I sit in with hosts John Moore and John Moore on NewsTalk 1010 to play the game “Did Richard Crouse Like This?” This week we talk about the “ghost with the most” in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the head bangin’ “Deaner ’89” and the haunting “The Front Room.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 31:29)
I join “CTV News Atlantic at Six” anchor Todd Battis to talk about the “ghost with the most” in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the head bangin’ “Deaner ’89” and the haunting “The Front Room.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join CP24 to have a look at the “ghost with the most” in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the head bangin’ “Deaner ’89” and the haunting “The Front Room.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I join the CTV NewsChannel anchor Renee Rogers to talk about the “ghost with the most” in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the head bangin’ “Deaner ’89” and the haunting “The Front Room.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show to talk the new movies coming to theatres and streaming including the “ghost with the most” in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the head bangin’ “Deaner ’89” and the haunting “The Front Room.”
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to tie a bowtie! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the “ghost with the most” in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the head bangin’ “Deaner ’89” and the haunting “The Front Room.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Front Room,” a new psychological horror film directed by Max and Sam Eggers, brothers of Robert Eggers, and now playing in theaters, a young couple is pushed to their emotional limit when they take in the husband’s ailing but demonically domineering mother.
CAST: Brandy Norwood (a.k.a. the mononymously famous R&B singer Brandy), Kathryn Hunter, Andrew Burnap, and Neal Huff. Directed by the Eggers Brothers.
REVIEW: “The Front Room,” based on the short story by Susan Hill, benefits from a bravura performance from Olivier Award winner Kathryn Hunter. As the mother-in-law from hell Solange, she is the catalyst for the growing sense of paranoia and fear that drapes over the proceedings.
Hunter, a virtuoso of physical performance, is, by times, frail, powerful and terrifying. She’s an unpredictable agent of chaos in her new home, and Hunter brings the spectrum of the character’s manipulative behavior to vivid life.
She is pure malevolence whose arsenal includes verbal abuse, guilt and even incontinence. Her presence changes everything in the house, proving that sometimes good deeds do, indeed, go unrewarded.
Hunter is the movie’s withered heart. Without her wicked performance, and the game of figuring out exactly what she is up to, you’re left with a horror riff on “Monster-In-Law.”
“The Front Room” tackles the price of obligation and the psychological stresses of parenthood, but it is Hunter who will grab and hold your attention.
I’ll be reviewing three movies this week, talking about everything from a lovelorn gothic superhero to a serial killer to a fantasy island trip gone wrong. All reviews posted on Thursday, August 29!
Narrated by Viktor Ivanov, a former KGB agent, “Reagan,” a new biopic starring Dennis Quaid as the 40th President of the United States, follows Ronald Reagan from childhood, to Hollywood fame to his time in the oval office and an assassination attempt.
Set against the backdrop of the Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict, the action thriller “1992,” sees a factory worker, played by Tyrese Gibson, caught up in a dangerous heist to steal catalytic converters, which contain valuable platinum, from the factory where he works.
In “Out Come the Wolves,” a new survival drama now playing in select theatres and day-and-date on VOD/Digital, Sophie (Missy Peregrym) chooses a hunting trip at a remote cabin in the woods, to introduce her childhood best friend Kyle (Joris Jarsky) to fiancé Nolan (Damon Runyan). The idea is to for Kyle to teach Nolan how to hunt for an article he’s writing, but jealous tension hangs in the air. When the two men are ambushed by a ferocious wolf pack, Sophie must rely on her hunting prowess to come to the rescue.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
Julie Taymor wants to give you the best seat in the house at TIFF this year.
She captured her acclaimed stage production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the Polonsky Center in Brooklyn on film, shooting 70 hours with handheld cameras.
“I think film is so great for Shakespeare,” says Taymor, the first person to ever win a Tony for Best Direction of a Musical for her work on The Lion King. “You enjoy it in live theatre. The kids who came loved it; the pillow fights, theatrical stripping. They got it. But on film you have close-ups. This is where film is better than the theatre.
“With fours days of shooting, with hand held cameras and using pickups, you are now in the best positions in the house. We’re in positions that no audience could be. So now you are getting the support of the close up, which means you can understand it when you see the facial expression and the lips moving. You don’t need to know what the words are. I found that in Titus Andronicus [which she directed on film with Anthony Hopkins in 1999]. I still don’t know what a ‘weeping welkin’ is, but when Anthony Hopkins says it, I get it. You could turn off the dialogue and you would know what’s going on.”
Her beautiful adaptation is brought to film without the use of any special effects—“What you see was all in the production,” she says—except one miraculous performance by Kathryn Hunter as Puck. The cast and the staging are extraordinary, but Hunter stands out in a performance New York Mag called “part yoga, part cartoon.”
“I think Kathryn is the greatest actor on stage right now,” says Taymor. “She has played King Lear. She’s the only female in London [to do that]. She’s not a movie actress, because nobody has figured it out yet… because she is this strange creature. She is so versatile. I had seen her in five or six shows and a year before I did this I said if I could get Kathryn Hunter to play Puck, I’ll do this.”
It’s a show Taymor has deep connections to.
“It was the first play I ever saw,” she says. “I saw it here in Canada at the Stratford Festival and I played Hermia when I was seven.”
It also led, indirectly, to her biggest Broadway success. When Disney was renovating The New Amsterdam Theatre in New York she knew the first show there had been A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “so I went to Disney and said, ‘Could I do A Midsummer Night’s Dream here.’ They said no, but ‘Could you do The Lion King.’”
