Richard speaks with “Lady and the Tramp‘s” Yvette Nicole Brown about her role in Disney’s newest remake, adopting rescue dogs, wearing corsets and if Brown agrees that her character is the villain of the story.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Angie Seth to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including the Agatha Christie-esque “Knives Out” with Daniel Craig, the Disney+ revamp of “Lady and the Tramp” and the thought provoking “Queen & Slim.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including “Knives Out” with Daniel Craig and a cast of n’ere do wells, the Disney+ revamp of “Lady and the Tramp,” the odd couple picture “The Two Popes,” the corporate legal drama “Dark Waters,” and the thought provoking “Queen & Slim” with CFRA morning show host Bill Carroll.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk the new movies coming to theatres including the who dunnit “Knives Out” with Daniel Craig, the Disney+ revamp of “Lady and the Tramp,” the buddy picture “The Two Popes” and the thought provoking “Queen & Slim.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
New to the Disney+ screening platform comes a glossy live-action—that means real dogs!— remake of “Lady and the Tramp,” the House of Mouse’s 1955 animated classic.
The updated version maintains the heart of the original. The story of two dogs from different sides of the tracks, a pampered American Cocker Spaniel named Lady (voiced by Tessa Thompson) and Tramp (voiced by Justin Theroux), a Schnauzer-mutt who lives on the street, is a study in class divides aimed at kid’s imaginations. The plot thickens when Lady’s owners (Kiersey Clemons and Thomas Mann) welcome a baby and, through circumstance, she finds herself on the streets, eking out a life with her new friend Tramp.
This is not your father’s “Lady and the Tramp.” The Disney+ version of is half an hour longer than the original version and comes with a modern sensibility. That means the regressive and racist “The Siamese Cat” song is nowhere to be found (the cats are no longer Siamese and they sing a new tune called “What a Shame.”), irritable Scottish Terrier Jock is now named Jacqueline and Tramp no longer has to defend Lady from a group of wild dogs. She’s more than capable doing that herself. Also, Tramp won’t be defined by the name Tramp. In this outing he has no name. “Who needs a name?” he says. “I’m free to be whoever I want to be.”
To my eye the changes and new additions don’t justify the extended running time but as a family television experience “Lady and the Tramp” offers up several pleasures. Once you adjust to the inherent strangeness of watching dogs speak, the canines hand in good performances (never thought I would ever actually have to write that in a review). They don’t have the range of expression their cartoon counterparts brought to the story but, as we saw in “The Lion King,” the technology that brings them to anthropomorphic life is state of the art if not quite the magical experience you might hope for.
Richard joins CP24 anchor Cristina Tenaglia to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including Christian Bale as former vice president Dick Cheney in “Vice,” the James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk” and Felicity Jones as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “On the Basis of Sex.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Angie Seth to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in “Vice,” the James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk” and Felicity Jones as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “On the Basis of Sex.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at the Dick Cheney biopic “Vice,” the James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and Felicity Jones as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “On the Basis of Sex.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
In 1956 when Ruth Bader Ginsburg entered Harvard Law School she was one of just nine women in her class. A new film, “On the Basis of Sex” starring Felicity Jones as the second female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, details her formative years from law school through to her ground breaking cases in the area of women’s rights.
We first see Ginsburg in a bright blue overcoat, sensible pumps and stockings with a perfectly straight line up the calf walking to class on her first day. She stands out in the mostly button down male pupils walking in Harvard’s hallowed halls. In class the keen student is met with stares of disbelief and asked to consider what it means to be a “Harvard man.” Worse, her dean, Erwin Griswold (Sam Waterston), bluntly asks, “Why are you occupying a place at Harvard that could have gone to a man?”
Cut to 1959. Her tax lawyer husband Marty (Armie Hammer) and daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny) are living in New York. Despite graduating top of her class Ginsburg can’t find a job in the biggest city in the world’s most litigious country simply because she is a woman. “We’re a tight knit firm,” one prospective employer tells her. “Almost like family. The wives would get jealous.”
Shut out of practicing law she accepts a position as a professor at Columbia Law School. The story jumps ahead a decade to 1970. Her class in women’s rights is ninety percent female but attitudes haven’t changed much since she graduated. “Some colleagues say I should be teaching the rights of gnomes and fairies,” she says.
The brilliant law professor feels stymied because while she is teaching the next group of lawyers to change the world she would rather be changing it herself.
When her husband presents her with the case of Charles Moritz (Christian Mulkey), a man denied a caregiver tax deduction because of his gender, she sees a way to make change. She leaps at the chance to take on a sex discrimination case that could have far reaching implications not only for Moritz but for women as well.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an exceptional person. So exceptional in fact that her life has been documented several times on film, including the recent documentary “RBG.” That movie presents her as a multifaceted person. An opera loving law prodigy with a wicked sense of humour and a sense of justice that has influenced every aspect of her life. Gloria Steinem calls her “the closest thing to a superhero I know.”
“On the Basis of Sex,” written by Ginsburg’s late husband’s nephew, Daniel Stiepleman, takes this pioneering woman’s spirit and shapes it around a formulaic narrative. It’s efficient, playing like a greatest hits collection of the heads she butted and the doors she kicked in. Gone is the quirky, layered personality displayed in “RBG,” replaced with Jones’s earnest portrayal. If, as Steinem says, she is a superhero, “RBG” portrays her as Wonder Woman. In “On the Basis of Sex” she’s more like Elektra, still remarkable but not quite as interesting.
“On the Basis of Sex” is a feel good history lesson, a movie that provides a look at Ginsburg’s determination, intelligence and humanity but one that goes too heavy on the hagiography.
