Eva (Alison Pill) as an insurance salesman but as the season wears on Doug finds himself drawn back to the rink. “I don’t think the insurance bug has truly laid its eggs inside me,” he says. At first he sneaks in ice time behind Eva’s back but when he finally comes clean she is cool with him returning to the ice as long as he doesn’t fight. Question is, will it be possible for Doug lace up and hit the ice without raising his fists?
The final showdown between the two bruisers boils down to the simple fact that Doug loves the game while Cain only loves to win.
“Goon: Last of the Enforcers” replaces the enforcer-as-gladiator subtext of the first film with easier to digest philosophical messages about loyalty, doing the right thing and how understanding your purpose and place makes for a happy life. That it splatters those messages with gallons of blood, jokes about autoerotic asphyxiation and, well, just about every bodily function known to man. It is rough and rowdy, like a scrappy booze-fuelled minor league game.
Scott brings his goofy charm to Doug, a sweetheart of a guy with an iron fist and a bum shoulder. He teammates are likeable misfits, each a little quirkier than the last. Locker room talk—some that would make the Hanson Brothers blush—abounds between them, but their real bond is a shared love of the game.
As Darth Vader on skates Wyatt Russell is welcome addition to the team. He gets the off kilter rhythm of the dialogue and is as villainous as Doug is soft-hearted.
At it’s dirty little heart “Goon: The Last of the Enforcers” is a sweet movie about love, Doug’s dual loves for Eva and the game.
“Lovesick” turns the usual romantic comedy journey of self-discovery on its head by flipping the main character’s sex from female to male. Other than that this is a by-the-book rom com that amiably balances the rom with the com.
Jacob Tierney is Dash, a thirtysomething mural artist recently separated from his long time girlfriend Lauren (“Mad Men’s” Jessica Paré). Childhood sweethearts, they were together for twelve years and their break-up has hit Dash hard. Compounding his hurt is her new love Mark (Jay Baruchel). He’s a wiseguy, quick with a barb, who has asked Lauren to marry him.
Dash’s lovesickness has affected every aspect of his life and when he meets Nora (Ali Tataryn) sparks fly, but he is still obsessed with Lauren. Hashing out his feelings of unrequited love with a therapist he searches for a way to let go of the past. Will it be a rehash of “The Graduate” or will Dash move on and move forward?
“Lovesick” doesn’t reinvent the wheel. The most remarkable thing about it is that it sets the action in Winnipeg rather than in the rom com cradle of New York. The same clever, slightly damaged people are on display, wearing their hearts on their sleeves in a movie that follows the rom com formula.
Luckily the cast has great chemistry. Montrealers Tierney, Baruchel and Paré click, making the most of the script’s charms. Rom coms are all about squeezing out laughs and a few heartfelt moments from a formula. “Lovesick” does that effectively, building a cast of quirky characters to surround Dash as his life crumbles.
“Lovesick” is a journey of self discovery, mixed with a few laughs, a tiny bit of romance (it’s more fixation than desire) and just enough darkness to separate it from the run of the mill rom com.
I have a few people to thank today! Firstly, Sunday night I hosted the Facebook Fishbowl Lounge at the Canadian Screen Awards red carpet. Really fun. Thanks to Marc Dinsdale for shooting and posting everything we did and thanks to everyone who stopped bvy the booth to answer questions from my Facebook Random Question Generator. It was a fun way to get things started last night.
Then I moved on to host the Press Room. We had great guests down there and I’d like to offer thanks to everyone who asked questions.
My biggest thanks of the night goes to Touchwood PR–Alma P, Andrea Grau Clunie,Juli Strader, Laila Jennifer Rashwan, Susan Smythe-Bishop, Julia Caslin and the entire gang over there. It was a long night but with organization, good humour and efficiency they made the night run without a hitch.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
Everybody knows what happens on stage at a big show like this Sunday’s Canadian Screen Awards. A host sings, dances and/or tells jokes, glamorous presenters tear open envelopes and announce award winners who thank everyone from managers to spouses to Jesus. There’s the slapping of backs, bespoke tuxedos and flowing gowns and tears.
Add in some drama, a red carpet and you have the ingredients of a big awards show, but what happens backstage?
