Richard joins CP24 to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “The Lion King,” “The Farewell,” the documentary “Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies” and the Jessie Eisenberg satire “The Art of Self-Defense.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard sits in on the CTV NewsChannel with news anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s big releases including all-singing, all-animal “The Lion King,” the poignant family dramedy “The Farewell,” the timely documentary “Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies” and the dark Jessie Eisenberg satire “The Art of Self-Defense” with CFRA Morning Rush guest host Matt Harris.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard has a look at the new movies coming to theatres, including the photo realistic “The Lion King,” the poignant family drama “The Farewell,” the timely documentary “Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies” and the dark Jessie Eisenberg satire “The Art of Self-Defense” with CFRA Morning Rush guest host Matt Harris.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Into the era of fake news comes “Propaganda: The Art Of Selling Lies,” the new documentary from director Larry Weinstein. A timely look at what activist Astra Taylor calls, “political brainwashing,” the film details the reasons why we are so often sucker punched by the use and abuse of the media.
Weinstein begins “Propaganda” with a fast cut montage of images—everything from Warhol’s Mao to scenes from “The Birth of a Nation” to images of Trump scrolling on a smart phone—intercut with expert voices like psychotherapist Adam Phillips who calls propaganda “a calculated attack on the complexity of other people’s minds.” The startling pictures display the power of images to create feelings and plant the seeds of idealogy. In short, as another commentator says, getting you to submit without realizing you are submitting.
From here Weinstein introduces a colourful cast of characters. New Yorker political cartoonist Barry Blitt chimes in on satirising Trump. “Every picture of him is a revelation. The sides of his face are interesting and the back of his head is fantastic. The colours, the textures. There is so much to draw there. It is too bad he is who he is.” 104-year-old Norman Lloyd discusses his friend Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” a stirring condemnation of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, fascism, antisemitism and the Nazis. “He was creating propaganda because he felt intensely for the need for it.” Artists Shepard Fairey and Jim Fitzpatrick, who created the Obama Hope poster and the iconic Viva Che image respectively, speak to the power of visual art in creating a political movement and Monsignor Timothy Verdon, Canon of the Cathedral of Florence speaks to “seducing through all the senses.”
Most terrifying of all is Jean Seaton, an expert in all things Orwellian, who reveals how social media is exploited to influence the unsuspecting masses. “Although propaganda has always sought to hide itself,” she says, “its capacity to do so on social media is enhanced.”
It’s one thing to learn about Felix Dadaev, Stalin’s body double. It’s quite another to see how propaganda is part of everyday modern life. The inclusion of Seaton and others, including cultural historian Edward Jones-Imhotep, help bring the documentary into the present. “If we grow up only surrounded by propaganda. How do we know what is true?” Suddenly our twitter feeds feel more sinister.
“Propaganda” is a fascinating look at human nature that covers the past but feels current, not like a history lesson.
Check out the Richard Crouse Show on NewsTalk 1010 for February 23, 2018! This week Richard welcomes Ali and Larry Weinstein, co-directors of “The Impossible Swim.” In July 2018, Maya Farrell attempted her second crossing of Lake Ontario, following in the footsteps of great Canadian female marathon swimmers Marilyn Bell and Vicki Keith. Featuring interviews with Bell and Keith, ‘The Impossible Swim’ explores the legacy, what it takes physically and mentally to be a marathon athlete, and the new rising regime. Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!:
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Ethan Hawke, director Brad Bird, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Roberts, Brian Henson, Jonathan Goldsmith a.k.a. “The most interesting man in the world,” and best selling author Linwood Barclay.
Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed! Read Richard NewsTalk 1010 reviews HERE!
The show airs:
NewsTalk 1010 – airs in Toronto Saturday at 9 to 10 pm.
For Niagara, Newstalk 610 Radio – airs Saturdays at 6 to 7 pm
For Montreal, CJAD 800 – Saturdays at 6 to 7 pm
For Vancouver – CFAX 1070 – Saturdays 6 to 7 pm.