Lots, as it turns out. Every year at the Canadian Screen Awards there’s a whole other show that happens offstage in the pressroom. Located deep in the bowels of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts it’s my domain during the live broadcast. Every year I host the room, interviewing the winners as they come off stage in front of an “audience” made up of local and national reporters there for the free food and access to the celebs. I am the purveyor of sound bites, the compère to the press who take the interviews I do and turn them into stories for the next day’s papers and newscasts.
Over the years Elvis Costello, Tatiana Maslany, William Shatner and many others have passed through, tossing out bon mots like they were candy. Jay Baruchel let it slip he was engaged to Alison Pill on our small stage. Viggo Mortensen proudly waved the Montreal Canadiens flag in the face of a roomful of Leafs fans and Jill Hennessey gushed about the Canadian Screen Awards gift bag, thanking the Academy for the Norman Jewison Maple Syrup.
It’s an easy gig for me. Everyone who comes down from the main stage is a winner, automatically in a good mood and ready to have some fun.
When Lifetime Achievement Award winner David Cronenberg was asked where the inspiration for his movies came from he took a moment to examine the assembled crowd of journalists before deadpanning, “Just standing here is giving me all kinds of ideas for horror films.”
Call Me Fitz star Tracy Dawson picked up a CSA for Best Actress but later told me that awards don’t guarantee work. She won a Gemini in 2011 for playing Meghan Fitzpatrick on the show and thought she had it made. Then her phone didn’t ring for ten months. In the pressroom she joked that she wanted to be clear—she was looking for work. “I’m totally available,” she laughed.
It’s a different show downstairs, less glitzy and more relaxed.
This year Andrea Martin is taking over hosting duties from fellow-SCTVer Martin Short but I’ll never forget last year how Short tore up the pressroom, still jacked up from hosting the show. He was hilarious when I asked if he’d try and top his spectacular flying entrance next year. “I can only fly so many times,” he said. “That harness chafes.”
To paraphrase the tagline of the original “Superman” movie for “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” “You will believe a dragon can fly.”
The story begins five years after the original 2010 movie. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is now an older and wiser teenager and master Dragon Whisperer. Through his efforts the citizens of his hometown, the Viking village of Berk, no longer fear dragons. In fact, the fire breathers have become part of the fabric of life. They have dragon races—that resemble Harry Potter’s Quidditch matches—and live a peaceful life co-existing with their serpentine pals.
Peace is threatened when Dragon Trappers, lead by the evil Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou), set their eye on the domesticated dragons of Berk. To avoid a war Hiccup and his girlfriend Astrid (America Ferrera) must change Drago’s mind about enslaving dragons.
The follow-up to “How to Train Your Dragon” half-a-billion-dollar grossing coming-of-age story is more of an action/adventure movie than the original. It begins with a stunning aerobatics sequence that shows Hiccup and his trusty sidekick Toothless soaring through the air doing barrel rolls, loops and stunts usually only seen at airshows. The slick and sassy scene sets the tone for the rest of the movie. It’s a wild ride and one that reinvents the franchise.
Director Dean DeBlois has taken some chances with the story, deepening and darkening the tone with subplots about family relationships, prejudice and sacrifice. Some of the imagery is intense—the “alpha” dragons look like they sprung from the mind of H.P. Lovecraft—and may be a bit traumatic for toddlers, but should be fine for kids 6 and up.
It’s not all sturm and drang, however. Baruchel brings the fun with his expressive voice and the script is gently humorous. The focus is firmly on the action/adventure aspects of the story, but there are laughs along the way for ids and adults.
Without slavishly aping the original it thematically expands the universe, building on ideas established in the movie that audiences first fell in love with. In other words, it’s a sequel, with recognizable characters and situations, but also works as a stand-alone film.
Most of all it’s about the on screen imagery. Inventive sequences—it “rains” fish at feeding time in the dragon sanctuary for instance—and beautiful animation carry the day.
“How to Train Your Dragon 2” is high on spectacle and never wastes an opportunity to entertain the eye and up the wonder factor, but it’s not just shock and awe. An emotional subplot regarding family adds some weight to the fantasy elements of the story.
Richard’s “Canada AM” interview with actors Jay Baruchel and America Ferrera and director Dean DeBlois on the animated feature ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ and its dark scenes.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Jay Baruchel has a unique voice. Instantly recognizable, the nasally twang he uses to bring the character of How to Train Your Dragon 2’s Hiccup to life is so distinctive it even has it’s own facebook fan page.
You would think that kids, who made the Viking teenager and his dragon Toothless so popular on the big screen—the original 2010 movie grossed almost half a billion dollars— and on the TV show and video games, would be thrilled to meet the man behind the voice. Right?
“Friends who have kids will say, ‘Hey! Look! It’s Hiccup,” and then it is utter, sheer disappointment,” he says. “‘This is not Hiccup. It’s a real life human dirt bag I’m looking at.’ Although I have to say I was in a liquor store in Los Angeles a few months ago and I was saying something to the cashier and this guy turned around and said, ‘You’re funny. You know you’re doing something right when you get recognized by your voice,’ but usually with the kids, they’re super bummed to actually meet me.”
Baruchel has voiced Hiccup in two films (with at least one more on the way) and forty episodes of the television show. Director Dean DeBlois says that the actor and the character are now interchangeable, with Brauchel bringing character ideas to the table every time out.
“How much input I ultimately have is purely up to (Dean),” says Baruchel. “I have played this character for seven years and I think he has a very specific way of speaking and a specific way of communicating. What’s really cool is that Dean, who created this epic world that comes from his head and heart, and who has so many things to think about, still finds time to be a collaborator and will always allow me to find my own way into things. I’d like to think we can equally take ownership over (Hiccup).”
One of Hiccup’s vocal tics unmistakably came from Baruchel—his habit of calling his dragon by the nickname Bud.
“That is clearly me,” he says. “I remember the first time we did it in the first one and it just kind of stuck and became a thing. I call everyone Bud in real life and half the work is for me not to call every character in this movie Bud. It’s kind of specific to Toothless now. I still fit in some hoser wherever I can.”
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
The Hobbit author J.R.R. Tolkien described dragon Smaug as “a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm.” The Flight of the Conchords have a song called Albi the Racist Dragon, and on Dragon Day at Cornell University, an effigy of one of the giant beasts is burned while students shout and dance.
They can be fiery, fearsome creatures. “Noble dragons don’t have friends,” writes Terry Pratchett in Guards! Guards! “The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.”
It’s not hard to understand why the folks on Game of Thrones are wary of Daenerys Targaryen’s (Emilia Clarke) brood of the beasts when she spouts off lines like, “When my dragons are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who wronged me! We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground!” Then there’s Bryagh, the serpentine villain of The Flight of Dragons who not only insults the movie’s heroes before dispatching them, he also gobbles up the eggs of other dragons!
Maybe if characters in movies paid more heed to the advice given by author Steven Brust — “Always speak politely to an enraged dragon” — then movies and TV wouldn’t have to offer up such a wide array of ways to rid the world of dragons. Look on IMDb, there are dozens of titles containing the phrase “dragon slayer.”
The 2010 animated hit How to Train Your Dragon begins in a remote Viking village where killing a dragon is “everything.” It focuses on Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), a kind- hearted boy who captures one of the flying behemoths and discovers two things: One, he can’t bring himself to kill it, and two, that dragons aren’t the fearful monsters everyone thinks they are. He becomes a Dragon Whisperer and the movie shows the serpentine creatures in a different light than the abysmal brutes usually seen on screen.
This weekend, How to Train Your Dragon 2 adds to the list of cinematic dragons who are more misunderstood than actually evil.
The 1941 Disney flick The Reluctant Dragon features a dragon that would rather recite poetry than cause havoc. “You’ve got to be mad to breathe fire,” he says, “but I’m not mad at anybody.”
In the live-action DragonHeart, a fire-breather must team with a dragon-slaying knight (Dennis Quaid) to end an evil king’s rule. When the giant serpent is accused of eating an adversary, he is indignant. “I merely chewed in self-defense, but I never swallowed.”
Eddie Murphy lent some comedic relief to the 1998 animated movie Mulan as the tiny, blue-horned Mushu. He may be the size of the Geico gecko, but don’t mention it. “I’m a dragon, not lizard. I don’t do that tongue thing.”