For London — Newstalk 1290 CJBK, Saturdays 10 to 11 pm
Check out the Richard Crouse Show on NewsTalk 1010 for December 9, 2017! This week Richard welcomes Larry Weinstein, director of “Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas,” John Mitchell, director of “Waiting for Ishtar” and Susan Coyne, screenwriter of “The Man Who Invented Christmas.”
Here’s some info on The Richard Crouse Show!: Each week on The Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Richard also lets you know what movies you’ll want to run to see and which movies you’ll want to wait for DVD release. Click HERE to catch up on shows you might have missed! Read Richard NewsTalk 1010 reviews HERE!
The show airs:
NewsTalk 1010 – airs in Toronto Saturday at 9 to 10 pm.
For Niagara, Newstalk 610 Radio – airs Saturdays at 6 to 7 pm
For Montreal, CJAD 800 – Saturdays at 6 to 7 pm
For Vancouver – CFAX 1070 – Saturdays 6 to 7 pm.
For London — Newstalk 1290 CJBK, Saturdays 10 to 11 pm
Welcome to the House of Crouse. Is the saxophone a cursed instrument? Does its smooth and seductive sound drive people mad? Larry Weinstein thinks so and has made a fascinating film about it called The Devil’s Horn. We talk about the yakety sax history of the instrument and Craig Davidson swings by to chat about his new memoir Precious Cargo. Join us! Sit a spell!
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
The sexy and seductive sound of the saxophone is as close to the cooing voice of a loved one is any instrument can be. Yet, for that very reason the instrument has had a long and storied past ripe with more intrigue than any James Patterson thriller. In the new documentary The Devil’s Horn director Larry Weinstein walks us through the sax’s wild, woolly and supposedly cursed history.
“It is one of these things where truth is stranger than fiction,” he says. “Certainly the life of [inventor] Adolphe Sax is terribly bizarre. From the near deaths he had as a child to the jealousy of instrument makers who actually tried to kill him, twice, and burn down his factory, it looks entirely fictionalized but everything we say about him is true. Then he got this cancerous growth that was so large he couldn’t eat or drink or breathe. By the time he was ready to come back to work his patents had run out. He died in total poverty.”
The idea of the cursed instrument seems to have originated with its inventor. “Adolphe Sax himself had this dream that devils with saxophones were pulling people to hell.”
The movie describes how sax icons Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker, John Coltrane and many other players of the “devil’s instrument” battled heroin addiction, creating sounds so carnal and voluptuous they were outlawed by everyone from the Nazis (who banned the sax from the Earth) to the Vatican. Movie studios barred it from soundtracks and it put the sex in sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.
“I always thought when they talked about it sounding like a human voice they meant the timbre of the saxophone. Like the human voice the sax has alto, tenor, soprano and bass, but I think it also has to do with the fact that it can bend and growl, that it can moan and weave around seductively. Also, you can play with so little air it can whisper but it can also scream and be much louder than most of the other brass instruments.”
Of course the horn and its players aren’t truly cursed but Weinstein says, “other instrumentalists have those problems and they exist in classical music too, but for some reason not to the extent that saxophonists have suffered.”
Using a mix of archival footage and new interviews with musicians like Colin Stetson and Giuseppi Logan, Weinstein gets past that catchy concept to make a compelling case for the sax as more than a symbol of depravity and immorality and Mr. Sax as “one of the greatest geniuses in the history of music.”
“The problem with the saxophone is you pick it up, blow into it and there is a beautiful rich sound right away. Adolphe Sax made it so people who can’t play well, sound good. That’s the genius of the guy. All other instruments evolved out of other instruments. This guy, in about 1840 said, ‘I want to make an instrument with this sound and I’m going to have to make it brass and give it the mouthpiece of a clarinet and the fingerboard of a flute.’ And he invented it. Most people if they looked at an 1846 saxophone they would think it looked like a modern saxophone and the sound is almost the same.”
Richard and “Canada AM” host Marci Ien talk about the weekend’s big releases, the pomp and circumstance of “The Huntsman: Winter’s War,” the Tom Hanks dramedy “A Hologram for The King,” Sally Field in “Hello, My Name is Doris” and the sexy sax sounds of “The Devil’s Horn.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
